In this Voices Inside Schools essay, a veteran teacher shares her reflections on a classroom unit entitled "How Language Reveals Character." The goal of the unit is to help adolescents read and write critically through an exploration of literary characters' language. Beginning by drawing on adolescents' fascination with one another,…

This chapter describes an innovative writing program at Simon Fraser University that has implications for fostering transformative learning.

This article offers an activity which hopes to illustrate the variety of ways that the media are able to manipulate not just information but also societal understandings of critical issues and events and to connect disparate media and time periods via an activity extended over several weeks. The topic for which this series of activities was…

This article illustrates the pedagogical value of employing student narrative writing assignments in the graduate sport management classroom and advocates for cultural studies and critical pedagogy approaches to teaching sport management. The article considers students' autobiographical narratives within a theoretical framework of cultural…

Case-based pedagogy is a valuable tool for applying business concepts and theories to organizational contexts. Traditional case-based pedagogy offers such learning opportunities. What this pedagogy lacks, however, is an element of real-time experiential learning opportunities. This research focuses on the advantages of incorporating a case-writing…

Improving students' writing achievement begins by creating a community of writers among teachers. These practices help staff learn more deeply.

I developed writing assignments for an introductory ecology class to encourage nonmajors to improve their writing skills and gain an appreciation for environmental issues. Statistical analyses suggest that during the semester, students' writing skills, their ability to write accurately about the environment, and their environmental behavior all…

This study describes the relationship between the instructor's feedback and students' metacognitive processes in an online course on democracy and multiculturalism, which was taught as part of a teacher education program. 700 postings, written by 68 students, were content analyzed along with 66 postings by the instructor, using tools designed for…

The Internet, coupled with technology, has enabled institutions of higher learning to offer online distance education classes to a worldwide student body at an increasing rate. In the next 5 years it is estimated that nearly 90% of universities will offer online classes. Unfortunately, the news is not all that good. Students are now cheating at an…

This study investigated the impact of prior knowledge, writing task, and hypertext format on university students' comprehension of multisource hypertext. Fifty-two students categorized as having high or low prior knowledge studied hypertext consisting of seven component texts on the topic of social influence. Some students were given a summary…

An autobiography class at Elizabethtown College (Pennsylvania) used one of its four technique paper assignments to focus on the exploratory essay, since the concept of exploration, simply for the sake of questioning, probing, and testing, has both validity and purpose in a class or assignment focusing on autobiography. First the class brainstormed…

Pupils need to express themselves in creative processes and products in the language arts curriculum. Too frequently, teachers require behavior which involves conformity on the part of learners. Specific objectives many times delimit pupils' opportunities to express original ideas that come from within the involved learners. Many activities can…

If writing teachers want to use modality effectively, they first have to deal with three problems: identification of markers of modality in English; representation (the use of models for modality); and correlation (pedagogical usefulness, and writing strategies for students). Two models of modality address the problems which writing teachers…

Many teachers would like to counter what Deborah Tannen calls "The Argument Culture." They recognize that teaching students traditional principles of argument may perpetuate the kind of adversarial thinking that erupts all too often: in aggressive newspaper headlines, on confrontational television shows, in court rooms, and in school…

In 1994, the situation of one writing teacher changed when she joined others at her institution to collaborate on the design and follow through of the Portfolio Composition Program for first-year writing students. Today, the collaboration continues as volunteer full-time faculty, graduate teaching assistants, and other part-time teachers try out…