The literacy classroom is a powerful context for students to learn about their own lives and the lives of others. By integrating lessons on identity and diversity in the literacy classroom, the learning experiences become more relevant and engaging. Not only is this the case for K-12 students, but also for the preservice teachers in teacher…

In a moment when the "value" of postsecondary education has been repeatedly called into question, this study responds by identifying long-term effects of the undergraduate experience with particular attention to the general education curriculum. Specifically, it draws on 559 written responses from a wide range of alumni to identify which…

Purpose: This study took place in an elementary English language arts classroom during a comics writers workshop unit and focused on one fourth-grade author. This paper aims to explain how a fourth-grade student receiving special education services positions himself and is positioned by others as an expert during a unit on comics. When students'…

This study reports on validation of a writing motivation survey and its relationship with a variety of indicators of academic performance of 566 undergraduate students drawn from six US postsecondary institutions. A writing motivation survey was used to capture students' writing goals, confidence, beliefs, and affect. Two research questions are…

Today's teachers seek to address the Holocaust not just as history, but also in relation to current events. Featuring stories from middle school, high school, and university classrooms across the United States, this collection offers a comprehensive argument for the inclusion of purposeful Holocaust pedagogy rooted in literacy practices and…

This article is a brief account of how the Writing Center at Daytona State College has begun to utilize social media in our space. We examine the platforms that we use, along with the data associated with them, and then discuss our goals for integrating our staff into the narrative that we share on campus and virtual campus. We first want to see…

Courses: Research Methods, Qualitative Research Methods, Ethnography. Objectives: The aims of this class exercise are: (1) To define an autoethnographic approach to communication research; (2) To understand autoethnography as both a research process and product; (3) To emphasize the varied forms of autoethnographic research and writing; (4) To…

This study investigates the role that textbooks, virtual reality (VR), and mixed approaches (i.e., text and VR) can play in the development of the two writing types, summary and argument writing. This study uses hemodynamics as a proxy for learning. Differences in hemodynamic responses during writing tasks were measured across four different…

While research into the potential benefits of second or foreign language (L2 or FL) collaborative writing for jointly written texts has proliferated in the last few decades, it remains unclear whether texts that learners compose individually after such activities demonstrate improved quality, accuracy, fluency, and complexity. This study compares…

Through either morphological or functional approaches, previous research has examined how instructed second language (L2) learners develop control over a challenging area of French: the use of the "imparfait." In order to better understand this challenge, this cross-sectional study utilized both approaches and examined how 94 university…

Recent studies documented that the act of writing explanations improves students' learning only to a limited extent, as students attend less frequently to genre-typical features of comprehensibility during writing explanations (i.e., cohesion). In this study, we investigated whether learning by writing explanations can be enhanced when students…

The author shares his experience in effecting change in an AP English Literature and Composition course by employing book trailers as an assessment. Using multimodal responses fostered a shared classroom space that combined the students' preferred, everyday communicative modes with the canonical literature study required by the curriculum. This…

After third grade, students' motivation and enjoyment of writing begins to wane, and this trend continues through most of their education. Middle grade students especially need high-quality writing instruction; however, many teachers report feeling inadequately prepared to teach writing. To combat these issues, teacher preparation programs should…

In England, two concurrent but largely disconnected discourses have emerged whose representatives have promulgated initiatives relevant to students' extended historical writing: genre theorists and the history teachers' 'extended writing movement'. Despite certain goals held in common, the two discourses have tended to talk past one another…

How do individuals create a knowledge base over a lifetime? Charles Darwin left detailed records of every book he read from "The Voyage of the Beagle" to just after publication of "The Origin of Species." Additionally, he left copies of his drafts before publication. I use these records to build a case study of how reading and…