Many students are experiencing precarity in the current political climate. School walls are permeable, and even the best efforts of teachers to create safe environments where young people can learn about and express themselves cannot fully insulate the classroom from the vulnerabilities produced outside of it. These vulnerabilities may inspire, in…

This article explores the practice-linked identity resources offered to preservice ELA teachers as they moved through a teacher preparation program. Nasir and Cooks's (2009) concepts of ideational, material, and relational resources are used as a frame to analyze the way preservice teachers talked about teaching writing at three points during…

(Re)Entering data from a networked collaborative project exploring how sound operates as a mechanism for attuning towards cultural difference and community literacies, this article examines one primary grade classroom's participation to investigate the rhythmic rituals of 'emergent listening' in early childhood literacy. Thinking with sound…

This article describes a brief moment when the University of Kentucky (UK) became the national focus of conversations around food literacies for a writing class about tacos in the U.S. South. Author Steven Alvarez explains to "Munchies" writer Javier Cabral that taco literacy goes beyond an appreciation of tacos. Alvarez describes his…

Whereas composition studies tends to use ethics and morality interchangeably, these terms may work better when explicitly distinguished, rearticulated as a topic, and kept in heuristic conflict. The more the tension between them is exploited, the closer our approach to a pedagogy not so much ethical as just.

This study addresses to see the significant difference between those who were taught using Jigsaw 1 model and those who were taught using picture composition to enhance the students' ability in writing descriptive writing. This cooperative study involved two groups. Sample of this research were the students of X-A using Jigsaw 1 Model and X-B…

The purpose of this article is to describe the development of writing in young dual language learners, who are children under 5 years old who are learning the dominant language and another language at the same time. Early writing has been associated with literacy outcomes in the later years of elementary school. The article presents samples of…

In this Retrospective I revisit Donald Murray's "A Writer Teaches Writing," fifty years old this year, and argue for a reconsideration of Murray's legacy within composition and rhetoric by claiming that the frame with which scholars and teachers of writing have tended to understand Murray (i.e. Donald Murray = Expressivist) is limiting…

How can teachers boost motivation and interest in writing when a student has disengaged from writing? This article looks at the case of a student with sensory and social challenges who lost interest in writing. Possible reasons for the loss of interest are explored through the elements that contribute to motivation for learning and for writing.…

The current study determined growth patterns during an 8-week writing intervention and then examined the association between growth pattern and students' initial skills as determined by instructional-level data. One hundred forty-seven first-grade students struggling with early literacy skills received a writing intervention at one of two tiers of…

For decades, researchers have investigated the impact of faculty-student interaction as well as the contexts in which such interactions occur and are most productive (Astin, 1993; Kuh & Hu, 2001). Cox (2011) identified two consistent outcomes from this body of research: first, that interactions between faculty members and students have…

The authors showcase the use of DocuViz, an information visualization tool, as a means to support middle school students' online synchronous collaborative writing. The purpose of this study was to explore writing outcomes when students write in groups and independently. Providing students with a tool to help them understand their individual…

The authors describe the Analytic Writing Continuum, a scoring system developed by writing assessment experts and the National Writing Project that provides a powerful way for teachers to assess students' writing and see good next steps for writing instruction. They give examples of educators using the AWC both to help students self-evaluate their…

This dissertation is a qualitative study of fifteen WPA instructors of the composition practicum. Driven by the primary research question, how do WPAs enact mentorship within composition practicum?, the study sought to better identify how WPAs enact and perceive mentorship within the composition practicum through an activity-theory framework in…

Children can become better communicators by expressing their thoughts, feelings, and ideas. Effective communication through speech or writing enables children to successfully convey their messages. When teaching writing to children, educators often look to writing traits--ideas, organization, word choice, voice, sentence fluency, conventions--to…