Maastricht University (UM) has a distinct global perspective and a strong focus on innovation. UM offers an array of PhD courses to distance and campus based students who have access to elective, credit bearing modules and the language needs of these students are catered for by the Language Centre. Many PhD candidates choose to take an academic…

An increased emphasis on writing standards has led many U.S. states to incorporate on-demand writing assessments into their test-based accountability system. We argue this creates political and pedagogical tensions for teachers to navigate. We discuss how rubric conceptualization (1) is a process wherein a teacher iteratively (co-)constructs…

We investigate students' implementation of the feedback messages they received in an automated writing evaluation system ("eRevise") that aims to improve students' use of text evidence in their writing. Seven 5th and 6th-grade teachers implemented "eRevise" (n = 143 students). Qualitative analysis of students' essays across…

Technology is changing traditional views of language teaching and learning, with generational and cultural differences influencing the ways that we interact with it. This paper describes an action research project undertaken at a university in Japan to understand how students use the Internet to prepare written assignments in L2, and the students'…

The study investigated the relationship between student proficiency on The Writing Revolution (TWR) evaluative scales and student performance on the English Language Arts Regents Exam (ELA Regents Exam). The participants (n = 54) were enrolled in an 11th grade English Language Arts Regents Preparatory class in a small urban New York City High…

Composition researchers have become increasingly concerned with the issue of knowledge transfer: the use of knowledge and skills learned in one setting to complete tasks in a different setting. In terms of writing-related knowledge transfer, research suggests that rigid rules and formulas for writing do not transfer as successfully as flexible…

This article traces the emergence of nineteenth-century U.S. high schools in the landscape of higher education, attending to the gendered, raced, and classed distinctions at play in this development. Exploring differences in the conceptualization and status of high schools in Louisville, Kentucky, for white male, white female, and mixed-gender…

For this essay, the authors provide an "introspective retrospective." A senior scholar of basic writing provides his views on the development of basic writing as one who began graduate school in rhetoric and composition two years after Mina Shaughnessy's 1977 Errors and Expectations. That perspective carries us through the discussions…

With the adoption of the English Language Arts Common Core State Standards, writing has become an increasingly important area of instruction. Moreover, there has been an increased sophistication in the types of writing required of young children and the use of textual evidence expected in student writing. Historically, children have not been…

There is a consensus nowadays that the best way to develop students' academic literacy abilities is within the context of their studies in the disciplines, an approach known as 'curriculum embedding'. But despite the demonstrable value of this approach, surveys of the field in Australia suggest there has been only limited success over the years in…

In this article, researchers in the field of early writing identify underlying beliefs and values about writing and learning to write for the beginning years of formal schooling in four jurisdictions: the American state of Connecticut, New Zealand, the Canadian province of Ontario, and Sweden, as reflected in the respective curricula and standards…

Despite the importance of scientific writing in a chemists' professional career, their development as scientific writers is often neglected in undergraduate and graduate curricula. Among the courses that do encourage students to generate written documents like proposals, lab reports, or essays, the scientific community rarely benefits from the…

The purpose of the study was to investigate how structured blogging influences pre-service teachers' writings. In this study, pre-service teachers were provided with structured guidance for blog writing to support their instructional media development, undertaken as part of their teacher education course. Content analysis was conducted to examine…

Individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are increasingly entering institutions of higher education. However, many are not prepared for the academic and social demands of postsecondary environments. Although studies have evaluated academic and social interventions for children and adolescents with ASD, little research exists on the college…

Very few empirical studies have investigated programmes in which doctoral students act as peer facilitators in faculty writing groups. We report on the development of a centrally delivered doctoral student writing programme in which twenty student participants were mentored and provided with the resources to initiate their own faculty-based…