In 2009 we developed an experiential Research Writing course to help academics at our university to become more productive and successful writers. Our aim was to create a stimulating environment in which each participant's voice, knowledge and experience was valued, and where learning was characterised by optimism, creativity and energy. In this…

Educators have long recognized that parental and community supports are important underpinnings for children's success in school. With respect to the teaching of writing, however, little research has been conducted to provide evidence of effective practices teachers use to involve parents and communities. As part of a national Canadian study of…

Can process portfolios that support students in goal setting, reflection, self-evaluation and feedback have a positive impact on students' writing self-efficacy? This article presents the findings of a yearlong study conducted in three 4th grade elementary classes in Cyprus where paper-based and web-based portfolios were implemented to help…

This article draws on the findings of a longitudinal case study, which investigated the writing experiences of five students who spoke English as an additional language (EAL). The major interest was in examining what it was like to be an EAL writer and what changes occurred in EAL students' perceptions of academic writing and of themselves as…

If we listen to them, the words of our students can provide a road map for instructional responses that meet their diverse literacy needs. In this article, Cara Gutzmer, a middle school literacy coach, and Phil Wilder, a teacher collaborator at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, discuss how a responsive teaching framework guided their…

How many times do teachers assign writing in science class only to be exasperated by their students' lack of writing skills? They often have difficulty making claims and using evidence; instead of explaining their reasoning, they state, "Just because." But teaching writing isn't just for English/language arts (ELA) class. Over the past two years,…

This study explored the concerns of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) students in college writing classrooms. The researcher interviewed 37 college students and 11 faculty members from a variety of different types of colleges and universities. LGBT students stated concerns about their overall campus experiences, safety, and identity.…

Writing journal articles is essential for academics and professionals to develop their ideas, make an impact in their fields and progress in their careers. Research assessment makes successful performance in this form of writing even more important. This article describes a course on writing journal articles and draws on interviews with…

The purpose of the present study is to examine concurrent and predictive evidence used in the validation of ACCUPLACER, a purchased test used to place first-year students into writing courses at an urban, public research university devoted to science and technology education. Concurrent evidence was determined by correlations between ACCUPLACER…

Many recent publications describe writing as the neglected "r"; however, there is very little data on what writing instruction looks like in schools, especially in grades 4-6. The purpose of this article is to describe large urban school district literacy leaders' views on the state of writing instruction within their districts--and their…

English as an Additional Language (EAL) students' textual borrowing in disciplinary writing has attracted wide research interest in recent years. However, much of the research was conducted in the regular curriculum setting while the relevance of the issue in a writing-for-publication context has largely been overlooked. In particular,…

This paper is a study of the author's experiences taking a six-week, asynchronous, online, faculty development class for educators at the secondary and postsecondary levels. Using autoethnography methods, the author details her learning and the ways her experiences support adult learning theories. Implications of this research suggest that adult…

Improving university students' writing skills is always a challenge. In a third-year French composition course, the researchers introduced the use of public Internet discussion forums to see if that would help achieve the argumentative writing skills goals that were set for this study. The results show that participation in the forums had a…

In this essay, I examine the problems I now see with the sample curriculum I proposed in "College Writing and Beyond: A New Framework for Writing Instruction" in 2007. There are numerous factors that must be considered in designing a writing course: choice of subject matter, choice of genres to assign, sequencing of writing assignments, number of…

Grounded in our work on designing game-based curriculum, this paper begins with a theoretical articulation of transformational play. Students who play transformationally become protagonists who use the knowledge, skills, and concepts of the educational content to first make sense of a situation and then make choices that actually transform the…