This study compared two techniques for teaching middle school students to compose from expository text sources, a common but difficult academic writing task. Classroom social studies content was used. Text structure instruction (TSI), which focused on text characteristics using graphic organizers, was compared with PLAN & WRITE for Summarization…

This study explored how voice developed in the English writing of 57 Chinese teachers of English who participated in a three-week writing workshop during a summer institute in a large, urban school district in southeastern China. Teachers from grades three through twelve wrote daily in English in a workshop environment. Primary data sources were…

In this microanalysis, a university writing center conference with an experienced tutor and a student he has never met before is analyzed for the tutor's use of direct instruction, cognitive scaffolding, and motivational scaffolding. Along with verbal expressions of scaffolding, this analysis also considers the tutor's hand gestures--topic…

In an era when so much emphasis is being placed on the high-stakes standardized testing of fundamental subjects such as reading, writing, and math, it makes sense to demonstrate the role technology educators play in developing such fundamental knowledge and skills in youth. While the author believes that technology education contributes to the…

When Don Imus made his infamous comments about the Rutgers University women's basketball team in 2007, he provoked widespread (yet short-lived) attention to the circulation of language practices demeaning to women of color. In an elective autobiographical writing course that the author designed with and for urban high school girls, the students…

Criteria-referenced self-assessment is a process during which students collect information about their own performance or progress; compare it to explicitly stated criteria, goals, or standards; and revise accordingly. The authors argue that self-assessment must be a formative type of assessment, done on drafts of works in progress: It should not…

Teaching is emotional, especially when teachers must change their practices. Past research on emotions and change in the general population has been predominately quantitative. Research about teachers' emotions, however, has been predominately qualitative. To draw on both these approaches, this mixed methods study examined 50 elementary teachers'…

Traditionally, assessing student writing ability has often been product-focused. Advocates of child-centered process-oriented classrooms, however, suggest that teachers should also focus on understanding children's writing behaviors in the context of meaningful communicative tasks. In such an approach, writing conferences are one way in which…

In a graduate literacy course, the author as the teacher educator conceptualized "Visual Literacy" into the course. In-service and pre-service teachers from inner-city schools in Georgia and Virginia invited struggling writers to create graphic novels by envisioning life activities, using drawings, and invented spellings as well as…

Technology has brought tremendous advancements in online education, spurring transformations in online pedagogical practices. Online learning in the past was passive, using the traditional teacher-centred approach. However, with the tools available today, it can be active, collaborative, and meaningful. A well-developed task can impel learners to…

This article relies on year-long ethnographic data to examine how the intersection of peer status, gender, and race influenced the role stances children took in one urban fifth grade classroom while participating in three different pedagogies: peer tutoring, cooperative peer editing, and collaborative writing. Informed by the sociocultural…

This study aimed to investigate the perceptions of a computer-assisted writing program among EFL learners in a college composition class. A mixed method research design was employed combining both qualitative and qualitative techniques. Forty-five junior students in a Taiwanese college writing class were introduced to the computer-assisted writing…

Writing in 1995 for the "Harvard Business Review" audience of executive managers, Harvard business professor Clayton Christensen coined the term "disruptive technologies" to describe innovations that improve a product, service, or operation in ways wholly unanticipated by leaders of existing markets. Christensen's economic theory offers a launch…

The ability to use literature effectively is essential to provide context and interpret results for any research project. Undergraduate students in geographical disciplines are regularly required to produce research reports, yet formal training in effective literature use is minimal. In this study students were taught effective literature use…

While research on portfolio assessment (PA) has focused largely on the summative aspects of writing assessment, not much has been done to find out its formative potential. Drawing upon student questionnaires and student and teacher interview data, this paper aims to explore the formative functions of PA and, specifically, how the formative…