Critical thinking and writing, a marriage originally made in heaven, is only now beginning to recover from a long and sterile period of estrangement. John Dewey described critical thinking as a complex, transactional, context-based web of activity involving the whole person, an activity which writing both demonstrates and promotes. The…

The dialectic of pitting reality against the perception of reality has been a proclivity of philosophers since the days of Plato and Greek civilization. Most philosophers today regard the availability of a pure reality to be impossible. The world is as it appears to be: thinkers have no access to perfect truth. Accordingly, the matter of…

An experimental composition project focused on a correspondence method of teaching writing. Composition and Literature students at the Florida campus of Embry-Riddle University exchanged papers and critiques with students on the Arizona campus of Embry-Riddle. This correspondence method insisted on the nature of writing as a form of dialogue.…

This bibliography is a listing of literacy learning materials (137 items), curricula documents (6 items), reference documents (19 items), and resource materials (16 items). All were developed in Manitoba (Canada). Ordering information and a list of abbreviations and acronyms are included. The bibliography was compiled for the National Literacy…

Both a guide and an anthology, this book is for teachers (and self-teachers) who would like to explore the list poem, a flexible poetic form that can be used by beginning writers (from kindergarten to 12th grade) as well as by the most sophisticated. The book: offers practical advice on how to teach list poetry; describes how to work with students…

As Langston Hughes' poem, "Theme for English B" recognizes, it is difficult for beginning writing students to develop a writing voice that is personal, yet expresses an awareness of context and community. Each writer/student potentially has three voices: (1) the voice students are born to, which reflects socio-economic and cultural…

For many years, writing centers have based their pedagogy on "collaboration." Now it is time to reflectively examine whether tutorial collaborations actually correspond to those definitions on which it is generally assumed they are based. Current practices assume that "collaborative" practices include non-authoritative pedagogy…

English is the second-largest major at the University of Puget Sound (Tacoma, Washington). Students may choose one of three emphases within their major: literature, creative writing, or professional writing. Puget Sound's professional writing program has grown gradually and slowly over the last 11-year period to include an array of 10 professional…

Addressing the possibility of making positive change in education, this book explores the way that American pragmatism and the rhetoric of North American romanticism work together to create a method for restoring hope to composition and English teachers and responsiveness to the systems they work within. What the book calls…

This paper describes the conflicts Writing Program Administrators (WPAs) face such as: personal, departmental, institutional, regional, and national, and presents possibly solutions for reducing the stress related illnesses attendant with the work. Often administrators' responses are somatic: conflict becomes a physical trope and administrators…

Designed specifically for authors, both aspiring and experienced, who work with children and their teachers, this booklet offers advice for educators who want to write and publish professional articles or books. It examines the following eight topics: (1) what it means to be an author; (2) how to prepare to write: learning the craft of writing;…

Labeling Peter Elbow an "expressivist" is an ironic reduction of his multifaceted thought to a one-dimensional term at a time when postmodernism stresses heteroglossia. This paper outlines the recent history of "expressivism" to demonstrate its curious social construction. The paper then calls for an "end of…

An instructional module was designed to enable learners to use a systematic approach to create a topic sentence. Using the instructional system design model, the designer of the module identified needs, established instructional goals, developed a program of study, applied the instruction, and evaluated the performance. The instructional module…

A teacher reports that during the process of writing a novel, he saw the creative link connecting language, image, and detail. He generated details from the images and language that preceded them. The initial envisioning often flickered erratically until he had generated enough language to place himself in a detailed scene. He has found that in…

The contradictory reception given the epistemic approach to composition pedagogy results from a resistance to simple transmission which is built into the approach, so that the approach is constantly re-invented by its practitioners. According to the epistemic approach, truth is dynamic rather than static, and thus continually being re-invented…