Academically oriented first-year seminars can be good venues for teaching many of the concepts important to WAC programs, including extended engagement with a research topic and situated writing. A qualitative study of a first-year seminar program at the University of Calgary highlights faculty members' and students' responses.

Using a "historical case study" of Edwin M. Hopkins, this article explores what Bruce Horner calls the "material social conditions" of teaching writing early in the twentieth century. It shows how Hopkins's own attitude and response to the demands of being a writing teacher serve as a backdrop for understanding his local and national crusade to…

Reviews the author's career as a teacher of composition and literature and as a writing program administrator of writing across the curriculum. Discusses the potential of poetry across the curriculum as an important tool for writing "against" the curriculum of academic discourse. Concludes that when they write poetry, students often express…

Discusses how the first author left his comfortable position at the university to teach high school full-time and how the second author left home to live the writer's life in New Orleans' French Quarter. Describes how they decided to pursue their respective projects, what a typical day was like, and what they learned. Addresses questions that have…

Argues that student use of quotation marks jars educators not because it departs from good practice but because, through them, students invoke voices educators do not want to recognize. Concludes that examining the ways both professors and students use non-standard quotes encourages an understanding of composition as a practice that brings…

Reflects on what the author has learned about university teaching from her experience being a novice student of karate. Asserts the value for even seasoned teachers to maintain a beginner's mind that is "free of the habits of the expert, ready to accept, to doubt, and to open to all the possibilities." Concludes that from this new position, her…

Uses a journal format to recall vignettes with a personal slant from the history of Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC), National Council of Teachers of English, Two-Year College Association, and Open Admissions at the City University of New York. (SG)

Argues that educators need to acknowledge how the material interests of part-time and adjunct teachers, graduate assistants, tenure-stream faculty, and administrators can come into conflict in composition in order to negotiate fairly among them. Discusses how the culture of academic professionalism militates against such a consciousness, and…

Proposes that there have been fewer spokespersons and fewer articles published by writers who teach than expected given the strength of the social-constructionist marginalization and the dismissal of expressivists. Argues the need for a teacher of writing to also be a writer and considers many viewpoints of this argument. Suggests reflective…

Looks at how teaching basic writing is shaped by the material conditions of teachers working in those programs. Documents reactions of two writing programs on two different campuses to a 1991 statewide directive calling for the removal of all "remedial" courses from state campuses. Describes the programs' transformations after the directive, and…

Examines differences between autonomous and ideological approaches to literacy, especially in terms of teacher/student relationships. Discusses how adult students at a local community literacy center resisted the traditional relationship with classroom authority (by limiting the author's authority as a teacher, in part claiming it for themselves)…

Examines writing assignments, articles, textbooks, and other expressions of faculty thinking from courses about relationships among education, writing, and society in philosophy, English, history, and sociology at Howard University, a historically black university. Finds writing assignments at once conservative, subversive, and creative, in a…

Summarizes the Ann Arbor "Black English" court case, focusing on teacher attitudes, knowledge, and practice. Argues that three distinct constructs of teacher knowledge are evident in writing studies today. Concludes that pedagogical theory in composition needs to more adequately address questions of language diversity and race to affect the…

The purpose of the Freshmen Composition course should be to provide students opportunities to use the skills their previous English courses have not released. (JH)

A questionnaire survey of 3,000 college teachers revealed that professors in courses other than English are concerned about English usage and are able to recognize usage errors. (DD)