This article reflects on where and how empirical research, focusing particularly on college/adult writing and literate practice, has appeared over the last century in the complete runs of "English Journal," "College English," "College Composition and Communication," "Research in the Teaching of English," and "Teaching English in the Two-Year…

The objective of this paper is to use psychoanalytic theory to examine how attempts at critical teaching in two English as a Second Language (ESL) classrooms related to changes in student subjectivity. The research critiques critical pedagogical assumptions regarding transformation and empowerment through a Lacanian perspective. More specifically,…

This paper describes how one group of Euro-American, middle-class two-year-olds living in the southern US learned to form and enact locally appropriate textual intentions and literate identities as they participated in writing events. Data were collected during a nine-month ethnographic study of two-year-olds' and adults' interactions at a…

In this study we take up challenges regarding researcher positionality, representation, and the construction of difference as a launching point to reflexively analyze our own practices within a research project exploring multilingualism, multiliteracies, and teacher development. Our data were drawn from a teacher study group we facilitated during…

Drawing from a study of one student's literate engagements with English studies and fan fiction and related fan art over her two years in an MA program, which also reached back to the earlier writing she did for English classes and other writings before the study began, this article employs sociohistoric theory to examine the profoundly dialogic…

Investigates elementary school teachers' beliefs and classroom practices about reading. Describes how three of the teachers experimented with new language, beliefs, and/or practices, juxtaposing them with current beliefs and practices. Considers how, at the end of two years, two teachers had altered their beliefs and transformed their practices,…

Despite a long debate and the accompanying call for changes in the past few decades, grammar instruction in college English classes, according to some scholars, has remained largely "disempowering,""decontextualized," and "remedial" (Micciche, 2004, p. 718). To search for more effective and empowering grammar teaching, this study explores the use…

Describes a two-year study of one college student's efforts to produce appropriate content area writing in different disciplines. Using observation, interviews, composing-aloud protocols, and text analysis, evaluates the student's performance according to the Gricean rubric of conversation. Concludes that success was affected by unarticulated…

This study was conducted to obtain empirical data to inform policy decisions about exempting incoming students from a first-year composition (FYC) course on the basis of Advanced Placement (AP) English exam scores. It examined the effect of avoiding first-year writing on the writing abilities of sophomore undergraduates. Two three-page writing…

In response to growing concerns among faculty regarding the lack of attention to the bilingual student population in our pre-service teacher education program, the authors engaged in a shared self-study of the process of revising and implementing a secondary English methods course with explicit attention to the special needs of…

This study identified historical continuities and discontinuities across a century of secondary research published in "English Journal" (1912-1966) and "Research in the Teaching of English" (1967-2011). It highlights considerable methodological continuity across six decades of "English Journal" and some shifts in research emphases that tended to…

The issue of teacher quality has emerged with special force recently; between 2000 and 2005, at least 15 reports addressing teacher quality from a public policy perspective have been produced (Cochran-Smith & Fries, 2005). The National Research Council has been charged by the U.S. Congress to do a national study of teacher preparation programs to…

In this article, we share findings from our process of "reading the past, writing the future" of elementary research in NCTE's journals. Our analysis focused on major domains of the field, including literature, writing, reading, language, and multimodal literacies, and spanned "Elementary English Review", which first appeared in 1924, was renamed…

Although mounting research evidence suggests that dialogic teaching correlates with student achievement gains and with high levels of student engagement, little work in English education addresses the challenge of supporting new teachers in developing dialogically organized instructional practices. In a design-based study, we examine a curricular…

Jory Brass and Leslie David Burns provide a useful and informative review of research appearing in the "English Journal" ("EJ") and "Research in the Teaching of English" ("RTE") over the past 100 years. It is a bit unfortunate, if understandable, to exclude books and articles in other journals, because such a restriction excludes many pieces of…