Initially designed to be an interdisciplinary experiment that would change attitudes about mathematics, the semester-long collaboration between a writing instructor and a mathematics instructor yielded unexpected long-term results. The collaboration served as an immersion in methods and techniques used by writing instructors. Description of…

The purpose of this study was to examine the differences in perceptions regarding students' proficiency in reading and writing skills between 12th grade English teachers and college English Composition instructors. A purposive, nonrandom sample of 12th grade English teachers and college English Composition instructors from West Tennessee were…

The instructor-led peer conference, a lesser-known approach to peer response involving both students and teachers, affords significant opportunities for collaborative learning and apprenticeship in the teaching of composition. This article uses sociocultural theories of learning to examine video-recorded episodes from two instructor-led peer…

The purpose of this article is to describe the vexing issues that arise as researchers try to define and assess the knowledge teachers need to teach reading and writing effectively in the primary grades. Over the past several years, the authors of this article have developed and tested an assessment system of teacher knowledge under a grant titled…

This study provides insight into the role of the elementary school writing teacher in helping students learn to "read like writers" (Smith, 1983). This case study documents how one fourth-grade teacher employed a gradual release of responsibility model as she deliberately planned activities that drew students' attention to well-crafted writing.…

This article reports a study that examines the efforts of one school--Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania--to improve student writing in first-year learning communities by promoting so-called process-based writing pedagogy outside of writing classes. Administrators encouraged instructors of subject-matter classes to integrate the…

K-12 teachers are often encouraged to develop their own writing projects and practices, in order to enrich their writing pedagogy and share knowledge with other educators. Yet, in pursuing their own writing, teachers face a number of constraints, not the least of which is limited time. These constraints may be particularly salient for beginning…

Integrating writing instruction into the content-area classroom poses a variety of challenges for instructors at all levels. Beyond the need to embrace a new skill set involving writing instruction, there is the resistance of students (and faculty) who find a disconnection between content-area and literacy learning. Developing a method for…

WAC scholars have demonstrated a strong commitment to faculty professional development in WAC programs but have yet to engage in much conversation, at least in scholarly literature, about the training of TAs in the teaching of writing. The rising number of TAs in doctoral-granting institutions and WAC programs suggests their role in teaching…

Technology is an ever-increasing part of how teachers and learners work on language and texts. Indeed, computers, the Internet, and Web 2.0 applications are revolutionizing how texts are consumed, discussed, and produced in classrooms. This article focuses on a specific technological innovation emerging from this digital revolution: the use of…

In an urban K-8 school, standardized assessment scores in writing declined 27% from the year 2007 to the year 2010. The scores indicated that the percentage of students scoring proficient or above in writing declined, while the population demographics remained stable. The purpose of this study was to examine elementary writing teachers'…

Sixteen teachers. Sixteen journeys. All on a quest to become outstanding teachers of writing. All taking different paths to acquire and hone those skills that make a teacher effective. From kindergarten to college, teachers are faced with the daunting task of instilling the art of writing in their students. From creative writing to research, the…

Existing research on first-generation college students has focused on the student and their paths from high school to college, experiences attending college, and expectations of the middle-class academy. Such student populations are not situated within similar positions that conventional students are often faced with. When differences in literacy…

The academic demands of classroom English require students to think about language structure in ways that they are not used to. Everybody "knows" much English grammar intuitively but the academic rules themselves can be difficult to articulate. This goes for punctuation, too: errors often reflect students' lack of explicit knowledge of grammatical…

For my purposes, I approach writing assessment as more than just grading or responding to a set of student papers within a classroom context. Instead, I look at writing assessment as a complex act that links to teaching and learning, that affects the educational environment and students, that acknowledges the consequences of the assessment, and…