Researchers collaborated with two high school creative writing teachers to consider how a particular use of technology--PowerPoint poetry interpretations--would function in their creative writing classes. Their findings encouraged them to consider three kinds of "classroom remix" related to the introduction of techno-literacy practices into the…

Teachers as Readers (TAR) is a strategy often recommended to engage teachers as active readers; participants share and learn in peer groups and then connect what they learn to their instruction of reading in the classroom. The idea is supported financially by a number of reading organizations. Reading is only one part of literacy--it is time to…

This article is a pragmatic, classroom-focused conversation about the teaching of writing among three teachers living in the United States and China, separated by many thousands of miles and many centuries of tradition and culture. Our focus here is on classroom concerns: actual student writing, assignment design, and assessment. We seek to…

Though attention to academic language is a key component of the Teacher Performance Assessment and the new Common Core Standards, little has been researched regarding how pre-service teachers build academic language knowledge and integrate it into their practice teaching experience. This study focuses on the construction and delivery of academic…

An examination of postmodern grounded theory and narrative research methodology philosophies should make us rethink foundational issues in writing assessment design. Postmodern approaches emphasize interpretation and meaning-making, arguing that truths are made rather than found. In fact, many postmodern researchers emphasize the impossibility of…

Writing program administrators and other composition specialists need to know the history of writing assessment in order to create a rich and responsible culture of it today. In its first fifty years, the field of writing assessment followed educational measurement in general by focusing on issues of reliability, whereas in its next fifty years,…

In recent years, many professional writing teachers have turned to service learning to achieve a number of important pedagogical goals. In addition to offering practical experience outside the classroom, service learning provides students with an "understanding of the community as well as a sense of their social and civic responsibilities." For…

As students increasingly rely on digital media to locate information, composition instructors must incorporate into writing instruction critical evaluation of and reflection on students' use of Web content. A growing problem in the composition class is underdeveloped critical digital literacy skills. To become fully literate, students need more…

Compulsory education in America arguably originated with Massachusetts's legislative acts of 1642, 1647, and 1648; the 1642 act compelled education of children. Best known is the colorfully named Old Deluder Satan Law of 1647, famously declaring towns with populations of 50 must hire a reading and writing teacher, and those holding 100 requiring a…

The authors are faculty in history and English, respectively, at Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn, New York. What their students want and need, and what the institution's role in the community should be, remain open questions, with policy implications at the departmental, college, city, and even national level. Indeed, President Obama…

News reports and well-publicized government studies have led to a popular perception that reading is an endangered activity, particularly among youth. In this study we surveyed college students, librarians, and college writing instructors about students' attitudes toward reading for pleasure, examine barriers to voluntary reading among college…

Teaching artists work in a field with a long, rich history, and many roots and strands of development. One of TAJ's roles is to try to make this history more accessible and useful to working teaching artists. In this article, the author outlines the evolution of teaching artistry in the United States.

The purpose of this study was to address a writing teacher's perspective about integrating Facebook, a social networking site, into a university-level English writing course in Taiwan. Data, including interviews with the teacher and class postings on Facebook, were analyzed inductively, qualitatively, and interpretively, resulting in three…

The purpose of this theoretical mixed-method study is to examine teachers' self-assessments of their perceptions about writing development and instruction. One hundred and fifty teachers participated in a multiple-method data collection utilizing a Likert survey, extended narrative response, and sociometric networking of literacy identity…

Portfolio assessment has become the predominant best practice in writing assessment at the college level. Despite its clear superiority to previous methods of assessment, portfolio assessment has brought its own collection of challenges. Although the stated goal of much portfolio grading is to create an overall, or holistic, judgment of a…