Considers how a feminist rhetoric can engage complicated notions of ownership and intellectual property. Discusses issues of ownership in writing classrooms. Explores the professional life of Andrea Abernethy Lunsford at Ohio State University. Notes that Lundsford suggests composition must be re-imagined as a field in which a radical individual is…

Considers how self-critique is difficult and is often accompanied by an acute form of self-doubt that leads writers/educators to believe that many of their kind may be more ambivalent about their pedagogies than they let on. Concludes that reflective practices are valid goals for teachers, and they should not ignore the problems and doubts…

Suggests that the overriding agenda of composition teachers is simple: "We want our students to share our class values." Combines personal narrative with an examination of college catalogs, claiming that as a "teacher class," compositionists reinforce and reinscribe national values and national character. (RS)

Suggests that current efforts to synthesize cohesive and differentiating functions in classrooms do not go far enough in recognizing interrelations. Argues that a crucial task for writing teachers is to nurture motives for both cohesion and differentiation in writing/reading classrooms; and that writing teachers must interrogate their motives and…

Explores three important critical perspectives taken toward student resistance: that of the "traditional" teacher/administrator, that of the student, and that of the writing teacher. Shows them as interactive elements of a system enriched by variety. Suggests that compositionists should see their pedagogical actions for what they are: sincere…

Discusses how what started out as a term project on a female Canadian artist changed the way the author writes poetry and how she teaches her students. Suggests that, rather than acquisition of knowledge being the primary focus of school, students need to be in conversation with knowledge--composing and creating their own understandings with…

Writing instruction can be improved by encouraging teachers to question assumptions, test strategies, and put learning into practice. Professional development should be designed in such a way that it should provide time and structure for teachers to pursue questions that interest them in order to create continual improvement in teaching of writing.

This article presents a systematic method for examining and evaluating written commentary. When used by writing instructors in authentic responding contexts, these reflective models can help instructors better understand their commenting practices in light of current response theories, establish clearer goals for making written commentary, and…

This past summer fifteen teachers from the Detroit public schools and the metro Detroit area participated in Wayne State University's first Invitational Summer Institute as part of the Wayne State Writing Project. As the director of a brand new National Writing Project site, the author was apprehensive about what she could expect from herself, the…

Three professors engaged in writing centers, educational technology, and service learning at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi collaborated with two technical writing teachers in a rural high school to establish a multimedia writing center and study its impact. This article presents the outcomes of this collaboration. It was found that the…

When four writing instructors were given the opportunity to teach writing for second language learners, they decided to collaborate in some ways and chose journal sharing as a way of facilitating their collaboration. The original goal of journal sharing was to critically reflect on their teaching practices and to connect their knowledge of…

Talk is central to what writers do--it is the collaborative activity that underlies most, if not all, individual acts of composing. Writers compose through inner speech while walking, by speaking aloud at the word processor, when discussing a work-in-progress, or as they share ideas during conferences in writing centers and classrooms. But this…

Like the narrator of Robert Frost's poem "Mending Wall," instructors need to ask what is being walled in and walled out of their composition programs when categories such as process vs. product, expressive, epistemic, current traditionalism, and social constructionism are constructed. When divisive categories prevent theorists from…

The connections between art therapy and the teaching of writing are many. The process of art therapy is essentially art making followed by talk--a process that parallels the process of writing and reflecting about writing that is encouraged in writing classrooms. It is a process aimed at self discovery and consciousness, whether in a writing…

The answers to five questions concerning writing across the disciplines can help to define useful connections between literacy theory and writing across the curriculum classroom practice. First, the experiences of a director of writing programs at the University of Louisville who also taught English at the National University of Singapore, as well…