A writing teacher wanted to know how students perceive the second selves (alter-egos or implied authors) that writing teachers infer in their written comments on student writing, whether students saw room for negotiating the role this second self implied for themselves, and whether teachers can exercise control over some of the choices they make…

Describes how website teacher evaluations enable students to read what other students have written about prospective teachers and instructors. Notes that online evaluations provide critical information that is regularly updated and available 24 hours a day. Concludes that online evaluation sites help teachers reflect on teaching practices, respond…

Reports the 1987 survey results of 70 Canadian colleges and universities regarding technical writing programs. Finds that half of the 35 responding institutions offer professional writing courses and that faculty attitudes range from enthusiastic to disapproving. Reveals that faculties at nonoffering institutions do not view technical writing as a…

Explains how and why three crises caused a paradigm shift in one professor's way of teaching new teaching assistants to teach writing. Explains how as teachers and students became a family--a community of writers--each person in that community found a voice. (MG)

Identifies the many different groups of scholars, teachers, administrators, and other professionals who lay claim to the field of writing assessment. Describes the various positions, and outlines the major beliefs and assumptions about what is important and valuable. Examines an intolerance for other positions within each position, and identifies…

Presents three ways of understanding literacy and literacy studies: literacy as the technology of cognitive change, literacy as basic skills performance, and literacy as communicative competence. Maintains that each of these understandings suggests something very important about how society, or at least how academic society, construes the value…

Proposes that writing teachers and administrators think, first, in terms of the truly political realities--the situated interconnections of interests, accidents, luck, and consequences--that constrain our abilities to realize utopian goals and, second, in terms of ethical constraints to which they are willing to be bound by. (RS)

Discusses the situation of part-time writing program faculty at the University of North Dakota and a research project undertaken to understand their situation. Suggests that such research, undertaken locally and shared with a local audience, can complement broad based reform initiatives like the Wyoming Resolution and the CCCC Statement of…

Describes a self-study in which a group of part-time composition instructors examined their practices for commenting on students' papers. Concludes that their commenting pedagogies had more to do with ubiquitous political ramifications of being marginalized part-timers or temporary appointees than they would have liked to admit. (RS)

Discusses 10 rites of writing program administrators followed by some suggestions for how to deal with them--in some instances through reactive behavior that accommodates the rites; in other instances through taking the initiative that transforms initiation rites into initiation rights. (MG)

Discusses how difficult it often is for writing teachers to write for their students. Relates the experiences of 12 teachers who tried to use their own writing with their students. (PRA)

Argues that, through its style, scientific communication conveys a view of the world as the causal interaction of physical objects and events. Claims that, to teach students to write experimental reports, composition teachers must see and study matters of style and organization as parts of a world they cannot enter or influence without knowledge…

Surveys 300 journalism professors responsible for their department's computer writing labs to determine who runs the labs, for what aims and purposes, and at what cost. Discusses the implications of the results for faculty in visual communication. (MG)

Compares writing students with medical patients. Discusses the challenges of writing teachers and tutors to provide the most useful methods to help their students develop as writers. Describes the author's experiences as a tutor after having been in medical practice. (MG)

Studies the writing of six high school students who write outside the school setting. Shares a case study of one student to show the themes and issues common to the group of students studied by the author. Finds that it is important for teachers to discover how their students view and understand writing. (MG)