Discusses the role of writing center directors and teachers in the university setting. Discusses how to explain these roles to department chairs and deans to counter persistent misconceptions and to present a fuller picture of the work done in writing centers than statistics alone can offer. (MG)

Provides excerpts from two composition classes which use small group instruction in different ways, where the teacher is leader and model and where the teacher is not available as model. Concludes that writing teachers should articulate clearly a purpose for writing; and model ways of using writing that students can follow. (NH)

Shares ideas for effectively and efficiently gaining control over the volumes of paper generated in a reading/writing classroom. Suggests that organizing the flow of paper in a class, through such items as file boxes and hanging folders, is essential for an effective class. Provides 10 sample categories for filed materials. (MAB)

Uses an account of the "left-hand castes" or the "Kammalans" in India to investigate the marginal status of writing teachers in the academy today. Argues for a university structure in which language and language programs are neither at the top of the professional hierarchy nor the bottom but at the center. (TB)

This article describes the increasing pressures on those who teach graduate seminars in composition pedagogy to cover a broad range of texts, topics, and techniques. It argues that in response, pedagogy instructors may need to deliberately (re)design their courses in order to continue to help new writing instructors engage in inquiry and…

Teachers know that these metaphors affect the teaching of composition: the banking concept of knowledge, student ownership of writing, and writing as risk-taking. However, these metaphors explain more to teachers and less to students who are writers. When teachers speak of the writing process in such terms as mapping, voicing, and brainstorming,…

A college English professor applied for and received a grant to equip a 20-station networked computer classroom designed to provide a site for state-of-the-art pedagogy in teaching English using computers. The networked computer classroom has two related goals: to provide a setting for the preservice and inservice training of English and language…

A study examined the changing conceptions about the writing instruction of three teachers who participated in the Teachers College Writing Project. Three New York City elementary school teachers were selected from a larger sample of 10 teachers who participated in a larger study of the same project. The teachers were selected because they had…

Teachers ought to know how to identify the alcoholic student (and also the student in early recovery), and how to help such students. Research indicates that alcohol is implicated in 38% of all academic failures. The alcoholic student may smell of alcohol, act in a disoriented manner, or drop out, but as many as one-third of students surveyed…

Recent writing theorists have recommended the use of collaboration and workshop techniques in writing classrooms, and the clinical experience of Donald C. Winnicott lies at the heart of this current thinking about collaborative classrooms. Winnicott's observations of mothers and infants produced a respect for families and a skepticism about the…

In considering exactly what takes place in creative writing classrooms, this collection of 22 essays reexamines the profession of writing teacher and ponders why certain practices and contexts prevail. The essays and their authors are as follows: "Introduction: Of Radishes and Shadows, Theory and Pedagogy" (Hans Ostrom); (1) "The…

Comparisons of writing instruction to therapy often focus on the teacher and student interaction, yet the analogy is necessarily more extended and complicated. Compositionists should be paying attention to issues of affect and providing teachers and program administrators with a course of study that includes introductions to personality theory,…

A study examined whether teachers in different personality type groups respond to student writing in different, possibly predictable ways. Nine teaching assistants at Florida State University responded to student essays and took the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), which measures several personality preferences. Using the MBTI scores, the…

In response to a state-wide request in 1986-87 from the governor of Missouri, public institutions of higher education undertook assessment projects related to their students' basic skills. English faculty at Missouri Western State College conducted a composition assessment project in which they used timed holistically scored writing as a means of…

Characteristics that describe composition studies at its best (interdisciplinarity, collaborative, dialogic, radically democratic, maintaining a dynamic tension between "praxis" and "theoria") do not reflect a view of writing which is widely shared either by academics in fields other than composition or by those engaged in…