For almost 40 years, our university's first year writing program has included a shared outcome: "Students will appreciate the capacity of writing to change oneself and the world." This outcome, unlike our more typical composition goals concerning writing processes, rhetorical acumen, and critical research abilities, had never been…

Often, composition instructors struggle to encourage STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) students to see the relevance of writing courses to their personal goals. Students' lack of recognition of the importance of literacy skills can lead to disengagement in required college writing courses compared to their so-called…

This article explores how the racialized discursive and behavioral norms of pseudocommunity interfere with faculty professional development toward antiracist writing pedagogy. The author draws upon original research into a faculty learning community of first year composition instructors to highlight how, without explicit acknowledgment and…

This article details the challenges and possibilities of assigning first year students writing assignments that require engagement with emotions and memories during the COVID-19 pandemic (Fall 2021). Using one first year writing class as a case study, the author describes the challenges that arose in writing conferences. Noting the rise in mental…

This essay illuminates adaptable and multimodal ways of teaching with etymology and idiomatic origin stories in the composition classroom. I model my pedagogical approach with a topic central to my rhetorical research--pigeons in histories of human communication--and the rich etymologically-linked concepts of homing in, pigeonholing, and…

Multilingual Academic Writing is a 12-week course that targets two major outcomes: (1) develop students' academic writing skills; and (2) prepare students for college writing. Using open educational resources (OER) and a variety of writing activities and assignments, students practice writing multiple genres, address different audiences, and…

The common arguments about potential student use of these technologies suggest artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted writing will damage student learning by shortcutting the writing process. There is a further worry that AI-based pedagogy will de-skill students by reducing writing to a mere editing practice. Additionally, some suggest that…

Asian American Rhetoric and Representation was a graduate-level course taught at Virginia Tech in 2019. The course overviewed disciplinary conversations and concerns in and around Asian American rhetorical studies over time, with a focus on the affordances of Asian American rhetorical theory for the study of rhetoric and writing more broadly.…

In this article, we describe the process of revising our writing program's teaching observation forms and processes over the last several years, drawing from descriptions of best practices in conducting teaching observations in writing programs (Comer; Jackson). We analyze the teaching observation form as it functions in a structurational nexus to…

The concept 'literacy crisis' has framed ChatGPT's popularity, its rapid evolution, and its seemingly sophisticated language and knowledge performance. The concept helps scholars and teachers easily enter conversations about artificial intelligence (AI) text generation technologies and how they transform the notions of authorship, research, labor,…

This article considers a pedagogical approach that centralizes student-led archival retrieval of rhetorics. The precise context of the author's inquiry is situated in a Californian classroom wherein the author teaches writing in a Latinx Studies department, serving predominately Chicanx first-generation demographics. In that context, the article…

Learning to teach writing remains challenging for both student instructors and the experienced faculty, staff, and other professionals who mentor them. Many institutions have created local repositories of teaching-related materials such as syllabi and assignments, and some national efforts have also attempted to facilitate sharing resources to…

Positioned at the crucial point of access to higher education, summer bridge programs often serve students of color and multilingual learners as well as first-generation and low-income students. Bridge programs, which frequently include first year composition courses, represent an underexplored entry point for collaborations between academic and…

This article argues for a Deweyan "democratic design" approach to program leadership that builds programmatic ideals into leadership practices. To illustrate democratic design in practice, we draw from case studies of two partnership programs based in writing studies--a writing partnership between the University of Arizona and area high…

Our research explores the meaningful writing experiences of 325 undergraduate students who self-identify as multilingual. Through qualitative coding of open-ended survey data, we found that respondents considered their writing meaningful when it allowed them to make personal and relevant connections and learn new skills and strategies. Our…