This study explores learners' sense of community in the linguistics department at a Christian university in Western Canada. Since sense of community is an important factor in students' satisfaction, retention, and learning, it is important for educators to know how to support their students' feelings of community. Theological research on Christian…

The implementation of edTPA, a portfolio assessment that preservice teachers must pass in order to gain certification in 41 states, has added standardization to the certification process. Those who go through the process develop very specific skills in the three focus areas of planning, instructing and assessing. The way that teachers are hired,…

Department chairs serve a vital function at community colleges. They are middle managers, mid-level leaders, and faculty members. They serve a unique position within the organization because they interact with nearly every unit: academics affairs, student affairs, senior administrators and students. At a time when professional organizations are…

Currently, two-year colleges are teaching the lion's share of college composition classes, mainly consisting of developmental writing and first-year composition courses; however, those same two-year colleges have been slow in embracing the composition theory and practices that are studied and implemented at four-year colleges. One way to…

This dissertation examines how nomenclature and the act of naming shapes disciplinary identities for scholars and teachers of rhetoric and composition. The discipline is named differently by many of its members, sometimes called "composition studies," "writing studies," "composition and rhetoric," "rhetorical…

Graduate teaching assistants are common fixtures on college campuses, and their roles encompass a wide range of duties, including supervising labs, working alongside mentors, and teaching a variety of beginner courses to students. It is common practice in the field of composition and rhetoric, for example, to employ second year master's students…

The Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Creative Writing, usually housed within the English Department, has become a progressively more popular field of study among students and budget conscious administrators. But for all its popularity, it is a field that has been left generally unexamined by scholars. While there have been numerous scholarly studies…

This study yields a broader understanding of the "development of rhetorical instruction in the American college" (Gold 15) by focusing on the composition programs at two little studied universities. This dissertation addresses the descriptions of composition courses as these appear in the course catalogs of two different kinds of…

Heuristics are deeply-held, tacit knowledge structures connected to our feelings. A heuristic study explores a phenomenon crucial to the researcher's self-discovery (Moustakas, 1990). Like me, many undergraduate composition instructors feel both fear and hope at the crossroads of composition and technology. Technology and composition shape one…

This exploratory, qualitative research explored the extent that course syllabi in the Departments of English in 13 public and 9 private universities in Taiwan reflect the inclusion of syllabus components to promote learning as recommended in the literature in the United States. Research questions included: what components can be inferred from the…