When Nickie Dobo wrote a column in 2003 for her college newspaper--"The Daily Collegian" at Pennsylvania State University--decrying the "hook-up culture" on the campus, she never expected it to resurface years later in an attack on her professional credibility. But that's what happened when Ms. Dobo, now a reporter for the…

Considering ways to assess digital compositions and their results (i.e., media products) is an important part of the author's pedagogical practice as a teacher educator. Discovering ways to evaluate the quality, effectiveness, and efficacy of these compositions and products presents an important aspect of responsive, critical instruction. Yet this…

This article argues for and models an approach to writing program assessment that relies on study of the writing practices of program graduates as a way to inform revisions in curriculum and teaching practices. The article also examines how conducting such assessments can help nondisciplinary publics understand the nature of composition …

To help students meet higher standards, all academic and career/technical teachers need to be willing and prepared to use reading, writing and mathematics as tools for learning across the curriculum. To do so, they must have access to ongoing professional development, literacy and numeracy coaching, shared strategies, and teamwork to make literacy…

This purpose of this study was to identify how adult ELL community college students perceive their experience in the development of academic literacy, specifically academic writing, and to explore their perceptions of the factors, attitudes, and experiences that have facilitated their development of that level of academic literacy. To address this…

This article summarizes the use of SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis and subsequent action planning as a tool of self-assessment to meet CAS (Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education) requirements for systematic assessment. The use of the evaluation results to devise improvements to increase the…

Academic institutions mediate online literacy practices in meaningful and significant ways. This essay explores the nature of that mediational process, using a visual-spatial method to map out and conceptualize dynamics and structures that have a bearing on the work of composition. A key argument is that composition teachers are intellectually…

Fayette County, once home to the Carnegies, the Mellons, and the Fricks, now punctuated by abandoned mines and coke ovens, is the second poorest county in Pennsylvania. Gay and lesbian students experience discrimination in this County. In this article, the author discusses her efforts to intervene in this complicated problem by deploying a…

The author analyzes his experiences teaching literature courses in which he encourages students to research works by people from their hometowns. He argues that relating literature to concepts of "home" makes English classes more accessible to students while also helping them reflect on important issues in ecocriticism. (Contains 31…

Because service-learning challenges participants to widen perspectives on social issues, we designed and assessed a multi-semester, multidisciplinary project with both academic and service objectives. In this project, undergraduate students developed a script and video centered on a board game designed to educate high-school students about their…

THIS INVESTIGATION WAS CONDUCTED TO DESCRIBE THE WRITTEN LANGUAGE OF DEAF STUDENTS BETWEEN 10 AND 18 YEARS OF AGE IN TERMS OF SIX MEASURABLE VARIABLES, AND TO RELATE THESE VARIABLES TO TEACHER JUDGMENTS OF QUALITY OF LANGUAGE. TEN STRATIFIED RANDOM SAMPLES OF COMPOSITIONS BY DEAF STUDENTS WERE SELECTED FROM 14 RESIDENTIAL AND DAY EDUCATIONAL…

In this reanalysis of narrative notes collected in a larger study of co-teaching, the reading and writing demands of high school social studies classes were explored. Eight pairs of teachers (one special education teacher, one social studies teacher) from five high schools in Western Pennsylvania and New York were observed co-teaching in social…

Teachers must also be writers. This notion, at the very heart of the National Writing Project, led Judith Jester to recognize the power of process, feedback, audience, modeling, and thinking. Being a writer and sharing the successful strategies she learned as a NWP fellow has helped her students grow as both thinkers and writers.

AN ANALYSIS OF CHILDREN'S WRITTEN LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT RELATED TO GRADE LEVEL, AGE, AND SEX WAS PERFORMED (1) TO DISCOVER THE SEQUENTIAL STAGES OF LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT AS REVEALED IN BASIC STRUCTURAL PATTERNS IN WRITTEN COMPOSITIONS OF INTERMEDIATE GRADE CHILDREN AND (2) TO ESTABLISH METHODS AND PROCEDURES AND PROVIDE RESEARCH INFORMATION ON THE…

Merry Perry teaches English courses (both writing and literature) where the majority of the students are white, middle class, and conservative. Perry begins the article by saying that in such an academic environment, her most challenging task is not teaching grammar, punctuation, or editing skills, but challenging these students to think about and…