The present study explores nine L2 mature writers' transition between different academic environments, and seeks to create more meaningful grounds for teaching academic ESL writing in the U.S. and college writing in Taiwan. The approach of this study is influenced by Hirvela and Belcher's (2001) reading of terms they define as…

"The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance." Change can be scary. Quite often people find themselves venturing down an unknown path, unsure of what twists and turns will come their way. This uncertainty brings about questions, anxiety, and for some, a sense of panic. Similar emotions…

In November 2008 the Sloan Consortium published "Staying the Course: Online Education in the United States." This study produced survey statistics relating to enrollments in online courses. The study confirmed what most administrators and faculty members already suspected: the growth of online higher education continues to be astounding;…

This keynote address will discuss the findings and implications stemming from a study of what literacy means for a group of 12 teachers and teacher educators. It will also discuss the factors that have caused the ongoing evolution of these ideas about literacy. Relying on the idea of a "permeable literacy continuum," which uses five…

The number of doctorates being awarded around the world has almost doubled over the last ten years, propelling it from a small elite enterprise into a large and ever growing international market. Within the context of increasing numbers of doctoral students this book examines the new doctorate environment and the challenges it is starting to face.…

Text analysis traditions in France and the United States include discourse analysis, critical linguistics, French functional linguistics, Bakhtinian dialogics, and "generous reading." These frames have not been used, however, in cross-cultural analysis of university student writing. The author presents a study of 250 student texts from…

Our dialogue explores the development of community/university publishing partnerships in the United States through the dual lens of the U.S-based "Students' Right To Their Own Language" and the U.K.-based Federation of Worker Writers and Community Publishers, a national alliance of working-class writing groups. At the conclusion of the…

Seventy-seven new academics--59 at a large, public university in the UK and 18 at a medium-sized, private comprehensive university in the USA--were asked to read an extract of an article on the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) and mark the text according to categories of difficulty or dislike. Analysis of the data revealed six main…

In the study described in this article, fourth-grade teachers and students of different abilities and language backgrounds were interviewed before, during, and after participating in an Internet pen pal program. Results reveal that the program's authentic tasks and texts facilitated communication and enabled students to learn about a different…

Writing performance for a large number of adolescents, with and without learning disabilities (LD), in the United States is below the level required for success in college and in the world of work. Despite the importance of writing and students' with LD documented difficulties in this academic domain, writing intervention research for adolescents…

Madam/Mr. President, I urge you to think broadly and systemically about improving education in the United States. Use your authority to create a plan that provides all children and adolescents with access to well-funded, desirable schools that orient their learning toward the future. Enable them to flourish because they are healthy, they have a…

The increasing diversity of students and the pedagogical issues that such differences bring to the classroom is a challenge for early childhood teacher education programs today. In the early childhood education classroom, culturally and linguistically diverse teachers are sought after, yet these same diverse teacher candidates find it difficult to…

The ECFMG[R] Clinical Skills Assessment (CSA[R]) was developed to evaluate whether graduates of international medical schools are ready to enter graduate training programs in the United States. The performance-based patient note exercise is specifically used to assess an examinee's ability to summarize, synthesize and interpret the data collected…

The National Writing Project's (NWP's) latest brochure makes a case for devoting more attention to writing, and demonstrates through recent research results that the writing project has had a positive impact on teachers and students across the country. This publication draws on a number of studies: a 2005 national public opinion survey showing…

This paper defines the concept of "improvement infrastructure" and "educational capital" for education, and it uses the case of the National Writing Project to develop an extended, data-based illustration of the design and generativeness of an improvement infrastructure. Since 1983 there have been multiple "waves" of…