David F. Green writes that while he is more than pleased by the decision made by "Composition Studies" to provide increased attention to work done at historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), his aim is to provide a clarion call for the types of collective approaches to writing at HBCUs that might yield the most value to…

Using her own experiences of keeping a journal while learning advanced Spanish creative writing and beginning Chinese during the same semester, the author illustrates that composition teachers' second language learning experiences--intimate and challenging encounters with a second language that multilingual composition students experience every…

Researchers in the field of composition studies have spent a great deal of time, energy, and scholarship proposing and debating strategies for collaborative pedagogy. While these discussions can be generative, many overlook what should have been central all along: the student collaborators. With this in mind, this essay seeks to focus our…

Process-based composition pedagogy has ignored the question of "doneness": the criteria used to decide when a piece of writing is complete. This article uses survey results from first- and second-year composition courses to challenge common beliefs about how students determine when writing assignments are sufficiently completed. We find…

In the course overview, the authors state that this course prepares those who enroll to teach Stretch and Studio Composition at the University of New Mexico by introducing relevant theory and pedagogy in the areas of basic writing, multilingual writing, metacognition, and reading instruction. While the English 537: Teaching Composition Practicum…

First-Year Writing (fyw) courses are ideal writing spaces where students' diverse identities and language resources can flourish for specific rhetorical purposes. While research has focused on multilingual students' language and writing practices, little attention has focused on self-identified multilingual students' perceptions of language…

This article reports on the results of a qualitative, interview-based study in which multilingual writing faculty based at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon, read and responded to "core" texts of composition scholarship primarily published in North America, for a North American audience. This study is premised on the…

The literacy narrative assignment is popular with composition instructors because of the reflection it encourages in students. Previously, scholars have claimed that students demonstrate reflection in literacy narratives when they critique dominant ideologies. Largely absent, however, is research on what other elements might indicate reflection…

This article takes survey and interview responses from undergraduate writing majors in two independent writing programs as points of departure for reflection on the disciplinary work of writing studies. Though scholarship about writing majors focuses on these programs as sites for the distribution of disciplinary expertise, students in this study…

This article explores the relationship between teacher authority and flaming in asynchronous online communication. Teachers who rely on what I call stabilization and universal applicability--two concepts emerging from a liberal democratic theory--may actually be preventing a full and robust understanding of the complexities of 21st-century…

This article describes LIT 730: Teaching Composition, a three-credit graduate seminar in American University's Department of Literature for master's-degree students interested in teaching composition. The Literature Department offers both an MA in Literature and an MFA in Creative Writing, and attracts applicants with a flexible "teaching…

For many writing faculty, electronic or digital literacies may not play an overtly significant role in their course designs and teaching practices, but these literacies still play a significant role in how students write. Whether or not writing teachers want to accept it, functional computer literacies are an important aspect of teaching writing.…

This essay explores the influence of the discourse and practices of the learning outcomes assessment (LOA) movement on three composition instructors' assignments and assessments. While outcomes assessment by itself can be a useful tool, it cannot be separated from the exigency that compels it, in which educational practices must be defended…

English 341: Advanced Composition for Teachers is a three-credit undergraduate course for pre-service educators at Francis Marion University, a mid-size public university located in northeast South Carolina. According to the university catalog, students enrolled in English 341 "explore connections among writing, teaching, and learning as they…

The instructor-led peer conference, a lesser-known approach to peer response involving both students and teachers, affords significant opportunities for collaborative learning and apprenticeship in the teaching of composition. This article uses sociocultural theories of learning to examine video-recorded episodes from two instructor-led peer…