The article illustrates the hopes and challenges evident in my attempt to use action research as an approach to engage student teachers in reflective processes. The data was systematically generated from the student teachers themselves and from the diaries I noted through out the inquiry. The study suggested that while lack of previous experience…

Describes the Modern Language Association (MLA) teacher education project. Hopes that the departments participating in the project would develop different exemplary programs appropriate to their departmental and institutional missions, faculty commitments, student needs, and state and local requirements concerning the preparation of secondary…

Calls for college English faculty to embrace the challenge of a diversity that includes nonelite institutions. Suggests that graduate students in English who find themselves in nonelite undergraduate institutions teaching mostly nonmajors will have to learn a second language: the language of accommodation. (RS)

Discusses how professional conversation should focus on the intersection of teaching and text. Notes that exemplary practices can be found in two-year college English programs, and university research programs should find ways to study and critique that practice. Suggests that graduate programs in English should explicitly acknowledge that a…

Based on his department's experience with curriculum change, the head of the English department at University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) concluded that curriculum change must be local, incremental, and unending. A consequence of the claim that curriculum change should be local is that proposed changes must be consistent with local realities--and…

Teaching in the two-year college, which was once considered to be a stepping-stone to teaching at a four-year college or university, has become a unique profession in itself. In the years ahead, community colleges should be actively involved in cooperating in developing English curricula. Prospective teachers of English at two-year schools need to…

Describes how computers are being integrated into the English department of Utah State University to support the "writing track," the production of texts, and teacher training. (PRA)

Conclusions based on the replies of 22 schools in Kentucky as to course requirements in the training of secondary teachers of English are presented. The conclusions are: (1) 17 of the 22 schools require 36 or more semester hours for a major; (2) a 6-hour requirement in Freshman English is almost universal; (3) a requirement in Introduction to…

Describes how an English professor trained to become a technical writer for industry and the benefits of such training to all technical writing teachers. (AEA)

In recent years, traditional teacher training programs for graduate teaching assistants which value a rather narrow definition of academic work have produced a limiting path of professionalization. The problem can no longer be figured as a matter of emphasis--should more training resources be directed toward pedagogy instead of content area…

The study of children's literature, of the prose and poetry that compels children to become and to remain readers, properly belongs in the college English department. The importance of accepting children's literature as a legitimate course in the humanities may be seen in the following three reasons: teachers with a background in, and critical…

Notes that the American presence in east central European higher education is considerable and continues to grow. Discusses the ongoing struggles over the shape and the soul of universities in this region. Describes briefly representative teacher and scholar exchanges, teacher-training reforms, and combined East-West programs of study. (RS)

University and college English departments, preoccupied with literary study, have long neglected their role in teacher preparation, especially the training of college composition teachers. Grammar, rhetoric, and logic are studies more valuable to the composition teacher than courses in imaginative literature. The weighting of curriculum in favor…

Reports results of student teachers' evaluations of one university's course offerings in the Department of Education and the English department, their English methods course, and the degree to which the two departments worked together. Concludes that cooperation between the two departments could be improved. (FL)

This study was undertaken to determine the extent to which college and university English departments are preparing their majors to teach black literature. Chapter 1 asserts that since English teachers receive their basic content courses from English departments, it is these departments that have the fundamental responsibilities to include black…