This article heeds Susan Naomi Bernstein's call for an "embodied epistemology" for Basic Writing. In the wake of recent economic and health crises as well as the ongoing effects of neoliberal reform efforts at the two-year college, a materialist, embodied orientation for critical practitioners within two-year colleges is more necessary…

This article examines transdisciplinarity in developmental education and Basic Writing in the context of externally-driven developmental education reforms. We report on a pilot study survey of 143 developmental educators regarding their professional identity, engagement, and resilience. Respondents identified professional roles and interactions…

Postsecondary literacy instruction--the teaching of basic writing and transitional, or developmental, reading in community colleges and 4-year colleges--is an important and growing field, but also one still developing in key areas. In this article, we discuss three of these areas within which postsecondary literacy instruction can continue to…

This ethnographic narrative employs a neo-Vygotskian perspective (Holland et al.) to examine how, in the setting of a remedial ESL program at a public two-year college in North Georgia, the subject position of an ESL basic writing instructor was mediated by her understandings of and engagement with the multiple and interactive contexts of her…

Many composition teachers use the writing conference to provide feedback to their students; however, the existing literature on the subject indicates that teachers may unintentionally harm their weaker students by using this strategy. To better understand the effect of the writing conference on developmental writing students, the researcher…

Argues that basic writing teachers should think of their students as seekers who are coming from different places and going different directions, each carrying different burdens and needing different tools. Presents a series of writing assignments using the process approach to writing. (RS)

Describes how a course in expressionistic writing helped a Chicana basic writer examine the roles of gender, ethnicity, class, and language in her life. Discusses aspects of the course including gender role, economic and ethnic explorations, reflections on language, and connections to expository writing. (PRA)

This article examines the relationship between the use of online tutoring sessions and student success in developmental writing courses. The results suggest a statistically significant difference between the success rates, as measured by course grades, of those students who use the tutoring service and those who do not, thus suggesting the…

Argues that basic writing students need incremental assignment sequences to experience success in writing and to develop their abilities to write about abstract concepts. Describes a four-part sequence of writing assignments moving from observing to narrowing to generalizing to theorizing. (RS)

Presents the voices of basic writers, telling the importance of education in their lives and their struggles with it. Argues that basic writing merits support and should be regarded as college-level in its objectives and methods. Rejects the move to transform the mission of two-year colleges into one of narrowly defined developmental endeavors.…

Considers how the revising skills of basic writing students improve when they receive both inductive and deductive teacher feedback. Finds that students who received inductive feedback changed their largest percent of errors when given oral conferences and students who received deductive feedback changed their smallest number of errors when given…

Understanding why students are not naturally and easily able to generalize or apply what they have learned in other situations involves understanding what teachers want their students to learn; what learning is; what teaching is; and what is involved in generalizing or applying what has been learned. Research in educational psychology identifies…

Discusses how various factors combined to move Chabot College, a California community college, towards creating a mission statement for all their English courses and within that context, one for their basic writing courses. Notes that the context for the creation of the mission statement includes a commitment to basic writing as a legal mandate,…

Presents a questionnaire that helps gather valuable information about students' attitudes toward mandatory placement in basic writing courses. Concludes that with the kind of information gleaned from responses to questionnaires similar to this one, educators can better understand the strengths and weaknesses of basic writing programs and revise…

Discusses whether written or oral peer review is more successful in developmental composition courses. Concludes that while oral reviews are generally preferred by intermediate developmental students, the success of peer review depends on the conglomerate personality of the class itself, based on the students' writing ability, self-concept,…