The seven articles in this journal issue deal with the politics and practice of teaching writing. The articles focus on the following topics: (1) efforts to establish educational accountability, including competency based teacher education, licensing of teachers, and minimum competency testing; (2) methods for teaching students to use intuition in the composing process; (3) the use of forensic rhetoric (legal writing) as the basis of an argumentative prose course; (4) basic skills in English and the training of English teachers; (5) a free writing lesson in a first grade classroom; (6) cohesion in writing; and (7) a college course in autobiographical writing. (GT)