Over the past two decades, writing studies scholars have continually stressed the importance of fostering the development of student metacognition in the writing classroom. Not only does the development of a metacognitive awareness of the writing process help students to become stronger writers, it also allows them to more successfully transfer the knowledge they gain in their writing classes to other contexts. Although scholars have suggested a variety of reflective activities and assignments intended to encourage the development of metacognition, none have explicitly explored the potential links between mindfulness practice and metacognitive awareness. Mindfulness based pedagogies are increasingly finding their way into K-12 and college classrooms because of their ability to help students improve their memory, attention, and emotional regulation. This pilot study investigates whether or not mindfulness interventions in a college writing class can also help students develop metacognition. More specifically, this pilot study consisted of a control group and a treatment group of students, both enrolled in a foundational writing course. While both groups were asked to take the Metacognitive Writing Awareness Inventory at the beginning and the end of the course, only the treatment group participated in weekly mindfulness activities. Results from this pilot study support the hypothesis that mindfulness interventions can help to foster the development of writer metacognition in the college writing classroom.

This program profile examines efforts by WPAs at York College, a senior college in the CUNY system, to adapt to externally imposed changes and develop a locally meaningful writing program. 1999 marked the end of remediation at four-year (senior) colleges in The City University of New York. The elimination of developmental writing at CUNY’s senior colleges was accompanied by a university-wide mandate for WAC. Fall 2013 marked the start of a university-wide set of general education requirements that will partially eclipse existing local requirements. Between these two bookends, WPAs—drawing on a mindset of relative agency and informed by an awareness of the curricular and institutional positioning of writing—carried out local efforts to build a more effective and coherent program.

Wendy Ryden and Ian Marshall’s Reading, Writing, and the Rhetorics of Whiteness is a difficult book, but an important one for scholars interested in rhetoric, whiteness studies, and basic writing. It is an eclectic and intricate set of musings on writing pedagogy, culture, and race, and it is this eclecticism that both challenges the reader and opens new possibilities for dialogue about the discursive and material dominance of whiteness.

This profile articulates the authors’ response to a statewide mandate to eliminate “remedial” writing instruction at four-year public universities, including their own. The profile describes the difficulties the authors faced in responding to this initiative, given the context of their regional comprehensive university and its specific challenges with retention and student success, and discusses their revision of the university’s writing program. The changes the authors made—eliminating a non-credit basic writing course and creating a credit-bearing basic writing course; instituting guided self-placement; and developing a flexible, WPA-outcomes based writing curriculum—have led to improved satisfaction, success, and retention rates among basic writers at their institution.