Review Article| October 01 2012 Class Considerations: An Exploration of Literacy, Social Class, and Family A Taste for Language: Literacy, Class, and English Studies. Watkins, James RayJr. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2009. Sheri Rysdam Sheri Rysdam Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Pedagogy (2012) 12 (3): 585–590. https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-1625352 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Sheri Rysdam; Class Considerations: An Exploration of Literacy, Social Class, and Family. Pedagogy 1 October 2012; 12 (3): 585–590. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-1625352 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter Books & JournalsAll JournalsPedagogy Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2012 by Duke University Press2012 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: Reviews You do not currently have access to this content.

This article describes an assignment that involves students in an exploration of the rhetorical practices common in Facebook, making use of rhetorical savvy that they have—but generally are not aware of—to teach the often-challenging skill of rhetorical analysis. The class discusses articles about Facebook use and redefines traditional Aristotelian rhetorical concepts in the context of the visually rich and collage-like texts that are Facebook profiles. Students take their cues from an anthropologist's analysis of identity representation on dorm doors to explore rhetorical practices of exaggeration also discernable in Facebook profiles. Students and teacher note features from Facebook pages that suggest tendencies to be popular versus being an individual or signs of addiction to the networking tool. This assignment that brings academic analysis to bear on non-academic literacy practices like the construction of Facebook profiles encourages students to reflect critically on daily activities that involve more complex rhetorical skills than they might otherwise notice. In addition to making students' often-tacit rhetorical knowledge explicit, breaking down the usual division between school and non-school rhetorics in this exploration of Facebook helps to educate teachers about their students' digital literacy practices.

Using George Hillocks's epistemic pedagogy and Michael Smith and Jeff Wilhelm's concept of “flow” as frameworks, I create a classroom in which students teach each other to read James Joyce's Ulysses. Students can do this while reading Ulysses for the first time because of the intricate scaffolding I create that requires close interaction outside of class with me, with one or two peer mentors, and with small groups of other students in the class, and that is actively supported by the library, which creates a special “Joyce room” whenever I offer my course. This essay describes how the course is organized and what students are required to do, and it attempts to explain why, in this particular course, students develop complex reading and writing skills and engage in critical work on a difficult literary text beyond what one would think could be possible in one semester on an undergraduate level. While one could teach this course in any type of college or university setting, I suggest that that the values and community of a small liberal arts college encourage faculty to create courses requiring intense student-faculty interaction and encourage students to blur intellectual and social boundaries that enable them to grow in myriad ways.

In this article we focus on new methods of multimodal digital research and teaching that allow for the increasingly rich representation of language and literacy practices in digital and nondigital environments. These methodologies—inflected by feminist research, new literacy studies, critical theory, and digital media studies—provide teacher-scholars a promising set of strategies for conducting research and for representing students' work and our own scholarship in digital contexts.

This article looks to a future where multimedia composing is the norm. While this paradigmatic shift in the cultural locus of literate activity will require the university to change, it also provides a rich opportunity for pedagogical innovation.

Readers of E. D. Hirsch's work on cultural literacy may be unaware that it is informed by the same theory of interpretation proposed by his much earlier book in literary studies, Validity in Interpretation. Understanding how the concept of genre functions in both projects clarifies why prior knowledge—not formal skills—is indispensable to all reading comprehension.

This response by E. D. Hirsch Jr., author of Cultural Literacy, points out that despite the book's many critics and detractors, the its central claims and theories have been realized in practice, as powerfully suggested by research in cognitive science, education, and the success of the Core Knowledge Foundation.

Engaging the term rhetoricity, which refers both to Cultural Literacy as text and cultural literacy as concept, Cook claims that the most productive pedagogical component of Hirsch's proposal—the sophisticated rhetorical sensibility on which the entire conceptual edifice of cultural literacy depends—was obfuscated by the book's lightening-rod ethos, its deceptively simple veneer, and its smugly casual presumption to name “what every American needs to know.”

The publication of E. D. Hirsch's Cultural Literacy and Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind in 1987 represented an exceptional moment, an opportunity for disciplinary and institutional reflection about the role and function of English studies, rhetoric and composition, the humanities and the academy writ large. The crucial moment demanded not only that we consider the merits of a variety of curricular ideals but also that we question the assumptions driving higher education in the United States. In Symposium: Revisiting the Work of Allan Bloom and E. D. Hirsch Jr., four articles and a response by Hirsch make an opportunity for self-reflection: if we can agree that a liberal education should be a liberating one, what do we mean by liberation and what sorts of people might that particular vision of freedom produce?

The Roanoke College Writing Initiative Grant (WIG) program provides a two-thousand-dollar stipend for non-English Department faculty to teach in the first-year writing program. Faculty is expected to teach three iterations of their proposed course and receive a year of training prior to entering the classroom. Hanstedt's introduction discusses the theoretical justifications for the program, as well as its historical roots and positive outcomes. The faculty development training of Roanoke's WIG program is described, as is how this member of the chemistry department put the lessons learned into action as he taught freshman writing for the first time. Rachelle Ankney taught an introductory writing course as a break from teaching many sections of introductory college math. She enjoyed learning a whole new approach to writing and had fun in the first-year writing course. But she was most surprised to find that teaching writing well makes teaching math better, too. She went from advocating “required writing across the curriculum” to being a firm supporter of “teaching writing across the curriculum.” This paper reflects on an experiment in using a writing course to teach critical thinking skills and vice versa, with special emphasis on helping students to get beyond their aversion to and distrust of argument. The course assigned short argument analyses, an exercise in literary interpretation, and a research paper in for students to gain more familiarity with argument and to appreciate its varied uses. One unforeseen result was the amount of time that had to be devoted to clarification of the terms of argument. Because clarification requires using inference, however, it is recommended that descriptive writing would be a helpful vehicle to start students addresstheir problems involving argument. This paper recounts a music professor's experience designing and teaching his first writing course, Music into Words. Research on the conceptualization of music argues that our ability to communicate musical understanding relies heavily on phenomenological and metaphorical description; the opportunity to teach writing about music to the general student offered the musician a laboratory for testing this hypothesis. However, the instructor discovered that, not surprisingly, narrative (story-telling) functioned as his students' primary mode of communicating meaning and significance in music. In the end, while reading and writing these stories, the students and the music professor learn important lessons about the role of music in human experience.

The books under review here envision models of professional development not as episodes of developing skills or training faculty to conform to changing laws, rules, and pet projects of administrators, but rather as collaborative processes of education and reflection that encourage faculty to rethink their practices. They draw on research in composition theory and pedagogy, suggesting that more effective learning takes place when teachers trust learners to consider their own need for knowledge, invite learners to devise variations and applications of received knowledge, and resist keeping things simple to be sure they are correct. Applying different focuses, these books consider how to put teacher-learners at the center of the process of their own professional development. Jeffrey Jablonski argues that the expertise developed in composition studies needs to be recognized and respected in initiatives to implement Cross-Curricular Literacy programs. The writers of The Everyday Writing Center consider how, in the midst of increased professionalization, to maintain the serendipitous—even carnivalesque, at times—learning and teaching that the intimate and nonhierarchical space of a writing center can foster. And the collective wisdom in The Writing Center Director's Resource Book surveys the current state of writing center theory and practice, providing a reflective guide for developing the expertise of writing center administrators, who are (or could be) leaders in campus faculty development efforts.

Research Article| April 01 2007 Thinking Critically About Digital Literacy: A Learning Sequence on Pens, Pages, and Pixels Donald C. Jones Donald C. Jones Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Pedagogy (2007) 7 (2): 207–221. https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-2006-031 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Donald C. Jones; Thinking Critically About Digital Literacy: A Learning Sequence on Pens, Pages, and Pixels. Pedagogy 1 April 2007; 7 (2): 207–221. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-2006-031 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsPedagogy Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Duke University Press2007 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: Symposium: Cluelessness and Difference in the Literature Classroom You do not currently have access to this content.

Review Article| January 01 2007 A Call to Action: Teaching, Researching, and Documenting Literacies in the Twenty-First Century Abby M. Dubisar Abby M. Dubisar Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Pedagogy (2007) 7 (1): 133–140. https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-2006-024 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Abby M. Dubisar; A Call to Action: Teaching, Researching, and Documenting Literacies in the Twenty-First Century. Pedagogy 1 January 2007; 7 (1): 133–140. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-2006-024 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsPedagogy Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Duke University Press2007 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

The Workshop In June 2004, the Associated Colleges of the Midwest (ACM), supported by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, sponsored an information literacy workshop for literature faculty. The workshop, attended by faculty, librarians, and instructional technologists from several of the private liberal arts colleges in the ACM consortium, provided a collegial setting for discussing best practices for information literacy instruction. Specifically, the group worked together to develop assignments that teach information literacy and literature in mutually reinforcing ways, assignments that move beyond the research paper so that information literacy forms a symbiotic relationship with the literature we teach. We discussed ways to use information literacy instruction not merely to train students in the skill set of locating relevant information for the purposes of literary studies but rather to foster in them better thinking and reading habits of mind. The assignments we present below developed out of this workshop. They reflect our commitment to approaching information literacy as a mode of critical thinking and thereby to encouraging its practice as a habit of active learning.

Review Article| January 01 2006 Engaging Literature: Difficulty as an Entry to Reading and Writing John Webster John Webster Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Pedagogy (2006) 6 (1): 155–159. https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-6-1-155 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation John Webster; Engaging Literature: Difficulty as an Entry to Reading and Writing. Pedagogy 1 January 2006; 6 (1): 155–159. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-6-1-155 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter Books & JournalsAll JournalsPedagogy Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2006 Duke University Press2006 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: Roundtable: Reviews of the Elements (and Pleasures) of Difficulty You do not currently have access to this content.

Don’t teach them writing. Don’t teach them reading. Teach them the habit of giving reasons for what they think, and explain how reading and writing can help them do that. If the basic goal of general education is instilling and exercising the habit of giving reasons, the apt way to characterize the larger commitment of education is that it should be diffi cult and, more exactly, that it is about intellectual diffi culty as something to be sought and about being diffi cult as a way to be. —James F. Slevin

Research Article| April 01 2005 Taking Whiteness Personally: Learning to Teach Testimonial Reading and Writing in the College Literature Classroom Brenda Daly Brenda Daly Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Pedagogy (2005) 5 (2): 213–246. https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-5-2-213 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Brenda Daly; Taking Whiteness Personally: Learning to Teach Testimonial Reading and Writing in the College Literature Classroom. Pedagogy 1 April 2005; 5 (2): 213–246. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-5-2-213 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter Books & JournalsAll JournalsPedagogy Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2005 Duke University Press2005 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Review Article| January 01 2003 A Lexis for Literacies and Service Hannah M. Ashley Hannah M. Ashley Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Pedagogy (2003) 3 (1): 123–126. https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-3-1-123 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Hannah M. Ashley; A Lexis for Literacies and Service. Pedagogy 1 January 2003; 3 (1): 123–126. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-3-1-123 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsPedagogy Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2003 Duke University Press2003 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: Roundtable: : Writing Partnerships: Service-Learning in Composition You do not currently have access to this content.