Although current research and professional development on teaching of argumentative writing focus on “best practices,” we offer the construct of argumentative epistemologies to consider how English language arts teachers approach teaching and how they understand their students’ capacity for and interest in argumentation. Drawing on historical emphases in writing theory, we describe and illustrate three argumentative epistemologies: structural, ideational, and social practice. In an observational study of 31 high school English language arts classrooms, teachers’ enacted writing instruction foregrounded either formal elements of students’ arguments, the ideas and content of students’ arguments, or consideration of the complexity and variability of social contexts within which students wrote arguments. Case study analysis of three teachers illustrates the three argumentative epistemologies, how these epistemologies were socially constructed during instructional conversations, and how they were made visible through language use in and about classroom literacy events. These argumentative epistemologies have significance for teacher education, school writing research, and professional development, furthering our understanding of how and why teachers choose to adopt particular approaches to argumentative writing.

This article develops a theoretical understanding of the processes involved in the co-construction of a written text by a teacher and student from a Vygotskian perspective. Drawing on cultural-historical and sociocultural theories of writing and Vygotsky’s concept of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), this case study of a student and teacher interaction in a UK secondary school examines the social mediation of collaborative activity in the negotiation of meaning.While expressivist process theories of writing focus on the development of the authentic voice of the writer, this article contends that the development of a student’s writing abilities requires active intervention by a teacher within a constructed zone of development. Writing is viewed as a situated activity system that involves a dialectical tension between thought and the act of composition.Finally, the article will argue that the recursive and complex nature of writing development is an integral tool in the learner’s own agency in creating a social environment for development.

The concepts of drafting and revision were developed out of process theory and research done in the early 1980s, an era when word processing was not as pervasive or standardized as it is now. This paper reexamines those concepts, drawing on an analysis of two decades of previous college-level studies of writing processes in relation to word processing and an exploratory survey of 112 upper-level undergraduate students who use computers extensively to write and revise. The results support earlier studies that found students’ revision is predominantly focused on local issues. However, the analysis suggests that the common classroom practice of assigning multiple drafts to encourage global revision needs to be rethought, as more drafts are not necessarily associated with global revision. The survey also suggests that printing out to revise may be on the decline. Finally, the analysis suggests the very concept of a draft is becoming more fluid under the influence of word processing. The study calls for further research on students’ drafting and revision practices using more representative surveys and focused qualitative studies.

While social constructivist interpretations have advanced a relational, multiple, and fluid conception of identity, one difficult problem involves understanding how identities are stabilized during the course of interaction. This article argues that interactants define and stabilize identity by producing identity artifacts with multimodal means, by constructing configurations of those artifacts, and by using those artifacts to project social space.