This study investigates the social media strategies that Chinese museums use in communicating on Weibo, focusing on the ways these museums engage with the public and the effectiveness of their online interactions. Combining grounded theory and content analysis, the authors analyze 319 posts from six major museums and 842 posts from 36 smaller museums. Their findings suggest that although museums effectively use social media for educational purposes, there is room for more interactive and diverse content to enhance public engagement. The study provides practical insights on how museums can optimize their social media strategies by emphasizing audience-centered communication and greater interactivity in order to foster deeper connections with the public.

Community health practitioners face a common challenge of communicating the value of their work because it is intentionally designed to prevent health issues from happening. This case study examines how impact storytelling—a four-question framework developed by a community health manager at a nonprofit health system—mediates between technical expertise and executive's understanding. Through interviews with four Community Health practitioners, this research explains how the framework addresses specific technical communication challenges. This research brings together theory with practice by offering both a transferable framework for nonprofit organizations as well as theoretical insights into how workplace communication tools emerge from workplace practices.

• Postgraduates engaged behaviorally, affectively, and cognitively with GenAI feedback. • Postgraduates dealt with ChatGPT primarily as a tool for refining their proposals, not for generating content. • Postgraduates demonstrated agency by actively questioning, annotating, and negotiating feedback. • Postgraduates engaged in diverse affective responses, ranging from appreciation to frustration. As Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools such as ChatGPT are becoming increasingly integrated into English as a Foreign Language (EFL) academic writing context, learners’ engagement with AI-generated feedback remains insufficiently examined. This case study investigated how four Chinese EFL postgraduates joining a course in a Malaysian university engaged with ChatGPT feedback while revising their academic research proposals. The study triangulated screen recordings, pre- and post-revision drafts, and stimulated recall interviews. Participants displayed a range of behavioural strategies, including accepting, questioning, rejecting suggestions, annotating visually, and seeking external validation. Affective responses ranged from appreciation and curiosity to doubt and frustration, particularly when feedback appeared conflicting or imprecise. Cognitively, learners applied various strategies such as evaluating, comparing, negotiating feedback, and regulating its use. Yet, they showed differing levels of engagement, shaped by individual perceptions and writing intentions. Importantly, participants regarded ChatGPT as a tool for linguistic refinement rather than content generation. Overall, the findings revealed that learners did not passively receive feedback but interacted with it in agentive and critical ways. The study highlights the interplay among these three dimensions of engagement and the importance of individual differences when evaluating the pedagogical potential of GenAI-generated feedback in academic writing.

For many transnational students in North America, digital literacies entail precarious participation—the adaptive engagement in digital literacy practices under conditions of systemic vulnerability and instability. This multiple case study examines how Chinese international students at a Canadian university perceive and navigate the precarity of their digital literacy practices across national and cultural boundaries. Findings reveal that the four participants exhibit tacit sensitivity to transnational digital precarity, employ strategic adaptation, and engage in measured resistance that cautiously transgresses digital norms. These insights contribute to broader discussions on digital literacies, transnational literacies, and digital precarity, extending and complicating existing frameworks in writing studies, literacy studies, and media studies.

The first yearbook of the Michigan College of Mines (1915–1916) included a feature about the short-lived student drama club, the “Micomi Club” (1911–1914). It was ending because male students could no longer play female characters: “no mining engineer could be a lady.” Using historical case study methods, this article argues that the yearbook feature demonstrates, in content, worries about the destabilizing potential of drag performance and, in form, the uses of humor in technical writing.

Agile methodologies often do not explicitly include the process of creating user documentation, consistent with the idea that documentation should be minimal to create efficient processes. While Agile provides several advantages for technical communicators, these processes also raise challenges that technical communicators creating user documentation need to address, including collaborating with development teams and evaluating the usability of user documentation. Building on existing research, this qualitative study aimed to understand both the advantages and challenges of Agile and illuminate how technical communicators and their colleagues address the challenges. We interviewed 14 practicing technical communicators and their colleagues over 3 months in the fall of 2022. Participants worked in six software development organizations across the United States, with one working in Europe. We analyzed results qualitatively to discern findings focused on three topics—general advantages and challenges of creating user documentation in Agile contexts, the dynamics of technical communicators interacting with Agile development teams, and the effects of Agile on assessing the usability of user documentation. We offer suggestions for practitioners and educators as they consider how Agile affects the creation of user documentation, leveraging the benefits of Agile, and addressing challenges in innovative ways as demonstrated by participants in this study. Future research will provide even richer perspectives.

This article reports a case study of teachers’ enactment of writing instruction for adult learners in Swedish as a second language at lower secondary level in municipal education. It highlights instructional practices and discourses surrounding writing in three classrooms. The analysis centers on literacy events initiated by teachers to support adult learners’ final individual assignments. Data consist of classroom observations (24 hours) and informal interviews with teachers. The findings reveal that teachers adopt different positions in their teaching. There are varying levels of support for students, with varying numbers of literacy events occurring both inside and outside the classroom. Teachers universally adjust their methods based on contextual factors, including diverse student groups, local agreements on content, and time constraints, raising questions about equality. Furthermore, a text-focused approach prioritizes templates and models over content. As a result, writing assignments emphasize genre awareness rather than personal views, thoughts, or experiences. In sum, teachers' pedagogical choices in writing instruction are shaped by their beliefs about writing, learning to write, and contextual factors. These differences in teaching practices seem to provide students with partly unequal opportunities for writing development. This is further elaborated in the discussion.

This case study of three female Chilean scientists with distinct levels of scientific writing expertise—novice, competent, and near-expert—investigates their notions about drafts. Interrogation of data—that is, document analyses, an entry questionnaire, a set of semistructured interviews, and member-checks—identified seven different notions about drafts: (1) draft as a canonical structure of scientific research articles, (2) draft as influenced by medium/time, (3) draft as an incomplete text, (4) draft as a process, (5) draft as product, (6) draft as a nondefinitive version, and (7) academic writing as a draft from scientific writing. Findings show that some shared notions about drafts transcend writer profiles and that these notions are rooted in writer identity, their writing practices, and the context of producing scientific research articles.

Writing studies scholarship lauds reflection’s capacity for building metacognitive understanding and facilitating transfer. Meanwhile, feminist and antiracist pedagogy scholarship highlights reflection’s ability to create spiritual and societal change. By contextualizing reflection within institutional and programmatic contexts, we argue that writing scholars can revise assignments to account for reflection’s contributions to civic and spiritual identity development. This cross-institutional case study analyzes patterns in first-year students’ reflective writing across three writing programs. Drawing on five codes for reflective identities—scholarly, writerly, professional, civic, and spiritual—we found that scholarly and writerly identities were emphasized regardless of context. However, students often had an “excess” in reflection, writing about civic and spiritual growth when prompts did not invite it. In conversation with university and program mission statements, we argue that instructors and WPAs can leverage reflection to expand beyond a single classroom context, ultimately tapping into its potential to create individual and social change.

This article reports the findings of a long-term qualitative study that examines the experiences and perspectives of Native youth re-learning their tribal community’s language. Situated within notions of Indigenous relationality, “identity resources” from the learning sciences, and Indigenous futurisms, findings reveal that, through learning their ancestral language, Native youth: (a) develop a deeper sense of their cultural identity, (b) imagine new linguistic futures and possibilities for their tribal community, and (c) recognize ways they, themselves, can become contributors to the cultural continuance of their tribal community. Set against the backdrop of structural settler colonialism and ongoing apocalypse within what is currently known as the “United States,” this research demonstrates the ways language revitalization operates as an anti-colonial act of rupture to settler colonialism’s ongoing attack on Indigenous Peoples, as well as an Indigenous-centric act of healing and self-determination .

J. Michael Rifenburg, Jenn Mallette, and Rebecca Nowacek Abstract This methods-focused article attends to the mechanics of participant drawing as a data collection tool in qualitative research. Writing studies researchers undertaking qualitative research benefit from a wealth of handbooks on how to design methodologically sound studies. However, despite interest in visual research methods, little guidance […]

Abstract Drawing from new and foundational scholarship in the field and from our experiences as teachers at a range of institutions, the authors consider how multimodal learning can support antiracist classrooms. This article emphasizes the value of cross-institutional collaboration, as the authors make a collective case for remixing the essay in first-year composition. This term denotes a method for building on the traditional college essay through activities and assignments that allow students to reevaluate and repurpose this well-established genre. The authors offer four case studies for remixing the essay—“Multimodal Translation: Playing with Post-Its” (Borough of Manhattan Community College /City University of New York), “Remixing Activism: The Essay as Personal and Political Playlist” (St. Francis College), “NYC Graffiti Autoethnography” (Fordham University), and “‘Vernacularity and Translation Activity” (Yale University). All four narratives present practices that support critical agency and linguistic justice by addressing the conventions of college writing assignments. Together, the authors offer a useful practice for composition instructors seeking to implement antiracist and multimodal instruction as well as a generative concept for administrators developing new writing curricula.

This study investigates how chronic pain is represented in widely used pain assessment scales. Through a thematic analysis, four overarching themes are identified: pain is framed as a linear continuum, depicted as a progressive bodily obstacle, normalized to a baseline of zero, and characterized as a predictable condition. The design of these scales oversimplifies the complexities of chronic pain into a linear narrative that can potentially marginalize patient experiences and lead to treatment delays. This research advocates for a shift toward patient experience design (PXD) to develop more nuanced, human-centered assessment tools that better capture the fluidity of chronicity.

This article explores the benefits of the use of standard versus virtual reality (VR) video when teaching ethics in communication and business courses. It presents a two-semester classroom study in which during one semester, students were given a case analysis and shown either a standard or a VR video, and during the next semester, students were given the same case study but were shown both a standard and a virtual video and engaged in group deliberation. The authors relate their findings from this study to practical wisdom about ethics and offer recommendations for the pedagogical leveraging of visual literacy in communication and business courses.

We report on a longitudinal case study (n = 9) about popularization writing skills in undergraduate interdisciplinary students. Writing skills were determined by analyzing components of the cognitive process model of writing proposed by Hayes. Keystroke logging and video observation were used to analyze the text construction process (the process level) in third-year writing. Genre knowledge (the control level) was analyzed through text analysis and assessment of first-year and third-year texts. Results showed that writing was highly individualized at the process level, including switches between processes, timing, number of edits, and reliance on the source text. At the control level, popularization genre knowledge did not significantly change over time and text quality remained low to average, suggesting a lack in genre knowledge. Choices in the writing process are, thus, not reflected in the quality of the writing product. These findings point to a need for explicit training in popularization discourse alongside academic discourse training.

In response to disruptions introduced to the job market by AI resume screeners, this article introduces a novel theoretical framework for the life cycle of artificial intelligence systems to help unblackbox resume screening AI systems. It then applies the AI life cycle framework to a digital case study of RChilli’s job-resume matching algorithm. The article introduces an eleven-step computational job-resume matching assignment that writing instructors can use in their classrooms to explore the pedagogical implications offered by the AI life cycle framework. The assignment helps students simulate important phases in AI production and development while highlighting biases and ethical concerns in AI screening of resumes. By exploring job-resume analytics, this study helps to teach critical AI and data literacy, make job-resume matching algorithms more explainable, and transform how professional writing can be taught in the age of automated hiring.

I argue that composition studies must build critical awareness about how humans from the Global South train AI with their writing embodiments. To draw our attention to how those working in the Global South train AI in harmful conditions, even though AI companies use algorithms and terms of service to smooth away these embodiments, I adapt the concept of humans-in-the-loop. Critical awareness of humans-in-the-loop moves scholarship in writing studies from a focus on AI-human collaboration that begins after an AI produces a text to one that requires us to see how AI products are always already human authored. Through a case study of Google Translate, I demonstrate how a critical awareness of how AI can erase the writing embodiment of humans-in-the-loop affords me opportunities to ask generative questions: How does language translation play a role in the erasure of embodied writing? Why does AI produce with bias toward marginalized populations when marginalized populations are those that moderate AI? Overall, I ask compositionists to see AI products as already human authored so that writing studies can consider the invisible labor of humans-in-the-loop as the field moves forward in researching AI.

With a view to better preparing teachers to engage in linguistically responsive feedback practices, we examined what 120 preservice secondary English language arts teachers (PSETs) considered to be “useful” and “appropriate” feedback to English learner (EL) writers by analyzing posts to an online database of student writing and teacher feedback. Findings of this qualitative study show that PSETs valued linguistic diversity, shared many core orientations of linguistically responsive teaching, and sought to give ELs holistic writing feedback; however, they ultimately equated useful feedback with error correction. PSETs were highly attuned to EL errors, but they were not able to connect different types of errors to language development and could not determine which errors were appropriate to correct given the student’s proficiency level. Furthermore, PSETs largely ignored ELA content and attributed appropriate EL feedback to teacher bilingualism rather than recognizing the need to learn about ELs’ interests and backgrounds. We suggest equipping PSETs with skills to learn about ELs and leveraging extant PSET attention to grammar with additional knowledge of language development processes. Identifying proficiency-level-appropriate errors could allow PSETs to selectively correct errors and provide space for more substantive feedback on ELA content.

Extracting a writer’s profile from a broader literacy study aimed at documenting extracurricular literacy practices among the Latinx population in Northwest Arkansas, this article presents a case study of a Peruvian woman’s lifelong use of literacy to enhance her personal agency in the face of personal, social, and civic demands. The article presents the writer’s profile as an indicator of the various literacy demands faced by the Latinx community and suggests that a critical consideration of such demands may lead to improved understanding and theorizing of writing through a lifespan writing research lens. Such a reorientation to writing may have a beneficial impact on first-year college composition courses by cultivating pedagogical practices oriented toward socioculturally diverse student populations and nontraditional students in college-level writing courses.

Manny Piña and Susan Wolff-Murphy Abstract This article examines the complexity with teaching for transfer (TFT) as curricular content through a qualitative study of how TFT was experienced by first-year writing (FYW) students at a regional, Hispanic-Serving public institution. Our analysis of reflective student writing supports previous studies that show that the curriculum supports the […]

This study uses grounded theory to explore Korean professionals' experience with communication in Business English as a lingua franca (BELF). The author collected data for the study by conducting semistructured interviews with 12 Korean professionals, resulting in 120 concepts, 33 categories, and 14 main categories in the coding process. The findings highlight the significance of accommodation, which affects the success of BELF communication and serves as a major action for resolving problems. The study emphasizes that BELF dynamics should be understood as a multifaceted and interactive process in which various factors are intricately interconnected, giving rise to fluid and complex BELF phenomena.

This article presents a critical account of one teen’s sense of audience as she enacted literacies on social media platforms and provides strategies that can inform the teaching of audience and purpose in ways responsive to teens’ digital literacies. Informed by case-study research and insights gained from interviewing, observing, and collecting digital artifacts, I discuss how Samirah X, a self-described teen actress and social justice advocate, engaged in writing practices on social media for three different main perceived audiences: cultural and racial community audience, socially conscious audience, and parental audience. Other sub-audiences from Samirah X’s case narrative are presented: audience as Black people, culture, and identity; audience as Black women and girls; and audience as Blacks who experience injustice and acts of violence. At the conclusion of this article, I provide implications for teaching English Language Arts focused on how social media work can fulfill state standards.

ABSTRACTInspired by challenges we faced in an undergraduate community-literacy cohort, we theorize “epideictic listening” as an important concept for articulating the range of listening strategies necessary both for our work in local public schools and for sustaining the cohort’s internal cohesion. Through critical reflection, we (faculty and student coauthors) offer a definition of “epideictic listening” that draws from, but also distinguishes itself from, other theoretical frameworks, such as rhetorical listening and community listening. We situate epideictic listening within the larger rhetorical tradition of epideixis. We end with a concrete application for epideictic listening—the debrief—and gesture toward the larger significance for epideictic listening in community settings.KEYWORDS: Debriefepideictic listeningepideixisethosrhetorical listening Disclosure StatementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

• Hispanic women engage more in check-in assignments than men. • Hispanic enrollment (37.71 %) exceeds community college average. • Main themes: course perceptions, personal challenges, faculty-student relations. • Check-in assignments enhance engagement and faculty-student bonds for Hispanic women. • Advanced course students report more personal challenges, greater faculty reliance. While online community college students’ engagement with coursework, class retention, and motivation to participate are critical for academic success, these needs often go unmet for diverse and underrepresented populations, especially in the absence of culturally responsive and inclusive teaching practices. This study contributes to the limited research on culturally responsive pedagogy in online community college settings by exploring the implementation and impact of high-context communication practices in that setting, with a focus on improving engagement and academic outcomes for diverse student populations. Drawing on frameworks of culturally responsive teaching and high-context communication, the research examines the effectiveness of “check-in assignments” as a low-stakes, personalized intervention designed to foster stronger faculty-student relationships, enhance student belonging, and bridge cultural communication gaps in online learning environments. Using a mixed-methods approach, the study analyzes quantitative data on assignment engagement and qualitative themes from student responses. Findings indicate that high-context communication practices promote deeper engagement, especially among Hispanic and non-Hispanic females, while highlighting disparities in engagement among male students. Key themes—course perceptions, personal challenges, and faculty-student relationships—underscore the role of culturally informed interventions in addressing the needs of underrepresented groups and enhancing engagement and academic success. Future research could expand on these findings by exploring longitudinal outcomes and adaptive strategies for diverse learning environments.

The article explores the prevalence of for-profit tutoring services contracted by four-year and two-year colleges and the perceptions writing center professionals have about for-profit tutoring services. Applying a grounded theory approach, the researchers found five main themes that emerged from an open-ended survey sent to writing studies and writing center listservs in fall 2022. The article concludes with suggestions modeled after not-for-profit tutoring initiatives such as the Western eTutoring Consortium.

Christina Saidy, Emily Robinson, and Kristin C. Bennett Abstract This qualitative study examines the experiences of first-year TAs as they conducted teacher research projects in the TA practicum. We argue that teacher research in the practicum provides a way to bridge teaching and knowledge making, foster a continual and layered learning practice, and extend the […]

This article explores the extent to which Global North mHealth apps are designed for user empowerment and persuasion in the Global South healthcare context. Findings from a case study underscore the need for decolonizing digital technology to promote more inclusive and equitable access to the digital ecosystem. The article suggests that deploying rhetorically nuanced, justice-driven decolonial design approaches can help stamp out digital colonialism and build a just future by bridging the North-South divide.

Technical and Professional Communication (TPC) scholars and practitioners (TPCers) see a need to intervene in a range of complex problems. Yet scholars such as Leah Ceccarelli and Lauren Cagle have noted a gap between scholarly research findings and policy changes. To address this gap, I theorize a strategic grounding framework, consisting of multiple, linked tactics that over time enable TPCers to make a case to gain a seat at the table to shape policy. I theorize this framework through a case study of Stephen J. Pyne, founder of the subfield of Fire History, who influenced national and global fire management policy. I examine Pyne's professional papers, housed in the Stephen J. Pyne Papers Collection at the Arizona State University Archives. The framework offers TPCers a series of tactics that position TPCers as change makers as they place their expertise to shape policy that addresses complex problems.

This article considers the rhetorical risks of using generative AI to compose organizational communication during crises or in the aftermath of tragedies. It focuses on a case study in which representatives of Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College of Education and Human Development disclosed their use of ChatGPT to write a response to a school shooting at another university. The author argues that although generative AI can often be useful in technical and professional communication, it can also undermine perceptions of “rhetorical humanity” if its use is disclosed or discovered, making it rhetorically risky in certain contexts. Thus, knowing when not to utilize AI is an important aspect of AI literacy for practitioners.

This study examines how supervisor-candidate coauthoring collaborations contribute to doctoral students’ writer identity. Three candidates’ coauthorship experiences with their supervisors were investigated in depth using a multiple-case study design. Interviews, written reflections, and email correspondence between coauthors enabled thick descriptions of these candidates’ writer identity formation. Guided by Burgess and Ivanič’s framework of writer identity, the multiple-case study showed how the candidates’ autobiographical selves, discoursal selves, authorial selves, and perceived writer were influenced through the experience of coauthoring with supervisors. Notably, the candidates benefited from supervisor-candidate coauthorship by engaging in scholarly collaborations, bolstering their confidence as academic writers, and strengthening their authorial voice and rhetorical awareness. This study also reveals potential pitfalls or challenges of such collaborations, highlighting key considerations for supervisors and candidates considering coauthorship.

Drawing on a larger year-long ethnography at a public, urban, comprehensive high school in the Midwestern United States, this article describes the texts students composed in a co-taught sophomore (grade 10) humanities course combining social studies and English language arts. Bringing together sociocultural perspectives on literacy and composition with queer theorizations of time, I argue for the utility of attending not only to time’s multi dimensionality but also its multi directionality. Doing so in writing instruction can help thaw binary polarization and foster more humanizing temporal and in turn ideological movements. To illustrate, I present an ethnographic case of students writing about the history of gendered clothing in 20th-century U.S. society. I examine how different temporal ideologies had consequences for students (not) reproducing antagonistic, polarized binaries with respect to oppressive values, in particular anti-LGBTQIA+ values as they intersect with class, race, and politics. Although my emphasis is how gender and sexuality intertwine with economics, race, and politics, this article suggests that attending to the multidimensionality and multidirectionality of time is a productive site for scholars and educators committed to praxes of justice in writing instruction.

This paper explores the diasporic tellings of Black African refugee-background youth through a critical Ubuntu literacy framework. The five tenets of a critical Ubuntu literacy state that participants are (a) already participating in community; (b) reflecting on oneself in relation with others; (c) seeing themselves in relation to community; (d) engaging with text in relation to others; and (e) undertaking a communal process and impact. In this one-year qualitative case study, we examined multiple sources of data from and about twelve Black African refugee-background students, ages 14 to 23, from seven different countries. In examining these data, we came to see how Black African youth from refugee backgrounds wrote about their diasporic histories and lived realities that illuminated the five tenets of a critical Ubuntu literacy framework. Through a thematic analysis, we found that renegotiation of individuality and collective identity was fostered through (a) collective resistance to challenge assumptions; (b) individuality within a collective community; and (c) collective identity that transcended borders. This study has insights for how a critical Ubuntu literacy framework can be used with students in community-based spaces. In addition, it has theoretical and methodological implications for how honoring students’ epistemological frameworks can reframe traditional literacy frameworks and research.

Previous literature has shown that generative artificial intelligence (GAI) software, including large language model (LLM) chatbots, might contribute to qualitative research studies. However, there is still a need to examine the relationships between researchers, GAI technologies, data, and findings. To address this need, our team conducted a thematic analysis of our reflexive journals from an LLM chatbot-assisted research project. We identified four roles that researchers adopted: managers closely monitored the LLM's work, teachers instructed the LLM on theories and methods, colleagues openly discussed the data with the LLM, and advocates worked with the LLM to improve user experiences. Planning for and playing with multiple roles also helped to enrich the research process. This study underscores the potential for using conversational roles as a framework to support reflexivity when working with GAI technologies on qualitative research.

We report our qualitative study on two graduate student instructors’ experiences teaching alongside an experienced professor in an experimental super-sized first-year writing class. Using the framework of wobble (Fecho et al), we explore how mentors can help novice teachers navigate moments of destabilization and uncertainty.

This eight-year longitudinal case study follows one high school English teacher from her practicum and student teaching through three subsequent job sites, with one year off due to prohibitive job stress. To study the developmental path of Caitlin, the teacher, we rely on the metaphor of the twisting path, which comes from Vygotsky’s attention to socially mediated concept development. This development is reliant on engagement with obstacles that promote growth and conceptual synthesis, with some obstacles becoming prohibitive and discouraging and with the path proceeding in a serpentine rather than straightforward way. Our principal data source is a series of biannual interviews conducted either in person or via video-conferencing platforms. We trace Caitlin’s developmental path by attending to her encounters with competing perspectives, policies, and practices informing the English curriculum, especially as they were enforced by different stakeholders. These obstacles were at times internal to her own thinking (e.g., the tension between relational, student-centered instruction and the belief that students need guidance to reach their potential), at times local in terms of English department and schoolwide tensions (especially, contentious battles over canonical versus relational and contemporary teaching), and at times from distant sources in the form of community pressures and externally created policies affecting instruction (in particular, imposed standardized teaching and assessment in conflict with instruction predicated on relationships and teacher judgment). These conflicts were virtually nonexistent in the fourth school she taught in, an alternative school where test scores were far less important than establishing supportive relationships with students through which they experienced care and cultivation. This eight-year longitudinal case study contributes to research that investigates how school contexts affect teachers’ persistence and attrition, with attention to which sorts of environments provided obstacles that benefitted Caitlin’s development, and which were prohibitive.

Although research illustrates the benefits of biliteracy, most bilingual students will not have access to a bilingual education program in which they receive official instruction in all their languages. However, the English language arts can become a space where any teacher can support students’ biliteracy through purposeful curricular, instructional, and family engagement choices. This case study of two early childhood educators illustrates specific actions teachers took in their language arts instruction to support home language literacy development, along with English, even with languages they did not speak. Specifically, results illustrate that three key general ideas allowed them to support students’ biliteracy: gathering information about the students and their languages, incorporating the home languages into their classroom, and most notably, developing strong family partnerships for caregivers to play an active role in home language literacy instruction. In this article, we share their specific actions that other ELA educators can take and the response from two students from low-incidence languages: an Arabic-heritage speaker and a newcomer Russian speaker from Ukraine. This study illustrates humanizing, rather than standardizing, language arts instruction that disrupts monolingual norms in order to provide bilingual students (from emergent bilinguals to heritage speakers) a more equitable education.

Black mentorship is key to the professional development of Black scholars in technical and professional communication (TPC) and writing studies. Blending narrative ethnography and grounded theory, this article extends existing investigations into mentorship among Black professionals, by exploring how mentorship and rhetorical kinship among Black TPC and writing professors enrich their professional development. With implications for both academia and industry, this article highlights how Black TPC scholars develop, negotiate, and sustain Black professional ethos.

Chemist Ethaline Cortelyou, a significant figure in the emerging profession of technical communication in the 1950s, became a national mentor to women in the sciences, first leading them into the practice of technical editing and then away from it. This article presents a case study of her awakening to the true nature and cost of the patriarchal workplace and her own complicity in actively supporting sexist assumptions and the status quo. During the Sputnik crisis, Cortelyou recognized and overcame her internalized sexism, revised her advice to young women in the sciences, and became a public advocate of workplace reform.

The ability to work with data is an important skill for students enrolled in technical and professional communication programs, but students with limited mathematical and computer programming literacies might find it difficult to do basic data analysis or customize data visualizations. This article examines the extent to which ChatGPT can make data analysis and visualization more accessible for students with limited technical proficiency. The results suggest that although the tool is poised to have a substantial impact in helping students create effective data visualizations, its efficacy as a data analysis tool is more limited.

This case study offers examples of the use of artificial intelligence (AI) writing tools at a small nonprofit workplace dispute resolution center. It explores the limits and strengths of these AI tools, as well as the mediation field's concerns around using AI as a replacement for mediation work. Further, it explores the implications of AI tool use for the ethos of the writer and the AI tool itself as well as for the current pedagogy deliberations occurring in the technical writing field at large.

Using case study methodology, this article analyzes the collaborative writing of three adolescent girls, one Latina and two Black, composing a group poem in an after-school spoken word poetry team. Drawing from literature on distributed cognition and embodiment, we found that participants utilized a system of writing techniques “on the page,” as well as a variety of embodied and social practices “off the page” in their team meetings to collaboratively compose this poem. We argue that focusing on the intersection of distributed cognition and embodiment in collaborative writing allows writing researchers to more fully attend to the collaborative sociality of all writing and allows teachers to support youth writers in recognizing and gaining collaborative writing skills for professional and creative writing contexts.

PDF version Abstract This article interrogates the political contexts leading up to the University of Arizona’s designation as a land grant and Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI). As a white settler teacher, I reflect on how researching this history helped me confront how increasing access to the university was met by exclusionary gatekeeping mechanisms that function… Continue reading Past and Present Contradictions in Land-Grant and Hispanic Serving Institutions: A Historical Case Study of the University of Arizona

This study examines how ten faculty at research-intensive institutions work with peer reviews, a process with potential to support faculty writing development and that plays a central evaluative role in professional success. The grounded theory approach revealed the importance of acts of recognition in the peer review process, facilitating a more collaborative experience.

Drawing from a qualitative study, this article advocates for challenging myths about the traditional graduate student. We discuss how these myths create a sense of unbelonging for graduate students, and we call attention to the exigency for transforming graduate programs to validate and sustain students’ diverse literacies and linguistic resources.

The majority of first-year writing “is taught by teachers whose educational backgrounds are more likely to be in literature, cultural studies, or creative writing than in rhetoric and composition” (Abraham 78). This disciplinary knowledge gap poses a challenge for FYW faculty to adjust to new shifts in FYW pedagogy. We would expect inhouse faculty development opportunities to help fill these gaps; however, the results of our year-long qualitative study indicate that the lack of shared disciplinary knowledge and the constraints on adjunct faculty make it challenging for faculty without backgrounds in writing studies to adapt their pedagogies. We add to the body of scholarship on professionalization in two-year college writing studies (e.g., Andelora; Griffiths; Jensen et al.; Sullivan; Toth et al., “Distinct”) and argue that addressing this problem will require investing resources in adjunct support; changing hiring practices to prioritize expertise in writing studies; and designing faculty development that focuses on both theory and pedagogy.

Abstract This article addresses a pervasive but undertheorized literacy practice: ghostwriting. Drawing on a five-year interview study with undergraduate students, I describe the many ghostwriting tasks that participants were asked to perform for their co-op jobs and how they perceived those tasks. Overall, students were bewildered by ghostwriting and found it very different from, and in some ways at odds with, their academic writing. Given the ubiquity of ghostwriting and the likelihood that much of it will be offloaded to artificial intelligence in coming years, I call for and begin to outline a critical pedagogical approach to ghostwriting grounded in critical language awareness.

AbstractThis article examines writing instructors’ processes for creating grading systems through the lens of liberatory design, an offshoot of the popular design thinking framework that focuses on creating equity-focused responses to complex problems. It uses a thematic analysis method to analyze seventeen interviews with writing instructors. The results indicate that instructors already use various design-based practices to create grading systems. However, the analysis also demonstrates opportunities to build stronger connections between these practices, to center student voices, and to approach the design problem more creatively. The article closes by illustrating potential liberatory design practices for creating grading systems.