In this study, we examine educators’ orientations to the teaching of “standardized English” (SE)—an idealized form often associated with academic and professional contexts. The perceived status of SE is reinforced by normative standard language ideologies and is often oriented as “correct” and necessary for success in education and employment. SE is also a primary focus in English language arts (ELA) classrooms, with educators often positioned as gatekeepers. In this study, we analyze discussion posts from 91 educators enrolled in an online master’s level sociolinguistics course in which they describe how they would define SE for their students. Through iterative, multi-level qualitative collaborative coding of participants’ discussion posts, we interpret six ideological orientations to SE, ranging from standard language ideology to critical language awareness, with varying degrees of acceptance of linguistic diversity and criticality regarding societal sociolinguistic power relations. Importantly, we discuss the messiness of language ideologies, especially as they pertain to ELA. This study highlights the prevalence of hybrid orientations to SE, indicating that educators’ views on SE are complex and often integrate multiple, sometimes conflicting, language ideologies. We argue for the need for teacher preparation and continuing education programs to address language ideologies, promoting strategies that go beyond respecting linguistic diversity to challenging standard language norms as inroads toward dismantling raciolinguistic and colonial legacies in English language education.

This project is an interdisciplinary endeavor to connect research in the teaching of English with Critical Disability Studies, an intersection that is crucial to disrupting ableism and creating more liberatory schooling and societal contexts that embrace broader notions of human differences. Invoking critical content analysis of five young adult novels that depict characters with Tourette syndrome (TS), we asked, how are various models for understanding “disability” invoked in YA fiction that depicts Tourette syndrome? How do these various models function to reinforce, complicate, or reconstruct in a more progressive way notions about human difference in YA fiction that depicts Tourette syndrome? We focused on one of the many pervasive tropes found within all five novels using the psychodynamic construct of splitting. In particular, we call attention to depictions of TS as embodying an animal—most often a dog—that splits off into the bad/dangerous side, usually subsumed within a character’s “normal self.” This trope can be seen as part of broader, historical discourses that have dehumanized disabled people, constructing them as “other” and subsequently rationalizing exclusionary practices. We advocate for and discuss ways for scholars and educators to continue integrating disability from the margins to the center in literacy research.

Yuni Kim Ostman, Heather, Howard Tinberg, and Danizete Martínez, eds. Teaching Writing Through the Immigrant Story. Utah State University Press/University Press of Colorado, 2021. Building on a growing body of scholarship that advocates for student-centered approaches in composition pedagogy, Heather Ostman, Howard Tinberg, and Danizete Martínez advance a narrative-based framework in Teaching Writing Through the […]

Hua Wang Vee, Annette, Tim Laquintano, and Carly Schnitzler, editors. TextGenEd: Teaching with Text Generation Technologies. The WAC Clearinghouse, 2023. https://doi.org/10.37514/TWR-J.2023.1.1.02. The rapid rise of AI, especially since the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, has intensified debates about the role of AI tools in higher education. While some educators reject AI’s use—particularly in writing […]

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 […]

The guest editors of this special issue of the Journal of Academic Writing present a selection of papers from the 12th Conference of the European Association for the Teaching of Academic Writing, held at Zurich University of Applied Sciences in Winterthur, Switzerland, on 5–‍7 June, 2023.

Academic writing has always posed a challenge to university students, regardless of the language they are writing in (first, second or foreign language) or the amount of digital support they have access to – for example, online dictionaries, thesauruses, or new generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) software such as ChatGPT. With the rise of GenAI as a legitimate digital tool in higher education, it is crucial to identify the professional development needs of teaching faculty in order to ensure quality teaching. Based on factors such as digital literacy, or access to digital tools, these needs might differ in various geographical regions. Within the context of the European Framework for the Digital Competence of Educators (DigCompEdu), this paper aims to provide a differentiated, international student perspective on the use of GenAI in the academic writing process, identifying professional development needs for faculty. We developed an online questionnaire that was filled out by 192 university students from 15 different countries. In addition to their academic and linguistic backgrounds, the respondents answered questions about their own experiences and competences with the use of GenAI within academic research. Results highlight clear discrepancies between geographic regions, for example, in their self-ranked digital proficiency or in what GenAI tools they use. This, along with further results from the analysis, provides the basis to identify some professional development needs.

The article presents results from a survey about the academic writing practices among the students of the University of Tartu (Estonia). We analyse how the use of generative artificial intelligence has changed between spring 2023 and spring 2024. Our data shows that there has been a small increase in the percentage of students who have used the help of AI while writing: in 2023, 43.9% of the students reported using or having used AI, in 2024 it was 51.6%. AI is most popular among the students of Science and Technology and least popular among the students of Humanities. In 2023, using AI was more common among undergraduates than master’s students, but by 2024 this situation had reversed. Among the activities that students use AI for, gathering ideas is most popular in both years. The biggest change between the two years is that the number of students using AI for summaries and overviews has nearly tripled. The paper discusses the possible reasons for these tendencies, as well as some relevant implications for learning and teaching (academic) writing.

This symposium is an extension of a plenary forum on generative AI (hereafter GenAI) held at the EATAW Conference at Zurich University of Applied Sciences in Winterthur, Switzerland, in June 2023. Since the conference, AI – particularly the large language models (LLMs) shaping GenAI such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT – continue to develop rapidly with extensive integration and usage across disciplines and career sectors with educational and societal impacts. Given these developments, we recognize the central role that writing instruction has in fostering critical literacies and engaged usage and, at times, non-usage of GenAI. Just as we have adapted our teaching and learning to other technological developments, so too are we now at a time of transition and adaptation. Our initial discussion at EATAW was wide-ranging, intentionally so because (1) there is so much to explore in relation to GenAI, and (2) the EATAW membership is diverse, coming from a range of academic backgrounds. Thus in our original plenary and here in this symposium we have raised issues ranging from specific pedagogical approaches to questions of program and institutional administration, to broader public issues and conversations about the relationship of humans to machines. Here in this written symposium we each raise a different issue related to GenAI and writing with the aim to foster dialogue and discussion about GenAI in writing-related contexts.

Effective written feedback is crucial to student learning and fostering writing skills. Responding to student writing is a multi-faceted and complex process which requires a more nuanced understanding in second language writing research. This study explored teachers’ beliefs and practices about written feedback may be influenced by a range of factors. Data were collected from four middle-school English teachers in China via stimulated recall tasks and semi-structured interviews reflecting retrospectivly on how and why teachers gave feedback to student writing. Findings revealed intersections between feedback strategy and learner proficiency level; feedback scope and time constraints and teacher workload; and feedback focus and contextual factors. The implications of these findings in relation to teacher professional development, contextualised teacher education, and the changing landscape of written feedback practices in the age of AI are discussed.

L2 writing, known as a cognitively demanding process, has also been perceived to encompass emotional aspects for L2 writers, as they tend to exhibit various feelings towards teacher feedback on their writing performance. The current study therefore explored EFL Vietnamese students’ emotions toward teacher-written feedback and how their emotions were perceived to impact their engagement and writing performance during the writing process. Data was obtained through semi-structured interviews with the involvement of college Vietnamese students after their essays and teacher feedback were collected. The results showed variations in students’ emotions were found at different rounds of teacher-written feedback, which were perceived by the students to influence their cognitive resources, motivation, and self-regulation of learning. Pedagogical implications are discussed with an emphasis on how to provide or modify teacher written feedback at different stages of the writing process to sustain and promote student engagement with teacher feedback and their writing practice.

In this article I discuss some of the issues that scholars are and aren’t writing about in relation to the recent resurgence in contract grading, and reflect on my own experience using contract grading in composition and other classes. I come to the topic as a scholar and university teacher in rhetoric and composition, though my discussion certainly is relevant to teachers in many disciplines and institution types. My aim is to offer an analysis of the benefits and drawback of the “new” contract grading, with special attention to what I call the “more is better” mantra that informs many current iterations of contract grading.

This teaching tip outlines a structured approach to incorporating a “Professional Blog Writing” assignment in a Business and Professional Writing course. Designed to develop students’ understanding of document design and professional communication, the assignment encourages students to apply designing and writing principles to create audience-focused, purpose-driven content in a professional blogging context. Through a combination of collaborative learning, independent writing, and iterative revision, this assignment promotes critical thinking, creativity, and practical skills essential for professional success.

In 1974, the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) drafted a statement recognizing students’ right to their own language. However, many writing classes, including those in college, continue to teach Standard English as the only acceptable language in the classroom. In this article, I argue that a critical place-based college composition course can demonstrate to students that nonstandard dialects can coexist in the writing classroom. Drawing on my experiences teaching critical place-based composition courses, I describe the writing assignments that encourage students to reflect on how their “hometowns” have influenced their current identities as well as to critique the commonly held assumptions that marginalized communities, such as Appalachia, matter less than places with more cultural capital. I also demonstrate how the assignments in this class can encourage students to critique the assumption that Standard English is the only acceptable language in the writing classroom. A critical place-based composition course has the potential to increase students’ sense of belonging in college, inspire students to be more culturally aware of the places they find themselves in, and aid in designing a composition curriculum that is more in line with the CCCC's statement recognizing students’ right to their own language.

Faculty actions in the classroom are known to impact student writing self-efficacy and academic achievement. The purpose of this paper was to validate Locke and Johnston’s Individual and Collective Self-Efficacy for Teaching Writing Scales, a tool originally validated in high school teachers, in a new population of post-secondary faculty. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis methods were used in two studies with independent samples of multidisciplinary faculty (N = 281) for the exploratory factor analysis (Study 1) and nursing discipline specific faculty (N = 187) for the confirmatory factor analysis (Study 2). Three factors were identified in the questionnaire which maintained the essence of the theoretical structure proposed by Locke and Johnston. Factor 1 was named Context and Process Competencies, Factor 2 Textural Competencies, and Factor 3 Motivational Competencies. This factor structure was confirmed with acceptable goodness of fit in the confirmatory factor analysis Study 2. Learning to be a teacher of writing is a developmental process and this measurement tool has important validation information that speaks to its usefulness in understanding that process. • Instructional practices are known to impact student achievement levels. • Faculty individual self-efficacy for teaching writing is three factors. • Faculty undergo a slow enculturation practice to teaching writing. • This scale can be used to assess impact of teacher agency on student outcomes.

Abstract This article proposes the value hip-hop based education can add to the first-year composition classroom. It provides a framework for using hip-hop based education to scaffold traditional writing assignments, including rhetorical analysis assignments and argumentative essays using concepts like zines, cyphers, and song analysis. Drawing from culturally relevant pedagogy, linguistic justice, and Black feminist pedagogy, this article offers the genre of hip-hop to define and solidify its usefulness in composition studies and its relevance to the Black community, asserting that centering pedagogy relevant to Black students is beneficial for all students. Based on culturally relevant pedagogy's tenets, this article highlights ways culturally relevant materials can be implemented to recognize and value students’ diverse cultures and lived experiences to increase student engagement, agency, and academic success. The concepts presented here promote antiracism and multimodal learning in the classroom contributing to pedagogical research and praxis looking to disrupt hegemonic teaching and learning.

Stephanie Bower is a professor of teaching at the University of Southern California, where she teaches upper- and lower-division writing classes as well as a seminar on climate fiction for first-year students. Her publications have included research on integrating community engagement into composition classrooms as well as reflections on a writing workshop she has cofacilitated with the formerly incarcerated.Elizabeth Brockman earned an undergraduate degree in English from Michigan State University and an MA and PhD in English from the Ohio State University. Before her tenure began in the English Department at Central Michigan University in 1996, Brockman taught middle and high school English. Upon retirement from CMU, she earned emerita status. Brockman is the founding FTC editor for Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture, and she is a founding codirector of the Chippewa River Writing Project.Carly Braxton is a PhD candidate and graduate teaching instructor studying English with a concentration in rhetoric and writing studies. As a teacher of writing, Carly assists students in developing their writing skills by leaning on key pedagogical concepts that reinforce the rhetorical and situated nature of writing. However, Carly also does this by dismantling preconceived notions of what writing is and what writing should look like at the college level. Antiracist pedagogy and linguistic justice is integral to Carly's research and teaching practice.Roger Chao is the Campus Director for the Art of Problem Solving Academy in Bellevue, WA. He specializes in community literacy projects.Jaclyn Fiscus-Cannaday is an assistant professor of English at University of Minnesota. Her research, teaching, and service are situated at the intersection of composition studies, feminism, and critical race theory.Olivia Hernández is an English instructor at Yakima Valley Community College. Her research, teaching, and service work toward culturally responsive, punk-teaching pedagogy.Betsy Klima is professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Boston, where she teaches courses on American literature and pedagogy. Her books include Urban Rehearsals and Novel Plots in the Early American City (2023), At Home in the City: Urban Domesticity in American Literature and Culture, 1850 – 1930 (2005), the Broadview edition of Kelroy (2016), and Exploring Lost Borders: Critical Essays on Mary Austin (1999), with coeditor Melody Graulich. She serves as associate editor of the New England Quarterly. Her current research explores the surprising role women played in Boston's early theater scene.Chloe Leavings is a PhD student studying rhetoric and composition. She is also an adjunct English professor and former middle school English teacher. With a bachelor's in English and a master's in English and African American Literature, she prioritizes using culturally relevant pedagogy through Hip- Hop Based Education. Her research interests include rhetoric of health and medicine, Black feminist theory, and linguistic justice.Claire Lutkewitte is a professor of writing in the Department of Communication, Media, and the Arts at Nova Southern University. She teaches a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses including basic writing, college writing, writing with technologies, teaching writing, research methods, and teaching writing online. Lutkewitte's research interests include writing technologies, first-year composition (FYC) pedagogy, writing center research, and graduate programs. She has published five books including Stories of Becoming, Writing in a Technological World, Mobile Technologies and the Writing Classroom, Multimodal Composition: A Critical Sourcebook, and Web 2.0: Applications for Composition Classrooms.Janet C. Myers is professor of English at Elon University, where she teaches courses on Victorian literature and culture, British women writers, and first-year writing. She is the author of Antipodal England: Emigration and Portable Domesticity in the Victorian Imagination (2009) and coeditor of The Objects and Textures of Everyday Life in Imperial Britain (2016). Her current research explores the role of women's fashion in fin-de-siècle literature and culture and has been published in Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies and Victorians Institute Journal.Scott Oldenburg is professor of English at Tulane University, where he specializes in early modern literary and cultural studies and critical pedagogy. He is the author of Alien Albion: Literature and Immigration in Early Modern England (2014) and A Weaver-Poet and the Plague: Labor, Poverty and the Household in Shakespeare's London (2020). He is coeditor with Kristin M. S. Bezio of Religion and the Medieval and Early Modern Global Marketplace (2021) and Religion and the Early Modern British Marketplace (2022); and with Matteo Pangallo of None a Stranger There: England and/in Europe on the Early Modern Stage (2024).Michael Pennell is an associate professor of writing, rhetoric, and digital studies at the University of Kentucky. He regularly teaches courses on social media, rhetorical theory, ethics and technical writing, and professions in writing.Jessica Ridgeway is a licensed 6 – 12 English/Language Arts teacher, with a wealth of experience in alternative, charter, magnet, and public schools. Currently, she works as a graduate teaching assistant, where she instructs Basic Writing, First-Year Composition, Intermediate Composition, and Intro to African American Literature. As an English teacher for eleven years, her passion for African American literature has flourished, including for her favorite writers Zora Neale Hurston, Toni Morrison, Langston Hughes, William Shakespeare, Maya Angelou, and James Baldwin. She recently completed an English and African American Literature Master of Arts program, and she is currently working toward achieving a PhD in rhetoric and composition. Her research interests include cultural rhetorics, African American rhetoric, Black digital rhetoric, culturally relevant pedagogy, composition pedagogy, and Black feminist pedagogy.Fernando Sánchez is an associate professor in technical and professional communication (TPC) at the University of Minnesota. He currently serves as the coeditor of Rhetoric of Health and Medicine. His current book-length project examines participation in TPC.Tom Sura is associate professor of English at Hope College in Holland, MI, as well as the director of college writing and director of general education. His most recent scholarship on writing-teacher development appears in Violence in the Work of Composition.Kristin VanEyk is assistant professor of English at Hope College in Holland, MI. Her most recent scholarship has been published in American Speech and Daedalus.

Abstract This article argues that performance pedagogy can invest students in difficult literary texts through slow reading and textual adaptation. Drawing on her experience of teaching Herman Melville's “Benito Cereno” to her multilingual students, the author uses Melville's interest in drama and performance as a jumping-off point for an exercise in adapting the text for in-class performance.

Abstract What is a pedagogy of the Anthropocene? Put another way, what would it look like to teach in a way that disrupts the logic of fossil fuel extraction? Building on critiques of Enlightenment thought that identify the causalities between dualistic models such as mind/body or nature/culture and systems of enslavement and extraction, the author argues we must orient ourselves against the toxic logic that has led to our current planetary crisis, and that a class on “climate fiction” can estrange students from the ubiquity of an epistemology that alienates us from the natural world and each other. Stories about climate change, whether speculative or realistic, can pry students loose from more familiar narratives that have immiserated us as a species and a planet. The author encourages a reorientation of how we teach that reframes the classroom as a space for students to imagine each other as allies rather than as competition, displacing the fetishization of “rigor” that aligns us to false idols of meritocracy and scarcity instead of the abundance that is possible when we find happiness in collective as opposed to individual success.

It is with the deepest sorrow that I write with the news that Erik Doxtader, Philosophy & Rhetoric’s editor, passed away on June 22, 2025, at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.Erik was a singular intellectual, teacher, mentor, colleague, and editor. Under his stewardship, Philosophy & Rhetoric did more than maintain its legacy as a unique forum of philosophical and rhetorical invention. He also stretched—indeed reconfigured—our philosophical and rhetorical imaginations in profound and indelible ways. Among many accomplishments, Erik made the journal hospitable to planetary thought; encouraged thoughtful encounters between ancient and cutting-edge theory; deepened the journal’s longstanding commitment to rigorous argumentation as the marrow of academic dialogue; and invited exploratory and experimental essays to the journal’s forums.It is a powerful testament to Erik’s legacy that he leaves behind a robustly healthy journal under the trusteeship of a dedicated editorial team, board, and community of peer reviewers. I am immensely proud to be following in Erik’s footsteps as editor of the journal, working alongside Dr. Freya Thimsen (Essay and Forum Editor) and Dr. Kelly Happe (Book Forum Editor). We are humbled and honored by your continued commitment to the journal. —Omedi Ochieng

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.

This paper explores the implications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on writing center instructions and presents a professional development workshop designed for writing center tutors to help them discover the affordances and the constraints of using AI in tutoring. Since AI became increasingly integrated in the academic environment, writing center tutors face new challenges and opportunities in supporting the students’ writing. The paper highlights key strategies for tutors to integrate AI awareness into their teaching practices, ensuring they remain effective in guiding students through the writing process while fostering academic integrity. Through a combination of theoretical insights and practical exercises, this professional development initiative promotes a balanced approach, emphasizing both the potential and limitations of AI in the writing center context. The goal is to prepare tutors for the evolving landscape of academic writing and enhance their ability to support students in a technology-driven educational environment. Keywords : AI policy, writing center practices, workshop, AI assisted writing, tutor training In the fall of 2022, a writer visited the Kathleen Jones Writing Center at Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP) to schedule a writing tutorial. Their main objective for the session was to ensure that their piece sounded more humane. During the session, the writer disclosed that their paper had been generated by ChatGPT and sought assistance to avoid detection by their professors. Although there was no existing policy on AI at the time, the tutor politely informed the writer that the center only worked with human-authored pieces. Following this incident, the director of the IUP Writing Center established an AI task force, with its first mission being the creation of an official AI policy for the center. As PhD candidates in Composition and Applied Linguistics, the task force members knew their AI policy should not violate the objectives of first-year Composition classes. As a result, the policy recognizes AI as “not reflective of a student’s own understanding and effort and, thus, is not acceptable, unless authorized specifically by the instructor/administrator.” The Kathleen Jones White Writing Center at IUP supports student success and engages in creating AI policies for the departments to implement in their classrooms. While concerns about AI’s potential to reduce students’ engagement with writing are valid, writing center tutors as well as students have also explored its potential benefits. For instance, ChatGPT could serve as a writing coach or a source of inspiration (Kleiman, 2022), or it might “support bottom-up writing skills, freeing up time, space, and energy for more advanced aspects of composition” (Daniel et al., 2023, p. 37). Mollick and Mollick (2023) provide a list of ways students can engage with AI as a partner in their work. For instance, AI can assist students in writing by offering real-time feedback, suggesting improvements in grammar and style, and providing creative prompts, allowing them to refine their work while enhancing their writing skills. Moreover, AI has the potential not only to enhance writing processes, but to transform or even redefine them—much like Google Docs redefined collaborative writing by enabling real-time, location-independent co-authoring (Puentedura, 2013). As a result of this growing body of literature that emphasizes the potential benefits of AI, the writing center held a tutor training about AI to help tutors direct their writers who use AI in the writing session. One of the ways to make writing center tutors aware of students’ challenges and concerns and help them overcome those challenges is to conduct a professional development workshop, which we did at Kathleen Jones White Writing Center. This workshop was designed and led in February 2024 and aimed to highlight the importance of creating a united AI policy to help tutors work with students who use AI tools to write their papers. It also aimed to help tutors discuss possible challenging situations around AI that they might expect in the writing center. One more goal of that workshop was to compare the feedback given by writing center tutors with AI feedback provided by ChatGPT to learn specific features of AI writing and to recognize its rhetorical moves. This workshop was titled Overview of AI Technology and its Relevance to Writing Center Support and consisted of four main parts: (a) discussion of different challenging issues concerning AI technology; (b) lecture and discussion, which focused on the introduction of AI and open discussion about its use; (c) an activity part that focused on proving different types of feedback and comparing human and AI feedback; (d) and creating a brief draft of a united AI policy that would help tutors work with students who use AI to write their papers.

Ben Kuebrich Ira Shor taught for over forty years at CUNY Staten Island and the CUNY Graduate Center. Well-known for his experiments with critical pedagogy, Shor has authored several books, including When Students Have Power: Negotiating Authority in a Critical Pedagogy, Critical Teaching and Everyday Life, and A Pedagogy for Liberation: Dialogues on Transforming Education, […]

This study compares AI-generated (ChatGPT and Gemini) and human-written business refusal texts. A genre analysis found that AI-generated texts are formulaic and less nuanced than human-written texts. Applying a rating of professional writing quality, inferential statistics revealed no significant difference in scores between Gemini and human-written texts, but revealed ChatGPT as lower. Human assessors identified authorship of AI-generated texts with an accuracy rate of 68.1%, and human-written texts with 86% accuracy. Key concerns for assessors were tone, relationship, language choice, content, and structure. The findings inform four key areas of focus for teaching business writing in the AI age.

<bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Introduction:</b> It has long been advocated that engineers should enhance their social and ethical responsibilities. With the rapid advancement of science and technology, this imperative becomes increasingly pressing. <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">About the case:</b> This teaching case took place in a public research university in China. The primary objective is to enhance engineering students’ understanding of their social responsibilities. <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Situating the case:</b> This study is an exploration of the application of design fiction, a commonly utilized practice in interaction design, within the context of a technical writing course. <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Methods/approach:</b> Within the study, participants were tasked to engage in creating speculative scenarios of future food in 2040. This scenario revolved around an imaginary technology related to food, envisioning its impact on people's lives and society. Through a structured process of guided speculation and critical reflection, participants wove together fragments of these future scenarios to craft complete fictional narratives. <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Results/discussion:</b> The result of this investigation revealed that the fictions generated by participants encompass a diverse array of elements that manifest the writers’ heightened awareness of social responsibilities. <bold xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Conclusion:</b> We contend that this study introduces an innovative and engaging approach to the teaching of technical writing, one that holds promise as a valuable complement to the existing curriculum. Moreover, within the sphere of engineering education, this research underscores the potential of design fiction in nurturing a deeper understanding of social responsibilities among engineers, particularly on a “macroethical” scale.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, several countries have eliminated face-to-face classes in all schools, requiring all teachers to deliver classes remotely. In this regard, the wide spread of information and communication technology (ICT) products and services in the educational sector became a burden for several teachers. This article aims to study the impact of online teaching, and how technological stress might vary between male and female teachers and to what extent it alters their family lives and their way of living. The case of Lebanon has been examined and analyzed using 379 participants in various schools randomly distributed throughout the country, who participated in a survey on how COVID-19 affected their technostress levels. The findings showed that married women were more prone to technological stress and that their family life and lifestyle were strongly affected. In particular, young women with few years of experience were more likely to experience technostress problems. We also found no differences related to educational levels. In addition, the inclusion of different degrees of computer self-efficacy has shown an impact on the development of technostress among individuals.

As part of the Association for Business Communication Student Case Competition, this article features a case study written by ABC member Rachel Dolechek. The case was blind reviewed and selected by the ABC Student Competition Committee. ABC membership utilized the case in their classrooms throughout 2024 and submitted top student examples for the 2024 Case Writing Competition. A submission from Addie Hileman, sponsored by Kelley O’Brien, was selected as the top student case writer after evaluation by the ABC Student Competition Committee and a marketing business professional. The student’s message serves as a teaching example within this article.

In the globalized labor market, skills gaps between industry expectations and university preparation are becoming more prevalent. English communication skills (ECS) are vital soft skills in all workplaces, particularly in international business, where English is commonly used as a lingua franca. This case study examined the nexus between academia and industry regarding the instruction of ECS and their applicability to meet the requirements of the globalized business landscape by collecting data from 43 personnel in the international ready-made garment (RMG) industry in Bangladesh. The research reveals that English courses in higher education do not adequately address the communication needs of the international RMG business, which requires practical experience in the workplace, trade-specific vocabulary, intelligibility, and clarity rather than a high level of fluency. The study recommends promoting the teaching of English for general business purposes in Bangladesh by integrating theoretical and practical learning in the classroom and workplace as part of the curriculum.

This article presents a curated collection of nine teaching innovations presented at the Association for Business Communication 89th conference in the “oil capital of the world,” Tulsa, Oklahoma, as well as online, in October 2024. Many of the MFA presenters demonstrated how AI can be used, integrated, and analyzed in business communication classes. This My Favorite Assignment 35th edition introduces readers to a wide variety of classroom-ready ideas that integrate AI. Teaching support materials—instructions to students, stimulus materials, slides, rubrics, frequently asked questions, links, and sample student projects—are downloadable from the Association for Business Communication website.

• 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.

This article explores teaching writing with generative AI as critical play where students and teachers engage in an ethically dialectical and aleatory game with generative AI. I qualitatively surveyed 24 writing teachers about how they teach writing with generative AI as well as its advantages and disadvantages. I discovered that teachers used generative AI to teach about the ethics of generative AI's design and rhetorical use to avoid plagiarism. Teachers also critically played with generative AI to teach the writing process of invention, drafting, revision, and editing. Specifically, the critical, dialectical interplay of human and machine invents in aleatory and emergent ways, creating moments of epiphany for students and teachers within the writing process for invention, drafting, revision, and editing while the real time pace of generative AI democratizes education, making writing and teaching more accessible for them.

The question of how generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI) will reshape communication is causing questions and concerns across the field of education, particular literacy and writing classrooms. Although important questions have surfaced surrounding the varied effects on writing instruction and ethical implications of AI in the classroom, there are calls for deeper investigations about how these tools might shape multimodal composing processes. This study builds upon this developing field by exploring how 21 university students in literacy education courses multimodally composed with generative AI and their perspectives on the use of AI in the classroom. Data sources included screen capture and video observations, design interviews, pre- and post- surveys, and multimodal products. Through qualitative and multimodal analysis, four main themes emerged for understanding preservice teachers’ multimodal composing processes: (1) composing was an iterative process of prompting guided by the AI tools, (2) composers exhibited two distinct processes when designing their projects, (3) AI shaped creative possibilities, and (4) play, humor, and surprise served a key function while composing. Preservice teachers’ perspectives also revealed insights into how AI shaped engagement with content, the importance of scaffolding AI in the classroom, and how ethics were intertwined with technical function and teaching beliefs.

The editors of this special issue of Teaching English in the Two-Year College highlight the lack of scholarship on two-year college writing centers despite their widespread presence. Systemic barriers are in place at most two-year colleges, including heavy workloads, lack of institutional support for research, and limited incentives for two-year-college writing center staff to publish. The issue features new research showcasing the unique challenges and innovations in two-year college writing centers. The editors hope this issue sparks an ongoing conversation around the important and distinctive work happening in two-year college writing centers

According to professional correspondence from Harvard, the spring 2024 anti-war and Palestine solidarity protests on campus were “disruptive.”1 UCLA similarly claimed that their students’ encampment was “a focal point for serious violence.”2 Despite these assertions, independent non-profit Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project analyzed 533 US campus demonstrations from that spring and found that 97 percent were uneventful.3 Journalist Steven W. Thrasher spent time at four camps and describes these as “beautiful” encounters.4 CNN examined “the role professors have played in the demonstrations,” a facet of the protests that “received comparatively little attention.”5 At my own institution's protest—Virginia Commonwealth University—I watched students set up food and medical stations, deliberate, and intermittently chant at a volume slightly higher than the towering, middle-aged white man who, almost every week, projects a monologue about hell outside the library.When it comes to student-driven political activity on college campuses, charged and widespread commentary often clashes with far more banal and contradictory perspectives. One of John McWhorter's New York Times op-eds, for instance, calls the 2024 student protests “a form of abuse.”6 Online comments on this piece display a range of assumptions about US higher education: someone writes that people with humanities and social science degrees graduate “with zero knowledge.” Another person maintains that the protests “are purely performative.” What I hear in these comments and in the broader narrativizing around college students are resonances of truisms that Bradford Vivian's vital book Campus Misinformation: The Real Threat to Free Speech in American Higher Education would categorize as, indeed, misinformation7. To Vivian, such truisms coalesce into an farfetched worldview where college students “crave confirmation” to the extent that they “frequently shut down campus events and even assume power over entire universities,” rendering an alternative reality where college is a breeding ground for extremism.8 As Vivian argues, this implausible perspective grows out of “fixations on the idea of trigger warnings and safe spaces,”9 the circulation of which produces reactionary doctrines like “viewpoint diversity.” These doctrines perform propagandistic moves such as proliferating data to mimic scientific or theological argumentation and appealing to feelings like cynicism as expertise. Vivian emphasizes that casting doubt on the legitimacy of universities “is common in periods of rising authoritarian sentiment.”10 A year after the publication of Campus Misinformation, Donald J. Trump chose Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate—the same man who in 2021 delivered a speech titled “The Universities are the Enemy” for the National Conservatism Conference.11Kendall Gerdes's compelling Sensitive Rhetorics: Academic Freedom and Campus Activism is a smart analysis of how such misinformation forms. Gerdes's book unpacks public critiques of (over)sensitivity to show how those critiques fuel misinformation about college students and higher ed more generally. Gerdes argues that critiques of sensitivity mark an “ideological discomfort with the idea that language is a form of action” (4). Even though misinformation does not persuade on a purely intellectual level, language is still reduced to mere correspondence. If words are just words, then college students are too sensitive about what texts they're asked to read, what visitors are paid to speak on campus, how violations are managed, and so on. But if words are more than just words—if language is perlocutionary—then language initiates a sensitivity that resonates in far more collective ways than previously realized. As Gerdes articulates, “the sensitivity of rhetorical subjects is a generalized condition of possibility for rhetorical affection” (51). Universities and colleges pose a threat because they reveal how vulnerable or exposed we really are, together, within language.Gerdes's theory of rhetorical sensitivity is revelatory: with each site of inquiry—trigger warnings, sexual misconduct policy, Black student activism, and campus carry policies in Texas—rhetoricity itself is resignified. The book articulates that it is one thing to think of sensitivity as a weakness—it is an entirely different thing to think of sensitivity as “an irremissible exposedness.” “Before symbolic persuasion,” Gerdes writes, “before thinking and knowing, even before the experience of being, a rhetorical sensitivity obtains, opening us to existence as rhetorical subjects” (91). This conception transforms many of rhetoric's givens. If sensitivity is a mutual condition “of one's constitution in language” (38), then “vulnerability and exposedness” are not “simply matters of individual agentive choice” (51). Rather, vulnerability is a radical openness to being addressed. At all times, to be rhetorical existents is to sit in the potential for language to affect.Readers of Rhetoric & Public Affairs will be interested in how Gerdes demonstrates that public critiques of sensitivity enlist the topos of academic freedom, often misunderstood as adjacent to free speech. Academic freedom is supposed “to provide insulation for those with less rhetorical power,” since the production of knowledge should be free from hegemonic pressures (9). Still, academic freedom is a baggy topos. In 2025, I think we are more aware than ever that appeals to academic freedom do not always protect against “harassment campaigns” and remain contingent on the governor's board of visitors (9). Infrastructurally, academic freedom is often a tool or gauge of rhetorical power. As Gerdes points out, arguments about curricular changes and practices even put academic freedom in opposition to students. When “trigger warnings” were constructed as a talking point—cherry-picked from isolated contexts—academic freedom was simultaneously turned into an exigence. Gerdes refers to a 2015 Chronicle of Higher Education article that used trigger warnings as evidence of an existential threat to the university (25). Many such opinion pieces not only amplify suspicion of students but also “pit the rights of instructors against the rights of students” (26). I think most rhetoricians would be wary of that dynamic. All told, Gerdes's theory of rhetorical sensitivity provides a nuanced reading of trigger warnings as advocacy for accessibility given that trauma modulates bodily response.Gerdes's third chapter argues that college campuses do not feel safe for historically disenfranchised students. Most campuses, Gerdes argues, are defined by what Louis M. Maraj references as “white institutional defensiveness, policies, and practices that posture tentatively (often in racially colorblind ways) so as to avoid causing racial stress for white individuals.”12 Black student activism that demands “safe spaces,” such as the productive 2015 occupation of the Carnahan Quad on the University of Missouri's campus, is always resistant to Diane Lynn Gusa's conception of “white institutional presence,” which is another example where Gerdes shows how rhetorical sensitivity can be a transformative tactic for invention (63).Sensitive Rhetorics not only takes student activism seriously as institutional critique, but it also implies that college students are uniquely attuned to our shared openness. The issues that college students raise make explicit the “power of language to injure, wound, or harm” (4), implying that the practice of learning sensitizes you, making the address of others more salient and available while you yourself grow more responsive. In this way, Gerdes communicates what many lifelong learners feel: the simultaneous heaviness of beginning to notice differently—notice more—while beginning to feel slightly more responsible. College students are not fragile or self-absorbed. In their quest for trigger warnings and safe spaces, students are practicing ethical sociality. Activism mobilized by sensitivity is not whimsy nor idiosyncrasy—it's an active negotiation with what it feels like to become more responsible for yourself with others.In the book's composition, it is inspiring to witness Gerdes pulling from sensitivity as a resource. If vulnerability is distributed, as Sensitive Rhetorics argues, then even experts on sensitivity are themselves drained, prickled, and agitated, with or without personal permission. While Gerdes shows remarkable restraint referencing egregious arguments as well as questionable decisions to platform speakers like Milo Yiannopoulos outside of “peer review and shared governance” (31), every so often Gerdes delivers a biting critique. In the book's rundown of how students pursuing the Title IX process to address abuses are demeaned, Gerdes writes: “It's worth noting when scholars complain about students acting like consumers but appeal to the ‘marketplace of ideas’ as a justification for academic freedom, as if the metaphor of an intellectual marketplace should only extend to those it figures as merchants, as if the responsibility for rhetorical engagement amounts to something like ‘buyer beware”’ (49). In response to misinformation about trigger warnings, Gerdes sneaks in some fair snark: “This claim implies that the potential for trauma is so regularly inflicted on students that to advise them about it in advance would halt the day-to-day activities of teaching” (35).This book sensitized me. The first chapter on trigger warnings is a tour-de-force and the arrangement of the book is incredibly smart. I'm now wondering what “ambient norms” my pedagogical and professional choices perpetuate (29). I'm struck by what it means to be unendingly affected by others. I'm spinning stories of rhetoric where sensitivity is “a rhetorical term of art” (3). I'm listening for fallacies of false dilemmas or those moments when higher ed values serve misinformation. My antenna is up, I'm reminded of precious commitments, and it's all due to the “uncloseable openness” of Sensitive Rhetorics (4).

Academic integrity continues to concern educators worldwide. Furthermore, general guidelines for ensuring academic integrity do not seem to encompass all the angles that are required to be taken into consideration when exploring the factors that contribute to multicultural students’ decision to adhere to the norms and values of academic integrity.  This literature review focuses on how academic values can be unified through academic integrity, and specifically explores factors and perspectives of utilising academic integrity to unify academic values when teaching academic writing. The dimensions of academic values explored in this paper are: a) beliefs and attitudes of multicultural undergraduate students and the theory of planned behaviour (TPB), b) the value of academic performance in academic writing classes, c) exploring the development of multicultural students’ authorial voice while maintaining academic integrity, and d) using technology to encourage academic integrity in academic writing classes. Over 56 identified sources were chosen carefully to ensure unbiased approaches to the issues of academic integrity and development of academic writing skills. The authors explored the issues from a variety of perspectives. The gap noticed in the review of literature is the disconnection between academic values and academic integrity. The authors make recommendations for future research.

This teaching practice paper shows how students may choose to work with ChatGPT, generative AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) to produce essays and written assessment solutions in a manner that may be considered as either acceptable or as a breach of academic integrity depending on individual and institutional views. Following a brief introduction to how chatbots work, case study examples show how modified prompts can be used to generate writing in alternative styles, how a writing tutor review can be simulated, and how LLMs can be run locally and without Internet access. The paper is intended to inform academic writing tutors, instructors, and assessors what is possible using generative AI for writing as of January 2024. It is not positioned to make a judgement regarding what is acceptable, but rather to illustrate how technically proficient users can accomplish more than is often indicated by writing beginner level prompts for a chatbot. Such techniques are accessible to many students and the Academic Writing Development community will need to consider its response.

Here we report a teaching practice exploring integrity issues related to the use of images in scientific and/or academic writing or, more broadly, in communication. The practice is intended to raise students’ awareness of the need of complying with research integrity principles/norms. It is targeted at undergraduate students in the molecular biosciences, more specifically, to students enrolled in a First Degree in Biochemistry course. It has been implemented in the context of a course unit in which the students perform laboratory work – within a small project – usually originating data that is reported as graphs or as pictures in their laboratory reports. These visual representations are also normally used in articles published in scientific peer-reviewed journals. We implemented a group assignment based on the analysis of guidelines of different journals regarding the preparation of figures, including acceptable image processing and manipulation, as well as on the application of these guidelines on both written and oral reports. We could observe that the students performed the proposed activity with commitment and interest in the aspects explored. Moreover, the exercise improved their critical thinking ability as demonstrated through in-class discussions. In the present work, we discuss challenges of including illustrations in scientific texts in view of science teaching.

This writing assignment, titled Metacognitive Analysis, prompts awareness of metacognition in learners early in their medical disciplines as they critically evaluate their process for making medical decisions. The Metacognitive Analysis assignment is completed by first-year graduate health profession students in a master’s level physician assistant (PA) course focused on the development of critical thinking and clinical decision-making. Throughout the semester, patient teaching cases are discussed and dissected by the students in small-group, problem-based learning sessions. In the Metacognitive Analysis assignment, students extend this learning by evaluating their own individual decision-making process in relation to concepts of intuitive and analytic reasoning.

This study examines the impact of traditional lectures and guest speaker sessions on developing business communication skills in supply chain education. Focusing on green supply chain management practices (GSCMP) and sustainable development (SD), the research highlights the complementary strengths of these teaching methods. Traditional lectures excel in enhancing written communication and theoretical knowledge, while guest speaker sessions significantly improve verbal communication and practical skills. The findings provide actionable insights for educators to design balanced curricula that align with the dynamic communication needs of modern supply chain management professionals.

Please note that some discussions of domestic, sexual, and racial violence are included in this article. This article explores how teachers and students in a teacher training program constructed precarious moments by engaging with sexual assault literature and pedagogy that centers rape culture and sexual trauma. In this qualitative feminist study, 23 participants took up readings of a sexual trauma text set and responded to pedagogy for teaching such texts with adolescent students in the Canadian K-12 public school system. A focal aim of this project is to think ahead to how teachers in training might cultivate radical communities prepared to address the pervasiveness of sexual assault and the insidiousness of rape culture in the secondary English classroom. As such, the ways in which teacher candidates’ experiences of and witnessing precarious personal safety, as well as how precarious moments impacted their attitudes toward considering this pedagogy in particular, are analyzed.

Language arts and literacy curricula around the world have been advocating for the teaching and learning of literature in multiple forms. However, apparently in much of classroom practice, little attention has been given to distinguishing the literary distinctiveness of multiple forms of ostensibly the same story. Developing an appreciation of the distinctive interpretive possibilities of multi-version literary narratives may be facilitated by semiotic analyses that indicate how the deployment of image, paralanguage, and language resources have been designed to orient the audience to particular interpretive options. Understanding how to analyze texts to determine such orientations is a crucial aspect of critical literacy. In this paper, we draw on systemic functional linguistics and its extension to the description of the meaning-making resources of image and paralanguage to focus on how differences in characterization are achieved in three versions of the story of Coraline.

This paper draws on Bakhtins notion of heteroglossia to expand theorizations of community translanguaging. Ethnographic and practitioner inquiry methods are used to explore the multiple voices that multilingual elementary students adopted and adapted in their digital, translingual texts. Findings illustrate how children drew from multiple voices, including popular media, family collective memories, the school/teacher, peers, and heritage languages, and how they used those voices to recontextualize ideologies about language, literacy, and schooling and to participate in the social and academic work of the classroom. Implications for emerging theorizations of community translanguaging as well as design of more equitable pedagogical practices for multilingual learners are discussed.

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 […]