Review Article| October 01 2011 Countering the Pedagogy of Regression Poets on Teaching: A SourcebookWilkinson, Joshua Marie, ed. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2010 Kevin Craft Kevin Craft Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Pedagogy (2011) 11 (3): 609–614. https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-1302899 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Kevin Craft; Countering the Pedagogy of Regression. Pedagogy 1 October 2011; 11 (3): 609–614. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-1302899 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsPedagogy Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2011 by Duke University Press2011 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

This essay addresses the question of how to best teach interdisciplinarity through a detailed discussion of a common upper-division gateway course for multiple majors housed in an interdisciplinary studies unit. It argues for a shift in the problematic within which discussions of interdisciplinary pedagogy generally take place by emphasizing the practice of interdisciplinarity itself.

In one of many scenes Frances Ellen Watkins Harper developed between student and teacher in her works, the impulsive Annette Harcourt explains her conflict with an Irish-American peer to her teache...

Abstract The professional life of elocutionist Alvina Winker Paterson suggests that previous views about women being excluded from rhetorical activities in the earlier twentieth century need to be revised. Like many other contemporary women, Winkler Paterson was able to avail herself of private instruction in elocution and become a highly successful performer and educator in the Northeast. Her career casts considerable light on the nature of elocutionary performance, the course of elocutionary education, and feminine access to public arenas and power at the time. Notes 1 We owe thanks to RR reviewers Susan Kates, Andrew King, and RR editor Theresa Enos for significant help in revising this manuscript. We also owe thanks to Amber Davisson for using the scrapbooks to create a chronology of Winkler Paterson's performances that was useful in the writing of this article.

This article reports on an international study of the teaching of undergraduate mathematics in seven countries. Informed by rhetorical genre theory, activity theory, and the notion of Communities of Practice, this study explores a pedagogical genre at play in university mathematics lecture classrooms. The genre is mediational in that it is a tool employed in the activity of teaching. The data consist of audio/video-recorded lectures, observational notes, semistructured interviews, and written artifacts collected from 50 participants who differed in linguistic, cultural, and educational backgrounds; teaching experience; and languages of instruction. The study suggests that chalk talk, namely, writing out a mathematical narrative on the board while talking aloud, is the central pedagogical genre of the undergraduate mathematics lecture classroom. Pervasive pedagogical genres, like chalk talk, which develop within global disciplinary communities of practice, appear to override local differences across contexts of instruction. Better understanding these genres may lead to new insights regarding academic literacies and teaching.

“Before we even got to the attendance policy, students were wrestling with an entire semester’s worth of work: they wanted to know how they could make a difference, how to get their voices heard.”

In “A Narrative of Teaching, Community, and Activism,” youth minister, Tim Lee, narrates his journey towards establishing a literacy program dedicated to the personal and spiritual development of young black men. In addition to spiritual advisement and critical dialogue, his program exposes young men to prominent black thinkers such as Langston Hughes, Etheridge Knight, Malcolm X, and Paul Laurence Dunbar. This community-based initiative is dedicated to the development of a community literacy specific and, as Lee sees it, necessary, for the successful development of the black male youth in Chicago and beyond.

Mrs. Wilma Stephenson has taught in the Philadelphia public school system for over forty years. She currently serves as a culinary arts teacher, a cheerleading coach, and the director of the yearbook committee at Philadelphia’s Frankford High School. Despite the fact that very few conversations about education incorporate a broad understanding of literacy and education that includes practical arts such as cooking, we believe such practices model spaces where institutional knowledge can meet community knowledge in valuable ways. Wilma Stephenson and her students are the subject of Pressure Cooker, a documentary about a group of Philadelphia high school students learning the ins and outs of the culinary arts.

In this article, Williams-Christopher calls for greater awareness of the educational import of non-traditional texts, specifically black women’s memoir, for college composition and rhetoric courses. Williams-Christopher contends that including texts that illustrate the various ways black women have transcended forms of oppression, abuse, and disenfranchisement helps to validate the experiences of black women inside and outside of academe. In doing so, the university becomes a space where the transaction of knowledge is multi-directional rather than merely from teacher to student. The goal of holding both community literacy and academic literary in equal regard is to create a space where students can start to break down sharp divides between academic spaces and local communities.

African American community literacy (AACL) originates with the belief that collective social interactions frequently provide the best chance for individuals to develop—through dialogue, personal interactions, and storytelling—into critical citizens. Community, although often taken for granted, figures into the learning of all students as a primary influence on their language and reading habits, as a space for deliberating with others. In response to this understanding, the editors and authors of this collection ask how we might use the long tradition of African American community literacy to teach students to write and respond to traditional academic concerns and the broader social world. Our interests in AACL extends from an understanding that “if writing instructors are to open their typically controlled, teacher-centered classrooms to the press of local community life, they should be aware of how literacy is figured differently across various contexts" (Deans, Roswell, and Burr 5). In this case, we focus on the way black Americans have used specific social practices to organize and educate one another.

This article examines Alexander’s experiences teaching literacy and African American Literature to prison inmates at the Orange County Correctional facility in Hillsborough, North Carolina. For Alexander the conversations and insights provided by these inmates about their experiences and the experiences of the writers they read were indeed emancipatory. As Alexander explains, the process of reading and discussing the works of African American writers can provide a critical lens for understanding one’s own subjugation, and participates in a long tradition of African American community literacy by helping to transform the lives and minds of a population disproportionately comprised of people of color.

Given the diversity of types of writing instructors in US and UK tertiary education and the range of their scholarly backgrounds, the likelihood is that most instructors have not participated in research in composition theory or pedagogy, rhetoric, academic literacies, or writing studies. The four projects reported here highlight the research opportunities and capacities of this diverse group, reflecting different types and levels of teacher or practitioner inquiry that involves teachers in studying significant questions arising from their own contexts. The article offers a brief history of practitioner inquiry research in its various forms and traditions; presents the projects themselves, including their aims and framing; and offers specific recommendations for the future of this invaluable form of inquiry. Definitions of action research vary greatly. The term in its broadest sense refers to research conducted in a field setting with those actually involved in that field, often along with an ‘outsider’, into the study of questions influenced by practitioners, rather than solely by ‘experts’ (Noffke 1996: 2). At the end of the day as teachers, we are often left wondering: Are we doing enough? How do we know? These are the essential questions that occupy the hearts and minds of so many of us as we walk into our classrooms (Goswami, Lewis and Rutherford 2009: 2).Teacher research just isn’t like other forms of research, in part because there is no blueprint for how to do it (Goswami, Lewis and Rutherford 2009: 1).

Textual borrowing, a distinctive feature of academic writing, is a very complex practice which poses problems to novice English as a Second Language/English as a Foreign Language (ESL/EFL) writers. Students in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) also encounter these problems when writing in English. The present study investigates the use of source texts in student essays in order to find out how BiH students incorporate borrowed text into their own. The first part of this paper provides a short theoretical background on the topic and offers insight into the BiH education system, while the second part of the paper presents the main research results which show a high incidence of inappropriate textual borrowing in student texts. It is argued that a stronger focus on teaching writing and more hours of explicit teaching are possible ways to overcome this problem.

Based on data gathered via survey questionnaire and follow up in-class discussion, the paper explores the ways undergraduate students think of themselves as writers and readers. Data drawn from a pilot survey in 2007 and a second in 2009 provides the impetus for discussion of issues of literacy and identity in a digital world. Of interest is 1) what first-year students anticipate they need to do and know, and 2) how final-year students reflect on what they have learnt in terms of academic literacies and related skills. A key issue is the way students bring a particular identity as readers and writers to university, and how this is transformed and re-inscribed through their studies. The importance of teaching for the development of rhetorical dexterity in a digital environment is highlighted because students’ digital literacy is a core element in their literacy identity. The paper also asks ‘how far should educators go in working into the space of digital literacies?’

This project outlines the rationale, design, and findings of a peer tutoring project in a UK teaching-led university. Three students received training and tutored their peers in academic writing. Qualitative data was collected from both peer tutors and tutees; quantitative data was collected through a questionnaire administered by the institution’s Careers department. Findings include a positive effect on the tutors’ self-perception of their own employability and understanding of the conventions of academic writing, along with positive feedback from students who received tuition.

The following set of three papers, ‘University Literacies: French Students at a Disciplinary “Threshold”?’ by Isabelle Delcambre and Christiane Donahue, ‘Modeling Multivocality in a U.S.-Mexican Collaboration in Writing across the Curriculum’, by Mya Poe and Jennifer Craig, and ‘Perceptions and Anticipation of Academic Literacy: “Finding Your Own Voice”’, by Claire Woods and Paul Skrebels, represents some of the ongoing practice-oriented research of the ‘Antwerp Group’, so called because the members came together as teacher-researchers with shared interests in student writing in Antwerp in 2006.

One particularly difficult area for higher education students is writing appropriately for their respective disciplines. As writing is a social, cultural and dialogic act, writing support should create learning events that will allow for useful social exchange of ideas within the appropriate disciplinary cultures. Indeed, many claims are made in favour of disciplinary-based writing support: students will become more engaged with their subjects, will develop as critical thinkers and, through debate, will produce scripts which are more likely to warrant them voice within their disciplinary cultures. In the study described in this paper, two academics from Art and Design and Humanities in a UK university used different techniques to create participatory writing cultures in the classroom. Despite different settings, similar issues arose that are not fully addressed in the literature on writing development, including student non-engagement with active learning; issues with the development of critical skills; and student agency. The authors will discuss their findings by drawing on student feedback and their own reflection on the teaching sessions.

This paper reports on a small-scale study in a post-1992 UK University that set out to explore how lecturers were approaching the challenge of developing first year undergraduates’ writing. It approached lecturers’ everyday writing practices from the perspective of literacy as social practice (Barton 2007, Barton, Hamilton and Ivanič 1999, Gee 1996 and Street 1984). Data collection focussed on the different ways the participating lecturers had tried to support students writing development as well as the extent to which they felt responsible for developing writing as part of their specific subject teaching. This study concludes that it may be beneficial for higher education institutions to provide opportunities for lecturers to develop their own academic writing identities in higher education, as well as supporting them to work more effectively as writing developers within their subject specialisms, or collaboratively with specialist writing development staff.

For over fifty years, US writing centers have been helping students, with writing centers found in approximately 90% of American universities and colleges (Eodice 2009). Because those who direct and tutor see student writers struggling with every kind of assignment, writing centers are important resources for anyone teaching writing or writing-intensive courses.Ironically, though, writing centers are an overlooked resource on literacy. As Eric Hobson and Muriel Harris argue, writing centers should share with those who teach writing to larger groups what writing center professionals have learned about the writing process. Based on four years of systematic research interviewing experienced writing center tutors, this article presents teachers of academic writing with valuable insights into how students misunderstand the writing process and how teachers of academic writing can improve their teaching of writing.

Critical reviews allow access to the critical thinking abilities of their writers, especially with regard to analyzing and synthesizing ideas. In most institutions of higher learning, critical reviews are assigned as coursework, and the general assumption is that students would know how to produce a ‘good’ review, one that meets its readers’ expectations. Is this a fair assumption? If not, which particular skills and strategies do we, as academics, teach them? This study was undertaken to find the answers to these questions and focused on the critical review writing of postgraduates. A mixed methods approach was adopted incorporating questionnaires, interviews and critical reviews of articles written in English by ESL postgraduate students at the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, University of Malaya. The critical reviews were analyzed from two perspectives (contents and presentation) using a checklist devised by the researchers. The findings revealed that most of the students lacked the skills and strategies for writing effective reviews.

for the Teaching of Academic Writing (EATAW).Since EATAW's founding as a professional organisation in

Legos Build the Way to Successful Process Analysis Writing, Michelle Rhodes (New Voice) Native American Elder Stories Make Descriptive Essays Easier, Pamela Tambornino (New Voice) Teaching Writing Style and Revision, Eric Bateman Dialect and Language Analysis Assignment, Amanda Hayes (New Voice) A Scaffolded Essay Assignment on Poetry, Jane Arnold (New Voice)

This article examines the intersections between Gerald Vizenor’s theories of survivance, postindian, manifest manners, and transmotion, and some longstanding rhetorical concepts that shape the teaching of writing. It also examines how Vizenor’s terminology may inform our understandings of these terms and help reshape the canon that informs our teaching of writing and rhetoric.

In this study we take up challenges regarding researcher positionality, representation, and the construction of difference as a launching point to reflexively analyze our own practices within aresearch project exploring multilingualism, multiliteracies, and teacher development. Our data were drawn from a teacher study group we facilitated during the first phase of a two-year study.We draw on poststructuralist understandings of discourse, power, and performativity and use elements of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to conduct a close thematic reading of two moments of discomfort in one study group meeting, and we critique our own complicity in the discursive production of difference. Further, we engage tools of process drama to theorize how we might have structured and responded to interactions differently during one of these same moments in order to address these challenges more successfully. We conclude by arguing for approaches and interpretive tools for researchers that could help to reimagine as well as respond both ethically and analytically to issues of representation in language and literacy research.

Composition theorists concerned with students’ academic writing ability have long questioned the application of voice as a standard for writing competence, and second language compositionists have suggested that English language learners may be disadvantaged by the practice of emphasizing voice in the evaluation of student writing. Despite these criticisms, however, voice continues to frequently appear as a goal in guidelines for teaching writing and on high-stakes writing assessment rubrics in the United States. Given the apparent lack of alignment between theory and practice regarding its use, more empirical research is needed to understand how teachers apply voice as a criterion in the evaluation of student writing. Researchers have used sociocultural and functionalist frameworks to analyze voice-related discursive patterns, yet we do not know how readers evaluate written texts for voice. To address this gap in research the present study asked: 1) What language features do secondary English teachers associate with voice in secondary students’ writing and how do they explain their associations? 2) How do such identified features vary across genres as well as among readers? Nineteen teachers were interviewed using a think-aloud protocol designed to illuminate their perceptions of voice in narrative and expository samples of secondary students’ writing. Results from an inductive analysis of interview transcripts suggest that participating teachers associated voice with appraisal features, such as amplified expressions of affect and judgment, that are characteristic of literary genres.

Using a sociohistoric developmental lens, this paper traces the construction of texts composed by fifth graders in an urban classroom in order to answer the following questions: How do children develop as writers in school? How do writing and drawing function in children’s texts? How do teaching practices shape children’s writing development? Ethnographic data collected in a fifthgrade classroom reveal how children used drawing to create classroom texts. Data show that drawing is not simply a developmental preface to writing. Rather, when given guided intellectual freedom, children integrate writing, drawing, and pictures in sophisticated and creative ways. The author traces children’s text development to show how schooling as an institution bounds and limits their use of their authorial prerogatives, their textual possibilities, and ultimately their developmental potential. She concludes by asserting that we must reconsider development in writing to include not only orthographic symbols, but also the wide array of communicative tools that children bring to writing. Any analysis of development that fails to include an analysis of the corresponding institutional practices and ideologies is liable to be no more than a contribution to the efficacy of that developmental model.

This webtext examines the ways that Jonathan Pearson, a recent graduate of The University of Missouri–Kansas City, revised one of his essays to turn it from a seminar paper into a published scholarly article. The project covers a time period from 2004 to 2010 and documents the article's most important streams of input. Those streams include the author's passion for his subject and the ongoing mentoring he received from Professor Jane Greer, his teacher and also the editor of Young Scholars in Writing, and from Professor Patti Hanlon-Baker, member of the journal's editorial board.

Documentary movie making is not academic writing. Nor is it traditional academic research. However, I have found it to be a remarkable vehicle for teaching both of these things...each semester I am amazed and humbled by the creativity and sincerity that my students bring to their work.

This paper draws on the findings of a three-year, observation-cum-intervention research project that focuses on the textual practices of middle school teachers in Singapore. Specifically, the focus here is on the teaching of suspense narratives to a class of average, lower middle school students as part of the 'text-type' syllabus adopted in Singapore's schools since 2001. The paper will reveal, through close analysis of a unit of work and two lesson transcripts, how one English teacher constructs, scaffolds and implements a series of lessons to develop her students' awareness of and competency in the construction and deconstruction of suspense in narrative writing. It argues that it is the teacher's ability to make use of connected learnings and explicit instruction to raise the overall intellectual quality of her lessons that contributes to the development of her students' textual competence. The paper closes with a critical appraisal of the lessons and a discussion of the implications this study has for writing teachers and researchers.

We should make the case that literary study has traditionally been, and continues to be, an effective gateway into the cross-cultural awareness that a truly global campus needs. At the same time, we should draw upon our own pedagogical history to ensure that our institutions of learning do not reinforce the neo-imperialism of cultural globalization. In fact, since World War II, calls for teaching world literature have been tied to shifting moral imperatives.

This is the second part of a two-part article on how Web 2.0 tools freely available afford so many opportunities for collaboration among writers in the context of social networking, creating the means for student writers to write purposefully for worldwide audiences. Part I set the stage by placing writing in the context of new views of literacy due in part to revoluntionary changes since the turn of the century in how content finds its way to the Internet. It explained how artifacts created with such tools are aggregated and harvested as learning objects with potential to promote and augment communication and collaboration online, and to promote writing by giving students interesting and meaningful ideas to write about, thus significantly changing how the teaching of writing might be re-envisaged in the digital age. Whereas Part I examined the production side of this dynamic, Part II explains how the Internet resolves the marketing side of the role once played by traditional publishing and how writers and audiences can navigate this seemingly chaotic preponderance of content online by tagging their work and using RSS and other aggregation tools to find one another's written work and carry on conversations about it, thus providing truly authentic motivation for their writing.

Like other kinds of work with a strong intellectual-reflective component, teaching is complex action. The wide range of skills and types of decisionmaking involved in this complex, high-level work classifies teachers as professionals not simply laborers As I have noted in research carried out with K-12 teachers in Hong Kong and the United Kingdom, teachers have to manage a wide range of competing priorities in their work Like other teachers, writing teachers must handle a set of contrasting aims in classroom teaching, balancing the course-level and whole-class curriculum concerns of structure and predictability against the activity-level and individual-level concerns of teaching-learning process, creative response, and adaptation to circumstances and to the needs and interests of individual students. The teacher's balancing act is complicated by the need to factor in requirements and constraints imposed by administrators and governing bodies as to class size, workload, curriculum and texts, testing, grading, and record-keeping, and it is exacerbated by the extra time needed to handle the added burdens. It is further exacerbated by differences in what can be planned for in advance and what cannot and by differences in the teacher's goals, preferences, and ideals, on the one hand, and the reality of the teaching situation, on the other. Writing teachers' best-laid plans are often laid aside because of the constraints of their teaching situation, such as too-large class size or students whose linguistic or writing skills require remediation.

In this article, we describe an approach to teaching first-year composition that is built on a qualitative design for undergraduate research and writing. As writing instructors at a state teaching college, we see the need to move our students beyond the boundaries of expressivism, personal narrative, and argument and into the murkier, messier, and more critical territory of considering subjectivities, interpreting cultural texts and contexts, and, ultimately, coming to see the dynamic and dialogic nature of rhetorical situations and knowledge production. We have discovered that asking undergraduates to do field work as a way to enter the academic conversation allows them to shift from high school writing to college-level writing. Inviting them to delve into a primary research project of their own design grants them permission to construct their ownership, authority, and intellectual engagement of ideas. Case studies of the experiences of five student research writers illustrate the process through which, as ethnographers, students become actors in their own learning process.

Writing pedagogy and civic literacy can form an interactive, interdisciplinary partnership beneficial to students. Students learn to compare the classical rhetorical genres of epideictic, forensic, and deliberative rhetoric to modern ceremonial, judicial, and legislative rhetorical genres. Elements essential to writing pedagogy – ethos, logos, pathos, claims, warrants, and enthymemes – become meaningful as students engage in civic-themed reading and writing assignments designed for first-year composition. Writing pedagogy enriched with a civic literacy motif encourages students to practice writing to authentic audiences for genuine civic purposes.

This study employs ethnographic case study method to explore secondary English language learners’ experiences with content-area writing in a U.S. public school setting. Documentary evidence, interviews, and students’ written work comprise the data set. Data are interpreted through a sociocognitive theoretical lens to take into account contextual and individual cognitive factors that come into play in English language learners’ development of content-specific writing. Findings suggest that a combination of institutional factors (e.g. school program design, state regulations, and state assessment systems) in concert with teacher beliefs and expectations of English language learners impact the content-area writing instruction which English language learners receive. This study points to the need for continued investigation of state policies, school processes, and teacher beliefs and practices that may enhance the quality and breadth of writing English language learners experience as they move through secondary school.

Although response to student writing often consumes the majority of a writing instructor’s time and energy, studies of teachers’ philosophies and practices with regard to feedback have been relatively rare in the response literature. In the study described in this article, college writing instructors from six community colleges and two four-year universities in Northern California (N=129) were surveyed, and volunteers from this group (N=23) gave follow-up in-depth interviews. In addition, each interview participant provided 3-5 samples of student texts with their own written commentary. Based on the findings, our analysis focuses on two questions: 1. How do the participants (college-level writing instructors in Northern California) perceive response to student writing? 2. In what ways might the participants’ own practices be causing or adding to their frustrations? We found that although most of the participants value response and believe it is very important, they are often frustrated and dissatisfied with the task itself and with its apparent lack of impact on student progress. Our data analyses suggest some possible underlying explanations for these teachers’ complex attitudes toward response. The discussion concludes with suggestions of ways writing instructors can adapt or focus their response practices to increase the efficiency and quality of their feedback, to reduce frustration, and to increase satisfaction with this aspect of their teaching practice.

Review of A Long Way Together and Reading the Past, Writing the Future ,Barbara L’Eplattenier Seeking Connections, Articulating Commonalities: English Education, Composition Studies, and Writing Teacher Education, Janet Alsup, Elizabeth Brockman, Jonathan Bush, and Mark Letcher Preparing Writing Teachers: A Case Study in Constructing a More Connected Future for CCCC and NCTE., Shelley Reid Contesting the Space between High School and College in the Era of Dual-Enrollment, Howard Tinberg and Jean-Paul Nadeau

The third goal of Zen practice, helping others achieve enlightenment, suggests that we should help students learn about their own composing practices and histories as part of their instruction, but we cannot help others until we learn to help ourselves by reflecting on our own processes and histories, becoming enlightened, and liberating ourselves.

Before Shaughnessy: Basic Writing at Yale and Harvard, 1920–1960 , by Kelly Ritter, Reviewed by William DeGenaro Teaching Developmental Writing, by Susan Naomi Bernstein; Before Shaughnessy: Basic Writing at Yale and Harvard, 1920–1960 , by Kelly Ritter, Reviewed by Gregory Shafer William DeGenaro’s Response to Gregory Shafer; Gregory Shafer’s Response to William DeGenaro

A study of scholarly research articles from six disciplines provides insights about academic writing that composition instructors can use to prepare students to write across the curriculum.

While teaching field research methods to freshman composition students, this professor uses online digital video to scaffold note-taking, interviewing, and observation skills.

Despite a long debate and the accompanying call for changes in the past few decades, grammarinstruction in college English classes, according to some scholars, has remained largely “disempowering,” “decontextualized,” and “remedial” (Micciche, 2004, p. 718). To search for more effectiveand empowering grammar teaching, this study explores the use of corpora for problem-basedlearning/teaching of lexicogrammar in a college English grammar course. This pedagogy wasmotivated by research findings that (1) corpora are a very useful source and tool for languageresearch and for active discovery learning of second/foreign languages, and (2) problem-basedlearning (PBL) is an effective and motivating instructional approach. The data collected andanalyzed include students’ individual and group corpus research projects, reflection papers oncorpus use, and responses to a post-study survey consisting of both open-ended and Likert questions.The analysis of the data found the following four themes in students’ use of, and reflectionsabout, corpus study: (1) critical understanding about lexicogrammatical and broader languageuse issues, (2) awareness of the dynamic nature of language, (3) appreciation for the context/register-appropriate use of lexicogrammar, and (4) grasping of the nuances of lexicogrammaticalusages. The paper also discusses the challenges involved in incorporating corpus use into Englishclasses and offers suggestions for further research.

The authors discuss courses in which they examined with students female rhetors’ historical presence in the public imagination, investigating how rhetorical work has inscribed these women into public memory and erased them from it.

For one hundred years, North Carolina Central University (NCCU), a Historically Black College and University, has promoted the concept of service as a means of building a stronger academic and social community. At NCCU, service manifests in many forms; however, during the fall 2009 semester, a group of college students collaborated with high school students on a handwritten letter-writing project. The cross-aged teaching initiative employed different theoretical practices that helped NCCU students become rhetors who immersed themselves in rhetorical situations that promoted change. This article focuses on the impact of this literacy-based service-learning experience on NCCU students’ perception of themselves as change agents and problem solvers and on their rhetorical and analytical thinking skills. It also focuses on high school students’ readiness to form a partnership with NCCU students and reveal the problems that negatively affect their lives. Since university students engaged in a rhetoric of change, this partnership is an example of how NCCU continues its founder’s legacy.

This article suggests that the methodology of community-based action research provides concrete strategies for fostering effective community problem solving. To argue for a community research pedagogy, the author draws upon past and present scholarship in action research and participatory action research, experiences teaching an undergraduate writing course revolving around action research, and conversations with community members who have benefitted from student research.

Based on Walter Eggers's article “Teaching Drama: a Manifesto,” this article discusses practical ways to emphasize the persistence and popularity of the dramatic tradition in an introduction to drama course. I argue that drama's popularity is an essential tool for teaching the genre to undergraduates in all disciplines, and to demonstrate this tenet in my own experience, I give examples of how I taught formal and thematic elements through their use in contemporary media as well as several assignments that demonstrate the symbiotic relationship between staged theatre and its multimedia counterparts.

This article argues for a pedagogy that attends to emotion as a crucial, epistemological component of rhetorical education. After exploring dominant cultural tropes for understanding emotion, I examine examples of how these discourses materialize in popular culture. I then draw from classroom moments to analyze the possibilities for and complexities of studying emotion in the classroom.