This report is a revised version of the original document, first published in 2004.

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.

This article describes a study on the types of writing tasks that ESL students commonly encounter in introductory academic courses at a two-year college and discusseshow the results of the study may have an impact on instruction.

We offer here a critical assessment of our experiences teaching in Kingsborough Community College's learning communities—in a descriptive, personal mode that echoes the frequent conversations we have together—to illuminate how official data fail to capture both important successes and failures and to model the kind of reflective, subjective assessment from a professorial perspective that we believe is vital for larger institutional decision making.

Reviewed are: The Idea of a Writing Laboratory, Neal Lerner Generation 1.5 in College Composition: Teaching Academic Writing to U.S.-Educated Learners of ESL, Mark Roberge, Meryl Siegal, and Linda Harklau, editors The Community College Writer: Exceeding Expectations, Howard Tinberg and Jean-Paul Nadeau College Writing and Beyond: A New Framework for University Writing Instruction, Anne Beaufort

This essay recounts the authors’ experiences as community college faculty members in a learning community linking first-year composition with a class in life-career planning and development.

This article describes the evolution of a program for preparing future two-year college faculty in the context of the academy writ large and from the perspectives of the program’sfounder, the department chair who contributed to the program’s success, and a program participant turned full-time tenured faculty member.

A survey of and follow-up interviews with adjunct faculty working with a writing program administrator or a similar person or committee reveal that adjunct faculty working conditions create more than a sense of unfairness; rather, they create a very real energy that works against the movement necessary to build a writing program out of a collection of writing classes, to develop the sense of a “we” moving toward a common goal.

College and high school writing teachers participated in an online assessment activity to build common understanding of standards.

This essay illustrates why compositionists should conceive of multimodal writing assignments as having wide-ranging and forward-thinking parameters, in order to invite the greatest possible range of student responses; it also suggests the directions we should take when evaluating such work.

Reviewed are: Academic Cultures: Professional Preparation and the Teaching Life Edited by Sean P. Murphy, Reviewed by Lois Birky Genre Theory: Teaching, Writing, and Being by Deborah Dean, Reviewed by Meredith DeCosta Ideas That Work in College Teaching, Edited by Robert L. Badger, Reviewed by Raymond Bergeron Inside the Community College Writing Center: Ten Guiding Principles by Ellen G. Mohr, Reviewed by Deborah Bertsch Essential Literary Terms: A Brief Norton Guide with Exercises by Sharon Hamilton, Reviewed by John Benson

Editor’s introduction: In this latest in a series of commentaries from former chairs of the national Two-Year College English Association (TYCA), Sharon Mitchler, TYCA chair (2004–6) and the 2009 winner of the Nell Ann Pickett Service Award, shares her views on becoming involved in local, regional, and national professional activities.

We enter this review as collaborators from the same institution, a four-year medium-sized private university. Additionally, some of us bring our collective experiences as teachers from small, liberal arts colleges, community colleges, and large research universities across the U.S. Our levels of teaching experience range from first-year PhD students to an associate professor, with scholarly interests from Renaissance literature to new media theory.

This analysis of the Writing Across the Curriculum section of the TYCA national survey of writing programs covers Writing Across the Curriculum and Writing in the Disciplines programs and initiatives, as well as writing centers and the overall satisfaction with two-year institutions’ integration of Writing Across the Curriculum.

Two-Year College English teachers offer brief descriptions of successful classroom activities.

This article describes the development of collegiality and the positive results of professional synergy within a group of English professors from three community colleges, a state college, a university, and a maritime academy in southeastern Massachusetts.

C. D. Albin is professor of English at Missouri State University–West Plains and has contributed poems to several journals, including Big Muddy, Cape Rock, and Teaching English in the Two-Year College.

This analysis of the Assessment Practices section of the national TYCA survey of writing programs examines recent trends in placement and exit practices at the two-year college.

The author examines surveys indicating that, in general, community college students are significantly less inclined and less able than students at four-year colleges to earn a bachelor’s degree. He argues that it is important for teachers of English to understand the numerous conditions that limit the first group’s chances for such “success.”

This article describes the Student Tutor Education Program (STEP) at Westchester Community College, which identifies and recruits potential future college English teachers at the community college level while they serve as peer writing tutors, with benefits to the entire college community as well as the teaching profession in general.

This final essay in the series evaluates TYCA’s achievements since its inception, in particular its research and scholarship agenda.

This analysis of the technology and pedagogy section of the TYCA national survey of writing programs covers online and onsite uses of technologies, multimodal essays and electronic portfolios, pedagogical training in the uses of technologies, intersections of training and curriculum innovation (i.e., electronic portfolios and multimodal compositions), and two-year college satisfaction levels with the integration of technology.

The article argues for raising class consciousness among community college students and describes how the author employs the writings of Charles Bukowski to reach an ethnically diverse, but predominantly working-class student population.

The article describes two service learning projects that engaged our Delgado Community College students in a sense of community that transcended their personal trials. A regional accrediting agency afforded local conference registrants the opportunity to participate in a Habitat for Humanity construction project; more than a hundred volunteered. What had been a diaspora of historical proportions effected a new community spirit, one borne of mutual loss and committed to restoration and rebuilding.

In recent decades, higher education has increasingly relied on contingent faculty to teach multiple sections of composition courses with low pay and few benefits. Administrators have argued that institutions need these faculty to protect tenure-track faculty in times of financial difficulty and to manage fluctuating enrollments. When Hurricane Katrina forced universities and community colleges to declare financial exigency or force majeur, contingent faculty were the first to be terminated. However, their dismissal did not protect tenured and tenure-track faculty. Moreover, without contingent faculty, the Xavier University English Department successfully managed to staff composition classes in the first semesters following Katrina, a period of uncertainty and fluctuating enrollments. This success shows that the employment of large numbers of part-time faculty cannot be rationalized. Furthermore, faculty should strive to integrate part-time colleagues into the academy, and administrators should follow the example of departments which have successfully converted part time positions into tenure-track appointments.

In this study, we compared self-revised essays to timed writing exams written by students in a developmental English course in a community college. Using a multiple-trait rubric, we found that self-revised essays showed greater elaboration than timed writing exams, and that elaboration and focus correlated only for self-revised essays. We argue, based on these findings and on theoretical grounds, for further exploration of the self-revised essay as an authentic portrait of student writing ability.

By reimagining traditional WPA work in the context of a two-year college, we can begin to identify unique challenges and opportunities for a two-year college WPA.

In the early 1990s, a small group of dedicated two-year college English faculty, led by Helon Raines, began the fight for the Two-Year College English Association (TYCA), a professional organization that would give two-year college English faculty across the nation a respected identity and voice within the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE).

This essay chronicles the early efforts of two-year college English faculty to forge a professional identity.

Rita Pourteau is an instructor at SOWELA Technical Community College in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

C. D. Albin is professor of English at Missouri State University–West Plains and has contributed poems to several journals, including Big Muddy, Limestone, and Teaching English in the Two-Year College.

The author calls for teacher-scholars in the two-year college to reveal in their scholarship the generation of their triumphs and their failures.

TETYC publishes articles for two-year college teachers and those teaching the first two years of English in four-year institutions. We seek articles in all areas of composition (basic, first-year, and advanced); business, technical, and creative writing; and the teaching of literature in the first two college years. We also publish articles on topics such as staffing, assessment, technology, writing program administration, speech, journalism, reading, ESL, and other areas of interest.

“A Defining Moment: Trying to Pin Down the Meaning of ‘College-Level’ Writing” from Joel B. Henderson, Editor of “TYCA to You”

This article describes two local research projects and provides a rationale for faculty scholarship at small and community colleges.

English faculty in community colleges feel pressured to make their composition courses acceptable for transfer to four-year schools. In particular, many of them feel obligated to emphasize academic research and argument at the expense of literature. But community college students will benefit from first-year courses that address a wide range of discourse by integrating literary study with writing instruction.

An authentic assessment embedded in a course becomes a teaching tool integral to the aims of the course, not simply a mandated test.

The highly competent professor of English in today’s two-year college—like highly competent faculty at all levels of education—is a skilled educator, a knowledgeable scholar, and an active learner and contributor within the profession. What distinguishes the two-year college teacher-scholar is his or her dedication to open educational access, commitment to democratic participation and equity within higher education, and ability to help make these ideals a reality for highly diverse learners from eighteen to eighty and from backgrounds that cross conventional divides of race, ethnicity, class, and academic preparation.

With increasing demands for online courses in all levels of higher education, a community college English instructor implements alternative methods of communication to ensure course rigor and integrity as she meets her objectives of enhanced student learning and success.

Reviews of three books: The Profession of English in the Two-Year College reviewed by Edwina Jordan; Postmodern Sophistry: Stanley Fish and the Critical Enterprise reviewed by Cathy Buckingham; Designing Writing: A Practical Guide reviewed by Jill Wright.

Review Article| April 01 2006 More profession, Less professing Jason Kane Jason Kane Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Pedagogy (2006) 6 (2): 342–349. https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-6-2-342 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Jason Kane; More profession, Less professing. Pedagogy 1 April 2006; 6 (2): 342–349. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-6-2-342 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search Books & JournalsAll JournalsPedagogy Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Duke University Press2006 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: Roundtable: Reviews of the Profession of English in the Two-Year College You do not currently have access to this content.

Review Article| April 01 2006 Back to the Future Barry Alford; Barry Alford Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Lucia Elden Lucia Elden Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Pedagogy (2006) 6 (2): 349–352. https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-6-2-349 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Barry Alford, Lucia Elden; Back to the Future. Pedagogy 1 April 2006; 6 (2): 349–352. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-6-2-349 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter Books & JournalsAll JournalsPedagogy Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Duke University Press2006 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal Issue Section: Roundtable: Reviews of the Profession of English in the Two-Year College You do not currently have access to this content.

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