This critical reflection, motivated by a comprehensive program review and the opportunity to teach a new course, explores issues of relevance and engagement in English Studies.  Arguing for instructional methods that meet our current challenges, the author shares her experience with case-based learning in a graduate level English Language Study course.   The course utilized real-life cases to teach advanced linguistics, encourage critical thinking, and show students the ways linguistics can be used to address everyday problems.  Feedback from students evidenced a high level of relevancy and engagement.  The article also highlights the importance of scaffolding and collaboration in implementing case-based learning successfully.

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An explanation of the history of standardized tests in the US reveals the ways they have shifted from tools of articulation to tools of accountability not only in K–12 classrooms but also in higher education. Understanding the competing interests at play and the potential effects of the Common Core State Standards at the college level is crucial to reasserting assessment as a teaching and learning practice instead of a system of accountability.

This article synthesizes and extends data from some of the most prominent and promising large-scale research projects in writing studies while also presenting results fromthe authors’ own research. By juxtaposing these studies, the authors offer a complex understanding of writing practices at the high school and college level. Future directionsare suggested in light of these research findings.

Data analysis and representation are important political acts in the research process. The types of data we select for study, the analysis we draw, and our textual and graphic representations of data all contribute to the ways in which the people involved in our research are positioned as subjects and the degree of individual and collective agency that can be constructed through the research process itself. It is because of the potential effects of our research on others that we need to demystify the research we do through laying bare our epistemological positions and opening our methods and methodologies to public criticism. Further, in the case of empowering research, it is important to include the research participants in the development of our research projects. This necessitates explorations into postmodern conceptions of subjectivity, knowledge formation, collaboration, and resistance as they relate to empirical research as well as redefining notions of validity and reliability.