Using both a Bakhtinian and a collaborative writing framework, in this qualitative study, we sought to understand writing practices in one elementary school. Through observations in three classrooms and interviews with students, the study found that students had opportunities to engage in a variety of collaborative writing activities, including supportive contributions and co-constructing a text. When engaging in supportive contributions, students inspired, assisted, or shared their work with peers. In collaborations of a single text, students who had experiences writing with one another negotiated ideas and texts successfully. In pairs where students experienced conflict, there tended to be fewer collaborative moments, and students sought help from the teacher. The study demonstrates that students’ relationships with one another play a significant role in collaborative writing practices and highlights the important role of friendships in successful interactions.

The editors introduce the articles in this issue and reflect on their editorship.

The editors introduce the four research articles in the issue.

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The editors introduce this issue of RTE.

This issue coincides with the Annual Convention of the National Council of Teachers of English, whose theme, “Reading the Past, Writing the Future,” celebrates NCTE’s 100th anniversary as the Anglophone world’s largest and oldest organization dedicated to the improvement of the teaching of English. The expansion of publications under the NCTE imprint from a single publication, (The) English Journal, beginning in 1912, to twelve peer-reviewed journals today focusing on issues and topics from early childhood to university-level English and from theory and research to policy and practice stands as a testament to NCTE’s longstanding commitment to empirical inquiry. We realized, in other words, that we needed to find a way to celebrate the tradition of research in all of NCTE’s journals published throughout its history.

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At universities, scholars in English studies manage what Gieryn (1999) called disciplinary boundary work (the rhetorical making and policing of boundaries that construct the discipline and its institutional formations as different from other disciplines and social formations) through categorical contrasts, including: literary criticism vs. writing studies/rhetoric; scholarship vs. creative writing; quantitative vs. qualitative research; university vs. K–12 schooling; university vs. workplace; and, of course, that most basic border of disciplinarity”disciplinary knowledge vs. everyday belief and culture. The two research reports in this issue of RTE both address college-level work in the field and both highlight interesting ways in which current theoretical and methodological developments are putting pressure on disciplinary boundaries in English studies.

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The editors introduce the three research studies and the Standpoints essay in this issue, all of which deal with the relations between digital technology and the development of adolescent literacy.

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We look forward to building on and expanding the role of RTE in shaping and disseminating research on writing, reading, literacy, literary response, and literature education.