This discussion introduces a heuristic to guide writing instruction with adolescents and young adults. Our framework, called "Open World Writing," consists of six writing territories (vision, material, design, voice, flow, polish) that provide focus and clarity for writing and educators working across academic and creative writing…

This article presents the findings of a study in which college freshman reflected on the process of writing a literacy narrative and considered the impact of such writing on their narrative identities. The author synthesizes existing scholarship on literacy narratives, discusses the methodology of interpretive phenomenological analysis utilized,…

An important part of college learning is the ability to comprehend complex texts. Research indicates that epistemic beliefs--views about what knowledge is like and how people come to know--may guide readers' goals and behaviors. Metaphor is a tool for uncovering individual's beliefs. This article reports on a study examining 90 beginning…

In this article, the author describes utilizing Instagram as a reading response activity in an undergraduate English course to increase student engagement with challenging texts. Using a shared class account, students created a menu of prompts that they then chose from to create posts after reading fictional, theoretical, and philosophical texts;…

The author provides a conceptual framework that illustrates the spectrum of authentic writing assignments and operationalizes authenticity, in an effort to guide practitioners toward crafting writing assignments that are meaningful for students by reflecting and replicating the kinds of writing that occur outside of the academic context. The…

Given the complexity of dialogic argumentative writing and the requisite instruction needed to support student writers, we describe the instructional practices of an English language arts teacher and her culturally and linguistically diverse classroom of 10th graders' writing during key moments in two instructional units during school year…

Qualitative data analysis from open-ended comments written by 206 undergraduates illustrates student attitudes, beliefs, and practices that reveal an academic reading paradox. Consistently, undergraduates report that reading is valuable, yet their noncompliance with reading assignments suggests otherwise. Undergraduates report that they achieve…

Students who understand their writing process and see themselves as writers are more likely to successfully tackle unfamiliar genres and writing tasks. In this self-study, a college English professor and two first-year college students make a case for an extended-metaphor assignment that helps students build stronger identities as writers.…

Previous research has revealed that U.S. schools are hostile and unsafe for queer youth, yet school-based supports, such as LGBTQ-inclusive curriculum, are associated with more welcoming schools. Studies focusing on inclusive curriculum have implicitly characterized this curriculum didactically, in other words, as a direct intervention into the…

With dialogic writing assessment, teachers can scaffold students' writing processes in ways that are flexible and responsive to students' individual needs. Examples of teachers using this conference-based method of classroom writing assessment illustrate how to practice assessment that is dynamic and relational rather than static and standardized,…

This article explores the written reflections and multimodal analyses of 31 middle school students who engaged with video games as texts. For four consecutive days, students spent 30 minutes playing video games and then 30 minutes writing reflections on their experiences and perceptions, resulting in 124 total reflections. Students focused on how…

In this study, the researchers explore how teacher candidates (TCs) across one content area literacies course and one bilingual education course engaged with their past linguistic experiences through two literacy autobiography assignments across the two separate classes. Borrowing from culturally sustaining, multiliteracies, and translanguaging…

The transition from high school to college is challenging for many students, especially first-generation college students. College courses require disciplinary specific reading, writing, and thinking skills not often taught in high school, such as reading and analyzing complex texts and constructing original arguments in discipline-specific…

Students who are quiet while reflecting on information before sharing their thoughts are often mistakenly judged as not participating in class. To better understand how quiet students navigated the space of a Midwestern U.S. suburban classroom, a yearlong action research study was conducted to learn more about student needs and test how adapting…

This study investigated how an interdisciplinary first-year seminar focused on representations of schooling in popular culture supported the acquisition of an academic version of critical media literacy. The authors explore how tapping into students' funds of knowledge, constructing carefully scaffolded assignments, and offering targeted,…