Examines gender differences in topic choice by analyzing freshman writers' narratives of an incident they witnessed. Finds that pronounced, gender-based patterns influence text production, with women demonstrating caring and nurturing values in everyday life and men engaging in romantic fantasies of self-aggrandizement or apocalyptic fascination…

Explores what writing teachers want to know about the ways cultural realities, such as gender, influence literary practices, such as writing autobiographical stories for composition classes. Argues that what they want to know affects how they read gender narratives and that reversing the terms would make a difference in their reading practices.…

Describes the use of an electronic bulletin board in a first-year composition class. Explores power relationships and issues of gender, conflict, and authority while focusing on one young man's role on the bulletin board. (SR)

Reviews college students' compositions describing the acquisition of their literacy skills. Reports that males' anecdotes tend to reflect individual achievement and competition, whereas females' writings display a process and cooperation focus. Argues that new research must be conscious of these differences, or gender-blind studies may be…

Surveys recent feminist research on gender differences in social and psychological development, and shows how this research and theory may be used in examining student writing, thus suggesting directions that a feminist investigation of composition might take. (SR)

Discusses how students of both sexes in a third-grade class used popular culture to scaffold their stories--they (1) aimed at audience reaction, often using argument and shock; (2) incorporated their favorite writers and curricular topics into their pieces; and (3) by year's end, merged the talents of both genders into a higher form of literacy.…

Finds that experience and education can produce extensive changes in the style and content of men's and women's writing, eliminate the dominance of gender-based writing characteristics, and help students develop a variety of styles. Suggests that instruction can help students develop varied, androgynous styles important for job-related…

Findings are reported from a longitudinal study, involving 8- to 10-year-old students in England, which evaluated and analyzed student writing samples. The writing samples were elicited by tests intended to produce two kinds of writing: a story and a description. (IAH)

Uses brief accounts by undergraduate students of their experiences with computers and word processing to investigate gender-related differences in attitudes toward computers and to explore why computers seem to reflect back to many women a learned sense of technical incompetence. Focuses on themes of power, caring, and self-esteem. (SR)

This full-color publication uses a tabloid format to present highlights from the National Assessment of Educational Progress 2002 writing assessment. It describes assessment content; presents major findings as average scale scores and as percentages of students scoring at or above achievement levels for the nation, at grades 4, 8, and 12; shows…

This report presents the results of the 2002 assessment in writing from the National Assessment of Educational Progress for the nation and for the participating states and jurisdictions. Comparisons are made to performance in the national assessment of 1998 at grades 4, 8, and 12. Comparison data are given within and across participating states…

This report presents the results of the 1998 NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) writing assessment of fourth-, eighth-, and twelfth-grade students for the nation and for participating states or jurisdictions. It provides results for subgroups of students defined by various background and contextual characteristics. The Introduction…

Explored relationships between middle school students' writing processes and their written products. Results suggest that students need to engage in a variety of writing tasks; teachers must be aware of the complexity involved in composing to assess progress; editing must be kept in its proper perspective; and teachers should recognize that…

The effect of teaching dialect-related writing skills to black, blue collar children in the fourth, seventh, and eleventh grades in comparison with similar white, blue collar students and white, white collar students was investigated. Eight operational hypotheses were developed and tested at the three grade levels. The data compared consisted of…