Adopting a "multiculturalism-from-below" approach and the perspective of public pedagogy, this study presents findings from a community-based research project that looked into a group of immigrant women writers' perceptions and experiences of everyday multiculturalism in the setting of a community writing workshop in Metro Vancouver, BC.…

In 2004, the University of Kansas (KU) launched an interdisciplinary Graduate Writing Program as part of a larger initiative to reduce time to degree rates and increase degree completion rates. Serving both domestic and international students, this program employs a rhetorical genre-based approach in a series of courses organized around the genres…

This study examined the writing development of English language learners (ELLs) in a fourth-grade bilingual classroom in Northern California. The purpose of this study was to explore the linguistic and cultural resources the students used to inform their writing and determine to what extent, if any, these resources influenced their writing. The…

This paper explores a new youth movement, spoken word, and the role it plays in identity development for many disenfranchised youth. Often addressing issues of identity, politics, gender, and power relations, young performance poets are carving out a critical public and educative space where they can speak "who they are." There is a…

The cultural production of the free markets has surpassed the commissions of all the monarchs and popes put together. Because the production of art, artifice, and criticism has become so vast and various, almost any hypothesis can be posed about culture--no matter how absurd one's speculation may be--and countless supporting examples and arguments…

Background/Context: While the arts are being elbowed out of school curricula, new community-based education venues for the arts are emerging in cities across the country. This article describes Richard Hugo House, an arts center for creative writing in Seattle, which attracts people of different ages and sociocultural backgrounds who participate…

As theories about identity have shifted over time to viewing it as a multidimensional and ever-evolving process created by social and cultural settings, conceptions of literacy and implications for classroom practices have shifted as well. This book presents studies of students in Grades 3 to 6 at three different United States school sites located…

"Politically correct" is a pejorative label applied to activities that in some way question, subvert, or threaten the dominant power structure. In discussing how best to educate students, some composition professionals assume that the composition classroom can be made apolitical. Freshman English, like all classes, is politicized…

This curriculum unit is adaptable for students in grades 1-12, from Mexico, Latin America, or any culture using the Roman alphabet in their written language. The unit proposes that students of limited English proficiency will transition from visual and tactile work to written English production. Using culturally familiar activities to enhance…

This paper explores the importance of peer relations for the experiences and texts of children in a third-grade writing workshop. Peers, as an audience for children's writing, bring with them friendship, trust, and a "social energy" that empowers authors and their writing in the classroom. Simultaneously, peers also bring with them…

This packet contains 10 selected papers on writing centers in both secondary and post-secondary settings: "Keynote Address: Collaboration, Control, and the Idea of a Writing Center" (Andrea A. Lunsford); "Diversifying for Disabilities: Making Writing a Mode of Encouragement" (Laurie Bertamus); "When Cultures Collide: The…