This comparative, mixed-methods study illustrates the impact of weekly facilitated peer review ("Writing Circles") in STEM courses across time: 1) in a lower-division course, Circles improve all learning outcomes for writing and critical thinking, and most significantly, writing; 2) in an upper-division course, Circles are most effective…

Literary criticism of children's literature asserts a one-directional view of power with the adult writer constructing the child reader. Using "aetonormativity"-- adult perceptions of normality -- this paper explores what happens when children co-construct publishable fiction. Our analysis of drama and creative writing workshops shows…

This paper focuses on the power dimension of social practices. The study sought to understand the literacy-related practices of a retired woman without a high-school diploma in everyday life and community activities. It drew on social practice theories, the New Literacy Studies, and transformative learning. The ethnographic approach chosen to…

This article introduces an innovative model of social work course development, teaching, and implementation. Using the principles of antioppressive education and community-engaged learning, the authors (a former student and faculty member) codeveloped and subsequently taught a course that explored writing, voice, social justice, and the…

The authors bring together decolonial, place attuned, and critical posthumanist orientations to analyze an event during a residential workshop organized as part of a state-funded research project on decolonizing early childhood discourses in South Africa. An invitation during the workshop to grapple with what might be unsettling by attending to…

Given the growing emphasis on academic research output and the challenges encountered in expediting completion of doctoral studies especially, mentorship is increasingly being utilised as a capacity development strategy for supporting scholars to complete post-graduate studies. This article reports on a mentorship project aimed at academic staff…

We consider how research participants engage alongside researchers as choreographers of data generation and highlight the everyday practices of researchers and participants "in motion" within and across time and space. Data for this case analysis were generated during a two-year qualitative study investigating multimodal literacies,…

A writing teacher, troubled by the hierarchical, authoritarian design of his courses, restructured his writing classes to alter the dynamics of authority in the classroom. The idea was rooted both in Paulo Freire's writings and in the simple notion that students should be designing their own writing tasks. First, students brainstormed possible…

Theories of creative writing have been for the most part bound up with theories of art. Both teachers and the general public, however, are dissatisfied with such institutionalized theories. Creative writers should first look to theories of writing rather than infer them from art. Recent composition theories, both cognitive theories and those of…

"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 paper examines the teacher's role in elementary and secondary school writing workshops--the teacher as Dostoevskian novelist creates a classroom novel and takes up relations with student-characters. The paper focuses on: the rejection of traditional relations among novelist and character, teacher and student, and the embrace of new ones; how…

This book remaps theories and practices for teaching creative writing at university and college level. This collection critiques well-established approaches for teaching creative writing in all genres and builds a comprehensive and adaptable pedagogy based on issues of authority, power, and identity. A long-needed reflection, this book shapes…

Describes a first-grade teacher's research in her own classroom, and shows how an apparently minor decision contributed greatly to inequality, unintentionally giving an already privileged group of students more knowledge and power, and decreasing the opportunities for knowledge and power of an already oppressed group of students. (SR)

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…