By virtue of its interdisciplinary nature, the Humanities Base program at the University of Dayton encourages carefully designed composition instruction that reaches beyond the boundaries of traditional pedagogy. Because the Humanities Base themes are set in binary opposites--faith versus reason; autonomy versus responsibility; individual versus…

Presenting highlights from the past decade of East Central Writing Centers Association conferences, this book addresses the questions of how writing conferences foster the development of writing ability and how teachers can give students control of their own writing and of the writing conference and thus promote higher-order thinking. By providing…

Four composition teachers (two adjunct and two full-time faculty members at a large midwestern urban university) with a combined 80 years teaching experience were interviewed concerning how they perceive and use theory in the classroom. Questions focused on three areas: what theories guided them in teaching composition; what they felt the trends…

For a specialist from the communication discipline, studying with Alexander Luria, who had been a colleague of Lev Vygotsky in the l920's, provided insights into the Soviet psychologist's ideas about mediation and mind and how writing fits into those ideas. According to Luria, Vygotsky was a methodologist who worried about what kinds of methods…

In classical Greece, there was a close tie between rhetoric and the practice and theory of public policy. Gradually, however, rhetoric became increasingly concerned with style and literary criticism, while philosophers began to debate political issues apart from the practical affairs of the polis. Because rhetoric provides a model that can still…

This paper rebuts four common assumptions underlying criticisms of higher education policy scholarship and policy making. The first assumption, policymakers agree on the nature of policy problems and therefore on the kinds of research needed, is rebutted by noting that actually, there is no way to identify and research all possible future policy…

Built on preliminary findings emerging from an ongoing research project, this paper examines student grouping practices from an institutional-theory perspective. The study, based on interviews with 10 teachers, examines how teachers explain their reasons for grouping students and how they account for their grouping actions. The majority base their…

This paper reviews recent research concerning the relationship between teachers' theoretical orientation about reading and their reading instructional practices. The paper first describes three major clusters of theoretical reading instructional approaches: phonics orientation, skills orientation, and whole language orientation. It then reviews…

Student development theory has been adopted as the guiding theoretical framework of the student affairs profession. Unfortunately this adoption has largely occurred without a critical analysis of the concept of student development as a gestalt. A case can be made that for the most part the theories of student development are logically coherent in…

In recent years student development theory has been adopted as the guiding theoretical framework of the student affairs profession. Unfortunately, this adoption has largely occurred without a critical analysis of the concept of student development as a gestalt or of the individual theories touted as central to understanding college students.…

This book was created to place side by side the ideas of researchers and practitioners concerned with organizational innovation. Included are 18 papers: (1) "Social Environments That Kill Creativity" (Teresa Amabile); (2) "High Creativity versus Low Creativity: What Makes the Difference?" (Teresa Amabile and Sharon Sensabaugh); (3) "Creativity and…

Experiential education provides an excellent justificatory framework for the forensics program as an educational opportunity. The three major tenets of experiential education are: (1) connecting theoretical knowledge to real life experiences; (2) valuing and fostering different "ways of knowing"; and (3) encouraging lifelong learning.…

A study examined whether published texts and studies being used in the speech communication classroom adequately address the needs of students when they go into the laboratory setting of forensic tournaments. Published studies in speech communication, selected textbooks used in the basic speech course, and selected studies and textbooks in…

Noting that the study of composition has been less affected by postmodern theory than other humanities and social science disciplines, this book assesses the study and teaching of writing against the larger theoretical, political, and technological upheavals of the past 30 years. The book addresses the theoretical debate about the "self"…

Writers construct meaning when they compose texts, and readers construct meaning when they understand and interpret texts. Building meaning through reading entails organizing, selecting, and connecting. Readers use previously acquired knowledge to operate on textual clues, organizing mental representations that include material they select from…