This book presents an ethnographic study which examines the ways first-year college students make sense of, engage, resist, and learn from the critical literacy approach practiced in the composition program at one Midwestern college. It argues that first-year students typically enter composition classes with an idea of writing and an understanding of what they need to learn about writing that is dramatically at odds with views and approaches of the teacher. It offers a pedagogy of "reflective instrumentalism" as a solution to this conflict; an approach which accepts students' pragmatic reasons for studying composition but then attempts to add a critical, socially aware dimension to that careerist orientation. The book's 8 chapters are: (1) Introduction; (2) The Research: Contexts, Participants, and Methods; (3) The Enigma of Arrival; (4) Ground Rules in College Composition; (5) Flashpoints: Developing an Analytic Stance; (6) Persuasion, Politics, and Writing Instruction; (7) The Dangerous Intersection of Home and School (by Sherry Cook Stanforth); and (8) Conclusion: Reflective Instrumentalism and the Teaching of Composition. Contains approximately 100 references. (SR)