Taking the Long View

This article discusses how the concept of undergraduate research has evolved from an artificial academic exercise, typically introduced in first-year composition courses, to an authentic activity that engages students in primary research. Through these authentic experiences, students have opportunities to learn why research is valued in colleges and universities, to see themselves as makers of knowledge, and often to contribute to their communities.

The Digital-Forward Writing Course

First-year writing and composition courses can be major roadblocks for students as their success in later courses often hinges on their abilities to construct a quality written document. Students enter composition courses with broad variation in their abilities and yet must all meet the same standards of completion. In order to address this inequity, greater opportunities for writing and in receiving feedback are paramount. Yet such opportunities would place a high burden on writing instructors in a traditional course. This chapter proposes the digital-forward writing course that draws on a combination of a number of digital tools and pedagogical strategies that can increase writing opportunities while maintaining or even reducing instructors' time commitment. This information is drawn from a workshop held in 2020 that asked writing instructors, instructional designers, developers, and other educators to ideate on meeting the challenges of the entire student writing journey. Specific tools and a discussion of the value of adaptive courseware are included.

Academic Literacy for Deaf Postsecondary Students through Integrated Reading and Writing Instruction

Based on theoretical findings from the literature on the integration of reading and writing pedagogies used with hearing postsecondary students to advance academic literacy, this article offers a model of instruction for achieving academic literacy in developmental and freshman composition courses composed of deaf students. Academic literacy is viewed as the product of acts of composing in reading and writing which best transpire through reciprocal rather than separate reading and writing activities. Pedagogical practices based on theoretical findings and teacher experience are presented as a model of instruction, exemplified as artifacts in online supplementary materials and juxtaposed with practices used with hearing students. Differences between the practices are seen in accommodations for students who learn visually, the amount of guidance provided and more opportunities for extensive practice.

The Sensuous Pedagogies of Virginia Woolf and D.H. Lawrence

Though the differences in style and politics between Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) and D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930) are many, they both had formative experiences as teachers. Between 1905 and 1907, Woolf taught history and composition courses at Morley College while Lawrence spent nearly a decade in the field of elementary education between 1902 and 1912. This study reframes Woolf’s and Lawrence’s later experiments in fiction, memoir, and literary criticism as the works of former teachers who remain deeply preoccupied with pedagogy. Across their respective writing careers, moreover, they conceptualize problems of teaching and learning as problems of sensation, emotion, or intensity. The “sensuous pedagogies” Woolf and Lawrence depict and enact are not limited to classroom spaces or strategies; rather, they pertain to non-institutional relationships, developmental narratives, spaces, and needs. Friendships and other intimate relationships in Lawrence’s fiction, for instance, often take on a pedagogical shape or texture (one person playing the student; the other, the teacher) while Woolf’s literary criticism models a novel approach to taste-training that prioritizes the individual freedom of common readers who must learn to attend to books that give them pleasure. Sensuous Pedagogies also reads Lawrence’s literary criticism as reparative, Woolf’s fiction as sustained feminist pedagogy, and their respective theories of life and love as fundamentally entangled with pedagogical concerns.

Teaching Black Lives in College When Black Lives Didn’t Matter that Much K through 12

This article explores complexities in teaching Black-authored material (especially Hip Hop lyricism) in premominantly non-Black college composition courses. It uses Barbara Smith's (1978) "Toward a Black Feminist Criticism" as a lens through which to define and examine those complexities. It offers antiracist pedogogal practices and posits withdrawal for reflection and self-care as a viable choice.