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Talk, Tools, and Texts tackles a perplexing issue: how can we envision writing as developing throughout a lifetime, from the first purposeful marks made on paper to the last? How can we make accounts of writing development that keep the complexity of our lives in mind while also providing useful insight to researchers, teachers, and writers?

Drawing on eleven accounts of writers at different points in the lifespan (ages 12 to 80) and in different social circumstances (from a middle-school classroom to a bird-sanctuary newsletter), Talk, Tools, and Texts constructs a “logic-in-use” for following writers and their writing development at a variety of points in the lifespan. It also offers several strategies scholars can use in pursuit of their own research into lifespan writing.

In Talking Back, a veritable Who’s Who of writing studies scholars deliberate on intellectual traditions, current practices, and important directions for the future. In response, junior and mid-career scholars reflect on each chapter with thoughtful and measured moves forward into the contemporary environment of research, teaching, and service. Each of the prestigious chapter authors in the volume has three common traits: a sense of responsibility for advancing the profession, a passion for programs of research dedicated to advancing opportunities for others, and a reflective sense of their work accompanied by humility for their contributions. As a documentary, Talking Back is the first history of writing studies in autobiography.
 

Contributors: Jo Allen, Ann N. Amicucci, Akua Duku Anokye, Paige Davis Arrington, Doug Baldwin, John C. Brereton, Judy Buchanan, Hugh Burns, Leasa Burton, Ellen C. Carillo, William Condon, Dylan B. Dryer, Michelle F. Eble, Jennifer Enoch, Joan Feinberg, Patricia Friedrich, Cinthia Gannett, Eli Goldblatt, Shenika Hankerson, Janis Haswell, Richard Haswell, Eric Heltzel, Douglas Hesse, Bruce Horner, Alice S. Horning, Asao B. Inoue, Ruth Ray Karpen, Suzanne Lane, Min-Zhan Lu, Donald McQuade, Elisabeth L. Miller, Rebecca Williams Mlynarczyk, Sean Molloy, Les Perelman, Louise Wetherbee Phelps, Stacey Pigg, Sherry Rankins-Robertson, Jessica Restaino, J. Michael Rifenburg, Eliana Schonberg, Geneva Smitherman, Richard Sterling, Katherine E. Tirabassi, Devon Tomasulo, Martha A. Townsend, Mike Truong, Victor Villanueva, Edward M. White, Anne Elrod Whitney, Kathleen Blake Yancey

Teaching Mindful Writers introduces new writing teachers to a learning cycle that will help students become self-directed writers through planning, practicing, revising, and reflecting. Focusing on the art and science of instructing self-directed writers through major writing tasks, Brian Jackson helps teachers prepare students to engage purposefully in any writing task by developing the habits of mind and cognitive strategies of the mindful writer.

Relying on the most recent research in writing studies and learning theory, Jackson gives new teachers practical advice about setting up writing tasks, using daily writing, leading class discussions, providing feedback, joining teaching communities, and other essential tools that should be in every writing teacher’s toolbox. Teaching Mindful Writers is a timely, fresh perspective on teaching students to be self-directed writers.

In Telling Stories, more than a dozen longitudinal writing researchers look beyond conventional project findings to story their work and, in doing so, offer otherwise unavailable glimpses into the logics and logistics of long-range studies of writing. The result is a volume that centers interrelations among people, places, and politics across two decades of praxis and an array of educational sites: two-year colleges, a senior military college, an adult literacy center, a small liberal arts college, and both public and private four-year universities.

Contributors share direct knowledge of longitudinal writing research, citing project data (e.g., interview transcripts, research notes, and journals), descriptions drawn from memory, and extended personal reflections. The resulting stories, tempered by the research and scholarship of others, convey a sense of longitudinal research as a lived activity as well as a prominent and consequential approach to inquiry. Yet Telling Stories is not a how-to guide, nor is it written for longitudinal researchers alone. Instead, this volume addresses issues about writing research that are germane to all who conduct or count on it. Such topics include building and sustaining good interpersonal research relations, ethically negotiating the institutional power dynamics that undergird writing research, effectively using knowledge from longitudinal studies to advocate for writers and writing educators, and improving both conceptual and concrete resources for long-range research in writing studies.

Applying the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework—a social constructivist model of online learning comprised of cognitive presence, social presence, and teaching presence—to writing studies, this book investigates peer review in hybrid and online first-year writing courses. The authors draw on both theory and disciplinary practices to analyze multi-institutional case studies, interviews, and artifacts, offering scholarship that is both data-driven and pedagogically pragmatic. The results of their analysis present a pragmatic and pedagogically sound approach to navigating the complicated task of designing and facilitating courses that incorporate collaborative activities such as peer review.

This edited collection, the first in the Practices & Possibilities series to be published in its Voices from the Field section, offers a rich set of narratives by writing instructors who are serving or have worked in contingent positions. Intended for anyone considering a career in the humanities, The Invisible Professor seeks to reach individuals in three phases of their careers: those thinking of entering the profession, those knee-deep in it and looking for ways to improve conditions, and those who have vacated academic positions for more humane alternative tracks.

As academia comes to a crossroads, with a disheartening shift towards a more disposable business model, multiple solutions are desperately needed. Faculty members in contingent positions are the new faculty majority on college campuses, and they are most likely the first professors students will meet. They deserve respect and a livable wage.