Composition Forum 48, Spring 2022
http://compositionforum.com/issue/48/

From the Editors: Volume 48

Christian Weisser, Ashley Holmes, and Faith Kurtyka

The field of composition has long wrestled with the tensions between theory and pedagogy. Our past is tied to the composition classroom in its various forms, and our present and future depend upon the advancement and evolution of writing theory. In many ways this is unique to our field—few other disciplines enmesh these dichotomies as deeply and meticulously. Composition Forum’s central goal is to address these tensions; in fact, the purpose of the journal has been and remains to be the dissemination of scholarship that “explores the intersections of composition theory and pedagogy.” Composition Forum began to address such questions more than thirty years ago. The larger conversation has evolved in that time, yet the relationship between theory and pedagogy remains a perennial topic in the field. This volume of Composition Forum continues to explore the junctures where composition theory and pedagogy meet and diverge. It contains ten scholarly texts of various types, and each contributes something different to our understandings of composition theory and pedagogy. We are pleased to carry on that discussion in this volume.

This volume begins with our first “dual” interview, and it covers a conversation involving Asao B. Inoue, Associate Dean and Professor of Rhetoric and Composition at Arizona State University, and Mya Poe, Associate Professor of English at Northeastern University. The interview reflects on Inoue and Poe’s Race and Writing Assessment, a collection that encourages teachers to explore how writing assessment affects culturally and linguistically diverse students. We are thrilled to share this new type of interview with our readers. If you’d like to propose or suggest an interview with a leading scholar in rhetoric and composition, contact our Interviews Editor Brian Bailie.

The volume features six articles that engage the intersections of theory and pedagogy in writing studies. A Space for Small Inventions: Access Negotiation Moments and Planned Adaptation in the Writing Classroom by Rachel Herzl-Betz seeks to theorize the pedagogical work disabled instructors navigate to create accessible writing classrooms. Through retroactive analysis, the author introduces the concept of Access Negotiation Moments (ANMs) as limited, low-stakes contexts where disabled instructors define the limits of their own access needs. In How Do Assignments Dispose Students Toward Research? Answer-Getting and Problem-Exploring in First-Year Writing, Sarah Madsen Hardy, Gwen Kordonowy, and Ken Liss explores the relationship between the dispositions toward research that writing teachers convey through their assignments and those that their students express in their reflective writing. Their results offer a new lens through which to view research-assignment design, provide evidence of how assignments can foster problem-exploring, and support the value of pedagogical collaboration with librarians. Synchronicity over Modality: Understanding Hybrid and Online Writing Students’ Experiences with Peer Review by Jennifer M. Cunningham, Natalie Stillman-Webb, Lyra Hilliard, and Mary K. Stewart includes interviews with 70 undergraduate students enrolled in online or hybrid first-year composition (FYC) classes at one of four universities in the United States and analyzes students’ perceptions of digital peer review. Arguing that the Community of Inquiry (CoI) Framework is a logical heuristic for examining writing studies research, this study finds that synchronicity might be more significant than modality with respect to the ways that peer review is able to achieve social, teaching, and cognitive presence. In Connecting Work-Integrated Learning and Writing Transfer: Possibilities and Promise for Writing Studies, Michael-John DePalma, Lilian W. Mina, Kara Taczak, Michelle J. Eady, Radhika Jaidev, and Ina Alexandra Machura explores ways that the field of rhetoric and writing studies can benefit from intentional engagement with work-integrated learning (WIL) research and pedagogy in the context of transfer research. Dana Lynn Driscoll and Jing Zhang’s Mapping Long-Term Writing Experiences: Operationalizing the Writing Development Model for the Study of Persons, Processes, Contexts, and Time Draws upon nine years of qualitative data, including a collection of writing samples and yearly interviews, seeking to articulate a model of long-term writing development that can be adapted for a wide range of research and teaching purposes. And Laura Feibush’s Gestural Listening In and Beyond the Classroom shows how gestural listening exerts pressure upon communicative situations inside and outside of the classroom, and how expectations for gestural listening must acknowledge how it is inflected by aspects of identity such as race, gender, neurodiversity, and ability. Ultimately, this essay argues that gestural listening should be understood as a palpable rhetorical force that shapes discursive conditions. If you have questions or comments about the articles in this volume, or wish to propose an article, contact Managing Editors Ashley Holmes and Faith Kurtyka.

This volume also includes a program profile addressing the intersection between writing theory and pedagogy. Preparing Disciplinary Writing Instructors: The Curry College Faculty Writing Fellows Program by Heather M. Falconer describes the development and implementation of the Faculty Writing Fellows program at Curry College. That Writing Fellows program introduces faculty outside of Writing Studies to Writing Across the Curriculum theory and practice, which leads to their development (or reworking) of a Reading and Writing Enriched course at the College. If you’d like to propose a profile of your institution’s program, please send a query to our Program Profile Editors Crystal Fodrey and Meg Mikovits.

The Reviews section includes a Review of Stuart A. Selber’s Institutional Literacies: Engaging Academic IT Contexts for Writing and Communication byPooja Narang as well as a Review of William Banks and Susan Spangler’s English Studies Online: Programs, Practices, and Possibilities by Freddie Harris Ramsby. Please send review queries—not unsolicited manuscripts—to our Review Editors Rachel Daugherty and Jacquelyn Hoermann-Elliott.

Please follow us on Twitter @Comp_Forum for news and updates about the journal. We will continue to use Composition Forum’s Weblog as another source of information about the journal, and we encourage readers to contribute timely and pertinent information to our Twitter feed and to our blog. Add our feed to your newsreader to receive alerts about new volumes of Composition Forum and other news from the field of rhetoric and composition. Please send questions or comments about the Composition Forum website to Website Editor Kevin Brock at webeditor@compositionforum.com. General inquiries about the journal can be sent to Editor Christian Weisser.