Including Students in Academic Conversations

This book responds to the new writing instructor’s need to understand the complexity of classroom teaching before entering the classroom. Designed to complement studies in composition, this book brings the instructor-to-be into the classrooms of experienced writing instructors from the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. These experienced instructor’s successes, half-successes, failures, and reflections on their classroom teaching help to make visible the process of creating and implementing classroom activities. All instructional strategies are grounded in a set of principles of academic writing that are equally accessible and credible to instructors from across the disciplines.

Chapter 1 introduces the authors’ principles of academic writing; throughout the chapter, voices of writers from across the disciplines speak about the process and purpose behind their work. Chapters 2 through 4 further explain the principles, relate them to learning goals and teaching strategies, detail the relevant classroom activities through extended case studies, and discuss what the activities suggest about the teaching of writing. Throughout the book, instructors mull over successes and failures in their general reflections and cautions.

Finally, the book’s conclusion specifically addresses the issue of failure as an inevitable and potentially productive part of learning to teach.