This dissertation is an ethnographic study of talk in peer instructional writing groups. It is concerned with the relationship of talk and various writing process activities to the construction of the community within the group and to the definition of social identity by the members of the peer group. The research question asked was "what norms of language use can be identified in the talk of peer writing groups, and for what purpose are the norms used by the group members?" The study was conducted in an English class at a regional vocational high school over a two and one half year period. The same peer writing group of four adolescent males was observed from tenth grade through twelfth grade. Data in the form of audio tapes, fieldnotes, and student writing was collected and then analyzed using a sociolinguistic based method of conversational coding and analysis. The purpose of the analysis was to identify norms of language use established by the members of the peer writing group, and to evaluate the purpose for which the norms were used. Eighteen norms of language use connected to writing process activities and storytelling in the group were identified. The findings suggest that talk within a peer writing group is being used for more than the accomplishment of the assigned task; the talk connected to the writing process activities is also being used to accomplish the construction of a language community within the group and to define the individual social identities of the peer group members. That the group established norms of language use for directing the talk within their group is significant, and that those norms were based upon aspects of the writing process and storytelling is important in that it indicates the existence of a means through which writing and social identity are connected.

James Berlin, Stephen North, and other leading historians of composition have implied that nothing very interesting happened in composition classrooms before 1960. To counter that assumption, I offer my description of English 1-2 at Amherst College, an innovative and challenging freshman writing course directed by Theodore Baird from 1938-1968. Although no one published much about this course while it was a going concern, several members of its staff, including Walker Gibson and William E. Coles, Jr., later wrote about similar courses they designed elsewhere. My observations about English 1-2 are based on interviews with its faculty and graduates and on a study of materials now held in the Amherst College Archives. English 1-2 was taught collaboratively by a staff of eight or ten men who devised a new and demanding sequence of 33 assignments each semester, calling on students to write from experience. The instructors, who otherwise used no text, mimeographed their students' papers and made these the focus of classroom discussions. The instructors invited students to explore the relation between language and reality and to view themselves as makers of meaning. Paradoxically, English 1-2 seems both to have generated a potentially disempowering mystique and to have enabled many students to claim new measures of authority over language.

This dissertation describes in-depth, using participant's words, experiences of undergraduate college writers. The study was undertaken in an attempt to understand from a student perspective what it is like to write in one's major course of study and throughout the university curriculum. There were seven students, representing different academic majors at a large university. Each were interviewed in a series of three open-ended interviews totaling four and one-half hours. Key questions followed Seidman's (1987) protocol for phenomenological in-depth interviewing: What was writing like for you before college? What is writing like for you now? And, What does your writing mean to you? Interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim, Three participant's transcripts were edited into profiles of the individual writers while other interviews were used to illumine themes common to all the participants. Insights from this study suggest students are "practitioners" and possess a certain "practitioner-expertise" in being student writers. This practitioner knowledge reveals student experiences are more complex than indicated by previous research. Among these complexities are students' interactions with their instructors, and their own procrastination, which produce tension about writing. Forms of this tension are explored in the histories and current experiences of different students. These experiences indicated that when student writing is perceived as a "task" which must be completed simply to comply with a course requirement, there is a tendency to approach writing in a formulaic way, with little attention paid to the writing processes. On the other hand, the participants expressed that writing is a positive experience at times when they are consciously aware it has contributed to their learning in a subject-area or when it has aided them in their personal growth. The study indicates writing in college is often shaped by the bureaucratic enterprise of grading and sorting students. Recommendations include making teacher-student interactions consultative and personable, teachers and administrators stronger advocates for smaller class size, and giving students choices of instructional approaches to writing so individual needs as writers are being met in composition courses and across the curriculum.

No description available.

No description available.

This ethnographic study of an American community of high school poets frames poetry 'ideologically,' focusing on the tensions faced by students who were members of a particular community of poets as they constructed social identities in relation to poetry writing. The study begins in the public high school poetry writing classroom at the center of their school poetry writing community and moves outward to include community contexts for poetry writing beyond the classroom--a poetry club and poetry conferences--and the contexts of the students' homes. Seven students who were members of the poetry writing community were followed in depth, and their experiences with poetry writing from family stories of literacy and personhood to circumstances for the writing of particular poems are analyzed in relation to 'ideological' tensions around poetry writing and social identity. Portraits were constructed of each of the seven students to show the connection between poetry writing and social identity. In each portrait, the data analyzed includes: (1) a description of the particular stories linking personhood and literacy in the student's family; (2) what social tensions these represented for the student as a poet writing to fulfill classroom assignments; (3) how in their choices about writing particular poems, students sought to resolve these social tensions; and (4) how students seemed to have positioned themselves as poets of greater or lesser status by the standards of poetry as art in resisting or embodying particular topics or conventions of language. Five types of tensions are identified: (1) those involving the low status of poetry as art in the school (2) those involving the definition of poetry in detached terms which differed from the students' experiences with poetry in contexts outside of school; (3) those stemming from a perception of poetry as an 'effeminate' social practice of literacy; and (4) those involving the use of male-authored texts as models in the classroom, despite primarily female membership in the poetry community. Implications of the study for developing an 'ideological' model of poetry instruction are discussed.

Thesis--PlanB (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Stout, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references.

<p> A case study was performed using archival data from retained students in three rural Missouri school districts. The data were examined to determine if a correlation existed between grade level retention and improved student achievement in Math and English Language Arts. A t-test was used to determine the impact retention had on student achievement. Scores were collected from the Missouri Assessment Program (MAP) data from retained students the year before they were retained, as well as the year following when they were retained. Data were collected from 2006-2014. Data from this study revealed students who were retained showed significant gains in academic achievement in both Math and English Language Arts. By running a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), it was discovered there was a difference in the performance of males and females after being retained. Retention was also revealed to play a significant role in determining the probability of a student dropping out of school. As a result of this research, it is recommended multiple strategies of instructional improvement and modes of student intervention or retention are implemented before a student is considered for grade-level retention. </p>

<p> Single donor museums like the Isabella Stewart Gardner in Boston, the McNay Museum of Art in San Antonio, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and The Barnes Foundation in Merion and Philadelphia, provide an intimate experience for their visitors, donors, supporters and staff members. They must compete with larger, more encyclopedic museums, with larger budgets and more resources. Like all museums, they hold art in the public trust and are responsible to the public. Contemporary museology asks not only that all museums protect their collections and educate the public, but that they also engage with their communities. None of the single donors highlighted had to donate their art, their money or their homes, but all chose to. Each museum chose to expand or relocate in response to difficult problems, whether financial, logistical (need for more space) or legal. Each engages new publics in creative ways. Certain predictable problems arose for each and they creatively resolved (and continue to resolve) those problems. Lessons learned from the experience of four single donor museums may suggest new thinking for those anticipating similar expansions or moves.</p>

Issued also as thesis, Université de Paris, under title: Le baccalauréat de l'enseignement secondaire. / At head of title: J.-B. Piobetta. "Bibliographie": p. 1033-1038.