The primary goal of my study is to explore students’ subjective experience of teacher response to their writing. This study is intended to deepen our understanding of students’ experience of feedback, and provide an opportunity to hear student voices adding to the conversation about what they have found to be most useful in terms of improving their writing. This is a qualitative study, relying primarily on individual interviews and questionnaires to elicit participants’ understanding of teacher feedback and response to student writing. An initial questionnaire about student response to teacher feedback was distributed to 73 students. The results of the questionnaire yielded significant information in terms of how students read teacher feedback, and how they interpret this feedback. I analyzed these 73 initial questionnaires for themes, and then chose 10 students for further in-depth interviews, looking at their writing and their response to/and interpretation of teacher comments. In these interviews the students brought in mid-process and final papers with written teacher comments, and then interpreted these comments. I analyzed themes in these interviews, and looked at whether and how teacher comments affected students’ final drafts. The in-depth interview findings indicated that a surprising number of students do not read the feedback thoroughly or seriously, and of those who do, many misinterpret that feedback, and very few students think of feedback as an exchange or dialogue between a teacher and student. At the end of the study all of the students met together in a focus group to reflect on their experience, to ask questions, and to add their voices to the conversation. Some of the implications of this study suggest that we need to spend more time in class educating students about feedback and response, and that we need to rethink, modify, and experiment with the ways we respond, especially in terms of creating dialogic response. I also suggest areas for further research.

<p> This study examines the perceived intellectual and dispositional takeaways for high school alumni who had been peer tutors in their secondary context. The research question which drove this study was, &ldquo;What abilities, values, and skills do tutors develop from their experience as peer tutors and how, if at all, have they used those abilities, values, and skills in their lives beyond high school?&rdquo; The findings come from the completed surveys of 63 high school tutor alumni who all tutored at a large, public suburban high school with a diverse population, and who represent a cross-section of the school&rsquo;s population. The survey was adapted from one made available by the Peer Writing Tutor Alumni Research Project (PWTARP), a national project which seeks to better understand the developmental process of students who engage in the work of peer tutoring during their undergraduate university experience. I collected this data between 2010 and 2013 in my role as the program coordinator and although I knew these tutors very well, their responses were anonymous. Participants named 25 skills, abilities, and values they developed. Participants also indicated, through the survey&rsquo;s four Likert-scale questions, that they found their tutor experiences were important or influential to their development after high school. This study used the grounded theory method of initial and focused coding for analysis of the data generated by the survey&rsquo;s open-ended responses. These responses generated 180 pages of text. During the analysis 132 initial codes were applied to 2,231 excerpts from the survey responses. The 132 initial codes were grouped into 34 focused codes. These focused codes were further consolidated into 11 categories that describe the learned skills, innate abilities, and developed values of respondents. These analytic categories are descriptive in nature and constitute the major findings of this study. These categories include writing, reading, collaboration, adaptability, patience, perseverance, confidence, maturity, leadership, bravery, and joie de vivre.</p>

<p> Colleges and universities in the United States are enrolling a growing number of veterans returning home from military service. Many of these veterans struggle in their transition from military to collegiate and civilian life. To augment college resources provided to assist veterans in their transition, this study offered and assessed the effects of a curriculum intervention associated with expressive writing activities over the course of a semester and within a classroom setting consisting of veterans. Designed as practitioner action research within a constructivist epistemology, the study took place at a community college in California within a for-credit, college-level English composition course designed for veterans. The study&rsquo;s research question was: <i>What are the perceived effects on the well-being of student veterans who write expressively about their military experiences? </i> The study&rsquo;s findings suggest that student veterans who engage in expressive writing activities within a classroom setting are likely to experience improvement in their self-reported well-being relative to their self-efficacy in terms of college, life in general, social support, their future, and gaining perspective to make meaning of their military experiences as they transition from military to civilian life. Key insights are offered for educators interested in offering expressive writing for veterans on college campuses.</p>