Smagorinsky Edits Third Volume in Landmark Series

Research on Composition: Multiple Perspectives on Two Decades of Change, edited by Peter Smagorinsky, professor in the department of language and literacy education, includes a chapter entitled, “Teacher Research in Writing Classrooms,” cowritten by Bob Fecho and JoBeth Allen, also professors in language and literacy education, and Claudia Mazaros and Hellen Inyega.

The book is the third volume in a landmark series on composition research.

Martin Nystrand, professor in the department of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says of the book: “Researchers, teachers, and other educators looking for a guide to teacher research, literacy beyond the academy, and second-language writing research will find their bearings here. The contributing authors and their chapters are outstanding.”

Covering the period between 1984 and 2003, this authoritative sequel picks up where the earlier volumes (Braddock et al., 1963, and Hillocks, 1986), now classics in the field, left off. It features a broader focus that goes beyond the classroom teaching of writing to include teacher research, second-language writing, rhetoric, home and community literacy, workplace literacy, and histories of writing. Each chapter is written by an expert in the area reviewed and covers both conventional written composition and multimodal forms of composition, including drawing, digital forms, and other relevant media. Research on Composition is an invaluable road map of composition research for the next decade and required reading for anyone teaching or writing about composition today.

Thursday, December 8, 2005

Contact: Peter Smagorinsky, 706.542.4507, smago@uga.edu