In a special event at the Western States Composition Conference in October 1999, Sharon Crowley and John Ramage debated the politically charged first-year writing requirement. This article provides a transcript of the debate as well as a succinct introduction written by Peter Goggin and a transcript of the discussion following the debate compiled by Kohl Glau. During her opening remarks, Crowley provides an overview of her well-known arguments for the abolishment of the first-year writing requirement. Ramage responds by arguing that, while he usually finds himself in a position of arguing against the "status quo," doing away with the requirement entirely is not the answer, either. As Goggin notes in the introduction, there was no clear "winner" of the debate, but the presentations of Crowley and Ramage and the discussion that followed provide a helpful overview of this complex issue that is of the utmost importance to writing instructors. In fact, Goggin suggests that the lack of a clear winner of the debate simply underscores the fact that the field is "far from resolving the pedagogical and political conflicts that mark the requirement" (par. 5).
At the University of South Carolina, writing histories and portfolios are examined to identify students who would benefit from participation in the Writing Studio. In the Studio, students from different sections of English 101 discuss assignments, drafts, and other texts, including teacher comments, related to their instruction in writing. Studio discussions reveal the personal and interpersonal components of writing instruction that are identified with feminine service. These components have been overlooked in institutionally sanctioned ways of talking about student writing and writing instruction that are based on a nostalgic and idealized literary view of authors and good writing. The Studio thus puts the relationship between words, institutions, and people, not textbooks and mass writing assessments, at the center of the professional work of writing instruction. Finally, the Studio encourages seeing basic writing as intellectual and academic work, not just a "slot" in the remedial curriculum.
Gunner discusses major examples of the rhetoric of professional statements including the Wyoming Resolution, the Conference on College Composition and Communication's Statement of Principles and Standards, and the Writing Program Adminisrators' Portland Resolution. Of the three, the Wyoming Resolution most usefully addresses the issues that concern basic writing instructors, providing for professional self-definition and solidarity as well as recognition of teaching as a central and viable intellectual activity. However, while the CCCC and WPA documents succeed in a political sense by focusing on the status of individual professional groups, Gunner suggests that the Wyoming Resolution ultimately fails, primarily because its rhetoric tends to separate its constituents from institutional power structures. Gunner argues that members of the Conference on Basic Writing should compose a professional statement that combines ideology with rhetorical efficacy. This Maryland Resolution would help to construct basic writing teachers "as a presence and force in the profession at large" (61).
Lalicker describes a brief survey that was conducted via the Writing Program Administrators listserv, asking respondents to identify their basic writing program as approximating one of five models: the prerequisite model, in which basic writing students take a course previous to the standard first-year composition course; the stretch model, in which basic writers take the standard first-year course over two semesters rather than one; the studio model, in which basic writers take the standard course augmented by additional hours working in a small group; the directed self-placement model, in which students are guided in making their own choice about which writing course in a sequence they would like to take; and the intensive model, in which the basic writing course mirrors the standard course but with "additional instructional time or writing activities tailored for basic writers" (par. 8). Respondents also provided insight into advantages and disadvantages of each model. No pattern was discovered between institution size, demographics, mission, or type of program. Specific institutional needs and the "theoretical or epistemological assumptions driving the writing program" (par. 2) seemed to exert greater influence on program design.
Lamos argues that the current movement toward the elimination of open admissions, mainstreaming basic writers, and the elimination of first-year composition programs exists in the context of an institutionalized racism that continues to reinforce racialized thinking in both students and institutions. Lamos provides a background delineating the overt racism with which open admissions was greeted in New York in the early 1970s.
First presented as a talk at the Fourth National Basic Writing Conference in 1992, Laurence asks all practitioners in the field of basic writing to consider the factors that influence basic writing at particular times and institutions. Min-Zhan Lu's "Redefining the Legacy of Mina Shaughnessy: A Critique of the Politics of Linguistic Innocence" [91] and Stephen North's The Making of Composition: Portrait of an Emerging Field, both reassessments of Shaughnessy's 1977 landmark Errors and Expectations [113], are critiqued for what they fail to consider—the complexities, multiplicities, histories, and differences present in any educational movement. Laurence's defense of Shaughnessy and colleagues' work at the City College of New York points to the lack of historical understanding in Lu's and North's critiques. Each situation has its political needs, and the 1970s was a time that called for subtlety in expression regarding open-admissions students at CCNY. These students' abilities were questioned, as was their credibility and potential as students. Laurence contends that understanding the political situation was a necessity for which Shaughnessy should be praised.
Open-admission work largely remains invisible to the general public and even to the profession of rhetoric and composition. Intellectual work can and does take place in open-admission settings, such as the basic writing classroom and various domains within two-year colleges. Through qualitative interviews and thick description, Lewiecki-Wilson and Sommers outline what constitutes this particular academic lifestyle. Critical pedagogy, process-based teaching, and teacher research all thrive in open-admission environments, so the field should stop devaluing knowledge construction there. Also, practitioners at open-admission institutions get the chance to be agents of institutional, curricular, and social change because teaching various sections over a longitudinal period of time is conducive to reflective, developmental teaching and sustained research. Therefore, the field should work on placing open-admission practice at the center of our disciplinary identity.
McAlexander reconstructs the dialogue between Mina Shaughnessy and K. Patricia Cross on open admission and remediation for "new college students" in the 1960s and 1970s. Both educators favored doing away with elitist admissions policies and replacing them with open admission to accept the low-achieving students. Shaughnessy saw the problems in racial terms; students at the City College of New York were minorities who had previously attended racially prejudiced schools. Cross believed her students at the University of California at Berkeley were different; because of California's three-tiered system, only the top 12 percent of high school graduates appeared at Berkeley; the others were enrolled at either state colleges or in two-year programs. Cross's "new college students" were different from Shaughnessy's in that they were "mostly [not] socially disadvantaged minorities" (33). They were not motivated and lacked the proper effort for success. Cross recommended alternative curricula routes (vocational and business training) for the "new college students." Shaughnessy favored strengthening the remedial methods. Today, most agree that Cross's conclusions were correct: that remedial classes do not help the students and may, in fact, harm them.
Miller maps the external and internal contests over the function and value of basic writing, illustrating how society and higher education together have established it as a credible academic enterprise. As a professionalized field, basic writing is a site where leaders question the motives, theories, and material realities of its curricula. One critique arising from this questioning involves a paradox of intention: the goal of basic writing is to mainstream basic writing students and professionalize its practitioners so that all may improve their status and work, but only a few students achieve this goal, and many departments hire part-time instructors to teach. To address this paradox and strengthen composition studies' commitment to teach and research writing, Miller draws on James Gee's notion of recognition work to create a new root metaphor on which basic writing should ground its work. In her view, this term offers composition studies a way both to recognize underprepared students in terms that would benefit their academic progress and to foster conditions that would enlarge the scope and function of basic writing curricula.
Reynolds notes that the training of basic writing teachers has not received sufficient attention by researchers. This problem can and should be addressed within the sponsorship and care of institutional structures. Teacher training can also be seen as a space to study and make critical decisions about whether and how to perpetuate institutional histories. Linking teacher training to the interests and concerns of an administration produces an effective situation, he argues, because the training can serve as an instrument for connecting basic writing programs to an influential administrative structure. In addition, practitioners should be willing to meet across institutions to establish ties and examine common issues concerning training. Reynolds concludes with a set of useful questions for discussion regarding the training of basic writing teachers.
Reynolds and Fillipi briefly describe the challenges and rewards that they and their colleagues experienced while collaboratively rewriting the curricular documents for the basic writing program. The process of collaborative revision was sometimes challenging because not everyone's vision prevailed. The authors point to several positive outcomes: considering connections between the writing program and the university's mission, creating space for the needs of a diverse writing faculty, and including faculty in the curriculum's design. All of these reduced the sense of faculty isolation and created a greater sense of mission and purpose within the program. Reynolds and Fillipi include the opening statement of the resultant document, "Toward a Deepened Notion of Access: The Writing Program at the University of Minnesota General College."
Rodby focuses on the efforts and complications involved in the reconfiguration of instruction of basic writers at California State University, Chico. Because of the stigmas and limitations attached to the category of "basic writing," administrators and teachers decided to mainstream these students. Rodby discusses two predominant issues that arose against this effort that suggest that the slotting of basic writers is largely political in nature. First, she describes the administration's circular arguments against giving credit for the course: that the non-credit course was necessary for the students to take the work seriously and that it was also important for the retention of minority students. Foundational to the resistance to change, Rodby argues next, is the issue of nostalgia as an ideological state that shapes everything from attitudes toward basic writing students to curricular and institutional choices. Rodby concludes by suggesting steps to break nostalgia's grasp and urges increased and constant communication and learning among others in the field as a shield against the assault by those who would eliminate these programs altogether.
Working from the belief that designating students entering their institution as "basic" did not describe students' writing abilities but merely created a population for basic writing courses, Rodby and Fox outline how and why they dismantled the noncredit-bearing basic writing curriculum at California State University, Chico. By mainstreaming all students into first-semester composition courses and providing additional adjunct workshops for students with low test scores, first-year writing has come to be seen as more meaningful by students. Additionally, instructors of first-year writing and adjunct workshops have a more complex context for discussions of student writing.
Rose argues that basic writing classes need to offer students challenging, engaging work that will enable them to participate more fully in the discourse of the university. In particular, five common practices tend to limit students' experience of writing and need to be examined and changed. First, basic writing courses need to move from being self-contained to fitting into the intellectual context of the university. Second, topics for writing need to be substantial rather than simplistic. Third, students need opportunities to experience the composing process as complex and expansive rather than as narrow and rule-bound. Fourth, the writing course needs to integrate reading and thinking into the composing process rather than focusing exclusively on skills. Fifth, teachers should reimagine ways of using academic discursive strategies to enable, rather than restrict, students' writing.
Directed self-placement "fosters student agency, particularly for basic writers who have historically been given very little control over the shape and focus of their early college careers." Royer and Gilles cite scholars specializing in education, learning, thinking, and psychology as providing the philosophical and pedagogical justification for directed self-placement. Readers are referred to an earlier article titled "Directed Self-Placement: An Attitude of Orientation" for a detailed explanation of the system. Royer and Gilles also believe this system creates an important initial educative moment for college students through a rearticulation of the following elements involved in placement decisions: agency (both students' knowledge and faculty expertise matter), articulation (students clarify their experiences and skills through thought and discussion with parents, teachers, and counselors), and assessment (students are assessed when they have completed a course instead of at the beginning with an unreliable one-shot instrument).
At Segall's college, basic writers enroll in a jumbo composition course in which they meet with instructors for five hours per week. Developmental reading, basic English, and first-year composition are rolled into one for this program. Arguing that most developmental textbooks are simplistic and "convey a powerful message to developmental students about their place in the academy" (par. 7), Segall and her colleagues decided that they needed a textbook that provided readings with a range in levels of difficulty and that offered interrelated reading and writing activities. They used the same text for the regular and jumbo sections of composition, a decision that allows them to justify granting the same credit in the end to students enrolled in the jumbo sections. Citing a plethora of compositionists who argue that the teaching of basic writing is still essentially conservative, Segall claims that writing program administrators can effect gradual change in their programs by bringing attention to textbook selection for basic writing classes.
Urban universities and academic support programs are unified through the trope of the "urban mission," a university's responsibility to serve the citizens of its city. Severino describes how the University of Illinois at Chicago's changing perception of its own urban mission affected the way basic writing has been taught there. Throughout its early history, UIC had an ambivalent attitude toward its own urban mission, but the social revolutions of the 1960s saw the birth of the Educational Assistance Program, an "urban mission" initiative that targeted inner-city minority recruitment and administered a full compliment of basic writing courses. Unfortunately, in its effort to attain the image of a first-rate research institution during the 1980s, UIC abandoned its urban mission by raising admission standards above those achieved by many inner-city minorities and by firing two-thirds of the Educational Assistance Program's basic writing teachers. At UIC and other urban universities, therefore, the strength and purpose of basic writing programs can often be gauged by the strength of commitment to an urban mission.
Soliday describes the development of a basic writing student, Derek, who participated in a Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education–sponsored pilot project designed to promote a progressive version of mainstreaming while supporting the goals of open admissions. "Derek" was enrolled in a writing course at the City College of New York. The project, called the Enrichment Approach, bypasses test scores that place students in remedial courses and instead places college students in a six-credit, two-semester writing course. The course's curriculum is responsive to the experiences and histories of nontraditional students with diverse language and cultural backgrounds and encourages students to describe, interpret, and analyze aspects of everyday language use and familiar cultural experience in the unfamiliar language of the academy. The mainstreamed curriculum enabled Derek to use the forms of academic discourse to more deeply explore complex, personal topics such as Black English and rap music in ways that helped him negotiate two "codes," his own and academic discourse, positioning himself as both an insider and a cultural critic. A mainstreamed curriculum that emphasizes such linguistic and cultural self-consciousness offers a progressive alternative to traditional remediation.
Soliday and Gleason describe the pilot of a three-year enrichment project that substituted a two-semester writing course in place of the traditional sequence of two remedial courses and one college-level course. The two-semester course, in contrast to the traditional sequence, carried full college credit, mainstreamed students who placed into remedial writing with students who placed into college-level writing, and allowed teachers rather than exit tests to decide whether students should pass their courses. The two-semester course was designed to build a stronger community of peers, class tutors, and teachers and to utilize students' cultural diversity. Assessments of student writing indicated that most students in the two-semester course improved their ability to produce good essays, evaluate their own writing, and conduct research. The writing assessments also indicated that students who would have been placed into remedial courses were competitive with students who would have been placed into college-level courses. Student self-assessments and teacher assessments of the same students generally indicated that students in the two-semester course were satisfied with their learning and could concretely describe what they had learned. Soliday and Gleason recommend giving students the option of taking either the traditional or the mainstreamed course sequence.
Strickland addresses basic writing scholarship that claims composition studies should abolish basic writing programs because such programs often fail to mainstream basic writers and position basic writing students as "other." Strickland contends that the decision to terminate or sustain basic writing programs will not be made by scholars but rather by deans and legislators. What scholars can do, however, is interrogate the discourse of basic writing, which works to convince teachers and university administrators to conceive of basic writers as educable and to understand the ways in which this discourse competes for the power to interpret and thereby construct basic writing. To view discourse in this way, Strickland suggests that scholars examine the history of basic writing scholarship, reflect on their positions as "knowers" in relation to students' positions as "known," and listen to students' words, reading students' texts as "living acts of communication from other human beings" (33).
Tabachnikov examines the dynamic of "teacherhood as motherhood" that is at work in composition classrooms, especially when student writing becomes intensely personal. Tabachnikov uses examples from her own students to illustrate opposite ends of the motherhood spectrum. The first student, Cindy, was repeatedly ill and expected to be treated as a sick child might be. Tabachinkov responded to Cindy as a guilt-inducing mother might. Unable to endure this treatment, Cindy quit coming, and Tabachnikov dropped her from the class roster. This behavior led Tabachnikov to question and then embrace her "mommyness"—her parental role in teaching. The second student, Pete, was a middle-aged man who was eager to learn. His openness, candor, and eagerness to succeed led Tabachnikov to respond to him with a friendship that had an appropriate amount of distance but was reminiscent of the adult-child relationship where that had power and role difference's are omnipresent. Despite being protective of Pete, a behavior she identifies as maternal, Tabachnikov maintained that her dynamic regarding him was parental rather than simply motherly. Enacting this parental role is one that Tabachnikov believes needs further consideration.
Uehling describes the development of the statement of goals and guidelines for Boise State University's basic writing course and the statements effects, emphasizing that its goal was to transform attitudes and that it structured the required first-year writing sequence. She also analyzes the conditions that produced the document—the urban, commuter nature of the institution; its fulfillment of various community college functions; the placement of the course in the English department; and the noncredit, one-semester status of the course. In addition, she shares her thoughts about the student competencies that the document supports, including building confidence; viewing writing as a multifaceted process; using multiple strategies for viewing written texts over time; producing coherent drafts with introductions, body paragraphs, and conclusions; employing format in appropriate ways; reading actively and critically; and editing assignments so that surface features do not interfere with communication.
Debates over mainstreaming basic writers often settle into either-or positions and fail to consider local institutional factors. Before deciding whether to mainstream basic writing students, writing program administrators need to examine the basic writing courses offered at their respective institutions, the type of literacy promoted, and any extracurricular factors that might affect the long-term success of these students. Knowing that the merits of mainstreaming basic writing students are open to debate, Wiley reports on the generally successful results of several experiments, which included an attempt at mainstreaming a contingent of basic writing students and combining two semesters of basic writing into one, that he and his colleagues conducted with their institution's learning community, the Learning Alliance. The results of these experiments have been instructive for all parties involved, and several program changes have followed. The lower-level basic writing course has been dropped; the upper-level course has been increased from three to four instructional hours per week; the English placement test cut-off score for eligibility for the university-level writing course has been lowered three points; and more mainstreaming experiments have been planned. Most important is the change in thinking about how the campus perceives and works with basic writers as students in transition.
Ybarra seeks to understand the cultural implications of basic writing as a mainstream educational framework imposed on Latino students through placement procedures, retention methods, and pedagogical assumptions. This qualitative study of one Latino student and a basic writing instructor argues that theories of resistance alone do not address the specific problems presented by Latino dropout rates within the university system. Ybarra suggests that placement in basic writing courses sends Latino students the message that they are not good enough to communicate within the mainstream culture. This misunderstanding is then compounded when writing instructors do not understand patterns of Latino discourse, resulting in a general dismissal of students. Ybarra suggests that instructors might actively seek out and motivate those students who do not participate in class discussions, who are regularly absent, or who might otherwise disappear from the class.