Skip to main content

Scholarly Roots of Writing Studies' Best Practices

These sources showcase some of the scholarship that led to the development of Writing Studies’ best practices such as process pedagogy, critical self-reflection, and writing-to-learn strategies; this is also the scholarship that grounds the UMass Writing Program, Writing Center, and Junior Year Writing.


Teaching the Writing Process: Revision, Reflection, and Peer Review

  • Murray, Donald. "Teach writing as a process not product." The leaflet 71.3 (1972): 11-14.
  • Breuch, Lee-Ann M. Kastman. "Post-Process ‘Pedagogy': A Philosophical Exercise." JAC, vol. 22, no. 1, 2002, pp. 119–50. JSTOR.
  • Elbow, Peter. Writing without Teachers. 2nd ed., Oxford University Press, 1998. EBSCOhost.
  • Elbow, Peter. Writing with Power: Techniques for Mastering the Writing Process. 2nd ed., Oxford University Press, 1998. EBSCOhost.
  • Elbow, Peter, and Pat Belanoff. A Community of Writers: A Workshop Course in Writing. 3rd ed., McGraw-Hill, 2000. EBSCOhost.
  • Hairston, Maxine. The Winds of Change: Thomas Kuhn and the Revolution in the Teaching of Writing" College Composition and Communication 33.1 (1982): 76-88.
  • Curtis, Marcia, and Anne Herrington. "Writing Development in the College Years: By Whose Definition?" College Composition and Communication, vol. 55, no. 1, Sept. 2003, pp. 69–90. EBSCOhost.
  • Murray, Donald M. The Craft of Revision. 5th ed.; Anniversary ed., Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2013. EBSCOhost.
  • Yancey, Kathleen Blake. Reflection in the Writing Classroom. Utah State University Press, 1998. EBSCOhost.

An Attention to Literacies

  • Brandt, Deborah. "Sponsors of Literacy." College Composition and Communication, vol. 49, no. 2, 1998, pp. 165–85. JSTOR.
  • Cazden, Courtney, et al. "A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures." Harvard educational review, 66(1), 60-92.

Technology, Multimodality and the Plagiarism Question

Writing Across the Curriculum/Writing in the Disciplines