Despite the increasingly global implications of conversations about writing and learning, U.S. composition studies has devoted little attention to cross-national perspectives on student writing and its roles in wider cultural contexts. How do students around the world make the transition as writers from secondary school to postsecondary education?

This collection examines the role of writing in the United States and in various other educational systems and cultures, specifically China, England, France, Germany, Kenya, and South Africa. Contributors discuss selected writing purposes and forms characteristic of their national education systems, describe students’ agency as writers, and identify contextual factors—social, economic, linguistic, cultural—that shape institutional responses to writing development.
354 pp. 2002. NCTE and Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Grades 9–College. ISBN 0-8141-5919-2.
No. 59192