EDRD 6301 CGWP Theoretical Foundations

Prerequisites: Acceptance into the CGWP invitational summer institute, acceptance into graduate study at GCSU. Taught in conjunction with and as a co-requisite to EDRD 6300, this course presents a wide range of research in composition pedagogy that has emerged since the paradigm shift caused by the "Why Johnny Can't Write" article in Newsweek in 1975. In his landmark book, The Making of Knowledge in Composition, Stephen North shows that in the thirty-two years since that article appeared, the field of composition has become the discipline of Composition, and an emphasis on research and theory has driven that transformation. Indeed, the National Writing Project, born at the University of California at Berkeley in the summer of 1974, has been a crucial part of the move to assert writing as foundational to all learning. Through exploration of a wide range of theory aimed at improving writing pedagogy, this course presents the corroboration of that claim.