Response to Reform: Composition and the Professionalization of Teaching

Author(s): Margaret Marshall

This book critiques the politics of labor and gender biases inherent in the composition workplace that prevent literacy teachers from attaining professional status and respect. Scrutinizing the relationship between scholarship and teaching, Margaret J. Marshall calls for a reconceptualization of what it means to prepare for and enter the field of composition instruction. Interrogating the approach the education system takes to certify teachers without actually “professionalizing” their careers, Marshall contends that these programs rely on outdated rhetorics of labor that only widen the gap between teaching and other professional jobs.

In providing an overview of the history of and language used to characterize literacy instruction, she also points out that while women are overrepresented in composition instruction, they are underrepresented in tenure track and administrative positions.
 
Studies in Writing & Rhetoric (SWR) series. 197 pp. 2004. College. NCTE/CCCC and Southern Illinois University Press. ISBN 0-8093-2545-4.
No. 40912
 

ISBN: 0-8093-2545-4

Grade Level(s): College

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