The Writing Studio Sampler: Stories about Change (Perspectives on Writing)

The Writing Studio Sampler presents interrelated, cross-referenced essays illustrating writing studio methodologies. Drawing on foundational work by Rhonda Grego and Nancy Thompson, writing studios engage mentored student workshop groups in collaborative reflection and inquiry into the writing done by student participants, their past experiences learning to write, and the pedagogical practices for teaching writing at their institution. These extended, recursive reflections lead not only to improved writing but also to the chance for institutional critique. Representing a wide range of institutional types and sites, the authors in this collection describe how specific studio programs were created, how they evolved in response to particular institutional contexts, and how they worked to meet the needs and purposes of students, faculty, and the institution. Each chapter includes detailed examples and extensive contextual background designed to support readers in adapting Studio to their own institutional context.

Sally Chandler taught writing at Kean University from 2003 to 2015. Throughout her career, she studied how sharing and reflecting on personal experience—in talk and in writing—open up what we know about ourselves, each other, and the way the world works. This interest has made her a devoted practitioner of collaborative, reflective methods—both in their teaching and in her research. Her first book, New Literacy Narratives from an Urban University: Analyzing Stories about Reading, Writing, and Changing Technologies, is a collection of essays, co-authored with five Kean University students. Student authors narrate, analyze, and interpret their (very different) stories about how they changed and grew in response to the increasing presence of digital communication technologies and the internet. While at Kean, she set up and administered the University's writing center, developed a Writing Studio for the Exceptional Educational Opportunities Summer Academy, a program for educationally and economically disadvantaged freshman, and, with Mark Sutton, helped to create and administer the University's Master of Arts program for teaching writing.