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Technical editing research has examined the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) tools, yet empirical studies on their effectiveness remain limited. This quasi-experimental study investigates whether an AI-assisted tool improves copyediting performance and explores editor perceptions. The study compared 33 students’ editing performance with and without AI assistance. The results showed that an AI tool provided selective benefits, failing to raise overall correction rates but improving detection of AI-flagged errors. Perceptions varied by skill level, with stronger editors finding AI to be more distracting than helpful. The authors consider the teaching implications of this study and suggest that future research should test the effectiveness of various AI tools across different technical content types.

The release of ChatGPT in 2022 introduced both transformative opportunities and notable challenges for writing instruction and heightened instructors’ concerns about its impact on teaching and student learning. To explore how GenAI may enhance business communication in the age of AI while mitigating its negative effects on writing instruction, this Feature on Teaching article explains how instructors can proactively design custom AI tools to shift use from content generation to learning support, and offers a practical approach to adapting to an evolving, AI-driven context while exploring strategies to enhance student engagement and learning outcomes.

This study examines how a structured LinkedIn workshop influenced undergraduates’ intention to engage in professional online networking. Grounded in Experiential Learning Theory, the workshop combined interactive instruction, guided profile development, and a practitioner-led session. Based on post-intervention survey data from undergraduate students in Vietnam, the findings show that only familiarity with LinkedIn and the perceived training role of the guest speaker significantly predicted engagement intention. The study contributes to business communication pedagogy by emphasizing platform familiarization and expert-led instruction in career-oriented digital learning.

To illustrate how environmental aesthetics shape present-day science communication pedagogy, this article situates contemporary science communication in the context of the American environmental writing tradition, drawing from the field reporting techniques of William Bartram as a form of artist's study. We use teaching case examples to demonstrate how the aesthetic experience of scientific knowledge—the acts of etching, visiting, feeling, and being in nature—ultimately contributes to better practices and pedagogy for technical illustrations, as well as more accessible entry points for scientific and technical communicators and their audiences. We present such examples of field-based writing, visualization, and multimodal projects from an undergraduate environmental writing course and a graduate science writing course to locate the role of aesthetics in natural history and contemporary science communication, contributing to a deeper engagement with the field's interdisciplinary history.

This qualitative study investigates the biographical factors that influence the professional identities and teaching practices of second language (L2) writing instructors. Previous L2 writing studies have tended to rely on teacher interviews to examine such identities and practices and have failed to include the important perspective of classroom observations. This study conducted teacher interviews and classroom observations with three graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) of a first-year writing course at a U.S. university. The findings suggest that although teachers’ disciplinary backgrounds, teaching philosophies, and prior experiences shape their professional identities and instructional approaches, their classroom practices in language instruction do not always align with their beliefs and stated values. Teacher education programs should integrate language pedagogy and grammar instruction into writing pedagogy, while encouraging teachers to engage in consistent self-evaluation and reflection on their practices.

In primary education, children frequently combine drawings with alphabetic writing in their compositions, and research has shown that drawing can support early writing development. Building on existing research on multimodality and intermodality in early writing, this study examines how drawing and writing function together in children’s multimodal compositions produced for diverse social purposes. The study analyses multimodal texts written by Swedish learners aged 7–8 years and explores intermodal relations between writing and drawing using a systemic functional, transitivity-based analytical approach. The findings indicate a predominance of word-led and combinatory intermodality, with alphabetic writing generally assuming a dominant role. At the same time, children strategically integrate drawing and writing in ways that vary according to social purpose, task theme, and the specific affordances of each mode. In several cases, drawing enables the expression of meanings that are less readily conveyed through writing alone, underscoring its distinct representational potential. The study contributes to ongoing work on intermodality in early school writing by demonstrating the analytical affordances of transitivity for examining multimodal meaning-making, and it highlights the need for pedagogical practices and teacher metalanguage that support flexible movement across semiotic modes in early literacy education.

This article presents a curated collection of four teaching innovations presented at the Association for Business Communication 90th conference in Long Beach, California, as well as online, in October 2025. These My Favorite Assignment presenters demonstrated various activities in helping students learn skills in analyzing and summarizing research results within business contexts. This My Favorite Assignment 33rd edition introduces readers to a wide variety of classroom-ready ideas that integrate research, analysis, and summary skills. Teaching support materials—instructions to students, stimulus materials, slides, rubrics, frequently asked questions, links, and sample student projects—are downloadable from the Association for Business Communication website.

Second language (L2) writers’ capacity to reason about language choices during revision is theoretically central to advanced writing development, yet few studies trace how this linguistic reasoning emerges in repeated feedback-revision cycles that integrate teacher and AI suggestions. This multi-case, longitudinal mixed-methods study examined how ten L2 learners enacted metalinguistic strategies and developed linguistic reasoning across a 12-week online Academic English program. Triangulated data sources included 1246 feedback revision episodes, pre-post reasoning-task responses, and semi-structured exit interviews. We operationalized linguistic reasoning as the processual construct of interest and treated metalinguistic strategies as observable indicators; reasoning responses were scored with a three-dimensional analytic rubric while revisions and interaction logs were coded thematically and by strategy. Results show a systematic shift from early, correctness-focused edits toward later revisions characterized by coordinated structural comparison, more explicit self-explanation, and integrative argumentation; composite reasoning scores increased, with the largest gains observed on depth of explanation. Process analyses identified recurrent patterns in which alternative-rich feedback coincided with comparison moves, partially divergent suggestions often coincided with more explicit self-explanation, and integrative argumentation involving discourse-level revision became more visible over time. Pedagogical implications are also discussed.

Existing scholarship abounds in pedagogical efforts to leverage the advantages of GenAI to support argumentative writing. Yet, these efforts have mainly positioned learners as consumers of GenAI feedback and support on writing, which is often associated with concerns of cognitive atrophy and metacognitive laziness. The emergence of AI-assisted vibe coding makes it possible for learners to play a more active role in creating personalized AI solutions. The repositioning of learners’ roles in relation to GenAI may induce deeper cognitive processing and greater metacognitive engagement. This article introduces AI-assisted vibe coding, a novel no-code development approach that enables learners as technology creators by designing and developing their own personalized argumentative writing tools. We present Base44, a full-stack, AI-powered platform that facilitates this process, and illustrate how students can leverage it to create personalized tools for addressing authentic argumentative writing challenges through concrete workflow examples. We explore the potential of integrating AI-assisted vibe coding into argumentative writing instruction, examine its limitations, and offer directions for future teaching practice and research.

This article presents a curated collection of six teaching innovations presented at the Association for Business Communication 90th conference in Long Beach, California, as well as online, in October 2025. These My Favorite Assignment (MFA) presenters demonstrated various activities in helping students learn skills in communicating persuasively within business contexts. This My Favorite Assignment 33rd edition introduces readers to a wide variety of classroom-ready ideas that integrate persuasive skills. Teaching support materials—instructions to students, stimulus materials, slides, rubrics, frequently asked questions, links, and sample student projects—are downloadable from the Association for Business Communication website.

Very few research studies of the teaching of grammar and writing had been carried out with children younger than eight-years-old prior to the research reported in this paper. The research evaluated a new approach to teaching grammar and writing called Englicious. A Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) and Implementation and Process Evaluation (IPE) research design, featuring 1,246 pupils aged six to seven-years-old in 70 primary school classes, was used to evaluate the effectiveness of Englicious for improving children’s writing. The approach was implemented in the context of the programs of study for grammar teaching in England’s national curriculum. The research found that there was no effect of the grammar teaching intervention on pupils’ narrative writing. The effect size for pupils’ sentence generation was sufficient to merit reflections about potential impacts of aspects of the intervention although this outcome also did not reach statistical significance. It is hypothesised that the manipulation of words, phrases and sentences, combined with practice at writing, may have contributed to any positive effect, although this would need to be confirmed in future research. It is concluded that until more research is done to investigate the effectiveness of different approaches to teaching grammar and writing with young children, existing evidence-based approaches are more likely to be effective to help young pupils’ narrative writing. England’s national curriculum specifications for teaching grammar and writing could usefully be reviewed to more closely reflect the evidence base from this field of writing research.

Although technical and professional communication (TPC) has long drawn on theories, methodologies, and methods from other disciplines, the authors argue that the Delphi research approach can aid researchers as they study and attempt to address the complex, context-dependent, and recursive nature of teaching and learning how to teach writing. The authors provide a brief background of the Delphi research approach and describe the steps to perform it in general terms. Then, they explain those steps in the context of a localized example and explain how this approach would most benefit the field of TPC. They conclude with a discussion of lessons learned and suggestions for future research.

Focusing on genre-related episodes (GREs) identified in teacher talk, this article investigates how two preservice teachers enacted genre-based writing instruction during their practice teaching in a 9th-grade public school English class in Türkiye. We adopted a teacher-oriented lens to investigate GREs, specifically paying attention to presentation choices and teacher talk during the genre knowledge elicitation phase—a move that facilitates eliciting students’ prior genre knowledge and making connections to the target genre. By examining the types of intentional guidance embedded in these GREs, the findings suggest that, through overt instruction and supervision in TESOL practicum courses, preservice teachers attempted to incorporate genre-specific instruction and showed increased investment in using prompts and tasks that would elicit their students’ genre-specific knowledge and organize their teaching around genres. Two important insights could be gained from this study: (1) TESOL practicum courses can serve as productive sites for cultivating genre-based writing expertise, enabling preservice teachers to design genre-rich lessons that support English as a foreign language student engagement with genre; and (2) GREs identified in classroom observations are valuable tools for examining new teacher genre-oriented deliberations during collaborative writing tasks. The article ends with a call to expand scholarly conversations on second language writing expertise and metacognitive awareness of genres to include a closer look at GREs during new teacher practice teaching.

This article focuses on teacher educators’ approaches to supporting discipline-specific undergraduate writing at the University of Strathclyde, the largest provider of initial teacher education (ITE) in Scotland. Although the Scottish Enlightenment had a substantial influence on positioning language, and therefore rhetoric, as a field of study ( Shieber, 2023 ), contemporary Scottish higher education—including teacher education—has no teaching of rhetoric or composition and no formalised general writing education (e.g., first-year composition). Yet, ITE students are expected to write in a variety of genres throughout postsecondary education. We position writing instruction as part of socially just teacher education. Our qualitative study investigates how university teacher educators conceive of student writing and enact these conceptualisations in practice. This study offers insight into how teacher educators evaluate the role of writing in teacher education and how they connect it to professional practice, positioning writing instruction as part of socially just teacher education.

The Developing and Teaching Academic Writing (DATAW) Global Online Course (GOC) is a teacher professional development course for writing educators in diverse contexts. The DATAW GOC was designed to employ a flexible, learner-centered pedagogy that combines Backward Design principles, foundational concepts of academic writing, andragogical strategies, and sheltered English instruction standards to create optimal learning activities for a highly heterogeneous group of adult learners with different language skills and teaching experience. It also integrates modeling and scaffolding of teaching strategies, experiential learning tasks, project-based activities, and application of knowledge to GOC participants’ teaching contexts and their students’ needs. In this reflection article, we make connections between our DATAW course design decisions and our observations from course delivery. Teaching the GOC across 8 terms to 850 participants from 103 countries revealed significant variation in teaching contexts, class size, workload, pedagogical practices, educational systems, and English language proficiency. These insights guided our iterative revisions at the end of each term, which allowed for continued tailoring and improvement of materials and tasks in response to the contextual possibilities and inhibitors in participants’ global contexts. By balancing theory and research-based best practices with participants’ real-life needs, the DATAW GOC provided a flexible, responsive platform for educators to improve their teaching practices, ultimately cascading their pedagogical knowledge to positively impact academic writing instruction in a globalized educational landscape.

This article presents findings from an ethnographic, rhetorical study of children's experiences with free-time writing in so-called author schools for children in Denmark. The study is guided by two research questions: What characterizes writing enjoyment in the context of free-time author schools for children, based on children's own experiences? and How can insights from children's writing experiences in author schools inform broader pedagogical considerations about writing in formal school settings? The aim of the article is to contribute empirically grounded knowledge about writing enjoyment in an out-of-school teaching context and to explore how such knowledge might inspire broader considerations about a pedagogy for enjoyable writing experiences. Findings point to four core dimensions of writing enjoyment as expressed by the children: (a) writing together with others in a community of writing, (b) being free in writing and experiencing agency, (c) using imagination in writing to explore ideas and stories, and (d) being taught by an author, someone who is herself a writer. These insights are considered in relation to existing understandings of writing enjoyment and discussed as inspiration for a writing pedagogy that is experience centered rather than performance centered.

English language teachers in many countries around the world teach large classes of 40 or more students. Since the 18th century, many English teaching methods have focused on speaking skills. However, in recent years, globalization has heightened the importance of writing instruction. Writing skills have become increasingly important for English language learners in professional, academic, and personal contexts. Despite this increasing importance, to date, there has been limited research that shows how writing instruction is implemented in large, secondary school English language classes although large-class contexts represent the majority of English language classes globally. Therefore, this qualitative, exploratory study aimed to explore and understand writing instruction in one particular large-class context—public secondary school English language classes in Côte d'Ivoire. Data were collected through autobiographical essays, interviews, and teaching artifacts and analyzed through narrative profiles. Major findings show that Ivorian secondary school English language teachers might not have much training for teaching writing. Additionally, Ivorian secondary school English language teachers face numerous challenges teaching writing, including student reluctance to write. Implications suggest the need to give more consideration to writing assessments and instruction and the need to ensure that secondary school English language teachers receive adequate training for teaching writing that fits their large-class contexts.

Curricula are an important but neglected part of the context of writing instruction; they mediate between policies, instructional practices, and student learning. Acknowledging the key role of teachers in interpreting and implementing curricula, we examine structural and contextual conditions that impact their agency in the “curriculum work” they do. Drawing on our international online survey of experts’ ( N = 46) views of writing curricula, we note teachers’ role in development; the nature of writing curricula and where it is located; teacher agency and the support they receive, for interpretation and implementation; and the resulting perceived degree of alignment of enactment with the official curriculum. Teachers’ role in the development of writing curricula is largely indirect, through consultation or participation of a small, selected number. Teachers are seen to have considerable agency in implementation; more than half of our respondents considered teachers had a fair amount or a great deal of autonomy. While responses suggest that a majority of curricula are relatively rich in terms of the theoretical perspectives they represent, some are narrow, and the coherence of others, with multiple perspectives, is questioned. Importantly, teachers reportedly receive limited support for implementation, while two thirds of our respondents considered teachers received only a small amount of preparation to teach writing. The data reinforce the need for the provision of quality, relevant resources, and opportunities for professional learning to support ongoing curriculum work of teachers in interpretation and implementation.

This systematic historical descriptive review was conducted to determine the trends and status of research using true and quasi-experiments (with pretests) to test the effectiveness of writing practices with students in kindergarten to grade 12. The analyses included 859 writing treatment/control comparisons, which were included in two previous meta-analyses ( Collins et al., 2025 ; Graham et al., 2023 ). The search for studies in these two reviews ended in September 2021 and December 2022, respectively. The use of true and quasi-experiments (with pretests) to test writing practices increased dramatically across the decades from the 1930s onward, with 290 treatment/control comparisons conducted in the 2010s. The expansion in the number of studies conducted was accompanied by an increase in study quality as measured by internal/external research design indicators. Research in this area moved from an exclusive study of teaching spelling and handwriting in the 1930s through the 1950s to the study of a diverse array of writing practices in the decades that followed. As the number of writing practices tested increased, so did the number of measures used to assess the effects of these instructional methods. Most of the writing treatment/control comparisons originated in the United States/Canada, but starting in the 1970s European researchers began to make significant contributions to testing the effectiveness of writing practices. The most prolific researchers from 1931 onward were Steve Graham, Karen Harris, Gert Rijlaarsdam, and Sue Del La Paz. Limitations and suggestions for future research are provided.

This article draws on data gathered during a 3-year study that was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and set out to investigate how dialogic metalinguistic talk mediates metalinguistic learning and informs students’ writing choices. Working with seven secondary English teachers in the South-West of England, pedagogical strategies and lesson sequences were explored for their potential to promote dialogic metalinguistic talk in Key Stage 3 (11 to 14 years of age) classrooms. This article reports on how teachers used one specific strategy, described here as metalinguistic modelling, to make thinking about language choice explicit and to scaffold writerly independence. Drawing on qualitative data capture of 33 whole lessons, this study develops the notion of metalinguistic modelling as a “bridging” mechanism that connects talk, text, and writing in the dialogic development of metalinguistic understanding, mediating the internalisation of thinking about language choice and activating procedural activity. This article offers an empirical conceptualisation of metalinguistic modelling as a key repertoire of a metalinguistic talk pedagogy and advances a theorisation of its role in writing instruction.

This article outlines the curriculum and assessment regime related to writing in England that affects children in their final year of primary school (Year 6: ages 10–11). The assessment in England is colloquially known as SATs and, for writing, consists of a grammar, punctuation, and spelling test, alongside a separate teacher assessment of writing using a set of criteria. Both these assessments are statutory and are integral components of the accountability system for primary schools in England. From an interpretive perspective, this article explores how teachers perceive the assessment and how it influences their instructional practices through data collected from interviews with 10 Year 6 teachers. A broad discussion centres around the potential negative consequences of the assessment regime on the teaching of writing and includes the teachers’ perceived impact of these assessments on writing instruction and the effects this has on the teachers’ teaching practices. There is a particular focus on issues around “teaching-to-the-test” with some implications for policy.

• Year 7 students can learn to code engaging animated narratives with basic Scratch. • English teachers can learn to sufficient coding to support students coding stories. • Student animated narratives of 2 – 3 min can meet English curricula requirements. • Student multimodality use can be evaluated using a criterion-based framework. • Student coding proficiency can be extended through coding animated narratives. Coding animated stories in the English classroom has been advocated from over a decade ago as an integrated curriculum context for early teaching of computer programming while simultaneously developing students’ multimodal narrative authoring. However, related research has not adequately addressed English curriculum requirements for narrative creation. This article describes the development of a framework for analysing coded animated stories from the perspective of English curriculum expectations. Analysis of 23 stories showed substantial variation in the emphasis given to different multimodal resources among those stories with the most extensive use of such resources. Stories with limited use of these resources excluded those expressing characters’ emotions and positioning the audience to experience the story from a variety of points of view. Stories with extensive multimodal expression were at the upper, but not necessarily highest, coding proficiency levels, while some with high coding proficiency showed limited use of multimodal resources. Implications are drawn for coding as an engaging creative tool in English classrooms.

• Generative AI can help multilingual communicators in professional writing. • Generative AI supports email/report writing and meeting summary. • Practical, ethical and legal concerns remain. • Students’ AI use at workplace informs academic writing teaching and learning. Because multilingual students’ languaging practices are not limited to academic settings, it is important to explore their lived experiences communicating in real-world situations to shed light on how to prepare them in college classrooms in the era of generative AI. Drawing upon writing samples, artifacts and interview data, this case study brings attention to the potential and challenges a multilingual international student face in implementing generative AI-assisted written communication during her 5-month internship in the workplace. The findings indicate that generative AI tools, especially ChatGPT, have the potential to help multilingual communicators meet their written linguistic demands in professional contexts, especially in email writing, report drafting and meeting summary. Generative AI-assisted writing tools could assist multilingual students with idea expression and boost their confidence and agency in communication. Yet, despite its many advantages, practical, ethical and legal concerns remain. This study contributes to the scarce yet budding literature exploring multilingual international students’ AI engagement in professional settings and offers concrete pedagogical implications and directions for future research.

This article’s author situates late 19th-century essays by Andrew Carnegie within the rhetorical history of business and professional communication (BPC). A close analysis of the essays reveals that Carnegie relied on rhetoric to shape his public image as a benevolent business leader during a period characterized by significant socioeconomic divisions in the United States. Three primary themes— wealth , labor , and democracy —emerge, which the author argues animated Carnegie’s reasoning and arguments throughout the essays. The author concludes by recommending greater attention to the rhetorical history of BPC in future research and teaching.

This study addresses the persistent misalignment between Arabic language curricula in Chinese universities and the communicative demands of Arabic-mediated business work. Adopting an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design, we surveyed 105 Chinese graduates who use Arabic in professional settings and conducted follow-up interviews with three lecturers responsible for Arabic for Business Purposes (ABP) courses. Exploratory factor analysis confirmed three reliable constructs: teaching methodology, workplace ability, and future training needs, while regression analyses showed that learner-centered, task-based teaching methodologies significantly predict graduates’ perceived workplace ability and heighten their awareness of ongoing training needs. The qualitative findings illuminated high-stakes communicative events such as negotiations, client correspondence, and intercultural meetings, and revealed systematic gaps between academic instruction and workplace discourse practices. Integrating quantitative and qualitative strands, the study proposes a dual-layer instructional model consisting of eight developmental stages and five interrelated competence domains that link classroom tasks to authentic business communication events. The model offers a contextualized pathway for redesigning ABP curricula in China and contributes to wider debates on how language-for-specific-purposes programmes can better support employability and professional communication readiness.

Teacher communication influences students’ cognitive and emotional well-being, yet mechanisms linking communication behaviors to learning outcomes remain underexplored. Grounded in the conservation of resources framework, this study tested an ecological model in which teacher clarity and rapport indirectly reduced writing apprehension through perceived immediacy, self-efficacy, and burnout. Undergraduate students ( N  = 389) in Business and Professional Communication courses completed validated measures. Structural equation modeling supported a serial mediation: clarity and rapport predicted immediacy and self-efficacy, which reduced burnout and, in turn, writing apprehension. Findings highlight burnout as a psychological conduit linking instructional communication to student anxiety.

To address students’ challenges in business writing and bridge the gap between workplace demands and the skills of new professionals, this quasi-experimental study examined the effects of flipped-ARCS and face-to-face ARCS instruction on Pakistani undergraduate English as a Second Language (ESL) students’ business writing achievement and motivation in a business communication course. The findings indicated that the flipped-ARCS model was more effective in improving business writing, while face-to-face ARCS instruction better boosted students’ motivation, supporting the potential of innovative teaching strategies and providing valuable insights for educators and policymakers on integrating technology-based instructional methods into business writing education.

Despite the current widespread use of Automated Writing Evaluation (AWE) feedback, many issues regarding its efficacy still remain unresolved. Recent studies mainly focus on correctly detected errors with a lack of attention on the comprehensiveness of error detection, or error coverage. Error coverage is interesting because little is known about the capacity of AWE systems to fully detect common second language (L2) errors. It is also important to investigate the potential effect of such capacity on student uptake and retention, which are important constructs in fostering L2 writing development. To this end, the present study compared teacher feedback and AWE error coverage in L2 writing classes. The findings suggest that both the AWE system and the teacher demonstrated low error coverage across grammar, usage, and mechanics error categories. However, they indicated differences in the types of errors they identified most frequently. The AWE system flagged more mechanical errors, whereas the teacher provided twice as many corrections for grammar errors, including wrong/missing words, prepositions, and incorrect word forms. While the AWE system performed moderately in flagging articles and comma errors, it struggled with more nuanced grammatical errors, suggesting it may not be a reliable standalone tool for addressing specific needs of L2 learners’ writing challenges. Interestingly, coverage was positively associated with successful uptake, with students utilizing a wider variety of revision acts (i.e., change, add, delete, remove) on AWE errors identified compared to errors not identified. However, error coverage did not correlate with short- or long-term retention of accuracy, implying that retention may result from the interplay of error coverage with other factors. Findings provide implications for writing teachers regarding the employment of AWE systems and for AWE developers regarding the future optimizations of the AWE systems.

Teacher written feedback is a central area of L2 scholarship and writing teacher education yet considerable research has focused on written corrective feedback (WCF) with considerably less attention paid to discourse-level (DLF) teacher written feedback. Our article identifies the gaps in the current teacher written feedback scholarship, explains why these gaps are problematic, and provides detailed recommendations for an agenda that examines teacher DLF and students’ use of this feedback. Our goal is to encourage scholars to explore new avenues of research that better take into account what writing “is” and “does” as well as take into account the linguistically heterogenous reality of 21st century writing classrooms.

This Teaching Tip introduces the Feedback Menu, a flexible protocol designed to promote student agency and feedback literacy in writing instruction. By allowing students to select the focus and mode of feedback they receive, the Menu helps tailor response to individual learning needs and supports meaningful revision at any stage of the composition process. The protocol is adaptable for use in first-year composition, professional writing, multilingual, and upper-division courses, in both face-to-face and online formats. Concrete implementation steps, sample menu items, and considerations for different teaching contexts are provided.

This article presents a curated collection of six teaching innovations presented at the Association for Business Communication 90th conference in Long Beach, California, as well as online, in October 2025. These MFA presenters demonstrated activities in helping students understand the use of artificial intelligence (AI) and social media in business communication. This My Favorite Assignment 34th edition introduces readers to a variety of classroom-ready ideas that integrate tasks involving social media and AI. Teaching support materials—instructions to students, stimulus materials, slides, rubrics, frequently asked questions, links, and sample student projects—are downloadable from the Association for Business Communication website.

Abstract This essay posits itself against higher education's ethos of FOMO regarding Generative AI. Instead, the authors propose Move Slow and Build Community, an ethos that conceptualizes teaching as relationship-based intellectual work, and they explore how this ethos guided an interdisciplinary community of practice experimenting with Gen AI in writing courses.

It's time for another turn.This turn, the "AI Turn," is more than simply the arrival of new technologies or the sudden acceleration of access to powerful tools -it is a complete paradigm shift, one that asks us to reconsider concepts that sit at the very heart of our disciplines: originality, authorship, creativity, literacy, imagination, composition.Nothing about this turn is minor.These concerns are at the heart of what it means to teach, to write, to understand what it means to be human.English studies is of course used to such turns.The social turn, the cultural turn, the digital turn -each brought us new questions, new answers, and new pedagogies.And yet, something about this turn feels decidedly different.Something about this turn feels world-changing in a Gutenberg-esque way.For it arrives not only with new concerns, new technologies, and new approaches to teaching and learning but also with a fundamental shift in what it means to produce and interpret text.Generative AI produces writing in ways that are increasingly so human that it begs the question of what role actual humans have in composition.Because these questions are so central to humanistic inquiry, it's no surprise that the rise of generative AI has sparked (to put it mildly) unease.At times, it can feel like these systems are encroaching on activities we have long considered distinctively human; at times, it can also feel like these systems are

Organizations increasingly recognize web accessibility as both necessary and beneficial for legal, ethical, and economic reasons. This article shows how instructors can easily integrate accessible web design into an introductory web design and development course for business students who have limited experience with design theory and user interface design. By applying testable criteria, following industry-standard guidelines, and using online tools, these business students can successfully build websites that individuals with visual, hearing, cognitive, or motor-control disabilities can use. The authors present their approach, describe specific assignments, and provide suggestions for incorporating accessibility into a traditional introductory web development course.

Nurturing the ability to argue is of great importance in science education, despite students often encountering cognitive and emotional barriers. The aim of this study was to examine the quality of argumentation and the issues raised by secondary school students when they are asked to respond to structured argumentation tasks. We chose topics from two different socio-scientific issues of varied perceived relevance to students’ daily lives: the sale of fast food in school canteens (Group 1) and the addition of antibiotics in animal feed (Group 2). The study involved 249 high school students aged 14–16, in Poland. A total of 139 participants took part in an intervention about fast food, and 110 in an intervention about the use of antibiotics. Data were collected in the form of written arguments developed by students as part of a structured teaching intervention. Quantitative and qualitative methods were used to process and analyze the data. On average, students’ arguments scored higher on the topic of antibiotic use on animal feed. Qualitative content analysis of the students’ arguments identified four thematic groups: (1) personal aspects revealing personal meanings, values, and defence mechanisms; (2) scientific aspects revealing substantive knowledge; (3) socio-cultural aspects revealing economic, sociological or cultural aspects; (4) nonsensical or incoherent arguments. A topic related to students’ personal decisions and perceived to be closest to their lives and daily experience (eating fast food in the school canteen) more often prompted arguments indicating cognitive defence, by denying the harmfulness of fast food and emphasizing possible advantages or appealing to the right to choose. Based on this finding, we discuss the need for defence mechanisms to be considered in pedagogical designs for the teaching of argumentation.

Background: Hospital educators are designated individuals who provide hospitalized K-12 children with their schooling during the time of their stay. They play a vital role in maintaining educational continuity for hospitalized children, yet their professional information and communication practices remain understudied in US settings. Literature review: We build on literature within technical and professional communication (TPC), specifically scholars who have studied technology and health in understanding US hospital educators' unique technological needs and communication practices within highly regulated healthcare environments. Research questions: How do hospital educators navigate professional communication, adapt teaching practices to meet diverse student needs, and utilize technology in hospital settings? What opportunities exist for artificial-intelligence (AI) integration? Research method: We conducted semistructured interviews with four hospital educators across US hospitals, applying reflexive thematic analysis, informed by Participatory Communication Theory, Sociotechnical Systems Perspectives, and Knowledge Justice. Analysis employed iterative open coding followed by theory-informed thematic development, where communication theory guided the identification of dialogical patterns, systems theory directed attention to sociotechnical interactions, and knowledge justice sensitized us to power dynamics affecting professional knowledge access and sharing. Results/discussion: Findings reveal characteristics of US hospital education contexts in our study: short patient stays, strict security requirements, institutional variability across hospital settings, and emphasis on engagement over assessment. Educators demonstrate remarkable adaptability in coordinating among stakeholders while navigating institutional constraints and developing strategies for rapid assessment and flexible instruction. While educational technologies offer benefits, implementation faces significant challenges regarding security, practical limitations, and offline functionality needs. Conclusion: We propose guideline themes for developing information and communication technologies–including some that use AI–that support hospital educators' professional needs while respecting hospital setting constraints. This research contributes to understanding how technologies can enhance hospital education while highlighting the importance of context-specific design that empowers rather than replaces educator expertise.

This article presents a curated collection of nine teaching innovations presented at the Association for Business Communication 90th conference in Long Beach, California, as well as online, in October 2025. These My Favorite Assignment (MFA) presenters demonstrated various activities in helping students prepare for their careers and develop their professional skills. This My Favorite Assignment 33rd edition introduces readers to a wide variety of classroom-ready ideas that integrate career readiness tasks. Teaching support materials—instructions to students, stimulus materials, slides, rubrics, frequently asked questions, links, and sample student projects—are downloadable from the Association for Business Communication website.

This article presents critical positive communication pedagogy (CPCP), which synthesizes the fields of critical pedagogy and positive communication pedagogy to promote positive communication practices that develop a social justice sensibility among students. We argue that CPCP contributes to the creation of learner-centered classrooms that promote interpersonal connection, foster feelings of inclusion and belonging, and aid students in achieving sustainable happiness. We provide examples of CPCP in business and professional communication classrooms to promote diversity and inclusion, specifically related to issues of gender and sexuality, race, disability, and class.

Positive communication is crucial for effective teaching, influencing student engagement, motivation, and educational outcomes. Synthesizing educational and interdisciplinary literature, this article develops two core propositions: (1) cultivating classroom relationships through responsive interactions and peer connectedness, and (2) strengthening teacher affirmation and credibility via authentic and empathetic communication practices. Specific strategies, such as personalized feedback, inclusive communication methods, structured confirmation behaviors, and generationally responsive techniques, equip educators to enhance classroom environments, improve student learning experiences, and prepare students effectively for academic achievement and professional collaboration.

This article presents findings from a content analysis of 707 articles appearing between 2011 and 2020 in five journals issued by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), a major teaching and research organization in North America. We examined topics and theoretical frameworks, finding that while core topics such as academic writing, curriculum, cultural studies, literacy, and teacher development remained stable, the latter part of the previous decade (2016–2020) showed increased attention to labor, diversity, social justice, and writing program administration, alongside declines in work focused on history, educational policy, ESL, and community writing. Many articles lacked explicit theoretical grounding, often using broad labels like “critical theory,” though use of specified frameworks (e.g., feminist and postcolonial theory) has grown. We identify differences among the journals and discuss the implications of these findings for NCTE, for content analysis as a method and for scholars’ efforts to navigate a complex and expanding field.

The hegemony of English, or at least a particular form of English, has been robustly critiqued, yet is far from having been abandoned in teaching.[1] In addition, dominant discourse deems Native American languages “extinct” or otherwise incapable of speaking to academic topics. However, Indigenous peoples develop language for various subject areas, and languages are used in ways that represent the cultural perspectives of their users.[2] Such perspectives are part of the heart of Indigenous peoples’ sovereignty, and the right to use Indigenous languages supports, quite simply, Indigenous peoples’ right to speak and think.[3] Declining to accept assignments in an Indigenous or any heritage language (or requiring translations) conveys the message that English is needed in academic contexts, and is therefore communicatively superior. I argue that writing courses should support student refusals of translation, creating a situation where an instructor may not know what the content of a student submission even is, and that this inability “to know” serves the aims of decolonization.   [1] Alim & Smitherman 2012 [2] See: Kimura & Counceller 2009, McCarty & Nicholas 2014, Wilson & Kamanā 2011, Reyhner 2010, McIvor & McCarty 2017 [3] These rights are a main tenet of how Leonard (2008, 2011, 2021) theorizes language reclamation

After 40-plus years, I retired from my professorship and returned to my first role as a teacher of children (kindergarteners through second graders, now at a neighborhood after-school center). As an academic researcher, an ethnographer, I had spent years with children as a “friend” as they often described me. But at the center, I was a teacher, expected to promote the children’s composing. In this role, I experienced at first a sharp shift in my relationship to children. The question arose: What is the relationship between being a researcher and being a teacher? I compared my responses to and from three selected center children and three research project children; data (field notes, written products) for each center child was compared to that of a research project child with similar composing characteristics. All children were urban and African American. Among my findings were that, first, my observations of center children were not the data-filled field notes of project children, and, second, that the teacher me was more attuned to the writing community in formation. Children expected our routine prac-tices, they were eager to share their work, and, moreover, they were ready responders to each other. By the school year’s end, I knew that all who teach must blend the roles of researcher and teacher: We are curious about those we teach; we work to study them the best we can by observing their responses to our efforts, and what we thereby learn feeds into how we teach and how our students learn.

This study examined preservice teachers’ (PTs’) multimodal and multigenre writing portfolios advocating for change in the teaching profession. Using theories of humanizing education and Janks’s framework of Big P and little p politics, this study analyzed how PTs used writing as professional resistance and a means to heal their own schooling harms and to envision a more inclusive future for students. The findings elevated how PTs engaged as writers to see teaching as a political engagement and transformative act within the educational climate of control, compliance, and conformity. Implications for the field included possibilities to expand professional agency and supporting future teachers in confronting the political and relational complexities of their work through authorship and sharing their voices and advocacy broadly.

This Research Brief presents an overview of current research in community-engaged writing, particularly foregrounding the importance of praxis-oriented and collaborative approaches. Here, we articulate collaboration, reciprocity, and accountability as some of the main tenets of community-engaged writing, and we showcase the variety of projects that such work can include (from local food writing to prison literacy work to transnational social justice movements and beyond). Then, we explore some of the methods and methodologies that are central in this scholarship, drawing on examples that engage storytelling, oral history and interview methods, archival methods, ethnographic research, and even public performances and workshops. We conclude with a discussion of future possibilities for research, teaching, and the imperative to see community-engaged work as part of scholarly work in tenure, promotion, and review.

This article describes a gamified technical writing assignment inspired by the Hunt a Killer board games. Students solve a fictional mystery by analyzing AI-generated technical documents as an introduction to the most common deliverables and genres in the field and practice of Technical and Professional Communication. Grounded in research on gamification and AI, this activity fosters experiential learning by situating technical writing genres as both structured and dynamic tools. By combining genre analysis with collaborative problem-solving, the assignment offers a novel approach to teaching genre in technical writing, emphasizing flexibility and critical thinking.

This essay shares a WAW reflection assignment that supports the development of writing knowledge for tax memos and for the accounting profession; it is taught in an undergraduate tax class for accounting students. Students develop an external tax memo and, following submission of that assignment, they write about their own writing in their completed memo. The emphasis on the WAW reflection is paragraphing, as this aspect of writing is highly valued in accounting and especially needed for an effective tax memo. Accounting education has long called for more writing-emphasis instruction in accounting courses, and this assignment answers that call.