Writing Pedagogy

This encompasses a lot of questions and topics that overlap with my interest in composition studies so perhaps I'll just lump them all here and let them sort themselves out.

I'm attending the Morehead Writing Project Summer Institute in preparation for taking over as Site Director in July. The MWP is doing some great work but the leadership team would like to see it expand its reach and programming.

Of course in order to do this we will need to know what our stakeholders need and want.

MWP Stakeholders:

Teachers
Students
Administrators
Community
Government
Writing Project Leadership

Some research has been done and I'll need to get up to speed on that as well as many other things related to WP and MWP in specific.

But I'd also like to get a better handle on what our English teachers in general need to know to effectively do their jobs (and at different levels) which has some overlap with above but may also be distinct in some areas.

I'm also interested in what writers need to know to successfully negotiate from high school to college to work which comes back to what do we need to teach our students (in college?). What specific skill sets and experiences?

I'm also really interested in process pedagogy as I think developing a unique and individual writing process is one of the keys to writing success (this is based more on my own experience as a writer and writing teacher than any research which is why I'd really like to study this hypothesis). Again this would aid my teaching but could also be of interest to WP. Definite overlap there. Heck I could even study the current fellows.

And of course coming back to the idea of discourse community. I'm really intrigued by this idea and think this could be a very key concept in terms of writing instruction as it is the community that drives so many of the specifics of writing (everything from correctness issues to genre) and it is the community that provides the audience and rhetorical situation. It is the discourse community that makes writing relevant and meaningful and real. I think this can come back and feed both my interest in writing pedagogy and composition studies.

Back full circle now. I'm so conflicted and confused. What to do, what to do...