Introduction

This book is the collective effort of the students (“Pre-Service English Teachers”) and professor of the ENG 382 Teaching Writing in the Secondary Schools class at Morehead State University in eastern Kentucky, USA. We have been engaged for several semesters in an undergraduate teacher-action research project through the PSET’s field experiences, in which they ask the research question What is effective feedback when working with student writers? while engaged in an array of field experience opportunities as writing mentors. For example, in this first iteration of this book–a result of the 2024 research semester–the PSETs worked with dual credit composition students at a high school in the university’s service region and in a campus class, seventh graders who wrote journals as part of their regular literacy curriculum, those same seventh graders who wrote poetry for a poetry ‘zine, and local ninth graders in the process of composing and recording TED talks for their English class. The PSETs also reflected on their own processes as writers. particularly how they experienced peer review in ENG 382 as they drafted and revised their own “zero drafts” in several different genres (argument essays, feature articles on pop culture, reviews of movies, etc, science fiction/fantasy stories, and memoir pieces).  We (I write this introduction as the course professor) offer this book as an Open Educational Resource in hopes that others can use it as a resource in the same way (i.e., to engage in teacher-action research and add to it and adapt it as needed–in and for their own contexts, appropriate for their own specific questions about working with student writers).