The Hitchhiker's Guide to Writing Research: A Festschrift for Steve Graham

This book brings together the work of established scholars from around the world to celebrate and honor the many ways in which Steve Graham has contributed to the advancement of teaching and researching writing. Focusing on writing development and writing instruction in different contexts of education, original contributions in this book critically engage with theoretical and empirical issues raised in Steve Graham’s influential body of work and significantly extend our understandings of the importance of writing in developing learners’ literacy and the roles of writing in teaching and learning processes.

This book is organized around themes central to Steve Graham's work, including theories and models of writing, effective instructional methods in teaching writing, surveys on teaching and learning writing, and systematic review studies on writing.

 Apart from regular chapters, the book also features personal and scholarly reflections revealing the powerful ways inwhich Steve Graham’s work has influenced our thinking in the field of writing research and continues to open up new avenues for future research endeavors. 

Xinghua Liu, PhD., is an Associate Professor at School of Foreign Languages, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China. He received his Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics from the University of Reading, UK and completed his post-doctorate training in writing research at Arizona State University, USA. His research interests include psychology of written production, linguistic profile of English-language learners’ written corpus, and validation of effective writing interventions. He serves on the editorial boards of International Journal of TESOL Studies and International Journal of Chinese Language Teaching. He is currently a member of the steering committee for International Society for the Advancement of Writing Research.

Michael Hebert, PhD., is an Associate Professor at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) and Director of the UCI Writing Project. His interests include the impacts of writing on reading, writing assessment, and the development of writing interventions. Dr. Hebert co-authored two influential Carnegie Corporation reports: Writing to Read and Informing Writing, and he was the co-editor of Best Practices in Writing Instruction, third edition. He is also the Primary Investigator for a Pandemic Recovery grant from the Institute of Education Sciences to accelerate reading achievement in rural Nebraska schools. He serves on the editorial board for the Journal of Educational Psychology. Dr. Hebert was previously a classroom teacher and reading specialist in schools in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, California, and the Navajo Nation.

Rui A. Alves is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Porto. His main research interests are the cognitive and affective processes in writing, which he studies using experimental methods and logging tools. He and his team have studied the development of text production using an own–developed handwriting logging software (HandSpy) and developed many evidence-based writing interventions addressing cognitive, motivational, and self-regulatory aspects of writing. He serves on several editorial boards and is an Associate Editor of the journal Reading & Writing, Springer. Currently, he is the interim coordinator of the European Literacy Network, ELN, and serves on the executive boards of ISAWR and EARLI.