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One ongoing challenge that educator preparation programs frequently encounter is their limited ability to authentically expose preservice teachers (PSTs) to rural schools and potential careers in rural school districts. To remedy this concern, faculty at three institutions in both the United States and Australia have developed targeted initiatives designed to provide initial exposure to rural schools, build a rural-intensive element within a practicum course, and establish rural immersion experiences for PSTs. A detailed look at the structure of these programs, a comparison of these three diverse approaches, and recommendations for the expansion and sustainability of these efforts are highlighted within this narrative. Through this comparison of activities being advanced in both countries, the authors provide a better understanding of the options and effectiveness related to initial rural school exposure.

Although authors often create literary texts in order to comment on issues of personhood and human relationships, reading and writing about literary texts in schools is often focused on close analysis of literary elements or exploration of one’s own experience with the text. Thus, students’ written arguments about literature typically do little work in the world toward understanding the human condition. In response, we argue for a theoretical and instructional framework of reading and writing about literature called Dialogic Literary Argumentation. Dialogic literary argumentation asks students and teachers to engage in reading, dialogue, and argumentative writing about how they and others make meaning out of literary texts, what the meaning says about what it means to be human together, and how we might act in and on the worlds in which we live. In this article, we explicate the various elements of this theoretical framework that situates the student’s literary argument within their own cognitive processes, social interactions in classroom events, and broader sociocultural contexts. Students’ composed arguments draw on multiple texts (the literary text, others in and beyond the classroom, their own experiences, the literary discipline, and the world), which are mediated by various classroom dialogues, scaffolds, and supports.

Writing studies scholarship has long understood the need for context-based studies of student writing. Few studies, however, have closely examined how students use intertextual relationships in the context of learning to compose argumentative essays. Drawing on a 17-day argumentative writing unit in a ninth-grade humanities classroom, this article uses the concept of "intertextual trace" to explore how students make intertextual connections in their writing and negotiate the social dynamics of classroom learning. Intertextual analysis of students' final essays revealed overlapping tracings and resonances across multiple resources, showing how and the ways in which students create arguments and respond to exigencies within a classroom setting. Analysis of thematic, structural, and lexical tracings also showed students making intertextual connections through repeating, reordering, responding to, and extending the texts offered by their teacher and peers. In so doing, students served as curators-shaping ideas, curricular offerings, and language into final argumentative essays-who were able to develop agency in and through their writing.

At the university level, rhetoric dominates conversations surrounding writing pedagogy, yet preservice English language arts teachers are not typically instructed to teach rhetorically. Although the stated exigence of the Common Core State Standards is to prepare students to be college and career ready, this analysis suggests misalignment. This research analyzed how rhetoric is used in the Common Core and how the Standards indicate what is necessary for writing in college. Findings indicate that rhetoric is used implicitly rather than explicitly and as a tool rather than a theory. The Common Core also promotes a progression of prescriptive writing tasks, a language of power, and a preference for logic over emotion. Rather than promote readiness, the Standards perpetuate the gap between secondary and postsecondary writing experiences.