CONCLUSION

In November 2010, Writing Spaces editors Charles Lowe and Pavel Zemliansky presented their work on this open-source textbook in a webinar titled, “Can We Write Textbooks the Way We Write Scholarship?” However, this is a moot question since this is precisely the sort of work that Writing Spaces presents us with, and successfully so. In addition, Writing Spaces offers more than an open-source textbook; it also offers a forum for the extrinsic reward systems that ties into the “work of being a teacher” in a way that also provides us with an outlet for the “institutional recognition” of service and scholarship related to the research work that informs our pedagogy. This approach to developing open-source textbooks combines the research, pedagogical, and service work that universities demand from their faculty, and it does so in a way that allows students a sneak-peek into some of the conventions of academic writing and their evolution. By situating the teaching-/research-essays for a dual purpose—a classroom focus and a research focus—Writing Spaces opens opportunities for nuanced teaching methods and approaches that build on a collaborative effort amongst students and teachers.

The organization of the essays in each volume provides opportunities for customized course materials without the need for costly publishing rights and taps into individual teachers’ pedagogical philosophies. In terms of textbook publishing, Writing Spaces challenges traditional textbook publishing processes—especially the high costs of publishing—and presents teachers with materials that facilitate in-class discussions and activities related to academic writing conventions. In addition, these essays are written personably so that students can not only grapple with the concepts valued by institutions, but also understand the logical groundings for those values. At the same time, these essays—and the Writing Spaces project as a whole—also confront some of the standardization criteria of “commercial publishing” (“Can We Write”, p. 7). The forthcoming volumes (three and four) are designed to continue challenging these standards and the standards of FYC courses, standards that can sometimes be difficult to ground for students coming into contact with academic conventions for the first time. By presenting teacher-researchers with opportunities to tie their pedagogies to the “already valued peer review processes” (p. 9) involved in tenure and promotion committees, the Writing Spaces endeavor to proliferate pedagogical perspectives and practices for the perpetual evolution of FYC is highly successful.

During the 2011 fall semester, I used essays from Writing Spaces in my own courses, and students rarely had questions about the expectations of academic writing conventions. With less time dedicated to addressing reading-specific questions, we were able to focus more on applying rhetorical concepts and composition strategies in our classrooms. Additionally, the essays present novice teachers with ways of grounding their own first-year composition pedagogies, as well as provide alternative approaches for more experienced teachers. Overall, Writing Spaces has created a project providing writing students and teachers (within and beyond universities/colleges) with advice from fellow writer-friends interested in refining their professional writing that builds on contemporary academic research on composition pedagogies—and particularly with Gregory Ulmer’s (1985) concept of post-pedagogy (cf. Applied Grammatology)—a perspective that proposes a collaborative effort through a process of mutual learning among students and teachers, and one that ties research and practice together.