Smagorinsky: Educating the public on the public's terms

Peter Smagorinsky, Distinguished Research Professor in Language and Literacy Education, encourages his fellow academics to consider the implications of working only within the echo chamber of  journals, conferences and classes in a July 21 article on _Writers Who Care_, a blog   published by members of the Commission on Writing Teacher Education, a working group of the Conference on English Educationr Continuing Education

"I'm not discouraging anyone from writing scholarly articles; I do it myself all the time, and it's given me the platform from which to write for the public. But in the last few years I've begun expanding my writing to the local media in hopes of communicating clearly and directly with the public, the voters, the politicians who get their information from newspapers, and others who are more likely to watch The View than read Research in the Teaching of English," Smagorinsky writes.