Constructing instruction for struggling writers: what and how.

To respond to the articles in the current issue, I begin with an amalgamated conception of a transactional universe of reciprocal reading and composing processes that includes cognitive and social processes. Next, I situate the four studies in the current issue according to their epistemological emphases in the transactional conception. Three focal epistemological questions are framed as a way of situating each study: (a) what knowledge or processes do researchers emphasize most in the universe of composing processes? (b) Where do the researchers think that knowledge or those processes reside(s)? (c) How does one get or create that knowledge or those processes? Next, beneficial contributions to the field from the four studies are highlighted, and finally, future research directions are suggested.