Analytic strategies, competent inquiries, and methodological tensions in the study of writing

While knowledge making is imperative for any disciplinary field (as Haswell, "NCTE/CCCC's Recent War on Scholarship," rightly notes), it is particularly important for the field of writing studies, where the object of study-contemporary writing practice-is not fixed but fluid and changing. This knowledge making depends on what John C. Dewey calls "competent inquiries," which we understand to be inquiries that are systematic, self-conscious, clearly articulated, and warranted. Hence, the nature of inquiry and the methodological issues associated with it are becoming increasingly salient-as this volume's editors so clearly argue. Copyright