Practicing change: Curricular innovation and change in writing programs

While much research in composition calls for---and offers advice for carrying out---curriculum change, the social processes through which such change occurs in writing programs have been under-researched. Additionally, composition scholars have tended to undertheorize curriculum and have relied on commonsense understandings. Theorizing curriculum and researching curriculum change can help administrators and teachers to carry out curricular innovations and change of their own and can improve how writing programs serve their populations, especially their teachers and students. This dissertation (1) unpacks implicit and explicit theories of curriculum in composition; (2) draws on theory of communities of practice to articulate an analytical framework for describing curriculum and curriculum change; and (3) presents a qualitative case study of curricular innovation and change in the writing program of large private non-profit university in the Northeastern United States. Research for this case study included semi-structured interviews with three writing teachers and three writing program administrators; semester-long ethnographic observations of a writing class; and document collection and analysis. Based on an analysis of case-study data, this dissertation argues that curriculum and curriculum change should be understood as plural and emergent. It also argues that theory of communities of practice offers a productive framework for understanding locally situated social processes that produce curriculum change. This study concludes by recommending that research on curriculum and curriculum change move beyond providing accounts of policy change and curriculum planning, in order to attend more closely to students' experiences of curriculum, patterns in those experiences, changes in those patterns, and the social processes that structure curriculum and lead to curriculum change.