Patricia Freitag Ericsson
Dissertation Abstract

Beyond the Laments, Beyond the Boundaries: Communicating about Composition

The public understanding of "writing instruction" remains firmly anchored in the belief that the only appropriate writing instruction is one concerned with forms and correctness. This misguided understanding of writing instruction fuels several problematic issues in composition studies including the abolitionist movement, hiring, class size, and assessment. In order to bring a more informed understanding of our disciplinary knowledge to a wider audience, to improve communication about composition, and to address some of the problems an uninformed understanding of writing instruction creates, I have studied the attempts of two organizations, the National Council of Teachers of English and the Council of Writing Program Administrators, to bring a more informed understanding of our disciplinary knowledge to a wider audience though standards and outcomes projects. I argue that standards and outcomes projects and the documents they produce serve our discipline as public policy documents. As such, these projects and documents deserve careful analysis, and conclusions about how to create better public policy need to be considered.

My three-part analysis includes 1) detailed research into the history of each project; 2) construction of an analytical scaffold that combines agency theory, rhetorical theory, and public policy theory; 3) application of the analytical scaffold to carefully examine each project, the document it produced, and how that document has been used. In addition to drawing conclusions based on this analysis, I also consider three recent studies and publications that consider the teaching of writing: the National Writing Project's Because Writing Matters, the AAU/Pew Foundation's Understanding University Success," and the College Board National Commission on Writing's Neglected "R".

I argue that composition scholars need to pay attention to political matters to guide their efforts to become more effective agents of change and better public policy advocates. I also argue that composition scholars need to form stronger, more effective advocacy coalitions to actively promote a public understanding of writing instruction that is informed by the last thirty years of composition scholarship.