Education Reform and the Limits of Discourse: Rereading Collaborative Revision of a Composition Program's Textbook

Abstract

This article links failed reform to failed education through a case study of an annual collaborative revision of a program textbook in the Composition Program at the Uni- versity of California at Irvine. Review of successive editions of the program's Student Guide to Writing at UCI reveals a progressive retreat from the program's pedagogical commitments and the reappearance of product-oriented instruction. here is increasing evidence that the failure of education reform is located in the educative act itself. James Milroy and Lesley Milroy observe that teach- ers' "rational conviction" about the intellectual bankruptcy of traditional no- tions of correctness in language use did not necessarily alter teachers' classroom practices, even though teachers appeared to believe they had done so (104). In a 1995 review of the assessment-driven reform movement across the United States, Larry Cuban reports a similar phenomenon. Teachers who actively embraced in-service training required to teach to the new assessments did not change their instructional practice to any significant degree, although teachers appeared to believe they had made the changes they had been taught