“We Have to Find What We're Doing Right to Move Forward”: Enacting Secondary Level Writing Reform in a Sea of Change

ABSTRACT Despite calls for writing reform over the past two decades, few of the recommendations from this work have made their way into high school classrooms in the United States where concerns about the paucity and quality of writing instruction remain. To gain deeper insights into the reasons for this phenomenon, this study examined a dialogic and iterative approach to embedded professional development focused on writing instruction that included a university partnership. Using the methodology of portraiture to explore empirical data, the study examined the process of revamping writing instruction in ninth and tenth grade English and how teachers with varying backgrounds of knowledge and experience teaching writing navigated writing instruction in a context of changing demands. The findings highlight the daily challenges of implementing writing reform, emphasize the importance of structural stability to sustain such reform, and illustrate the need for co‐constructed dialogic learning with teachers and leadership striving to improve writing instruction. Two narrative portraits, assembled as a montage exemplifying persistent issues of contending with teacher turnover and changes in state mandatory testing, capture the struggle and potential of dialogic professional development to reform instructional practices. This study also queries the potential role of university researchers as engaged partners committed to long‐term inquiry in support of educational reform.