- Interconnected: “All of the acts, actors, and objects in an ecology are connected, both in space and time and the interactions among them reverberate throughout and beyond the system itself” (6). Writing programs “are intertwined with departments, divisions, and colleges; majors, minors, and concentrations; colleagues, organizations, and scholarship; administrators, faculty and students” [and so on] (6).
- Fluctuation: “ecologies are in constant flux and continual transformation. Ecologies evolve over time, are influenced and transformed through actions and activity, and fluctuate, grow and wither as a result of internal and external forces” (6). “In fact, a mark of success in a writing program is its ability to transform, adapt, and evolve as a result of interactions and influences…[W]riting programs adapt to constraints and external impositions while strategically re-appropriating them to their advantage” (7).
- Complexity: “Complexity refers to the intricate interweaving of discrete aspects in apparently chaotic systems. Complexity arises when an increasing number of variables interact to form an ecology…Complexity theory postulates that those components are strongly interrelated, self-organizing, and dynamic” (8). “Writing programs embody and enact this complexity, as they are systems of interaction in which order, patterns, and structure (be it learning outcomes, assessment mechanisms, training and professional development programs, curricular infrastructure) arise and create meaning through ongoing, interactive, contingent performances” (8).
- Emergence: “Emergence refers to the ways in which unique and coherent structures, patterns, and properties evolve during the process of self-organization in complex systems. Ecologies are seen as emergent when the actors or objects within them form more complex behaviors as a collective…Emergence is what self-organizing, complex ecologies produce” (9). “Writing programs are emergent in that they create something new from the shared perspectives and interactions among faculty, administrators and students…The very concept of a ‘writing program’ is an emergent attribute of the contemporary university system, and such programs will give way to new structures, patterns, and developments in the future” (9).
Reiff et al argue that, though we acknowledge writing is ecological, we have been studied writing programs as ecologies: “we are suggesting that writing programs are quintessentially discursive and material ecologies because they emerge through complex networks of interrelations, depend upon adaptation, fluidity, and the constant motion of discursive systems, are generative and constitutive of diverse rhetorics and discourses, and exhibit a range of other ecological characteristics” (4). They use a framework of four characteristics: interconnectedness, fluctuation, complexity, and emergence.
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