Localizing Pedagogy: Inquiring into the Teaching Practices and Attitudes of First-Year Writing Instructors and Curriculum Designers at Makerere University

Esther R. Namubiru

Advisor: Douglas Eyman, PhD, Department of English

Committee Members: Susan Lawrence, Rebecca Fox, Isidore Dorpenyo

Horizon Hall, #4225, https://gmu.zoom.us/j/98617813656?pwd=7XsIazcCYM7rIhdGtBaApHkBe2Yj9w.1
April 20, 2026, 02:30 PM to 04:30 PM

Abstract:

Ugandan universities face the criticism that their graduates are ill-prepared for discipline and professional contexts due to their writing and language proficiencies (The Monitor, 2021; Nalukenge, Wamala, & Ocaya, 2016). The universities are situated in a dynamic postcolonial setting that has a historical narrative about lagging literacy rates in Uganda curricular improvement efforts notwithstanding, ongoing national policy calls to change teachers’ professionalization and certification procedures, and growing partnerships between local and international universities to create more writing program resources (Ssekanda, Mugenyi, & Achola, 2024; Smith, 2023; National Teachers Policy, 2018). At Makerere University, the first university created in Uganda upon independence, prior research about students’ writing has questioned how effectively the university’s students are prepared for academic writing in the disciplines, the students’ attitudes toward (and ability to access) university resources that support their writing skills, and the potential for online tools and artificial intelligence to increase students’ communication proficiency (Nassanga et al, 2025; Namatovu & Kyambade, 2025; Nalukenge, Wamala, & Ocaya, 2016). These converging trends, narratives, and research present a unique opportunity to understand how writing and English are taught to Makerere’s first-year students. This dissertation, which is undergirded by narrative inquiry (Clandinin & Connelly, 1990) and the locus of enunciation concept (Mignolo, 1994) thematically analyzes syllabi and interview transcripts of writing instructors and curriculum designers teaching a writing course meant for first-year students at Makerere to understand how writing and English are taught as well as the attitudes instructors have toward students’ English writing. Having found five themes which paint a comprehensive overview of the local instructors’ teaching choices and attitudes toward students’ English writing, this study has several implications from interrupting situated threshold concepts in writing studies, composition, and rhetoric (WCR) fields’ like writing process, standard English ideology etc to highlighting the importance of institution and labor in pedagogy to emphasizing the expansion of transnational writing studies. Moreover, the study validates local instructors’ creativity and resourcefulness in their teaching and proposes institutional and national-level teacher support mechanisms that can be integrated into teacher-related policies in Uganda’s education sector.