This collection of abstracts is part of a continuing series providing information on recent doctoral dissertations. The 38 titles deal with a variety of topics, including the following: (1) how writing centers succeed and fail; (2) the effects of scoring method, topic, and mode on grade 12 students' writing scores; (3) analysis of the peer conferences of upper elementary writers; (4) toward a pedagogy of rewriting; (5) the development of journalistic writing styles; (6) effects of assignment on writing quality and lexical cohesion at four grade levels; (7) attitudes of principals toward written composition research and instructional leadership practices associated with effective writing programs; (8) criteria for evaluating teaching behaviors of college writing instructors; (9) the function of rereading in the writing process; (10) writing stories under time and length constraints; (11) oral and textual composing patterns of beginning writers; (12) effects of teacher-written comments on the revision of description essays by college freshmen; (13) the dimensions of purpose in college writing; (14) the effect of writing upon good and poor writers' learning from prose; and (15) the transactive-developmental writing process as an instructional theory in response to competency testing. (HOD)