The process paradigm for teaching writing has been the dominant curricular model for the past 20 years, but by anatomizing various dimensions of this paradigm, it becomes clear why it, like any other paradigmatic model, will not last forever. To be adopted and become normative, any new paradigm has to appeal to salient features of the prevailing intellectual, social, and political climate. The process paradigm has become embedded and promulgated in the theory, research, and textbooks that dominate the field because it satisfies a number of dimensions lacking in the old, current-traditional paradigm. However, every paradigm is heavily value-laden; as values and priorities change, paradigms must change to accommodate them. An examination of these dimensions (intellectual, pedagogical, political, philosophical, social, ethnographic, psychological, gender, professional, and economic) demonstrates how the process paradigm satisfies values and priorities and delineates potentially disruptive influences. An educational model is unstable because the population it represents is not static, and the very dimensions listed above reside in a constant state of flux. When the process paradigm is supplanted, as it inevitably must be, its replacement will embed and accommodate many of the same principles that the process paradigm has accommodated so comfortably. Certainly, whatever new paradigms arise, they will be expected to fulfill enduring, value-laden national goals, existing, necessarily, not only for the individual's, but also for the nation's own good. (Thirty-eight references are appended.) (HB)