Writing Center Scholarship Research Articles

Writing Tutor Alumni Takeaways: Pros and Cons of Contingency

This essay aims to build upon the Peer Writing Tutor Alumni Research Project (PWTARP), designed by Bradley Hughes, Paula Gillespie, and Harvey Kail (2010), which focuses on what tutors learn about themselves as writers and students. However, the PWTARP survey, like much of writing center scholarship, focuses on student workers attending PWIs (Predominately White Institutions). To help fill the diversity gap in the existing literature, the current study uses the PWTARP survey as a frame of reference to investigate what tutors learned about themselves as writers and students at a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI). Based on feedback from a team of current and former tutors, we added questions that addressed demographics, multilingualism, and worker conditions. We conducted a mixed methods case study and collected data via surveys and focus group interviews with tutor alumni before and during the COVID-19 pandemic (2019–2022). Our findings connect with many results of the original PWTARP and other responses about economic vulnerability and the emotional labor of tutoring. Also, our survey produced many useful findings about issues related to being a contingent worker, including economic pressures, emotional labor, and professional development.

Review: Counterstories from the Writing Center by Wonderful Faison and Frankie Condon

Counterstories from the Writing Center is a book that centers the perspectives and experiences of peoples of color in writing centers as tutors, administrators, and students. The book aims to educate all readers, but specifically “white, straight, cisgendered women (WSCGW)” (p. 5), whose presence has permeated writing center scholarship and work, about how writing centers often engage in representational change or practice, applying Band-Aid solutions that fail to enact social justice and antiracist practices. The goal of the book is to get readers to exercise a certain level of humility, to reflect on and accept responsibility, in order to enact genuine and true change that begins to address and resolve issues of racism in writing centers.

Writing Centers, Enclaves, and Creating Spaces of Change Within Universities

Writing center scholarship often highlights the ways in which their distinctive, less directive, nongraded, and individualized instruction can make them distinctive social and pedagogical spaces. There is a simultaneous argument, however, that writing centers are often institutionally vulnerable and may be unable to engage in or promote such differences within the larger college or university. Yet, despite their size and possible vulnerability, the daily practices and institutional positioning of writing centers can help change conversations and work toward a different vision, political approach, and institutional presence. Drawing on Victor Friedman’s concept of “enclaves of different practice” and Brian Massumi’s theories of affect, this article explores how writing centers can adopt a theory of institutional change grounded in social fields and relationships. If, as Friedman advocates, institutions can be changed from the “inside out” through attention to empowering relationships and reconfiguring social fields, writing centers can adopt dispositions and practices to create the environments from which futures can emerge that sustain their values. The article provides brief examples of how a writing center can explicitly frame and promote pedagogical and participatory values to work toward larger institutional and political change.

Review: Advocating, Building, and Collaborating: A Resource Toolkit to Sustain Secondary School Writing Centers edited by Renee Brown and Stacey Waldrup

The past decade has shown enormous growth in the number of SSWCs and a need for increased scholarship and research from this group. Inspired by the work of previous secondary school writing center director (SSWCD) authors, the content offered in the Advocating, Building, and Collaborating toolkit is rooted in directors’ real experiences in K–12 schools, rather than in the post-secondary context we find in most writing center scholarship.

The Response to the Call for RAD Research: A Review of Articles in The Writing Center Journal, 2007–2018

The study examined in this article explored the impact of RAD research on articles (N = 97) in a 12-year period of The Writing Center Journal (WCJ), in 2007–2012 and 2013–2018, to achieve four purposes: 1. to document the amount of replicable, aggregable, and data-supported (RAD) research published in WCJ in two equal periods before and after Driscoll & Wynn Perdue’s (2012) call for RAD research in writing center scholarship; 2. to identify how WCJ articles score in individual areas specified in Driscoll & Wynn Perdue’s RAD research rubric; 3. to provide an understanding of methodological trends in research published in WCJ by examining the most common methods of inquiry; and 4. to understand trending research interests in the field by highlighting themes running through the research articles. The analysis demonstrated important differences between WCJ articles published in these time periods in all four areas examined, i.e., the amount of RAD research, changes in individual RAD rubric scores, methods of inquiry, and research trends, illustrating that the field is taking up Driscoll & Wynn Perdue’s call for more such research. This article includes a discussion of findings, acknowledgement of study limitations, and suggestions for future research.

Writing Center Research: Reflecting on “Radical Reciprocity in Online Spaces”

Writing Center peer tutor, Abby Bernard, describes her journey with Writing Center research. Bernard first explains her understanding of Michele Eodice's concept of "participatory hospitality" before examining participatory hospitality in online, asynchronous writing studios. This inquiry presents an opportunity to further understand which tutoring practices may foster participatory hospitality, as well as demonstrates the process of research within Writing Center scholarship.

Writing Center Research: Reflecting on “Radical Reciprocity in Online Spaces”

Writing Center peer tutor, Abby Bernard, describes her journey with Writing Center research. Bernard first explains her understanding of Michele Eodice's concept of "participatory hospitality" before examining participatory hospitality in online, asynchronous writing studios. This inquiry presents an opportunity to further understand which tutoring practices may foster participatory hospitality, as well as demonstrates the process of research within Writing Center scholarship.

Partners in Literacy: A Writing Center Model for Civic Engagement by Allen Brizee and Jaclyn M. Wells

Reviewed by: Partners in Literacy: A Writing Center Model for Civic Engagement by Allen Brizee and Jaclyn M. Wells Allison Bennett Partners in Literacy: A Writing Center Model for Civic Engagement Allen Brizee and Jaclyn M. Wells Rowman & Littlefield, 2016. 165 pp. As most writing center practitioners can attest, their participation in community engagement is not new; plenty of writing centers regularly engage with community members on and off campus. However, the published conversations surrounding this engagement are few and far between. Thankfully, Allen Brizee and Jaclyn M. Wells's Partners in Literacy: A Writing Center Model for Civic Engagement—a resource that is sure to intrigue more than just writing center administrators—can now be added to the mix. In her 2014 book Rhetoric of Respect: Recognizing Change at a Community Writing Center, Tiffany Rousculp touches on the infrequent attention "seminal writing center scholarship" gives to "theories or pedagogies of empowerment, public writing, or community engagement" (46). Rousculp's purpose is to help educators interested in activist efforts understand the Salt Lake Community College Community Writing Center's (CWC) value (6). Two years after her book was published, beginning in August 2016, Jaquelyn Davis and Tereza Joy Kramer authored a four-part series on the state of service-learning in writing centers on the WCJ Blog Community, featured on The Writing Center Journal website. Davis and Kramer intended to "work toward a revision of service-learning in the writing center, one that better reflects the mutuality at the heart of writing center work." As they walk readers through this revision, they compare the "substantial" literature available on service-learning and composition to the mere handful of articles on writing center service-learning work printed in the WLN and WCJ in recent years. The reality that scholarship on writing center community engagement is scarce clearly fuels both Rousculp's and Davis and Kramer's separate yet similar intentions, thereby inspiring continued dialogue: cue Brizee and Wells. In their preface, Brizee and Wells echo the shared observation regarding limited scholarship, acknowledging that while the number of both writing center books and community engagement books continues to increase, these resources are being published independently of each other. Consequently, Brizee and Wells's aim with Partners in Literacy is to "[blend] the two scholarly areas together" (xiv); this combined [End Page 106] approach permeates the presentation of their content. Brizee and Wells mix reflection, methodology, findings, and discussion, alongside a research narrative of their three-year engagement project, beginning modestly from a graduate public rhetoric course assignment. While their project would eventually exceed the parameters of the semester, their positions in the Purdue University Writing Lab allowed them to continue partnering with the Lafayette Adult Resource Academy (LARA), a community literacy program for adults, and WorkOne, an organization offering workforce development and employment support (xi), to create and test online GED, ESL, and job document resources. Their initiative responded to a noticeable void on Purdue OWL: the website lacked writing resources for the community beyond the university. As a result, Community Writing and Education Station, or CWEST (pronounced "quest"), was formed. Overall, Brizee and Wells's approach to exploring writing center community engagement is similar to Rousculp's: both offer an honest, reflective narrative of the authors' experiences with engagement, elucidating how each initiative responded to a specific community need and highlighting the importance of location and place as well as the authors' own respective relationships as transplants within a community. They also encourage readers to move beyond misguided perceptions of engagement. Throughout their project, Brizee and Wells maintained their mission not to merely be of service to community members but rather to engage with them (128). Rousculp argues that, while some felt as though the CWC wrote "with the Salt Lake community," in actuality, "the 'community wrote' with the CWC" (22–23, emphasis original). Yet it is Brizee and Wells's emergent methodology that provides readers with a replicable example of the recursive nature of writing center engagement that, although arguably present, is far less explicit in Rousculp's account of the CWC. Brizee and Wells rely on details of the CWEST project to illustrate the steps leading to engagement and reveal...

The Line That Should Not Be Drawn

This article argues that writing centers must recognize themselves as already reading centered and prepare tutors to teach multiple ways of reading because current writing center scholarship does not help sufficiently with nonliterary reading work and because doing so would position centers to fully support students as they work within the wealth of “new” reading pedagogy and curriculum that has surfaced (or resurfaced) in recent years. It discusses the limitations of tutor handbooks in supporting tutors in reading-focused sessions and offers a tangible tool for helping tutors begin thinking and talking about reading work, ending with a call for writing centers to reconceptualize themselves as reading centered in order to embrace and explore “new” reading pedagogies through research and practice.

Reconsiderations: After “The Idea of a Writing Center”

Originally published in a 1984 issue of College English, Stephen North’s article “The Idea of a Writing Center” has over the years been much cited in writing center scholarship. Even so, this scholarship as a whole did not proceed to gain much presence in CE and other broadly-oriented composition journals. Reconsidering North’s piece, the authors argue for greater attention now to writing centers as sites for potentially valuable scholarly inquiry.

Review: The Center Will Hold: Critical Perspectives on Writing Center Scholarship

Review: The Center Will Hold: Critical Perspectives on Writing Center Scholarship

Reaffirming, Reflecting, Reforming: Writing Center Scholarship Comes of Age

Reaffirming, Reflecting, Reforming: Writing Center Scholarship Comes of Age

REVIEW: Reaffirming, Reflecting, Reforming: Writing Center Scholarship Comes of Age

REVIEW: Reaffirming, Reflecting, Reforming: Writing Center Scholarship Comes of Age

Institutional and Intimate Contexts: A Review of Recent Writing Center Scholarship

Institutional and Intimate Contexts: A Review of Recent Writing Center Scholarship

Bibliography of Recent Writing Center Scholarship (Nov. 1993-Oct. 1994)

Bibliography of Recent Writing Center Scholarship (Nov. 1993-Oct. 1994)

Bibliography of Recent Writing Center Scholarship (April 1992-October 1993)

Bibliography of Recent Writing Center Scholarship (April 1992-October 1993)

Bibliography of Recent Writing Center Scholarship (April 1991 - March 1992)

Bibliography of Recent Writing Center Scholarship (April 1991 - March 1992)

Bibliography of Recent Writing Center Scholarship (April 1990 - March 1991)

Bibliography of Recent Writing Center Scholarship (April 1990 - March 1991)

Checklist of Recent Writing Center Scholarship: April 1989-March 1990

Checklist of Recent Writing Center Scholarship: April 1989-March 1990

Checklist of Recent Writing Center Scholarship: April 1988-March 1989

Checklist of Recent Writing Center Scholarship: April 1988-March 1989