Writing Center Work Research Articles

Good Intentions: Writing Center Work for Postmodern Times

No abstract available.

Hospitality in the Writing Center: A Conceptual Framework for Tutors

ABSTRACT This article explores hospitality’s utility as a conceptual framework to assist writing tutors. The study, described in the article, investigated tutors’ perceptions concerning how Haswell & Haswell’s elaboration of hospitality—as a disposition—might bring about more positive, generative, and encouraging outcomes in writing center work. The data collected in the form of audio-recorded tutorials, post-tutorial interviews, and a focus group suggests that hospitality offers an open but promising schema to help tutors consider what responsible and ethical use of power and authority might look like for their appointments—particularly when working outside their disciplines and with multilingual students.

Beyond Accommodations: Imagination, Decolonization, and the Cripping of Writing Center Work

Beyond Accommodations: Imagination, Decolonization, and the Cripping of Writing Center Work

Negotiating Relationships at the Writing Center: Removing Roadblocks and Building Bridges

In our peer writing tutor/consultant alumni research project, participants indicate that writing center work is primarily focused on negotiating relationships. We identify two primary orientations participants had to negotiating relationships: “removing roadblocks” and “building bridges.” We discuss the potential for the bridge-building orientation to promote an inclusive culture of writing across campus.

Comfort, Contingency, and Writing Center Work: An Essay in Three Illusions

In this hybrid essay, I engage creatively with the illusory nature of contingent work, presenting three episodes from my personal experiences as a contingent writing program administrator (WPA) during the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, I interrogate these experiences by building on past critiques of “comfortable” writing centers, applying Sara Ahmed’s work on the affectiveness of (dis)comfort in order to examine comfort and its uneasy relationship with labor. For whom is the writing center expected to labor to provide comfort? Whose comfort, and moreover whose safety, is jeopardized or made invisible in the process? In answering these questions, this essay proposes that writing center work during the pandemic offers three valuable insights into contingency: first, how contingency is a state that generates semantic shifts around its workers, such as the slippery meaning of “comfort”; second, how contingency reproduces itself aesthetically in “comfortable” writing center spaces; and finally, how writing center professionals might work to resist the exhaustive demands of contingency within writing center work.

Veteran–Novice Pairing for Tutors’ Professional Development

This mixed methods study examines whether veteran–novice mentorship between tutors, as part of continuous in-service professional development, would have a positive effect on either party’s transferable skills (e.g., communication, collaboration, and professionalism). Quantitative findings from pre- and postsurveys about the veteran–novice mentorship suggest that tutors have significant gains in some transferable skills, such as oral/written communication skills, teamwork/collaboration skills, digital technology skills, and career management skills, after attending the continuous in-service professional development. Quantitative findings from the pre- and postsurveys further indicate that novice tutors improve more, compared to veteran tutors, in their self-perceived oral/written communication skill levels. Qualitative findings from postmentorship interviews explain findings suggested by quantitative analysis, with contextual factors. This research study has bifold significance: “a theoretical perspective” on writing center work and research-supported professional development strategies. The findings of this study provide more food for thought on the subjects of how to design veteran–novice mentorships, how to target some transferable skills for professional development in the future, and how to exemplify the transferable skills in the survey to make those abstract constructs more concrete.

Faith, Secularism, and the Need for Interfaith Dialogue in Writing Center Work

This article argues that religious and secularist identities complement and intersect in political ways with race, class, gender, sexuality, and nationality and that they inform writing center practice because belief exists along a spectrum that involves all writing center inhabitants and affects all writing-centered conversations. We suggest that this spectrum of faith is evocative of the spectrums that theorists of race, gender, and sexuality in particular have discussed, yet often faith has been overlooked in discussions of identity in writing center work (Denny, 2010). We propose that theories of race, gender, sexuality and other identities that have served as springboards for professional development in writing centers can help to facilitate the development of a greater literacy of faith and secularism as complicated and nuanced identities. Specifically, we believe theories involving intersectional social justice work and hybridity can help to facilitate self-reflective and productive interfaith dialogue or dialogue about faith and secularism. Thus, such theories can help writing center professionals dismantle stereotypes about believers and secularists and problematic notions of what faith, or a conversation about faith, is or should be.

Agents of Change: African American Contributions to Writing Centers

African Americans and their contributions to our field’s first pedagogical models and operational structures are absent from writing center histories. This archival research invokes their presence by recounting the stories of five African American innovators—Bess Bolden “B. B.” Walcott, Coragreene Johnstone, Anne Cooke, Hugh Gloster, and Percival Bertrand “Bert” Phillips—spanning four decades at three historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). Their stories invite an expansive understanding of writing center work, moving beyond a focus on traditional tutoring and strictly alphabetic literacies and into “strategic literacies”—the survival skills needed to stand up for oneself and one’s community in the face of dangerous times and violently racist places. The writing center leaders described here saw writing as a tool to be used in concert with embodied performances for expression and survival to advance struggles for labor equity, legal justice, and civil rights. This conception of writing center work springs from sites of research such as HBCU archives and popular Black press archives that are less often examined by dominant disciplinary histories. From those sites, a timeline of African American writing center administrators emerges that spurs further research of these under-studied figures, who together constitute a remarkable legacy.

Contingent Writing Center Work: Benefits, Risks, and the Need for Equity and Institutional Change

This study investigates and reports on the personal, professional, and programmatic benefits and risks associated with contingent writing center work. Interviews were conducted with 48 contingent writing centers workers, including directors, assistant directors, associate directors, graduate student workers, and tutors. Survey data of the interview participants showed contingent writing center workers are usually White women with advanced degrees. Most of this article focuses on interview data, analyzed using grounded theory. Interviews revealed participants’ understanding of what contingency means and revealed their struggles with instability, insecurity, and uncertainty even while they lauded the flexibility, freedom, and autonomy their contingency afforded them. The interview data also further revealed the ways in which these working conditions were created and maintained by the institution. These findings suggest the need for collective action across the composition and writing center fields—from professional organizations, tenure-line writing center workers, and contingent workers themselves. Through collective action, we can create equitable working conditions for all writing center workers.

Imagining the New Community: The Writing Center’s Hidden Antagonisms after the Neoliberal Turn

This paper reimagines writing center labor’s place within the university’s production of knowledge after neoliberalism. This positioning of writing center labor reveals parallels and affinities with the “feminized” characteristics of service sector labor, a type of work which has proliferated after deindustrialization. While I explore dimensions of writing center work that this positioning reveals, important limits to these parallels emerge, and within and beyond these descriptive limits I advocate redefinitions of writing center labor. Accordingly, I assert that this work escapes economic measure while embodying an ethos that is antithetical to the neoliberal imaginary’s individualist assumptions. The constantly shifting, emergent identities of students and tutors, alongside the writing center’s activation of the feminist care ethic through social production, are what characterize this challenge to forces shaping the university in the context of neoliberalism.

Access [dis]Abled: Interrogating Standard Design Practices of Higher Education Writing Center Websites

In the 11 years since the 2006 publication of the International Writing Center Association's (IWCA) Position Statements on Disability and Diversity, writing center scholars have continued to explore how disability issues intersect with writing center work including the development of accessible web content and interfaces (Hawkes, 2010). Recent studies have found that university websites were ineffectively designed, difficult to navigate, and omitting any representation or acknowledgment of students with disabilities (Gabel et al., 2016; Gabel & Miskovic, 2014; Meyer, 2008; Miskovic & Gabel, 2012). In this study, the primary author and four undergraduate student-researchers study where and how disability support is explicitly articulated on writing center websites from regional Institutions of Higher Education (IHEs) and how digital resources have been designed for students with disabilities. Results show that two out of the 35 writing center offices that exist at the 55 universities analyzed have a mission statement that explicitly articulates a support for students with disabilities. Writing center websites also ineffectively incorporate pictures, simple text, simple navigation, and other accessible features (71% of the 35 writing centers analyzed had websites where 21 – 70% of the content is inaccessible). Recommendations to address these problems are provided.

Session Notes as a Professionalization Tool for Writing Center Staff: Conducting Discourse Analysis to Determine Training Efficacy and Tutor Growth

A common practice in writing centers is to record the events of a tutoring session after it has occurred. Commonly written by tutors, “session notes” can be a useful resource for the day-to-day support work in which tutors engage. Currently, however, little research exists on how session notes can be used to measure tutor development and change over time. Instead, research focuses predominantly how particular audiences interact with session notes, rather than the linguistic content therein. This study addresses the gap in research between the conceptual and practical uses of session notes. The researchers implemented semesterly training modules for tutors, and then conducted a longitudinal discourse analysis of 1,261 session notes that were collected over six semesters. Session notes were coded for 12 variables to include behavioral, semantic, and affective reflections on writing center work. From this analysis, we were able to conceptualize how, in completing these forms, tutors describe their tutoring practice and demonstrate their tutoring knowledge. Findings show that, for many aspects of note taking, a semester of experience has an effect on tutors, such that they start to conform on note taking practices; however, specific trainings can change the behavior of experienced tutors.

Measuring the Effectiveness of Writing Center Consultations on L2 Writers’ Essay Writing Skills

With the international growth of English-medium education, tertiary institutions are increasingly providing academic support services to L2 students, and thus, the number of writing centers working with L2 student writers has also increased. Writing center practices originated in L1 English educational contexts and their appropriateness for L2 English writers requires examination. This study investigated the effect of writing center consultations on the essay writing skills of L1 Arabic foundation level students at an English-medium university in the Gulf region. Analysis was based on quantitative measures of writing ability of two distinct groups of students: an experimental group who participated in tutoring sessions at the university’s writing center and a control group who did not. Findings indicated that students who participated in writing center consultations scored significantly higher in overall essay writing scores, as well as in two aspects of writing: task fulfilment (that is ideas) and text organization/coherence. These findings contribute to a limited bank of similar empirical studies on effectiveness of writing center sessions on students’ essay writing ability. They also support the case for the expansion of writing center work beyond the domains of predominantly L1 English academic communities.

Moving beyond Alright: And the Emotional Toll of This, my Life Matters Too, in the Writing Center Work

Moving beyond Alright: And the Emotional Toll of This, my Life Matters Too, in the Writing Center Work

Review: Around the Texts of Writing Center Work by R. Mark Hall

Review: Around the Texts of Writing Center Work by R. Mark Hall

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...

Looking Up: Mapping Writing Center Work through Institutional Ethnography

Looking Up: Mapping Writing Center Work through Institutional Ethnography

Educating and Recruiting Multilingual and Other Graduate Students for Writing Center Work

Educating and Recruiting Multilingual and Other Graduate Students for Writing Center Work

Building social capital with skills transfer in the writing center at American Design University in Qatar

This study examines English faculty perceptions of the Writing Center at American Design University in Qatar (ADU-Q) through a social capital analysis. This was part of a larger study that took a sociocultural approach to English faculty perceptions of writing center work at ADU-Q. One of the emergent themes in that study was the lack of students’ language skill transfer from English courses to their disciplines. This finding has critical implications for the development of writing center and writing-across-the-disciplines work by uniting the fields of Composition, TESOL, and writing center research.

Vygotsky, Scaffolding, and the Role of Theory in Writing Center Work

Vygotsky, Scaffolding, and the Role of Theory in Writing Center Work