Writing Centers Between Past and Future: Outstanding Scholarship Award Texts and Student Success

WRITING CENTERS BETWEEN PAST AND FUTURE: OUTSTANDING SCHOLARSHIP AWARD TEXTS AND STUDENT SUCCESS

A dissertation submitted to the Kent State University College of Education, Health, and Human Services in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

By Leah A. Schell-Barber May 2020

A dissertation written by

Leah A. Schell-Barber

B.A., The University of Akron, 2003

M.A., The University of Akron, 2006

Ph.D., Kent State University, 2020

Approved by

______, Co-director, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Natasha Levinson

______, Member, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Tricia Niesz

______, Member, Doctoral Dissertation Committee Alicia Crowe

Accepted by

______, Director, School of Foundations, Leadership Kimberly Schimmel and Administration

______, Dean, College of Education Health, and James C. Hannon Human Services

iii

SCHELL-BARBER, LEAH A., Ph.D., May 2020 Cultural Foundations

WRITING CENTERS BETWEEN PAST AND FUTURE: OUTSTANDING SCHOLARSHIP AWARD TEXTS AND STUDENT SUCCESS (204 pp.)

Director of Dissertation: Natasha Levinson, Ph.D.

This project uses Hannah Arendt’s concept of gaps to show how writing centers will perpetually be in a state of becoming. The term gap signifies a place in time where there is potential for revolution and transformation and is inadvertently opened revealing things that wouldn’t ordinarily be within view. Through Outstanding Scholarship Award- winning texts, I investigate how writing center identity and conceptions of student success have shifted over time and are currently within a gap between past and future.

As writing centers began to professionalize as a legitimate field of study in the 1980s, their focus on student success shifted from supporting institutional expectations for student writers to questioning those expectations in relation to student capital.

Additionally, writing center scholars discuss the conflict created by their role as both a student support service within the university and advocate for student success. Each chapter focuses on a different theme found within the scholarship: the conceptualization of student success, research practices within the field, and expectations and realities concerning writing center administrators. Findings suggest that the continuous nature of writing center work provides writing centers with an opportunity to gather new evidence

that their efforts affect student success and are a valuable asset in the perpetuation of education for a democratic society.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am humbled and grateful to have had such an amazing support system throughout my tenure at Kent State University. First and foremost, my husband, Justin Barber, is my rock. This dissertation would not be possible without his unconditional love and consistent patience. I would also like to thank Dr. Natasha Levinson for offering critical feedback to gently nudge my thinking to places I never thought possible. An additional heartfelt and sentimental offering of thanks to my parents, David and Sylvia Schell, for always believing in my abilities and never doubting my dreams. Finally, to Tessa, my forever companion and four-legged friend, thank you for ensuring I never wrote alone.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... vi

I. HANNAH ARENDT AND THE CRISIS OF EDUCATION: WHY THE GAP BETWEEN PAST AND FUTURE MATTERS FOR WRITING CENTER STUDIES...... 1 Background and Context of the Study…………………………………………….4 Study Design and Dissertation Overview ...... 12

II. STUDENT SUCCESS AND WRITING CENTERS IN OUTSTANDING SCHOLARSHIP AWARD TEXTS ...... 19 A Nontraditional Perspective: Student Success and Writing Centers ...... 20 Writing Centers and Remediation: A Contemporary History...... 23 Student Success, Power, and Literacy ...... 32 Student Success after Good Intentions: International Students, Race, and Literacy as a Cultural Practice ...... 42 The Idea of a Writing Center: Tradition, Grand Narratives, and Opportunity ..... 52

III. WRITING CENTER RESERCH PATTERNS, CRITIQUE, AND METHODOLOGIES IN OUTSTANDING SCHOLARSHIP AWARD TEXTS ...... 61 RAD Research: Calling Scholars and Publishers to Task ...... 62 Writing Center Research: Developing a Critical Lens ...... 65 Writing Centers as Research Site and Legitimacy ...... 65 In-house Critique, Research Methodology, and Student Success ...... 77 Research Methodology: New Directions, Silenced Voices, and (the lack of) Quantitative Research ...... 80 Student Success ...... 91 The Future of Writing Center Research ...... 95

IV. EXPECTATIONS AND REALITIES CONCERNING WRITING CENTER ADMINISTRATION IN OUTSTANDING SCHOLARSHIP AWARD TEXTS ...... 101 Writing Center Administrators: Expectations and Realities ...... 103 Tutor Training and Writing Center Outreach: Defining Tutors...... 113 Tutor Training and Writing Center Outreach: Defining Tutoring ...... 122

Outreach: Looking Out, Looking In ...... 135 Defining Writing Centers, Defining Writing Center Administration ...... 142

V. ACKNOWLEDGING THE “GAP”: WRITING CENTERS AS LEADERS OF TRANSFORMATIVE CHANGE IN HIGHER EDUCATION ...... 150 Encountering the “Other”: Writing Centers and Community ...... 155 Potential for Writing Centers in Responding to the Crisis in Education ...... 168

REFERENCES ...... 179

CHAPTER I

HANNAH ARENDT AND THE CRISIS OF EDUCATION: WHY THE GAP

BETWEEN PAST AND FUTURE MATTERS FOR WRITING CENTER

STUDIES

Seen from the viewpoint of man, who always lives in the interval between past and future, time is not a continuum, a flow of uninterrupted succession; it is broken in the middle, at the point where “he” stands; and “his” standpoint is not the present as we usually understand it but rather a gap in time which “his” constant fighting, “his” making a stand against past and future, keeps in existence. (Arendt, 1961, p. 10)

…

When the term “gap” is mentioned in education, it’s often to signify an achievement gap, a gap in access to technology, a gap between one set of students compared to another. However, for Hannah Arendt (1961), the term gap signifies a place in time where there is potential for revolution and transformation. It pushes the current trajectory of social movements from their path and invites change. The gap between the past and the future is inadvertently opened in order to see things that wouldn’t ordinarily be within view. While some of the “gaps” in achievement and equality have the potential to be solved in some way, the gap Arendt focuses on serves to draw attention to a problem - to open it up rather than close it down.

As a support service for students, writing centers historically have been tasked to aid in bridging the gap between what students know and what they need to know in order to persist in post-secondary education. However, this fostering has also opened a gap as

referred to by Arendt, a gap not intended to be bridged but to draw attention to a disconnect of the idea of a writing center. Throughout the past 30 years, the idea of a writing center has shifted from serving the university to serving students and has since fostered questioning about the purpose of writing centers’ role in higher education. In

1984, a capstone year in the professionalization of writing centers as an academic field,

North, a writing center scholar who won the initial Outstanding Scholarship Award from the International Writing Centers Association (IWCA), addressed misunderstandings of the purpose of a writing center by his colleagues. To do this, North questions what writing centers should be, especially if they shouldn’t be the remedial and grammar fix-it shops they’re often viewed as by faculty (composition or otherwise). Essentially, North comes to define writing centers as places not to correct student writing but as a place to support students as writers. He ends his manifesto with a call to writing faculty to revise their view of writing centers as a remedial service and instead see writing centers as a place for writers to talk about writing: “In short, we are not here to serve, supplement, back up, complement, reinforce, or otherwise be defined by any external curriculum. We are here to talk to writers” (p. 52). Essentially, North’s idea of a writing center focuses on the development of the student writer as opposed to the written product a student develops.

The late 1990s became an era of literacy studies and postmodern theoretical applications of the idea of a writing center. Scholarship from this time questioned institutional requirements and highlighted the capital students from myriad backgrounds brought to higher education. Many writing center administrators and scholars at this time

focused on training tutors to acknowledge the individuality and differences students brought with them to writing tutorials. Through the 2000s, scholars continued to focus on equality and developing a space for students that reflected an understanding of their possible struggles in higher education. Scholars also continued to critique and elaborate

North’s “Idea,” and in doing so, many writing center traditions and ways of thinking were established. In 2016, however, Salem brings the conversation full circle, and instead of focusing on the misunderstanding of writing faculty of what the idea of a writing center is like North did, she appeals to her fellow writing center colleagues to question, again, what the idea of a writing center should be. Essentially, she notices a gap in which the problem of writing center identity can be brought to light. Salem argues that the current idea of what a writing center is and does has created a gap between the academic and demographic characteristics of students who seek assistance and those who do not. She claims that the writing center’s raison d’être, to support the students it serves, has been outside of the spotlight for too long and argues “for completely rethinking what we do and why we do it […] ensuring that students who visit the writing center get the best support we can provide them” (p. 164).

For the better part of 30 years, writing center scholars have continued to argue about a conceptual framework that defines their service and its role in higher education.

The purpose of this study is to explore the idea of a writing center and how it has transformed from a space where students can talk about their writing to a call for completely rethinking writing centers within higher education in terms of their purpose, the nature of their work, and how they are understood by the institutions that house them.

Additionally, it aims to reveal how writing center scholars (a) define and contextualize

student success, (b) research writing centers and promote of the effectiveness of their

work, and (c) view their status as a professionalized field. This study proposes that

Arendt’s conception of “gaps” is a conceptual hook that mitigates the worry that writing

centers are in crisis.i The aim of this study is twofold: (a) to explain how these scholars

understand the crisis at particular moments in time and (b) to assess whether these centers

are indeed in a state of crisis, or whether it might be better to see them as operating

within a “gap” in the purpose of the broader institution of a university. Arendt’s

conception of the “gap” between the past and future of the writing center will aid in

defining the potential writing centers have to be harbingers of transformation within

higher education.

Background and Context of the Study

While a gap in time can breed hope, it’s not without dilemmas, crises, and consternation. Hannah Arendt (1961) explores this notion of the gap in her text, Between

Past and Future where she centers on how key political terms (justice, reason, responsibility, virtue, and glory) have lost their meaning, creating a crisis now faced by what she terms as modern society or the Modern Age. In this text, Arendt works to pinpoint what needs to be rethought in essays focused on the concepts of tradition, history, authority, freedom, education and culture, truth and politics, and the conquest of space. She explores what no longer holds in these concepts, and what we need to understand about current social conditions. In the case of this study, this kind of exploration will focus on the institution’s responsibility to students, which is quite

different than previous eras when the aim was to fit students to the university. Writing centers will be a focal point for a broader and more pivotal discussion of the university’s responsibility to students. Within the context of being in crisis, writing centers are not in need of fixing but rather, through an opening of the “gap,” can be harbingers of institutional transformation.

Throughout Arendt’s essays, she regards the gap between past and future as “the only region perhaps where truth eventually will appear” (p. 14). Developing an understanding of this gap provides insight on how moving in any direction affects future outcomes of a particular movement. In other words, it’s a conceptual gap having to do with the purpose of a writing center, but it also has to do with a gap between past expectations of students and conceptions of student success and current understandings of these things. Additionally, an exploration of the gap in terms of writing centers can assist in illuminating how past and current scholarship reveals how they are positioned to head into the future. While a “truth” may not necessarily be revealed through such an exploration, developing a more concrete understanding of how writing centers can use

Arendt’s attention to gaps as a way to comprehend disjunctures is useful for looking anew at the role of the writing center on college campuses today.

The gap, as defined by Arendt, occurs when a person’s mind is forced into a displacement of thought that invites a rethinking aimed at shifting the trajectory of current thought. This can happen when a person is able to escape from thought into action, and then after having acted, the person is again forced back into thought. Arendt argues that the relevance of this process is to notice that

the appeal to thought arose in the odd in-between period which sometimes inserts

itself into historical time when not only the later historians but the actors and

witnesses, the living themselves, become aware of an interval in time which is

altogether determined by things that are no longer and by things that are not yet.

(p. 9)

In Arendt’s view, the gap occurs when those in the present develop an awareness that a tradition is no longer warranted; however, the outcome of the denouncing of that tradition is yet unknown. In Arendt’s words, “these intervals have shown more than once that they may contain the moment of truth” (p. 9). While gaps seem to be a phenomenal opportunity to act anew, it is those actions which spur further thought. And the trouble,

Arendt concludes is that “we seem to be neither equipped nor prepared for this activity of thinking, of settling down in the gap between past and future” (p. 13).

In terms of writing centers, Salem (2016), director of the Writing Center at

Temple University who later became Assistant Vice Provost and Director of the Student

Success Center, developed a proposal to completely rethink what writing centers do and why they do it may reveal a gap is forthcoming in how writing centers function within higher education. The tradition of writing centers that has been developed over the past

30 years no longer serves the purpose for which they were created. In an exploration of

Hannah Arendt and the temporal condition of human beings in the world, Tatman (2012), a Philosophy scholar, argues that “tellers of meaningful worldly time must confront what is all too often an unbearable sequence of happenings, and by means of thinking completion put those happenings into shape” (p. 73). In this sense, writing center

scholars have tasked themselves to sort through the stories they create and decide which are praiseworthy and which are not. Tatman continues that in so doing, the tellers

“meaningfully re-constitute a world’s past and present, thereby affording the possibility, though not the certainty, of meaningful temporal continuity into the future” (p. 73).

However, a plethora of identities have been folded into writing center scholarship, and while these stories persist to continuously define writing center work, it is the action of that work that prevents a meaningful exploration into the kinds of thinking called for in

Salem’s article. Arendt writes that traditions encounter issues when they are first developed and at their end, when they receive their final challenge, meaning that something exists at the beginning and has its issues – there are still kinks to work out, and the practice of the tradition hasn’t yet been integrated into society. The end of a tradition comes when society questions its value. Once the tradition no longer fulfills the needs of the society, it ceases to be a tradition. The gap, then, opens up when the tradition in question no longer gives sufficient guidance, in the present and in the future. It is the gap between how we think things are and how they are; it is a break, disconnect, and rupture between ideology and reality.

For writing center scholars, tradition is something that has been developing since the late 19th centuryii and, for roughly the past 20 years, it has been contested, reanalyzed, and redefined. Based on more recent scholarship, it is clear that much of the field’s early scholarship focused on defining writing center work as filling a gap between what students know and the standards set by the institution. Over time, scholars began to criticize the writing center’s role in supporting the institution without questioning

whether or not those standards were in the best interest of the students. Traditions for

writing center theory, approach, and dissemination of scholarship began in the 1970s

through The Writing Lab Newsletter. This text started as a way for writing center

professionals to share ideas about writing center work and the role writing centers play in

higher education and while it has never regarded itself as establishing a tradition, many of

the early conversations and scholarship published within it inspired many writing center

administrators when developing writing centers on their campuses. Prior to The Writing

Lab Newsletter, there was no other writing center-specific communication. In a review of The Writing Lab Newsletter several decades after its establishment, Michel Pemberton

(2003), writing center scholar and past President of the IWCA, traces the journal’s growth and role in building a scholarly community. He discusses how it grew to contain more professionally-recognized scholarship, arguing that the publication was a major player in developing a discourse about writing center identity, theory, and professionalization. A second publication, The Writing Center Journal, was launched in

1980 and is described as “the primary research journal in the field of writing centers” (“A

Little About Us,” n.d.). The Writing Center Journal is the official journal of the

International Writing Centers Association, an Assembly of the National Council of

Teachers of English, and is committed to publishing strong empirical research and

theoretical scholarship relevant to writing centers. Through the dissemination of

scholarship, writing center professionals have built a history and identity through

research, experience, and communication.

Over time, as the field of writing centers continued to grow and professionalize,

scholars began critiquing publications in The Writing Lab Newsletter and The Writing

Center Journal. The same year that Pemberton was analyzing the legacy of The Writing

Lab Newsletter, Lerner (2003) offered a critique about writing center research in general, arguing that “we need to think broadly about research on writing center effects, not just about how many students came through our doors or if those students were satisfied, but about how do our writing centers contribute to the teaching and learning goals that our institutions hold dear?” (p. 64). This critique of writing center research is most certainly a theme throughout the field (Hobson, 1994; Carino, 1996; Johanek, 2000; Gillespie,

Gillam, Brown, & Stay, 2002; Grimm, 2003; Boquet & Lerner, 2008; Driscoll & Purdue,

2012; Grutch McKinney, 2013; Nordlof, 2014); however, through this continued conversation, writing centers have also redefined their work from helping students meet university standards to a more complicated identity that works to better understand how students can influence those standards. In this regard, the idea of a writing center shifts to become a space that operates in the gap between the university traditionally conceived and a potentially more empowering place for students.

Putting the concept of the writing center in the context of a larger question about the purpose of the university, with tensions over issues of authority and power, will help to establish how writing centers have rethought their responsibility to students as an extension of higher education. Arendt argues that education must take place in a world of hope where it is ever possible to set the trajectory of social thought on the right path, and while this aim can never be assured, the goal itself is at the heart of the possibilities each

new generation brings with them. For writing centers, this may mean creating conditions

conducive for student thought and action and therefore existing within a space on the

boundaries or margins of higher education and having their own missions and insights to

student success that focus on more than financial aspects of the institutions they serve.

To highlight this move toward a more complex perspective of student success that

includes social justice work, some writing center scholars integrate theoretical aspirations

toward equality into their practice. For example, in an article focusing on using

university missions to enable writing center de-marginalization, Wilkey and Dreese

(2007) discuss how writing centers integrate service-learning theory into their current practice to enhance civic engagement to support a just society. For this integration, they suggest a reconfiguration of collaboration and peer tutoring interactions that redefine the role of the writing center for the tutor, student, and university. They argue that

“[v]iewing the tutorial as a site for negotiating differences, our position goes beyond suggesting changes for interpersonal relationships within the tutorial experience to promote institutional changes that radically transform the tutoring experience itself” (p.

171). In order to transform the tutoring experience, the authors rely on the work of

Grimm (2003) and Flower (2002) to frame their discussion within New Literacy Studies and service learning theory. They argue that through this type of engagement, writing centers can become de-marginalized and “take advantage of their unique institutional positioning to lay claim to the social virtues of a literacy education that is more socially conscious” (p. 181). Wilkey and Dreese’s example shows how writing centers are involved in success efforts that go beyond traditional notions of student success by

adding social consciousness to the student experience to influence institutional change.

This type of work bolsters access to education for populations not traditionally included as well as works to create an environment that is welcoming for all students, not just those students who have the capital to succeed.

Scholarship that focuses on social justice can be a step towards rethinking the idea of a writing center. However, as part of the university structure, writing centers must tread lightly between the boundaries of their own missions and those of the institutions they serve. It is within this space that writing centers are still teetering within issues of authority and their role in the university curriculum. For example, in an article focusing on power and authority with a tutorial session, Carino (2003) argues that tutors should be taught to recognize where power and authority lie in a tutorial. He writes that “[w]riting centers can ill afford to pretend power and authority do not exist, given the important responsibility they have for helping students achieve their own authority as writers in a power laden environment such as the university” (p. 113). Within the construct of a writing center, it is important to be aware of how power and authority play a role both in interactions with others as well as within the educational system itself. While writing centers are not free from constraints constituted by power and authority, the acknowledgement of these constraints can be viewed as a way for writing centers to develop an awareness of how power and authority have affected writing center traditions.

Having an awareness of how power and authority may play a role in a tutorial, opens a gap for new ways to think about and interact with students.

Through an awareness of authority and boundaries, writing centers can become leaders in addressing institutional responsibilities toward students. This aspect of writing center positionality closely relates to Eodice’s (2003) argument for writing centers to collaborate with others in order to “offer a way of seeing that what we do with collaboration every day in our writing centers can empower us to dismantle its borders and perform a kind of collaboration that will benefit both us and our institutions” (p.

118). She concludes that writing centers “should demand collaboration and continue to work toward boundarylessness, even with the knowledge that these actions will never be fully accomplished, completed” (p. 129). While writing centers have yet to experience a world outside of crisis, these attempts to reform the education system highlight their values as they relate to equality, individualization of their work, and acknowledgement toward how power and authority work within their system. Writing centers are positioning themselves as leaders by example, willing to collaborate with others to dissolve borders. Within the gap between past and future, writing centers find themselves both within and outside of the boundaries drawn by the institutions they serve. Through this gap, writing centers may be positioned to make a stand against what has happened in the past and what the future may hold.

Study Design and Dissertation Overview

In this introductory chapter, I’ve outlined Arendt’s use of the term “gap” and how the creation of gaps through writing center scholarship have affected their identity.

Writing centers’ focus on individuality; power, authority, and cultural capital; and the power of human thought and action to create wonder questions the status quo and

interrupts traditional ideology concerning the purpose and reproduction of education.

Additionally, writing center scholarship exposes how writing center scholars have been

questioning writing center “truths” and reinventing new ways to perceive, research, and

work within writing centers as a part of the higher education landscape.

I have chosen to use all but oneiii of the International Writing Center Association

(IWCA) Outstanding Scholarship Award (OSA) winning articles, books, and book chapters from 1985-2015 as a dataset for the proceeding chapters. Because these works have made waves in influencing writing center theory and practice with varying degrees of impact, they are representative of how writing centers have defined, invented, reinvented, and analyzed their impact on students, their institutions, and themselves over time. While some of these works have persisted in the field, most of them rarely resurface in writing center scholarship. However, even if the work hasn’t persisted since the year it was awarded an OSA, it can, at the very least, be reviewed and analyzed in terms of student success based on its historical merit and impact on the field at the time of publication. This is where the significance of these texts come together. As a body of scholarship, texts awarded an OSA provide a glimpse into what the field valued at the time of their publication. Bringing attention to these texts highlights how award-winning writing center scholarship has contributed to the role writing centers play within institutions of higher education.

While some of the research has made more of an impact than othersiv, these texts

were selected for the OSA award because they were deemed to:

• Address one or more issues of long-term interest to writing center administrators,

theorists, and/or practitioners.

• Discuss theories, practices, or policies that contribute to a richer understanding of

writing center theory and practice.

• Show sensitivity toward the situated contexts in which writing centers exist and

operate.

• Make a significant contribution to the scholarship of and research on writing

centers.

• Serve as a strong representative of the scholarship of and research on writing

centers.

• Embody the qualities of compelling and meaningful writing. (“IWCA Award

Information,” 2017)

At least within a historical perspective, the chosen texts for these awards have, therefore, served to exemplify the most important ideas within writing center research in a given year. Carino (1996) rightfully points out that “few writing center professionals would doubt that material history is always more complex than the discourse that strives to record it” (p. 30). Obviously, writing center history is not limited to award-winning texts, and the analysis provided in this dissertation is incomplete. Therefore, I would be remiss to claim that these could be the only references used to address student success; however, they still warrant a dataset that many professionals within this field have read, have access to, and have incorporated into their writing centers in some way.

Chapter 2 will provide an analysis of how student success is defined in award- winning writing center scholarship (OSA). Through this analysis, I will unpack student success in relation to writing center history and identity to show how the concept of student success has changed over the past century. Student success is traditionally defined in terms of course completion, grades, retention, and graduation. In Chapter 2, I will provide a history of writing centers from the early 19th century when the idea of a writing center started in response to declining writing proficiencies at Harvard

University. By the 1950s, writing centers were becoming more common on university campuses, and by the mid-1980s, writing centers were professionalizing through the creation of a professional organization, field-specific journals, and scholarship awards.

After this pivotal moment in writing center identity, writing center scholars began to question the purpose of a writing center and its relationship to higher education. Through this exploration, scholars began to question university standards, value the lived experiences of students, and focus on tutor training to acknowledge differences in students and how to work with them during a writing tutorial. Much of this scholarship stems from Grimm’s (1999) work on critical literacy and the politicization of the talk that transpires between tutors and students. Overall conclusions suggest that within the liminal intersections of literacies, students can transform the education system based on their cultural literacies. This chapter will conclude with a discussion of how writing centers can continue to grow their identity concerning student success efforts and measures, especially in terms of acknowledging that the efforts writing centers make to

create spaces conducive to developing liminal intersections of literacies affects student success.

In Chapter 3, I will discuss success in terms of writing center research.

Specifically, I will show how OSA articles and books define, analyze, and criticize writing center research practices in relation to student success. The evolution of writing center assessment will be used to analyze how research practices affect writing center identity. This discussion uses Richard Haswell’s (2005) landmark essay,

“NCTE/CCCC’s Recent War on Scholarship” where he argues that replicable, aggregable, and data-driven (RAD) research was disappearing from Composition and

Rhetoric scholarship. Even though writing center scholarship categorized as RAD had been increasing during the time of Haswell’s argument, this is not an indication that writing center research practices do not have other issues. While Haswell’s call for more

RAD research was discussed in OSA scholarship, other themes also emerged. Writing centers as research sites continue the conversation about legitimatization from Chapter 2.

Scholars also often focus on research methodology and how to study what writing centers do and how to do it. A critique of this discussion reveals an unbalanced adherence to qualitative and humanities-oriented research methods in spite of Johanek’s (2000) OSA text arguing for the abolishment of a research dichotomy between qualitative and quantitative research methods in the field. Finally, Chapter 3 reports on the lack of measurement of student success efforts. This chapter concludes with a discussion of how writing center research aligns with Arendt’s vision of gaps and crisis in education.

In Chapter 4, I will focus on successful administrative practices and considerations based on OSA scholarship. This discussion will provide an overview of the state of writing center expectations and realities based on proposals and observations developed in Simpson’s (1985/1995) position statement on writing centers and professional concerns where she concludes that writing centers “have arrived.” However, an analysis of the expectations and realities of writing center work reveal that writing center administrators still have work to do in terms of professionalization, suggesting the inclusion of a robust perspective in scholarship from the writing center community and the understanding of the greater academic community concerning the potential of writing centers and student writing. Additionally, a review of tutoring, tutor training, and writing center outreach will be provided to highlight major aspects of the role of writing center administrators. Findings here suggest that a focus on reflection can help tutors and administrators meet the needs of a diverse student body, and outreach efforts can have reciprocal influence concerning the work writing centers and their academic partners do and can accomplish through collaboration. Finally, Chapter 4 will conclude with a discussion on how scholarship that emphasizes writing center administrative practices helps provide a context for issues concerning power, authority, and autonomy and their effect on modern writing center identity and sustainability.

Finally, in Chapter 5, I discuss the potential writing centers have to transform higher education for the benefit of students. Using Biesta’s (2006) work on democracy in education, OSA scholarship, and discussion from Chapters 1-4, I will discuss how writing centers support the “other” community through collaboration and their location. I

will also discuss areas where writing centers can focus their efforts in order to continuously improve their potential in creating conditions where the “other” community can exist, such as supporting a more diverse tutoring staff and incorporating a democratic practice into its publishing of field-specific scholarship. Chapter 5 will conclude with my final argument of how acknowledging a gap in writing center identity can affect their sustainability and play a role in how scholars gather evidence of student success.

CHAPTER II

STUDENT SUCCESS AND WRITING CENTERS IN OUTSTANDING

SCHOLARSHIP AWARD TEXTS

In Chapter 1, I explored Arendt’s concept of the gap between past and future and how writing centers can be tied to her argument of education being in a perpetual crisis.

For Arendt, the crisis in education is not really an educational crisis but a broader and deeper crisis of authority. Unless we understand that the “crisis” stems from the existential condition of figuring out how to introduce newcomers to our shared world, contemporary crisis talk, designed to stoke fear and create panic, misses the essential point. Through their focus on individuality; power, authority, and transmission of cultural capital; and the power of human thought and action to create wonder, writing centers can further the notion that newcomers, in this case, those new to higher education, can transform the education system as much as it is used to transform students. To support this discussion, I used writing center scholarship to highlight scholars’ questioning of writing center “truths” and outlined how scholars have reinvented new ways to perceive, research, and work within writing centers as a part of the landscape of higher education.

The following analysis will unveil writing center scholars’ perspectives of student success since the publication of the first Outstanding Scholarship Award (OSA) article,

North’s “The Idea of a Writing Center” (1984). Student success will be explored in terms of the student, the tutor, and the role of writing centers within institutions of higher education. Within this exploration, I will show how student success has been understood

at various times and its influences on writing center practice and identity. This chapter will conclude with a discussion of how writing centers’ conception of student success reflects Arendt’s notion of gaps and the crisis of education. Findings suggest that while writing centers may not be in crisis, there is still work to be done to ensure students are part of the conversation when it comes to discussions of their success. As will be revealed, writing center scholars and administrators have focused on what the writing center can do for the benefit of students; however, it seems as if these discussions take place without input from the students themselves on the effectiveness of these interventions. If writing centers are to be positioned as harbingers of student success, it is imperative that students are invited to collaborate in these endeavors.

A Nontraditional Perspective: Student Success and Writing Centers

Traditionally, student success is measured through course completion, grades, retention and graduation rates (Bloemer, Day, & Swan, 2017; Connolly, Flynn, Jemmott,

Oestreicher, 2017; Severiens, Meeuwisse, & Born, 2015). However, some studies suggest shifting the perspective of success factors to focus more on the individual student as opposed to the success rates of an overall population. For example, a study by

Shulruf, Hattie, and Tumen (2008) found that because demographic characteristics affect student pathways to and success in higher education at the individual level, interventions to improve success rates should target at-risk populations as opposed to interventions at the institutional level. Furthermore, interventions targeting schools should identify the schools by their structure and function, rather than by their demographic characteristics.

These study results reveal a more personal way to view success. Instead of looking at

institutional change or the development of institutional measures to facilitate student success, Shulruf, Hattie, and Tumen’s findings suggest that demographics are best utilized to serve students who are most likely to fail for whatever reason. Demographic initiatives like these could help researchers better understand how to help individual students who share specific characteristics. This is significant to writing center scholarship in that most success efforts in higher education are aimed at ensuring students meet institutional standards as opposed to initiating success efforts aimed at institutional change. However, as will be revealed, writing center scholars spend significant amounts of time evaluating the system of higher education in order to ensure more equitable transformational efforts aimed at both the individual student and the institutions at large.

In relation to efforts aimed at student success, writing centers will often work to ensure that tutors and administrators are aware of differences in student experiences, especially in regards to university expectations. For example, in an article articulating a cultural studies agenda for writing centers, Cooper (1994/1995) explores how writing centers can become spaces for critique over the status quo of academic practice concerning student writers and their expectations as writers within the academy.

Utilizing the work of Gramsci to discuss the differences between traditional intellectuals

(those who perpetuate dominate thought) and organic intellectuals (those who question dominate thought and develop critiques to hegemonic direction), she sees writing center tutors as having the potential to be organic intellectuals. She writes that if writing tutors are going to help students understand standards set by higher education and the constraints of these standards, “they also need to help students understand that if they are

to achieve agency in writing, they must learn how to challenge these constraints productively in the service of their own goals and needs” (p. 140).

In addition to this article having implications for tutor training development, there are also implications for seeing the writing center as a way to bolster student success from a nontraditional perspective. While writing centers claim to tutor all students

(Grutch McKinney, 2013), acknowledging that student populations contain students outside of traditional university standards may increase demographic awareness initiatives that could help researchers better understand how to help individuals who share specific characteristics with other groups of students. Cooper argues that writing centers should develop tutor training seminars that blend with research groups in order to create a deeper understanding of systematic inquiries into the nature of writing in college and the value of different methods of teaching writing. Research like Cooper’s brings writing centers closer to creating a learning environment that better understands students and can make adjustments based on those needs as opposed to remediating them to meet the requirements of the institution. Viewing tutoring beyond a deficit model can add additional layers to how student success is understood, implemented, measured, and questioned. While writing centers advocate for students by creating a space that caters to individual student needs, traditional notions of student success have created a fissure between how others view the writing center and contemporary writing center identity.

The next section will discuss writing centers’ relationship to remediation and how that label hinders transformative progress that will help students navigate higher education as

well as affecting writing centers’ role in equity initiatives that provide targeted services to

a variety of student populations.

Writing Centers and Remediation: A Contemporary History

As a support service for students, writing centers have been tasked to aid in

bridging the gap between what students know and what they need to know in order to

persist in post-secondary education. This positioning between what students are bringing

with them to higher education and expectations set forth by the academy have frequently

defined writing centers as a remedial service. As a remedial service, writing centers often

found themselves on the fringes of academia. This positioning has historic roots for how

writing centers are perceived by stakeholders, where writing centers are located on

campus, and how writing centers view and define student success. To better understand

how these effects have developed over time, it is important to have background

information on how writing centers became associated with remediation.

In the first quarter of the 20th century, Harvard was perfecting their English curriculum to ensure graduates tied to their esteemed name were worthy to call themselves “Harvard gentlemen.” Therefore, the language skills of these students were expected to reflect the type of man Harvard wanted representing their institution. Those students who performed poorly in Harvard’s composition class, English A, were relegated to a series of lower-level English courses that changed in name from 1917 until

1948 when the program was dissolved. This “special instruction” class, known as either

English F or English C, was not a formal course but an elective site for students who

either voluntarily sought extra assistance in their English A course or were referred there

by an instructor. Often, this special instruction was provided by graduate students or upper-level students in a one-on-one setting, much like the tutor-tutee relationship found in many modern writing centers (Ritter, 2008). While English F/C students were sometimes given additional work, this model of instruction provided a designated site for writing improvement outside of the course structure, which, like programs at the State

University of Iowa and Iowa State University, marginalizes students who do not meet the writing standards of the institution. While neither of these programs labels this additional assistance as a writing center or laboratory, much of this work seems to usher in the conception of writing centers in higher education while also tying this kind of supplementary work to remediation of students who do not meet the standards set by the institutions they attend.

The influx of college students from the 1930s to the 1950s intensified the perceived deficiencies in student writing by English faculty, resulting in the university writing center becoming a place to send students in order to help them produce college- level writing skills and “address the instructional problems of weaker students by strengthening their writing and critical thinking skills” (Murphy, 1991, p. 276). Writing centers in higher education prior to World War II can be traced to the University of

Minnesota and the State University of Iowa (Carino, 1977). Most likely, the increase of the student population at these institutions was a result of rapid expansion, and while the majority of students were white males, there was an increase in students who were children of immigrants and what would be labeled today as first-generation students. At these institutions, the laboratory approach to teaching writing that was happening inside

the classroom was moving into its own space where one-on-one instruction could take

place, shifting the lab from a practice-oriented pedagogical tool to a physical location

(Boquet, 1999). For students who were seemingly unprepared for the rigor of a college

curriculum, schools began to turn to supplemental models of education such as those in

Minnesota and Iowa. Tying the needs of the institution to the progressive movement in

education that was happening at the time, a laboratory approach to teaching writing

developed, allowing students a space to test ideas before submitting them as a final

product for evaluation.

At Iowa State University, the development of a more individualized approach to

working with remedial writers became commonplace. In Carrie Ellen Stanley’s 1943

College English article, “This Game of Writing: A Study in Remedial English,” she

examined how individualized instruction moved out of the classroom to a one-on-one

tutoring situation. Stanley begins with a narrative about an unnamed freshman star basketball player who was also a remedial writing student. Her narrative soon transitions to motivating students to perform better rather than to humiliate them, a theme she notes was often used in the classroom to motivate students into performing to a higher standard. While her article provides a practice-oriented perspective on working with remedial student writers, she also discusses how to engage with students who find themselves on the “outer fringes of composition” (p. 424). Her description of Iowa

State’s Remedial English laboratory was that it would:

provide opportunity for directed practice in composition for those who write

under continued handicaps […] Remedial English offers no credit; it yields no

grade; it has no requirement other than a spirit of willingness on the part of the

student, whose agreement to appear is wholly voluntary; it is, in fact, not a course

at all. (p. 424)

This course, functioning much like a writing center, would provide support to students as opposed to quarantining or marginalizing them in the classroom. Stanley concludes that her star basketball player worked his way to a passing grade, thus winning the game of writing. She claims that his success was found outside of the regular curriculum in a laboratory where he could experiment with academic discourse until he could master the skill and rejoin the college community. This early view of success, however, is limited compared to more contemporary scholarship because it focuses on providing an outlet for students to obtain what is perceived as lacking in their academic abilities. This conception of success, according to which support services fill a gap between university expectations and student ability, is evident in many institutions of higher education, even ones considered prestigious, during the first half of the 20th century.

During the early stages of writing center development, when Stanley was working with Iowa State University’s star basketball player, she worked to establish a space that supported students as opposed to quarantining or marginalizing them. However, this space was conceived in the notion that some students “write under continued handicaps.”

This perspective of writing support services proliferated into the 1950s when writing centers were just starting to develop an identity in higher education. For example, in

1950, Moore surveyed 55 institutions about their writing center services. Out of those 55 institutions, Moore found that 24 had writing labs or clinics and that an additional 11

institutions planned to develop writing labs in the near future. After the publication of

Moore’s findings, the amount of scholarship focusing on writing centers declines, and little to nothing exists until Whitted (1966) published an article focused on tutoring remedial students in College Composition and Communication (Carino, 1977). Again, remediation is the central focus of writing support at the university level. However,

Whitted seems to have a perspective about remediation that is more aligned with current writing center perspectives. She writes that the student is “not someone who fails to meet a mythical arbitrary standard of excellence, but is a non-member of an ‘in’ group with respect to communication in an academic context” (p. 40). It is with this perspective of students as not being deficient in institutional standards that highlights the potential writing centers have to support students as opposed to solely supporting the more narrowly conceived goals of the institution.

The early 1980s ushered in a pivotal movement that would be key in changing the perspective of writing centers from one of remediation to one where writing centers become centers for college-level writing development. During this decade, the National

Writing Centers Association (now known as the International Writing Centers

Association), an affiliate of the National Council of Teachers of English, was established; the Outstanding Scholarship Awards were formed; and North published “The Idea of a

Writing Center.” In 1985, North’s “Idea” was the first recipient of the IWCA

Outstanding Article Award. This is significant for two reasons. First, North specifically addresses his faculty colleagues about his perspective of what a writing center is.

Second, citations of this article appear in more writing center scholarship than any other text (Boquet & Lerner, 2008).

In North’s landmark essay, he addresses perceptions of writing centers as places that remediate student deficiencies. He argues that writing centers should be seen and used as a place “whose primary responsibility, whose only reason for being, is to talk to writers” (p. 446). North’s idea of talk emphasizes a student-centered approach to writing and views success as changes in the writer as opposed to changes only in the writing.

North’s argument pushes on the assumption that students have a handicap in need of treatment or intervention. He writes that a writing center:

represents the marriage of what are arguably the two most powerful contemporary

perspectives on teaching writing: first, that writing is most usefully viewed as a

process; and second, that writing curricula need to be student-centered. This new

writing center, then, defines its province not in terms of some curriculum, but in

terms of the writers it serves. (p. 438)

While perspectives of the purpose of a writing center may have been changing within the field since the 1960s, they were much slower to change for others. For example, North

(1984) addresses his English Department colleagues, admitting that his “Idea” is one

“that began out of frustration” (p. 433). He claims that the source of his frustration is the ignorance of his colleagues that “do not understand what does happen, what can happen, in a writing center” (p. 433). Defining writing centers as serving students as opposed to supporting faculty pushes on his colleagues’ beliefs and challenges the notion that writing is product-oriented. North argues that writing should focus on the process of product

development, and according to North, this ideology would be inherently student-centered

because it gives students power to develop as writers.

For students, a process-oriented approach to writing could demystify objectives

required by college-level writing standards set by institutions of higher education. In a

more modern example of a student-centered approach that works to demystify the writing

process, Corbett (2005) examines authority within classroom tutoring and encourages

tutor trainers to help peer tutors who work in writing centers better understand how to

negotiate their work with students through an apprenticeship approach. He explains that

student writers will learn to model discourse from the peer tutors in relationship to their

writing. Corbett argues that as writers, “we empower and we become empowered when

we rehearse and imitate – students, tutors, and teachers – together. We learn to negotiate

how much authoritative knowledge student, tutor, and teacher hold in any given moment”

(p. 109). Corbett’s work to incorporate apprenticeship models into the peer tutoring

structure extends North’s “Idea” by redistributing the power held by faculty in North’s

essay to both the student and the peer tutors working with the student. As student writers

begin to incorporate what they are learning through their engagement with those more

knowledgeable about college-level writing, they can begin to acquire more power over

their educative experiences. Corbett concludes by suggesting that this model of dialogue

in the classroom will develop a two-way dialectical street that involves listening and talking prompted by directive and nondirective questioning. Through this version of power negotiation, these kinds of practices can help students become writers who are more independent. Ensuring that peer tutors and faculty are cognizant of the power

dynamics during this exchange can facilitate an environment where students are more active decision-makers in how they learn material and express ideas. Additionally, power redistribution between students, peer tutors, and faculty can help negate a writing center’s remedial status. If faculty are dialoguing with students and peer tutors to assist student writers in developing college-level writing skills, it can create an environment where writing centers are equal stakeholders in student success as opposed to “fix-it shops” where students receive guidance on lower-order writing concerns such as grammar and punctuation mistakes. Through dialogue, writing centers become part of the conversation in how students develop as writers.

In addition to defining the purpose of writing centers, North discusses the role of the writing tutor as participant-observer, someone who participates and observes in the ordinarily solitary act of writing. He writes that tutors “must measure their success not in terms of the constantly changing model they create, but in terms of changes in the writer”

(440). North suggests that the practice of becoming a participant-observer is student- centered and will start where the student is, not necessarily where the student should be in his or her writing process. He juxtaposes this role to traditional notions of what a writing center is – a place for remediation to get students up to the standards of the academic discourse community as quickly as possible. The participant-observer role, as North defines it, pushes back on the writing center as a vessel for remediation. If the tutor is expected to work with the student at the student’s level, then remediation isn’t really the focus anymore. He argues that the new focus would be on the writer, not the writing.

Again, in a system where power is more equally distributed from the faculty to the

writing center and student writer, students would be more likely to develop into college-

level writers who can produce college-level writing. The writing center works with

students at their level, and it is dependent on what that level is for each student that would

determine how a peer tutor would approach a writing tutorial. Because writing is a skill

that can continuously be improved upon, not all students would necessarily visit the

writing center for remediation.

North ends his proposal with a call to writing faculty to revise their view of the

purpose of writing centers to value their legitimacy as research spaces vital to the

academic landscape and physical location on college campuses. As opposed to

remediation, his view of writing centers as a place for writers to talk about writing means

that all writers, even strong writers, can benefit from writing centers as places of

collaboration, critique, and analysis. He writes that “if we agree that the biggest obstacle

to overcome in teaching anything, writing included, is getting learners to decide that they

want to learn, then what a writing center does is cash in on motivation that the writer

provides” (p. 443). This perspective of writing centers, as a place for writers and not a

place of remediation, was a new way of looking at student support services – that these

services could be for all students and not only for students who aren’t meeting the

standards set for them by the institution.

Because of an unwanted association with remediation, writing center scholars have pushed back on this perception to legitimize their place within higher educationv,

especially in economically lean times when university cuts and program consolidation are

very real roadblocks for writing center persistence (Simpson, Braye, & Boquet,

1994/1995). Oftentimes, through this process of legitimization, scholars have turned to their work with students and how writing centers facilitate student success. This work both highlights and questions how writing centers function as an extension of the institutions they serve as it pertains to the students with whom they work. While remediation doesn’t necessarily permeate all scholarship focused on student success, it is an often contested issue related to what students know, what they need to know, and how student success is defined and implemented in writing centers as well as campus-wide initiatives. The following section will look at how scholars have responded to North’s

“Idea” as it relates to how power and literacy affect student success.

Student Success, Power, and Literacy

North’s “Idea” is the most quoted article in writing center scholarship (Murphy &

Law, 2000), making it one of the most influential texts in the development of writing center ideology and identity. However, it is unsurprising that a work with this much impact has been contested within the field as well. While most writing center scholars would agree with North that having a support service that focuses on the writer as opposed to the product is a good thing, some scholars have taken issue with North’s lack of focus on cultural literacy, university standards, and institutional power dynamics.

North’s argument focuses on writing centers being spaces for all writers to talk about their texts and find success in meeting the requirements set by the institution. While this goal helps to establish a perspective of writing centers that veers away from a remedial

identity, it also positions writing centers as an extension of the university, and this relationship may not benefit all students in a way that North proposes in his essay.

In a direct response to North, Grimm (1992) pushes on the idea of writing centers being a space of talk since that talk can be politically charged and therefore would be difficult to sustain in institutional space. She sees tutoring as functioning within a site of social struggle where relations between dominant and dominating groups interact (p. 6).

These sites of struggle were coined by Pratt (1991) as linguistic contact zones. Grimm’s argument is that linguistic contact zones politicize writing centers because questioning what success in the academy means for students writing within its boundaries can have negative repercussions for both the student and a support service operating within institutional space. In terms of student success, this politicization of writing center work puts a new perspective on what it means to be successful in higher education. If students are questioning what is defined as success and who gets to define success, it disrupts the hierarchy of the academy itself. Additionally, if writing centers are where this questioning takes place, it can put their existence in jeopardy. Within Grimm’s critique,

North’s view is sociologically insightful but politically dangerous since the talk that happens in writing centers has the potential to push on institutional demands and standards concerning student learning. To combat any hazardous outcomes for writing centers within a linguistic contact zone, Grimm ushers in a new perspective for the role of writing centers in higher education – writing centers as research sites for the relationship between literacy and student success.

Picking up on Grimm’s shift in thinking about writing centers and linguistic contact zones, OSA scholarship in the 1990s focuses on how the institutional environment plays a role in student success. Like Grimm, scholarship during this decade frequently questions how students fit within the standards set by the institution. For example, Mullin (1994) expands the idea of language and community by redefining literacy in higher education and how privileged literacy is often manifested during writing center tutorials. To frame her discussion, Mullin turns to J. Elspeth Stucky

(1991) and his questioning of whether the object of literacy should be to privilege.

Mullin connects the idea of education for the accumulation of capital to how privilege is manifested during writing center tutorials. She argues that writing tutorials “can provide students with opportunities to examine language’s effects on community practices […]

But if our practices, supported by traditional concepts of literacy, remain unexamined, they will continue to encourage a formulaic, technological approach more than we might suspect” (p. 164). Mullin relates power and language to writing centers and the success of students within higher education by illuminating its role in shaping what we think, how we act, and what we value. Grimm’s radical insights note that the institution will not be pleased to support writing centers as sites of subversion. Additionally, Mullin and

Grimm are skeptical that North’s view of writing centers as places of talk does not go far enough in questioning the literacy expectations for students. Overall, the 1990s were a transitional period for writing centers as they start to question how students were affected by the “talk” they were engaging in during tutorials.

As the 20th century comes to a close, the power dynamics and language that

Mullin claims as critical aspects to student success continue to accompany the questioning of writing centers’ role in perpetuating institutional standards. In Good

Intentions: Writing Center Work for Post-Modern Times (1999), Grimm discusses how a

postmodern analysis of writing center work can contribute to both a deeper understanding

of literacy and more democratic approaches to literacy education. Grimm positions

literacy as a potential gatekeeper to success. She argues that oftentimes, students outside

of the hegemony, or those students who are not white and middle class, can struggle in

higher education to both understand and meet institutional expectations and requirements

necessary to earn a degree. As these students find their way to academic support

services, Grimm writes that writing center workers “are often conflicted about how much

‘help’ to provide these students, about their relationship to faculty, and about their role in

the university” (p. xiii). To combat this conflict and contribute more democratic

approaches to literacy education, Grimm proposes that “writing centers need to be more

fully engaged with the paradox of literacy – the way that literacy both dominates and

liberates, both demands submission and offers the promise of agency” (p. xiii).

Additionally, she sees writing centers as “sites of participatory research into students’

literacy practices and as sites of knowledge about the ways that discourse regulates who

we are and who we can be” (p xvi). The act of participatory research opens the door for

reflectivity in how literacy affects student success and how writing centers contribute to

or detract from that success.

In the spirit of reflection, Grimm questions the effects of education’s

transformative process for students and notes that this process can be unequal depending

on a student’s background, specifically, his or her social and cultural values. Grimm

articulates the value of a writing center in relation to it being a space for listening,

contributing to the understanding of difference, creating participatory roles for students,

and allowing opportunities for faculty to better understand the “mental models” (p. 25)

students bring to institutions of higher education. For Grimm, good intentions aren’t

enough, and postmodern theoretical applications can more accurately dig into work that

more successfully helps students understand how the path through higher education isn’t

necessarily on the straight and narrow.

As writing center scholarship focusing on student success moves into the 21st century, literacies, as ways for students to navigate their journeys through higher education, continues to be a major theme of OSA texts. In an example of how feminism can improve the outcomes of tutorial sessions, Lutes (2002) looks at how to help tutors in a writing fellows program become critical readers of both student drafts and of gender and disciplinary conventions. To do this, she uses three tutors’ experiences to reflect how gender is explicitly or implicitly playing a role in how the tutor identifies as a tutor and perceives the work he or she is doing with students. By looking at how tutors facilitate student success within their role as a writing fellow, Lutes reveals that feminism is a driving factor for how gender and disciplinary conventions intersect. Lutes argues that gender “influences not only how tutors and tutees interact, but also their understanding of what constitutes an academic discipline and what it means to cross disciplines as a

writing tutor” (p. 241). Lutes claims that keeping a space open for dialogue and exchange should be a priority for all educators, especially when tutors are encouraged to engage in linguistic contact zones and be agents of change for authority. Developing an understanding of gender and its relationship to academic writing and disciplinary standards can help tutors develop a feminist approach to sessions that will help them

“assert themselves as authentic producers of knowledge while revealing the limitations of any singular truth and refusing to claim a subject position that transcends socially constructed boundaries” (p. 242, emphasis in original). Essentially, acknowledging how feminism shapes writing tutors’ approach to dialogue with students can expand on the repertoire of skills they use to accommodate a wider range of writers across disciplines.

Lutes provides her readers with another layer of the importance of literacy work and reflection in writing center practices. Not only do writing centers need to have a better understanding of how literacy plays into institutional standards, but disciplinary knowledge is also a factor in how students may be able to persist within a given major or area of study. For example, in one of Lutes’ reflections on her tutors’ experiences, she analyzes an essay written by Jill about her sessions with two students. In Jill’s narrative, she is one of the only tutors to articulate an awareness of power differentials within a tutorial. Jill also defends her decision to be a peer tutor when a friend accuses her of

“helping an oppressive academy to stifle students’ creative voices” (p. 243). While Jill has a moment of critical awareness of how institutional standards can affect writing center work, her reflection does not turn the same critical eye to her work with individual students. Through her sessions with a female communications major and a male

mechanical engineering major, Jill demonstrates stereotypical approaches. In her session

with the female student, Jill displays Socratic questioning to help the student develop a

thesis statement. Her session notes communicate that the student took action during the

discussion. During Jill’s session with the male student, she assumes he will appreciate a

more formulaic approach to thesis development. Her session notes show Jill doing most

of the work as the student becomes a passive receptor of information. Lutes concludes

that without a critical awareness of how knowledge is produced, “student tutors’

assumptions about disciplines – their own and others’ – can inhibit their tutoring” (p.

246). Overall, Lutes suggests that through a feminist lens, tutors can be better prepared

to navigate linguistic contact zones, especially as they emerge in sessions where gender

plays a role in influencing a tutor’s perception of disciplinary differences.

To develop a fuller understanding of the role literacy plays in writing tutorials, it

is important to ensure that tutor training programs reflect the demographics of the

individual institution. Shamoon and Burns (2001) find that a standardization of tutoring

practices and tutor training is being used to professionalize writing centers.vi While

standardization can provide a more consistent baseline for writing centers overall,

Shamoon and Burns argue that it creates a Fordist approach to tutor training, and they

equate standardization to an assembly line that churns out tutors who tend to focus on

product improvement to maintain the status quo in hegemonic discourse. They argue that

writing center scholars and practitioners need to pay more attention to the philosophical underpinnings and consequences of everyday practice often published in writing center scholarship. When students’ lived experiences aren’t taken into account during their

education experiences, Shamoon and Burns claim they have less opportunity to flourish.

Therefore, tutors need to develop an understanding of how their approach during a tutorial can affect the success of that tutorial, especially in terms of student support within a system that most likely does not make accommodations for individuals outside of its standard. According to Shamoon and Burns, when writing centers are perceived as remedial and tutor training programs perpetuate practices that do not account for individual differences in an institution’s student demographic, it can leave tutors and writing center administrators caught in a problematic and conflicted position. On the one hand, the writing center is supporting the institution it serves and helps students produce writing that satisfies institutional standards; however, on the other hand, it also maintains the standard itself without questioning the values of current college-level writing standards. Shamoon and Burns conclude by emphasizing the importance of questioning the familiar and accepted ways to not only work with students but also how tutors are trained to work with students. This questioning should emphasize why certain practices and processes are in play and the ramifications of those actions.

In order to make the familiar unfamiliar, Dvorak and Bruce (2008) suggest developing creative approaches to writing center work. Dvorak and Bruce’s stance is one that focuses on the challenges writing centers face and being proactive in developing innovative approaches to writing center work. In one such approach, Denny (2008) looks at how injustices to students within higher education can create an uneven playing field for these students in order to navigate success in school and beyond. While creativity can respond to unjust circumstances, he warns that creative pedagogy that “ignores the

ubiquitous dynamics of social and cultural division risks blindness to reinscription of

bitter practices of racism, sexism, and class bias in America” (p. 56). Denny advocates

for social justice and deliberative democracy to ensure voices are not silenced as change

takes shape, creating an environment where innovation can happen. Innovations such as

creating a space for cultural interactions is one way to develop space where dialogue and

diverse exchanges can occur.

Also taking creative approaches into consideration, Owens (2007) argues for

more incorporation of creative literacy into writing centers as campus cultural centers

where students would have a space to dialogue about their encounters with culture at any

level. This argument for cultural space is in response to a one-sided perspective of

writing centers as service-oriented centers that focus only on the student and his or her

academic work. He writes that writing centers should address the reality that “students

need greater access to avenues in which they might actively generate their own responses

to their environments through writing, conversation, and visual and performative media”

(p. 157). To support this argument, Owens suggests that writing centers adopt creative

literacy practices where “students are ‘served’ through the offering of a wider variety of

activities and events directly and indirectly connected to our evolving contemporary

concept of writing” (p. 166). These events can help students gain an understanding of

how to think and write more critically based on the capital they bring to an institution and

the value of that capital in an educational setting.

Putting creative pedagogy into practice can inherently disrupt power structures; however, as discussed by Shamoon and Burns, tutor training programs are not always

executed or designed to respond to or question unjust circumstances. For example, in a discussion about subjects and subjectivity, Rodby (2002), explores power structures as related to students, tutors, and faculty. As part of this exploration, Rodby analyzes a session where a student is writing/revising a paper for a recreation class. In this particular session, Rodby focuses on the tutor’s resistance to break from a traditional power structure where the tutor has the knowledge and the student is there to learn. In this particular case, each time the tutor moved to preserve her power and more closely align with her position at the university, the more the student resisted the session. Rodby analyzes this session in terms of student success and subjectivity. She argues that sessions that maintain traditional power structures tend not to progress until the tutor and the student are “able to step out of the dialectic of power and resistance evidenced in their discourse” (p. 231). According to Rodby, the tutor was unaware of the impact of her power with the student, resulting in an unsuccessful session and breakdown of any meaningful discourse.

Rodby’s study isn’t unique in its discussion of power structures and student success, suggesting that in order for students to be successful, those traditionally in positions of power need to understand what that power means and how it manifests. For writing centers, Rodby claims that this readjustment would mean developing opportunities for students and faculty to dialogue about literacy and language, especially as it pertains to linguistic contact zones and the spaces they create for capital exchange and acquisition. These efforts “could also result in student awareness of the multiplicities of literacy and its social contexts, and in this light perhaps students would find

themselves less often the leery subjects of literacy” (p. 234). It is in this repositioning of power that writing centers refine what constitutes as student success and how this concept has changed over time. No longer is success simply defined as helping a student gain an understanding of college writing standards. Through literacy work and an emphasis on what literacy means to both writing centers and students, writing center scholars are beginning to consider the role of the student as an agent in their learning and as a participant in changing power structures within the educative process.

Student Success after Good Intentions: International Students, Race, and Literacy as a Cultural Practice

After Good Intentions made waves throughout writing center scholarship in the early 21st century, research on student success proliferated, especially research focusing on minority and international students. Specifically, these texts often question not only how tutors are trained to work with minority populations, but also whether or not good work is being conducted with these students or if that work is simply from a place of good intentions.

Through scholarship focusing on minority populations, the considerations for student success echo much of what Grimm discusses in Good Intentions, especially in terms of writing centers as spaces where knowledge about discourse regulation and identity takes place. Grimm writes that the daily work of the writing center “requires us to stand outside our own worldview long enough to understand other ways of making meaning in the world” (p. 47). She claims that this outside-looking-in perspective makes

writing center workers aware of how easy it can be to have good intentions and assist students in meeting the requirements of what she claims is the regulatory role composition can play within higher education. While these good intentions can help students successfully complete their coursework, they also have the potential to maintain a hierarchical system that disenfranchises groups of students who are outside of the hegemonic paradigm established by many universities. In order to push back on regulatory practices, Grimm argues that literacy should be front and center:

When we understand that students’ lived experiences are not accounted for in the

subjectivities they are expected to assume in university writing assignments, we

can locate the problem in social conflict rather than in inadequate and

undeveloped student writers, and we can offer students more choices so that they

can be agents rather than subjects of literacy practices. By placing writing center

work fully within the paradox of literacy, we can access the transformative

potential of working at the liminal intersections of literacies. (p. 53)

Grimm’s vision for writing centers is one of change in higher education in general and in how writing centers approach writing tutorials with students. Within the liminal intersections of literacies, students have the power and agency to incorporate their cultural literacies and capital into the education system. However, Grimm’s vision also puts writing centers in conflict with their institutions. If writing centers are encouraging students to change institutional values concerning cultural literacies and capital, the institution could see this as a threat to its values and traditions. These actions have the potential to usher in a system of higher education that is more inclusive, socially-

oriented, and community-driven; however, the tension between scaffolding a more pragmatic attempt to carve out space within the academy for more pluralistic conceptions of student success and maintaining a productive and supportive relationship with the academy itself is a critical juncture for writing centers with potentially disastrous results.

If writing centers choose to lean into students’ lived experiences as a way to transform higher education, it is imperative that writing centers better understand diversity, especially as they work to understand who should change and why.

Most likely not a coincidence, internationally-focused articles won the OSA around the same time the National Writing Centers Association became the International

Writing Centers Association. This new focus on international students and writing centers usher in a broader understanding of how differing perspectives can facilitate new definitions of success, especially for students who are studying in a language that may not be their first language. Concerning international models of writing centers and student interactions, several studies investigate what student success may look like within different situations, cultures, and contexts. For example, Devet, Orr, Blythman, and

Bishop (2006) discuss considerations that must be made when applying a U.S. peer tutoring model to a university in the U.K. The authors find that there are many advantages in a peer tutoring model beyond a large supply of less expensive labor and argue that with these benefits in mind “the central challenge is to identify the aims of writing development in the U.K. and to select pedagogies that will achieve these aims”

(p. 205). The authors caution readers that a simple application of one system onto another is inadequate and could be dangerous. Specifically, they warn readers about

cultural and power issues inherent in peer dynamics. They conclude that it is more important to explore appropriate pedagogical approaches for writing development based on aspects of other, already established models as opposed to adopting a particular model of staffing. Individualization of practice to benefit a specific institution and its demographic helps ensure that a writing center is developed around the needs of an institution’s specific student demographic. While theoretical and practical aspects of other writing centers or writing center scholarship may be incorporated into the development of writing support on campus, those aspects alone may miss the mark based on the unique needs of the students at a particular institution. Specifically, as writing centers become more globalized, they must work toward the development of theoretical foundations that support their local contexts of higher education and student support.

While scholarship from the U.S., at this time, is focusing on pushing the boundaries of power and authority between students and their educational institutions, it may be neither the time nor the place for these discussions to affect the development of writing centers on an international scale. In terms of student success, the mere development of writing centers as a support service seems to uphold a global concern that students require a space for focused improvement on writing.

In an effort to better understand how international writing support benefits students, Bergman et al. (2004) discuss what they learned from international tutoring experiences from a student exchange program where tutors from Purdue and California

State University, San Bernardino worked for a year in Sweden and Germany as peer tutors. The authors report on misunderstandings from the host institutions about the

role(s) writing centers can and should play in meaning making within developing texts and the role of authorial integrity between students and peer tutors. Bergman et al. briefly discussed issues writing centers face within an international context; however, the authors’ focus centered on how the tutor exchange experience developed for them a more robust understanding about the experiences English as Second Language (ESL) students may face in the U.S. Their reflections on the project reveal that understanding new contexts “is essential in deciding who should change or adapt and why […] We need to tread carefully when considering who, in short, might be appropriating whose culture and to what effect” (pp. 204-205). Bergman et al.’s warning highlights Grimm’s challenges to writing center work concerning literacies as a cultural practice. She writes that understanding literacy as a cultural practice “challenges us to call attention to the cultural assumptions and power relations involved rather than ignore them, to understand and question the history and the culture that position us to ‘help’ others” (p. 53). The lessons that Bergman et al. share from their experiences with a writing tutor exchange program reveal that this kind of literacy work is imperative. When writing centers cease to work toward an understanding of new contexts or new perspectives when working with minority or international students, the writing center is no longer working with the student; it is working to maintain institutional standards that place knowledge deficits on the student, labeling them as remedial, not college-ready, or deficient in any way. In terms of student success, a lack of student power or even autonomy can discourage minority and international students from persisting in higher education.

When students have the opportunity to insert their identities into their work, they are more likely to negotiate the standards set by the university. When working toward an understanding of literacy as a cultural practice, writing centers have the potential to assist in this process. However, the dynamics in higher education don’t always allow for systemic transformative change. Thomas, Bevins, and Crawford (2002) discuss how their Portfolio Project illuminates the integration of student perspectives and authority into their educational experiences and shows how students negotiate their identity while working toward fulfilling institutional standards. The Portfolio Project, a longitudinal study of writing completed by students during all four years of their time as undergraduates, revealed how students negotiate their interests and the assignments they are writing for. The authors found that while Portfolio Project participants were willing to accommodate the demands of institutional forces on how and what they wrote, the students would only do so as long as the accommodation “does not interfere with the progress of their own projects, and they found ways of inserting their own decisions into academic experiences” (p. 157). For example, one student, Nicki, a veterinarian medicine major, limits the amount of direct quotes she includes in her writing because she feels that quoting detracts from her internalization of the content of the texts she reads. Even though her instructors have pointed out the lack of direct quotes in her writing and how they could enhance her discussion, Nicki wants to “control the way she shapes her writing and, thus, the way she shapes herself’ (p. 157). Through discovering the need to negotiate institutional and personal requirements concerning writing projects, the authors situate how reflective practices can be integrated into the writing center to

help tutors better understand how higher education can be a site for inquiry and critique, even if that means placing the institution and institutional practices under a critical lens.

The Portfolio Project revealed a negotiation between institutional standards and a student’s personal learning goals, suggesting that students often accommodate and resist academic forces in their fields of study. Because students are strategically negotiating when to accommodate and resist institutional forces, it becomes the responsibility of the writing center to be aware of when and how to address these instances with students during tutorial sessions. Thomas, Bevins, and Crawford found that reflection not only helps tutors develop an understanding of their struggles with institutional forces (thus scaffolding them to negotiate these roles within their tutorials), but it also helps students better understand their roles as writers. The authors conclude that the Portfolio Project has helped them reflect on student stories, and they can “understand more deeply the politics of writing and writing centers and the kinds of conversations that can make change possible” (p. 166). This change, as related to institutional politics, brings the relevance of experience back to the students. Through listening to student stories, writing center professionals and peer tutors can gain a deeper understanding of what matters to students and how the educational process affects them, even if that means questioning the practices of the institution itself.

The relationship between politics, writing centers, and student success is highlighted again in the OSA book, Writing Centers and The New Racism: A Call for

Sustainable Dialogue and Change (Greenfield & Rowan, 2011). Greenfield and Rowan specifically look at how race critically affects writing centers and the students they serve.

The inspiration behind Greenfield and Rowan’s book was a keynote speech by Victor

Villanueva (2006) at the National Conference on Peer Tutoring in Writing where he calls

on writing centers to examine the language, rhetoric, and material reality of racism that

shapes writing center work. After the conference, the authors noticed a prolonged silence about racism and writing center work on the WCenter listerv, an email listserv specifically for writing center professionals. They argue that this “refusal to see racial difference often manifests in claims that race and racism lie outside the boundaries of

‘normal’ writing center work” (pp. 5-6). Each author’s chapter within this text responds to the following questions: (a) How does institutionalized racism in the American education system shape the culture of literacy and language education in the academy and

in the writing center? (b) How does racism operate in the rhetoric and discourses of

writing center scholarship/lore and how do writing centers cooperate, however

unintentionally, in racist practices? (c) How can we meaningfully operationalize

antiracist work in our discourses and in our centers? (d) How do we persevere through

the difficulty and messiness of negotiating race and racism in our writing centers?

Through these questions, the authors of the included chapters extend Grimm’s

analysis of good intentions and literacy work. Reflection continues to be a topic worthy

of attention, and more specifically, these works look at the role of reflection in how race

and writing center work connect (Geller, Condon, & Carroll, 2011; Valentine & Torres,

2011; Johnson, 2011). While reflection can be a powerful tool to engage with writing

center experiences, to understand the relationship between race and writing center work,

authors in The Writing Center and New Racism turn to additional ways to analyze how

writing centers affect and facilitate student success. For example, in a chapter on tutor perceptions of African American language and bias in the writing center, Wilson (2011) surveys faculty and tutors to better understand their perceptions of language and the students using that language. Her findings suggest that tutors and faculty often excuse mistakes from ELL students but not speakers of African American Language (AAL), and these same groups also have negative attitudes toward both AAL and its speakers.

Wilson argues: “My point is not that we should refrain from pointing out deviations from

EAE [Edited American English], but that we should also historicize and contextualize

EAE, acknowledging the validity of other Englishes such as AAL, to recognize that deviations are just that and should not be viewed as ignorance” (p. 189).

Writing centers and the validation of differences students bring with them to higher education is also a theme in Esters’ (2011) chapter on black maleness, degrees of racism, and community on the boundaries of the writing center. Esters’ narrative focuses on his experience as a black male working at a writing center in a Research I school. He discusses what it means to him to be black and in such a position and how that relates to his identity both inside and outside of the academy. He also reflects on his experiences with students, his peers, and workshops he’s conducted through a black, male lens.

Esters argues that “there is no community if race or gender is an elephant in the room.

They should be safe spaces, liberating spaces, not silent ones that never address the issues of race that imbue the center, its tutors, its clients, and its administrators. Community needs to be built, and it needs to be just as much a part of the strategic plan as computers and salaries and legal pads” (p. 299). Community is also central to Grimm’s (2011)

discussion of how writing center work can transform a system of advantage based on race. Her central argument focuses on how an ideology of individualism both shapes writing center discourse and races the writing center, privileging white students. She continues that a social model of learning would change the language used to describe writing center work and shift the focus of that work to a social structure. Grimm argues that revising our perspective on an ideology of individualism would bolster a writing center identity that is more social and community-oriented. Additionally, a utilization of situated learning (Lave & Wenger, 1991) would help usher in work that encourages and accepts legitimate peripheral participation and provide a writing center space for social interactions integral to learning and help us understand what we do and why we do it in order to challenge the “covert operations of the new racism” (p. 99). These recommendations translate to institutions as well, especially if higher education, as a means to the development of a community of learners, wants to be seen as responsive and capable of retaining students.

Overall, since the publication of Good Intentions, writing center scholarship has focused concertedly on the question of the role writing centers play in supporting students. At times, this may mean that writing centers are in conflict with the institutions that house them; however, developing a perspective that is more socially-oriented and community-driven can help writing centers develop the necessary tools to enact change on their campuses while keeping students at the center of their efforts. Framing this discussion in student success, especially as it pertains to minority students, not only provides writing centers with the opportunity to question the normativity of their daily

practice, it can also prove beneficial in discussions with institutional stakeholders. As student populations continue to become more diverse, universities need to ensure that they are providing opportunities for students to become a part of and succeed within a higher educational community. Having a diverse student population will mean that traditional notions of higher education may not produce the results they expect nor the results needed by a changing and more globalized society.

The Idea of a Writing Center: Tradition, Grand Narratives, and Opportunity

Since North’s “Idea,” writing center identity has gone through a metamorphosis.

Once believed to be a place where students could be diagnosed and cured from their academic ills, writing centers have since shifted to being places of talk where students can dialogue about their writing. Eventually, writing center identity took another turn, focusing on becoming even more student-centered. In this version of writing centers,

North’s idea of talk was extended to not only discuss the writing students are doing but also making writing centers a space where students and student differences are accepted.

This student-centered approach provided a way for students to gain autonomy and authority over what and how they write. At the turn of the 21st century, scholars included additional layers to writing center identity by discussing tutoring sessions as rebellious contact zones where students are invited or even scaffolded to question the authority of the academy. As scholars explore writing center identity, Grutch McKinney (2013) issued a warning to writing center administrators that any staunch adhesion to

contemporary concepts of working with students and of writing center identity can be detrimental to writing centers in how the work they do is defined.

As writing center identity continued to expand and more considerations were being made about the students who seek out those services, Grutch McKinney (2013) claims that some aspects of writing center identity continued to proliferate unquestioned.

In her book, Peripheral Visions for Writing Centers, she turns modern perceptions of writing center identity upside-down, writing that “writing center work is complex, but the storying of writing center work is not […] I call it the writing center grand narrative, which goes something like this: writing centers are comfortable, iconoclastic places where all students go to get one-to-one tutoring on their writing” (p. 3, italics in original).

She argues that this grand narrative does not match the reality of writing center work and therefore ill-prepares administrators for the field and negatively affects the work writing centers do with students. In response to how North’s “Idea” influenced writing center scholarship, Grutch McKinney contends that this text provided the writing center community with a common definition and identity. However, she argues, that definition has restricted the storying of writing center work to a narrow range of topics. For example, in an analysis of how writing centers claim to tutor all students, Grutch

McKinney problematizes the perception of one-to-one tutoring. She argues that this service can reinforce a writing center identity of remediation by campus faculty.

When faculty send students to the writing center, Grutch McKinney believes that they are passing the responsibility of preparedness from the institution to the student.

She writes that tutoring “keeps us focused on changing individual students […] tutoring

keeps us from asking why they need us; writing center work becomes about meeting needs and not about evaluating systems” (p. 69). The evaluation of systems works to find the root of a problem as opposed to creating pathways for a problem to continue to persist. For example, Grimm’s work on the regulatory role of the writing center discusses the writing center’s responsibility to acknowledge and engage with the idea that the academic environment supports a very specific literacy that students may or may not have had access to. Grimm positions writing centers in the paradoxes of literacy work and brings awareness to how literacy practices “reproduce social order and regulate access and subjectivity” (1996, p. 5). Grimm argues that literacy work too often focuses on the students rather than changing teaching practices, and a narrow perspective of only theorizing writing centers as sites for individual instruction limits systemic transformation and regulates literacy. Instead, she argues, writing centers should work to re-theorize their work as occurring in spaces where mutual transformations can flourish.

Through the expansion of defining writing center work from individual tutoring to transformative collaborative experiences, the system itself has the opportunity to change based on the needs of its stakeholders.

The evaluation of systems that is highlighted by Grutch McKinney and called for in much of the OSA scholarship (Grimm, 1999; Nelson and Evertz, 2001; Greenfield and

Rowan, 2011) supposes a rebellious nature of writing centers and writing center work by positioning themselves against the status quo of institutional standards. Grutch

McKinney argues that the focus on evaluating systems and fighting for mutual transformations between students and higher education in writing center scholarship can

make writing center identity seem iconoclastic. Through questioning the system, writing

centers may no longer see themselves on the outskirts of their institutions. Instead of

feeling marginalized as had been the case when writing centers became a more

mainstream support service, pushing on the boundaries of academic expectations seems

to have provided writing centers with an opportunity to take an active stance in fighting

for systemic change rooted in student success. For example, Grutch McKinney quotes

from Rihn’s “Resistance One-on-One” at length to highlight how writing center scholars have storied themselves as nontraditional and iconoclastic. Rihn (2010) writes:

I am a conflicted person by nature. I don’t often feel like I fit in, even in places

where I really want to. I feel like a charlatan, an impostor, because I am always

critiquing the very institutions I become a part of. This facet of my personality

leads me to seek out other people and places that don’t quite belong, spaces that

represent the “boarderland,” people with whom I can share my sense of “in-

betweeness.” Maybe these impulses were what first led me to my campus

Writing Center, where I have worked as a peer tutor for three years. (p.20).

Grutch McKinney claims that this isn’t a unique story, and it personifies the grand narrative of how writing centers have often referred to themselves throughout their scholarship – not belonging, boarderlands, a sense of in-betweeness. According to

Grutch McKinney, these storied ways of describing writing center work have developed two prongs of writing center identity. The first prong is that of writing center as marginal. The second prong accepts the marginal foothold writing centers claim to have and rallies other scholars to celebrate their outsider status. It’s this second prong that

Grutch McKinney claims creates an unquestioned aspect of writing center identity. She

writes that “in a very conscious effort to cast off the ‘marginal’ story and its

consequences, writing center scholars have restoried the writing center as iconoclastic. In

other words, the ‘writing center as marginal’ is so ardently rejected, the rejection has

become a part of the grand narrative” (p. 41). Many writing center scholars would argue

that the consequences of existing on the margins, or believing that this is where writing

centers exist can be reproduced in how the academy views writing center scholarship and

therefore can affect how writing centers and writing center professionals are viewed

within the academy. However, Grutch McKinney cautions that a focus on whether or not

writing centers are marginalized has given writing center scholars tunnel vision: “If we

put aside our rhetorical and visual habits that have us continually wrapped in discussing

and seeing ourselves as marginal or not marginal, we might see other perfectly viable,

perhaps even more useful representation” (p. 56).

Re-envisioning writing center work can widen the view of what writing centers do, and according to Grutch McKinney, this doesn’t necessarily mean doing anything new as much as it recognizes the scope of what has already been done. She argues that reflecting on how the writing center grand narrative operates in writing center identity while “allowing the suppressed and peripheral pieces to surface, and re-envisioning the

boundaries of writing center work will allow us to dislodge our established rhetorical and

visual ways” (pp. 89-90). For example, having peripheral visions in writing center work

and identity could open doors for reimagining how writing centers affect student success

and how writing centers play a role in the collaborative transformative effects that happen

between writing centers and students during daily tutoring sessions. While Grutch

McKinney doesn’t offer concrete examples of what peripheral visions can lead to, she does envision a fracture for the future of writing centers if the grand narrative persists. In one movement, Grutch McKinney sees a rise in multiliteracy centers where students can receive assistance and feedback on a multitude of texts, not just student writing. The second movement places writing centers as comprehensive writing centers where programs are offered that go beyond peer tutoring. In these comprehensive writing centers, faculty workshops are conducted, campus writing events are created, and there is more of an emphasis on writing across the curriculum to develop awareness of how writing and literacies can impact student mastery of their major study areas. Grutch

McKinney argues that once this split takes place, all that will be left is the tunnel vision created by the writing center grand narrative. The inflexibility or unwillingness of writing centers to question or evaluate their own system could be the demise of writing centers themselves. In other words, if writing centers remain stuck in tradition, their existence could be in jeopardy.

It seems improbable, however, that writing center scholars would adhere to tradition and ignore Grtuch McKinney’s call to question the seemingly infallible identity writing centers have developed over the past thirty years. Through an analysis of OSA texts, writing centers seem to continue to grow, question, and reinvent themselves based on the needs of the institution and its students coupled with the influence of writing center publications. Even though North’s “Idea” is the most cited text in writing center scholarship, scholars seem to recognize the potential of this essay as a starting point for

discussion as opposed to being an all-encompassing manifesto for what writing centers are and should always be. This recognition to extend North’s work can do wonders for the role writing centers play in student success and how student success is perceived. On the surface, Grutch McKinney’s warning that writing centers may become irrelevant if peripheral visions aren’t adopted can seem nihilistic. Taken another way, peripheral visions can be a starting point for discovering the potential writing centers have to ensure students can succeed within a system placed squarely within Arendt’s crisis of education.

Celebrating what writing centers are and what they can do echoes Arendt’s concept of the power of human thought and action to create wonder. If education is to take place for a world where hope is within the realm of possibilities, questioning the traditional hierarchy can be a major influence for “the instilling of wonder at that which is as it is”

(p. 40). Questioning the traditional hierarchy doesn’t necessarily have to marginalize writing centers or make them iconoclastic so much as it can help students realize their potential. However, writing centers can only manifest the success efforts as highlighted in OSA scholarship if they’re willing to shift focus, and as Grutsch McKinney suggests, utilize peripheral visions to re-envision the boundaries of writing center work and

“dislodge our established rhetorical and visual ways” (p. 90). In turn, writing centers can upend tradition as developed in the grand narrative Grutch McKinney warns writing center professionals against and secure a part in the transformation of higher education.

Arendt writes that once a tradition no longer fulfills the needs of the society, it ceases to give direction and orientation, yet, problematically, it still functions as a tradition. The gap between the past and future exists between how we think things are and how they

are; it is a break, disconnect, and rupture between perspective and reality. It is opened up

when people take stock of where they are without the blinders of tradition, or faith, and

other attitudes that lead us not to see the world “as it is.” For writing centers, this gap

serves as an opportunity to re-envision and re-story what writing centers are and what

they can become, shifting the system to not only better support our students’ success but

also support the role writing centers play within this success.

While writing center scholarship is often steeped in ensuring students have

equitable access to services that aid in student success, it must be noted that the bulk of

OSA scholarship doesn’t directly focus on the outcomes of those efforts. Instead, these

articles and books focus on the writing center itself and what it sees as valuable for the

student such as engaging power structures, racism, and gender issues. These aspects of

writing center work, while important, place more emphasis on creating an environment conducive to student success; however, evaluations focused on the success of those efforts seem to be lacking in the scholarship. It seems as if a shift should be in order here, to question if that is indeed what is valuable to our students. It’s obvious that students would want help with their writing, getting their ideas on paper, writing

“correctly” and in an engaging way. Perhaps writing center scholarship is ignoring the actual needs, desires, and/or goals of the student and instead is focusing on the needs, desires, and/or values of writing center administrators, tutors, or even editors. This observation calls into question the democratic nature writing centers claim to be part of their identity within higher education. Most of the OSA scholarship that pertains to student success exposes this idea of democracy, of stepping away from their position of

power, yet here, they are assuming what is best for the student. If writing centers truly practice what they preach, it seems as if there is a disconnect between what they do and how that activity is proliferated within the field. With this in mind, I will now turn to writing center research and how scholars discuss, implement, and apply research to what it is writing centers do and how that information is disseminated to the academy at large.

CHAPTER III

WRITING CENTER RESERCH PATTERNS, CRITIQUE, AND

METHODOLOGIES IN OUTSTANDING SCHOLARSHIP AWARD TEXTS

In Chapter 2, I explored student success as discussed in texts that have been awarded the Outstanding Scholarship Award (OSA) from the International Writing

Centers Association (IWCA). Through this discussion, I focused on writing center identity and its history with remediation and how this history has been developed into a body of work focused on students and how writing centers engage with them. An article by Shulruf, Hattie, and Tumen (2008) showed that student success is better addressed when individuals and groups are targeted for intervention as opposed to efforts that target the institution. With this in mind, I highlighted how writing centers have been and are connecting with individual students to facilitate student success. Issues such as power, authority, and literacy were major themes within the scholarship, and these concepts were developed to show their relationship to students writing within academia. Findings suggest that writing centers often view their work as critical to rectifying the imbalance in power between institutional standards and student ability. However, Grutch McKinney

(2013) warns her readers to not stick too closely with a grand narrative that only adheres to one concept of writing center identity. She argues that it is important for writing centers to utilize peripheral visions to re-envision the boundaries of writing center work and “dislodge our established rhetorical and visual ways” (p. 90). Finally, Chapter 2 closed by illuminating the lack of scholarship specifically on student success. Instead,

these articles and books focus on the writing center itself and what it sees as valuable for the student.

In Chapter 3, I plan to discuss how researchers understand the concept of student success. Specifically, I will examine how OSA articles and books reveal how writing center assessment has evolved. Additionally, I will analyze how Richard Haswell’s call for RAD (replicable, aggregable, and data supported) research has affected the way writing center scholars discuss the current state of the field. The chapter will conclude with a discussion about writing center research practices and Arendt’s vision of gaps and crisis in education.

RAD Research: Calling Scholars and Publishers to Task

In 2005, Richard Haswell published his landmark essay “NCTE/CCCC’s Recent

War on Scholarship,” lamenting that both the National Council of Teachers of English

(NCTE) and the Conference on Composition and Communication (CCCC) had substantially withdrawn their sponsorship of replicable, aggregable, and data supported

(RAD) research. It is important to note that NCTE and CCCC are the leading publishers of scholarship in Composition and Rhetoric, including writing center scholarship.

Through Haswell’s analysis, he traces the amount of RAD scholarship from 1940-1999 published in NCTE and CCCC books and journals, revealing a decrease in RAD research in NCTE and CCCC books and journals and an increase of RAD research in non-NCTE and CCCC publications. Haswell’s position is that RAD scholarship is “a best effort inquiry into the actualities of a situation, inquiry that is explicitly enough systematicized in sampling, execution, and analysis to be replicated; exactly enough circumscribed to be

extended; and factually enough supported to be verified” (p. 201). Essentially, RAD

research extends scholarship so other scholars can potentialize published data to develop

a body of work to support and grow an academic field.

For writing centers and Composition, RAD research would be a means to

increasing their legitimacy as a scholarly discipline. What Haswell uncovered in his

analysis is that much of what NCTE and CCCC published lacks what Carr and Kemmis

(1986) refer to as “systematically produced knowledge” (p. 8). Based on his search

criteria of NCTE/CCCC publications and non-NCTE/CCCC publications, Haswell

argued that:

the field lacks a body of testable knowledge connected to class size, computer

pedagogy, group work, part-time teaching, interdisciplinary instruction, 1st-year

sequenced syllabi, and the list can go on. And, in part, it does not have the body

of facts because its most prominent professional organizations, NCTE and CCCC,

do not valorize or support the apparatus needed to drive RAD research. (p. 219)

For writing centers, this would mean that a better job needs to be done to not only perpetuate the field but also to develop a body of research that highlights the positive work writing centers do for and with students.

While Haswell’s findings seem grim for Composition and Rhetoric as a whole, writing center research using RAD techniques has been increasing since 1980. Driscoll and Purdue (2012) do their own analysis of RAD research usage in the NCTE-sponsored

The Writing Center Journal, covering a timespan from 1980-2009. The authors employed a RAD Research Rubric that focused on 7 areas: background and significance;

study design and data collection; selection of participants and/or texts; method of analysis; presentation of results; discussion and implications; and limitations and future work. Their findings suggest that articles using RAD research have been steadily increasing, especially after 1990. They also found that 16.5% of analyzed articles scored as highly RAD. Based on these findings, the authors argue for a revised definition of research and how it relates to writing center practices and publications. This redefinition would help validate the field’s practices and secure external credibility and funding to develop evidence-based research. To move the field in this direction, the authors suggest

1) fortifying our knowledge; 2) developing replicable and aggregable research methods;

3) envisioning broadly and making connections; 4) shifting our expectations as both readers and researchers; and 5) sponsoring research (p. 30). Driscoll and Purdue conclude their discussion with a call for more research to understand “the complex relationships between writing center practitioners and how we produce and discuss our research” (p. 36). This call echoes Haswell’s point – that without a buildable body of knowledge, it is difficult, if not impossible, to review how knowledge is produced and what its implications are for the field and its practitioners and scholars.

The next section of this chapter will discuss writing center marginalization and how being marginalized has affected writing center legitimacy as an academic field.

Specifically, I will review OSA scholarship that calls for writing centers as research sites and how these calls, while heard within the writing center community, may fall upon deaf ears within the greater academic community. In order to review the effectiveness of calls for writing center as research site, I will look at OSA scholarship from the late 20th

century that focuses on collaboration in terms of writing center research practices and

writing center identity and align those discussions with research from Composition

scholars publishing at the same time.

Writing Center Research: Developing a Critical Lens

Prior to Haswell’s publication in 2005, a main issue concerning research and writing center scholarship was gaining legitimacy within institutions of higher education as well as within the field of Composition and Rhetoric. Starting in the 1980s, the marginalization of writing centers became a popular topic in published scholarship, and this focus on marginalization started to be equated with writing center identity (Cooper,

1994/1995; Simpson, Braye, & Boquet, 1994; Healy, 1993/1995; Macauley & Mauriello,

2007; Miller, 2008). In Chapter 2, I discussed writing center’s history of marginalization and how this status came to be contested by many writing center scholars, and in 2013,

Jackie Grutch McKinney focused on this as one of the issues of the writing center grand narrative: writing centers are comfortable, iconoclastic places where all students go to get one-to-one tutoring on their writing” (p. 3, italics in original). With so much OSA

scholarship focusing on marginalization, it is not surprising that writing center scholars

were using their research to further legitimize their existence both on campus and as an

academic field.

Writing Centers as Research Site and Legitimacy

In an early OSA article that focuses on the value of writing centers, Summerfield

(1988/1995) contemplated the history of her experiences directing a writing center.

These experiences, she claims, can illuminate the future of writing centers, especially in terms of their standing as a legitimate research site. As her writing center opened its doors, Summerfield defined her writing center as integral to the “political, social, and pedagogical experiments” that came with CUNY’s new open admissions policy that brought with it a demographic of students not traditionally seen within the higher education landscape (p. 64). Based on her work in the writing center with this student population, Summerfield concluded that “all teaching, tutoring, writing, reading, indeed, all language acts, are ineluctably social” (p. 65). Summerfield focuses the rest of her discussion on two aspects of writing center theory related to language as a social act: a process approach and a workshop approach to writing. Summerfield believed that because the writing process can be formulaic in how it’s presented to students (e.g.: brainstorming  drafting  revising  editing), the process could become too institutionalized, giving students a process to write but not a way to explore ideas. A workshop approach, on the other hand, would be a way for writing to be recursive and students could choose to implement any usable process that would best serve the rhetorical situation and students’ needs. Summerfield argued that a workshop approach

“inquires into the mind working in society [where] writing is seen in terms of what it does to a reader, or better, to readers” (p. 66, italics in original). In a workshop approach, Summerfield claimed that writing centers are community, and having a community within the greater institution can be problematic as it can encourage students to question institutional practices. At a time when higher education at CUNY was

transitioning to a less traditional student population, these questions could have the

potential to disrupt power and authority structures at the institution.

Summerfield believed that because she developed a space where she also pushed

the boundaries and asked questions, becoming “too noisy” (p.65), she was forced out of

her position as the writing center’s director. As far as what this means for the future of

writing centers, Summerfield worried about trends such as testing and computers as a

way to drive writing back to the individual and away from the collaborative atmosphere

of the writing center. She concludes with this warning: “Watch out for all evidence of

attempts to break down the gathering of minds” (p. 68). This early warning opened the

door for further research on writing centers and student success, especially in terms of

collaborative learning theory as this would foster an environment for “the gathering of

minds.” Since research trends suggest that insofar as collaborative learning theory is also

a prevalent way for Composition scholars to study writing, then it would seem that

writing centers should be positioned as central locations for collecting data, making

observations, and researching collaboration in action. While writing centers continue to

thrive as spaces for the gathering of minds, they continue to be largely ignored as a

prevalent research site for studying the teaching of writing. As a result, writing center

scholars have a 30-year history of discussing their marginalization from the field they were designed to support.

In light of writing centers and the perception of marginalization, Lisa Ede (1989) argues for writing centers to have a stronger presence in Composition scholarship because of their uniqueness and the value of data that can be mined there. Ede made her

point by problematizing Bruffee’s early notions of collaborative learning as a means of helping student writers break from the solitude of writing. Later in his career, Bruffee

(1984/1995) focuses on the merits of collaborative learning, arguing for the social construction of knowledge peer tutoring provides. To support these claims, Bruffee discusses two key reasons why peer tutoring plays an important role in education. First,

Bruffee claims that peer tutoring provides a context for practicing academic conversation.

Second, this conversation has extensions to other communities outside of the academic institution. Additionally, Bruffee sees peer tutoring as an integral service in that it

“provides the kind of social context in which normal discourse occurs: a community of knowledgeable peers” (p. 93). This community, Bruffee argues, is imperative since it provides an outlet for learning how to communicate one’s thoughts into conversation while also providing a way for that conversation to be re-externalized in writing to a reader. He closes his article by discussing the extensions of peer tutoring to the real world and finds that “peer tutoring is one way of introducing students to the process by which communities of knowledgeable peers create referential connections between symbolic structures and reality, that is, create knowledge, and by doing so maintain community growth and coherence” (p. 96).

However, Bruffee’s focus on writing centers comes about a decade after he began publishing about collaborative learning, and his research already had time to impact the trajectory of thinking within Composition. Therefore, his early ideas and theoretical foundations about collaborative learning were being disseminated throughout

Composition scholarship. Because of the impact of Bruffee’s research, Ede uses these

early works to zero in on his claims about writing being naturally solitary and how writing in a collaborative setting would seem unnatural. She argues that this unnatural perception of writing could implicitly suggest that “only beginning or second-best writers would need the support and collaboration that in-class peer groups and writing centers provide. Real writers, experienced and professional writers, wouldn’t need to seek out such concrete dialogue” (pp. 6-7, italics in original). For writing centers, this would mean being viewed as “pedagogical fix-it shops” to help students who are “unable to think on their own” (p. 7). She continues that perceiving writing centers as fix-it shops

“not only places writing centers on the periphery of most colleges, where our second- class status is symbolized by our basement offices and inadequate staffs and budgets, it also places us on the periphery of our own field of composition studies” (p. 7). Ede’s call for writing centers as unique sites for research coupled with their physical marginalization from the academic institution seem to mix about as well as oil and water.

If writing centers are not visible, then it would seem quite likely that calls such as Ede’s would fall upon deaf ears.

The disconnect of the writing center as research site and writing center location did not, however, affect writing centers’ focus on collaboration. Writing center research saw a surge of texts focusing on collaboration during the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Additionally, Compositionists were also looking towards collaboration as a theoretical foundation for research within the field (Myers, 1985; Porter; 1986; Brodkey, 1987;

Rafoth & Rubin, 1988; Harris, 1989). While both groups seem to be focusing on collaboration as a theoretical framework for discussing the teaching of writing, writing

centers as research sites for Compositionists never came to fruition. One reason for the lack of research conducted in writing centers by Compositionists may be because of physical and academic marginalization. Another reason could also be due to the quality of writing center scholarship being produced about collaboration. Driscoll and Purdue

(2012) noted that writing center scholarship using RAD research increased from 1980-

2010; however, it’s important to note that having a RAD label doesn’t necessarily mean that research results should become undisputed, factual, or even folded into the fabric of the field’s scholarly identity.

In a bibliographic essay highlighting the accomplishments and current trends of writing center research, Bushman (1991) writes, “Discovering how learning is enhanced through the collaborative efforts of tutors and tutees is the primary objective of writing center research” (p. 33). Within both writing center and Composition research, Bruffee’s use of collaborative learning theory within different contexts begins to influence much of the discussion of teaching and tutoring writing. However, some scholars noticed a heavy reliance on this theory and began to deconstruct Bruffee’s influence and how his works have been used by other scholars. In one such discussion, Gillam’s OSA piece from the edited collection Intersections: Theory-Practice in the Writing Center (1994) evaluates

the theoretical merits of Bruffee’s concept of collaborative learning theory as it relates to

writing center practice. She writes: “Seldom, however, are theory and practice

considered together, that is, in terms of one another […] What’s missing from these

discussions are particular, ‘contextualized’ illustrations of the relationship between theory

and practice” (p. 41). Gillam argues that if collaborative learning theory is the primary

objective of writing center research, then practice and theory should be studied together.

Furthermore, she suggests that “it is clear that the critical operations of theory can challenge and enlarge our understanding of practice” (p. 51). Through the perspective that critical operations of theory can challenge and enlarge an understanding of practice,

Gillam unveils the main point of her chapter, that the writing center offers a “fertile site for engaging in reflective practice and for generating paradoxical, contingent knowledge”

(p. 51). This argument echoes Summerfield’s assertion that writing centers are prime sites for research in the teaching and learning of writing. Gillam astutely brings together practice and theory in order to develop contextualized relationships of concepts used in writing center scholarship. Additionally, she points to the prime role writing centers can play in researching how practice and theory can intersect, especially when looking at collaboration in action. However, this text appears in a writing center-specific edited compilation. At the time of publication, the editors of this text, Joan Mullin and Ray

Wallace, were mostly known for their writing center work. Like Ede’s call for writing center as unique research site, Gillam’s similar position would most likely only be read by her writing center peers. As writing center scholars continue to use collaboration in

OSA scholarship, this myopic perspective of collaboration doesn’t seem to highlight the teaching of writing outside of the walls of the writing center. At this point in time, writing center scholars continued to claim that writing centers are valuable to the discussion of collaboration; however, very few scholars make connections between the kinds of collaboration taking place in the writing center and how those findings can transcend to the writing classroom.

One landmark example of how collaboration is specifically used to look at writing

center theory and practice is Lunsford’s (1991/1995) discussion of how control and

collaboration affect each other and are used to define writing center identity. Through

this discussion, she describes three kinds of writing centers: The Center as Storehouse,

The Center as Garret, and The Burkean Parlorvii Center. In “The Center as Storehouse,” knowledge is exterior to the learner, accessible, and individually derived. In this model, collaboration can be seen as unwelcomed and sometimes hostile since the tutor’s main task is to provide knowledge to the student. Another type of writing center, “The Center as Garret,” views knowledge as within the student, and these types of writing centers focus on helping students “get in touch with this knowledge, as a way to find their unique voices, their individual and unique powers” (p. 110). The problem Lunsford saw with these types of writing centers is that they do not emphasize or support all of the benefits of collaboration. Lunsford argues for a writing center steeped in collaboration and cautions what this may look like and how it might work within the current structure of education, especially in terms of power. She argues that the “Burkean Parlor Center” can help educators “enable a student body and citizenry to meet the demands of the twenty- first century [in terms of market needs]” (p. 113). Additionally, collaboration puts power in the negotiating group as opposed to the tutor (Storehouse) or student (Garret). This restructuring of power would theoretically help students co-create knowledge, and according to Lunsford, this change in writing center work can move writing centers from the margins of academia and turn traditional structures of higher education on their heads.

Projections that promise a more legitimate presence for writing centers seem like a move in the right direction for writing center identity and scholarship and could be used to make writing centers more visible to outside scholars. In Lunsford’s description of three kinds of writing centers, she briefly mentions that collaboration “both in theory and in practice reflects a broad-based epistemological shift, a shift in the way we view knowledge” (p. 4); however, there is little discussion of what collaboration is and its purpose in knowledge creation beyond the meeting of the minds. While this may seem like a critical oversight on Lunsford’s part, her work with collaboration in this article does what she argues for writing centers – for collaboration to be front and center, providing a conversational context for the term. Laverty (2010), in a critique of Richard

Stanley Peters’ work, argues that the role of philosophy in education is to provide a conversational context for the pedagogical dimension of concepts. It’s important to note that Lunsford isn’t a philosopher; however, using Laverty’s perspective about conversational context, Lunsford does seem to attempt a philosophical context for her discussion of collaboration as a framework for writing center practice by taking the idea of collaboration and control and situating it within current writing center research. By situating collaboration with control, Lunsford both extends the conversation about these concepts and shifts subsequent dialogue to a new way of viewing the status quo.

However, in Laverty’s critique, she discusses the philosopher’s role as one that requires scholars to analyze concepts in order to develop and understand normative commitments (p. 31). As an extension and critique of Peters’ groundwork in educational philosophy, she seeks a pedagogical dimension that argues for a first-order (ordinary

language) use of concepts that encompasses second-order (conceptual clarification)

concerns. This pedagogical dimension is framed in Laverty’s view of language as a

vehicle for understanding, that “[i]t allows us to see things differently, heightening our

appreciation of the commonplace […] The exercise of one another’s concepts is critical

for building community and creating the recognition of a shared world” (p. 36-37) – all

important aspects necessary for the development of a new framework for writing center

identity.

Working towards developing a new conversation for writing center administrators

to view the work that goes on in a writing center and the political threads that run through

this work, Lunsford’s use of collaboration is a shift in the way knowledge had been

viewed as “mediated by or constructed through language in social use, as socially

constructed, contextualized, as, in short, the product of collaboration” (p. 4). While

Lunsford doesn’t necessarily define her specific use of collaboration in the same way

Peters would as conceptual clarification, she is using collaboration as a first-order concept. Collaboration, according to Lunsford, is not only a way to construct knowledge, but by incorporating control, she acknowledges that knowledge isn’t free, that knowledge, while socially constructed, is also contextually bound. This marriage of concepts is a reflection of tutoring practice as well as her framework for viewing the power of collaboration as being in the hands of the negotiating group. It’s here that

Lunsford’s article reflects Laverty’s use of the strong sense – that “any personalized use of a concept has the potential to be exemplary and definitive because conceptual understanding is inherently normative” (p. 37). Lunsford’s claim that socially

constructed knowledge is politically charged is inherently normative in that knowledge cannot exist without being defined by the society it reflects and what that society values.

Through this discussion, Lunsford provides a conversational context for the pedagogical dimension of the concepts focused on in her text. While this conversational context works well for writing centers and situating collaboration within the field’s lexicon, the possibility of this article to influence scholars outside of writing centers seems low.

Lunsford may highlight the use of collaboration in writing center work, but there is a lack of a focus on how this perspective of collaboration transcends the writing center to the writing classroom.

Not only are writing classrooms left out of the scope of Lunsford’s discussion of control and collaboration, some scholars argue that she is also relying too heavily on a single theory, social constructionism, to define writing center work. During the time collaborative learning theory was shaping writing center practice and being incorporated into writing center identity, Murphy (1994) cautioned her readers about the dangers of relying too heavily on a single theory as opposed to a combination of theories. Murphy specifically questions social constructionist theory as a mode of writing development and the writing center’s devotion to this way of knowledge construction:

it is important to consider whether social constructionist theory – with its limited

valorization of collaborative vs. individual learning strategies, its limited

understanding of the role the emotions play in the writing process, and its

emphasis upon only those aspects of knowledge that can be socially constructed –

gives us a broad enough understanding of the meaning-making activities of

individual writers to assist us in providing the most effective instruction we can.

(p. 29)

Murphy argues that one issue with social constructionism is the lack of focus on how hegemony and counterhegemony are distributed and redistributed within groups.

Murphy has found that scholars often argue that collaboration should be a cornerstone to educational practice; however, how collaboration will be introduced, maintained, and assessed are rarely discussed. Because of the lack of understanding of how social constructionism works within an educational setting, Murphy argues that following these ideals without completely understanding their pitfalls can create a practice riddled with good intentions at best and harmful interactions at worst. Murphy concludes that social constructionism provides "a paradigm that explains a number of aspects of writing instruction; however, to argue that it provides all the answers, or even answers sufficient to warrant the devaluing of other theories and philosophies of education […] seems unwise” (p. 36).

This turn to marginalization may have occurred because of the development of community and the “noise” associated with it. If writing centers build their own network in order to maintain a space to ask critical questions, then this network might also work against writing centers as spaces willing to collaborate with the greater institutional community, including faculty and scholars from Composition. This would especially seem true in the late 20th century as writing center and Composition scholars both turned toward collaboration as a theoretical framework for discussing the teaching of writing.

For writing center scholars, a turn toward collaboration looked more at how collaboration

manifests within writing centers as opposed to highlighting how collaboration and writing center work could transcend to the writing classroom. Within OSA scholarship, it wasn’t until 2007 when Macauley and Mauriello published Marginal Words, Marginal

Work? that the conversations about what happens in a writing center were explored outside of the writing center’s walls. The next section will more closely explore citation patterns and critique of research practices within OSA scholarship to uncover how assessment has affected writing center identity, especially in terms of student success.

In-house Critique, Research Methodology, and Student Success

To truly understand how OSA scholarship has impacted writing center research practices, it is important to review how writing center scholars have discussed and implemented research practices. As discussed above, scholarship from the 1980s and

1990s mainly focused on legitimizing writing centers both within the university and as an academic research site. Since then, the value and quality of disseminated scholarship has come under review by the writing center community itself. This section will analyze how writing center assessment has evolved since the 1990s and how writing center research may have affected writing center identity. In order to do this analysis, I will review writing center research practices and potential influences for what writing centers have researched and how those results have been folded into writing center theory and practice.

In 1999, Boquet published her OSA article, “‘Our Little Secret’: A History of

Writing Center, Pre- to Post-open Admissions,” providing a background of writing center scholarship from early 20th century to 2000, focusing on writing center identity as related

to method/practice and location. She writes that this “prying apart of space and method represents a rare but necessary move in our discussions on pedagogical practices” (p.

465). Through her analysis, Boquet finds two major trends in writing center practice and theory. First, that the origins of writing centers are based on early methods that support hegemonic production, assisting students in filling a knowledge void in order to help them meet the expectations of the university. Additionally, these early methods also appear as extracurricular of composition and counter-hegemonic: writing center operations as attempts “to wrest authority out of the hands of the institution and place it in the hands of the students” (p. 466) – a method Boquet admits she finds tempting as it

“highlights the politics of location that have proven so crucial in discussions about the institutional placement of writing centers” (p. 466).

Overall, Boquet’s exploration leads her to conclude on a surprising note, the state of writing center research. She quotes Murphy from the 1997 meeting of the National

Writing Centers Association in that there is a “‘bankruptcy of writing center scholarship’” (p. 477). Boquet explains that writing center discussions currently happening during the time her article was published focus on “how to fund, set-up, and publicize an online writing lab” (pp. 477-478) as aspects of administrative execution, and these topics of discussion do not get at “what is most challenging to me about my work in the writing center: the excessive institutional possibilities that the writing center represents” (p. 478). Boquet argues that her critique doesn’t support an excessive theory of writing centers where they grow into massive, resource-sucking entities on campus.

Rather, she sees an excessive theory of writing center operations as requiring “us to seek

out the overflow of the expected in all its forms, asks us to create a space for play […] rejects the ‘form-as-reproducible’ model (Sirc 10) of low risk/low-yield tutoring in favor of higher risk/higher yield strategies […] and insists on less predictable but potentially more productive conversations which wander, circle, and return again to the point where they began” (p. 478). According to Boquet, writing centers shouldn’t be aligned under a similar or the same theory or practice but instead play with those ideas and develop new questions worth seeking answers to. She argues that writing center research should focus on the stories held within these spaces that “pry apart distinctions which have become fused in our discussions of writing center theory and practice” (p. 479). With the influence of OSA scholarship on the writing center field, one would think that this call for a new valuing of research would have influenced scholars to take up issues outside of the daily practice of writing center administration. While some texts did work within the guidelines to develop outside-of-the-box thinking, many did not, and Boquet’s call for more thought-provoking research seems to echo within OSA scholarship for the next 15 years.

The shortage of what Boquet deems thought-provoking research may have more to do with privilege within the position of some writing center directorsviii than it does with a lack of focus on critical topics within writing center studies. Lerner (2000) argues that members of the writing center community who have power and the resources to publish are more often than not the few who are able to propagate research, and more specifically, are more likely to have the resources to design and carry out studies that attempt to pry apart distinctions that join theory and practice together. The position of

writing center director isn’t static from one institution to the next, meaning that not all

writing center directors have a faculty contract with expectations of publication.

Therefore, practical and practice-oriented scholarship can be beneficial for many writing center administrators who are trying to establish or legitimize writing centers in their institutions. Overall, with so much disparity in the responsibilities of this role, it is not surprising that some voices are left out of the conversation or that the conversation as a whole isn’t relevant to all members of the writing center community. In relation to the value of writing center research, the wide range of relevant research can create disparity in the time it takes for a call for research to be made and for that call to be addressed.

While writing center scholars may not necessarily be talking past each other, what is relevant or interesting to one segment of the population may not be as relevant to others.

Research Methodology: New Directions, Silenced Voices, and (the lack of)

Quantitative Research

A few years before Haswell’s text on RAD research shook up the way

Compositionists and writing center scholars view and value research, Gillespie, Gillam,

Brown, and Stay (2002) turned the gaze inward at writing center research, explicitly discussing what is meant by research, what should count as research, and how to conduct research in their OSA-winning book, Writing Center Research: Extending the

Conversation. Within this edited compilation, authors were asked to contextualize theoretical and conceptual inquiry in terms of larger debates about knowledge making; to acknowledge the political dimension of research methods and methodologies; and to raise questions about current and future directions for writing center inquiry.

As a way to attend to the requests of Writing Center Research’s editors, many of the authors focus on research tools and methods that they believe should be introduced to writing center studies. In an attempt to frame these discussions, Gillam (2002) works to illuminate unspoken assumptions, contradictions, and unresolved dilemmas that continue to influence scholarly inquiry by analyzing early calls for writing center research from the 1980s. Through this analysis, she explores three metaphors in these early calls for writing center research: writing center as frontier; writing center as adolescent; and writing center as research lab. The frontier metaphor connects writing center research with composition’s “pioneering” efforts to investigate writing processes and pedagogies while also differentiating writing center research as located within a further frontier.

Writing center research as adolescent describes calls that lack methodologies for pursuing the questions that are in need of further investigation. Additionally, these works call for a theoretical foundation for writing center scholarship; however, the field has not yet developed theoretical frameworks for interpreting and explaining practical experience.

Finally, writing centers as research lab refers to calls that assume research will uncover the truth regarding writers’ processes and better tutorial practices. Gillam continues that within writing center as research lab calls, a distinction is made between systematic and intentional inquiry and informal reflections on practice. These scholars, according to

Gillam, “all assume that the ultimate goal of writing center research is to enable better or more effective intervention in writers’ processes, that, of course, is the goal that has dominated composition research” (p. 15). Gillam concludes with a call to reinvigorate the discussion about research. As the book unfolds, the authors of subsequent chapters

focus on the development of theoretical foundations to guide research as well as how to

apply research methodologies to writing center studies. While it’s difficult to ascertain

whether or not this text reinvigorated the discussion about research, it does provide a new

perspective about the future of writing center research.

Instead of critiquing past research endeavors, Writing Center Research centers on new directions for research, using previous writing center scholarship as a springboard for these discussions. For example, Carino (2002) provides researchers with a rhetorical analysis that unveils the institutional discourse of writing centers. Carino argues for discourse analysis to be used to “enable us to engage in dialectic about our identities as shaped in communal and local context” (p. 107). Another example of research methods that further the conversation about research and writing centers is in Lerner’s (2002) chapter focusing on participant observation. Here, Lerner discusses his experience using participant observation research for his dissertation and how this method could enrich writing center scholarship as it adds perspectives and voices to the ongoing dialogue. He concludes that his experience: “as an insider with an outsider’s research agenda was filled with dilemmas, exploring those dilemmas – examining and countering my biases, making clear my expectations and their origins, establishing working relationships with my participants – was at times as valuable as any answers I might have discovered” (p. 68).

Additionally, Neff (2002) argues for the value of using grounded theory to study writing centers. He proposes that grounded theory will provide writing center researchers with a method that (a) doesn’t produce privilege within dialogue between description and theory; (b) provides systems for managing and displaying the complexity of social

practices; (c) supports situated research as well as collaboration among researchers and

practitioners; and (4) builds a place for writing center staff and administrator experiences.

In addition to research methods, Writing Center Research also touches on matters related to students as stakeholders of the writing center. In Olson, Moyer, and Falda’s chapter on student-centered assessment research, they argue that more writing centers should allow students to use the writing center as a research location in order to successfully make the writing center a research site for students. The authors claim that through this type of partnership, “students gain valuable experience as researchers and consultants; the writing center administrators and tutors gain useful, nonfrightening perspectives on their program” (2002, p. 128). While student research doesn’t have the same academic reach as published research in peer-reviewed sources, it still paves the way for writing centers to be perceived as a valuable research site. Additionally, working with student researchers can deepen a writing center’s ties to collaboration, a value that certainly seems to be ingrained within writing center identity. In DeVoss’ (2002) chapter on computer literacies, she shows how writing centers and students can benefit from working together. DeVoss argues that assisting students with their technological needs as it relates to composing can situate writing centers as crucial stakeholders that are working towards a more “complex and critical use of computing technologies and computer- related literacies” (p. 167). In terms of student success, DeVoss concludes by reiterating that through computer literacy “writing centers can situate themselves as core institutions for the better use of technology and the development of the literacy skills of our clients”

(p. 185).

Writing Center Research extends the conversation about qualitative research

methods and how they can be applied to writing center work; however, the text seems to

fall short of its goal of contextualizing theoretical and conceptual inquiry and

acknowledging the political dimension of research methods. While some questions were

raised about current and future directions for writing center inquiry (Welch, 2002; Rodby,

2002; Lutes, 2002), much of the text centers on methodology. This stunted conversation

may also be reflected in the lack of research-oriented texts within OSA scholarship after

the publication of Writing Center Research. For example, Babcok and Thonus (2012)

authored Researching the Writing Center: Towards and Evidenced-Based Practice, a text

that the authors claim is the “first book-length treatment of the research base for

academic writing tutoring” (p. 1). Researching the Writing Center is a direct response to

Haswell’s claim that RAD research is disappearing from NCTE/CCCC publications and

synthesized writing center research in order to show gaps within the current knowledge

base of the field. It’s curious that Researching the Writing Center was not chosen as an

OSA text, especially since no book was chosen that year; however, it is integral to this

discussion because it specifically addresses RAD research in writing center studies and

influences thinking within this realm of writing center research. In fact, after Haswell’s

critique of RAD research rates in NCTE journals, the only research-focused text awarded as OSA scholarship is an article by Driscoll and Perdue (2012) that focuses on the amount of RAD research used in The Writing Center Journal from 1980-2009. Driscoll

and Perdue provide readers with a RAD Research Rubric, and while that can be a useful

tool for analyzing and designing studies, Researching the Writing Center should have

made just as much of an impact. In Researching the Writing Center, Babcock and

Thonus not only examine writing center theory and practice, they also provide readers with potential research projects to truly extend the conversation in those areas.

The oversight of not awarding Researching the Writing Center an OSA is not the first time scholarship that provides new ways of researching the impact writing centers has flown under the radar. The same year Boquet (1999) won an OSA for her article,

“Our Little Secret,” Johanek (2000) also won an OSA for her book, Composing

Research: A Contextualist Paradigm for Rhetoric and Composition, arguing for the value of quantitative research methods for Composition and Rhetoric studies. In Composing

Research, Johanek contextualizes the research debate in Composition and Rhetoric through what she defines as a Contextualist Research Paradigm. According to Johanek, a

Contextualist Research Paradigm justifies why a dichotomy should not exist between quantitative and qualitative research methods and how the nature of the study should dictate how the study should be conducted. She writes that “a Contextualist Theory of

Epistemic Justification draws us to an analysis of context […] Such a framework offers a meta-epistemological reflection before the ‘parts’ of the epistemology are put in motion through research” (p. 104). In furthering how a Contextualist Research Paradigm should be applied to scholarship, Johanek first defines context and then develops research questions she believes should drive a study. She argues that context “is ‘released’ as a flexible construct defined by its own power and its own variability – both stemming from the moment a researcher wants to know something” (p. 3). Once a point of contact with a potential research project has been made, a researcher should ask: (a) In what contexts do

we construct arguments about our research? (b) In what contexts do we conduct research in the first place? (c) Which contexts demand certain research methods more than other methods? and (d) In what ways does the current debate in composition decontextualize the problems we debate? These questions would help a researcher construct a study around the phenomenon as opposed to developing a study around a specific research method or research type.

Unfortunately, according to Johanek, much of the research within the field of

Composition and Rhetoric does not seem to put context before method. She argues that the current trend of using anecdotal evidence as research has contributed “more to ‘lore’ than to ‘research,’ two components of our knowledge-making that have always had an unfortunately strained relationship” (pp. 9-10). Additionally, Johanek sees fault in much of the scholarship from Composition and Rhetoric for not providing more information on how to research as much as they discuss how to understand research. She claims that these texts create dichotomies in research methods, potentially causing researchers to either favor one method over another or choose a method before finalizing a research question.

To better understand the dichotomy existing between research methods, Johanek looks at why quantitative methods have become unfavorable in the field and found that many researchers in Composition and Rhetoric have a) general anxiety about math and stats; b) feminist responses to a traditional research approach; c) the field’s preference for writing that is more creative, literary, and expressive than the traditional research report.

In response to these findings, Johanek argues:

We must be careful not to dismiss particular methods – especially those that rely

on numerical evidence – as anti-woman, anti-humanist, or anti-creative, for to do

so would be to blame the vehicle for having had a lot of bad drivers […] All

research methods and how we teach those methods to others can be done in such a

way to include the feminist, to understand math as a storytelling language in its

own right, and to include the narrative as a foundation for and an extension of that

research in relation to experience and practice. (p. 83)

To combat the dichotomy between quantitative and qualitative research methods in

Composition and Rhetoric, Johanek suggests that graduate programs should do a better job of teaching research and research ethics to students. Again, she argues for more emphasis to be placed on having students learn quantitative statistics so as to be better prepared to develop a research method that will help the student research his or her research questions. She concludes that storytelling can enhance inquiry, but “diverse inquiry can aid the power of those stories at the same time, if we do not limit the forms of evidence we seek, the political ideologies we seek to uphold, and the written forms we favor and find pleasing” (p. 205).

Overall, Composing Research is the first OSA text to take hard look at research methods, specifically those that are quantitative in nature. In Composing Research,

Johanek seems to foreshadow the rise of RAD research and critique of current research methodologies in Composition and Rhetoric. Additionally, this text aims to expand the knowledge base of the field and allows for the opportunity to test knowledge that seems readily accepted. Not only does Johanek argue for an acceptance of quantitative research

in Composition and Rhetoric, but Composing Research also shows how the addition of

quantitative research methods can, as Haswell advocates, potentialize published data to

develop a body of work to support and grow an academic field.

The inclusion of Composing Research in OSA texts seems interesting for two

reasons. One, it is the only text within this scholarship set that zeroes in on quantitative

research methods and how this type of research can provide numerical data that can be

used to more effectively teach writing. Additionally, it is the only text that focuses on

Composition and Rhetoric scholars as its audience as opposed to writing center scholars.

It seems as if Johanek’s book could have opened the door for more partnership between

composition instructors and writing center administrators, fulfilling the assertion that

writing centers can and should be valuable research sites for the study of writing. Even

with the potential to collaborate with scholars outside of the writing center and the

potential to develop new ways to research the writing center, Composing Research doesn’t seem to have made much of an impact on writing center scholarship. For example, in Writing Center Research, Johanek is only cited once. In the book’s introductory material, the authors mention a rise in advocates for scientific empiricism, concluding that this rise shows a new era of openness and tolerance “along with renewed debates about old epistemological and methodological questions” (p. xxvi). However, the authors quickly turn to self-reflective inquiry, and at this point, neither Johanek or quantitative research methods are used or discussed again.

The year following Writing Center Research’s OSA award, Pemberton and

Kinkead (2003) were awarded an OSA for their book, The Center Will Hold: Critical

Perspectives on Writing Center Scholarship. This text is a celebration of Muriel Harris’ prolific contributions to writing center scholarship, and uses her work as an inspiration for the critical perspectives presented in the book. The authors featured in the text look to the past and future of writing center scholarship. Looking to the past, authors analyze gaps in writing center scholarship (Grimm, 2003), graduate courses (Jackson, Leverenz,

& Law, 2003), physical space (Hadfield, Kinkead, Peterson, Ray, & Preston, 2003), technology (Inman & Sewell, 2003), and tutor training manuals (Kail, 2003) to uncover aspects of lore, administrative practices, and mentoring as related to writing center identity. Gazing toward the future, aspects of writing center scholarship such as power and authority (Carino, 2003), collaboration (Eodice, 2003), and assessment (Lerner,

2003) are analyzed in conjunction with writing center potentiality and concern for how these concepts are and should be folded into writing center identity. While this text takes a critical eye to writing center scholarship, the discussion of quantitative research is minimal. In fact, Johanek is only cited once in spite of her book earning an Outstanding

Scholarship Award only three years earlier.

The only chapter to highlight Johanek’s discussion of quantitative research methods in The Center Will Hold, is Lerner’s “Writing Center Assessment: Searching for the ‘Proof’ of Our Effectiveness” (2003). Lerner looks at ways to incorporate better statistical research into writing center scholarship. He believes that writing centers “need to think broadly about research on writing center effects, not just about how many students came through our doors or if those students were satisfied, but about how do our writing centers contribute to the teaching and learning goals that our institutions hold

dear?” (p. 64). To think more broadly about research, Lerner aligns his thinking with

Composing Research (Johanek, 2000), claiming that statistical evidence can lead to a fuller understanding of the work writing centers do. However, this alignment is only part of Lerner’s article as he then provides a list of how writing center scholars can provide more valuable research. In the end, Lerner’s goal is to help researchers collect usable data to “avoid the defensiveness of ‘justification’ and instead begin to assess our work in ways that we feel are meaningful and useful” (p. 73). Lerner sees the importance of quantitative research as being a part of this research paradigm; however, the call to unite qualitative and quantitative research methods as acceptable forms of research never again appears in OSA texts.

It is outside the scope of this paper to argue for the inclusion of quantitative research within writing center scholarship; however, it does seem interesting that (a) there is a glaring lack of this type of research in OSA texts overall and (b) OSA texts post-Johanek seem to eschew quantitative research methodology in spite of Haswell’s call for more NCTE/CCCC publications to be replicable, aggregable, and data supported.

It should also be clarified that RAD research does not necessarily have to be quantitative in natureix; however, it does seem as if writing centers are at an impasse concerning the scholarship of the field and how that affects writing center identity, especially in terms of how writing centers work with students and measure the quality of that work.

Student Success

It seems to be the case that OSA articles and books focus on the writing center itself and what it sees as valuable for the student as opposed to student success and the writing center’s role as a facilitator of that success. A closer look into what writing center scholars choose to research seems to reflect a lack of discussion about how students benefit from writing center services. However, a few of the OSA texts do take a closer look at how writing centers work with students and what this work means.

Overall, though, most of the OSA texts that do look at students, look at peer tutors and what this population gains from writing center work.

While few OSA texts focus on student experience and the writing center, two recent OSA articles research student experience in conjunction with the writing center.

In the first article, “Scaffolding in the Writing Center: A Microanalysis of an Experienced

Tutor’s Verbal and Nonverbal Tutoring Strategies,” Thompson (2009) analyzes verbal expressions and hand gestures pertaining to scaffolding during a tutorial between a senior tutor (Trevor) and freshman student (Alice). Thompson argues that scaffolding is an important factor of teaching as well as establishing rapport with students, and by analyzing gestures and conversation, the intersubjectivity of a successful tutorial and attempts to contextualize the influence of a tutor’s directiveness can be illustrated.

Implications of this study focus on the importance of developing comfort and trust between a tutor and student to stimulate a student’s readiness to learn. Thompson concludes that conferences should be highly interactive, arguing that if tutors are too directive too early and the student is not motivated to be an active participant, then the

tutorial is not likely to be successful. In relation to student success, this article’s focus on scaffolding shows an awareness of students needing to learn how to regulate their own learning and performance. Additionally, Thompson reveals through her analysis that successful interactions increase a student’s motivation to further enhance their performance. Thompson elaborates:

Trevor understands that in this conference, success will finally be measured

according to the grade Alice receives on her essay. Therefore, his conspiratorial

suggestions about how to psyche out her instructor to get a higher grade intend to

increase Alice’s motivation as well as tell her how to improve her writing. (pp.

445-446).

Thompson’s microanalysis shows how a particular tutoring strategy, scaffolding, can help improve the success of students, meaning that students may be likely to earn higher grades on their writing assignments as well as teaches students to better understand their needs as a learner. In addition to this study’s contribution to connect writing centers and student success, it also falls under Haswell’s definition of RAD research. Thompson includes both a literature review for her study and research methodology for replicability, traits not commonly included in pre-2005 publications.

A second article that analyzes successful tutorials in conjunction with student success and the writing center is Babcock’s (2011) “Interpreted Writing Center Tutorials with College-Level Deaf Students.” In this study, Babcock uses grounded theory to better understand writing center tutorials with deaf students. Her research took place at two locations and focused on three tutors, three deaf tutees, and three hearing students.

Babcock frames the importance of her study as an addition to writing center resources for tutor training. Her findings suggest that there is no one way of working with deaf students, and like most tutorials, tutors should take the individual student and his or her desires into consideration before settling on a method. However, in opposition to the findings reported by Thompson, directness in communication does seem to be favored by deaf students, and tutors should take culture (specifically hearing culture) into consideration during discussion.

While not necessarily focusing on student success, the Peer Writing Tutor Alumni

Research Project does look at how working at a writing center can benefit peer tutors post-graduation (Hughes, Gillespie, & Kail, 2010). Framed in collaborative learning theory and the benefits of a liberal education, the Peer Writing Tutor Alumni Research

Project revealed that the developmental experience of becoming a peer tutor “helps to shape and sometimes transform them personally, educationally, and professionally” (p.

13). Through the peer tutor experience, the authors argue that “writing centers not only help student writers improve, but also play a transformative role in helping student tutors advance their own liberal educations” – implications that can help writing center scholars and advocates “transform institutional awareness of our educational purpose and significance” (p. 40).

These articles suggest that tutors need to be pragmatic and well-trained to understand how to best work with students during a writing tutorial. Additionally, peer tutors benefit from their time in the writing center both personally and professionally.

The benefits students can accrue from working in the writing center can help writing

center administrators advocate for institutional awareness. Overall, these articles

contribute knowledge about tutoring and student populations; however, very little about

these studies reveals much about the role writing centers and writing tutorials play in

student success. Based on the scholarship of OSA texts, it seems as if a majority of the work about writing centers is all about the “front end” of student success, meaning that writing centers are prepared to work with a diverse student population and work through issues that may inhibit a conducive learning environment for students. While these may be positive aspects of ensuring that students can thrive in higher education, there seems to be a gap in the literature that provides measures of student success to reveal the outcome of these efforts. Even more specifically, the emphasis in OSA texts has not been on quantitative measures like grades but on qualitative dimensions of student success that can be difficult to measure.

There have been no follow-up studies to test Thompson or Babcock’s findings to

confirm whether or not these suggested tutoring methods contribute to student success or

define how writing centers affect student success. In relation to the Peer Writing Tutor

Alumni Project, it can be argued that working in the writing center may be a factor that

can contribute to student success, but the student population at large is not addressed and

is most likely outside of the scope of this study. While student success may not have

been a direct focus of these articles, it seems curious that so much writing center

scholarship, especially award-winning scholarship, sidesteps this demographic. While it

may be difficult to determine the writing center’s role in a student success within an

institution at large, the small amount of research conducted to measure writing center

effectiveness is disconcerting (Lerner, 2003). While RAD research itself may not suggest what the right measures of effectiveness would be, engaging in a variety of research methods as opposed to having research mainly dominated by a humanities-oriented approach may contribute to the scholarship on the impact writing centers have on student success. Writing center researchers have yet to situate themselves in relation to the prevailing emphasis on RAD, a research method focused on social scientific analysis and has achieved hegemonic status. Writing centers have a rich history when it comes to researching the work they do and advocating for writing centers as a valuable site for greater academic research. The existing paradigm for writing center research is obviously lacking a wide range of research methods to both support its work and reveal the effectiveness of that work with students. However, this oversight may be due to an unease in changing paradigms than it does with an overt dismissal of a wider range of research methods. Since writing centers have honed in on their use of qualitative and humanities-oriented research practices, it would be detrimental to eschew these methods altogether in favor or RAD research trends. However, the addition of RAD research could not only further legitimize writing center work, it could also add a richness to the field that does not currently exist.

The Future of Writing Center Research

In this chapter, I have discussed how writing center scholars have discussed, conducted, and analyzed research to better understand what writing centers are, what they do, and how they fit within both the greater academic discourse community as well as

within their institutions at large. This analysis has revealed three themes. First, writing

center scholars argue for legitimacy through using their spaces as research sites.

Secondly, some scholars argue that writing center research lacks theoretical grounding.

Finally, writing center scholars employ a variety of study designs to collect and analyze

data. However, in regards to this last point, quantitative research has largely been left out

of this conversation, and even when quantitative methodology is discussed as a valid way

for writing center scholars to better understand the effects of writing center work, those

calls go unheard. To close this chapter, I would like to discuss current writing center

research practices and Arendt’s vision of gaps and the crisis in education.

Within the ten years after Richard Haswell published his call for RAD research,

writing center scholars have focused their research efforts on more longitudinal studies.

Two major studies -- the Peer Writing Tutor Alumni Project and the Writing Centers

Research Project – were established and highlighted as winners of the Outstanding

Article Award. Both of these projects collect data that has the potential to be used to

justify the existence and sustainability of writing centers. The Writing Centers Research

Project specifically establishes benchmark data that can be used to question and reimagine local situations and decisions based on national trends (Griffin, Keller, Pandey,

Pedersen, & Skinner, 2006). The authors of this project argue that “Because of the multiple sites in which local practices and national representations intersect, the local is never purely local, and the national is always a patchwork of localities” (p. 20).

Essentially, this data helps writing center directors place their writing centers in a national context, providing situational information that highlights trends for writing

center administration, budgets, and locations. While neither the Peer Writing Tutor

Alumni Project nor the Writing Centers Research Project site Haswell, both of these studies could be designated as RAD research, meaning that the survey tools used in both studies could be replicated to produce aggregable and data driven results.

In addition to these studies, other research-related scholarship published after

Haswell’s call for RAD research seem to reinvigorate arguments from the 1980s and early 1990s, mainly that writing centers need to be highlighted as valuable research sites and that writing center scholarship lacks theoretical grounding. Boquet and Lerner

(2008), in an attempt to better understand why writing center research patterns continue to highlight the lack of writing centers as research sites, explore the frequency and effects of citation patterns of Stephen North's (1984) “The Idea of a Writing Center.” Through a close reading of North’s “Idea” and an analysis of this article’s effects on writing center research, Boquet and Lerner found that North's “Idea” is cited in writing center journals more often than any other article, and that these citation patterns are not replicated in any other Composition-specific journal. Because of the dependence of “Idea” to frame writing center identity and practice, Boquet and Lerner argue that “the wide and uncritical invocation of North's ‘Idea’ lets writing center workers off the hook in many ways. ‘Idea’ offered a reading of the problem as one largely external to writing centers”

(p. 171). They believe the problem with this finding is that it may have prevented the proliferation of writing center scholarship in more Composition-specific journals.

Additionally, they find that none of North's other works seem to have made so many ripples in the pond as far as citation patterns or content development is concerned. They

conclude that more studies that focus on physical and virtual spaces where students write

with others, work through their personal zones of proximal development, and talk about

why and in what contexts writing matters can further the knowledge of an already rich field and body of knowledge. In order to ensure that this information continues to influence thought on the study of student writing, they proclaim that “we must ensure that the work that is proceeding in these sites is integrated into our research streams and our mainstream scholarly conversations” (p. 186).

Nordlof’s (2014) work on the role of theory in writing center work argues for a broad theoretical perspective that contextualizes practice with research agendas.

Furthermore, he aligns his discussion with Haswell, lamenting that replicable and aggregable research can facilitate more generalizable explanations for the underlying principles behinds research results. He writes:

the importance of adopting adequate theoretical frames to explain our work will

serve at least two important purposes. First, it will allow us to articulate our

practices and their value more convincingly to those outside our own writing

centers […] Second, work that develops theoretical perspectives will allow us to

explore the question of ‘why’ that is so important to a spirit of inquiry. (p. 49)

To illustrate his argument, Nordlof uses scaffolding and Vygotsky’s concept of the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) to study the directive/nondirective debate found in most tutor training manuals. His findings suggest that a scaffolded ZPD approach provides an explanatory framework for tutor training and practice and that this theoretical foundation can serve as a basis for further research. Nordlof concludes his article by arguing for

more emphasis on theoretical development in writing center research to better inform both practice and further research.

Overall, these most recent articles echo concerns of the past: that writing centers are valuable research sites and writing center scholarship should have a stronger theoretical foundation. These issues continue to cycle through professional discourse, signaling that writing centers have yet to situate themselves in relation to the prevailing emphasis on RAD. Arendt argues that the gap between the past and future is opened when people take stock of where they are without the blinders of tradition, faith, or other attitudes that lead them to not see the world “as it is.” Within this context, writing centers seems to be less within Arendt’s notion of a gap and more in line with her notion of tradition as it relates to education in crisis. As far as research patterns suggest, writing centers very much have the blinders of tradition influencing their perspective of what writing centers are and why they do the work they do.

This chapter shows a significant issue of stagnation and perhaps even myopic interest in writing center research and assessment. There also seem to be two concerns in research evaluation going on, the effectiveness of practice and the professionalization and respect of writing centers within the academic community. This last point seems to suggest that the writing center still is trying to find its place in academia both wanting to be its own entity and wanting to be an integral part of larger research areas. While RAD research is on the rise within writing center scholarship, very few studies have been replicated to determine the effectiveness of the findings, and even fewer studies focus on student success to ensure that writing center theory and practice is reflected in student

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growth. The future of writing center research needs to include more variety of research methods and more replication studies. Furthermore, there needs to be more consideration of the gaps in research, specifically as they relate to student success. In order for writing center scholarship to break from a loop of focusing on and discussing the same topics, perhaps it is time to turn to the students. The Peer Writing Tutor Alumni Project and

Olson, Moyer, and Falda’s chapter on student-centered assessment research in the writing center start to bring students into the fold of assessment. However, the significant lack of research focusing on this important population is additional evidence that student success is curiously missing from writing center scholarship. In Chapter 4, I will turn towards administrative practices and how OSA articles and books discuss successful administration of writing centers.

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CHAPTER IV

EXPECTATIONS AND REALITIES CONCERNING WRITING CENTER

ADMINISTRATION IN OUTSTANDING SCHOLARSHIP AWARD TEXTS

In Chapter 3, I evaluated writing center research practices in light of Richard

Haswell’s 2005 article depicting the lack of research that is replicable, aggregable, and data supported (RAD) in NCTE-sponsored academic journals. Texts granted the

Outstanding Scholarship Award from the International Writing Centers Association reveal a rise in RAD research to promote the understanding of writing center work and the value of writing centers as a valuable research site; however, much of the scholarship remains humanities-orientated or qualitative in nature. While writing center scholars are transitioning to a research approach more aligned with social science research practices, there remains a gap in research practices that measure or evaluate the effectiveness of the outcomes of writing center work. There have been several calls from the writing center community to bloom a wider variety of research practices, but most of these calls have yet to be answered. Also revealed in my analysis is a push for writing center professionalization through research conducted by writing center scholars as well as scholars from other academic communities. Chapter 4 will further investigate the expectations and realities of the role of writing center administrators and the professionalization of writing centers in terms of writing center identity within the community and as it relates to the academic community at large.

In 1985, Jeanne Simpson (1985/1995) published a position statementx on writing centers and professional concerns. In this statement, Simpson argues that writing centers

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“have arrived,” meaning that the establishment of national and regional writing center professional organizations and a growing library of scholarship maintains that writing centers have become a part of the academic landscape (p. 57). To avoid stagnation as a group, Simpson suggests ensuring writing center administrators are professionalized, arguing that “writing center directors work in dreadful situations not because administrators are intentionally making things difficult but because no one has a clear idea of how things should be” (pp. 58). Her intention for this position statement is to negotiate for ideal working conditions for writing center professionals. The position statement itself delineates what the National Writing Centers Association supports as appropriate working conditions, position description development, and basic operation of facilities. She concludes that writing center professionals “must not lose either the energy or the commitment that characterized our initial stages. A change in style need not affect our basic purpose of making writing centers exemplary programs that offer students an opportunity to develop as writers” (p. 61).

These guidelines come two years after the establishment of the National Writing

Centers Association (now the International Writing Centers Association [IWCA]), a professional organization that:

fosters the development of writing center directors, tutors, and staff by sponsoring

meetings, publications, and other professional activities; by encouraging

scholarship connected to writing center-related fields; and by providing an

international forum for writing center concerns. (“About IWCA,” 2017)

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The IWCA is host to several regional and local chapters of writing center professional organizations, each usually holding an annual conference and/or professional development opportunities. In 2009, the IWCA secured a permanent day-long workshop opportunity (IWCA@CCCC) at the Conference of College Composition and

Communications, the National Council of Teachers of English’s professional organization for Composition and Rhetoric scholars. Through the IWCA, writing center professionals have developed several position statements that guide decision-making in writing center development, maintenance, administration, and service. Having the IWCA as a professional organization for writing center professionals would seem to suggest that writing centers have, in Simpson’s terms, “arrived.” However, much of the Outstanding

Scholarship Award (OSA) literature surrounding writing center administration suggests otherwise. This paper will analyze how OSA writing center scholars discuss writing center administration. I will first provide a history of how writing center scholars have defined writing center administrative roles to develop an understanding of how these roles have changed over time. I will then turn to specific tasks of writing center administration such as tutor training and writing center outreach. This chapter will conclude with a discussion about how scholars define writing centers and how that definition affects the role of a writing center administrator.

Writing Center Administrators: Expectations and Realities

Issues concerning writing center administration have been discussed in OSA scholarship consistently since the early 1990s. In 1995, Murphy and Law published

Landmark Essays on Writing Centers, a collection of articles the editors believe

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contributed to writing center identity, theory, and practice. Several articles from the

1980s included in this text provide an overview of and context for writing center administrative issues since the formation of the IWCA. In these early articles, scholars focused primarily on professional status. Olsen and Ashton-Jones (1988/1995) explore writing center director status through surveys that asked current writing center professionals about their perceptions of what a writing center director should do. Their findings suggested that most writing center professionals were more concerned with issues of managing or supervising the campus writing center as opposed to being a teacher, scholar, or writing specialist. According to Olsen and Ashton-Jones’ survey, most writing center professionals rated the essential items of their positions as training tutors, possessing strong communication skills, monitoring the quality of the staff’s tutoring, communicating with the composition director, and recruiting and hiring tutors.

Olsen and Ashton-Jones see the problem of misunderstandings of writing center work as being rooted in perception: “If freshman English directors do not recognize the center director as a ‘teacher,’ they appear equally disinclined to see the director as a ‘scholar’ or as a ‘trained specialist’” (p. 49). In other words, if writing center directors are perceived only as supervisors, then they won’t be recognized as true members of the academic community. This perception can marginalize writing centers, labeling them as remedial or nonacademic, affecting the sustainability of writing centers on campus.

The problem with perceiving writing center directors as marginal is intertwined with several aspects of writing center administration. As related to writing center research, scholars as early as the 1980s highlighted the value of writing centers as a

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research site in order to combat marginalization from the academic community as well as

within institutions of higher education (Summerfield, 1988/1995; Ede, 1989). For

writing center administration, the struggle between what a writing center director does

and what a writing center director should do is a wicked problemxi that comes up in OSA

texts every two or three years.

In the 1990s, much of the conversation about writing center administration picks

up where Olsen and Ashton-Jones leave off and discusses writing center directors

perceived as managers instead of teachers and researchers. Harris (1990/1995, 1992)

seems to straddle both ways of thinking in her work on trends and traditions in writing

centers and solutions and trade-offs in writing center administration. Concerning

traditions, Harris (1990/1995) finds six themes of writing center administration. First,

Harris believes that most writing center professionals are concerned with sharing and

nurturing, developing writing centers as “helping places which provide assistance to other

writing centers and substance to students to help them grow, mature, and become

independent” (p. 29). However, this individuality, Harris claims, challenges traditional

faculty perception about individualizing instruction, stating that “we don’t merely value

the individual student; we focus on that student’s individuality as a basis for whatever

help we can offer. And therein lies the secret of some of our success” (p. 31). Other

traditional conceptions of the position mentioned by Harris include outsiders’ misguided

perspectives on the role of writing center administrators, positive connotations of incorporating collaborative learning into one-on-one tutoring models, ensuring tutors’ personal enrichment, and being people-oriented over technologically-dependent in their

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work with students. While this list seems broad in its perspective, Harris is providing a glimpse into overall traditions developed by writing centers from the mid-1970s to the early 1990s. These traditions focus on administrative status, pedagogical perspective and practice, and influence trends Harris claims have provided new directions for writing centers.

While Harris doesn’t focus on the potential contraction between the faculty perception of individual instruction and the other traditions of writing center administration, she does point to trends in writing center scholarship and practice that seem to focus on developing more of an understanding of what writing center work entails. These trends include moving toward a greater professionalism and away from the label of “remedial only” that seems to have attached to writing centers during the open admissions era of the 1970s (Summerfield, 1988/1995; Boquet, 1999). Additional trends identified by Harris include growth in high school writing centers, greater integration with classrooms, and a focus on serving more non-traditional students. Harris claims that writing centers have built a strong foundation; however, new directions and traditions will continue to develop as writing centers persist. The following year, Harris (1991) focuses more on possible issues writing center administrators face and considers solutions to these problems. Through an exploration of ten possible scenarios, Harris cautions that as writing center professionals share their knowledge, experiences, and resources with others, they may also be supporting the message that there is a right way to structure a writing center. Therefore, Harris claims, solutions for any of these scenarios should be based in the same traditions used when working with students. These

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solutions should be as thoughtful and individualized as tutoring sessions. While practical

in nature, these early observations about professionalization have little to do with

perceiving writing center directors as scholars. Harris offers suggestions for more

effective management of the writing center and strategies for collaborating with faculty;

however, writing center director as scholar loses momentum as a way for the position to

gain legitimatization within higher education institutions.

Similarly, in a continuation of the conversation of what a writing center is and

how a writing center should be managed, Healy (1993/1995) explores tutor authority in

relation to writing center identity and administration. While writing center director as

scholar is outside of the scope of Healy’s argument, he does work to create a scholarly

and theory-driven explanation of how writing centers should operate within their

institutions, especially in terms of leadership. Healy cautions that the role of a writing

center director must be professional, and that teaching assistants are neither prepared for

this responsibility, nor do they possess the authority necessary to carry out essential

functions of a writing center within an institution. In most cases, teaching assistants are neither trained as administrators, nor is it guaranteed that they have worked as tutors during their undergraduate experiences. Healy argues that teaching assistants have incomplete notions of their allegiance to both the instructor for whom they work and the mission and policies of the writing center they also are employed by. Healy’s stance supports Simpson’s position statement; however, the issue of teaching assistants as writing center directors is not firmly recognized by the International Writing Centers

Association until 2001xii. Healy’s article is a glimpse into the issues surrounding writing

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center administration and how writing centers were incorporated onto college and university campuses. Using teaching assistants as writing center directors sheds light on how and why writing centers may have accumulated their marginalized identity. If writing centers are being staffed with paraprofessionals, then it would be very difficult for writing centers to be anything but marginalized. In these cases, their leadership turnover rate would be high, any consistency in staffing or theoretical foundations would be low, and at worst, the writing center could be viewed as a nonessential service and thus more prone to being disassembled if funding or budget constraints were ever an issue.

In addition to Healy’s focus on staffing issues, Simpson, Braye, and Boquet

(1994/1995) published an email conversation centered on power, marginalization, and how to sustain writing centers. Simpson focuses on writing centers having purpose in order to survive and argues that writing centers must reveal gaps within their services and show how filling those gaps would align with institutional goals. These arguments would make writing centers an essential service and serve as evidence to ask for more resources.

In Braye’s responses, he questions how to make arguments for resources and negotiate with administration. Boquet pushes back on Simpson’s focus on developing needs based on the buzz words that “can be bandied about until they’re practically meaningless”

(assessment, diversity, retention in this case), and she argues that survival isn’t necessarily the main goal for an academic support service, that it’s goal is to function as best as possible (p. 171).

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Even though no conclusions were drawn in this article, the point of its publication, to toss around and work through ideas and initiate further conversation, highlighted the problems still evident in writing center administration, especially as related to writing center identity. Simpson’s concluding comment echoes her initial concerns of survival, stating that the institution “CAN’T survive unless it can prove that it performs the function society requires of it […] So survival and helping students are not, to my mind, antithetical. They are connected: survival=educating and graduating students=helping students so they can do that” (p. 178). A decade after Simpson initially published her position statement on writing centers and professional concerns, she continues to find writing centers fighting to survive and working to prove to their institutions that they’re worthy of professional leadership, adequate resources, and conditions in which to function as well as possible.

Working conditions and professional status prove to be a major focus for OSA articles in the 2000s, and they center on what writing center administrators should consider in order to be successful within their positions. In 2000, Lerner reflects on his experience becoming a full-time writing center director and relates his narrative to the history and present status of the profession. Lerner’s findings suggest that too often, the writing center professional’s position is underpaid, underrepresented, and under- resourced. His fear, he writes, is having an enfranchised and a disenfranchised class of writing center directors that are charged with running new writing centers “created in the face of pressures to eliminate ‘remedial’ coursework or, more recently, the outsourcing of writing center services (DeCiccio) and thus offering the service without even needing a

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writing center director!” (p. 43). Lerner’s observation suggests that those members of the writing center community who have power and the resources to publish are spending too much time on work involving theoretical matters that only speak to a handful of writing center directors. With most writing center directors still fighting for professional status,

Lerner argues that those with the authority and means to publish should spend more time on “closing the divide between the class of writing center directors who have ‘made it’ and those, often unheard, whose working conditions are barriers to professional advancement and institutional change” (p. 45). Again, the expectations of the position and its realities are misaligned. While some writing center directors struggle to make ends meet, others are lashing out on the lack of theoretical significance tied to the work of writing center scholars. Essentially, the issues of writing center director as scholar that

Olsen and Ashton-Jones highlighted in their work continues to haunt the position. While some writing center directors are fighting to be seen as scholars and are working to develop a body of scholarship to legitimize the field, others are not privileged with the opportunity to conduct and disseminate research. As Lerner observes, the theoretical grounding of the field is being built by too few members of the writing center community, and while these members are working to promote writing center directors as scholars, the lack of voice from the collective group could develop problems for writing center identity overall as it pertains to the group as a whole.

Further highlighting the differences between writing center administrators and other academic administrators, Balester and McDonald (2001) discover barriers to professional advancement and institutional change. They distributed a survey to writing

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center directors (individuals in charge of overseeing writing support on campus) and

Writing Program Administrators (individuals who focus more generally on the development of writing across campus) to gather information about status and working relations, finding that working relations were generally positive. However, they also found that Writing Program Administrators (WPAs) were often granted more faculty and tenure-track positions than their writing center counterparts. In either case, the authors learned that both positions are often held by individuals with little to no administrative training, causing these WPAs undue frustrations when dealing with the administrative structure and boundaries of their institutions. To better prepare future professionals for these administrative roles, the authors suggest integration of administrative and management issues within Composition graduate programs. Jackson, Leverenz, and Law

(2003) also focus on underprepared professionals in their work on the development of graduate courses in writing center theory, practice, and administration. In their discussion of the value of writing center and WPA-specific courses integrated into grad- level Composition programs, they argue that because these roles are often focused on complex problem solving, graduate courses should prepare students to participate in an environment that can be hostile and unstable. They write that graduate programs should be “preparing students to participate in, complicate, even resist and reshape the conversations and context within which their work is situated” (p. 137).

A decade later, the same issue persists: unprepared individuals are being thrust into volatile writing center administrative positions. Geller and Denney (2013) found that WPAs are generally not prepared for writing center work during their first year in the

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field. Through 14 interviews with writing center professionals at the beginning or middle of their careers, they also found three major themes that shape the identity of this position: Administrative v. Faculty Route (many writing center professionals are happier in non-faculty positions), Re-Negotiating, Re-Imagining, Reaching the WCP Position

(how writing center professionals have grown their positions and the challenges they face), and The Everyday Labor of writing center professionals (the overwhelming work of daily management and the rewards associated with writing center growth).

Implications of these themes centered on tenure, advancement, and liminal politics of professional identity. The authors conclude that misunderstandings of the writing center professional lead to tensions in the valuing of writing center professional scholarship, professional identity, and institutional status.

Overall, writing center administrators have been battling the same issues for 30 years. While, as Simpson declared, writing centers “have arrived,” it seems as if the role of writing center administrator has yet to be invited. She argued that writing center directors work in dreadful situations because of a lack of understanding of how the role of writing center director should be defined. While most writing center scholars agree that the role of a writing center director should be professional, there’s no clear definition outside of Simpson’s 35-year-old position statement on what professionalization means or what it should look like. Based on OSA scholarship focusing on administrative considerations, not only are writing center directors still working in precarious situations, but, as Lerner reveals, the scholarship about writing center administration is propagated by those who work in high status programs and in a privileged position themselves. The

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next section of this chapter will focus on two aspects of writing center administration that does seem to have consensus, that successful writing center administrators participate in training tutors and developing outreach strategies.

Tutor Training and Writing Center Outreach: Defining Tutors

As the International Writing Centers Organization was getting off the ground and writing center administrators were focusing on professionalization, several scholars began to turn their attention towards crucial aspects of writing center sustainability: defining tutors and exploring the work they do with students. Tutors, in a general sense, provide individualized and focused time to students in a one-on-one setting outside of the traditional classroom. However, what tutors need to know and how they spend their time with students is often debated. To provide context, as writing centers gained popularity, a need for inexpensive labor was created. As a support service, writing centers do not traditionally bring funding or any monetary profits to an institution. However, as a means to retain students, especially as many publicly-funded institutions were opening their doors to a more diverse student body in the 1950s and again in the 1970s, writing centers were established as services where students could gain what they were perceived to be lacking in terms of college-readiness (Carino, 1992/1995).

In the forward to OSA text, The Politics of Writing Centers (2001), Trimbur writes “writing-center work is always involved in the making and remaking of the division of labor in contemporary society” (p. x). This division of labor is a key point in

Devet, Orr, Blythman, and Bishop’s (2006) chapter “Peering across the Pond: The Role

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of Students in Developing Other Students’ Writing in the US and the UK.” The authors discuss considerations that should be made when applying a US peer tutoring model to a university in the UK. The authors find that there are many advantages in a peer tutoring model beyond a large supply of less expensive labor and argue that with these benefits in mind “the central challenge is to identify the aims of writing development in the UK and to select pedagogies that will achieve these aims” (p. 205). However, the authors also caution readers that a simple application of one system onto another is inadequate and could be dangerous. Specifically, they warn readers about cultural and power issues inherent in peer dynamics, lamenting that it is more important to explore appropriate pedagogical approaches for writing development based on aspects of other, already established models as opposed to adopting a particular model of staffing. These labor considerations should be addressed not only when peering across the pond but also when exploring possibilities within any writing center. At the administrative level, pedagogical approaches should be considered based on both researched best practices and knowledge of the needs of the local population the writing center will be serving. By highlighting the work that goes on in a writing center over staffing needs, Devet, Orr, Blythman, and

Bishop establish a sentiment adopted by many writing center directors – that institutional context plays into sustainability of a writing center (Harris, 2002).

When it comes to staffing and sustaining writing centers, defining who tutors are and what role they play within the institution helps writing center administrators understand the complexities of labor concerns. In the mid-1980s when writing center administrators were focusing on professionalization, Bruffee (1984/1995) was arguing for

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the social construction of knowledge peer tutoring provides. Through a discussion of thought and knowledge construction, he finds two reasons why peer tutoring plays an important role in education. First, peer tutoring provides a context for practicing academic conversation. Second, this conversation has extensions to other communities outside of the academic institution. He views peer tutoring as an integral service because it “provides the kind of social context in which normal discourse occurs: a community of knowledgeable peers” (p. 93). Bruffee argues that a community of knowledgeable peers is imperative because it provides an outlet for thought and communicating one’s thoughts into conversation while also providing a way for that conversation to be re-externalized in writing to a reader. In relation to the world outside of academia, Bruffee finds that

“[p]eer tutoring is one way of introducing students to the process by which communities of knowledgeable peers create referential connections between symbolic structures and reality, that is, create knowledge, and by doing so maintain community growth and coherence” (p. 96). In this sense, peer tutors play an integral role in knowledge creation, specifically when it involves students learning to be a part of a new, academic community.

Within the spirit of community and peer tutoring, North’s “The Idea of a Writing

Center” (1984), views tutor success not in terms of the constantly changing model they create, but in terms of changes in the writer. He writes that “[r]ather than being fearful of disturbing the ‘ritual’ of composing, they observe it and are charged to change it: to interfere, to get in the way, to participate in ways that will leave the ‘ritual’ itself forever altered” (p. 339). Here, North is highlighting the power of collaboration. With the

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assistance of the peer tutor, the student writer can see writing through the lens of both a reader and a more experienced writer. This new student perspective changes how he or she approaches writing, transforming both the text and the student. The peer tutor’s role to interfere and forever alter the “ritual” of composing seems to support Bruffee’s claim that peer tutors have the power to extend the conversation to communities outside of academia. If students are participants in the creation of knowledge with their peers in an academic setting, then it’s possible that this process is replicated outside of academic communities as well.

Furthering the discussion about tutors and tutoring, McAndrew and Reigstad

(1984) argue that “[t]he tutor’s goal is to get the student to participate actively in the learning process” (p. 2). Through this text, McAndrew and Reigstad emphasize studies where one-to-one instruction produced equivalent or better results than other instruction methods. The measures varied from test scores, attitudes about writing, and knowledge of grammar and structure (pp. 7-8). McAndrew and Reigstad’s empirical evidence coupled with Bruffee’s arguments about social constructionism continue to provide evidence for peer tutoring as the predominant method for staffing writing centers. In

McAndrew and Reigstad’s model, peer tutors would engage with writers in ways that develop community among the student population, and through this development of community, both students and peer tutors could exchange ideas and develop knowledge.

However, as peer tutoring as a way to staff writing centers was on the rise, some scholars began to question the label itself, especially in terms of tutor expectations in how they work with students. Specifically, Trimbur (1988) questions the use of “peer tutor,”

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arguing that “[d]espite (or maybe because of) their good intentions, tutors aren’t always

sure they’ll be able to help their tutees write better” (p. 21). Trimbur argues that just

because a student is a strong writer, it does not mean that he or she would be a strong

tutor. When a student is asked to become a peer tutor, it:

invests a certain institutional authority in the tutors that their tutees have not

earned. For new tutors, the process of selection itself seems to set the terms

‘peer’ and ‘tutor’ at odds. It induces cognitive dissonance by asking new tutors to

be two things at once, to play what appear to them to be mutually exclusive roles.

(p. 23)

To help alleviate the cognitive dissonance created by the label peer tutor, Trimbur

suggests that tutors should let go any fears about conventional measures of success and

faculty authority on what good writing should be. Instead of focusing on these aspects of

academic writing that can instill doubt, peer tutors should “experience instead the

authority co-learners invest in each other as they forge a common language to solve the

problems writers face” (p. 26). Peer tutors as autonomous co-learners outside of official

academic channels “creates the social space for peer tutoring and makes writing centers an extension of the social solidarity and collaborative practices in student culture” (p. 27).

While the term peer tutor may be at odds with itself, the collaborative role of a peer tutor remains similar to that defined by Bruffee and North.

Historically, collaborative practices are at the heart of the peer tutoring model.

Through collaboration, student writers and peer tutors are able to create knowledge and develop solidarity through working together toward a common goal. As early as 1987,

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collaboration has been a cornerstone of writing center work: “Learning to write in a

Writing Center means participating in a fellowship of writers. Such fellowship has

always been what learning is all about” (Clark, p. 5). This same year, Kail and Trimbur

analyze two different models for writing center incorporation on campus: Bruffee’s

Brooklyn Plan and Haring-Smith’s Writing Fellows program. They argue that while a curriculum-based program like Haring-Smith’s can be more affectively managed, it does not provide collaborative learning experiences for students. Within the Haring-Smith model, tutors are used as an extension of the faculty, and in this role, the tutor would be more focused on faculty expectations than on building community with student writers.

This model would echo expectations of remediation from the writing center and its staff, and this particular perspective of a writing center’s purpose has been regularly contested.xiii In a more collaborative model, like Bruffee’s Brooklyn Plan, the point of

peer tutoring:

is not the delivery of knowledge from tutor to tutee but an experience of their own

power as learners that will lead peers to discover authority in each other. Peer

tutoring based on collaborative learning begins, then, by organizing tutors and

tutees outside normal channels of teaching and learning so that they can constitute

each other as active subjects in the social interaction of co-learning. (p. 208)

Within a framework of co-learning, curriculum-based models “suppress the crisis of

authority precipitated when students work together, domesticate it, and channel the social

forced released by collaboration into the established structures of teaching and learning”

(p. 209). Kail and Trimbur argue for a redistribution of power from the faculty to the

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student or students in order to foster a more active learning environment. This distribution of power, they argue, would enable the student to take control of his or her learning as opposed to fostering an environment where students are passive recipients of knowledge.

Transferring authority from the classroom to the writing center environment developed a new problem – authority and power distribution within the tutorial itself. In a discussion of authority and tutoring methods, Cogie (2001) studies the directive/nondirective dichotomy of tutoring practice often discussed in writing center scholarship by observing and recording a tutoring session between a graduate assistant tutor and a traditional freshman. Her findings suggest a negotiation of directive and nondirective methods should be used to collaborate with students and help them find their voices and authority as writers. Cogie argues that through this negotiation, tutors may

“become more willing to risk a variety of strategies with the awareness that authority expressed by tutors, a given in any approach, need not preclude the students’ discovery of powers of their own” (p. 48). Cogie does not further explore the idea of tutor authority being a given during a tutorial; however, if authority is something that can interfere in the development of an active learning environment for the student, it is worth further exploration by both writing center administrators and tutors. Carino (2003) sees tutor training as a place for this exploration to take place. He proposes that tutor training needs to better handle how power and authority play out in tutorial sessions in order to enable the tutor to employ differing methods when working with individual students. He argues that tutors should be taught to recognize where power and authority lie in a tutorial.

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Carino argues that “[w]riting centers can ill afford to pretend power and authority do not exist, given the important responsibility they have for helping students achieve their own authority as writers in a power laden environment such as the university” (p. 113). When defining tutors, it should be recognized that power and authority affect their position. If peer tutors are expected to collaborate with student writers, then there needs to be a more thorough understanding of the dynamics of that collaboration. This understanding will help writing center administrators plan tutor education and training activities directed toward facilitating student success. If peer tutors can learn to balance their authority while developing an active learning environment with students, it can create conditions in which the social construction of knowledge can take place. In turn, students can gain a better understanding of how to be successful within the academic community while also developing an awareness of their own authority as co-constructors of knowledge.

In terms of directing a writing center, writing center administrators should also be aware of their own authority as they train and educate their staff. In a discussion about authority and supervision, Mattison (2007) discusses how his authority plays a role in how and why tutors reflect on their work. Mattison refers to Foucault’s concept of the

Panoptican, an experimental laboratory of power where behavior could be modified based on surveillance and the power held by those in charge. To illustrate how

Foucault’s Panoptican theory prevails in writing center administration, Mattison looks at reflective assignments often given to tutors to monitor their performance. In theory,

Mattison argues, reflection would assist tutors in assessing their behavior and make corrections. However, Mattison questions what degree this happens and to what

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detriment. To elucidate his concerns, Mattison discusses two students reflecting on their vigilance in their work with students so as to not waste time for productivity and worries that reflective assignments hinder pedagogical flexibility. He argues that these kinds of assignments “have contributed to a ‘continuous self-assessment’ that does not allow for much freedom or exploration” (pp. 43-44). Mattison argues that writing center directors should allow for more open lines of communication between administration and staff and between staff members themselves so as to disrupt the Panopticon environment writing center directors can inadvertently foster. He writes that “consultants need to be subjects in communication; they need to have lateral visibility. Listening to one another, sharing their self-reflections, will help them expand the possible choices they have during a consultation” (p 45, italics in original). When directing a writing center, it’s important to foster a collaborative environment among the staff as well as with students. Not only will this help peer tutors understand how their authority plays a role in tutorials with students, but it will also help them gain independence to make decisions that better serve students.

Defining the role of peer tutors in a writing center can help writing center directors understand how their services fit within the context of the institution. Writing center directors can better support their services by having evidence that the work done by peer tutors facilitates student success and creates an environment that fosters knowledge creation. Having a thorough understanding of how authority affects both relationships between tutors and students and between tutors and administration can ensure that power can be distributed in a way that facilitates personal growth within a community of learners. Labor issues continue to complicate the distribution of power

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within a writing center environment as it relates to the institution at large. However, as

writing center scholars continue to focus on these issues, more evidence can be generated

to combat them and narrow the gap within the division of labor that exists within higher

education, and specifically with writing centers as an extension of higher education. The

next section will further explore the role of writing center administrators in facilitating

the work peer tutors do and educating tutors to make decisions when working with

student writers.

Tutor Training and Writing Center Outreach: Defining Tutoring

In light of writing center professionalization, tracing scholarship focused on tutor

training and tutoring methods can be beneficial in two ways. First, having a thorough

understanding of the conversation surrounding tutoring can help administrators better

understand this crucial aspect of directing a writing center. It can also provide an

explanation as to how tutoring became an aspect of the writing center grand narrative and whether or not this perception of tutoring best serves its stakeholders.

The first three book-length texts awarded the IWCA Outstanding Book/Major

Work Award were tutor training manuals: Training Tutors for Writing Conferences

(McAndrew & Reigstad, 1984), Writing in the Center: Teaching in a Writing Center

Setting (Clark, 1985), and Teaching One-to-One: The Writing Conference (Harris, 1986).

This alone establishes the importance of tutoring to writing centers. These early works emphasize one-on-one instruction, collaboration and active learning, and interpersonal communication. Additionally, each manual includes strategies for how to work with

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student writers. Clark even goes so far as to offer a chapter on how to successfully tutor: generating topics/ideas, focusing on global issues instead of lower-order concerns, scaffolding the writing process, and working with students for whom English is a second language. Overall, what these manuals offer is a series of steps a tutor can adapt to individual students in order for them to produce texts that align with university expectations.

It wasn’t long before writing center scholars began to expand the body of knowledge writing tutors would need in order to tutor effectively. Much of this discussion focused on the incorporation of reflectivity into both the training and ongoing supervision of peer tutors. Essentially, reflection would enable tutors to review their thoughts and actions during a tutorial in order to become aware of and improve their practice. Practicing reflection would help tutors better understand what they do and why they do it. Oftentimes, reflection is presented to tutors as a guided activity and part of either a training program or as a tool for ongoing tutor education. It can also be used to question norms of what is regularly accepted as successful tutoring. For example, in

Mullin’s work on examining assumptions of writing center work, she analyzes how privileged literacy is manifested during writing center tutorials (1994). She argues that these tutorials provide students with opportunities to examine language and its effects on community practices, allowing students to better understand that texts are context-bound communications. However, she writes that if “our practices, supported by traditional concepts of literacy, remain unexamined, they will continue to encourage a formulaic, technological approach more than we might suspect” (p. 164). Therefore, reflection

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becomes a necessary tool to question whether or not conceptions of literacy serve the students who visit a writing center. Mullin concludes that without comparative reflectivity, “classroom writing practices and the assumptions embedded in them continue to undermine student success” (p. 169). Through reflection, tutors are better able to question their assumptions about what students require to be successful in higher education. In return, peer tutors can begin to understand how privileged literacy can impede writing center practice in terms of how students understand, contextualize, and perceive language.

Using reflection as a tutor training tool not only helps tutors develop a theoretical guide for their tutoring practice, it can also serve as a way for them to become more flexible and creative during their sessions. Abascal-Hildebrand (1994) has found that tutors who are more aware of interpreting and translating as processes are better at tutoring, and that these processes are part of an ethical realm because the tutor and student need to work together to create or work towards a mutual understanding. He argues that an awareness of how thinking undergirds tutoring “can encourage tutors, students, and teachers to move beyond imagining tutoring as merely methodological or technical support” (p. 176). In a discussion on how drawing and reflection lead to creative practices in writing centers, Geller (2008) uses tutor drawings to encourage discussion and reflection of tutors’ writing center practice. She argues that writing center directors can use reflection in any form to better understand how creativity is fostered within the writing center itself. Geller writes that if “we want our tutors to feel encouraged to risk imaginative and creative thinking in conferences, we must build a

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deep listening, learning culture among our tutoring staff so they feel encouraged to imagine creative conference risks in one another’s presence” (p. 170). Overall, if a goal of writing centers is to push the boundaries of literacy expectations, then writing center directors need to create space in order for tutors to understand what that means and how they can work their understanding of literacy into their sessions with students. Reflection as a tool guides successful administrative practice to encourage tutors to think outside of the box in how they approach their work. The incorporation of reflection supports the focus of one-on-one tutoring that proliferated early tutor training manuals. However, texts that review reflection as a tool move beyond a series of steps a tutor can take to help students meet the expectations of their universities. The incorporation of reflection challenges the idea that there is a specific approach to tutoring. As opposed to seeing tutoring as a conveyor belt process of helping students understand the writing process, reflection encourages tutors to question the validity of that writing process as it pertains to an individual student’s needs.

As a tutor training tool, reflection can foster an environment where tutors can expand their knowledge of themselves and their role in the education of their peers.

However, it also seems to be a powerful tool for writing center directors to understand their positioning as an administrator and educator. In addition to using reflection in her tutor training class to help her students learn to tutor, Yancey (2002) uses reflection to better understand how she teaches students to learn to tutor. Through reflection, she finds that because tutors need to see themselves and identify with the students with whom they work, it’s important for them to also “see and appreciate the other in our students; that

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difference is what enables us to bring to them what they need” (p. 200, italics in original).

Through reflection, Yancey claims that she was able to understand the “duality of identity

and separation/difference as a part of the process of becoming a tutor” and incorporate

training activities that directly relate to these concepts (p. 200). In this case, reflection

not only helps tutors better understand the students they work with, but it also helps the

writing center director educate tutors to meet the needs of their institution’s student

demographic.

The relationship between reflection and tutoring can also be seen in the myriad of

OSA scholarship dedicated to concerns centered on special populations like students with

disabilities, English language learners, and minority students. In most cases, many

aspects of individualizing one-on-one tutoring applies when working with special

populations. For example, Ricker (1991) suggests that tutors work to develop

relationships and reinforce successes when working with students with disabilities.

When assisting college-level deaf students, Babcock’s (2011) grounded theory study reveals that there is no one way of working with deaf students, and like most tutorials, tutors should take the individual student and his or her desires into consideration before settling on a method. However, she does suggest that directness in communication seems to be favored by deaf students, and tutors should take culture (specifically hearing culture) into consideration during discussion.

Cultural consideration is also a theme in OSA texts focused on students for whom

English is a second language. Clark (1985) dedicates a chapter of Writing in the Center

to ESL students, concluding that tutors should address higher order concerns such as

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thesis development, organization, and audience awareness before lower order concerns such as grammar and spelling. While this tutoring strategy is popular in most tutor training manuals, Bruce and Rafoth’s (2004) tutor training manual, ESL Writers: A Guide for Writing Center Tutors focuses specifically on this population and pushes back on a one-size-tutoring-fits-all approach to writing assistance. For example, Matsuda and Cox draw on Min-Zhan Lu's framework of three stances readers can take when responding to

ESL texts: assimilationist, accommodationist, and separatist. They write: “The stances come down to ways of reading difference and whether tutors should read to ‘correct’ difference, explain difference, or overlook difference” (p. 45). The authors recommend taking a nonjudgmental stance in order to focus on meaning and create an atmosphere of mutual respect where the differences can turn into opportunities for growth for both the reader and writer of an ESL text. Taking these stances into consideration requires the tutor to assess the student, text, and context of the tutorial to determine how best to assist the student. Additional themes from ESL Writers focus on avoiding assimilation

(Severino), establishing trust with a student (Staben & Nordhaus), helping students acquire proofreading skills through error analysis (Linville), and avoiding plagiarism

(Bouman). In a chapter on possible backgrounds, experiences, and attitudes among ESL students visiting a writing center, Leki emphasizes that each student, no matter his or her

English proficiency, should be considered an individual with individual needs.

Therefore, one style of tutoring would be insufficient for working with students for whom

English is a second language. All students, and in particular ESL students, require a specialized and individual approach during a tutorial.

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When working with minority students, it seems as if tutors need to understand more than how to approach a student’s writing or build relationships. Within texts that discuss minority students, and specifically, race, tutors need to have an understanding of lived experiences in order to effectively meet the needs of this student demographic. In

Greenfield and Rowan’s (2011) work on antiracist tutor education, they focus on two assumptions: (a) writing centers are always raced and (b) questioning the work of tutor education is to question the work of writing centers. Under these assumptions, they ask:

“If we believe that writing center work is always already raced, what roles do our tutor education courses play in the racism or antiracism of our institutions?” (p. 125). To answer this question, the authors explore a critical pedagogy approach to education where tutors would be empowered with critical lenses through which to explore and interrogate their own agency in order to help writers gain the same empowerment. In order for this empowerment to take place, the authors argue that antiracism needs to be central to tutor education programs, not just a topic thrown in near the end of the semester. They encourage writing center administrators to look critically at how race is incorporated into their tutor education programs to re-theorize broader goals for tutor education and students’ critical engagement and activism in their everyday work.

Through a focus on tutor training and antiracism work, Green (2011) discusses the complexity of discussing race in a tutor training course. To help combat resistance from peer tutors and potential peer tutors toward the topic, she turns to stories as a way for them to bring a critical eye to experience and how it relates to the course content. She writes that writing centers can be a location for “shared stories, overlapping narratives,

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and contradictory explorations of language and identity that can lead to antiracist work”

(p. 257). Therefore, Green argues, student stories can assist in complicating identities

and showing a relationship between the stories tutors and student bring to the writing

center. To scaffold storytelling, Green used two assignments: prior texts (researching the

conversation surrounding a particular article) and tutor tales (telling three stories – one of

which is written in third person – to write about experience using thick description and

detail). These stories, she concludes, “can create multiple kinds of colored light,

refracting off unexpected surfaces and revealing what’s hidden or ignored” (p. 270).

Green hopes that storytelling can help us see writing centers differently and they can

work against the “isms” that pervade American culture.

Seeing writing centers differently in relation to antiracist work is furthered in

Geller, Condon, and Carroll’s (2011) illustration of how their work with tutors has shaped their understanding of race and antiracist work. To do this, they also use stories to “connect lived experience of whiteness to the social, political, and historical conditions that (re)produce and enable this experience” (p. 104). The authors use a framework of shame (Elspeth Probyn, 2005) as a reflective tool and palinode as a way to acknowledge past and present experiences and how they relate to and inform each other. The stories shared in this text highlight how tutors (and their directors) are affected by and utilize antiracist scholarship in the context of writing centers and during their private lives.

Through this work, the authors argue that if tutors are scaffolded to be theorists of race and racism, “we will need to (re)center our recognition of the intimate and necessary relationship between a perpetually emerging self-identity and an evolving and dynamic

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collective identity as a community of practice” (p. 121). They conclude by acknowledging that writing center administrators and tutors need to reflect and think collaboratively when confronted with racist experiences, and these collaborations can facilitate a change in relationships with ourselves as well as our relationship with others.

To work with special populations, there is a lot of information a tutor needs to gain, reflect upon, understand, and individualize when working with students on their texts. To summarize, a tutor would need to understand strategies specialized to students with disabilities while also building relationships and reinforcing success. A tutor would also need to employ different reading strategies when working with ESL students in order to help them with their English acquisition and writing skills. Tutors should also be aware of cultural differences, avoid assimilation, and understand how to engage an ESL student to avoid plagiarism and learn proofreading strategies. Finally, tutors should also have an in-depth knowledge about lived experiences and engage in antiracist work.

Obviously, no tutor training program would be able to thoroughly cover all of these strategies, theories, or skill-building practices. However, having this information available about special populations seems to circle back to reflection as a key component to training tutors and helping develop their skills. Through reflection, tutors have the opportunity to gain a better understanding of the students with whom they work. While this strategy may not transform a writing center to a panacea for social justice, it may help tutors be a little more aware of and respect the differences within their institution’s student demographic.

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As effective tutoring and tutor training methods for all students continued to be topics of OSA scholarship, some scholars began to consider how defining tutoring shapes writing center identity and contributes to writing center lore. In an analysis of tutor

training manuals from the 1970s and 1980s, Kail (2003) deconstructs their content

anthropologically in order to navigate the lore they produce. He finds three points of lore

reinforced with the analyzed manuals: (a) that one-on-one conferencing can humanize the

tutor/teacher and student and demystify the writing process; (b) that peer tutoring can

change students’ lives and reinvigorate campus literacy; and (c) that learners can thrive in

the flexible culture one-to-one tutoring creates. While Kail articulates these points of

lore, he does not analyze their usefulness or truthfulness. However, in terms of lore,

Grutch McKinney (2013) argues that it creates a cognitive dissonance between the work

of writing centers, how writing centers talk about that work, and how writing centers use

a grand narrative to build community. She claims that a grand narrativexiv does not match

the reality of writing center work and has since ill-prepared future administrators for the

field. In order to better understand how writing center lore impedes the work of writing

centers, she deconstructs the grand narrative, focusing on writing center space and

identity and tutoring.

Grutch McKinney claims that part of the grand narrative of writing centers

perpetuates the perspective that writing centers tutor (all students), and she argues that

there are consequences to positioning writing centers as tutoring centers, specifically that

it situates tutoring services as remedial. When instructors isolate writing deficiencies in

individual students and send them to the writing center, she argues that it makes the

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problem of difference an individual one as opposed to an institutional problem.

Furthermore, Grutch McKinney asserts that tutoring “keeps us focused on changing individual students [and] keeps us from asking why they need us; writing center work becomes about meeting needs and not about evaluating systems” (p. 69). According to

Grutch McKinney, aligning writing centers with tutoring means that no one is questioning why students need tutoring in the first place. This lack of questioning can lead these systems to being a sine qua non of higher education as opposed to being flexible and transformable to student needs. While Kail has discovered that many tutor training manuals promote tutoring as a way to humanize students and tutors, demystify the writing process, reinvigorate campus literacy, and develop a flexible culture, Grutch

McKinney seems to be pushing back on these ideas and asking why our scholarship focuses on assisting students to better meet the needs of the institution instead of asking why institutional standards don’t better meet the needs of the students.

In her own analysis of tutor training manuals, Grutch McKinney reveals that tutor and student demographics are often stereotyped, assuming that, in a normal session, the tutor and student “will likely be white, of high ability, young, and American” (p. 71).

When tutor training manuals do focus on differences in characteristics, Grutch McKinney finds that these differences often show up in the student, positioning tutors and students as “us and them” (p. 71). Additionally, this narrative also positions writing centers as believing all students want tutoring. Grutch McKinney claims that because writing centers think they exist for all students that they are the solution for all students.

However, she found that the numbers reported by writing centers based on the students

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they serve do not reflect this belief, and that “we know only about a quarter of students will take us up on our offer” (p. 73). When considering tutor training, however, it does seem as if there is a pressing need for tutors to be prepared to tutor all students. While a majority of students do not seek out the writing center on their campuses, the tutors themselves seem to need to be aware of the specific needs of a variety of student groups and how to individualize the assistance they provide. It may be problematic for writing centers to believe that they tutor all students; however, it also seems rash from an administrative perspective, to not be prepared for all students and what their needs may be. This perspective may assist writing centers in spearheading a shift in thinking when it comes to student ability. If the writing center can work to heighten the strengths in student writing abilities, it could serve as a model for institutional change concerning whose needs are being met.

Preparedness and demographics aside, Grutch McKinney makes a valid observation that because writing centers focus on the belief that they tutor all students, non-tutoring activities writing centers engage in seem to be left out of the conversation.

She argues that writing center scholarship rarely focuses on other activities as alternatives to tutoring, and that activities such as website, video, and blog development and maintenance and in-class introductions, workshops, and writing groups are rarely documented. Grutch McKinney believes that this lack of attention to these activities perpetuates the writing center grand narrative and obscures that writing centers do more than tutoring and that widening the view of what writing centers do doesn’t mean doing anything new as much as it encompasses recognizing the scope of what is already done.

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She argues that “before the so-called ‘professionalization’ of writing centers […] there

were multiple approaches to helping writers at schools and universities […] When

writing center studies focused on a collective narrative to describe their work, they lost

their sense of a mixed descent” (p. 75).

While writing centers’ attempts at professionalization may have unified writing

center practice, it has also developed a model of assistance that could be scaled to other

models of support services and approaches to teaching at higher education institutions.

However, as Grutch McKinney claims, it may have also narrowed the idea of writing

center identity to be too specific and limiting. When it comes to tutor training and how

writing centers approach their work with students, I would argue that writing centers do

look outside of the grand narrative Grutch McKinney claims exists. While there is ample

evidence that writing centers can rely too heavily on a prescribed identity developed

through four decades of scholarship, there also seems to be evidence that writing centers

and writing center scholars have the potential to have peripheral visions when it comes to

working with a variety of student populations. As long as writing center directors

understand that tutoring is not a one-size-fits-all approach to writing instruction, and that tutoring should be consistently reflected upon in order to make changes necessary to be as equitable and effective as possible, any grand narrative should cease to perpetuate a static writing center identity. Therefore, it is necessary to not develop writing center

identity in a vacuum chamber or to let the pursuit of professionalization overshadow

other aspects of the work writing centers do. Developing a more collaborative and

deliberative network of professionals, colleagues, and supporters can aid in the goal

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Simpson declared several decades ago and to “arrive” as an integrated and integral support service for all types of student writers.

Outreach: Looking Out, Looking In

Writing centers are inherently tied to collaboration. From Carrie Ellen Stanley’s work with a struggling student athlete in 1943 to the development of community writing centers (Rousculp, 2014), writing centers have worked with writers in order to meet a mutual goal of some kind of writing improvement. Outstanding Scholarship Award texts highlight the benefits of collaboration at the institutional level as well. For example, in

Eodice’s (2003) stance on positionality, she argues that the collaboration done every day in writing centers offers a way for them to build relationships with their institutions to the benefit of all involved. Through the development of positionality, writing center identity can both influence and be influenced by those with whom they work. In terms of scholarship that focuses on outreach, positionality of the writing center through outreach and collaboration can be seen as working in two phases: (a) getting outside of the writing center; and (b) reflections/reconsiderations about what happens when writing centers moved beyond the writing center. This section will relay a synopsis of scholarship focusing on outreach in terms of writing center administration, including how these relationships affect writing center identity and administrative practices.

In writing center research practices, scholars often discuss the value of the writing center as research site (Summerfield, 1988/1995; Ede, 1989; Olson, Moyer, & Falda,

2002). One way for writing centers to showcase the work with student writers to those

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outside of the field is through writing across the curriculum (WAC) and writing in the disciplines (WID) programs. In a study on how writing centers could play a role in writing across the curriculum, Leahy (1989/1995) argues that there isn’t enough time spent on expressive writing in WAC programs to help students write to learn, and therefore, writing centers can be a place for more of this writing to take place. He envisions four areas where writing centers could play more active roles in fostering a conducive environment for students to hone their writing process. He asks:

(1) What if the writing center offered to help students learn to write productive

journal entries?

(2) What if the writing center offered to coach students in freewriting, showing them

how to focus it and get the most out of it?

(3) What if writing centers appealed directly to students in writing-for-learning

courses and worked with them on the new methods of learning being used in their

classes?

(4) What if more writing centers sponsored ongoing education of faculty in writing-

for-learning? (pp. 201-202)

According to Leahy, these “what-ifs” could facilitate more expressive writing in WAC programs to help students connect their transactional writing assignments to the writing process and make the writing center a more influential force in WAC programs. For writing center administrators, this would mean a move toward legitimatization of writing center work in higher education. If writing centers could become the center of writing

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instruction on campus, then this expertise could lend to some authority about writing, a critical aspect of college-level work.

In addition to Leahy’s focus on branching out, other scholars highlight the benefits of taking writing center pedagogy to the classroom. For example, Wallace

(1991) discusses the benefits of cross-curricular partnerships to serve writers across the curriculum that work to professionalize the writing center and make it an integral part of the institution. Similarly, Kimball (1998) discusses how to provide outreach for teachers of writing intensive courses through the development of a writing center website. While much of Kimball’s discussion focuses on content development, the idea that the writing center could be accessed at any time and from anywhere, provides more visibility for the services writing centers offer. Another way writing centers reach beyond their walls is through writing fellows programs where writing tutors are assigned to classrooms to work with student writers. Severino and Knight (2007) discuss how their writing fellows program helps stakeholders understand what the writing center does and how to model best practices for teaching writing. Their long-term goal for the writing fellows’ program is to not only let their campus community know about their resources and invite instructors and students to take advantage of them but to also demonstrate the value of adopting their practices and philosophy as their own.

Overall, writing centers have been busy developing networks on campus to increase visibility and help others understand the value a writing center can hold.

However, these partnerships do not come without their challenges. Focusing on local and communal politics, Carino (2001) examines how writing center relationships with

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composition programs and composition studies affect the construction of professional identity and the implementation of writing center practice. His findings suggest that the writing center community remains conflicted about WAC program relations; however, there is more of a focus on local context, and he believes this focus is a healthy development for the field. He concludes by suggesting that “[w]hatever the local context, the center’s relationship to the writing program will remain a challenge constantly refigured and negotiated, and well it should be” (p. 11). In an example of how writing centers and writing programs negotiate and collaborate with each other, Bergman and

Conard-Salvo (2007) focus on their relationship with two programs within the English

Department at their institution -- First-year Composition and Professional Writing. They claim that extending tutoring techniques to relationships among programs “can lead to increased dialogue and better relations between writing centers and other writing programs, and can in turn help writing centers attain or maintain a more central role in the curriculum” (p. 186). Through a renewed focus on the needs of these programs in terms of how the writing center can support their students, the authors found that working from a shared interest can increase dialogue between the writing center and outside programs, helping expand the mission of the writing center itself. Additionally, these collaborations can create research opportunities for students that focus on developing new ways for programs to work together to support students’ writing needs. They claim that this approach to collaboration can help writing centers maintain an existence outside of the margin, and affirm their position as “equals in an ongoing professional conversation” (p. 195).

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While these kinds of considerations and collaboration can centralize writing centers within their institutions, some scholars warn that this move can also mean a reduction or loss of autonomy. Focusing on centrality, Bickford (2007) writes that facilitating more interaction and conversation between faculty and tutors to increase awareness of writing center services means that faculty, tutors, writing center directors, and students should understand and support each other’s goals. While this interaction requires negotiating with tutors to take a more active role to communicate with faculty,

Bickford argues that the risks of losing autonomy are overshadowed by the gains writing centers can make in increasing authority. This authority, Bickford claims, has the potential to create conditions where change can be implemented to better serve all stakeholders. Similarly, Frey (2007) found that through collaborating with faculty, engaging with tutors to publicize aspects of the writing center and the college, and focusing her reports to tie in with the goals of her administration on aspects of college initiatives, she was able to expanded her role on campus from one that solely focused on tutoring and training tutors to one that advocates for writing and engagement in learning that it brings to students.

Through collaboration with faculty and university administration, it seems as if writing centers can extend their reach to more student writers. However, more isn’t always better, and it’s important to consider that building relationships with outsiders requires buy-in from everyone involved. Cogie, Janke, Kramer, and Simpson (2007) describe the risks and rewards involved in outreach programs, finding that boundarylessness may affect their success in terms of the goals set by the program’s

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administrator(s). They argue that different collaborations may shape the program in terms of its structure and its success within the institution. In a solo study by Cogie

(2012) on breaking the silence on racism through collaborative outreach programs, she finds that tutors entering a classroom where the majority of students are of color can

“help disrupt the lines of institutional power and provide a way for the students, the tutors, and their trainers to not only respect difference but also find a way past silence to express their respect” (p. 251). This conclusion follows Cogie’s discussion of a grant she received to work with a Black American Studies course. Through this opportunity, Cogie highlighted potential issues of having a predominately white tutoring staff enter a classroom with predominately Black students. However, she claims that her decision to follow through with the project stemmed from a determination to break from a tacit endorsement of the status quo resulted from not fully understanding the implications of institutional racism. While the program did not receive subsequent funding, Cogie concludes that these kinds of programs can serve to re-envision writing center practice more effectively than one-on-one sessions within the writing center itself if they are

“configured to affirm multiple nodes of power that allow potentially polarized parties to be disrupted in their habitual uses of their own power” (p. 251).

The disruption of power is evident in Rousculp’s (2014) focus on a rhetoric of respect as she oversaw a community writing center funded by Salt Lake Community

College. Rousculp writes that “Engaging within a rhetoric of respect draws attention to how we use language in relation with others […] Whereas respect itself may exist as a feeling, a rhetoric of respect requires discursive action” (p. 25). Working under a rhetoric

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of respect, Rousculp focuses on shifting relationships from the Community Writing

Center to the community at large. She finds that these different kinds of interactions changed the Community Writing Center and those within it. Part of this change was the realization that the Community Writing Center was a supporter of the community and its role wasn’t to point out the deficits within the writing of its community partners, that writers were already whole and the Community Writing Center provided an environment for writing to take place. Rousculp concludes that through their ease with uncertainty at the Community Writing Center, “we came to embrace our uncertain relationships with partners and individuals, encountering them with a rhetoric of respect, taking on a responsive role rather than leadership, pursuing collaboration instead of empowerment”

(p. 124). These examples reveal that the success of any writing center outreach efforts is reliant upon a mutual understanding of a project’s goals and projected outcomes. If this relationship isn’t collaborative or if stakeholders do not fully understand the benefits of the relationship, the collaboration is much less likely to succeed. For the writing center, this could have dire consequences for its sustainability on campus.

When reaching beyond the writing center’s walls, it’s important for writing center administrators to consider where to engage in outreach efforts, how this outreach would affect writing center practices, and who would benefit from the interactions. As these scholars have shown, outreach efforts can bring visibility and legitimization to writing centers; however, that attention can come with a loss of autonomy. Additionally, working with others means that collaboration needs to take place and that all parties involved need to be open to change in order for the partnership to be mutually beneficial.

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As Rousculp noted in her book, outreach efforts of any scope need to practice a rhetoric

of respect, especially when faced with uncertainty. As writing centers continue to affect

change within their institutions and communities, it would be remiss to believe that

writing center identity would not be affected through their work outside of a writing

center silo. The final section of this chapter will respond to scholarship focused on what

writing center administrators need to consider when defining writing centers and how that

definition, in turn, helps define the role of the writing center administrator.

Defining Writing Centers, Defining Writing Center Administration

The idea of a writing center has taken on a multitude of layers since North’s publication of “Idea” in 1984. Writing centers may have once been perceived as remedial centers where students could learn how to fix their deficiencies to better fit within the expectations of universities, but that perception wasn’t necessarily how those working within writing centers defined their work. North’s article opened the door for a new way to study student writing and writers. While North may have seen writing centers as spaces of talk, the content of that discourse has been expanded over the past 30 years to question the role of writing centers within institutions of higher education and the power structure inherent to a system where one holds the knowledge and the other is expected to obtain it. The politics characteristic of the kinds of conversations taking place within and outside of writing centers play into issues of their funding, location, and mission, and an exploration of those politics and perspectives complicate how writing centers create an identity and how that identity is intertwined with how writing center administrators approach student success initiatives.

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Early scholarship about writing centers and identity focused on removing an

association with remediation (North, 1984; Addison & Wilson, 1991; Murphy, 1991

Simpson, Braye, & Boquet, 1994/1995; Lerner, 1998). Through this discussion, a

conversation began to unfold about writing center identity outside of that label. If writing

centers aren’t fix-it shops where students are remediated to eventually become “college- ready,” then what are they? What are the possibilities for writing centers, and how might those possibilities affect how writing center administrators define their roles? While it may seem productive to develop a collective and encompassing definition of writing centers and writing center administrators, Carino (1992/1995) argues that how we define writing centers should be unfinished, that a definition is an end and doesn’t allow for growth or change. He believes that writing center scholars need to keep exploring how to define writing centers in order to keep the conversation about them flourishing. Since the early 1990s, that conversation has flourished, and multiple angles of writing center work have been analyzed, scrutinized, criticized, defined, and redefined. This conversational recursivity complicates writing center identity; however, it is within those complexities that writing centers can remain relevant and flexible entities that can combine global and local expectations for their services.

Tracing the history of writing centers, Lerner (2009) finds that writing centers were born from remedial roots, as spaces students would go for remedies to their writing ills, especially in times of student population influx. This cycle of remediation, Lerner argues, is “perhaps broken only in our present era when writing centers seem far more commonplace, far more accepted, though far less experimental” (p. 32). However, in

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modern academic settings, Lerner argues that the structure of higher education continues to be tethered to traditional modes of classroom teaching, and this structure limits possibilities for student potential. He implores that teaching writing should be an experiment in what is possible as a way to embody the ideals of higher education while offering a pedagogical plan for meeting those ideals (pp. 196-197). In terms of writing center identity, thinking beyond the classroom to experimental approaches to teaching writing harkens to the potential writing centers have for creatively approaching the needs of student writers.

Writing center directors often think outside the box in order to creatively develop best practices for working with student writers in a variety of settings (Dvorak & Bruce,

2008). Specifically, Boquet and Eodice (2008) believe that creativity is a state of being

“toward which we strive collectively, supported by an overarching understanding of the importance of its role in our work and by clearly articulated goals providing the scaffolding necessary to build and maintain a functioning, creative enterprise” (p. 18).

Furthermore, creativity can be used to ensure writing centers maintain autonomy while also working within institutional challenges. For example, Hobson and Lowe (2001) surveyed past presidents, current members, and nonmembers of the National Writing

Centers Association (NWCA). Their findings show tension within the writing center community concerning insider/outsider polarity, mission, scholarship, advocacy, and assessment in relation what people want and what people perceive the organization to do.

They call for a politicization of the NWCA so as to not be politicized by external forces.

By politicizing the professional organization for writing center administrators, it could

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create the conditions necessary to develop an environment where administrators could argue for resources to adequately and successfully maintain writing centers on their campuses. Having a collective voice that engages in a more unified alignment on issues such as polarity, mission, scholarship, advocacy, and assessment could help legitimatize writing centers by providing tools to better meet the guidelines established by Simpson

(1985/1995) in the position statement she created about writing center administration.

However, the politicization of a professional organization may not be enough to push back on politicization from outside forces.

The need for autonomy to maintain writing center sustainability can be seen in several other texts as well. Murphy and Law (2001) trace the future of writing centers based on the trajectory of higher education. They project that the most dramatic and immediate transformation of writing centers is outsourcing writing tutoring within and outside of the academy. They argue that “the next century will find writing centers forming social alliances and finding new identities within technology and industry. This refocusing will occur as the result of extensive social changes that are also redefining

American higher education” (p. 140). Their disheartening vision for the future of education centers on its being dismantled in the wake of technology and industry. While this outlook seems more extreme than other scholarship would suggest, it highlights the need for writing center administrators to acquire political agency in order to strengthen their relationships with their institutions so as to make them more equitable and accountable to their stakeholders. This political agency could be built through developing stronger ties to the professional community as a whole. Much like Lerner’s

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(2000) discussion of the state of writing center scholarship, most professional organizations, like the International Writing Centers Association can provide a platform for membership. An association with the organization can be fairly static for those not serving on its board or without the funding means to regularly attend professional conferences and make connections with their peers. Therefore, more outlets must be created for dialogue to take place within a professional environment. In which case, communication could be more than a tool used to identify and discuss issues; it could be a means for creating a “complex transactional practice for building a democratic ‘we,’ or a political will among a group of people organized for particular changes in a public institution” (Knight Abowitz, 2013, p. 99). Communication and the more writing center- centric term, collaboration, can link individual issues to a collective common interest.

Having a stronger collective voice can help develop an agenda for power exchange and a clearer understanding of setting specific goals to have that change gain momentum in the civil structure of the institution. While the politicization of the International Writing

Centers Association is a start, it may not be enough to sustain writing centers in a changing higher education landscape. Creativity in communication and collaboration, however, can position writing centers as a space of innovation, allowing writing center directors to help shape the environments in which writing centers can thrive.

Explorations in creativity can drive writing center directors to develop an ideology that works to maintain autonomy as well as cultivate a working writing center identity. Marshall (2001) explores how writing center work can be viewed as intellectual work. To ensure that explicit and hidden institutional practices do not cast the work of

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writing centers as an invisible, bureaucratic service detached from the intellectual interests of faculty, Marshall argues that writing center directors must document and make visible writing center activities and evaluate those activities in ways similar to evaluating other faculty labor. These actions can facilitate conditions that can benefit outreach efforts and help other faculty understand the value of writing centers. For example, the role of writing center documents can foster a greater understanding of the writing centers as a space for writers to grow as opposed to a space dedicated to “fixing” writers (Beech, 2007). Through impression management and how its cumulative development can help (re)shape writing center identities, Beech argues that writing center documents can reinforce more desirable identities and help faculty and staff better understand the professionalization of the writing center director position and disrupt common beliefs about the purpose of a writing center. These documents can also serve as a way to educate faculty on what writing center work entails which may lead to conversations and collaborations on campus that have the potential to shape writing center identity.

In a case study of how the Swarthmore College Writing Center changed its mission, image, and identity on campus, Gladstein (2007) highlights how her writing center went from an underutilized resource to one of the central influences on the writing culture at its institution. To do this, her writing center reestablished themselves from a single room where students receive assistance on papers to a program that has a symbiotic relationship with the overall writing program and culture of the college.

Gladstein paved this path through assessing the history and current structure of the

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institution and how the writing center fits in with the college climate, culture, and curriculum; developing a cycle of assessment and education to unearth the writing center’s identity and then share that identity with the college; interacting with faculty and students to engage the college community in a discourse around what writing is and how it fits into the current goals of the institution; and tapping into the goals of commitment, responsibility, and students as agents of change in order to talk with the college in ways they could hear (p. 242). Focusing on outreach efforts that both educate and support can facilitate an identity that better reflects the work writing centers are engaged in on their campuses and could open doors for writing center professionalization.

In terms of writing center identity, writing center administration seems to center on sustainability. OSA scholarship focusing on administration and writing center identity traces a conversation that begins with a separation from remediation. Suggestions for how to do this couple individual writing center needs with a broader theoretical and practical understanding of writing center’s role in higher education. Scholars began to look outside of a remedial view of writing center work to educate stakeholders on how limiting and narrow this perspective can be. However, stepping outside of the margins can be both a cause for celebration and dangerous. If writing centers are no longer associated with remediation, what are they and how do they benefit the campuses they serve? In order to answer these questions, writing center administrators have looked outside of the writing center itself both in terms of educating others of what writing centers are and in outreach efforts that inspire collaborative relationships. However, it is important to note that defining writing centers is complex and perhaps impossible. As

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Carino (1992/1995) argued, a concrete definition of writing center identity could mean a cessation of discussion about writing centers. Keeping this conversation alive means that writing centers have a voice, and that voice can be used to help bring writing centers closer to the ideals set forth by Simpson (1985/1995) in her position statement on writing center professionalization. While writing centers may still be “arriving,” the conversation about them continues to grow both within the writing center discourse community as well as with stakeholders that outreach efforts have brought into the fold.

The heart of writing center administration, as revealed through OSA scholarship, may lie in tutor training and outreach; however, underling issues of power, autonomy, and sustainability remain as an ongoing reminder that there is still work to be done and voices to include.

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CHAPTER V

ACKNOWLEDGING THE “GAP”: WRITING CENTERS AS LEADERS OF

TRANSFORMATIVE CHANGE IN HIGHER EDUCATION

“You never want a serious crisis to go to waste” – Rahm Emanuel (Wall Street Journal,

2008)

…

As defined by Arendt (1961), gaps can signify a place in time where there is potential for revolution and transformation. This is the gap where hope can turn into action and deliver transformative change to a broken system. However, if these gaps are not recognized as such, the system continues to exist as a broken state, and this fragmented version of that system turns toward crisis. In terms of writing centers, this gap signifies two significant opportunities. First, writing centers can address this crisis by acknowledging a gap within their identity and how this gap affects their sustainability.

Second, through an acknowledgement of this gap, writing center scholars have the opportunity to lead transformative change in higher education and use the body of knowledge they have created as a baseline for this change.

In Chapter 1, I developed an understanding of how writing centers conceptually relate to Arendt’s perspective of gaps. In the 1970s, writing center scholarship was first disseminated and started to influence what would become writing center traditions and identity. Throughout the past 30 years, those traditions and identities have changed as scholars questioned the role of the writing center within the university. In 2016, Salem published a study that questions the role of the writing center in terms of student success

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and support. She argues that writing centers have not been focusing on student support

and need to rethink what writing centers claim to do and why. Arendt argues that a gap

can occur when a person’s mind is displaced and invites a rethinking aimed at the

trajectory of current thought, and Salem’s study opens a gap by directly displacing the

current trajectory of writing center scholarship and calls into question the basic role of a

writing center in higher education. This gap brings with it the opportunity for writing

centers to rethink not only their identity but how their work can influence higher

education in terms of student success and support.

Chapter 2 focuses specifically on student success and uses writing center

scholarship awarded the Outstanding Scholarship Award (OSA) by the International

Writing Centers Association (IWCA), an NCTE Assembly founded to foster communication among writing centers and to provide a forum for concerns (“About

IWCA/Governance,” 2019). To develop a framework for understanding writing center scholarship in conjunction with student success, I discuss the first OSA text, North’s

(1984) “The Idea of a Writing Center.” Since this initial OSA text, writing centers began to break from traditional notions of student success and their remedial roots by putting pressure on institutions to transform along with and because of its students. This break also created conditions for writing centers to question their own roles within higher education. Writing center scholars have contributed to our understanding of student difference, created participatory roles for students, and allowed opportunities for faculty to better understand the “mental models” (Grimm, 1999, p. 25) students bring to institutions of higher education.

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At the turn of the twenty-first century, writing center scholarship began to highlight the importance of creating liminal intersections of literacies where students would have the power and agency to incorporate their cultural literacies and capital into the education system. In terms of student success, writing center scholars argue that a lack of student power or even autonomy can discourage students, specifically minority and international students, from persisting in higher education. As student populations continue to become more diverse, scholars argue that universities need to ensure that they are providing opportunities for students to become a part of and succeed within a higher educational community. Having a diverse student population will mean that traditional notions of higher education may not produce the results that respond to a changing and more globalized society. While writing center scholars and administrators have developed literature that focuses on what the writing center can do for the benefit of students, I argue in this chapter that these discussions take place without input from the students themselves on the effectiveness of these interventions.

To better understand how writing centers have come to view student success and their roles within higher education, Chapters 3 and 4 focus on issues of research and administration. Through the field’s research practices, many scholars call for writing centers to be seen as valuable research sites, suggesting that writing centers offer unique learning opportunities for students. While this may be true, the lack of research about writing centers in other fields suggests that they have yet to make a strong enough case for their role in student success. Writing centers continue to search for their place in academia as their own entity and as an integral part of larger research areas. Over the

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past 30 years, writing center scholarship reveals that very few studies have been replicated to determine the effectiveness of scholars’ findings, and even fewer studies focus on student success to ensure that writing center theory and practice are reflected in student growth.

While there is a significant lack of research focusing specifically on students, scholarship focusing on administrative practices echoes the themes of student empowerment and authority focused on in Chapter 2. Within this body of scholarship, tutoring and outreach dominate the discussion. Most writing center scholars would agree that tutoring and outreach lie at the heart of writing center identity and work. In tutoring students and collaborating with other faculty and administrators to infuse writing and writing support into the curriculum of higher education, writing centers focus on student success by developing a sense of importance for the value of critical thinking and written communication. This work, coupled with writing center scholars’ focus on critical literacies highlights the value writing centers put on students and their impact on the institutions they attend. However, as a field, writing center administrators seem to struggle to be seen as professionals and scholars which may have more to do with their administrative status than a lack of potential to affect student success.

Jeanne Simpson’s position statement on writing centers (1985/1995) claims that writing centers “have arrived” and that it is time for writing center administrators to professionalize to improve the working conditions for people in these positions. Having the IWCA develop as a professional organization for writing center professionals would suggest that writing centers have, in Simpson’s terms, “arrived.” However, much of the

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OSA literature surrounding writing center administration suggests otherwise. Most writing center scholars would agree that the role of a writing center director should be professional; however, there’s no clear definition outside of Simpson’s 35-year-old position statement on what professionalization means or what it should look like.

Developing a collective and encompassing definition of writing centers and writing center administrators may be productive, but Carino (1992/1995) argues that how we define writing centers should be unfinished, that a definition is an end and doesn’t allow for growth or change. He believes that writing center scholars need to keep exploring how to define writing centers in order to keep the conversation about them flourishing.

Essentially, keeping this conversation alive means that writing centers have a voice, and that voice can be used to help bring writing centers closer to the ideals set forth by

Simpson (1985/1995) in her position statement on writing center professionalization.

While writing centers may still be “arriving,” the conversation about them continues to grow both within the writing center discourse community as well as with stakeholders that outreach efforts have brought into the fold. Even though the heart of writing center administration, as revealed through OSA scholarship, lies in tutor training and outreach, underling issues of power, autonomy, and sustainability remain as an ongoing reminder that there is still work to be done and voices to include. Overall, conversational recursivity complicates writing center identity; however, it is within those complexities that writing centers can remain relevant and flexible entities, allowing them the capacity to become uprooted from and connected to tradition so as to be better positioned to support ongoing efforts toward student success.

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In this concluding chapter, I will review how writing centers have put students

first, and what they will need to consider in order to lead academic change. While writing centers seem to have always worked in the best interest of the student, there is still myriad work that needs to be done to not only ensure writing centers advocate for and support student success but also play a role in transforming the educational landscape in a way that truly puts students first. Writing centers may be harbingers for student success within the work they do with and for students; however, until the educational system revises institutional expectations that can hinder students with diverse cultural,

economic, and educational backgrounds, writing centers will also be faced with issues of

power and authority as it relates to institutional expectations that do not align with

practices of equity or a rhetoric of respectxv.

Encountering the “Other”: Writing Centers and Community

Writing center scholarship awarded the Outstanding Scholarship Award (OSA)

reveals a storied history of how writing centers have persisted in higher education.

Through this history, writing centers have struggled for legitimacy both as a field of

academic scholarship and as a central location on university campuses for student

success. Overall, these stories highlight how writing center identity has shifted and also

has been recursive over time. Writing centers have since grown from focusing on a

deficit model of education to questioning university expectations in light of student needs

and the capital they bring with them. However, the one constant that seems to remain

central to writing center identity is student success.

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There is certainly not a lack of research on student success within higher education. However, many of these discussions focus on student preparedness or student deficit as predictors of success (Adleman, 2004; Perin, 2005; Jeffery, 2009; Moore, Slate,

Edmonson, Combs, Bustamante, & Onwuegbuzie, 2010). There is a limited amount of research that discusses the transformative effect students can have on education and systemic changes that can be made to better education for students (Friere, 1970/2014;

Gqweta, 2013; Stillwaggon, 2017). Schneider (2018), president emerita of the

Association of American Colleges and Universities, argues that for change to take root,

“each institution must take the time to figure out how to get it right for their particular students and mission” (p. xv). Extending this argument, Maimon (2018), President of

Governors State University, claims that it takes vision, strategy, action, and leadership to braid equity and quality together. She believes that university leaders “must articulate a vision for creating community across class, income, race, and gender. Making higher education inclusive is not optional” (p. 126). Within the quest to create an equitable community in higher education, consideration for how community is created and what the outcomes of these changes mean for education is imperative.

In order to develop community, there needs to be an understanding of the

individuals involved in that community and the potential for gained opportunities for

these individuals through the community itself. Biesta (2006) outlines in his text, Beyond

Learning: Democratic Education for a Human Future the responsibility of the educator

and the role of education in the development of opportunities for individuals to become

unique, singular beings. He claims that if we are to argue that education is more than

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inserting an individual into an already existing order of social belonging, then “it entails a responsibility for the uniqueness of each individual human being” (p. 8). Communities that develop through educational endeavors must respond to these specific needs.

Therefore, transformational aims in education should include the development of conditions where individuals have the opportunity to become unique, singular beings.

Instead of doing what is perceived to be best for the students, all stakeholders, including students should be included in the process of developing transformative change.

According to Biesta, there are two communities that influence education. There is the rational community where all members are interchangeable, and it does not matter who is speaking as long as something is being said. In the second community, the

“other,” an individual can speak with the stranger to develop his or her singular, unique voice. In terms of education, Biesta argues that “it is only in and through our engagement with the other community, that is, in and through the way we expose ourselves to what is strange and other, that we come into the world as unique and singular beings” (p. 67).

Biesta also argues that the main reason we have schools is for participation in the rational community, imparting knowledge on those becoming members of the rational world.

Again, though, it is through encounters with the “other” that students can begin to develop their singular, unique voice. While it may seem logical to incorporate the

“other” community into schools, Biesta claims that the “other” community “cannot be brought into existence in any deliberate or technical way” (p. 69). Therefore, making encounters with the “other” is impossible to deliberately design within a curriculum.

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To ensure encounters with the “other,” Biesta recommends that opportunities should be developed within education “to meet and encounter what is different, strange, and other, and also that there are opportunities for our students to really respond, to find their own voice, their own way of speaking” (p. 69). Furthermore, he argues that what disrupts the rational community contained within the educative process could “be the very point at which students begin to find their own, responsive and responsible voice”

(p. 69). This disruption to the rational community is, in part, a way to develop the importance of the “other” and is a necessary component in the creation of spaces for individuals to develop their unique, singular voice.

In many ways, writing centers are an example of the “other” community because of their focus on creating opportunities for students and tutors to meet outside of the confines of the traditional classroom or within the constraints of curriculum. For students to encounter the “other,” Biesta proclaims that educators must take responsibility “for what is to come, without knowledge of what is to come” (p. 148). While tutors understand that they work with student writers, they often do not know the students with whom they work. Tutors must work with the understanding that students’ experiences, values, and ideas are diverse. In this regard, Biesta claims that “how to live with others who are not like us, will not go away […] Democracy, itself is, after all, a commitment to a world of plurality and difference” (p. 151). In these unique social situations, where encounters with the “other” occur, Biesta finds that “democracy can precisely be understood as the situation in which everyone has the opportunity to be a subject, that is, to act and, through their actions, bring their beginnings into the world of plurality and

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difference” (p. 135). For writing centers, these democratic acts can be found in tutorials where ideas may clash and conversation moves both the student and tutor into new ways of thinking about the world. Because of the opportunities writing centers provide to encounter the “other,” it shows how current traditions or structures, like a classroom, work against democracy in education.

Writing center work ensures that a focus on students provides an opportunity to learn about and reflect upon what Biesta terms as “the fragile conditions” under which people can be subjects. As writing center identity moved from being a support service devoted to student talk to one that questions notions of traditional requirements within higher education, students can work within spaces conducive to braiding equity and quality together. Writing center scholarship reveals a commitment to inclusivity, reflection, and growth which could lead to transformative change in education.

According to Arendt, the state of education may always be in crisis; however, much of the ideology presented in Outstanding Scholarship Award (OSA) texts suggests that writing center work has the potential to address the crisis in education and preserve the newness of each individual by introducing him or her “as a new thing into an old world” (p. 189). As revealed in Chapter 2, OSA texts that highlight the value of the unique consciousness of the individual often center on voice and identity. For example, in Grimm’s (1996) work on how literacy practices reproduce social order and regulate access and subjectivity, she argues for writing centers to re-theorize their work as occurring in spaces where mutual transformations between staff and students can flourish. Adjusting the definition of writing center work from individual tutoring to

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transformative collaborative experiences provides opportunities to better understand the

needs of students. Through this understanding, we can work to transform higher

education to better support our students as opposed to forcing students to transform to

meet the needs of higher education. While education will always remain a transformative

process for students, that transformation could be aimed at providing opportunities for

individuals to become unique, singular beings instead of transforming to fit into an ideal

established by tradition and the status quo.

For collaborative experiences to be successful, Rousculp (2014) argues that all

parties involved need to be open to change in order for the partnership to be mutually

beneficial. She argues that involvement requires a rhetoric of respect to support what a

community wants as opposed to dictating its needs: “we came to embrace our uncertain relationships with partners and individuals, encountering them with a rhetoric of respect, taking on a responsive role rather than leadership, pursuing collaboration instead of empowerment” (p. 124). Through the use of a rhetoric of respect to pursue collaboration, writing centers have the opportunity to work with students as individuals and eschew working with a fixed agenda of empowerment. Additionally, Rousculp highlights the need for collaboration to be a two-way street. If higher education is imposing its standards upon students, the opportunity for mutual growth disappears, and instead of empowering students, we are working to create conditions where students are told who to be and what to think. At worst, within a system where groups or individuals are not open to change, it can create educational standards that not only establish the status quo but

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actively work to exclude individuals and groups who, for whatever reason, cannot meet

the requirements set by the system.

While empowering students is imperative for transformative change to occur in

higher education, it’s important to be cognizant of the repercussions of a shift in power

dynamics. A focus on empowerment could parry a student’s probability of finding

experiences with the “other.” Empowering students would mean some transference of

power, and oftentimes, since writing tutors are often peers, putting the writing center in a

position to empower others could suggest that one set of students is more enlightened

than another set of students and could blur the collaborative focus writing centers have

woven into the fabric of their identity. As discussed in Chapter 4, it should be recognized

that power and authority often affect work between tutors and students. Specifically, if

peer tutors are expected to collaborate with student writers, then there needs to be a more

thorough understanding of the dynamics of that collaboration. If peer tutors can learn to

balance their authority while developing an active learning environment with students, it

can create conditions in which the social construction of knowledge can take place. In

turn, students can gain a better understanding of how to be successful within the

academic community while also developing an awareness of their own authority as co- constructors of knowledge.

Empowering students can be a tenuous within the dynamics of writing center tutorials; however, collaboration that results in empowerment during writing center sessions is often viewed as transformative for students, tutors, and the institution. For example, throughout the collection of essays in Writing Centers and the New Racism

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(2011), many scholars examine how writing centers can persevere through the difficulty and messiness of negotiating race and racism to support student writers. These arguments rarely suggest empowerment as a primary goal for writing center sessions and instead work to develop a better understanding of how race can be used as a tool for the development of transformative experiences within an educational setting. Focusing on knowledge transference and the sharing of lived experiences can be empowering without empowerment being a goal of the session. In one such study, Johnson argues that “racial literacy praxis in the classroom and in the writing center can help move the field from the stagnant practices of racial liberalism to the transformative practices of racial literacyxvi”

(p. 212). She concludes that the future of racial literacy teaching and tutoring requires helping students create their own meaning from the chaos of working through their understanding of the construction of race and racism via language. An emphasis on meaning-making permeates additional scholarship focused on student success, specifically as it relates to the power of collaboration and the development of conditions where students have the potential to experience the “other” community. While Johnson’s text focuses specifically on racial literacy, the idea of collaboration as a means to transform the educational experience for both the tutor and student writer embraces the value of students and their potential to grow as unique, singular beings.

North (1984) values the talk associated with writing centers, Grimm (1999) questions the how those conversations affect students, and Grutch McKinney (2013) critiques the very identity writing centers built for themselves based on the incorporation of both of these notions. However, the one constant throughout all of the OSA texts

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published from 1984-2015 is that having collaborative experiences with individual students holds some value for both individuals. Theoretically, what writing center scholars value from these collaborative experiences has changed in the past 30 years, but the essence of the importance of collaboration remains. Arendt argues that each new generation brings with it the possibility to set the world right, and that education should not be transfixed on old traditions because of the possibilities of each new generation to break from the status quo. Building writing center identity on a foundation of student collaboration and having the foresight to continually reflect upon the quality and possibilities of these encounters highlights the commitment writing centers have to embrace change and support new generations of students in finding their unique, singular voice. While not every writing center experience could possibly affect transformative change, the fact that these opportunities exist in a space conducive for reflection on what has been gained through talk and collaboration supports progress toward “setting the world right” and making the university a more inclusive space.

In addition to writing centers’ approach to collaborating with students one-on- one, writing center location has the potential to create conditions for students to interact with the “other.” Writing centers are generally located outside of the classroom, meaning that they are often evaluation-free environments where students may feel as if they have more freedom to ask questions about their writing. It is not common practice for writing centers to assign grades or voluntarily communicate with a student’s instructor without the student’s permission. Therefore, writing centers can be seen as “othered” themselves in that they are academic in nature, but their authority differs from that of an instructor.

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While marginalization from the academic community has been a contested issue within

OSA texts (Cooper, 1994/1995; Simpson, Braye, & Boquet, 1994; Healy, 1993/1995;

Macauley & Mauriello, 2007; Miller, 2008), it also may be considered a contributing factor of student success. If writing centers are viewed as being outside of the academic community and are physically located on the margins of their university campuses, they could be seen by students as spaces conducive to freely sharing ideas.

Biesta (2006) explores how space can affect education as a way to foster individuals to become unique, singular beings. For his analysis, Biesta focuses on architecture theory and its response to creating worldly spaces. He argues that “there is an extremely thin line between the desire to address social problems through architecture and the creation of new forms of surveillance and control that limit the opportunities for human action” (p. 108). Biesta concludes his discussion with the paradox of architecture and its similarities to the responsibilities of the educator. He argues that the responsibility of the educator “lies precisely in a concern for the paradoxical” (p. 115).

Educators should be aware that what disrupts the smooth operation of the rational community is not necessarily a disturbance of the educational process because this disturbance might be where students can come into their own unique, singular voice.

Similarly, Mattison’s (2007) OSA work on reflection and authority in the writing center explores the paradox between educational processes and the disruption of the rational community. Mattison, an Associate Provost for Undergraduate Curricular Development and Academic Support Services and Writing Center Director, focuses on how his authority plays a role in how and why tutors reflect on their work, arguing that writing

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center directors should allow for more open lines of communication between

administration and staff and between staff members themselves to disrupt the Panopticon

environment writing center directors can inadvertently foster. While his discussion is

focused on the relationship between writing center administrators and tutors, the same

concept could be applied to instructors and their students within a classroom setting.

Since instructors have the power to evaluate and assign grades to students, creating

moments of freedom within the classroom seems more difficult than it would be in an

alternative setting. For students, writing centers operate outside of spaces designed for

surveillance and control that limit the opportunities for human action. While these

particular ideals may not have been put in place when a writing center’s space was

designed, opportunities to disrupt the rational community abound, especially since

writing centers seem to continuously question university standards and encourage

students to do the same (Grimm, 1999; Nelson and Evertz, 2001; Greenfield and Rowan,

2011).

It is within writing scholars’ criticism of both higher education and their role

within that system that they could establish conditions ripe for transformative change.

Grutch McKinney (2013) argues at the end of Peripheral Visions that inflexibility toward expanding the story of writing centers has the potential to adversely affect their sustainability. She argues that “re-envisioning the boundaries of writing center work will allow us to dislodge our established rhetorical and visual ways” (p. 90). Her stab at tradition in order for there to be growth within writing center identity seems on the brink of a revolution for writing center identity and sustainability. This revolution could have

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the potential to affect not only writing centers’ role in higher education, but it also could

be seen as an effort to transform higher education to better support each new generation.

Through their work with students and other stakeholders, writing centers have a unique

position to be a catalyst for change.

Writing center scholars acknowledge the importance and necessity of questioning

the norms within which they exist, and they do so through critical means. Their

questioning of institutional standards puts their sustainability in danger; however, this

work also enables writing centers to be at the forefront of transformational change. As

writing centers continue to collaborate with their stakeholders, questions that put students

first become pivotal moments in how writing centers can use authority in ways that build

a foundation for educative experiences as opposed to using authority to control students.

Because writing centers often value collaboration over authoritative control, they have

the potential to experience encounters that challenge their own worldview as well as

influence the worldview of others. For example, Rousculp (2014), in her focus on

community writing center development, argues that “people, organizations, and even

institutions have reached out from those new strands to make their own change – change

that is recognized, even if only by the people making it” (p. 154). This assertion

acknowledges how one change can influence scholarly decisions that affect the trajectory

of practice and provides direction on what writing center scholars would have to actively

take up in order for these changes to have effect.

Willingness to collaborate with others also positions writing centers to dissolve borders between administrators who set institutional standards and the students who are

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expected to meet them. Bourdieu (1986) argues that those in power are the ones dictating what is learned, how it’s learned, and how to measure whether or not learning has taken place. Through their work with students, writing centers often value literacies that exist outside of the dominant group, and through their collaboration with other stakeholders, writing centers have the potential to share this perspective and begin to transform traditional power structures of higher education. As discussed in Chapter 4, Eodice’s

(2003) stance on positionality reveals that the collaboration done every day in writing

centers offers a way for them to build relationships with their institutions to the benefit of

all involved. Through the development of positionality, writing center identity can both

influence and be influenced by those with whom they work. The transfer of knowledge

facilitates an authority within education that focuses on change as opposed to controlling

which values are perpetuated within the system. Arendt argues that the loss of

permanence and durability has not prevented people from building, caring, and

preserving a world fit for future generations. These good intentions have proven to not

be enough to ensure that individuals have the opportunity to become unique, singular

beings within an educational system that only values a specific ideology. Through

collaborative efforts, writing centers have the potential to permeate other spheres within

higher education. While these efforts may not be without their challenges (e.g. writing

center ties to institutional funding, marginalized locations, acceptance as a research site),

through continued collaboration, it’s possible for writing centers to influence the greater

academic community.

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As long as writing centers and students continue to collaborate, writing centers will continue to have the potential to address the crisis in education and preserve the newness of each individual. Arendt argues that to preserve the newness of each individual, they must be introduced “as a new thing into an old world” which, according to the newcomer, is always outdated (p. 189). For students, the traditions of higher education must seem outmoded as they continue to support hegemonic ideology and maintain the status quo of how education is defined, packaged, and measured. However, for writing centers, the potential of each new student to transform these ideals seems to exist. Through collaboration with stakeholders and a reliance on reflection as a tool for improvement and introspection, writing centers continue to question how and why education persists as it does and how its standards affect the students it is supposed to serve. These efforts further indicate that the gap between past and future illuminates writing centers’ potential to be harbingers of transformation within higher education.

Potential for Writing Centers in Responding to the Crisis in Education

To address the crisis in education, there must be spaces for students to find freedom through encounters with the “other” community. In these spaces, students have the potential to engage in opportunities that support individuals as unique, singular beings. Greene (1988) argues that freedom can be found in dialogue with others for the sake of personal fulfillment. She also argues that an education for freedom “must move beyond function, beyond the subordination of persons to external ends. It must move beyond mere performance to action, which entails the taking of initiatives” (p. 133).

Through questioning institutional standards and reflecting on their role within the

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university, writing centers have taken an active role in using a rhetoric of respect to support students and their needs as unique, singular beings. However, an analysis of

OSA texts reveals that writing centers can do more to lead transformative change in higher education. To do this, writing centers will need to develop a better understanding of (a) how to better create conditions for encounters with the “other” community, (b) how their efforts to support student success relate to the preservation of the newness of each individual, and (c) how diversity within writing center scholarship can develop a deeper understanding of their positionality in terms of educational transformation and a student- first agenda.

Through a collaboration-focused foundation and one-on-one approach to working with students, writing centers can create the conditions necessary for encounters with the

“other” community. However, as Biesta argues, the “other” cannot be developed through curriculum and must be encountered organically. While conditions for encounters with the “other” community may be present in writing centers, some aspects of writing center practice and training may hinder these developments. For example, Grutch McKinney’s analysis of tutor training manuals reveals that tutor and student demographics are often stereotyped, assuming that, in a normal session, the tutor and student “will likely be white, of high ability, young, and American” (p. 71). Additionally, Grutch McKinney finds that when tutor training manuals do focus on differences in characteristics, these differences often show up in the student, positioning tutors and students as “us and them”

(p. 71). This positioning highlights a power dynamic that makes freedom in dialogue difficult to maintain. Greene’s argument that education must move beyond the

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subordination of persons to external ends harkens to the necessity for equity between members of a discourse community. If the tutor is often portrayed as the hegemonic ideal for educational standards, then opportunities for collaboration or encounters with the

“other” decrease for both the student and the tutor. Additionally, the portrayal of students and tutors in tutor training manuals may discourage potential tutors who don’t identify as white, of high ability, young, and/or American from becoming tutors. The discouragement some students feel for becoming a peer tutor could contribute to fewer opportunities for students and peer tutors to encounter the “other” community.

In addition to a need for more diversity in tutor training materials, more scholarship is needed that focuses on preparing writing center administrators for training different kinds of tutors. As discussed in the previous section, Greenfield and Rowan’s

(2011) book, Writing Centers and The New Racism, focuses on developing antiracist practices for writing centers and reveals the difficulty and messiness of negotiating race and racism to support student writers. Additionally, Writing Centers and The New

Racism includes information on how to develop tutor training programs based on critical race theory and the probability of racist encounters. The chapters that do focus on tutor training, however, tend to discuss race in terms of how it may impact student writers and not necessarily student tutors. In Greenfield and Rowan’s own contribution to the text, they investigate a critical pedagogy for antiracist tutor education and develop a framework for their approach based on two assumptions: (a) writing centers are always raced and (b) to question the work of tutor education is to question the work of writing centers. Under these assumptions, they ask: “If we believe that writing center work is

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always already raced, what roles do our tutor education courses play in the racism or antiracism of our institutions?” (p. 125). To answer this question, the authors explore a critical pedagogy approach to education where tutors would be empowered with critical lenses through which to explore and interrogate their own agency in order to help writers gain the same empowerment. In order for this empowerment to take place, the authors argue that antiracism needs to be central to tutor education programs, not just a topic thrown in near the end of the semester.

Greenfield and Rowan conclude by encouraging writing center administrators to look critically at how race is incorporated into their tutor education programs to re- theorize broader goals for tutor education and “students’ critical engagement and activism in their everyday work” (p. 148). While empowering tutors to engage with their own agency in a raced environment is incorporated into much of the training activities, this aspect of training seems less focused on the tutors and more focused on the students the tutors will eventually encounter. Greenfield and Rowan argue that the goal of this training method is to empower tutors so students can be empowered; however, this would imply that a power dynamic exists that provides one group (tutors to empower) with tools and leaves the other group (students who need empowerment) lacking. In this scenario, it would seem that the tutors and students are unequal in their legitimate knowledge about race and antiracist work. While Greenfield and Rowan’s work is only one of several texts focusing on tutor training; overall, throughout OSA texts, there seems to be an absence of materials and preparation to adequately train a diverse staff. Biesta recommends that opportunities should be developed within education to encounter the

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“other.” Without better resources to attract, train, and maintain a diverse tutoring staff, writing centers cannot reach their full potential to create conditions for students (peer tutors and student writers) to encounter the “other” community and begin to find their own, responsive and responsible voice.

Biesta also argues that freedom is required for students to find their own voice and that true freedom can only be experienced in the “other” community. To gain a better understanding of how their efforts to support student success relate to the preservation of the newness of each individual, writing centers must develop a better track record of listening to students, especially in terms of how the writing center may or may not contribute to their success. Through OSA texts, it seems as if writing centers focus more on the frontend work of making writing assistance inclusive, equitable, and critical and less on whether or not these efforts actually make a significant difference in the success of students. While North (1984) very much wanted his colleagues and institution to understand the idea of a writing center, it was Grimm (1992, 1996, & 1999) who expanded the idea to include a writing center that focused more on the inclusivity of the students it serves rather than on the perpetuation of institutional standards. In terms of student success, Grimm’s politicization of writing center work put a new perspective on what it means to be successful in higher education. If students are questioning what is defined as success and who gets to define success, it has the potential to disrupt the hierarchy of the academy itself.

While questioning the academy within writing centers can put their existence in jeopardy, Maimon (2018) argues that inclusivity in higher education is not optional, and

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therefore, a vision for creating community among students is imperative for inclusivity to

function. Grimm moved the idea of a writing center as a support service from one that

supports the university to one that supports students, and while this move may create

friction between the writing center and its home institution, these moves are necessary in

order to transform higher education and have a student-first community. However, these

efforts are missing a crucial part of the community itself – the students. What writing

centers are missing is that education, according to Arendt, is not only always in crisis, but

also is old-fashioned and on the verge of destruction in that it is impossible to continually

transform to meet the standards of the new generation. Listening to students won’t

necessarily ensure that writing centers can make education seem less outmoded, but it

could help writing centers develop an awareness of whether or not the efforts being made

to support student success achieve these aims. Additionally, the absence of student

voices and perspectives included in OSA scholarship, makes it difficult to ascertain

whether or not these efforts truly address the needs of the students or if they are, instead,

addressing what scholars believe the needs of the students to be.

Not assessing the outcomes of these frontend efforts concerning inclusivity for

students is not the only issue with writing center discourse and scholarship. Chapter 3

reveals that writing centers claim to be valuable research sites while also arguing that

writing center scholarship should have a stronger theoretical foundation. Based on OSA

texts, these issues continue to cycle through professional discourse, signaling that writing

centers have yet to situate themselves in relation to the prevailing emphasis on studies that are replicable, aggregable, and data supported (RAD). As shown in Chapter 3, there

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is a significant issue of stagnation and perhaps even myopic interest in writing center

research and assessment.

With RAD research on the rise in writing center scholarship, it may be

problematic that very few studies have been replicated to determine the effectiveness of

the findings, and even fewer studies focus on student success to ensure that writing center

theory and practice is reflected in student growth. Increasing RAD-driven studies can

help illustrate that writing centers are valuable research sites and professional members of

the academic community; however, it is imperative for writing center scholars to not

blindly follow RAD research study requirements but to also think critically about what is

being measured and why. Biesta (2017) explores how the contemporary culture of

detailed measurement has impacted education as a professional field and questions whether or not these efforts bring with them an understanding of the value of the processes and practices that are being measured. Furthermore, Biesta asks his readers to consider “whether what is going on in our age of measurement is getting us any closer to an understanding of what makes education good, rather than what makes it merely effective or efficient” (p. 316). Instead of joining the rat race to publish RAD studies,

Biesta suggests for democracy to be reinserted into the professions, especially in consideration of the propagation of scholarly discourse. He defines democracy as a process “in which the ‘wants’ and desires of individuals are brought into collective deliberation in order to figure which of those wants and desires can legitimately be

‘carried’ by the collective” (p. 327). The outcomes of this process of deliberation establishes “what should have authority in our collective lives. In this regard, we can say

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that democracy itself is characterised by the transformation of power into authority” (p.

327). By inserting a democratic practice into the professions, it can provide a starting point “for a robust and reasoned response against the current erosion of the democratic potential of professionals’ work in the age of measurement” (p. 328).

In terms of writing centers, a democratic approach to research could mean more variety regarding who and what is being published. RAD research may persist within writing center studies through a democratic approach. However, in using a democratic approach, its inclusion in the discourse would come from the field as opposed to outside forces insisting on the merits of this research method. Additionally, a democratic approach to research could mean more of a focus on students and why writing centers value frameworks such as critical literacy and how these frameworks affect both writing center identity and the students writing centers serve. The significant lack of research focusing on students is potential evidence that student success is curiously missing from writing center scholarship. It may be difficult to ascertain whether this is because the field does not value the impact of these frameworks on students or because there is no place for this type of research within scholarly publications. However, having a better understanding of the value of what writing centers are doing doesn’t necessarily mean having evidence that something works, but consideration of both students and professionals within the field could determine the value and outcomes of new considerations that are put into practice.

Arendt argues that the gap between the past and future is opened when people take stock of where they are without the blinders of tradition, faith, or other attitudes that

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lead them to not see the world “as it is.” While writing centers continuously work to create an environment for students based on equity and critical literacy, within their own discourse community, these same efforts aren’t made. Carino (2002) argues for engagement in “dialectic about our identities as shaped in communal and local context”

(p. 107). However, to maintain a democratic approach to scholarship and engage in these discussions, members of the discourse community need to have access to the discussion.

Lerner (2000) observes that members of the writing center community who have power and resources to publish are more often than not the few who are able to propagate research, and more specifically, they are more likely to have the resources to design and carry out studies that attempt to pry apart distinctions that join theory and practice together. Having more variety of scholars in OSA texts would mean a broader perspective of how writing centers operate in higher education. More focus on deliberative democracy in the writing center community could unify writing center perspective toward educational transformation and a student-first agenda. Furthermore, the expansion of participation in writing center scholarship could have an effect on what earns an Outstanding Scholarship Award, and having more voices included in the conversation of what counts as effective research could mean a difference in what writing center scholars accept as legitimate scholarship. Additionally, a democratic approach to scholarship may also address the gap between past and future. With a fuller understanding of what writing center administrators value, it could prevent an unthinking attachment to tradition, faith, or other attitudes that writing center scholars seems to propagate in OSA texts.

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A gap between past and future created by the inclusion of more voices in writing center scholarship may also affect writing center sustainability and help them become leaders in a movement that addresses the crisis in education, and to better address the crisis in education, writing centers must reflect critically about efforts that increase equity in how writing centers train and recruit tutors, support student success, and develop diversity within our scholarship. This critical inquiry will help writing center scholars develop a deeper understanding of their positionality in terms of educational transformation and a student-first agenda.

…

This chapter has revealed that the crisis of education is ongoing and that while writing centers are certainly addressing issues associated with the crisis of education, there is still work to be done. Arendt argues that education will always be in crisis.

However, within this crisis, writing centers seem to be forthcoming in ensuring students’ needs are addressed within higher education. Their focus on creating conditions conducive to student diversity and critical literacy serves as a catalyst for controversial change within the hegemonic standards of what it means to be educated. Additionally, the focus on collaboration writing centers have woven into their identity fosters positionality toward the transformation of all stakeholders involved in an exchange.

These critical engagements can situate writing centers as harbingers of change to better support the success of adult students.

This concluding chapter leads with a quote from Rahm Emanuel (2008): “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” While Emanuel was referencing the

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economic crisis of the time, he elaborates, arguing that “things that we had postponed for

too long, that were long-term, are now immediate and must be dealt with. This crisis

provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before.” The crisis in

education also provides opportunities for revolutionary thinking and revolutionary

actions. In fact, the crisis in education requires revolution to create a gap that addresses

the crisis. Writing centers may not be able to adequately address the crisis alone.

However, the crisis itself provides writing centers with the opportunity to acknowledge how the gap can open the possibility for further exploration of their own identity and relationships to institutions of higher education. It is additionally imperative that writing center scholars continue to reflect on how this gap can affect their sustainability. Here lies the significance of this study: because OSA texts represent critical junctures of writing center history and identity, they provide a means to highlight areas of growth and opportunity and to celebrate their persistence and commitment toward student success.

Outstanding Scholarship Award texts have shown how writing centers consider the needs of the student and implement programs to cater to those needs. However, the gap between the past and future sustains the notion that writing centers will perpetually be in a state of becoming. Because of the continuous nature of this work, writing centers have the opportunity to gather new evidence that their efforts affect student success, and these efforts can be used to convince stakeholders that writing centers have “arrived” and are a valuable asset in the perpetuation of education for a democratic society.

REFERENCES

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i Salem (2016) does not use the term “crisis” in her proposal to rethink the purpose of writing centers. However, her call, after 30 years of research that often calls into question the purpose and context of writing centers seems to suggest that, at the very least, writing centers have opened a “gap” between past and future. ii For more information about early writing centers, see The Idea of a Writing Laboratory by Neal Lerner (2009), specifically Chapter 1. iii The only text eliminated from this study was Richard Kent’s (2006) A Guide to

Creating a Student-Staffed Writing Center: Grades 6-12. While compelling, this study focuses on post-secondary education therefore falls outside of the scope of this project. iv See Learner (2014) for a discussion on dominant ideas and authorial proliferation in

WC literature. v See Chapter 4 for a more thorough discussion on legitimacy and the role of the writing center. vi See Chapter 4 for a more thorough discussion of tutor training and writing center professionalization. vii The Burkean Parlor refers to Kenneth Burke’s concept of unending conversation:

“Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact, the discussion had already begun long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you

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answer him; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself against you, to either the embarrassment or gratification of your opponent, depending upon the quality of your ally's assistance. However, the discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress.” (pp. 110-

111) viii For more information about the state of writing center administration, see Chapter 4 of this dissertation. ix See The Meaningful Writing Project: Learning, Teaching, and Writing in Higher

Education (2016) by Michele Eodice, Anne Ellen Geller, and Neal Lerner for an example of non-quantitative RAD research. x The following is Simpson’s position statement on professional concerns. Included in this position statement is also a list of guidelines the National Writing Centers

Association had already developed concerning developing job descriptions for writing center directorships and for evaluating the credentials of applicants for these positions.

Simpson’s position statement is below in its entirety.

The National Writing Centers Association recommends that institutions employing writing center directors provide the following working conditions:

1. Establishment of a directorship should begin with a definition of appropriate

preparation for the position.

2. Directorships should carry sufficient stability and continuity to provide for sound

educational programs and planning.

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3. Directorships should not be assigned to persons against their will.

4. Directorships should be considered faculty and administrative positions rather

than staff positions.

5. Directorships should include access to promotion, salary, tenure, and travel funds

equivalent to that provided for other faculty and administrators.

6. Requirements for retention, promotion, and tenure should be clearly defined and

should take into consideration the particular demands of the position.

7. Directorships should be established with clear formulas for determining

equivalencies, such as released time for administration and tutor training. The

National Writing Centers Association recommends that, where it is appropriate,

tutor training programs should be considered courses and should have credit units

assigned to them.

8. Directorships should be established within a clearly defined administrative

structure so that directors know to whom they are responsible and whom they

supervise.

9. Directorships should include access to administrative support–such as clerical

help, computer time, and duplicating services–that is equal in quality to that

available to other program directors.

10. Evaluation of writing center directors should be conducted by persons in the same

area of specialization. xi See Skaburskis, A. (2008). The origin of “wicked problems.” Planning Theory &

Practice, 9(2), 277-280.

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xii The International Writing Centers Association’s position statement on graduate student

writing center administration can be found here: http://writingcenters.org/wp-

content/uploads/2008/06/graduate-student-position-statement2.pdf

xiii See Writing Centers and Remediation section in Chapter 2 for a fuller explanation of

the relationship between remediation and writing centers.

xiv “writing centers are comfortable, iconoclastic places where all students go to get one-

to-one tutoring on their writing” (p. 3, italics in original).

xv For a detailed discussion of Rousculp’s concept of the rhetoric of respect, see Chapter

4, specifically, pages 139-140.

xvi Johnson defines racial literacy as the understanding that race “is a signifier that

operates at a discursive level and informs our literacy definitions and practices. Racial

literacy as a theory and pedagogical practice falls under the rubric of critical literacy and

critical race theory but argues for a more directed and deliberate examination of the

construction of race and racism via language” (p. 212). In terms of meaning-making,

racial literacy can impact how language affects the way an individual understands race

and racism.