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

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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 © Copyright, 2020 by Leah A. Schell-Barber All Rights Reserved ii A dissertation written by Leah A. Schell-Barber B.A., The University of Akron, 2003 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. iv 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 v 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 vi 1 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 2 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
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