Volume 25, No. 1
The
Writing Center ournal
J
Co-Editors
Neal Lerner, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Elizabeth Boquet, Fairfield University
Associate Editor of Development
Michele Eodice, University of Kansas
Web Support
Sean Ringey, University of Kansas
Member of the NCTE Affiliate Information Exchange Agreement
Member of the Council of Editors of Learned Journals
Printed on recycled paper
2005
Statement of Purpose
The Writing Center Journal is an official publication of the International Writing
Centers Association, which is an Affiliate of the National Council of Teachers of
English. WCJ is published twice a year.
The Writing Center Journal’s primary purpose is to publish articles, reviews, and
announcements of interest to writing center personnel. We therefore invite manuscripts that explore issues or theories related to writing center dynamics or administration. We are especially interested in theoretical articles and in reports of research
related to or conducted in writing centers. In addition to administrators and practitioners from college and university writing centers, we encourage directors of high
school and middle school writing centers to submit manuscripts.
Subscription and Submission Information
For information about manuscript submission and review, please refer to the
“Information for Authors” section at the back of this issue. Information is also available online at www.writing.ku.edu/wcj/.
The Writing Center Journal also welcomes letters responding to WCJ articles and
reviews. Please see the “Information for Authors” section for contact information.
Subscription to The Writing Center Journal is $25 per year with IWCA Membership or
$40 per year with Membership and The Writing Lab Newsletter. Library rate for The
Writing Center Journal is $35. To subscribe, review, or change address, please go online
to www.iwcamembers.org.
Back issues of WCJ are $7.50 each. The following back issues are available: 18.2, 19.2,
20.1, 20.2, 21.1, 21.2, 22.1, 22.2, 23.1, 23.2, 24.1, 24.2. Many other back issues are available for free download from the Writing Centers Research Project archive
(www.wcrp.louisville.edu). To purchase back issues, make checks payable to The
Writing Center Journal and send to Neal Lerner, MIT Writing Across the Curriculum,
Rm. 32-083, 77 Massachusetts Ave., Cambridge, MA 02139.
Address all inquiries regarding subscriptions, back issues, announcements, and
advertising to the editors at [email protected] and [email protected].
Reproduction of material from this publication is hereby authorized if it is for educational use in not-for-profit institutions, if copies are made available without charge
beyond the cost of reproduction, and if each copy includes full citation of the source.
For reprint permission, contact the editors.
Design: Process.
© International Writing Centers Association, 2004
ISSN 0889-6143
The
Writing Center
Volume 25, No. 1
Journal
2005
1 From the Editors
Neal Lerner and Elizabeth Boquet
Articles
5 Tick-Tock, Next: Finding Epochal Time in the Writing Center
Anne Ellen Geller
25 The Polyvalent Mission of Writing Centers
Phillip Gardner and William Ramsey
43 Pedagogies of Belonging: Listening to Students and Peers
Julie Bokser
Reviews
61 Writing Groups Inside and Outside the Classroom
Beverly Moss, Nels Highberg, and Melissa Nicolas, eds.
Roberta D. Kjesrud
64 Virtual Peer Review: Teaching and Learning about Writing in
Online Environments
Lee-Ann Kastman Breuch
Kevin Dvorak
68
Announcements
76
IWCA Information
85
Information for Authors
WCJ Reviewers
All essay submissions are reviewed blind by two external readers; those listed below are
members of the active reader pool. We thank them for their contributions to scholarship
in the field.
Valerie Balester, Texas A&M University, College
Station
Susan Blau, Boston University
Deborah H. Burns, Merrimack College
Nick Carbone, Bedford/St. Martin’s Press
Peter Carino, Indiana State University
Meg Carroll, Rhode Island College
Pamela B. Childers, The McCallie School
Irene Clark, California State UniversityNorthridge
Jane Cogie, Southern Illinois University
Frankie Condon, St. Cloud State University
Albert C. DeCiccio, Rivier College
Lisa Ede, Oregon State University
Michele Eodice, University of Kansas
Tim Fountaine, St. Cloud State University
Tom Fox, California State University-Chico
Clint Gardner, Salt Lake Community College
Anne Ellen Geller, Clark University
Alice Gillam, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Paula Gillespie, Marquette University
Wendy Goldberg, Stanford University
Ann E. Greene, Saint Joseph’s University
Nancy Grimm, Michigan Technological University
John Hall, Boston University
Muriel Harris, Purdue University
Carol Peterson Haviland, California State
University, San Bernardino
Joan Hawthorne, University of North Dakota
Susan M. Hubbuch, Lewis and Clark College
Brad Hughes, University of Wisconsin-Madison
James Inman, University of South Florida
Joyce Kinkead, Utah State University
Harvey Kail, University of Maine-Orono
Lisa Lebduska, Wheaton College
Ed Lotto, Lehigh University
James McDonald, University of Louisiana at
Lafayette
Joan Mullin, University of Texas at Austin
iv
Christina Murphy, Marshall University
Jon Olson, Pennsylvania State University
Derek Owens, St. John’s University
Michael Pemberton, Georgia Southern University
Jill Pennington, Lansing Community College
Ben Rafoth, Indiana University of Pennsylvania
Terrance Riley, Bloomsburg University
Carol Severino, University of Iowa
Donna Sewell, Valdosta State University
Steve Sherwood, Texas Christian University
Byron Stay, Mount St. Mary’s College
Patricia Stephens, Long Island University,
Brooklyn
Jill Swavely, Temple University
Terese Thonus, California State University, Fresno
Howard Tinberg, Bristol Community College
Nancy Welch, University of Vermont
Susan Wolff Murphy, Texas A&M University
Corpus Christi
Mary Wislocki, New York University
From the Editors
Time is on my side, yes it is.
Time is on my side, yes it is.
—By Norman Meade (for Irma Thomas and The Rolling Stones)
In her recently published book The Midnight Disease, author Alice Flaherty is gripped
by a need to write that keeps her up at night. In her manic phases, Flaherty describes
words as “flee[ing] from [her] head like rats from a sinking ship” (34). Each time we
describe this compelling book to friends and co-authors trying to squeeze in a bit of
writing time, their responses are always the same. “I sure could use a case of that
‘Midnight Disease,’” lamented one colleague, as the alarm on her sabbatical clock
went off.
We have been thinking a lot about time lately, about the ways that clock time is often
at odds with our goals to learn something new, keep up with developments in our
fields, spend time with loved ones, or even “get more writing done.” Time becomes an
either-or proposition: either we have it or we don’t. Most days, it feels like we don’t.
All three of the authors whose articles are featured in this issue urge readers to
revisit binaries, troubling either-or divisions, that interfere with our ability to reimagine productive futures in and around our writing centers. In the opening article,
“Tick-Tock, Next: Finding Epochal Time in the Writing Center,” Anne Ellen Geller,
drawing on the work of organizational management theorist Allen Bluedorn, contrasts
epochal time (where “the event defines the time” and where time is linked to a person’s internal rhythm, or to an external social rhythm) with fungible time (where the
clock is the determiner of starts and stops, of beginnings and endings). Using vivid
descriptions of illustrations generated by her tutors, all of whom feel constrained by
the clock on the wall, Geller urges her readers to consider that “if we embrace the
notion of epochal time, we can also embrace the notion that conferences are defined
by much more than the time that it takes to hold them.”
This expanded approach to the work of the writing conference makes us wonder
about many other time-constrained situations. One in particular are the deadlines we
operate under (and assign to our students) for many writing projects. When was that
proposal due? How soon is that conference coming up? You want my annual report by
when?! Consider the advice we often give writers when it comes time to revise: put that
The Writing Center Journal
Volume 25, No.1 (2005)
1
draft away for awhile, get some distance, a fresh perspective, and, above all, don’t procrastinate! Our slow-down, hurry-up approach is often more about when grades are
due or the length of a quarter or semester than the time needed to craft a powerful
essay or an effective report. Our narratives, then, run on a clock not of our own making, and we wonder just how much that idea constrains our work.
A more familiar, though no less problematic, binary is the central-marginal paradox
that has dogged writing center literature for decades. In “The Polyvalent Mission of
Writing Centers,” Phillip Gardner and William Ramsey engage the “deep uncertainty”
that our marginalized identity seems to offer. Just as Geller urges readers to reconsider time, Gardner and Ramsey argue for a reconsideration of the dominant “counterhegemonic” writing center identity. Avoiding facile categorizations of writing centers
as “anti” or “extra,” these authors argue that our ambivalence about the writing center’s critically intellectual curricular role has inhibited the development of discourses
necessary for writing centers to survive and thrive.
Insider-outsider status is a concern for our third contributor as well. Julie Bokser in
“Pedagogies of Belonging: Listening to Students and Peers” considers the question,
“How can we better train tutors to tutor imaginatively and effectively”? For Bokser, the
answer takes her staff away from clock watching and into the potential for epochal time
that Geller proposes. Bokser recommends equipping tutors with a “rhetoric of listening” to help students in the process of dealing with cultural difference, of “belonging”
to the institution, the course, or the discipline. For Bokser, time has changed. She tells
us, “I now spend more time listening to how my tutors listen.”
The two books reviewed in this issue—Virtual Peer Review: Teaching and Learning about
Writing in Online Environments and Writing Groups Inside and Outside the Classroom—
continue the theme of thinking about our work in seemingly alternate ways. Both
books are not about writing centers per se, but both offer views of teaching and learning in various settings, whether on- or off-line, that expand what we know about the
one-to-one work conducted in familiar settings. Expanding what we know or believe
is certainly worth our time, we feel.
One additional site of our struggle with temporal reality has been the disconnect
between the dates listed on each issue of WCJ and the actual dates they arrive in subscribers’ mailboxes. While it seems a nice gesture to offer our readers spring/summer
in October, this discrepancy has gradually become a crisis of sorts, particularly when
WCJ is held to other calendar-year requirements (such as the nominations for the
IWCA Outstanding Scholarship Award). As a result, starting with this issue we have
decided to revise the dating/timing of our issues. Rather than fall/winter 2004, this
2
From the Editors
issue is labeled volume 25, number 1 (2005). Historically, the seasonal designations in
WCJ have ebbed and flowed. We are the first editors, however, to remove the seasonal
distinction altogether. An issue that asks readers to consider the arbitrary nature of
temporal markings seemed an opportune moment to bring our own external deadlines
in line with our administrative rhythms.
Our current fascination with time leads also to one more analysis and that’s an
attempt to understand the relationship between writing and time in terms of our own
editorial rhythms. As we try to schedule our own writing, our own teaching, and our
own extra-curricular lives, we thought it might be helpful to have a sense of when you
are thinking and writing and, subsequently, sending articles to us. As Figure 1 shows,
October through February are long, dark, cold and lonely months here in the
Northeast, as we await the ding of an inbox telling us we’ve got mail. In contrast, June
through September are popular months for submissions. Summer, it seems, stretches
out before us all, filled with Geller’s epochal time, dedicated to writing, free from the
competing demands of the school year.
18%
16%
Percent Total Submissions
14%
12%
10%
8%
6%
4%
2%
0%
Jan
Feb
Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Jul
Aug
Sep
Oct
Nov
Dec
Months
Figure 1. Writing Center Submissions by Month, Jan. 2002 to Oct. 2004
What would happen, we wonder, if those competing demands became complementary events or experiences that helped our writing rather than hindered it? In other
words, what if, rather than making writing a low priority during the academic year, we
made it a high priority–not to the exclusion of our other duties, but instead as a parallel activity? How would writing enable us to do the work we do better, whether that’s
gaining a more complete understanding of our writing centers or putting ourselves
The Writing Center Journal
Volume 25, No.1 (2005)
3
constantly in the spaces we offer to our students—as writers discovering new knowledge? How can we place our own writing in epochal time?
Now, we are not talking about coming down with a case of Flaherty’s “Midnight
Disease.” However, we’re convinced that putting (even forcing) thoughts into words,
scheduling regular writing time (even in short bursts), writing along with others, and
having the courage to send out that work despite the occasional rejection are fine
strategies to get more writing done. We look forward to seeing the results in future
issues.
WORKS CITED
Flaherty, Alice W. The Midnight Disease. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004.
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4
From the Editors
Tick-Tock, Next: Finding Epochal Time in the Writing Center
by Anne Ellen Geller
In this world, there are two times. There is mechanical time and there is body
time. The first is as rigid and metallic as a massive pendulum of iron that swings
back and forth, back and forth. The second squirms and wriggles like a bluefish
in a bay. The first is unyielding, predetermined. The second makes up its mind as
it goes along.
—Einstein’s Dreams, Alan Lightman
Every now and then in our writing center staff meetings, I pile crayons, magic markers, colored pencils and a stack of white paper in the middle of the table. For the first
fifteen minutes, the graduate student tutors draw pictures. There is no prompt beyond
“draw a picture of a conference you’re left thinking about from this week.” Sometimes
the drawing time is silent. I watch the geographers and economists and women’s studies scholars bite at their lips and furrow their brows as they work in an unfamiliar,
perhaps-forgotten medium.
When we share these drawings, we place ourselves back in one another’s conferences, but as we discuss the conferences each of us has drawn, we also prepare for
future conferences. Though we know few conferences we’ll face will be exactly like
those we’ve already held, or heard about, we imagine possibilities, riffing off one
another’s successes, struggles and ideas. It is that interaction, that asking and suggesting and wondering together, that makes our brief hour-long meeting feel so valuable
to us all.
In one of these meetings, Alice drew a picture of herself sitting at a round table saying, “Next” (see Fig. 1). A conveyor belt of student writers winds past her into infinity.
About the Author
Anne Ellen Geller directs the Writing Center and Writing Program at Clark University,
where she also teaches writing classes, including a literacy class that incorporates community engagement. She hosted and co-chaired the 2004 Writing Centers Summer Institute and will co-chair the 2005 Institute. Her essay, “‘What’s Cool Here?’: Collaboratively
Learning Genre in Biology,” is forthcoming in Genre Across the Curriculum. An earlier
version of this essay was delivered at CCCC 2003 in New York City.
The Writing Center Journal
Volume 25, No.1 (2005)
5
That week, she met with all of the students
in a graduate course she was teaching; in
addition, she tutored eight hours in the
writing center. How could she have the
energy to get through so many conferences in what little time she had that week
without feeling “Henry Fordist” (Conroy,
Lerner, Siska 131)?
In Lisa’s picture (see Fig. 2), a blackoutlined clock and a huge polka-dotted
question mark float prominently and
weigh heavily on Lisa’s mind. A laptop is
open on the table and a student talks about
texts from her film class. The writing center is sunny at 1:25 in the afternoon, but
the heavy clock covers most of the sun.
Lisa’s mouth is crooked. She doesn’t
Figure 1. Alice’s picture.
know what to do, or say, but the clock ticks
away the conference hour. “Tick-Tock” echoes in the corner of the picture. Lisa worried that time would run out before she could decide how best to help the student.
In a more minimalist picture, Jessi’s stick figure awkwardly faces the student
writer’s stick figure (see Fig. 3). The student holds the text. “No,” the student says.
“Okay,” Jessi replies. The minute hand of the red clock in the background nears the
Figure 2. Lisa’s Picture.
6
Tick-Tock, Next: Finding Epochal Time in the Writing Center
end of the hour. Time is lost in negotiation,
which never progresses in this image (or in
this conference, according to Jessi) beyond
this dead-end exchange.
Jessi smiles in another of her pictures (see
Fig. 4). She intended to capture the last
moments of her time with a student writer.
The clock has not quite reached the hour,
and Jessi felt she had successfully focused
the student on one doable project they could
work on together. She had just enough time
to write in this student’s folder. But the student in this picture is smiling, too. She’s
pointing to the clock. She’s a regular, and she
knows she has been scheduled for an hour.
“Hey, we have eight minutes left,” she says,
“I want to do this and I want to do this and I
Figure 3. Jessi’s first picture.
don’t know what to do,” she says in the picture. Other projects and other due dates are still on her mind. Who controls the time
in conferences? Jessi wondered. The tutor? The student? Who should? Why is this student writer still unsatisfied after fifty-two minutes of conference time? In a picture
Carolyn drew (see Fig. 5), a student writer physically blocks the door even though the
ticking clock reveals that the conference has already run five minutes past the end of
Figure 4. Jessi’s second picture.
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Volume 25, No.1 (2005)
7
Figure 5. Carolyn’s picture.
Carolyn’s shift. “You cannot leave—I need you,” the student writer says. Red boxes
around the writer’s head say “ME, ME, ALL ABOUT ME.” “Yikes,” Carolyn’s stick figure representation of herself thinks.
Clocks are everywhere in these drawings, and I began to wonder why tutors so often
draw pictures that put moments of awareness, or negotiation, or confusion, or frustration, or success, in relation to time.1 The most obvious answer is that conferences
in the Clark Writing Center are one hour in duration. The tutors are always aware that
when one hour ends, the next appointment will arrive. They are always watching the
clock. And they are always aware, as are most of us who teach, that there is never
enough time to teach all that we want to.2
But clocks are also the physical manifestation of a central tension in writing centers
—the tension between fungible time and epochal time. Fungible time is measured by
“units…equivalent to and interchangeable with any of the other units. Indeed, these
units may take on the values of any clock or calendar interval (second, minute, hour,
day, week, month, year, decade, century, etc.)” (Bluedorn 30). Epochal time is measured by events, the “time is in the events; the events do not occur in time” (31). For
example, in fungible time, I call a friend and say “let’s have lunch tomorrow at 12.
That’s my lunch hour.” In epochal time I might call the same friend and say, “Let’s
have lunch tomorrow. I’ll call you when I get hungry. Or, when I’m between projects.
And we’ll eat until we can eat no more.” In epochal time “the event defines the time,”
and time is “linked to the individual’s internal rhythms (e.g., the onset of hunger)” or
“external social rhythms (e.g., the flow of work that day)” (Bluedorn 31).3
It is difficult for tutors and student writers to access epochal time, especially within
the strict demands of a single writing conference an hour or half-hour in duration. In
8
Tick-Tock, Next: Finding Epochal Time in the Writing Center
the face of short writing center appointments (constantly threatened to become ever
shorter because of budget cuts) and rushed students with busy schedules, we risk succumbing to the pressure of fungible time, into what we think of as the necessity of efficiency. On email listservs, we ask other directors how they keep their tutors from
running over time in conferences, and we reassure one another that conferences in
which we focus on just one skill are preferable. In our staff meetings, we raise the issue
of time management over and over again.
Efficiency need not always preclude meaningful interaction, but to imagine that
tutors must, most of all, be efficient in conferences means that we buy into something
like Fredrick Taylor’s “efficiency engineering” and its establishment of “standard
times for each bodily motion” (Levine 70). We decide that a thesis can be generated in
a half hour, and there may simply be no time for what Taylor enthusiasts deemed
“waste” motions (Levine 71). In the case of writing centers, these waste motions might
include laughter, off-topic story-telling, or a walk outside when the conference work
becomes difficult, and student and tutor need to take a break. The more economically
vital, the more individualistic, the more capitalistic, the more populated a place is, the
faster its pace of life (Levine 9–18). When we prioritize efficiency, we allow writing
centers to take on the aura of Taylorized factories or the financial markets of major
cities. “A focus on people,” psychologist Robert Levine tells us, “is often at odds with a
tempo dictated by schedules and the time on the clock” (19).4
But what would happen if we searched within defined time for the space and possibility of epochal time? When writing center tutors, and the student writers at their
sides, can shift their concerns from the unyielding demands of clock time to the fluidity and possibility of epochal time, they create space for tutor and student alike to
think, to imagine, to experiment, to collaborate, to build a relationship, and to learn.
We know this happens in many conferences, but how often do we consciously work to
make it happen? We can think and talk about how we will never be able to do enough
work in the time we have in short conferences. Or we can accept the inevitable limitations of each short conference, turning our focus instead to what is possible in the
epochal time we can harness in the conference itself. Perhaps we should remind tutors
to look at the clock less often rather than more often.
***
Writing centers with drop-in hours are certainly more epochal than the Clark
University writing center with its strict hour-long appointment schedule. But even
drop-in hours do not ease all of the time constraints on student writers and tutors (or
directors). Students write toward deadlines, and most of them schedule their writing
center visits in relation to deadlines. I’m working on a paper that is due today. My class is
The Writing Center Journal
Volume 25, No.1 (2005)
9
Figure 6. Tamer’s picture.
at 1pm. My paper is due in class. I need to revise it this morning. We have to admit it: no
matter how we strive to work at the point of writers’ needs, student writers’ needs
almost always arise within institutionalized time, the type of time that can constrain us
if we let it narrow our focus more than it needs to.
At Clark, we offer student writers an hour conference a week. We ask writers to
schedule appointments days ahead of time. As much as we’d like to imagine we could
work with students at their points of need, whenever they needed us, for as long as they
needed our help, we usually can’t. It is common for me to see some version of this
comment on students’ evaluations of their writing center conferences: “I wish we had
more time together to _____” —fill in the blank with “to talk,” “to go over more of the
paper,” “to look at my other paper.” Student writers watch the clock, too. All this
makes a search for epochal time more essential. For when the work of a writing
conference is grounded on speed and breadth more than on interaction and depth,
students and tutors alike can become unimaginative, rigid, or worse (as the drawings
reveal), pressured, paralyzed or hostile.
Epochal time is less familiar to us within writing center conferences than we might
like it to be, but it is often also more comfortable, more welcome, than we might expect
when we experience it. Epochal time is the time represented in the second half of
Tamer’s picture (see Fig. 6). As the hour begins, a large academic in a robe and mortarboard looms over student and tutor and points at the clock. It is the professor who
seems to control time in this conference even though he or she is not physically present. Half an hour later, in the noticeably smaller right half of Tamer’s diptych, the
clock is still present; the professor is not. No one points at the clock. No one even
looks at it. What defines the work, and the time it takes to do that work, is the event,
the interaction between student and tutor, turned toward one another, thinking about
the symbolism of rain in the Noah’s Ark narrative, the text the student must analyze in
10
Tick-Tock, Next: Finding Epochal Time in the Writing Center
the overdue paper. Tamer and the student writer are working together. The representation reveals how much longer the first half of the conference felt to Tamer and how
much more satisfying the second half felt.
Here, within Tamer’s one conference, the conflict between fungible and epochal
time is, to some degree, reconciled. When we can shift any part of a conference, even
an uneven half of a conference outside of institutional time, we do just what Tamer
shows himself doing in this picture. We turn toward the writer, embracing all she tells
us with outstretched arms. She turns towards us. Lost in the words of a writer who owns
her own project, we feel, although the clock tells us we have only half a conference left,
as if we have all the time in the world. We are drawn into the work, away from the limits of the time we have. The writer, drawn into the work, may even feel somewhat
released from fungible time.
Perhaps it is too romantic to imagine that we could exploit epochal time in each and
every conference in this way. But if we were to imagine that we could release ourselves
from the pressure of the ticking clock, we might also be able to imagine—and help students imagine—a whole variety of different choices in conferences.
Tamer’s visual representation of himself and the student turned toward one another offers clues of what happens in this conference. Tamer is aware of time and the limits of the hour, but he is also very aware of this student writer and all she has brought
to conference. Elements of this conference were familiar to him from previous conferences.5 He had worked with many, many students who were overly concerned about
their professors’ expectations, and he had spoken in staff meetings about how this was
his least favorite type of conference. What I believe he did in this conference was pay
attention to the student beside him and his relationship in conference with that student. That turn of attention, away from the looming clock, large professor and late
paper, to the student, the student’s ideas and himself, allowed Tamer to vary his use of
experience to meet this student’s needs and his own needs within an hour.
Perhaps he asked himself, how might this conference proceed if this student knew
how to take ownership of this text? How might I work if she knew? He realized this
conference did not have to turn out as past conferences like this one had, and he did
not have to work as he had before, even if he worked from his experience and even if
he was under the pressure of the ticking clock.6 Tamer’s move to embrace epochal time
was a shift that allowed him to utilize his experience in new ways and allowed him to
turn away from the unyielding clock and unyielding professor. Tamer’s turn toward the
student writer shows that he is aware of how he and the student writer share the
conference.
The Writing Center Journal
Volume 25, No.1 (2005)
11
Near the beginning of Milan Kundera’s novel, Slowness, the narrator sits at a traffic
light. In his rearview mirror, he watches an impatient couple in the car behind him
and wonders why they cannot turn toward one another and enjoy one another’s presence while they are stuck at the light. “Why doesn’t the man tell her something
funny?” (3) the narrator asks. Why can’t the female passenger capture the male driver’s attention? Because, the narrator realizes, “she’s at the wheel with him, and she’s
cursing me, too” (4)—they are not at all aware of one another; they are only aware of
the goal, getting through the light and moving toward their destination. I wonder how
often the pressure of time in conferences works against tutors’ and students’ real
presence in conferences? How often does a paper’s pending due date, or a ticking
clock, create the pressure of that traffic light, keeping writer and tutor from engaging
with one another, no matter how closely they sit next to one another?
***
Knowing I want to encourage my graduate tutors to find and embrace epochal time
in their conferences has led me to look at their pictures and listen to their conference
stories in new ways. Now I specifically look and listen for moments when I think
they’ve shifted to work in epochal time because I want them to understand why a shift
in strategies and attitude was possible even when the clock might have been telling
them that change would be impossible.
Three stories stand out to me from last semester. To me, these stories reveal the
necessary interrelationships between fungible time and epochal time. Tutors are well
aware of the tensions between those two types of time, but I believe that when tutors
shift their awareness to epochal time they can make different choices in conferences.
Two of the stories I’ll tell, Jessi’s and Sandy’s, describe long-term relationships
between tutors and student writers. Over the course of a semester, Jessi saw that the
pressure of the clock could not–and should not–keep her from responding to a multilingual student’s needs. She also realized that a fear of the ticking clock may make
tutors take on more responsibility for students’ progress than they should. Sandy
found she was surprised in the middle of the semester when a student she had been
working with regularly could more confidently face what had originally been an
unmanageable weekly deadline. Their conferences were scheduled solely to help
Laura complete her weekly writing. But when Sandy realized Laura’s relationship to
her own work had changed, she was able to re-imagine how they might work in their
weekly conferences. The third story, Jonathan’s, reveals what is possible when a tutor
embraces epochal time in a single conference. Time transforms geographical space,
and I’ll describe how, in that conference, tutor and student moved not only through
12
Tick-Tock, Next: Finding Epochal Time in the Writing Center
time, but also through many geographical spaces and many possible ways of understanding not just the texts they work at but also one another.
Each of the tutors in these stories had worked in the writing center for a least a full
semester before these conferences took place, and I believe this is important.7 They
had experience working with first-year students and with non-native and native
English writers from across the disciplines, and I hope to reveal, at least implicitly,
how their experience may have provided the structure for their shifts. I hope, most of
all, to show how these tutors turned their awareness away from a ticking clock toward
the writers beside them.
First, Susie. When Jessi began working with Susie, we knew only that her graduate
advisor in international development had referred her to the writing center because he
was concerned by how little English he felt Susie understood. After a first conference,
Jessi felt concerned, too. Susie seemed hardly able to converse in English. Jessi wondered how they would ever get to English exchanges in which they might understand
one another, let alone exchanges complex enough to allow Jessi to help Susie with her
written graduate work.
In that first tentative conference together, Jessi suggested they both write. With
free-writing finished, they began to look at Susie’s sentences, clarifying word choice,
practicing the sounds of various letters, and reorganizing the order of words in the
sentences. It was slow work, and Jessi remembers the pressure of the clock. There were
so many sentence-level issues to talk about; they had so little time in that one-hour
conference to get through even the few sentences Susie had generated.
Jessi had suggested they write sentences so that she and Susie could communicate
around writing, but it became more and more apparent that “Susie didn’t want to stay
on the paper.”8 Jessi remembers a moment she describes as “energetic.” “I was talking about placements of words, and listening to her tentative questions, and then the
question she was asking became more and more clear. She wasn’t focused, as I was, on
how the sentences were structured. She wanted to know something else.”
When Jessi somewhat reluctantly turned her attention away from the text she felt
pressured to focus on, she could hear Susie’s real questions. “How do I respond in
English when someone invites me for dinner?” and “What type of responses do I offer
at a dinner party?” are the questions Jessi remembers most. Susie asked these questions so pointedly, so seriously, so meaningfully, that Jessi realized Susie saw the writing center not just as a place where she could develop her written communication, but
also a place where she could develop new, cultural communication skills.
Jessi remembers how tense that moment felt to her. The conference was short. The
semester was short. Susie had so much to practice and to learn. She was familiar with
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13
the writing tasks the graduate program would require Susie to complete. As Nancy
Grimm notes, “in tutoring interactions, listening is often done under the pressure of
time, usually with a desire to be helpful, and almost always with a notion of what is a
normal academic essay” (67). But, realizing how important Susie’s questions were to
her, Jessi turned her attention away from the text in front of her and began what
Grimm might call “authentic listening” (69). Susie either will, or won’t, learn enough
English to remain in this program, Jessi remembers thinking to herself, but she is
asking me to help her with more immediate language issues I can’t ignore. Jessi and
Susie worked together once a week all semester, and every session contained what
Jessi calls “blurriness” in her communication with Susie. But, in accepting that blurriness, she and Susie could “dialogue.” “Authentic listening,” Grimm says, is “experiential” (69). How could Jessi know exactly where her conferences with Susie might
lead until the two of them discovered that together?
Writing sentences and having conversations about American culture led to conversations about Susie’s interest in studying in the United States. Conversations about
the experience of studying in a different culture helped Susie clarify how she wanted
to frame her written work on women’s roles in international development. And
though they never stopped talking off the written page about cultural questions Susie
would raise, they began to turn their attention to actual papers she had begun to
generate.
By the final weeks of the semester, Susie was bringing in complete drafts of final
papers, work she felt proud of completing. Jessi believed she spent entire weekends
creating these drafts, but Jessi could see a shift in her confidence. Jessi was also aware
of a transference; the more Susie discussed her own Chinese culture in relation to
American culture in conferences, the more confident she became of doing the same in
her texts. Jessi, too, found she was more confident in conferences, more sure of what
Susie wanted to communicate. She felt as if she could talk to Susie about her writing,
but she also felt as if Susie could speak back to her comments. “Instead of just ingesting what I had to say, we could dialogue.”
In thinking about this story, I don’t want Jessi, or any of us, for that matter, to focus
on the obvious success narrative. Each of our writing centers has these successes—
semester-long, year-long, career-long relationships with international, non-native
English writers who find a comfortable working space in the writing center. Yes, Susie
is still a graduate student, and however painfully and painstakingly she completes her
work with Jessi’s assistance, she is completing it, and she is working toward her
degree.
14
Tick-Tock, Next: Finding Epochal Time in the Writing Center
Instead, what is important to me in my conversations with Jessi, and what I believe
should be important for all of us, is considering this story in the context of fungible and
epochal time. The shift that Jessi had to make is an important one. Had Jessi continued to worry about whether she’d ever have enough time to teach Susie all the English
she would need to know, she might have ignored Susie’s requests to talk off the written
page. Any of us can, and probably would, say that a writing tutor listening carefully
wouldn’t have ignored Susie’s questions. But even Jessi, an experienced writing tutor
with a counseling background, could see how easy, and how right, it might have been to
have made that choice. Here’s Jessi’s explanation:
I think when you’re thinking, here’s the hour, here’s what I know about hours
and this student’s need, and here’s what I can get done, there’s never room to
find out what the student’s goals really are, no matter how much you say you
may be listening to hear them. But when you make that switch you give up your
own responsibility, and you’re no longer clocking time in the same way. It’s
toward a different goal. That seems even more pertinent with multi-lingual students because I have a hunch that no matter how open-minded we say we are, it
has to do with what kind of responsibility we think we have for getting things
done in conference.
When we take that responsibility off of us, we probably take it of off the student,
too. My purpose felt huge, but when she claimed the work of the conference as
her own, I thought to myself, okay, she knows I’m not going to teach her English,
so I can release myself from that because that’s just not going to happen.
A writing center tutor worried about the clock is likely to take on too much responsibility for what happens in conference. A more balanced power dynamic was possible
only because Jessi gave up some responsibility. As Susie gained confidence in what she
could write, Jessi gained confidence in what she could, and couldn’t teach, in conferences. Jessi said it was as if she heard Susie tell her, “This is what I want. All that you
want to teach me is good, and I need to learn that, but this is what I want to know and
what I need to know right now.” When Jessi could hear that and make decisions based
on that, she was working in epochal time rather than fungible time.
In another, very different, long-term relationship, Sandy worked with Laura, a firstsemester freshman writing for a seminar on the AIDS pandemic. What Sandy remembers most about the first four or five weeks of conferences with Laura is that the
routine of their work together seemed clear almost from the start of their relationship.
They met once a week, every Monday, to go over a one-page response to the week’s
readings. The readings were filled with scientific terms related to AIDS, terms Sandy
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Volume 25, No.1 (2005)
15
lumps together as “dyoxyzocorplasmastuff” and “gooeyribonvecleaicgunk” (see Fig.
7). The professor seemed to want a regurgitation of the week’s highly philosophical
and scientific readings, but the regurgitation was to be as concise as possible. Laura
struggled to revise her prose so that it would be concise enough. So Laura and Sandy’s
early conferences settled into a pattern: rush to look over the previous week’s
returned response and work to figure out “what the heck” this professor wanted for
the response due the next day. Even with that routine, it seemed to Sandy as if they
never had enough time in conference to get all the way through revisions of Laura’s
one-page responses, especially when Laura was challenged by the course readings.
Bored by a full hour of “dyoxyzocorplasmastuff” and “gooeyribonuecleaicgunk” each
week, Sandy longed for the hour to be over even as she tried to help Laura understand
her readings and write a tight response.
Halfway through the semester, though, Laura’s responses were improving, becoming tighter and more concise, just as her professor had hoped they would. She was
receiving higher grades on them and gaining confidence. Laura’s growing confidence
in her own writing began to affect the time she and Sandy spent together in conferences. More and more often, Laura took ownership over how they would use the hour
and articulated aloud how she might use a strategy from an earlier response, or an earlier conference, and apply it to the response she was in the midst of writing and revising. Sandy hadn’t immediately recognized how much less Laura needed her help to
shape a concise one-page response, and she hadn’t immediately recognized that Laura
Figure 7. Sandy’s picture.
16
Tick-Tock, Next: Finding Epochal Time in the Writing Center
was now asking questions that had more to do with style and word choice and finding
ways to add her own voice to the one-page responses.
Weekly conferences, once carefully timed to help Laura prepare a single page of
writing to be handed in to her demanding professor, were no longer stressful races to
meet the impending due date. Instead, conferences became conversations about stylistic and analytical choices Laura was making. The battle was no longer over how it
could be possible to make the writing concise enough for the audience. Conversations
were instead about where to make the writing more concise and why. Sandy realized she
no longer needed to feel pressured to try to understand the scientific jargon so unfamiliar to her. Instead, she turned her attention to what she knew how to do—”helping
a young writer learn more about how to gain a confident and comfortable academic
voice”—and she allowed Laura, now deeply immersed in the content of the course and
familiar with the type of texts she was reading, to drive any discussion of content.
Sandy realized she might have missed this shift had she remained more focused on the
professor’s goals and Laura’s rush to finish each week’s response than on Laura’s
awareness of her own progress. As Sandy prepared less and less for what she would do
in conference and worked from cues Laura offered, she enjoyed their time together
more and more. Laura sometimes left before the hour was over, and it became Sandy
who wished she had more time with Laura, instead of Laura wishing for more time
from her tutor.
Laurel Johnson Black tells us “both students and teachers agree that while successful conferences may involve teaching, they always involve learning of some sort, and in
the best conferences, there is active, mutual learning” (162). Though most of the conferences Black considers are student-teacher conferences, it is worth noting that her
research reveals that students, too, realize how powerful the effect can be when teachers, or tutors, learn in conference and take that learning beyond the borders of conferences. For the second half of the semester, Sandy was able to value what Laura was
teaching her about teaching writing because both she and Laura became aware of how
their conference relationship was “mutually responsive, active, supportive, and symmetrical” (Black 161). These conferences were no longer just about what Sandy could
give in the designated time they had together or how Sandy could help Laura meet her
deadlines successfully.
It is that question of what is possible in the designated time of a conference that so
often constrains what can or can’t happen during an actual conference. Jonathan, who
held the third conference I think of from last semester, has noted that when he feels
most able to step out of the time confines of a conference, it is usually when he is working with a writer he has conferenced with before. Then, just as Sandy and Jessi
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17
described, he and a student share
some history—either in their relationship, or in their knowledge of
the text they’re looking at—and
they have a foundation, a past, to
work from. But there was a time
when Jonathan experienced a
noticeable shift in time—and
space—in a single conference with
a writer. That writer, Yuki, an
international student whose first
language is Japanese, is not an
English major, and as soon as she
sat down at the writing center
table, she told Jonathan she was
struggling to complete an assignment for an English literature
class. She needed to analyze an
Ezra Pound poem and write about
Figure 8. Jonathan’s picture.
her analysis. After thinking and
thinking, she hadn’t been able to
come up with an analysis, and she didn’t know how she would come up with one. She
didn’t know what to write.
Jonathan asked her to tell him about the poem. As she did, he realized the Ezra
Pound poem was actually an Ezra Pound translation of a Chinese poem written by Li
Bai. It was a poem he, too, had read, when he was an undergraduate at Oberlin College.
As they talked, he found out Yuki had also read the Li Bai version when she was a student in high school in Japan.
Jonathan drew a picture of this conference in staff meeting (see Fig. 8). When he
and I looked at it together, he remembered how strongly he felt himself respond to the
poem. He said, “This conference touched some almost nostalgic memories for me of
poetry, emotionally based memories that went back to Oberlin.” The poem also
brought out Jonathan’s sense of himself as someone who lives within at least two
cultures, for he is an American who has studied to become a fluent Chinese speaker
and writer.
Running through his geometric drawing is what he calls the “red arrow of time.” The
red arrow connects different boxes, which, as he says, represent “space or time, a
18
Tick-Tock, Next: Finding Epochal Time in the Writing Center
nexus of occurrences that are happening.” One box, which seems to reverberate forward into all others is labeled “language.” A circle, which sits behind a box labeled
“Japanese High School,” has a question mark because Jonathan said he didn’t know
anything about Yuki’s life, besides her presence in the writing center and her high
school experience of reading the poem. “Ezra Pound” labels a box in the center and
represents the text at the center of the conference. That box is framed by other boxes,
labeled, in the order that they surround one another, “Writing Center,” and “Clark
University” and “geography” (Jonathan’s discipline). Pointing at black boxes in the
picture’s foreground that seem to come toward us, Jonathan said, “These frames lower
down are frames in the future, which are not yet set, but we can see where they might
be because of the past and present.”
To me, it feels as if the conference went to many different spaces and times. Because
Jonathan was aware of how he and the student were taken backwards and forward,
something very different could happen in conference than might have happened had
Jonathan disconnected from his emotional reaction to the text, and said to himself, I
have an hour, how should I work at this poem with this student who must write an
analysis? Jonathan embraced the relationship they could share in the present because
of what they both knew about the text in the past. But he also did more than say, I’ve
read this poem before, and I have some ideas for you. He let the poem carry the student
writer and himself back in time. Each of them talked about their previous understandings of the Li Bai poem even as they worked at Yuki’s present day analysis of the Pound
translation.
As Jonathan and I sat together looking at his picture of the conference, the empty
boxes extending forward from the box representing the conference became more and
more prominent to me. What did it mean, I asked him, to be so aware of many future
directions in a conference that had grounded him so powerfully in his past? Why and
how was he aware that there were so many directions their work together in conference
could go, so many different directions that her essay could go, even though he had such
specific experience with the exact poem she was considering? Why didn’t this become
the model of an efficient conference, one in which he could quickly use what he knew
to help Yuki meet the requirement she was facing? Jonathan pointed to all of the intersecting lines in his picture and noted the ways his past and Yuki’s past informed the
blank boxes in the future of his picture. “The past has a flow, too,” he said. “The past is
a structure because it is, as we know, unchangeable. The past determines the limits and
boundaries of where something can go in the future. But our knowledge of the past, our
understanding of the past, is always changing, if we let it.”
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19
The next time the Clark tutors are frustrated at seeing the third or fourth or seventh
paper from the same class, I want to bring up what Jonathan told me about how our
experience of the past can change, if we let it. Sure, you’ve seen that assignment
already, I’ll say, and you’ve already seen one draft that answers the question well, so
you know exactly how you can use the time you have in conference. But what if you
tried to understand the assignment—and your experience with it—in a new way? What
if you make certain to understand the experience each new student sitting beside you
is having with the assignment? What if you allow your experience to change when you
sit down in each conference even as you rely on what you know? What then? Time in
conference may move entirely differently, even if you think you know exactly how you
could use the hour you have.9
In Noise from the Writing Center, Elizabeth Boquet wonders if we might try to “recast
our understanding of the nature of experience so that we might think of it, in terms of
training, not as something someone ‘gets’…but instead as something which is continually constructed and reconstructed” (80–81). She asks us to try to develop a model of
staff education that “encourages tutors to ‘voyage out,’” (80) to investigate new possibilities they might not have previously thought of just as we do as writers when we voyage out in Peter Elbow’s loop writing exercise.
However, to encourage tutors to construct and reconstruct experience as she hopes
we will, and to encourage tutors to “voyage out,” we may also need to learn to talk about
time and help tutors understand how to have the future available to them in the present of a conference. Boquet says she loves “the suggestion that two people make decisions about whether and how to invest themselves in what may appear to be sheer
chaos and that those decisions, those investments, create an opportunity for a future,
for a new relationship, for new ways of being together” (142). But she points out that
tutors often have difficulty identifying moments when these decisions happen. No
wonder, really, because we encourage our tutors to become better and better at conferencing through experience and repetition. As Donald Schon notes, it is only when
we know how to do something really well that we “can execute smooth sequences of
activity, recognition, decision and adjustment without having, as we say, ‘to think
about it’” (26). The third, or fourth, or seventh conference on the same paper assignment, for example, leaves us smoothly on auto-pilot for an hour.10
But, every now and then, we find ourselves faced with what Schon calls a “problem”
of practice. As he says, a “familiar” strategy may create “an unexpected result; an error
stubbornly resists correction; or, although the usual actions produce the usual outcomes, we find something odd about them because, for some reason, we have begun to
look at them in a new way” (Schon 26). A student writer says no, or interrupts us with
20
Tick-Tock, Next: Finding Epochal Time in the Writing Center
questions that surprise us because they don’t seem related to the written work, or
reveals that she has been learning the whole time even though we might not have realized it. That disruption makes us more present in conference and aware of all that is in
our presence. However brief or extended, these moments when student or tutor takes
the work of the conference out of fungible time and into epochal time are obvious to us.
Schon describes those moments as moments when we identify a “problem.” And
when we notice a “problem,” we name it for ourselves and “frame” it. “Through complementary acts of naming and framing” we select what we will pay attention to, and we
are likely to change the way we are working “guided by an appreciation of the situation
that gives it coherence and sets a direction for action” (Schon 4). If the tutors in the
three stories I told had not named and framed problems in their conferences, had not
stopped to appreciate the situation at hand, they would not have allowed themselves to
voyage out from their familiar routines. I’m interested in these conferences because
none of them became, or remained, rote. These were conferences with moments that
surprised tutors, conferences in which tutors realized they faced what Schon would call
“problems,” and in the face of those “problems,” tutors had made decisions that
expanded their work. That Tamer and Jessi and Sandy and Jonathan invested themselves in the present of their conferences, that they committed to “making something”
(Schon 31) of the conferences was what allowed them to do more, much more, than
they could have ever believed they had time for. Schon writes that this “making” of
something happens when a person “carries out his own evolving role in the collective
performance, ‘listens’ to the surprises…that result from earlier moves, and responds”
(31). He compares the process to “Edmund Carpenter’s description of the Eskimo
sculptor patiently carving a reindeer bone, examining the gradually emerging shape,
and finally exclaiming, ‘Ah, seal!’” (31). A writing center pedagogy that relies on clockwatching may not allow for such gradual and satisfying discoveries and may not allow
for us to be surprised by the ways conferences change and develop before our eyes.
***
When I think of the types of interactions we can have that make short bits of fungible time feel like endlessly satisfyingly learning experiences, I can not help but think
of Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth. Here’s how The Phantom Tollbooth begins.
Walking home from school one day, elementary school student Milo thinks to himself,
“It seems to me that almost everything is a waste of time” (9). He “can’t see the point
in learning to solve useless problems, or subtracting turnips from turnips, or knowing
where Ethiopia is or how to spell February” (9).
In his bedroom he finds a surprise package—a turnpike tollbooth, complete with
tokens, a map, a book of rules and regulations and (my favorite accessory) three
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21
precautionary signs, “to be used in a precautionary fashion”(12). Perhaps the guarantee in the box, one all of us in writing centers wish we could make, is what convinces
him: “Results are not guaranteed, but if not perfectly satisfied, your wasted time will
be refunded” (13). He closes his eyes, pokes his finger to the map and sets out in his
toy car on a journey to Dictionopolis.
It doesn’t take long, even with a map, for Milo to find himself lost in the Doldrums,
where his car slows and “it is unlawful, illegal and unethical to think, think of thinking, surmise, presume, reason, meditate or speculate” (24). The Doldrums, a resident
tells him, “is where nothing ever happens and nothing ever changes” (23). In the
Doldrums, Tock, the barking watchdog, races down the road toward Milo. The book’s
illustrations reveal Tock is a dog like any other, except for the fact that he just happens
to have a “loudly ticking alarm clock” embedded in his side, and he is “always sniffing
around to see that no one wastes time” (28–29). Tock is an interesting and paradoxical traveling partner. He is ever vigilant of fungible time because of the clock embedded in his side (his alarm even goes off every now and again), but his clock also
reminds him, and us, that we should seize time and value it.
I hate to ruin the ending of The Phantom Tollbooth for those who haven’t read it, but
it is important to know that when Milo returns home after a book’s worth of travels and
adventures with Tock (and the Humbug), he finds out he has been gone only an hour.
He’d “never realized how much he could do in so short a time” (254), even with—or
partly because of—the ever-vigilant Tock ticking away at his side.
The battery-powered clocks that hang in the Clark Writing Center tick-tock loudly,
ever present reminders of time passing, inside and outside of conferences. Student
papers will be due (and overdue). I will still mourn the two hours a day I lose to my
commute to and from campus. But I want the tutors I work with to see what is possible
even as the clock tick-tocks. I want them, whenever they can, for as many minutes or
as few minutes as they can take, to look away from the clock, the due date, the mathematical tabulations in their minds of how much there is to do in the hours they have. I
want them, instead, to find moments of exchange, or connection, or possibility, with
students and savor these. I want them to use exchange, connection and ever present
possibility to both structure and open up their conference hours.
If we accept that conferences have unyielding, pre-determined beginnings and
ends but can still allow tutors and students to make up their minds as conference
hours evolve, it may be that no time need ever really feel wasted. For if we embrace the
notion of epochal time, we can also embrace the notion that conferences are defined
by much more than the time that it takes to hold them.11
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Tick-Tock, Next: Finding Epochal Time in the Writing Center
NOTES
Time was never intended to be the focus of
any of these drawings. Though they were
drawn in more than one staff meeting, the
prompt continued to be “Draw a picture of a
conference you’re left thinking about from this
week.”
1
Thanks to the anonymous reviewer who
pointed out “the shared sense—on the part of
teachers worldwide and probably in perpetuum
—that there is never enough time to do what
needs to be done.”
2
Allen Bluedorn’s “fungible time” (27) is what
Alan Lightman calls “mechanical time” (23).
Epochal time is what Lightman calls “body time”
(23). Asking “which type is the true time?” (35),
Bluedorn can only quote Lightman: “Each time
is true, but the truths are not the same” (qtd. in
Bluedorn 35).
3
According to Robert Levine, who cites
research done by Harry Triandis, a social psychologist at the University of Illinois specializing
in individualism-collectivism, “individualistic cultures, compared to collectivist ones, put more
emphasis on achievement than on affiliation”
and this “time-is-money mindset…results in an
urgency to make every moment count” (18). In
“cultures where social relationships take precedence, however, there is a more relaxed attitude toward time” (Levine 18). It does not seem
as if it would be a stretch to wonder if a writing
center that stresses efficiency might be uncomfortable for student writers or tutors who identify as members of collectivist cultures.
4
Tamer had already tutored in the writing center for more than two years when he had this
conference and drew this picture. The more
experienced tutors become, the more they
seem to be able to consciously and explicitly
balance the epochal time of a conference with
the fungible time of a conference.
5
In Noise from the Writing Center, Elizabeth
Boquet tells us that “improvisation,” being willing to try something new on the spot in conference, “is largely about repetition, repetition,
repetition” (76). The ability to improvise is “a
consequence of expertise, of mastery and of
risk” (76). In other words, having well-founded
confidence, developed over the course of many,
many previous writing center conferences
(some successful and some unsuccessful), and
having strategies that have already been roadtested in those conferences, may be what
allows more experienced tutors to make new
6
The Writing Center Journal
choices, choices that may seem, or even be,
riskier choices.
Any of us who have tutored in a writing center could name off a number of regular, recurring conference scenarios. Thus, even when a
new student writer presents new challenges—
as every new student writer inevitably does—
experienced tutors have strategies at hand,
tricks saved in a “bag ‘o tricks.” An experienced
tutor also knows what it would feel like to be
surprised or uncomfortable or unsure, and thus
when it happens, she doesn’t feel as if she
uses as much time processing those feelings.
She can acknowledge the feeling and move
more fluidly and instinctively to a response.
7
This is just what graduate writing tutors
described to me when they talked about the
value of experience (Geller). They said once
they learned to bring repetition to their conferences they gained confidence. Every choice
they made in conference did not have to be an
entirely new choice.
Direct quotations in this section come from
interviews. Once I knew I wanted to think about
tutors’ experiences of time, I began looking
back through the pictures and thinking about
stories tutors had told about their work with
student writers. I asked three graduate tutors if
they would talk with me in one-on-one interviews (Kvale, Seidman). In those interviews,
which I audio-taped, I asked Jessi, Sandy and
Jonathan to tell me about their work with particular student writers, at first with no emphasis
on time. Then, in follow-up questions, I asked
each to think about the relationship between
the conferences and time.
8
Jessi never drew a picture of her work with
Susie, but Sandy and Jonathan had drawn pictures of their work with Laura and Yuki. In my
interviews with them, we also looked at and
talked about their pictures. Finally, I asked each
tutor to read the section of this text describing
her/his conferences (see Seidman 54 for a
description of this reviewing process).
Consultants’ names are their own; student writers’ names have been changed to pseudonyms.
Jack Petranker wonders if “a different
approach to being in time” might “make different knowledge” and “different experience available” to us (1). Being in local time, “the time of
action and the time of experience, each informing the other” (3), means we must pay careful
attention to our present, but we must also
imagine the future as “always arriving.” Here is
how Petranker describes it: “If we think of the
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Volume 25, No.1 (2005)
23
future as what has not yet happened, or as
what will happen later, we will miss the dynamic
that the future makes available…To recover the
future and access the present, we must start
with the presence of the future, with its ‘always
arriving’.…It arrives as I tell stories, act out
desires, form intentions, interact with others; it
arrives no matter what I do. The future flows.
Improvisation engages this flow” (6). As
Petranker sees it, “The structures of the past
must be integrated with the presence of the
future” (6). A tutor must use past experiences
to structure the present of conferences, but
must also have an imaginative hold on the
future in order to improvise. Petranker’s theory
suggests tutors must have a sense of how to
integrate past, present and future and must
have a desire to strive for this integration.
10 When our actions are “predicated on the
idea that what will arise in the future can be
determined and accounted for in advance,” (3)
we are working in what Jack Petranker terms
“global time.” So, if I respond “to the situation [I]
find myself in,” (4), as I might if I were to follow
a pre-dictated tutoring script that told me how
to act and respond in a certain kind of conference, I am in “global time.” When we “act and
respond to what’s happening” (4)—when a
tutor, for example, responds to all of the details
of the conference she is in, as Jessi did with
Susie, she is in “local time” (4). For Petranker,
local time “is the time of action and the time of
experience, each informing the other”; local
time “starts with what is present and invites
presence” (3), even as units of fungible time
tick away.
Thanks to Tamer Amin, Carolyn Finney, Alice
Hovorka, Jonathan Lassen, Sandy McEvoy, Lisa
Meirerotto and Jessica Willis for sharing their
pictures and experiences. For helpful feedback
on earlier drafts of this essay, many thanks to
Beth Boquet, Gino DiIorio, Michele Eodice, Lea
Graham, Pat Hoy, Lisa Käll, Neal Lerner, Jim
Mancall, Heather Roberts, and two WCJ
reviewers. Thanks, too, to Jon Olson and Lisa
Lebduska, my CCCC 2003 co-panelists.
11
WORKS CITED
Black, Laurel Johnson. Between Talk and
Teaching: Reconsidering the Writing
Conference. Logan: Utah State UP, 1998.
Bluedorn, Allen C. The Human Organization of
Time: Temporal Realities and Experience.
Stanford: Stanford UP, 2002.
Boquet, Elizabeth H. Noise from the Writing
Center. Logan: Utah State UP, 2002.
Conroy, Thomas Michael, Neal Lerner and
Pamela J. Siska. “Graduate Students as Writing
Tutors: Role Conflict and the Nature of
Professionalization.” Weaving Knowledge
Together: Writing Centers and Collaboration.
Ed. Carol Peterson Haviland, Maria
Notarangelo, Lene Whitley-Putz and Thia Wolf.
Emmitsburg, MD: NWCA Press, 1998.
128–151.
Geller, Anne Ellen. “‘A big tangled mess’: New
Graduate Student Tutors Reflect on Their
Experiences in the Writing Center.” Diss. New
York University, New York, 2001.
Grimm, Nancy. Good Intentions: Writing
Center Work for Postmodern Times.
Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook, 1999.
Juster, Norton. The Phantom Tollbooth. New
York: Bullseye Books/Alfred A. Knopf, 1961.
Kvale, Steinar. InterViews: An Introduction to
Qualitative Research Interviewing. Thousand
Oaks: Sage, 1996.
Kundera, Milan. Slowness. New York:
Perennial/Harper Collins, 1996.
Lightman, Alan. Einstein’s Dreams. New York:
Warner Books, 1994.
Levine, Robert. The Geography of Time: The
Temporal Misadventures of a Social
Psychologist, or How Every Culture Keeps
Time Just a Little Bit Differently. New York:
Basic Books/Harper Collins, 1997.
Petranker, Jack. “Local Time and Living Time:
Notes for Dynamic Time Conference.” Center
for Creative Inquiry, June 2002.
Schon, Donald A. Educating the Reflective
Practitioner. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass,
1987.
Seidman, Irving. Interviewing as Qualitative
Research: A Guide for Researchers in
Education and the Social Sciences. New
York: Teachers College Press, 1998.
24
Tick-Tock, Next: Finding Epochal Time in the Writing Center
The Polyvalent Mission of Writing Centers
by Phillip J. Gardner and William M. Ramsey
Rented Tuxes and Tattoos
Even as writing centers have proliferated across American campuses, writing center
discourse has been characterized by deep uncertainty. In a provocative, signature
moment, Terrance Riley in his 1994 article “The Unpromising Future of the Writing
Center” took a retrospective look at the writing center movement and made a gloomy
prediction of its future. What he feared most was that the revolutionary potential of
writing centers was ending, about to be replaced by a bland era of “business as usual”
(21). This would happen because writing centers would progress in finding an “institutional niche” (26). Riley noted that academic disciplines go through developmental
stages before achieving institutional recognition, and he recalled how the early teaching of American literature lacked an academic status equal with the study of British and
ancient classics. Unfortunately, in Riley’s view, once American literature gained
recognition as an academic field, it lost an initial, non-elitist, “revolutionary energy”
(21). Writing center work likewise, he feared, is well on its way to becoming just another field resembling others. Because the proper mission for the writing center, he
argued, is to be “an alternative to mass education” (20) and a “project of countering the
hierarchy” (21), successful assimilation of writing centers into institutions will end
their effectiveness. Privileging populist resistance over what he saw as elitism, Riley
stated that “our most exhilarating successes derive from our intermediate, outsidethe-mainstream status vis-à-vis the university” (28); consequently, mainstream success will spell the loss of a “liberatory and contrarian” mission (29).
About the Authors
Phillip Gardner directed the Francis Marion University writing center for fifteen years.
He is the recipient of the 2004 Southeastern Writing Center Achievement Award and the
author of Someone To Crawl Back To, a collection of short stories.
William M. Ramsey is a member of Francis Marion University’s English department.
His specialties are black American literature and American literature. He has taught
composition for thirty years.
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Volume 25, No.1 (2005)
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Situating himself near the end of the second of three phases in writing center development, “high idealism,” “frustration,” and “business as usual” (21), Riley admittedly was frustrated. And from that stance he employed contrarian assumptions
widespread during the last twenty-five years of the writing center movement, years in
which a deeply felt exclusion from mainstream status fostered a highly oppositional
outlook. For, regardless of the work actually done in writing centers, the prevailing
view of theorists has been that writing specialists do their best work when opposing
the practices of mainstream education, creating an anti-space where the oppressive
and mass template methods of the academy can be undone. Routinely those mainstream practices are described in journals as teacher-centered, hierarchical, culturally hegemonic, neocolonialist, or directed toward regulatory control of passive and
victimized students.
As a consequence, theory has focused more on difference than on articulating the
vital common ground—which we will argue is critical inquiry—where mainstream education and writing centers can be seen to stand together in a shared educative mission.
Indeed, the current gap between theory and working actualities is so immense that
writing center discourse inaccurately describes what we do, or why we do it, or the
benefits we bring to our students, colleagues, and institutions. Dismayingly, our theory has left us with no effective language for sitting down with deans, vice-presidents,
or boards of trustees and describing in a discourse they can understand our contributions to the mission of the university. What we need, in short, is a theoretical perspective that more productively centers us in the university even as we offer space for
difference.
Yet, currently, we are a highly conflicted group. While demanding higher institutional status, we confide in our journals the secret that we are all about resisting hegemony. Success, whispers Riley, is something to be feared. Having lived on the margin
for so long, we cannot relinquish the language and paradigm of an oppressed group.
Wanting membership in the Academic Country Club, we desperately seek appropriate
recognition from the very folk we say are so different from us. Frustrated, standing
outside in rented tuxes, we await the benefits and blue-blood status possessed by
those who belong to the party. But, ambivalently, we cling perhaps to our outsider,
rebel status while tucking rattail haircuts under starched collars or hiding sinuous tattoos under prudently high necklines. Even as we gain entrance to the dance, we feel
secretly subversive, defiantly contrarian, uncertain of who we are and how to belong.1
We argue that positioning ourselves in terms of marginality has neared the end of its
usefulness. That is because no group, we think, can sustain its long-term health by
defining itself chiefly in terms of mutually excluding polarities, or by what it is not.
26
The Polyvalent Mission of Writing Centers
Our root problem is that over the last twenty-five years our collective discourse has
melded into what postmodernists term a “grand narrative” or metanarrative. Its
assumptions, often implicit rather than explicit, are those of antagonistic struggle,
opposition, and contested values. We are not mass lecturers, we insist. We are not
teacher-centered, we proclaim. To which one might ask: Who in fact expects us to
operate on the mass-template model? Does not the one-to-one ratio of tutor to client
naturally lead to its specific pedagogical orientation? Behind pedagogy, what is the
general educative mission that we positively serve, and how do we define it according
to what it is, rather than what it is not? If we could answer that, the convergent interests of writing centers and universities could be better foregrounded.2
What the Power Company Sells
One alternative to the bleak future of “business as usual,” therefore, may depend on
reframing a key assumption of the writing center movement, one taken to involve its
“essence.” It is that the practices of the writing center are a kind of anti-curriculum. We
contend that what Riley and many others would call the movement’s most “exhilarating successes”—highly fertile learning methods such as collaborative, dialogic, and
student-centered practices—should be framed in terms of shared mission with mainstream education, rather than as a subversion of it. Yet, long ago the die was cast. As
Stephen M. North, by no means a radical contrarian, explained in 1984, the writing
center “defines its province not in terms of some curriculum, but in terms of the writers
it serves” (438; emphasis added). Shifting writing center rationale from the simplistic
remediation model to the dynamic complexities of the writing act, North argued
against “a generalized model of composing” and for a dynamic focus on persons themselves, or “the activity itself,” because “the subject is in the learner” (439).
With remarkable percipience, North predicted and called for new and creative
learning protocols such as have emerged in the last twenty years, and which have
helped rejuvenate writing instruction in the academy. But North and many others were
situated in such profound institutional marginality that they perceived writing center
activity (and composition) in contradistinction to mainstream disciplinary fields. That
writing center/curriculum gap is what our argument addresses, because the gap has
grown wider and wider as theorists with more oppositional and postcolonialist outlooks have come to dominate writing center discourse. Typically such theorists have
attacked oppressive and hierarchical hegemonies, worldviews which, they argue, writing centers must help clients negotiate. (Writing-center clients’ own subject positions
are often profoundly in tension with practices of the university.) These theoretical discourses of oppression and liberation developed, much like the black liberation
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struggle of late 1960s to early 1980s, a profoundly subversive, separatist tone,
premised as it was on critiquing the mainstream curriculum. In effect, as the vital links
and continuities between classroom teaching and writing center conferral were muted,
the tensions between the two were foregrounded.3 We argue, however, that tensions
and links are equally important, and that writing center work is profoundly polyvalent.
In the mid-1980s, the oppositional discourse then emerging can be seen in the
metaphorically graphic arguments of Harvey Kail and John Trimbur. Like Riley’s later
argument, these were signature moments in our discourse. In 1983 Kail proposed that
collaborative learning practices of peer tutors must counter or “disrupt” the “lineal”
authority of teachers. Lineality and top-down verticality were images of critique, as
Kail attacked the transmission model of classroom education, by which teachers with
virtually “sacred” (596) authority and power impose on totally passive students a body
of knowledge. Such teaching authority is excessively “lineal,” a term Kail defines as a
“relation among a series of causes or arguments such that the sequence does not come
back to the starting point” (595). A top-down, unidirectional teaching process stifles
productive learning by precluding student agency in the teacher-student relationship.
Further, Kail stated (drawing on critics such as Paolo Freire, John Holt, and Ken
Macrorie), the whole structure of institutional power from “grades, acquiring credit
hours, commencement…moves in the same direction, from us to them” (595). Kail’s
argument was a classic, early critique of top-down hierarchy.
In 1987, Kail and Trimbur offered readers of The Writing Center Journal a graphic
metaphor for perceiving the coercive authority of lineal teaching, which they saw as
similar to a power plant’s generation and transmission of electricity in a one-way
energy flow to consumers. They warned against writing center tutors’ extending in
surrogate fashion the transmission-model authority of teachers. In this view, teachers sit near the top of a hierarchical order figured as a power plant that generates all
power (knowledge) vertically downward, through various levels of electric lines and
substations, to students at the bottom. Those power lines can be subversively cut,
argued Kail and Trimbur, in writing centers, where students can be empowered
through collaborative and independent learning activities.4
With the totalizing tendency of a grand narrative, Kail and Trimbur’s metaphor suppresses other realities, such as this one: When a power customer flicks on a lamp
switch at home, the result can be light. This light can enable one to read, learn, and
thus perform one’s own acts of empowerment. In effect, reductive readings suppress
the polyvalent or mixed resonance of many situations, as it does here with both teachers and students. First, teachers may be engaged in creating their own liberatory
space, working in potential or actual tension with institutional and social pressures.
28
The Polyvalent Mission of Writing Centers
Indeed, in the Vietnam-era counter-cultural moment, faculties were popularly
regarded as subversive of mainstream cultural values. If that view was simplistically
stereotypical, at least it recognized a teacher’s polyvalent potential to work within
institutional authority while also questioning and changing it. Second, students too are
not totally helpless and passive victims of a coercive power flow. The power plant
metaphor sells them seriously short. We strongly doubt that the very active enterprise
of earning grades, credit hours, and diplomas—while growing intellectually and
maturing socially—makes students akin to a grocery sack passively being stuffed. Yes,
institutions carry coercive cultural weight, but students are not mere sacks. Writing in
the 1980s, when the revolutionary fervor of civil rights and war protest still had a
potent legacy, Kail and Trimbur offered a discourse of oppression and political liberation from a binaristic stance that suppresses more richly nuanced, assimilationist
scenarios.
The effect of such discourse has been long-lasting, for much of the significant theorizing from the 1980s to the present is colored pervasively by the binary antitheses of
an oppressed group’s outlook. A totalizing, grand narrative of resistance, with its
attendant fear of cooption, implacably severs writing centers from the general mission
of the academy. If writing center professionals take as “natural” only a set of oppositional assumptions, they will not ask questions that can point the way out of their binaristic trap, i.e., the impasse between hegemony and counter-hegemony. Their grand
narrative of resistance permits them to engage only in a kind of anti-curriculum.
The signature moments provided by Kail, Trimbur, and Riley thus reflect a general
discourse that is pervasively contrarian, especially in its well known tropes such as
basements, sub-basements, and cross-cultural contact zones. Among the best known
examples, Nancy Welch in 1993 saw writing centers as places of “critical exile” where
one “not only questions received knowledge and social norms but transforms them”
(“From Silence” 4). In writing centers, she argued, one is a “dissident” (11) and resists
“the codes that create and control conversations” (7) in order to “write and act in the
world rather than be written and acted upon” (4). Her 1995 characterization of the
writing center as a “crossroads” (“Migrant” 5) was another of the era’s many
metaphors of embattlement at the margin. In the same year Mary Soliday described
tutors as both “outsiders as well as insiders” whose role was to cultivate “the art of
boundary crossing” (59). More recently, Bonnie S. Sunstein suggested that writing
centers be places of geopolitical “liminality” to offer students the temporary “inbetweenness” (7) of “a demilitarized zone” or a “borderland” (20). Exile, boundaries,
borders and other liminal zones are tropes that foreground tension and antithesis, not
shared institutional mission.
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By the mid 1990s, a term used widely by theorists was the word “dominant,” usually preceding nouns such as “culture,” “order,” or “group” and indicating a rigidifying
of political outlook. In 1994 Marilyn M. Cooper had argued that writing centers are a
“site of critique of the institutionalized structure of writing instruction” and must
“empower students” (98), vis-à-vis the “constraints on writing imposed by the dominant order” (102). Drawing on Foucault’s dominance-submission paradigm, Nancy
Grimm criticized writing centers’ “regulatory role” of constraining students to write
in culturally accepted forms so as “to reproduce the social order” (5) and “reinforce
the status quo” (11). Because we cannot “pretend that this regulatory power is liberating or culture-neutral” (8), she urged writing specialists to become social “change
agents” that mediate culture (17). In sum, our grand narrative relentlessly privileges
one preferred side of bivalent political values, perceiving mainstream education primarily as the power of cultural inscription and writing centers as the reaction of a negotiated resistance. Thus, Suzanne Diamond feels that writing centers, whose missions
are “imposed by external…forces” (6), must confront the “power of an existing hierarchy…to sustain its foundational inequities” (1). Anis Bawarshi and Stephanie
Pelkowski, summing up in 1999 the Foucaultian and postcolonial currents now dominating the discourse, have advocated Edward Said’s notion of “critical consciousness.” They argue that we must resist the idea that writing is “ideologically innocent or
even empowering” because the hegemony’s aim is “to transform the student and his
or her texts into the acceptable standard of the university” (46), in other words to
enact a colonialist aim.
What is the gist of all this? Higher education is mean, nasty, and brutish cultural
reproduction. The dominant order’s teaching of its values, though “natural,” is starkly oppressive. Writing within and for that order is not empowering because when students write they are, quite passively, being written upon. And if such is the case,
according to the scholarship, then writing centers must not belong.5
A Deconstruction
Several signs indicate that the profession is ready for a deconstruction of the binaristic thinking—either regulation or emancipation—that we have fallen into. There is a
general sense that we have been victims of our tropes, that in proposing to administrators that we belong, we must move beyond our hands-on-hips posture of insisting
on outsider status yet wanting insider money and position. Most astutely Eric H.
Hobson contends that we have fallen into a “dualist trap,” trying to see all in terms of
right or wrong while failing to find one theory that adequately describes our “hodgepodge practices” (107).6 Elizabeth H. Boquet cogently has explained that writing
30
The Polyvalent Mission of Writing Centers
centers currently are caught between hegemonic and counter-hegemonic missions.
Our profession’s tropes of embattlement are also slipping. Andrea Lunsford’s image of
the writing center as a “parlor” instead of a “storehouse” or “garret” is (though perhaps classed) one of the few spatial tropes characterized by sociality not liminality and
embattlement. Lise Ede has critiqued the “binary” tendency to view writing centers as
marginal and oppositional. In an important insight that anticipates ours, she faults all
binary schemas for failing to situate centers in specific local contexts, suggesting that
writing centers are situated in “inevitably mixed” sets of “tensions, and possibly even
contradictions” (120).
The problem has been that in the subsuming of diverse educational practices under
a signifying system of rigid binaries, only one pole has been privileged, yielding a false
impression of unitary essence. If education is either hegemonic and conformist or
about student agency and autonomy, our grand narrative has privileged only the latter.
One set of binary assumptions has been repudiated so that an “opposing” set could be
valorized. This is the trap of essentialist thinking that our discourse has fallen into,
arising from the impulse to define oneself by what one is not. In the schema below, we
indicate the opposed valences on which the narrative is constructed, noting that theorists have subordinated valences in the left column to privilege their “preferred”
counter-hegemonic values.
Hegemony
regulatory
site of cultural inscription
conformist authority
hierarchic
coercion
control
acculturation
molding
teacher centered
teaching
text correction
depositing a body of knowledge
passive students
lecture
mass education
Counter-hegemony
liberatory
method of negotiating subject positions
autonomous agency
contrarian
empowerment
freedom
struggle
discovery
student centered
collaboration
consultation
active-learning practices
interacting students
dialogic practice
learning
We characterize the left column’s valences as values of sociality and the right column’s as values of autonomy, and we propose that both polarities are present in learning situations that we find more mixed than unitary. Educational practice is, we insist,
unavoidably polyvalent, rather than arising from one column’s presumed
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foundational essence. In sum, practices that acculturate (the regulatory) also can
potentially liberate (the emancipatory).7
In our view, theorists’ imperviousness to seeing any value in the schema’s left column has been flabbergasting. Let us compare the polyvalent character of education to
speed limit signs. Such signs are explicitly regulatory, controlling, molding, and coercive,
instruments by which the state inscribes its hegemonic will onto private desire. But
who would argue that speed limits in their “essence” are bad and to be resisted for the
sake of autonomy? Our desire is actually mixed. While our private desire surely is to
drive faster than the posted limit, we also value social cohesion, civic order, consideration—and freedom from road accidents. Autonomy has limits, society sometimes
wisely limits, and by virtue of guiding limits we may construct freedoms. Perhaps
freedom is another name for good regulation.
The coercion/submission paradigm, therefore, misreads the complex educational
situation because neither student nor teacher is a univalent entity. To use a trope that
avoids the univalence of a garret, basement, or exile zone, we see the writing center as
magnet. Each pole requires the other, and a writing center is constructed of its very
polarities. Situated in the regulatory context of university requirements, it performs
mind work that limits and frees simultaneously, client by client and assignment by
assignment. In our view, students may desire (with ambivalence, of course) exactly the
cultural inscription that theorists feel uncomfortable with. If a college degree brings
increased economic and social advancement, students will regard it not just as a stifling of personal desire but also as a means to empowerment, agency, freedom, and
choice—a way to escape the underclass.
Our argument is not, then, the naïve one that education should be taken as “ideologically innocent” or “culture-neutral,” but that it is rarely univalent. We think that
writing center professionals, even while embracing values in the schema’s right column, might feel more positively enmeshed in the left column’s values. If we may paint
with a broad brush, the personalities drawn to writing center work are conspicuously
social and nurturing, conscientiously concerned with the successful social integration
of their clients. In such professionals, the values of sociality are powerfully salient. A
grand narrative that terms their magnificent sociality as oppressive and regulatory
perhaps divides them against themselves.8 So we call for a critical discourse that
affirms more of what we accomplish within the official aims of the academy. We suspect that resistant readers may view our argument as theft of the writing center’s
essential mission, and that we are advocating a massive cooption by the hegemonic
establishment. We suggest, however, that situating ourselves only in a marginal zone
of resistant exile is depriving ourselves of enjoying a great social enterprise.
32
The Polyvalent Mission of Writing Centers
Critical Inquiry in the Mosaic of the Curriculum
By its very presuppositions, whatever narrative that we write about our professional
selves limits us to which questions we ask about our mission. The narrative of resistance now pervading our discourse has done just that, leaving us trapped in an impasse
of warring binaries. Elizabeth H. Boquet sensed this when, in reviewing the history of
writing center thought, she concluded, “We are left to wonder, then, what we are failing to imagine now for our writing centers.…What is left out of our discussions on teaching writing by our failure to account for the work of the writing center in a critically
intellectual manner” (479; emphasis added).
The argument that we present is a response to that question. Indeed, our view amplifies one of her most cogent observations, that the work performed in a writing center
is compatible with “the nature of scholarly inquiry” (478) and that the writing center
is “a place where students and tutors alike…profit intellectually” (479). We too believe
that something “is being left out of our discussions” and that it very much involves the
intellectual work of the academy.
We suggest here a curricular trope that encompasses more than resistance and
alienation. The curriculum, we propose, is a mosaic. Biology, physics, literature, psychology, economics, mathematics, and the rest are individually colored tiles that
somehow, by the cohering magic of an observing eye, yield a greater picture. The writing center, however, especially in times of budget crunch, can seem the smallest, most
indistinctly colored of the tiles, a chip that may fall from the mosaic with least harm to
the picture’s grand effect. The problem, almost too well known to state, is the writing
center’s apparent lack of disciplinary content. Writing centers present to clients not a
subject content but a set of practices, not a body of knowledge but the methodologies
born of the field’s knowledge. By contrast, mainstream disciplines define themselves
by the purity of their tile’s color, or exclusive field content. For as long as that remains
the perception, writing centers will suffer the fate of being treated as ancillary and
expendable support services.
The challenge facing theorists, then, is to explain writing center mission in terms of
the plaster in which the tiles of all disciplines are set. We believe that the cohesive
material is critical inquiry. No field exists without it, and all fields exist because of it.
Further, in that critical thinking practices are similar across the curriculum, critical
inquiry directs attention to shared affinities rather than exclusive tendencies of the
disciplines. This frame of reference is more beneficial to perceiving the vital force of
writing centers. In our view, the work of writing centers is not an anti-curriculum but
is the same work of the disciplines and an extension of them.
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For instance, when a student enters the writing center for help on her term paper
about the French Revolution, is the work we perform either regulatory or liberatory?
Let us say the course is taught in mass lecture form. The professor in this instance has
had no choice but to be a “sage-on-the-stage” lecturer to two hundred students,
reluctantly and no doubt guiltily dispensing knowledge in top-down, hierarchical,
teacher-centered fashion then testing mechanistically by multiple choice.9 The
administration, for its part, with a state-funded budget marked by stinginess, has had
no choice but to staff the history department at half the level needed for small-class
format, with graduate teaching assistants paid meagerly to grade any papers or
research essays. All players—teacher, administrators, teaching assistants, and students—know that this mass template education is less than what they hope for. Is the
writing center now complicit with the values indicated in the left column of our
schema—imposing conformist control on passive students? Indeed, is the student
herself complicit, seeking only a quick fix for getting a B on a paper she does not care
about in a system that overwhelms her? Our answer to that question is, Yes, the writing
center is in a regulatory situation.
On the other hand, does the critical thinking prompted by the writing center tutor
oppose the situation’s coercive force? Is the student inspired to engage in productive
study of the French Revolution? We answer, Yes, the writing center is in a liberatory situation. Since both valences are present, we argue that neither column in our schema
adequately explains the mixed potential of this learning transaction. We are observing
both waves and particles. That is why contrarian discourse alone fails to explain the
mission of writing centers. In the hands of an effective tutor, the student in our example is doing history when developing her paper; thus, the tutor is an extension of the
professor, helping the student perform exactly the kind of thinking that a history
course hopes to elicit. Yet, the tutor has no professional credentials for teaching history. “Doing history” in this case is effecting a critical inquiry whose operations
belong not to history but to all disciplines, and preceding them all, as plaster that
holds tiles in a mosaic. The tutor, radically unbound to any specific discipline, works
to uncertain and indeterminate end. Who, in fact, can predict that students coming
out of this center will later develop either revolutionary or Napoleonic impulses? Both
might happen.
That is because critical inquiry is an equal-opportunity employer. It can be
accountable to the standards and authority of an institution, but the very ideas it hones
can liberate from hegemony. Reactionary ideologues as well as iconoclasts can employ
it even while debating the same issue. Serving both the status quo and change, the
operations of critical thinking are politically neutral even though, ironically, always
34
The Polyvalent Mission of Writing Centers
attaching themselves to contexts with political valence. In sum, critical inquiry is the
soul of the curriculum, always relativizing fixed positions to enable the emergence of
new ones. When a student who is mentally blocked on a paper enters the writing center and asks questions that set the agenda of her own inquiry, the tutor now is committed to liberating her from a previous point of view. Rooted in the values of open
inquiry, the writing center worker stands on the same common ground as the whole faculty. Importantly, it is simplistic to say the tutor in the above example is serving by regulatory proxy the history department. Rather, the tutor is serving the intellectual
discipline of history, which ideally that department itself must serve even while
embedded in a structure of hierarchical authority. The primary allegiance of the
writing center, therefore, is to the curriculum, or rather the habits of thinking that the
curriculum invites.
In this context, writing centers are not peripheral but integral to highly important
work of the academy. They are not contrarian refuges from the alleged horrors of the
classroom. They are not nonacademic support services. They are hardly intellectually
marginal. As polyvalent sites of thought, their work can contain both the regulatory
expectations of the institution as well as liberatory resistance. More important, they
aid in the growth of the mind. As we have argued, the process of critical inquiry is
owned by neither teacher nor student, each being required to serve the event of learning. For learning to occur, each must serve the demands of critical inquiry, which
include openness, tolerance for alternative perspectives, collaborative receptiveness,
and a disposition toward discovery rather than defense of a fixed position. In even the
most routine writing center consultation, perhaps discussing a draft for some sentence-level issues, such qualities must be at least minimally present. In fact, unless
there is that cognitive disposition, no critical examination of a communication act can
begin. When tutees are asked, What do you want to say? and To whom are you saying
this? and What effect are you seeking here? and How might someone else interpret
this? they are led into the clarity of thinking that must precede good writing—and good
writing is good learning. In nurturing the maturation of students’ cognitive dispositions, we argue, writing centers serve central ideals of the mainstream curriculum.
Many students first entering writing centers, however, are in their late teens, an age
when cognitive development is insufficient to experience comfort and skill with the
process. For these persons, looking at work self-critically, reassessing one’s beliefs,
and performing related cognitive operations are major challenges. The work of Patricia
King and Karen Kitchener sheds some light on this issue. According to their sevenstage developmental model of reflective judgment, high-school seniors at age 17 simply lack the epistemic maturity to perform advanced cognitive operations. Although
The Writing Center Journal
Volume 25, No.1 (2005)
35
they have progressed well beyond Stage 1, a level of pre-reflective thinking at which
“knowledge is assumed to exist absolutely,” they are far from Stage 7, at which “Beliefs
are justified probabilistically on the basis of a variety of interpretive considerations”
(14–16). In King and Kitchener’s 1977 study, the mean score of high school juniors was
at Stage 2.77, and college juniors measured only at Stage 3.76 (importantly, later testing yielded scores about a point higher) (133). Doctoral students alone scored in the
Stage 6 range (133), at which “beliefs are justified by comparing evidence and opinion
from different perspectives,” and “solutions…are evaluated by criteria such as the
weight of the evidence” (15).
The ramifications of these findings for writing centers are enormous because so
many unique and humane methodologies of writing center workers have grown from
these epistemic realities. We are not advocating that writing center professionals
become educational psychologists, but we believe that writing centers must be promoted for their vital work with the mind. At the cognitive development level, what
tutors confront in the writing center is exactly what professors face in classrooms.
Teachers complain that college students initially struggle to see the difference between
reasoning and opinion, or argument and exposition, or evidence and trivial matter.
They may cling to established beliefs rather than revise views in the face of contradictory information. They may respond to value conflicts with emotionally loaded language and an absolutist sense of knowledge. Claims may be supported by beliefs rather
than inferences from evidence. These very issues also look into the eyes of writing center workers each day, from those needing help on a journey of critical inquiry.
Professional Validations of the Work We Do
In the current climate, key validations of our professional work are hard to find. As
we write this article, a national recession has led to budget cuts in writing centers
across the country, often with swift surprise. In one instance a writing center worker
came back from an overseas sabbatical to find the center closed. In another, a memo
from a provost informed one director of a meeting at 10:30 the following morning “to
discuss the future of the writing center.” Elsewhere, positions in a writing center were
converted from faculty to student services status with altered reporting and budgetary
lines, and with the loss of tenure possibilities and associated benefits. On another
campus the center closed because, in the director’s view, her personality failed to
induce her provost to save the operation. Her view contains an astonishing assumption, that a vital service’s continuance can depend, precariously, on one person’s being
liked.10
36
The Polyvalent Mission of Writing Centers
Theory has let that director down as much as personality or administrative fiat because
a language is not readily available for explaining the mission of writing centers in
broadly understandable terms. No compelling discourse has emerged (or can emerge,
if we define ourselves by what we are not) to ground writing center work on central
curricular values that academics already believe in. We have argued that the cognitive
impact of writing centers on students, at key stages in their development, is wholly
congruent with the aims of the mainstream academy. Though writing centers do not
focus primarily on field content, they focus intensively on how students dispose
themselves to think in field, and therefore are highly effective tools for academic
maturation.
How, then, in an administrative office, might a writing center director appeal to a
provost whose budget axe is raised? Perhaps the director could state that in the writing
center students learn through active discussion and problem-solving sessions. That
students are helped with higher order thinking skills such as analysis, synthesis, and
evaluation. That the instructional tone is always positive, collaborative, and nonjudgmental, because judgmental authority undermines self-confidence and willingness to
take risk, conditions essential to critical thinking. That students perform recursive
and reflective thinking; process alternative points of view; practice belief revision;
develop an increased affective disposition toward open inquiry; defer less to expert
authorities when, self-reliantly, their academic confidence grows. That students come
to the writing center from courses all across the curriculum, and that in the writing
center a university’s curricular effectiveness is therefore magnified many times over.
That when writing center specialists assist the faculty in test and research paper
designs, they are developing instruments for producing and measuring intellectual
work. In a word, to cut the writing center from the budget is to impair student thought
across the whole curriculum. We conclude that the most important curricular decisions should be driven by program value, not the fickle consequences of personality.11
Prevailing writing center discourse fails because it is more expressive than descriptive. In the period of frustration that Riley describes, writing center professionals profoundly needed a language to express their alienation. However, that language,
stressing primarily separation and resistance, fails to describe the value and place of a
writing center in an academic setting. What deans and boards require from writing
center administrators is not an understanding of how they feel but a description of
what they do and why they do it. Writing centers, then, must shift toward a descriptive
language, one that we believe must focus on acts of critical inquiry. When we do, we
will find the common ground necessary to be understood in terms of institutional
contributions.
The Writing Center Journal
Volume 25, No.1 (2005)
37
If the description given in the budgetary scenario above may be termed an argument
of “curricular intensification,” another side of writing center work is the full array of
activities outside course-related tasks. We hesitate to call these “extracurricular” or
“support services,” because collectively they are a fairly robust mix of learning acts. Nor
would we call them a “counter-curriculum.” Perhaps this kind of contribution should
be called, simply, “holistic.” In our own campus writing center, which is representative of many others, such activities include freshman seminar support; resume writing; consulting with students with learning disabilities; creative writing consultations
(students not in creative writing courses who seek an ear for their poems or short stories); applications to graduate and professional schools; test preparation for the MCAT
and similar exams; answering queries from community businesses (the legal secretary
needing to know where to place a semicolon on an important document); and consulting in area schools.
Beyond these activities, who can measure the unusually humane and sensitive contributions of writing center folk to the retention of students facing challenge, selfdoubt, and duress? In our anecdotal experience that holistic impact seems great. In
terms of retention, at least, university culture can understand the writing center’s
unique validation of the individual.12
It is as much an institution’s collective values as its fiscal realities that determine
whether writing centers close or retrench while swimming pools, for instance, stay
open. If the faculty at large strongly support the values of writing and critical thinking,
the outlook for writing centers will be positive, and for that reason we are very hopeful
about the future. The contrarian outlook that we have criticized was shaped in different times, in an era of frustration, when mass education looked far more static and
entrenched than now. But in two underlying ways education has changed rapidly, and
what we once resisted now has changed its face. First, the transmission model of education has given way to many of the very learning methods that writing centers first
privileged. Like writing centers, academic disciplines increasingly have adopted discovery-based methods over deposition of facts by lecture. That old, professorial sage
on the stage, always a bit of the straw man, is increasingly a rare bird. To the extent that
writing centers have won that battle of methodologies, toward what are we to remain
contrarian—if we remain contrarian at all?
Second, even the disciplinary term scholarship is being powerfully redefined, and in
a way that offers full recognition of what writing center people do. The Carnegie
Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, in its 1997 report, criticizes the narrowly specialized definition of scholarship privileged at research institutions, by which
professors pursue abstruse scholarly topics while remaining disengaged from institu38
The Polyvalent Mission of Writing Centers
tional and other communities, and divorced from the practicable consequences of
knowledge. The report proposes an expanded definition of scholarship in four ways:
• Scholarship of Discovery: traditional investigative activities such as specialized
research in discipline to extend theory and knowledge.
• Scholarship of Integration: synthesizing and integrative activities that draw connections between areas of knowledge, including inter-disciplinary work and
the directing of in-field knowledge toward nonspecialist results.
• Scholarship of Application: work applied to consequential problems (campus,
community, government projects, etc.), and considered “scholarship” if professional knowledge is employed.
• Scholarship of Teaching: one’s record of teaching; knowledge activities applied to
teaching; course development; etc. (Glassick)
As much as any of the academic constituencies, the writing center community
embodies such principles:
• Discovery: It has developed a scholarly knowledge base that (despite our critique
here of one element of it) is distinguished in the connection of theory to praxis.
• Integration: It has connected, client by client and paper by paper, in-field
knowledge across the disciplines to the practical needs of students.
• Application: It has applied most adeptly a knowledge of critical thinking skills to
the problem of campus literacy.
• Teaching: It has contributed to education a full array of learning methodologies.
By the Carnegie definitions, stating that scholarship is far more than writing specialized books in discrete fields, writing center professionals are fully and equally
scholars of the academy, and their work should not be dismissed as adjunctive service.
We argue, then, that the mission of writing center professionals is in diverse ways to
perform scholarship, and in that manner to contribute to the life of the mind. The manifold methodologies of writing centers are directed intensively, in one-to-one sessions,
to precisely that aim. Looking forward to an era that Terrance Riley feared would be
“business as usual,” we believe that in both research and discourse there are opportunities to articulate better what we do for the academy by virtue of being very much in it.
Socrates in the Academy
Looking back to Stephen North’s 1984 essay, we are struck by his final paragraph,
offered as a kind of afterthought. Noting that writing centers exist to talk to writers, he
recalls the great talker and “tutor” Socrates, who set up shop “open to all composers,
no fees charged, offering, on whatever subject a visitor might propose, a continuous
The Writing Center Journal
Volume 25, No.1 (2005)
39
dialectic that is, finally, its own end”
NOTES
(446). In this graceful coda to a far-
1
of courageous tutors. As a critic of
Perhaps no single issue has generated more
pages of writing center text than that of status.
Whereas we might claim that our professional
values rest upon higher moral ground, our
sense of professional status seems remarkably
similar to other academics. “Professional status
as equated with institutional security and leverage,” writes Neal Lerner, “can come in many
forms in many different contexts.…The key for
institutional status is to be as close to the
money as possible” (44). Though writing center
theory pulls in the direction of contrarian resistance and reform, fiscal and security issues pull
toward institutional belonging. Writing center
theory needs to address the realities of leverage and security in terms of institutional
mission.
Athens, Socrates had an agenda of ques-
2
sighted argument, North actually pointed
the way to the kind of scholarship the
academy seems at this time poised to
appreciate, in which active dialectic
serves as plaster to the disciplinary tiles.
We are keenly aware that for his contrarian and liberatory impulses Socrates
was killed by a hegemonic state, illustrating the difficult and uncertain situation
tioning popular values. But as with all
college faculty, his situation was polyvalent. If you stand today atop the Acropolis
and gaze downward toward the old agora,
you see most vividly that he positioned
himself wholly in the center of the polis.
Situating himself in the heart of Athens,
he tutored future civic leaders. A distinguished citizen, he was proud of his military service. He argued memorably at trial
that as his “punishment” the state should
pay him money for outstanding public
service.
Given the example of Socrates, we do
not sweep under the rug the hard realities
that writing center work includes frustration, tension, misunderstanding, and
conflict, and that in the fickle fluctuations of power writing centers will know
both marginality and belonging. For us,
the lesson of Socrates was his dedicated
focus on clear thinking. This really is the
work of writing centers, as it is of the
academy at large.13
40
The Polyvalent Mission of Writing Centers
We doubt that race car drivers would define
their work as such: “We are not canoe paddlers.” Or that U.S. citizens would define their
national identity as such: “We are not Tahitians.”
What would be the point? Canoe paddling, like
race car driving, has a specific reason for existing as a means of transportation, and the collective identities of Americans and Tahitians
have positive, specific reasons for existing.
Definitions based on mutually excluding negations, such as the argument that writing centers
are “an alternative to mass education,” overlook
those important reasons.
A great irony in the history of writing centers
is that, as theory increasingly stressed separation from the academy, writing centers were
altering mainstream pedagogy with a robust
array of new, student-centered practices. While
prevailing theorists have stressed the importance of resistance to the academy—English
departments in particular—readers who have
served on composition text committees know
that core elements of writing center practice—
collaborating, talking, listening, and responding—have become almost commonplace in
composition classrooms.
3
4 Kail and Trimbur thus advocated peer tutoring
as “an implicit critique” of hierarchy, successful
when in contrarian fashion it “precipitates a crisis of authority” through “an exercise in
unlearning” (207–208). Such highly charged,
oppositional terms work against articulating the
important common ground that writing centers
have with the mainstream curriculum.
We do not question the usefulness of current
theory in the evolution of writing center history.
We see that theory as a set of voices that
5
reflects a period of frustration. Collective feelings of frustration seek an expressive discourse
that can articulate and give meaning to those
feelings. But an expressive discourse will not
give us a framework to communicate with others in the academy. For that a descriptive discourse is needed.
Outlining three theoretical epistemologies that
have competed to explain what constitutes writing center educative goals—the objectivist, the
expressionistic, and the social constructionist—
Hobson concludes that “to find the one system
of thought in which the writing center fits” is “a
hopeless effort” (108). Our contention is that
we must expand our theorizing to include the
established discourse of critical inquiry, so as to
recognize and embrace the mixed, competing
valences in our mission.
6
One commonly hears in writing centers and
conference meeting places comments such as,
“I wouldn’t want to impose myself hierarchically
onto the client.” In this enormous reticence to
impose on the student’s subject position, the
“values of autonomy” are palpably present and
perhaps in conflict with personal instincts.
7
At a recent writing center conference, we
observed how reticently, almost apologetically,
various speakers proposed ideas such as directive learning protocols, which (heretically) center the tutor somewhat in learning transactions.
Again, theory’s grand narrative seemed visibly
to resist such leanings. Yet most of the conference’s sessions focused on activities reflecting
institutional “values of sociality” rather than
counter-hegemonic resistance. Theory may be
inhibiting new practice.
8
Our sense, over years of conversation with
fellow colleagues, is that most professors
involved in mass lecturing, even if they think
they are good at it, consider the pedagogy less
desirable than small class approaches. Whether
or not this is so, we argue that writing centers
must base their mission on the critical inquiry
occurring in the tutor-tutee relationship (on
what the writing center is) rather than in opposition to academic practices it naturally does
not follow (on what it is not).
9
10 On a writing center listserv, a director recently posted a frantic query in reaction to the
incipient termination of her operation: “What I
need are studies, articles, etc., on the benefits
of writing centers.…What do you suggest?”
(Graham). Several directors’ responses were
that data don’t count even when demanded.
One said: “no one was interested in looking at
The Writing Center Journal
our figures. Or rather, the only figures they saw
were the costs of salaries” (Boswell). Another
response was: “schmoozing has gotten us far
more than data” (Johnson). The general situation, as we have argued, is that theory has
failed us. That is why so much depends
currently on the unreliable vagaries of
“schmoozing.”
11 There are concrete signs that a linking of
critical thinking theory to writing centers is
underway. In a listserv discussion, Lisa Johnson
has noted that her Washington State University
writing center’s staff has worked with faculty
“to involve them in a common conversation
about writing and critical thinking” in a “sincere
attempt to bring together a community of
teachers so we can discuss our values about
education—and good writing and critical problem-solving are things we have gotten almost
all faculty to agree that they value.” She concludes: “I say data schmata, establishing good
relationships with departments and faculty has
proven far more effective.” We would add, however, that a paradigm shift is emerging there.
12 Examples of the writing center’s contributions to curricular and “extra-curricular” needs
are abundant. Lester Faigley, in “Writing
Centers in Times of Whitewater,” places the
work of writing centers at the cusp of innovative education. “The traditional structure of the
university, like that of the traditional factory,” he
says, “has become increasingly anachronistic”
(13). Faigley cites Patricia Lambert Stock’s
“Reforming Education in the Land-Grant
University: Contributions from a Writing Center,”
where she shows how writing centers contribute to learning communities, incorporate
student-centered pedagogies, and contribute to
an atmosphere for learning, three ideals in the
1997 Kellogg Commission Report. Faigley’s
explanation for the marginality of writing centers is, however, typical of current theory:
Writing Centers “threaten the status quo” (15).
Our contention is that we have not articulated a
theoretical framework, a descriptive discourse,
that demonstrates the link between the work
we do and the aims of existing and emerging
educational practices such as group learning
and problem-based learning.
13 The idea for this article grew out of a Francis
Marion University English department workshop
on critical thinking, in which the ideas of Mary
McNulty, Betty Ramey, and William Ramsey
were helpful in perceiving parallels with writing
center work. For invaluable manuscript editing
we thank Kenneth Autrey, coordinator of
Volume 25, No.1 (2005)
41
Francis Marion’s composition program, and
Terrance Riley. For her critical reading of the
manuscript, as well as research leads, we thank
Jennifer Liethen Kunka, director of our writing
center.
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13.1 (1992): 65–76. Rpt. in The Allyn and
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Pedagogies of Belonging: Listening to Students and Peers
by Julie A. Bokser
After they are admitted, many students find actually joining the university to be disorienting and even daunting, especially those whose socioeconomic, racial, ethnic,
linguistic, and/or educational worlds differ markedly from the academic world they
encounter in college. We know that writing centers play a key role in helping students
make this transition, serving as crucial conduits of adjustment for otherwise marginalized students. But exactly how we help tutors to help these students is less familiar
ground. Tutors are not usually considered when composition scholars characterize the
ways in which writing professionals help students belong. Nevertheless, tutors as well
as teachers are party to a process seen variously as assimilation, accommodation, separatism, acculturation, translation, or repositioning (Severino; Bruffee; Lu, “Writing
as Repositioning”), and the students tutors work with must undergo a process that can
be positively characterized as “going native” (Bizzell, “Cognition” 386), quizzically
understood as invention (Bartholomae), or negatively viewed as conversion (J. Harris
103; Lu, “Conflict”) or initiation (T. Fox). Clearly, there is no consensus among these
many “camps”; rather, what we have is provocative, useful discussion on the pedagogical processes of belonging. But many a tutor who finds herself on the frontlines with
a lost student will not have the benefit of knowing this discussion. As a writing center
administrator who has worked in two urban institutions with ethnically and linguistically diverse student populations, I have struggled to formulate tutor training that
urges tutors to consider the complexities of belonging. I believe the tutor needs to
understand the paradoxical ways in which writing and academic literacy more generally are instruments of belonging that can constrain as well as liberate. To write one’s
About the Author
Julie A. Bokser just completed a three-year term as Director of the Writing Center at
DePaul University, where she is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English.
She is grateful to the tutors and colleagues whose work and thoughts influenced this
project, which was completed through assistance from a Faculty Research and
Development Grant at DePaul University and a University Fellowship at the University
of Illinois at Chicago.
The Writing Center Journal
Volume 25, No.1 (2005)
43
way into the disciplinary discourse of a political science major, for example, may
simultaneously bring the freedom of new ways of thinking and new potential careers,
while curtailing more immediate intimacy with a home culture.1 Let me clarify my
position: The tutor will know the paradox, but tutor training can give her the conceptual framework to successfully navigate it.
Writing about the ways in which universities constrain as much as liberate through
their teaching of sanctioned forms of literacy, Nancy Grimm argues that writing centers should intervene in this literacy paradox, mediating between the institution and
students. She wants us to train tutors to question “the rules of the academic literacy
club” instead of to unquestioningly help tutees conform to them (117). While I am certain that not all writing center tutors are as ideologically conventional as Grimm
implies, her argument nonetheless hits home. In her chapter entitled, “Redesigning
Academic Identity Kits,” Grimm considers Anne DiPardo’s article about a tutor
named Morgan who is unsuccessful in her efforts to help her tutee conform to expected academic conventions. Grimm questions Morgan’s goals and asks, “But what if
Morgan had been prepared differently? What if her tutor training and her preprofessional education had insisted on conceptual and theoretical understanding over
strategic know-how?” (66). Elizabeth Boquet shares Grimm’s impatience with what
they both imply is a typical model of tutor training—one that focuses on content
knowledge and scripted how-to approaches to a finite list of common writing problems. Boquet critiques what she calls this “low risk/low yield model” of tutor training,
encouraging instead a more chaotic, “noisy” approach in which a writing center director asks herself, “how might I encourage this tutor to operate on the edge of his or her
expertise?” (78, 81). Both Boquet and Grimm imply that if tutors lack imagination, it
is because their training has lacked imagination. Indeed, although I am doubtful that
there is any such thing as “typical” tutor training, the key question that I believe is
raised by these two insightful writing center scholars is how can we better train tutors
to tutor imaginatively and effectively?
In the pages that follow, I sketch as well as ruminate on my approach to this problem. Through accounts of my own experience teaching a credit-bearing tutor training
class at two institutions, I trace my attempts to illuminate ideas about belonging
through a rhetoric of listening. Always, I consider the challenges of a pedagogy of
belonging. I use this phrase as shorthand to describe as well as to complicate our
understanding of how students can belong in a classroom or tutoring site, and how we
teach individuals to become members of the academic community. I offer my
44
Pedagogies of Belonging: Listening to Students and Peers
experiences not as a model, but to generate an extended consideration of what is
involved in making such encounters beneficial moments of cultural exchange.
In the present demographic environment of the United States, this issue is especially pertinent. For example, recent census figures indicate that those who identify as
Hispanics are already the nation’s largest minority and that this population will continue to increase for many years. The census also shows this group to have a large proportion of people below the age of 18, to experience a lower rate of educational
attainment than non-Hispanic Whites, and to face more language barriers. Thus, statistics on Hispanics alone signal that writing center work with students who speak
English as a Second Language (ESL) will most likely increase, and that many of these
encounters will be with people who have already been in the United States for a while
or who plan on staying. In other words, more and more, tutoring will be a “contactzone” encounter in which participants will need to work even harder to figure out how
to collaborate with someone who speaks a different language, holds different cultural
values, and lives down the block. Mary Louise Pratt tells us to embrace the pedagogic
potential of cultural clashing in the contact zone, trying to learn from instead of avoid
moments when subordinate individuals and groups come into contact with those in
dominant, hegemonic roles (“Arts” 34). The contact zone demands that teachers and
tutors—in “dominant” roles by definition—acquire new, imaginative, and effective
pedagogic approaches to issues of belonging, including a consideration of what
belonging means in a multicultural setting and whether belonging is always possible or
even desirable.
To help tutors help linguistically marginalized students, I structure tutor training so
that issues of belonging pertinent to higher education (such as assimilation or initiation) are central. Carol Severino, David Bartholomae, Patricia Bizzell, and Kenneth
Bruffee are compositionists whose work can help tutors balance the desire to help
tutees conform with an understanding of the price of conforming for some students.
For example, asking tutors to read Bizzell’s “Cognition, Convention, and Certainty.
What We Need to Know About Writing” raises issues that are central to a pedagogy of
belonging. Bizzell talks about student writers who encounter “the problems of a traveler in an unfamiliar country—yet a country in which it is possible to learn the language
and the manners and even ‘go native’ while still remembering the land from which one
has come” (386). Bizzell’s metaphor makes for interesting analysis. To “go native” is to
let loose and act as if one belongs. Presumably, Bizzell intends “going native” to
reverse the usual association of native with less-educated, subjugated people who have
been forcefully converted. Instead, she assigns it to the academic world—a world to
The Writing Center Journal
Volume 25, No.1 (2005)
45
which, ironically, no one is “native.” Although Bizzell doesn’t acknowledge it, to tell a
student of color who successfully assumes a bicultural world view that she has “gone
native” demands the student recognize doubly ironic overtones: first, she must see the
irony of an allusion to native-like comfort in a world where there are no first-language
speakers; and second and more disturbingly, she must recognize that to presume
native-like comfort in a land where she is not native might make her feel like the last
thing she expected to be, a colonizer.
At my current institution, students are generally not open to radical critique of
existing institutional power structures. Therefore, instead of using a theorist like
Nancy Grimm with tutors, I find it more effective to introduce someone like Bruffee,
whose pedagogy of belonging contains ideas of conversation and collaboration that
tutors tend to like, but which they can also be coaxed to critique. Interestingly, Bruffee
uses the term “translator” to refer to the teacher who helps students to become acculturated to new knowledge communities by teaching them the language and conventions of these new communities. But although he talks of translation, he is not
referring to or terribly sensitive to ESL students. True, he wants joining disciplinary
or professional communities to be “unthreatening and fail-safe,” but as Pratt points
out, safety is not a feature of the contact zone (74). Bruffee’s teacher is supposed to ask
herself how “the community languages [her] students already know reinforce or
interfere with learning the language [she is] teaching” (73). The teacher should help
students “divorce” from other communities (79). Not only does Bruffee fail to consider the ramifications of “divorce,” but he also never doubts students’ desire to join,
nor does he question the value of the professional communities with which he wants
students to affiliate. Any discussion of Bruffee must highlight what he himself overlooks: the problems of membership that teaching facilitates. It must therefore ask students to be competent critics of a group’s systems of discourse. To some extent, a
pedagogy of belonging means that nobody should be too comfortable with their own
belonging—my goal is to encourage tutors to learn how to question their own commitments, to understand others’ commitments, and to acknowledge the challenges and
conflicts present in any individual’s multiple commitments.
To help students examine commitments, I have begun to make listening a primary
object of attention in tutor training. Listening is obviously a component of tutoring;
but, as Muriel Harris says in her discussion of the topic, it is inadequately attended to
in our literature (57). And, while composition theory can introduce the conceptual
aspects of belonging, too many tutors actively resist anything that can be construed as
theory. This theory only becomes meaningful when tutors learn how to listen for
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Pedagogies of Belonging: Listening to Students and Peers
issues of belonging from tutees themselves. Along with my tutors, I have been developing “a rhetoric of listening” as a way of noticing commitments. While listening is
central to tutoring, I don’t believe it’s possible to teach someone to listen. But I do
think it’s possible that, by foregrounding listening, students will become aware of how
they listen, what kinds of things others hear, and what kinds of things we all tend to
tune out. In other words, a rhetoric of listening attempts to develop a method for listening to what others say, but also a method for listening to how we listen. Perhaps
because listening appears to be something that is automatic and straightforward, it is
an easy topic to introduce. Then, as tutors seriously engage with their own acts of listening, figuring out just what kinds of listening are at work in their tutoring, they move
from resisting theory to theorizing for themselves. This move is not always smooth—
that is, theorizing is hard work—but it tends to be self-motivated. Tutors theorize about
listening because they really want to figure out how to do their jobs.
Not recognizing the challenges and conflicts of a student’s commitments is precisely what DiPardo accuses Morgan of when she calls her “insufficiently curious” in the
above scenario cited by Grimm (DiPardo 362). Morgan, an African-American tutor,
never finds out that Fanny, a Navajo, has learned English as a second language.
DiPardo asserts that what Morgan needed most was to “listen more” (365). Yet, when
listening is not a focus of study, this advice can seem empty because listening itself
appears to be transparent. One of my tutors made this disturbingly clear in a posting
on our course Blackboard several years ago:
I have not yet been in a situation wherein listening more to the student
would have been at all beneficial to the session. Usually, the student
doesn’t know what is [wrong] exactly with the paper, let alone how to
fix it, in which case, they generally have little to nothing to which I
would “listen more”…Other than letting the tutor know the crucial
information regarding their fundamental inability to write yet, does
the student have anything else that the tutor could listen more to?
In contrast, when tutor training highlights the rhetoric of listening, students quickly learn what else they might listen for and appreciate how complicated this can be. In
a recent class in which listening had curricular precedence, a tutor was concerned
about how student commitments influence the possibility for collaboration. In a posting on the same kind of electronic forum, Heidi referred to Alice Gillam’s article,
“Collaborative Learning Theory and Peer Tutoring Practice”:
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Gillam brings up the point that Suzanne and Kari probably have
formed their relationship on their common upbringing, gender, and
ethnicity, as well as their similar learning goals. It is not their shared
studenthood that bonds them, but their basic human similarities. Not
all tutor-tutee partnerships will be so homogenous (luckily, I think)—
what impact does this have on collaboration? Are some sessions less
likely to productively create learning together due to their first
impressions of each other? Is the “peer relationship” of students
enough to forge productive collaboration, or are we doomed to only
relate successfully to those people that are a reflection of ourselves?
Instead of doubting the point of listening, Heidi reflects on its subtleties. In
essence, she asks, who can listen to one another? What are the conditions for productive listening? Can we only listen to those with similar membership pedigrees? Krista
Ratcliffe attempts to answer these questions by conceptualizing rhetorical listening as
a strategy of invention. One of the few theorists who attends to the role of listening in
rhetorical theory, Ratcliffe points out how we can hear differently, how we can notice
voices drowned out by the din of dominant paradigms, and even how listening is a
useful trope for how we can more fully engage ourselves professionally.2 As a strategy
of invention, listening allows us “to receive, not master” other discourses, and to
“argue for what we deem fair and just while simultaneously questioning that which we
deem fair and just” (209, 203). Tutors, who are, after all, professional listeners, need
to be introduced to new, complicated understandings of listening that will help them
to navigate the conflictual discourses they face when working with displaced students.
Ratcliffe’s rhetorical listening is certainly not a cure-all, for as she says, it is ongoing
and discomforting, but coming to understand listening as a process that will help “us
continually negotiate our always evolving standpoints, our identities, with the always
evolving standpoints of others” can give tutors “conceptual and theoretical understanding” of their own “strategic know-how” (Ratcliffe 209; Grimm 66). In the next
section, I narrate an early stage in my work with the rhetorics of listening, exploring
how listening to tutors and co-teachers both illuminates and complicates ideas about
what belonging might mean for ESL students and their tutors.
“I want you to write a certain way”
In spring 1999, as part of a co-taught tutor-training course, Magda (a fellow graduate student from Poland) and I assigned a group project that we knew would challenge
speaking skills, but (as will soon become clear) it inadvertently also challenged
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Pedagogies of Belonging: Listening to Students and Peers
listening skills.3 As part of my commitment as Assistant Director of the Writing Center
at a large Midwestern public university, I had taught the course three times already;
Magda was new to the writing center world. The center had an unusual set-up in that
tutors and the two co-teachers were all learning to “become” teachers. Magda and I
were Ph.D. graduate students in rhetoric and composition teaching secondary education graduate and undergraduate students to tutor. This arrangement, in which pedagogical aspirations, membership, and authority were so much a text and subtext for all
members of the class, provided an interesting ground for an exploration of pedagogies
of belonging because, although relations between teachers and students were as
“asymmetrical” as they must always be, neither party yet considered itself in a fully
“dominant, hegemonic” role. In this setting, the complications of peerness and the act
of listening to peers—mainstays of tutoring philosophy—were central components of
our pedagogical dialogues at several levels. Over time, what I am calling a rhetoric of
listening evolved from my experiences with this course.
The project required students, who had been tutoring since the second week of the
term, to make a presentation to brand new tutors at the next term’s Writing Center orientation.4 All eight students decided to work together to introduce future tutors to the
issues inherent in tutoring students who speak English as a second language. They
chose this topic because they felt their own orientation had not adequately addressed
it; their hopes were to bolster their own tutoring skills with ESL students and to better
prepare the next crew. By choosing to work with ESL issues, students confronted the
political complexities of balancing the call for academic assimilation with the concurrent need for incorporating new cultures and standards into our changing academic
practices. In other words, students were pulled from opposite ends by two reasonable
yet seemingly opposed exigencies: assimilation, on the one hand, and the forging of
what Patricia Bizzell calls “hybrid” discourse culture, on the other (“Hybrid”). While
helping ESL students to write promised liberation via academic and economic
advancement, it simultaneously posed constraint by imposing uncomfortable standards and even threatening loss of a home culture. Like many of us, students confronted their own conflicted roles as purveyors of pedagogies of belonging they didn’t
wholeheartedly support.
At this institution, the issue of assimilation is particularly pertinent because, while
there are many foreign students, most of the Writing Center’s ESL clients are resident
immigrants and, frequently, citizens. These students live in the United States permanently with their families, and most have a good understanding of American culture.
Many of these individuals have lived here for years; often, they speak their native
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language, but their memory of the native country is not strong. Few have been taught
to write in their native tongues. Most learned to write in public schools here, at the
same time they were learning to speak English, and they typically have mastered the
latter fairly well while their writing skills vary considerably. In other words, notwithstanding their lack of proficiency in written English, many of these students are
Americans first and foremost. Additionally, among those students whose first and
only language is English, a great many are first-generation college students who have
limited acquaintance with university culture or expectations. These conditions help to
explain why Writing Center tutors feel pressure to serve as cultural guides, translating
world views for students who desperately desire to “invent the university”
(Bartholomae). This complexity also shows how institutional exigencies determine
the specific “conceptual” needs of tutors in training.
Students in our tutor-training course were asked to act as peers, but the group project required them to become teachers. Peer and teacher are conflicting roles, but role
conflict probably occurred before the onset of the group project, since as John
Trimbur argues, peer tutor combines words that imply equality and mastery, respectively, and is therefore an institutionally induced contradiction (“Peer Tutoring”).
Thus, a sensitivity to belonging reveals varying power differentials between three
groups of supposedly equal “students”: there were class members (soon-to-be experienced tutors), the students they would be teaching (novice tutors), and the students
they were teaching about as well as tutoring (ESL writers). In sum, cultural differences, competing institutional status, and interpersonal dynamics gave rise to the
complexity and confusion typical of contact-zone encounters.
In a class activity designed to stimulate thinking for the ESL project, we read a paper
with a strong accent, one that marked the student as a writer of nonstandard English.
The subject of the paper was also, as it were, accents. I should say that I (not Magda)
brought in the paper, which was written several years earlier by a student, Lynn, in one
of my composition courses.5 The assignment was to write about an experience of
negotiating two languages, using essays by Richard Rodriguez and Barbara Mellix as
both starting point and stylistic template. Here is the second paragraph of Lynn’s
revised draft:
The reading of Rodriguez’s experience caused me to recall my own
experiences between three distinctive dialects. English, Cantonese,
and Chinese are the dialects identify me. I was born in Canton, China
twenty years ago. I constantly experience different languages, when
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immigranting to the United States. There is no doubt that I would have
difficulties with the private, family language and public, school language.
A sophisticated sense of irony both bittersweet and humorous pervades this writer’s
prose as she goes on to discuss the fact that she acquired a new Chinese dialect more
proficiently than English in a public school in Chicago’s Chinatown. She reveals her
family’s frustration when she failed to translate business letters for them while she was
in grade school. One of the few language successes she records involves removing her
accent, which she unexpectedly accomplished by sitting next to a Latina student:
As time pasted, I did learn a lot of English words. There was a period
where I only could think of is English vocabulary. That is when I was in
seventh grade, a Spanish girl sits next to me. My permanent seat for the
whole year. This young lady really helped me in my English. She helped
me to get rid of my Chinese accent. Listening to her Spanish accent
allows me to correct my Chinese accent.
Our discussion of this paper evolved into a debate about whether and for whom
accents are desirable. With the help of terminology from the week’s assigned article by
Carol Severino, the group labored in particular over the degree to which they perceived
their job as tutors to be a task of assimilation—erasing accents—by helping newcomers
to join an academic, standard-English prose world. Was assimilation implied in the
very job description? Severino provided terms for different political stances toward
teaching ESL students, which our students summarized as follows: assimilationist—a
teacher (or tutor) who advocates standard English and the loss of home culture;
accommodationist—one who advocates joining mainstream discourse but also values
biculturalism; and, separatist—one who wants ESL students to keep their native,
accented voice.
Ensuing discussion was rich. Tutors questioned the degree to which they were forced
to be assimilationists, considered whether their tutoring practice was in accord with
their philosophy, and identified situations where they could encourage separatist writing. Barbara, the only African American, turned Severino’s use of the terms from a
stance the teacher or tutor assumes to levels a student moves through at each stage in
her education. She then insisted:
But your ultimate goal…you’re always, you know, advancing, and looking for…the next level would ultimately be an assimilationist—and not
so much to forget the whole culture, but to ultimately be well understood, well read, and able to express yourself well under the right
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academic…so I don’t think they’re that different from each other. I
just think you reach them at different levels… I probably want to be an
accommodationist, but as much as I’m fighting it I probably am moving more toward the assimilationist. Just from the mere fact that I
want to be an English teacher, you know, I want you to write a certain
way, no matter how I color that up, you know. I want you to write a certain way.6
Anne responded hesitantly, looking at our outline of the categories on the blackboard and slowly admitting that she might be an assimilationist against her better
judgment: “I mean what you think is best might not be in agreement with what you
practice. I mean—you know, I hate—I don’t really want to be an assimilationist, but—”
Barbara: But you are, Anne!
A: What?
B: We are! We all are.
A: Yeah, that’s not what you want to be, but it’s what you’re practicing.
A bit later, Megan tentatively revisited this issue, wondering if the group’s stress on
the rich content of ESL papers meant they were separatists. Anne replied by reminding
us to consider students’ viewpoints. Her comment revealed her awareness that students’ desires are shaped by the political forces of those with more power, teachers:
I think we have to think of what they want us to do, because I have not
gotten any student who came in and said, “Can you help me with this
paper so that I sound more Chinese?” I mean, you know what I’m saying, it’s like, “I want this to sound, quote unquote, American.” So I’m
thinking that they sort of want us to be assimilationists. And also
maybe that’s not by their choice, that’s by, well I think it probably is by
their choice, but it’s also by their professor’s choice.
Lilia, who was planning to study ESL at the master’s level the following year, admitted she was still uncertain about her stance: “Because I’m somewhere in between
accommodationist and separatist I guess, but—.”
“But again,” Megan interrupted, attempting to get the group to arrive at a consensus, “I think everyone wants to be as tutors the assimilationist.”
Gia, the only Asian American, protested:
No, I don’t know that that’s where I want to be. I don’t look up to that
as something to reach for. I think we should reach to be able to be separatists, I mean that’s kind of … But I know that’s not reasonable, I
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know that’s not gonna happen at least now. So that’s why I kind of
reach for the accommodationist’s view, where I see that assimilation is
necessary right now…
In essence, these tutors were debating where they belonged in a conversion process.
Reading an ESL student’s paper, they discovered, meant listening simultaneously to
the student’s conflicted desires, society’s dictates, and their own self-concept of their
job description. They were beginning to sense that to teach literacy encompasses hearing the troubling, often contradictory nuances of belonging. They saw themselves as
compelled to uphold a practice that the “converts” themselves desire because it is the
only clear route to success. Moreover, tutors were uncomfortable with enforcing a single standard for written communication, yet they nevertheless acknowledged their
own desire for tutees to “write a certain way.” They saw themselves, that is, as instruments and agents of a system that they didn’t entirely condone but didn’t know how to
escape. “What values are involved in the decision by writing center personnel to help
others assimilate, that really is the question,” Christina Murphy has recently written
(7). Our students confronted this question with thoughtfulness and complexity.
In other words, like John Trimbur’s “rhetoric of dissensus,” the rhetoric of listening entails confronting the “forces which determine who may speak and what may be
said” (Trimbur, “Consensus” 451). Trimbur asserts that these forces present themselves as universally agreed-upon consensus, and the rhetoric of dissensus unmasks
and interrogates this supposed consensus. The rhetoric of listening also involves
resisting attempts to impose consensus within the more local group dynamic.
Although speakers like Barbara and Megan tried to impose their views on everyone
(“You are an assimilationist. We all are!”), dissent was allowed to remain. In other
words, foregrounding the rhetoric of listening in the classroom and in tutoring sessions should impart an ability to hear the fact that everyone is not in agreement. Such
rhetoric, along with “relentless self-reflection,” is necessary for productive exchange
in the writing center (Grimm 117).
Hearing Accents as Charming
Another form of dissensus was present in the classroom, one that I only became fully
aware of when I listened to a tape of the proceedings several months afterwards.
Without planning or even knowing of our differences, Magda and I were offering two
opposing messages about Lynn’s paper. I felt that, though the paper was written in
nonstandard English, its use of irony and detail made it in many respects linguistically proficient. Lynn had worked within the parameters of the assignment to great effect;
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her essay written with nonstandard usage was eloquent and moving. Magda, on the
other hand, felt it reflected a real struggle that should be respected as the writer’s
desire to put the struggle behind her, which could only be achieved by erasing her
written accent, her errors.
At one point during the discussion of Severino’s article, I called attention to
Borderlands by Gloria Anzaldúa, which we had considered using as a course reading
before we settled on Severino. Rather, I now realize I had considered Anzaldúa, and
Magda had replaced that idea with Severino. I described Anzaldúa’s style of moving
back and forth between English, Spanish, and Tex Mex. I said,
It’s about language, and her point—she’s really advocating for embracing this language which is her, which is a mixture, which goes back and
forth…and this is OK and it’s sophisticated linguistically. [She is saying,] “This is who I am, and this is who other people should be.” But,
assimilationists still probably would reject what Gloria Anzaldúa is
advocating.
Magda immediately interjected:
Yeah, I would. I would reject it. I mean I love it. But in terms of teaching, if you got it from a student, it’s not—I mean she’s basically got
both languages down pat so she can play around with it. It’s a good
thing you said that you didn’t give this an A because I would think,
well, what did the student think when you presumably gushed about it
and said this is a good paper?
Magda, a fluent and accented speaker of English as a second language herself, then
said that she never wanted to hear, in fact, didn’t believe that she had an accent. It
soon became clear to all of us that it was easy to long for an accent when you felt you
didn’t have one. Those of us who had grown up speaking more or less the same as those
around us saw accents as desirable marks of exoticism. But by “exoticizing” ESL students, we were obstructing real listening (Zamel 516). Megan, a native English speaker, said passionately that she wished Lynn and other bilingual students didn’t want to
get rid of their accents. “That’s part of the charm, you know,” she said. “They shouldn’t want to get rid of their accents.” Magda balked:
It’s different when you’re crossing borders and there’s a reason why
you’re leaving a particular lifestyle. So it comes with a whole host of
luggage. You’re leaving this lifestyle, so the language is probably the
last thing to go, your accent. But you really want…I mean they can’t see
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Pedagogies of Belonging: Listening to Students and Peers
where you came from but they can tell, right? And I can’t begin to tell
you, I mean people and friends ask me what’s life in Poland like. Well,
I’m not in Poland and there’s a reason for that, OK?….
“Is that an issue a lot of immigrants have?” Sarah asked, suddenly aware that her
childhood longing for a Scottish or Irish accent was the result of linguistic and cultural insularity.
Magda answered by pointing to the significance of a second-language speaker’s
motivations for being in a new country—to the difference between voluntary immigrants and refugees. “We’re not all me, who just decided to drop and go,” she said.
Then she returned to Lynn’s paper. I now see the following exchange as a conciliatory
gesture regarding my pedagogical insertion of what had become a contentious student
essay. In the actual exchange, our words almost overlap. When Magda refers to the
“charming” comment as offensive, the overt “you” is Megan. Yet surely, I am her main
addressee:
Magda: So I guess you know when I’m reading this and I know it sounds
charming to you but to me it’s like this person is really trying...
Julie: It’s really a struggle.
Magda: It’s really a struggle, so I’m on the side of this person who’s
really wanting you not to say maybe it’s charming because you’ve got an
accent….But it is a good piece and it really shows the struggle. And,
hey, three languages.
My overly anxious desire to align myself with Magda’s reading of struggle and
Magda’s ready repetition of my words (“It’s really a struggle”) as well as her pause in
between critiquing the “charming” and endorsing the supposed value of Lynn’s piece
indicate quick attempts to stage an agreement that wasn’t really present. Although
Magda’s reaction was quite forceful, because we didn’t convert such outbursts into text
for class discussion, I don’t really know for sure whether Megan ever recognized just
how offensive her use of “charm” was. I saw my own offenses, but I had the benefit of
listening to the tape of our classroom and hearing my own gaffes made more apparent.
There I confronted how much I had dominated discussions and realized how willing
Magda had been to learn from a peer who had taught the course before. Our own interactions crossed contact zones on several fronts and taught both of us much about how
to work alongside a person whose world view is other than one’s own. But we did not
learn how to identify and confront our differences in front of students. Eventually, this
chasm led me to conceptualize a rhetoric of listening.
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Listening for How We Belong
Originally, I did not hear the interchange between Magda and myself as conflict.
Afterwards, when the tutors’ final ESL presentation was reductive, didn’t really confront cultural difference, and presented a consensus we knew didn’t exist, Magda and
I wondered if it was because we had failed to model dissensus. But later I realized that,
while we clearly did display dissensus, when it arose we shut it down rather than
explore or even acknowledge it, as contact-zone theory encourages. We were committed to agreement. We had not been trained to listen for or embrace conflict publicly.
Rather, we diffused it. Cutthroat academic debate is often satirized; yet, in even the
most contentious department I have been part of, disputes were couched in nods and
restatements of opponents’ positions such that it took time and care to discern actual
points of disagreement. Magda and I had few models to work with. It was in the car on
the drive home where I slowly came to understand just how vexed the issue of accents
was for her, and she recognized my conflicted attitude toward students like Lynn,
whose paper I fretted (rather than “gushed”) over. In other words, our understanding
of the other was enriched largely because we were neighbors.
As a method for listening to what others say, a rhetoric of listening attends to attitudes toward conflict and consensus in order to help us find ways of belonging amidst
(not in spite of) multiple perspectives. Whereas Trimbur’s model of dissensus similarly emphasizes the multiple voices that can be heard behind a semblance of consensus, a rhetoric of listening also attends to how listeners’ own positionality—especially
the positions of “student” and “teacher”—can influence attitudes toward listening. A
rhetoric of listening attends to audience as well, by considering not just who listeners
are (a traditional concern of rhetoric), but how speakers conceive of their listeners.
For instance, it was only in the part of the course that officially belonged to the teachers that students engaged conflict, generating the rich, reflective discussion on
accents and assimilation. In the part of the course where students actively planned
their presentation, there were early considerations that the project did not need to
offer new tutors “answers,” but could offer ideas, such as positing Severino’s three
political stances toward ESL tutoring as all valid ways to look at the issues. But these
considerations were soon squelched by concerns that new tutors would feel “pressured” to choose a position and that this political material was “almost too deep.”
Rejecting “just laying it out” as an “ambiguous” approach that would offer new tutors
choices with no real answers, they reminded themselves of the need for “summarizing” and appropriate “presentation format.” In other words, their understanding of
pedagogical genre encompassed an attenuated listener. They were persuaded that to
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Pedagogies of Belonging: Listening to Students and Peers
belong in front of a classroom required “answers” and unity. But then, in their own
classroom, conflicted instructor discourse had subsumed itself, also assuming listeners who sought agreement.
Moreover, through its attention to how authority influences listening, the rhetoric
of listening retrospectively helped me to work through my ultimate disappointment
with the ESL project, which showed students listening sophisticatedly as students and
narrowly as teachers. Class members delivered a polished, nicely choreographed performance, but one that highlighted tutoring tips, most of which were not unique to ESL
tutoring. A significant portion of the final presentation relied on outside expertise,
which came most notably in the form of an interview with a faculty member whose specialty was ESL teaching—an “expert” with officially sanctioned knowledge and power.
In fact, this interview, touting a very pragmatic, grammar-conscious approach to
working with ESL students, probably altered the final presentation content and contributed to the loss of “ambiguity.” And more acceptance of ambiguity was precisely
what I’d been hoping for. What I wanted was for tutors to develop a tutoring style sensitive to the needs of both assimilation and home cultures. I wanted them to consider
questions of belonging as central to tutoring as grammatical error. I wanted them to
import an acceptance of all three of Severino’s stances into their tutoring, and then
export it to their tutor training of the next crew. They wanted training to be straightforward and useful. They did not want to “operate on the edge” (Boquet 81).
The expert they relied on had no tutoring exposure, but perhaps students were
swayed by her institutional authority as much as her content knowledge. After all, the
expert was faculty, and we, their instructors, were not. Notions of authority also influenced how they perceived their “subjects,” the ESL students. Lilia said of the ESL students they would interview, “We almost have an idea of what they’re gonna say, because
we’ve already scripted the questions beforehand.” She had closed her capacity to listen
to differences before the interview had even begun. Tutors allowed themselves to be
scripted by experts, and they simultaneously scripted the responses of those whom
they felt expert about. The rhetoric of listening makes note of how hierarchy can
obstruct productive listening, learning, and speaking.
What the rhetoric of listening tells us here is how differently tutors belong depending on which side of the classroom they sit. And how differently they hear and conceive
of hearing on each side. Magda and I gave our class two conflicting messages, both
invested with teacherly authority. Our classroom presence was multivoiced and discontinuous. It therefore demanded a complicated listening response from students.
No clear direction was being offered, no edict, but two passionate stagings of views
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that, if not quite contradictory, then at least offered no clear pedagogical solution. Yet
students rose to the occasion. They listened—and spoke—with complexity and subtlety. They listened both receptively and resistantly. They debated where they fit in the
politics of assimilation and simultaneously questioned the utility of labels like
“assimilationist” as too confining and not reflective of the hybrid nature of actual
practice. Magda and I asked the students in our tutoring course to be students and
teachers, to listen and speak. And as students they did listen and speak, hearing divergent messages with a sophisticated, problematizing ear. But the troubling finding here
is that when they shifted to teachers, their approach to listening narrowed. As teachers/speakers to an audience of new tutors (an audience they had been members of only
a few months before), they produced a monolithic consensus of factual nuggets. They
student-listened with complexity, but teacher-listened simplistically, assuming new
tutors would only hear a unified front of succinct, easy-to-process tips and not an
array of continually shifting stances and choices.
But the issues ESL students face are “deep,” political, and, often, ambiguous. Tutors
need to see such discussion as integral to tutoring, and to see both themselves and ESL
students as capable of such discussions. Tutors need to be able to ask a student how she
feels about her accent, about joining the academy, about language practices in her
home. And they need to be able to truly hear her answers. In my most recent attempt
at tutor training, at a private, urban institution, I have focused on the latter. I have
explicitly asked tutors to join me in defining a rhetoric of listening, and have engaged
them with written exercises called Listening to Yourself (analyzing a taped session),
Listening to Another (observing another tutor), Listening to Scholarship (writing a
summary), and ultimately, a Philosophy Statement. Sometimes this work is uncomfortable. At times listening feels like “listening in” on others’ conversations uninvited. As my syllabus states, “We should all expect—and accept—some awkward
moments.” Quite a few tutor Philosophy Statements attempt to identify a specific kind
of listening they try to attain in tutoring: “interested,” “patient,” “present.” One tutor
finally found her tutoring authority as a listener, a role she accepted much more easily than “writer.” Another tutor adapted her life philosophy of Christian love to tutoring, offering tutees unconditional attention with a “non-reciprocal love of redefined
listening.” Listening proved especially useful with resistant tutees: “You need to listen
to what they aren’t saying and then how they do say things when they end up speaking.
Listen for what they get excited about or what they seem discouraged about and you will
most often find that one thing to be the key to the session, the key that will get the student engaged in the session.” This approach to tutor training has yielded responses
58
Pedagogies of Belonging: Listening to Students and Peers
very different from that of the tutor who
NOTES
couldn’t fathom what to listen for.
considers how and why others listen, how
1 While the choice is certainly not either/or, and
critics like Bizzell have argued fervently for
some sort of balance between home and
school cultures, my point here is to demonstrate the degree to which literacy can be both
freeing and constricting.
one’s self listens, and how these condi-
2
We need to consciously engage a more
intentional pedagogy of belonging that
tions affect what gets said. This process
requires meta-discussion of what just
happened in the classroom in order to
clarify student-student, student-teacher,
and teacher-teacher interaction. In
Magda’s and my classroom, a rhetorical
self-assessment would have asked all of
us to consider our ways of listening and
speaking as students and teachers. Then
See Ratcliffe and Ballif, who both explicitly
call for a reappraisal of listening. Grimm uses
Gemma Corradi Fiumara to consider “authentic
listening” (67, 69). I explore some of the ways
traditional rhetoric has slighted listening in my
unpublished dissertation. Although it is undertheorized, the trope of listening is quite prevalent: a flurry of recent composition scholars
rightly chastises us for not hearing our students
(see Fox, Listening; O’Neill and Fife; Strickland).
3 The names of my colleagues, students, and
institution have been changed to maintain confidentiality.
Center tutors belong. I now see my role as
In the tutor-training course, there were seven
upper-level undergraduates and one graduate
student, all female. One student was African
American, one was Asian American, and six
were white; there were two Greek speakers,
one of whom had been educated in Greece
first, although she was American. Magda and I
were both white, and, respectively, Polish and
American. Two students were mothers of small
children. The age range was between 20 and
29. All students were working toward highschool teaching certification, and the tutoring
experience was required for certification.
teacher as responsible for highlighting
5
students could have worked toward a
reassessment of their audience’s listening capacity and thus allowed themselves
to find ways to speak about ESL tutoring
that would have enabled their audience to
more productively confront crucial issues
regarding how ESL students and Writing
multiple ways of listening for belonging
as part of the rhetorical exchange. I now
spend more time listening to how my
tutors listen. Tutor training can prepare
tutors to work with cultural difference by
encouraging an understanding of listening as a rhetorical activity that can make
students and teachers more cognizant
and sensitive listeners and speakers.
The Writing Center Journal
4
Because she was one of the first ESL writers
I confronted as an instructor, Lynn’s writing had
caused me turmoil at an early point in my
teaching career; what I perceived as the severity and frequency of errors in her prose contrasted sharply with the poignancy of what she
had to say and the strenuous effort she put
into each assignment. Therefore, I had particularly strong and mixed emotions about the
paper.
Excerpts of discussion reported in this essay
are taken from electronic course bulletin
boards and from transcripts of three taped
class sessions. All have been used with permission. The three class sessions (out of fifteen
total) were chosen because this was when
students would be discussing their ESL project.
I was not always present during the taped
discussions.
6
Volume 25, No.1 (2005)
59
WORKS CITED
—. “Writing as Repositioning.” Journal of
Education 172.1 (1990): 18–21.
Ballif, Michelle. “What is it That the Audience
Wants? Or, Notes Toward a Listening with a
Transgendered Ear for (Mis)Understanding.”
JAC 19.1 (1999): 51–70.
Murphy, Christina. Rev. of Noise from the
Writing Center, by Elizabeth Boquet. Writing
Lab Newsletter 27.5 (January 2003): 5–9.
Bartholomae, David. “Inventing the University.”
When a Writer Can’t Write: Studies in
Writer’s Block and Other Composing
Problems. Ed. Mike Rose: Guilford P, 1985.
O’Neill, Peggy, and Jane Mathison Fife.
“Listening to Students: Contextualizing
Response to Student Writing.” Composition
Studies 27.2 (1999): 39–51.
Bizzell, Patricia. “Cognition, Convention, and
Certainty. What We Need to Know About
Writing.” Cross-Talk in Comp Theory. A
Reader. Ed. Victor Villanueva Jr. Urbana: NCTE,
1997. 365–389.
Pratt, Mary Louise. “Arts of the Contact Zone.”
Professions 91 (1991): 33–40.
—. “Hybrid Academic Discourses: What, Why,
How.” Composition Studies 27.2 (1999):
7–21.
Bokser, Julie A. “Rhetorics of Belonging in the
Contact Zone: Sor Juana’s Rhetorica Plus
Ultra.” Diss. U of Illinois at Chicago, 2000.
Boquet, Elizabeth H. Noise from the Writing
Center. Logan: Utah State P, 2002.
Bruffee, Kenneth A. Collaborative Learning:
Higher Education, Interdependence, and the
Authority of Knowledge. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins UP, 1993.
Fiumara, Gemma Corradi. The Other Side of
Language: A Philosophy of Listening. Trans.
Charles Lambert. London: Routledge, 1990.
Fox, Helen. Listening to the World: Cultural
Issues in Academic Writing: NCTE, 1994.
Fox, Tom. “Basic Writing as Cultural Conflict.”
Journal of Education 172 (1990): 65–83.
Gillam, Alice M. “Collaborative Learning Theory
and Peer Tutoring Practice.” Intersections:
Theory-Practice in the Writing Center. Ed.
Joan Mullin and Ray Wallace. Urbana: NCTE,
1994. 39–53.
Ratcliffe, Krista. “Rhetorical Listening: A Trope
for Interpretive Invention and a ‘Code of CrossCultural Conduct’.” College Composition and
Communication 51.2 (1999):
195–224.
Severino, Carol. “The Political Implications of
Responses to Second Language Writing.” Adult
ESL: Politics, Pedagogy, and Participation in
Classrooms and Community Programs. Ed.
Trudy Smoke. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence
Erlbaum, 1998. 185–206.
Strickland, Donna. “Errors and Interpretations:
Toward an Archaeology of Basic Writing.”
Composition Studies 26.1 (1998): 21–35.
Trimbur, John. “Consensus and Difference in
Collaborative Learning.” Cross-Talk in Comp
Theory: A Reader. Ed. Victor Villanueva Jr.
Urbana, Ill.: NCTE, 1997. 439-456.
—. “Peer Tutoring: A Contradiction in Terms?”
The Writing Center Journal 7.2 (1987):
21–28.
Zamel, Vivian. “Strangers in Academia: The
Experiences of Faculty and ESL Students
Across the Curriculum.” College Composition
and Communication 46.4 (1995): 506–521.
Grimm, Nancy Maloney. Good Intentions.
Writing Center Work for Postmodern Times.
Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 1999.
Harris, Joseph. A Teaching Subject. Upper
Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1997.
Harris, Muriel. Teaching One-to-One: The
Writing Conference. NCTE, 1986.
Lu, Min-Zhan. “Conflict and Struggle: The
Enemies or Preconditions of Basic Writing?”
College English 54 (1992): 887–913.
60
Pedagogies of Belonging: Listening to Students and Peers
Review: Writing Groups Inside and Outside the Classroom
Beverly Moss, Nels Highberg, and Melissa Nicolas, eds.
Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum/IWCA Press, 2004
by Roberta D. Kjesrud
Having just turned the last page in Beverly Moss, Nels Highberg, and Melissa
Nicolas’s book, Writing Groups Inside and Outside the Classroom, I am still marveling at
the impressive array of writing-group contexts represented by the articles included in
this edited volume. As a writing center director whose program has made several fledgling (mostly failed) attempts at facilitating group work, I began the book eagerly,
expecting an authoritative prescription for structuring meaningful writing-group
experiences. When no such prescription emerged in the reading, however, I quickly
adjusted my expectations. At times frustrated and at others enchanted by the scrumptious complexity, I savored the book as a meal, one layered with flavors that enrich my
appreciation of writing groups in all their manifestations.
The breadth of contexts represented in the book is nothing short of astonishing.
While we in the academy may think such groups are our bailiwick, in truth, they’re
everywhere—in prisons, in The Hood, in the community, and, naturally, in the academy, too. Even Part I of the book, limited to academic writing groups, samples a range of
contexts. For example, some writing groups (Anderson and Murphy; Gilewicz), are situated in familiar contexts—the writing center and the composition classroom. Less
typically, Thomas, Smith, and Barry’s group is situated in the sciences. Some (Hessler
and Taggart) straddle the college and the community. Still in the academy but focused
on groups composing joint texts, Day and Eodice and Piontek study very different writing group constituents, faculty and freshmen. And in a surprising departure from the
typical campus, Jackson’s freshman comp writing group takes place in a men’s prison.
About the Author
Roberta Kjesrud began her writing-centered career as an undergraduate tutor in the
Western Washington University Writing Center, the program she currently coordinates.
She organizes biannual staff development days for Puget Sound-area writing center
directors and serves as president of the Pacific Northwest Writing Centers Association. In
addition to published articles in The OWL Construction and Maintenance Guide and
Writing Center Perspectives, she is interested in play theory, strength-based reader
response, and writing center assessment.
The Writing Center Journal
Volume 25, No.1 (2005)
61
If context is the most notable dimension represented in the menu of contents, several socio-political ingredients emerge in the reading. Taken together, the volume’s
writing groups reflect society’s major fault lines, including age, gender, ethnicity, and
class. Consider the following sampling: In “Questions of Time: Publishing and Group
Identity in the StreetWise Writers Group,” the authors consider the tensions inevitable
in a response group featuring homeless writers on the socio-political and economic
margins. In “A Group of Our Own: Women and Writing Groups: A Reconsideration,”
the authors discuss the benefits of creating a feminine space for synthesizing women’s
lives within the male-dominated literacy of the academy. And while this is the only
essay that specifically analyzes writing groups using the lens of gender, the editors, in
their closing remarks, note that the very limited presence of male authors in the volume suggests something (what?) about the engendered nature of writing groups.
Given the varied contexts and themes these editors present, readers may be slightly
disappointed that the volume omits any consideration of writing groups situated in
virtual contexts. True, the editors bemoan that same lack; nevertheless, as my writing
center now conducts fully one third of its sessions in a digital environment, I’m still
regretting this absence. Further, readers may share my annoyance with the curricular/extracurricular taxonomies the editors create. At best, the distinctions seem arbitrary. For example, the women-only group, situated in Part II, “Writing Groups in the
Extracurriculum,” deals with academics writing for decidedly curricular purposes. At
worst, the distinctions suggest an unsettling town-gown binary. Both academic and
community groups can certainly learn from each other through this volume, but the
distinctions unnecessarily “other-ize” the different contexts.
In the midst of reading, readers may be perplexed about just what lessons the editors mean us to take from their mélange. Not-yet-in-recovery pragmatists would
probably be happier with a volume titled, Ten Easy Steps to Implementing Wildly
Successful Writing Groups. Readers should not expect transparent principles they can
apply immediately to practice. In fact, even the editors express this frustration. In a
highly ingenuous “Afterword,” they confess that the volume raises for them more
questions that it settles. While the chaos may frustrate practitioners, it will delight
scholars. Truly provocative research such as this seldom yields tidy conclusions;
instead, it reveals a delightful profusion.
It’s out of the profusion that readers will find sustenance. For instance, I’m now seeing required classroom writing groups as a value-laden, political act. Warned by the
inmate who “won’t talk to blacks,” I understand how imposing collaborative groups,
despite my benevolent intent, can be hegemonic, especially in an academy institu62
Review
tionalizing individual rewards. How is mandated collaboration truly collaborative?
Similarly, I’ve shifted to a less-glowing vision of collaborative learning. As a writing
center director, I’m drawn by the ideals of social constructionism. But this volume has
helped me remember my undergraduate mindset toward collaborative work—I dreaded the inherent negotiation and stalemate. When does collaboration’s seamy underbelly—conflict—hamper literacy and learning? Finally, I’m struck by the relational
dimension of writing groups. Words like “love” and “trust” don’t leap to mind in my
classroom- and center-based groups, yet they resonate in the testimonies of community group participants. How should I foster such values in writing groups sponsored
by the academy?
Make no mistake—writing groups are a confusing enterprise, as this volume amply
demonstrates. Their very purpose, responding to writers and shaping their writing,
combines the difficult tasks of illuminating writing and thinking while considering the
angst and affect of writers. Frankly, it’s a wonder these groups work at all. We shouldn’t be surprised that, in a discussion challenging us with a complex array of psychological, social, and intellectual dimensions, we may not reach consensus about writing
groups. But it’s this very feature—the lack of conclusion—that provides the volume’s
greatest strength. In effect, the book acts as a renewable feast. When we read the volume with one guiding question, “What’s the best way to implement writing groups?”
we will be fed differently than when we read with another, “How do power relationships affect writing groups?” Whether we’re eating steak or vegan, Thai or Tahitian,
this book has our entrée. Bon appetit!
The Writing Center Journal
Volume 25, No.1 (2005)
63
Review: Virtual Peer Review: Teaching and Learning about
Writing in Online Environments.
Lee-Ann Kastman Breuch
Albany, NY: SUNY P, 2004
by Kevin Dvorak
Perhaps the irony of this book review is that it has undergone the very pedagogical
treatment that is at the heart of the work it is discussing, a treatment so common to
writing instructors that we often do not even realize we are performing it. This review
has been written by its author as a computer document, sent to the editors at The
Writing Center Journal via email, reviewed using Microsoft Word’s “Track Changes” and
“Insert Comment” features, and returned via email to its author with questions and
suggestions embedded within the text that encouraged further writing. It is this act of
“virtual peer review,” an “activity of using computer technology to exchange and
respond to one another’s writing for the purpose of improving writing” (10) that LeeAnn Kastman Breuch explores in Virtual Peer Review: Teaching and Learning about
Writing in Online Environments.
In her work, Breuch sets out to create an epistemological foundation for virtual peer
review, a developing concentration in writing studies that Breuch claims “has received
very little explicit attention” (2). Virtual Peer Review constructs a solid theoretical
foundation for this concentration by isolating virtual peer review as a deliberate, individual pedagogy; deconstructs elements, issues, and definitions pertaining to virtual
peer review; demonstrates how to use virtual peer review as an extension of classroom
practice; and presses for further research and practice to assist in developing this nascent pedagogy.
In establishing her theoretical foundation for virtual peer review, Breuch suggests
that virtual peer review “differs fundamentally in practice from peer review but is
rooted in the same basic purpose: to respond to another’s writing” (9), and that, as a
concentration of its own, virtual peer review has received too little research given the
amount of virtual peer reviewing we perform daily. In fact, Breuch claims that “one of
About the Author
Kevin Dvorak is a Ph.D. candidate in the Composition and TESOL program at Indiana
University of Pennsylvania. He currently teaches writing at IUP and is a former Graduate
Assistant Director of both IUP and Sonoma State University’s writing centers.
64
Review
the frustrations in studying virtual peer review is that no concrete definition of the
activity exists; as far as I can tell, even my use of the term ‘virtual peer review’ is new”
(10). Breuch appears to be correct. There are few studies regarding this concentration,
and she is, to my knowledge, the first person to use this phrase to describe such an
activity. For a writing center practitioner, it is, at times, difficult to digest the idea that
virtual peer review is new considering the amount of research the writing center field
has put into online tutoring and OWLs. However, it is important to note that Breuch
separates her work from writing center pedagogy in one significant way. Breuch
suggests that student-student relationships are much different than either tutor-student or teacher-student relationships. The latter two relationships, according to
Breuch, involve more “power differential,” and less peer-ness, than student-student
relationships.
Breuch understandably promotes an optimistic overview of virtual peer review’s
elements. With so much apprehension toward integrating computer technology into
the classroom, it is important for her to argue this way. Interestingly, though, her optimism is embedded in a long, deliberate, critical examination of peer review, writing
studies, and computer technology. For example, Breuch’s most assertive claim in differentiating peer review from virtual peer review is that the latter “remediates” peer
review, suggesting that “electronic communication ‘borrows’ from face-to-face communication” (8), thereby changing the focus of the activity. This change in focus, for
Breuch, results in the primary difference between these pedagogies: the text-based
nature of virtual peer review calls for a review to be performed entirely by writing, thus
countering the oral nature of peer review. Breuch also details how virtual peer review
disrupts three major elements of peer review—time, space, and interaction—and discusses how attitudes shaped by virtual peer review are different from that of traditional peer review. Four of the book’s six chapters examine these extensions, or
differences, she claims distinguish each of these pedagogies from the other.
By focusing so much attention on the “differences” rather than the “similarities”
between these two pedagogies, Breuch leads her reader to a carefully constructed conclusion: that virtual peer review creates an “abnormal discourse” in regard to the normal discourses that pervade peer review, writing instruction, and computer
technology. Breuch frames this conclusion using works by Thomas Kuhn, Richard
Rorty, and Kenneth Burke, highlighting Rorty’s use of the terms “normal” and “abnormal discourse” (57). According to Breuch, the normal discourse of peer review suggests that writing conferences should be conducted orally, or face-to-face, between
active participants and is strongly backed by both composition studies and writingThe Writing Center Journal
Volume 25, No.1 (2005)
65
center praxis. Again, Breuch’s assertion has merit. For many of us, this is exactly how
we are used to conducting conferences with other writers, and are, perhaps, too comfortable with using. So, while reading Breuch’s explanation of abnormal discourse and
her argument of how virtual peer review possesses the qualities of abnormal discourse
in regard to peer review, it may be hard to digest thinking of virtual peer review as
“abnormal,” a term that suggests deviance. And while virtual peer review may, in fact,
be deviant from peer review, it does not, I hope, possess the negative connotations that
deviant or “abnormal” can so quickly imply. Breuch concludes this deconstruction by
suggesting that virtual peer review needs to create a new discourse, one that separates
it from face-to-face peer review.
If writing center folks are going to find anything deviant in the foundation Breuch
establishes for virtual peer review, I believe it will be in her acknowledgement and
acceptance of the directive nature virtual peer reviewers often assume when commenting on other’s writings. This potential complexity appears to serve as an impetus
for Chapter 4, in which Breuch examines issues concerning ownership and authorship. Recognizing how difficult it can be to get online tutors to stay away from usurping textual ownership from writers, one can only imagine how much more difficult it
can be to get lesser-trained writers to be less directive. However, Breuch challenges
this assumption, asking not what one can do to lessen potential usurpation, but how we
might re-think ownership and authorship in light of this situation. She suggests that a
student who receives a paper with directive comments must engage with those comments critically before applying them to his or her paper; thus, “virtual peer review is
a form of collaborative learning but should not be a form of collaborative writing” (87).
I was left wondering why Breuch only briefly touches on writing center literature
concerning OWLs and online tutoring, rather than using these works to recognize an
existing foundation for virtual peer review. Perhaps it is because of the peer relationships Breuch suggests students have with one another, as opposed to the conflicting
power relationships students have with tutors and teachers. When Breuch does recognize writing center literature, many of the references she makes are in an effort to construct a normal discourse for peer review in order to distinguish the “abnormal”
discourse of virtual peer review. For example, in Chapter 3, Breuch acknowledges that,
while recent writing center scholarship has examined tutorials “in terms of both oral
communication and written communication,” a strong preference still exists among
writing center scholars to use “such terms as ‘talk’ and ‘conversation’ to describe the
work of writing centers” (63). According to Breuch, this preference for traditional
peer review terminology marginalizes any new lexicon virtual peer review may
66
Review
eventually offer. There is, however, one very specific instance where Breuch uses writing center literature to assist in establishing her groundwork for virtual peer review.
Breuch effectively cites Barbara Monroe’s “The Look and Feel of the OWL
Conference,” using Monroe’s terminology to demonstrate ways students may make
comments on each others’ papers.
In Virtual Peer Review, Breuch achieves the goals she sets for her work. She has given
virtual peer review the explicit attention she believes it has needed and has provided
writing instructors with a concrete foundation for a pedagogy many of us have been
using and will continue to integrate into our classrooms and professional lives. For
writing center practitioners, this book offers a critical challenge of how our discourse
concerning face-to-face peer review has become a dominant discourse in writing pedagogy, perhaps without many of us even realizing it.
The Writing Center Journal
Volume 25, No.1 (2005)
67
Announcements
Please note: For the most current list of writing-center related announcements, go to
http://writingcenters.org.
Outstanding Scholarship Awards: Congratulations to the winners of the 2003 IWCA
Outstanding Scholarship Awards: Michael Pemberton, Joyce Kinkead, and Neal
Lerner. The following awards were presented at the Watson Conference October 9:
Best Book: Pemberton, Michael A., and Joyce Kinkead, eds. The Center Will Hold.
Logan: Utah State UP, 2003.
Best Article: Lerner, Neal. “Writing Center Assessment: Searching for the ‘Proof’ of
Our Effectiveness.” The Center Will Hold. Ed. Michael A. Pemberton and Joyce Kinkead.
Logan: Utah State UP, 2003. 58–73.
Maxwell Distinguished Leadership Award: Harvey Kail, Associate Professor of
English and Coordinator, University of Maine Writing Center, has won the 2004
NCPTW Ron Maxwell Award for Distinguished Leadership in Promoting the
Collaborative Learning Practices of Peer Tutors in Writing. The award recognizes dedication to and leadership in collaborative learning in writing centers, for aiding students in together taking on more responsibility for their learning, and, thus, for
promoting the work of peer tutors. The award also denotes extraordinary service to the
evolution of the conference organization.
A plaque and cash prize, presented October 30, 2004, at the 21st Annual National
Conference on Peer Tutoring in Writing hosted by Centenary College in Hackettstown,
NJ, were funded by an endowment from Ron and Mary Maxwell. A panel of five former
award recipients selected the winner from among the nominations.
Harvey’s nominators praised his “brilliance and compassion”; his “unassuming
manner and deep insightfulness”; his “way of hearing, of listening deeply to issues,
thinking broadly, and then posing solutions that would satisfy a wide range of needs”;
his work connecting writing centers locally, nationally, and internationally; and his
success in training tutors to become “models of peer consultant brilliance and mild
goofiness.” “He is a model of supporting (rather than supervising) collaboration and
peer interactions.” Nominators also appreciated that Harvey’s scholarship—often
68
Announcements
about peer tutoring—”has helped to build the core body of literature in our field, and
this has done a lot for the sense of community we have.”
Purdue Writing Lab Wins CCCC Writing Program Certificate of Excellence: The
Writing Lab at Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, is one of eleven winners of
the Conference on College Composition and Communication’s (CCCC’s) Writing
Program Certificate of Excellence for Fall 2004. Established in 2004, this CCCC award
is presented to 20 writing programs each year. The recipients of these awards will be
honored for their achievement at the CCCC Conference on March 18, 2005.
The Purdue Writing Lab was cited for its excellent work, successfully demonstrating
that their program meets the following criteria: it imaginatively addresses the needs
and opportunities of its students, instructors, and locale; offers exemplary ongoing
professional development for faculty of all ranks, including adjunct/contingent faculty; treats contingent faculty respectfully, humanely, and professionally; uses current
best practices in the field; uses effective, ongoing assessment and placement procedures; models diversity and/or serves diverse communities; has appropriate class size;
and has an administrator (chair, director, coordinator, etc.) with academic credentials
in writing. In particular, the Purdue program was noted for its OWL and Writing Lab,
together providing innovative and quality writing instruction to local, national, and
international communities.
Call for Papers: Teaching English in the Two-Year College (TETYC), Writing Centers and
the Two-Year College: Writing centers have served as valuable resources for decades.
During that time, writing centers, in addition to assisting student writers, have become
rich sites for research in writing practices across the curriculum. Moreover, they have
promoted effective and creative means of responding to student writing, shaping practices within the classroom, and promoting trends in the field of composition generally. Where do the writing centers at two-year colleges enter this historical narrative?
TETYC plans to publish a cluster of essays that attempt to write two-year colleges into
the history of writing centers. Manuscripts may investigate a broad range of questions,
including
• What histories of two-year college writing centers have already been written? What
do those histories tell us?
• What histories of such centers have yet to be written? What lessons can THEY
offer us?
The Writing Center Journal
Volume 25, No.1 (2005)
69
• How are two-year college writing centers similar to or different from their counterparts at four-year institutions? What advantages do they have? What unique
challenges might they face?
• Is peer tutoring possible in a two-year college writing center? What creative models do we know of for staffing and training?
• How does the mission of the two-year college, with its concern for career-specific
education, affect the mission of a writing center in that context/setting?
• How can a writing center foster a Writing-Across-the-Curriculum program in a
two-year-college?
• What productive relationships between writing centers and writing programs
are possible?
Papers submitted should conform to guidelines set out in the “Information for
Authors” <http://www.ncte.org/pubs/journals/tetyc/write/110526.htm>, published
in every issue of TETYC. Manuscripts of featured articles, instructional notes, and
reader commentary should be sent to Howard Tinberg, Editor, TETYC, Bristol
Community College, 777 Elsbree Street, Fall River, MA 02720. Deadline: March 1,
2005.
Call for Proposals: The International Writing Centers Association and the National
Conference on Peer Tutoring in Writing are pleased to announce their 2nd joint conference, “Navigating the Boundary Waters: The Politics of Identity, Location, and
Stewardship,” October 19–23, 2005. The conference will be held at the Hyatt Regency
Hotel in Minneapolis, Minnesota and hosted by the Midwest Writing Centers
Association.
Proposals should include a fifty-word abstract and a 350-word description. Please
consider a variety of formats as you write your proposals including, but not limited to,
workshops and mini-workshops, facilitated discussions, roundtable discussions,
panels, and/or presentation of research at the research fair. Questions about the 2005
IWCA/NCPTW Conference and Call For Papers may be directed to Frankie Condon at
[email protected]. Proposals may be submitted online beginning February
1, 2005. Please go to www.writingcenters.org and click on the 2005 conference link.
Deadline for Submissions is March 1, 2005.
70
Announcements
Call for Proposals: “Writing Empowerment throughout the Disciplines,” East Central
Writing Centers Association 27th Annual Conference, Siena Heights University,
Adrian, Michigan, April 1–2, 2005.
In the same manner students struggle with the written form, writing centers grapple
to empower their clients with the skills necessary to succeed in a variety of environments. As though this task were not daunting enough, a large percentage of students
arrive from courses or institutions that have not equipped them with the skills necessary to effectively respond to writing center services. Thus, how do we work with those
students who are not prepared to be empowered, and how does that assistance translate into independence? In addition, what practices or skills must peer writing assistants adopt to prevent students from becoming dependent on services that are offered
in the writing center? Given the limited resources in academic communities, it has
become imperative for peer writing assistants to function with equal proficiency when
working with students of all disciplines, to ensure investment in writing centers. Thus,
how can we make writing centers interdisciplinary, and how do we encourage faculty to
view the writing center as a valuable resource for their courses?
Additional topics are also welcomed.
All proposals must include a 150–200 word description, abstract, title, and should
be postmarked by February 11, 2005. Presenters may also choose to give a 25-minute
presentation, joined with another of a similar topic, or a group presentation of 50 minutes. Please indicate presentation selection with proposal and indicate the equipment
necessary for the presentation(s). Also, please provide name, phone number, E-mail
address, and institution of all presenters. Please send all inquiries to April MasonIrelan, Siena Heights University, 1247 East Siena Heights Drive, Adrian, Michigan
49221, (517)-264-7638, [email protected]. Conference website: http://www.
sienahts.edu/~eng/ECWCA/ecwca.htm
Call for Proposals: “Local Practice/Global Vision,” European Writing Centers
Association Conference, June 17–19, 2005, Halkidiki, Greece.
The aims of this Conference—as perceived within a framework of viewing our various “local” practices within a larger philosophical and global vision—are threefold:
1. to continue cultivating links among Writing Center practitioners across Europe
2. to create a forum for bridging international models of Writing Center theory
and practice
3. to contribute to the evolution of Writing Center work into the 21st century,
including technology
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Keynote Speaker: Dr. Gerd Brauer, Asst. Prof. in German Studies, Emory University
(USA) and Visiting Professor at the University of Education, Frieburg, Germany,
author of Writing Across Languages (2000), editor of Teaching Academic Writing in
European Higher Education (2003).
Suggested Proposal Topics:
• International models of Writing Center theory and practice: taking stock of
cross-currents and intercontinental trends
• Writing Center practices in relation to cultural and cross-cultural practices
• Tutoring and Peer-tutoring in multilingual contexts
• Writing Center technology for the 21st century
Proposals are invited from anyone involved or interested in Writing Center theory,
practice, research, and/or development: including Writing Center administrators,
professional tutors, peer tutors, researchers, curriculum developers, and educators of
all disciplines involved in writing-across-the-curriculum programs. Proposals can
be for Presentations (60 minutes with 15 minutes for questions—inclusive),
Workshops (90 minutes—interactive), or Panels/Roundtables (75 minutes 15 minutes
for questions—inclusive).
Conference Language: English
Deadline for Submission of Abstracts: January 31, 2005
Deadline for Conference Registration (presenters & non-presenters): Feb. 25,
2005
Conference website: http://ewca.sabanciuniv.edu/ewca2005/
Conference Announcement: The Southern California Writing Centers Association,
which is not yet an official entity but is an active group, will host a tutor conference
February 26, 2005, at Glendale Community College. The day-long conference will
again feature tutor facilitated-discussion tables and director-facilitated fine food. For
more information, email Carol Haviland ([email protected]).
Directors continue to meet every other month, rotating among campuses. New
members may join the listserv by emailing Rob Rundquist (robert.rundquist@
chaffey.edu).
Conference Announcement: The Pacific Northwest Writing Center Association will
sponsor its second annual conference on Saturday, April 16, 2005, at the University of
Washington, Bothell. Considering how our rich pedagogy influences our campuses
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Announcements
under the theme “When the Margin Moves to the Center,” this year’s event features a
keynote address by Nancy Grimm, Director of the Michigan Technological University
Writing Center and author of Good Intentions: Writing Center Work for Postmodern Times.
For further information, including a copy of the CFP, contact conference chair, Becky
Reed Rosenberg ([email protected]).
Project Announcement: Forthcoming issues of The Writing Lab Newsletter will include
progress reports on an important new project to collect handouts and other materials
on <writingcenters.org>, the International Writing Centers Association Web site. The
planned outcome is to have a central repository where writing centers can share materials. For more information, contact Bill Macauley ([email protected]), who is
chairing this project.
Call for Proposals: Marginal Words, Marginal Work? Tutoring the Academy in the Work of
Writing Centers. Edited by William J. Macauley, Jr. & Nicholas Mauriello, and published
as part of the Hampton Press series on Composition and Literacy.
On your campus, who is really clear on what your writing center does? Outside of
those who actually work there, who understands the scope of that work and its relationship to the academy? And, if others do understand writing center work, how did
that knowledge come about? How did the writing center facilitate that learning? Even
though writing centers have made it out of the dormitory basement at the far edge of
campus, their work is not always clearly understood or sufficiently supported. How can
we tutor our campus communities, administrators, faculty, and students toward the
most effective use of writing center resources?
This collection investigates historical, practical, and theoretical issues relative to
helping others understand writing center work. Based on the premise that writing
centers already know how to guide learners toward more productive and successful
work, this volume invites researchers and scholars to provide historical, theoretical,
and practical support to those who have done this work, will do this work, and want to
improve their practices in this work.
For more details, email Bill Macauley or Nick Mauriello at the addresses provided
below. Please send 500-word proposals, completed manuscripts, or selected documents (MS Word, PC compatible) in an email message and attachment together by no
later than January 15th, 2005 to Bill Macauley at [email protected] and Nick
Mauriello at [email protected]. Exceptional late proposals/manuscripts may be accepted. Submission responses will be sent on or before 2/28/05.
The Writing Center Journal
Volume 25, No.1 (2005)
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Call for Proposals: The Clearing House will be publishing a special edition on secondary school writing centers in its September/October 2006 issue. Research on writing
centers in secondary schools has been limited despite the existence of centers in public and independent schools since the 1970s. These centers have a variety of purposes
and function in unique ways with common issues of funding, staffing, and roles within the institution. This special edition will consider these and other related issues to
help our audience gain a perspective on the significant role a writing center can play
in the thinking, writing, and learning of a secondary school community and beyond.
We encourage middle, secondary school, and college writing center directors and
tutors, as well as teachers of all subjects, to submit proposals of approximately 250
words to Pamela B. Childers, The McCallie School, ([email protected]) by May 1,
2005. Final submissions (2,500–3,000 words) will be due by February 1, 2006.
The Clearing House offers informative, practical articles on teaching and administration in middle schools and junior and senior high schools. All submissions are blind
reviewed by peers in the field. Educators report their successes with various teaching
techniques, as well as present articles on administrative procedures, school programs, and teacher education for the secondary level. Theoretical articles, results of
research, and occasional pieces on comparative education also appear.
Call for Papers: Open Words: College English and Open Access. Open Words is dedicated
to publishing articles focusing on political, professional, and pedagogical issues related to teaching composition, reading, and literature at open admissions campuses. We
seek critical work in areas such as instructional strategies, cultural studies, critical
theory, classroom materials, technological innovation, institutional critique, student
services, program development, etc., that assist educators, administrators, and student support personnel who work with students in open admissions settings. Articles
should consider the particularities of these settings—issues, for example, surrounding
the identifier of “open access,” intersections of race, class, gender, and sexuality, and
the range of competencies students bring with them to classrooms—in light of the
aims of English studies to empower students’ critical and creative endeavors. We value
works pertinent to specialists yet accessible to non-specialists, and we encourage
submissions that take into account what interactions with students teach us about the
broader, democratic goals of open access educations and English studies. Send 15- to
30-page submissions for the inaugural issue of Open Words to Editors John Paul
Tassoni (Miami University Middletown) at [email protected] and William H.
Thelin (University of Akron) at [email protected].
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Announcements
Call for Papers: The Writing Lab Newsletter, a monthly publication for those who work
in the tutorial setting of a writing lab, invites manuscripts. Authors are invited to submit articles, book reviews, papers presented at regional conferences, reports of writing lab conferences, articles by tutors, and news of regional groups and/or specific
writing labs. Recommended length is 10 to 15 double-spaced pages for articles and 3 to
4 pages for tutors’ essays for the “Tutors’ Column,” though longer and shorter articles
are also invited. Please use MLA format. If possible, send hard copy and a 3.5 in. computer disk (any Macintosh or DOS is acceptable, and we can work with most word processing programs). We will also accept manuscripts via e-mail ([email protected]) as an
attachment in Word, ASCII, or text-only (with no line breaks). The e-mail “cover letter” should include author’s name, address, and phone/fax, as well as the name of the
file attached and name plus version of the word processing package used.
Subscriptions to WLN are $15/yr. ($20 in Canada). Make checks payable to Purdue
University. Send newsletter materials and subscription requests to: Professor Muriel
Harris, Editor, Writing Lab Newsletter, Dept. of English, 500 Oval Drive, Purdue
University, West Lafayette, IN 47907-2930. Phone: 765-494-7268; fax: 765-4943780; e-mail: [email protected] or [email protected]; website: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/files/newsletter.html.
Call for Papers: Composition Studies, first published as Freshman English News in 1972,
is the oldest independent scholarly journal in rhetoric and composition. CS/FEN publishes essays on theories of composition and rhetoric, the teaching and administration
of writing and rhetoric at all post-secondary levels, and disciplinary/institutional
issues of interest to the field’s teacher-scholars. Each issue includes Course Designs,
an innovative feature on curricular development in writing and rhetoric of interest to
teachers at all post-secondary levels. CS/FEN also includes lengthy review essays,
written by rhetoric and composition’s leading authors, of current scholarly books in
the field.
See the journal web site for all submission guidelines. Those wishing to submit to
Course Designs are strongly urged to see the full project statement, also available from
the web site. Those interested in writing review essays should forward a letter and CV
to the editor. All unsolicited manuscripts are reviewed blind by two external readers.
Composition Studies is published twice each year (April/May and October/November).
Subscription rates are: Individuals $15 (Domestic) and $20 (International);
Institutions $25 (Domestic) and $30 (International); Graduate Students $12. Back
issues are available at $6. Send all inquiries to: Carrie Leverenz and Ann George,
Editors, Composition Studies, Texas Christian University, Department of English, TCU
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Volume 25, No.1 (2005)
75
Box 297270, Fort Worth, TX 76129. E-mail: [email protected]; website:
http://www.compositionstudies.tcu.edu.
Call for Submissions: The Dangling Modifier, produced by Penn State tutors in association with the National Conference on Peer Tutoring in Writing, needs your tutors!
The editorial staff is still considering manuscripts for our next online issue (see
http://www.ulc.psu.edu/Dangling_Modifier/index.htm).
If you are teaching a tutor training class or any other class in relation to writing centers, please encourage your students to consider transforming their papers into articles for this national publication. Or if you have veteran peer tutors who might be
interested in writing an article, please send this message along to them. Also, if you
would like to nominate a very special tutor to be featured in this issue, please send us
your article along with the tutor’s photograph. We appreciate and try to use all
submissions!
We request that the manuscripts be 500 words or less. Please include name, e-mail,
title, and college information for each submission. Manuscripts can be submitted via
email at [email protected]. At the discretion of our staff, accepted manuscripts may be e-tutored before publication.
Call for Submissions: Praxis: A Writing Center Journal is an online publication that represents the collaboration of writing center consultants and directors across the
nation. We invite article submissions for our upcoming issues. The theme for the fall
2005 issue is whom we serve: who visits the writing center, why, and how we can help.
This issue’s deadline is April 10. In addition to pieces on these themes, we invite short
article submissions on other writing center-related topics from consultants and
administrators. Praxis is a project of the University of Texas Undergraduate Writing
Center.
View the complete call for articles and submissions guidelines at http://uwc3.fac.
utexas.edu/~praxis/.
Also check out the fall issue of Praxis: A Writing Center Journal this September at
http://uwc.fac.utexas.edu/praxis. In this issue, we hear from innovators in two of the
fastest growing areas of the writing center community: secondary school and community writing centers.
Call for Submissions: IWCA Update: The International Writing Centers Association
Newsletter. IWCA Update is published twice per year: one issue in the Winter/Spring
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Announcements
semester (late January/early February) and the second in early Fall semester (late
September/early October). The newsletter is circulated to all current members of
IWCA and Update contributors. The purpose of IWCA Update is to provide IWCA members with the most current information about the organization and its work. Update is
also dedicated to providing for writing center professionals a forum in which a wide
range of information and writing can be found, work that is important to the field and
might not otherwise find publication. Finally, IWCA Update strives to provide up-todate announcements, calls for proposals and/or submissions, information on awards,
discussion/review of publications, and information on IWCA, IWCA regional, and
other writing-related conferences.
Submissions for the fall issue should be received by no later than July 31st.
Submissions for the winter/spring issue should be received by no later than December
1st. All submissions should be sent via email to [email protected]. Each submission
should be sent separately. Please include your full name, as you would like it to appear
in the newsletter, current title/position, institution, and complete contact information
in the email. Each electronic submission should be in an MS Word document attached
to the email AND pasted into the email message itself. For submission guidelines or for
more information, call Bill Macauley, Update Editor, at 330-823-8440 or email
[email protected].
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Volume 25, No.1 (2005)
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International Writing Centers Association
Membership Form
The Assembly: The International Writing Centers Association, an NCTE Assembly,
was founded in 1983 to foster communication among writing centers and to provide a
forum for concerns. Comprising directors and staffs of writing centers at universities,
two-year colleges, and public schools, the IWCA is governed by an Executive Board that
includes representatives from the regional writing center organizations.
Publications: The IWCA sponsors two publications. The Writing Lab Newsletter,
edited by Muriel Harris at Purdue, provides a monthly forum for writing center concerns during the academic year. The Writing Center Journal, edited by Neal Lerner and
Elizabeth Boquet, offers in its two issues per year longer articles on writing center
theory and research. The IWCA also sponsors the International Writing Centers
Assocation Press.
Awards: IWCA offers the following awards: (1) an award to recognize individuals who
have made significant contributions to writing centers, and (2) awards to recognize
outstanding publications on writing centers. In addition, small grants are available to
graduate students whose research focuses on writing centers and to researchers seeking external funds for writing-center related projects. IWCA also supports regional
association conferences with speaker grants.
Meeting: The IWCA Executive Board meets twice a year, once during NCTE and once
during CCCC, and during a International Writing Centers Association conference in
alternate years. At NCTE, IWCA sponsors either a day-long workshop, or an Active
Writing Center; at CCCC, the assembly sponsors a special interest session, along with
an exchange of writing center materials. Executive Board meetings are always open to
the membership.
Name: __________________________________________________________________________________
Preferred Mailing Address: ____________________________________________________________
Options
IWCA Membership
Membership + WCJ
Membership + WLN
Membership + WCJ + WLN
U.S.
$10
$25
$25
$40
Canada
$10
$30
$30
$50
Overseas
$10
$30
$50
$70
Make checks payable to IWCA; mail to Ben Rafoth, IWCA Treasurer, 110 Leonard
Hall, Indiana Univ. of PA, Indiana, PA 15705-1094. (724) 357-3029, [email protected].
IWCA cannot send out invoices nor process purchase orders.
For more information on the IWCA, see http://writingcenters.org/.
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IWCA Information
International Writing Centers Association
An NCTE Assembly
Officers
Jon Olson
President
Penn State University
Ben Rafoth
Treasurer
Indiana University of Pennsylvania
James Inman
Vice President
University of South Florida
Paula Gillespie
Past President
Marquette University
Jill Pennington
Secretary
Lansing Community College
Members of the IWCA Board
Penny Bird
RMWCA Representative
Brigham-Young University
William J. Macauley, Jr.
At-Large Representative
Mount Union College
Elizabeth Boquet
Writing Center Journal
Fairfield University
Muriel Harris
Writing Lab Newsletter
Purdue University
Patricia Stephens
NEWCA Representative
Lond Island University
Carol Haviland
SoCalWCA Representative
Cal. State San Bernardino
Anna Challenger
European Representative
American College of Thessaloniki
Roberta Kjesrud
Pacific Northwest WCA
Western Washington University
Pam Childers
At-Large Representative
The McCallie School
Allison Holland
SCWCA Representative
University of Arkansas Little Rock
Frankie Condon
MWCA Representative
St. Cloud State University
Sharifa Daniels
At-Large Representative
Stellenbosch University
Michael Pemberton
At-Large Representative
Georgia Southern University
Bob Barnett
At-Large Representative
University of Michigan-Flint
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Volume 25, No.1 (2005)
79
Neal Lerner
Writing Center Journal
MIT
Byron Stay
IWCA Press
Mt. St. Mary’s College
Barbara Lutz
MAWCA Representative
University of Delaware
Kurt P. Kearcher
At-Large Representative
California University of Pennsylvania
Troy W. Hicks
Graduate Student Representative
Michigan State University
Clint Gardner
Community College Representative
Salt Lake Community College
Marcy Trianosky
SEWCA Representative
Hollins University
Nathalie Singh-Corcoran
At-Large Representative
University of Arizona
Jenny Jordan
Secondary School Representative
Glenbrook North High School
Tim Catalano
ECWCA Representative
Marietta College
Otto Kruse
EATAW
Zurich Univ of Applied Sciences
IWCA Web Site
For information about the International Writing Centers Association, visit the
IWCA Web site at: http://writingcenters.org/.
Computer List
Writing center personnel with Internet access may be interested in a list devoted to
discussion of writing center practice and theory. WCENTER is for anyone interested
in writing centers.
To subscribe to WCENTER, send a message to: [email protected]
Leave the subject line blank. In the message window, type a two-line message:
subscribe wcenter <your name>
set wcenter mail ack
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IWCA Information
International Writing Centers Association
Research Grants Guidelines
Purpose: The International Writing Centers Association (IWCA) serves to strengthen
the writing center community through all of its activities. To encourage the advancement of existing theories and methods and the creation of new knowledge and support
of new colleagues, the IWCA offers its Research Grant and Graduate Research Grant.
These grants support quantitative, qualitative, theoretical, and applied projects associated with writing center research and application. The Graduate Research Grant supports projects associated with a master’s thesis or doctoral dissertation. While funding
travel is not the primary purpose of these grants, we have supported travel as part of
specific research activities (e.g., traveling to specific sites, libraries, or archives to
conduct research) or to disseminate research findings that this grant also funded.
However, this fund is not intended to support solely conference travel; instead, that
travel must be part of some larger research program stipulated in the grant request.
Award: $500–$750
(Note: IWCA reserves the right to modify the award amount.)
Application: Complete application packets contain the following items (electronic
applications accepted):
1. Cover letter: Addressed to the current IWCA President, the letter should do the following:
• request IWCA’s consideration of the application.
• introduce the applicant and the project.
• specify how grant monies will be used (materials, travel, conference registration, etc.) in an itemized budget.
2. Project Summary: 1–3 page summary of the proposed project, its research questions and goals, methods, schedule, current status, etc. Locate the project within the
relevant, extant literature.
3. Curriculum Vitae
4. For Graduate Research Grant only—Letter of Support: Please include a support letter from the thesis/dissertation director.
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Process: Proposal deadlines are January 1 and July 1. After each deadline, the IWCA
President will forward copies of the complete packet to the Board for consideration,
discussion, and vote. Applicants can expect notification within 4–6 weeks from
receipt of application materials.
Stipulations:
1. IWCA support must be acknowledged in any presentation or publication of the
resulting research findings.
2. Copies of resulting publications or presentations must be forwarded to IWCA in the
care of the Executive Secretary.
3. Recipients must submit a final project report to the IWCA Board, in care of the
Executive Secretary, due within 12 months of receipt of grant monies. If the project
extends more than one year, recipients must file a progress report to the Executive
Secretary at the one-year point.
4. Recipients are strongly encouraged to submit a manuscript coming out of the supported research to one of the two IWCA-affiliated publications, The Writing Lab
Newsletter or The Writing Center Journal, or to the IWCA Press, with the understanding
that they are willing to work with the editor(s) and reviewer(s) to revise the manuscript
for potential publication.
For information or to discuss the project’s fit to the award’s guidelines, contact the
current IWCA President. Names and addresses of the President and Board members
are available on the IWCA Homepage at http://writingcenters.org/.
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IWCA Information
IWCA Honor Roll
Muriel Harris Outstanding Service Award
1984 Muriel Harris
1987 Joyce Kinkead
1991 Jeanette Harris
1994 Lady Falls Brown
1997 Byron Stay
2000 Jeanne Simpson
2003 Pamela Childers
Outstanding Scholarship Awards
1985 Stephen North, “The Idea of a Writing Center”
Donald A. McAndrew and Thomas J. Reigstad, Training Tutors for Writing
Conferences
1987 Edward Lotto, “The Writer’s Subject is Sometimes a Fiction”
Irene Lurkis Clark, Teaching in a Writing Center Setting
1988 John Trimbur, “Peer Tutoring: A Contradiction in Terms?”
Muriel Harris, Teaching One-to-One
1989 Jeanette Harris and Joyce Kinkead, “Computers, Computers, Computers”
1990 Richard Behm, “Ethical Issues in Peer Tutoring”
Lisa Ede, “Writing as a Social Process”
Pamela B. Farrell, The High School Writing Center
1991 Lex Runciman, “Defining Ourselves: Do We Really Want to Use the Word
‘Tutor’?”
Jeanne Simpson and Ray Wallace, eds., The Writing Center: New Directions
1992 Alice Gillam, “Writing Center Ecology: A Bakhtinian Perspective”
Muriel Harris, “Solutions and Trade-offs in Writing Center Administration”
1993 Anne DiPardo, “‘Whispers of Coming and Going’: Lessons from Fannie”
Meg Woolbright, “The Politics of Tutoring: Feminism Within the Patriarchy”
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1994 Michael Pemberton, Ethics Column in Writing Lab Newsletter
1995 Christina Murphy, “The Writing Center and Social Constructionist Theory”
Joan A. Mullin and Ray Wallace, eds., Intersections: Theory-Practice in
the Writing Center
1996 Peter Carino, “Theorizing the Writing Center: An Uneasy Task”
Joe Law and Christina Murphy, eds., Landmark Essays on Writing Centers
1997 Peter Carino, “Open Admissions and the Construction of Writing
Center History: A Tale of Three Models”
Christina Murphy, Joe Law, and Steve Sherwood, eds., Writing Centers: An
Annotated Bibliography
1998 Nancy Grimm, “The Regulatory Role of the Writing Center: Coming to Terms
with a Loss of Innocence”
1999 Neal Lerner, “Drill Pads, Teaching Machines, Programmed Texts: Origins of
Instructional Technology In Writing Centers”
Eric Hobson, ed., Wiring the Writing Center
2000 Elizabeth Boquet, “‘Our Little Secret’: A History of Writing Centers, Pre- to
Post-Open Admissions”
Nancy Maloney Grimm, Good Intentions: Writing Center Work for Postmodern
Times
2001 Neal Lerner, “Confessions of a First-Time Writing Center Director”
Cindy Johanek, Composing Research: A Contextualist Paradigm for Rhetoric and
Composition
2002 Valerie Balester and James C. McDonald, “A View of Status and Working
Conditions: Relations Between Writing Program and Writing Center
Directors”
Jane Nelson and Kathy Evertz, eds., The Politics of Writing Centers
2003 Sharon Thomas, Julie Bevins, and Mary Ann Crawford, “The Portfolio Project:
Sharing Our Stories.”
Paula Gillespie, Alice Gillam, Lady Falls Brown, and Byron Stay, eds., Writing
Center Research: Extending the Conversation
2004 Neal Lerner, “Writing Center Assessment: Searching for the ‘Proof’ of Our
Effectiveness”
Michael A. Pemberton and Joyce Kinkead, eds. The Center Will Hold
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IWCA Information
IWCA Graduate Student Research Award Recipients
1986
Evelyn J. Posey, “Microcomputers, Basic Writing, and the Writing Center”
1987
Mary Kilmer, “Writing Centers and Content-Area Courses”
1989
James Bell, “Perceptions and Behaviors of Writing Center Tutors”
1991
Eric Hobson, “Centering Composition Instruction: The Roles of Writing
Centers in Composition Programs”
1995
Deborah D’Agati, “Writing Center Tutor Training and Classroom Response
Groups”
Neal Lerner, “Teaching and Learning in a University Writing Center: An
Ethnographic Study”
1996
Stuart Blythe, “Conceptualizing the Technologies of Writing Center Practice”
1999
Anne E. Geller, “‘A Big Tangled Mess’: New Graduate Student Tutors Reflect
on their Experiences in the Writing Center”
2001
Eliza Drewa, “Reconstructing Practice, Reconstructing Identity: How Tutors
Move from Orthodoxy to Informed Flexibility
Sarah Mitzel, “A Descriptive Study of the Interpersonal Concerns of Writing
Center Users,”
Melissa Nicolas (Dunbar), “Feminization of Writing Centers: Fact and/or
Fiction”
2002
Kerri Jordan, “Power and Empowerment in Writing Center Conferences”
Francien Rohrbacher, “Are Writing Centers Polite? An Exploration of the
Patterns and Effectiveness of Politeness in Writing Center Tutorials”
2003
Rebecca Day, “Tutoring Deaf Students”
Katie Levin, “How are the Educational Epistemologies of Tutors Constructed
and Enacted in Writing Centers?”
2004
Karen Rowan, “Graduate Student Administrators and Administrative
Professional Development in the Writing Center”
Amanda Beth Godbee, “Outside the Center and Inside the Home: Exploring
Relationships Among Environment, Community, and Effective Tutoring”
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IWCA Research Grant Award Recipients
1999
Irene Clark, “Student-Tutor Perspectives on the Directive/Non-Directive
Continuum”
2000
Beth Rapp Young, “The Relationship Between Individual Differences in
Procrastination, Peer Feedback, and Student Writing Success”
Elizabeth Boquet, “A Study of the Rhode Island College Writing Center”
2001
Carol Chalk, “Gertrude Buck and the Writing Center”
Neal Lerner, “Searching for Robert Moore”
Bee H. Tan, “Formulating an Online Writing Lab Model for Tertiary ESL
Students”
2002
86
Julie Eckerle, Karen Rowan, and Shevaun Watson, “From Graduate Student
to Administrator: Practical Models for Mentorship and Professional
Development in Writing Centers and Writing Programs.”
IWCA Information
Information For the Authors
The Writing Center Journal’s primary purpose is to publish articles, reviews, and
announcements of interest to writing center personnel. We therefore invite manuscripts that explore issues or theories related to writing center dynamics or administration. We are especially interested in theoretical articles and in reports of research
related to or conducted in writing centers. In addition to administrators and practitioners from college and university writing centers, we encourage directors of high
school and middle school writing centers to submit manuscripts.
Guidelines for Submission
1. Manuscripts should be between 4,000 and 8,000 words and should include a list
of works cited. Manuscripts should follow the NCTE Guidelines for Non-sexist Use
of Language and the MLA Handbook, 6th edition.
2. Submissions to WCJ should be made via e-mail as an MS Word attached file to both
[email protected] and [email protected].
3. Manuscripts judged by the editors to be appropriate for the journal are submitted
for blind review to two external readers. Approximately fifty percent of manuscripts submitted to WCJ are sent out for review. Manuscripts are accepted for
review with the understanding that they have not been submitted or published
elsewhere.
4. Receipt of a manuscript is acknowledged with an e-mail message. Authors are
notified of decisions on the disposition of manuscripts within 8–10 weeks of submission.
5. Copyright of all articles published in The Writing Center Journal, including the right
to reproduce them in any form or media, is assigned solely to WCJ.
For additional information, go to http://www.writing.ku.edu/wcj/.
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Volume 25, No.1 (2005)
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