Theories and Methods of Writing Center Studies


Book Description

This collection helps students and researchers understand the foundations of writing center studies in order to make sound decisions about the types of methods and theoretical lenses that will help them formulate and answer their research questions. In the collection, accomplished writing center researchers discuss the theories and methods that have enabled their work, providing readers with a useful and accessible guide to developing research projects that interest them and make a positive contribution. It introduces an array of theories, including genre theory, second-language acquisition theory, transfer theory, and disability theory, and guides novice and experienced researchers through the finer points of methods such as ethnography, corpus analysis, and mixed-methods research. Ideal for courses on writing center studies and pedagogy, it is essential reading for researchers and administrators in writing centers and writing across the curriculum or writing in the disciplines programs.




Center Will Hold


Book Description

In The Center Will Hold, Pemberton and Kinkead have compiled a major volume of essays on the signal issues of scholarship that have established the writing center field and that the field must successfully address in the coming decade. The new century opens with new institutional, demographic, and financial challenges, and writing centers, in order to hold and extend their contribution to research, teaching, and service, must continuously engage those challenges. Appropriately, the editors offer the work of Muriel Harris as a key pivot point in the emergence of writing centers as sites of pedagogy and research. The volume develops themes that Harris first brought to the field, and contributors here offer explicit recognition of the role that Harris has played in the development of writing center theory and practice. But they also use her work as a springboard from which to provide reflective, descriptive, and predictive looks at the field.




The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Writing Center


Book Description

The Allyn & Bacon Guide to Writing Center Theory and Practice offers, in unparalleled breadth and depth, the major scholarship on writing centers. This up-to-date resource for students, instructors, and scholars anthologizes essays on all major areas of interest to writing center theorists and practitioners. Seven sections provide a comprehensive view of writing centers: history, progress, theorizing the writing center, defining the writing center's place, writing-across-the curriculum, the practice of tutoring, cultural issues, and technology.




Landmark Essays on Writing Centers


Book Description

This collection introduces the reader to the ideas that have shaped writing center theory and practice. The essays have been selected not only for the insight they offer into issues but also for their contributions to writing center scholarship. These papers help to chart the legitimation of writing centers by providing both a history and an examination of the philosophies, praxis, and politics that have defined this emerging field. They demonstrate the ways a clearer profile of the discipline has emerged from the research and reflection of writers, like those represented here. This volume charts the emergence of writing centers and the growing recognition of their contributions, roles, and importance. As a nascent discipline, writing centers reflect the concerns with marginality and with finding a respected place in the academy that characterize any new field of academic inquiry, practice, and research. Concomitantly, professionals in these fields seek standing within the academy and a way of defining and validating their contributions to the educational process. Contemporary writing center theorists look to interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary investigations to interpret the work they do and to clarify their aims to the academy at large. Their work employs a variety of philosophical perspectives -- ranging from sociolinguistics to psychoanalytic theory -- to show the complex nature and potential of writing center interactions. The idea has now become the multidimensional realities of the writing center within the academy and within society as a whole. What its role will be in future redefinitions of the educational process, how that role will be negotiated and evaluated, and how professionals will shape educational values will constitute the future landmark directions and essays on writing center theory and practice.







Writing Center Research


Book Description

There are writing centers at almost every college and university in the United States, and there is an emerging body of professional discourse, research, and writing about them. The goal of this book is to open, formalize, and further the dialogue about research in and about writing centers. The original essays in this volume, all written by writing center researchers, directly address current concerns in several ways: they encourage studies, data collection, and publication by offering detailed, reflective accounts of research; they encourage a diversity of approaches by demonstrating a range of methodologies (e.g., ethnography, longitudinal case study; rhetorical analysis, teacher research) available to both veteran and novice writing center professionals; they advance an ongoing conversation about writing center research by explicitly addressing epistemological and ethical issues. The book aims to encourage and guide other researchers, while at the same time offering new knowledge that has resulted from the studies it analyzes.




CounterStories from the Writing Center


Book Description

CounterStories from the Writing Center gathers emerging scholars of colour and their white accomplices to challenge some of the most cherished lore about the work of writing centres. Writing within an intersectional feminist frame, this volume’s contributors name and critique the dominant role that white, straight, cis-gendered women have played in writing centre administration as well as in the field of writing centre studies. This work will shake the field’s core assumptions about itself. Practicing what Derrick Bell has termed “creative truth telling,” these writers are not concerned with individual white women in writing centres but with the social, political, and cultural capital that is the historical birthright of white, straight, cis-gendered women, particularly in writing centre studies. The essays collected in this volume test, defy, and overflow the bounds of traditional academic discourse in the service of powerful testimony, witness, and counterstory. CounterStories from the Writing Center is a must-read for writing centre directors, scholars, and tutors who are committed to antiracist pedagogy and offers a robust intersectional analysis to those who seek to understand the relationship between the work of writing centres and the problem of racism. Accessible and usable for both graduate and undergraduate students of writing centre theory and practice, this work troubles the field’s commonplaces and offers a rich envisioning of what writing centres materially committed to inclusion and equity might be and do. Contributors: Dianna Baldwin, Nicole Caswell, Mitzi Ceballos, Romeo Garcia, Neisha-Anne Green, Doug Kern, T. Haltiwanger Morrison, Bernice Olivas, Moira Ozias, Trixie Smith, Willow Trevino




Empowering Students Through Multilingual and Content Discourse


Book Description

Empowering Students Through Multilingual and Content Discourse is a peer-reviewed research book that challenges the traditional monolingual classroom approach, where the teacher's voice dominates and only the dominant culture's language is considered the path to success. The book aims to empower students by creating classroom spaces where all voices are heard, valued, and empowered. It draws on research from scholars who study discourse and offers insights into how discourse can be used to promote language and literacy development, honor all students' voices, and empower them. This book also provides guidance on culturally and linguistically sustaining discourse practices and encourages educators to incorporate students' home languages and discourse practices in classroom instruction. It challenges educators to move away from centering White English and represent language more responsibly within the classroom. This research is a valuable resource for academic scholars and a useful tool for teachers looking to cultivate student-centered classroom practices. By encouraging discourse among students, educators can create a space where human life holds meaning, and students feel empowered to act and use their voices.




Writing Centers


Book Description

Prepared by writing center directors, the articles in this book examine the pedagogical theories of tutorial services and relate them to actual center practices. The 19 articles are arranged into three categories: writing center theory, writing center administration, and special concerns. Specific topics discussed in the articles include the following: (1) collaborative learning, (2) writing center research, (3) promoting cognitive development in the writing center, (4) writing centers in the two-year college, (5) developing a peer tutoring program, (6) the handbook as a supplement to a tutor training program, (7) reluctant students, (8) prewriting for the laboratory, (9) meeting the needs of foreign students, (10) tutoring business and technical students, (11) attitudes in writing center relationships, (12) financial responsibility, (13) form design and record management, and (14) undergraduate staffing in the center. A selected bibliography concludes the book. (FL)




Landmark Essays in Contemporary Writing Center Studies


Book Description

This volume collects essential writings in the field of writing center studies as it has blossomed and developed since the 1995 publication of Landmark Essays on Writing Centers. These writings offer a new generation of writing center readers' provocative ideas and research-based praxis on the topics covered in the book’s four parts: Writing Center History, Critical Perspectives on Current Practices, Writing Center Research, and Writing Centers in New Spaces. Its provocative chapters discuss issues including student agency, collaboration, social justice and marginalized populations, community engagement, and online writing instruction. Landmark Essays in Contemporary Writing Center Studies provides an up-to-date introduction to new students and a useful reference for long-time practitioners. It is essential reading for undergraduate and graduate students in composition and education, as well as writing center staff and directors.