ENGL810 Paper #2 Major Questions

When writing centers established themselves as a subdiscipline in the late 1970s, a central issue became definition. What is a writing center? What are writing centers? Here I explore three sub-questions related to definition: What is a writing center professional (WCP)? What is writing center pedagogy? and How does technology and medium (media) affect writing centers?

What is a writing center professional (WCP)?

WCPs have been concerned about their status in English Studies since they started the subdiscipline in the late 1970s. Stephen North’s 1984 “The Idea of a Writing Center,” published in College English, calls out “people in English departments” (45) “not involved with writing centers” (44); it directly reflects the tension between WCPs and the rest of the English department. In 1985 Jeanne Simpson attempted to articulate what a WCP is, i.e. the uniqueness of the position and qualifications necessary and knowledges from psychology to finances. Simpson argues that “presenting writing center directors as professionals is, in fact, one of the most important tasks facing the writing center movement” (para. 8). Importantly, she notes, “directorships should include access to promotion, salary, tenure, and travel funds equivalent to that provided for other faculty and administrators” (para 13). Essentially, Simpson sees the WCP as an unacknowledged Writing Program Administrator.

Though the WCJ published Simpson’s position statement in 1985, questions still surround the disciplinary and institutional status of WCPs. A recent article in the WCJ demonstrates the complexity of defining a WCP, particularly among the tensions of English Studies, Rhetoric and Composition, and institutional value and definition of academic work. Instead of imagining what WCPs should be, as Simpson did, Anne Geller and Harry Denny analyze the careers of real WCPs. Sadly, they argue: “The very aspects of WCP’s positions that turn out to be the most important to their success and satisfaction are at tension with the academic cultural actions that feed disciplinary growth and could position WCPs as central agents in the discipline of English” (97). Similar to Robert Yagelski’s concerns with English education as a subdiscipline of English studies and his vision for the potential of English Studies (277), Geller and Denny think WCPs need to advocate for professional status, especially in terms of publication since writing center studies has unique perspectives on students and pedagogy.

What is writing center pedagogy?

The earliest writing center scholars rushed to link the history of individualized instruction in teaching writing with the essence of writing centers (Carino). An example of individualized instruction that paved the way for writing centers is Carol Feiser Laque and Phyllis A. Sherwood’s 1977 A Laboratory Approach to Writing. Scholarship in the 1970s and early 1980s advocated for the one-on-one approach to teaching regardless of who provided the instruction– classroom instructor or tutor. Writing center scholars linked the “obviously effective and worthwhile” (Harris 1) nature of individualized instruction by classroom teachers to tutoring in writing centers. Muriel Harris’s 1986 Teaching One-to-One: The Writing Conference is perhaps the culmination of the discussions circulating in early volumes of the Writing Lab Newsletter and Writing Center Journal. Harris provides her book as a resource for both the professor-student conference and the tutor-writer conference (1). She wants to provide would-be tutors and professors a guide. She does not spend time theorizing one-to-one tutoring versus student-teacher conferences; she wants to provide a how-to guide.

More recent scholarship does not overturn the assumption that one-on-one is an effective approach to teaching writing , but some scholars question why tutoring works and in what situations it is most effective. North’s “The Idea of a Writing Center” defines writing centers as different than the classroom: “in a writing center the object is to make sure that writers, and not necessarily their texts, are what get changed by instruction” (50). Though North has since critiqued the ideological nature of “The Idea of the Writing Center,” focusing on the intensely contextual nature of writing centers (North, “Revisiting”), his early axioms have been taken up and tested. For example, Terese Thonus questions the power dynamics in the “peer” tutorial (“Triangulation” and “Tutor and Student”). Through interactional sociolingustics, she studies the conversations or “talk” during sessions and interviews. Her findings in “Tutor and Student Assessment of Academic Writing Tutorials: What is ‘Success’?” suggest that what writing center studies value in sessions (indirectness, avoidance of authority), writers do not always identify as successful techniques. In “Triangulation in the Writing Center: Tutor, Tutee, and Instructor Perceptions of the Tutor’s Role,” she argues that the instructor shapes the conversation and concept of the tutor’s role as fellow instructor or peer.

How does technology and medium (media) affect writing centers?

Today perhaps the most pressing and “hot button” question for writing centers is: how does technology affect writing centers?  Yet again, since the early days, writing centers have questioned how technology might help us with our goal to make better writers. For instance, Joyce Kinkead’s “The Electronic Writing Tutor,” suggests, in 1988, that email asynchronous consultations are a way to reach writers who cannot physically visit the center. Today, Online Writing Labs (OWLs), like Purdue University’s online resource center or Virtual Writing Centers (VWCs), like the service we provide at the University of Louisville, allow writers to access feedback and resources without leaving their homes or offices. Though, technology has advanced beyond email consultations to more interactive synchronous sessions.

Yet, technology’s effect on how we write and communicate pushes the question of writing center definition perhaps the farthest of any issue I’ve discussed so far. What happens when the writer becomes a composer?  Since the publication of the New London Group’s “A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures,” writing centers have begun to question our purpose and future. Most recently, David Sheridan has called for writing centers to embrace “multiliteracy,” or an ability to create and rhetorically analyze multimodal texts. For Sheridan, writing centers become multiliteracy centers, assisting with both technology and response to most anything students create. Sheridan acknowledges that this shift may not be right for all institutions and it certainly costs money; however, he views it as an imperative because of the shift in the definition and use of writing.

Writing centers, defined?

Writing center studies began in the late 1970s with what they thought was potentially a simple question: what are writing centers– people and pedagogy? Yet, that question is still being asked thirty five years later as technology challenges all of writing studies to answer what is writing?  It seems that today’s writing center scholars, while still interested in questions of pedagogy, are focused on defining who we serve and how.

Works Cited

Carino, Peter. “Early Writing Centers: Toward a History.” The Writing Center Journal 15.2 (1995): 103-115. Print.

Harris, Muriel. Teaching One-to-One: The Writing Conference. Urbana: NCTE, 1986. Print.

Geller, Anne and Harry Denny. “Of Ladybugs, Low Status, and Loving the Job: Writing Center Professionals Navigating Their Careers.” Writing Center Journal 33.1 (2013): 96-129. Print.

Kinkead, Joyce. “Electronic Writing Centers.” Writing Lab Newsletter 13.14 (1988): 4-5. Print.

Laque, Carol Feiser, and Phyllis A. Sherwood. A Laboratory Approach to Writing. Ubana, IL: NCTE, 1977.

New London Group. “A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Designing Social Futures.” Harvard Educational Review 66.1 (1994): 60-90.

North, Stephen. “The Idea of a Writing Center.” St. Martin’s Sourcebook for Writing Tutors 4th ed. Eds. Christina Murphy and Steve Sherwood. New York: St. Martin’s, 2011. 44-58. Print.

–. “Revisiting the Idea of a Writing Center.” The Writing Center Journal 15.1 (1994): 7-19. Print.

Sheridan, David M. Ed. Multiliteracy Centers: Writing Center Work, New Media, and Multimodal Rhetoric.

Simpson, Jeanne. “What Lies Ahead for Writing Centers: Position Statement on Professional Concerns.” The Writing Center Journal 5.2/6.1 (1985): 35-39.

Thonus, Terese. “Triangulation in the Writing Center: Tutor, Tutee, and Instructor Perceptions of the Tutor’s Role.” The Writing Center Journal 22.1 (2001): 59-81. Print.

–. “Tutor and Student Assessment of Academic Writing Tutorials: What is ‘Success’?” Assessing Writing 8 (2002): 110-134. Print.

Yagelski, Robert P. “English Education.” English Studies: An Introduction to the Discipline(s). Ed. Bruce McComiskey. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 2006. 275-319. Print.