Digital Commons Network^™

How Genre-Trained Tutors Affect Student Writing And Perceptions Of The Writing Center, Lucy Bryan Malenke, Laura K. Miller, Paul E. Mabrey Iii, Jared Featherstone

The Writing Center Journal

Writing center scholars have long debated whether writers are best served by “generalist” tutors trained in writing center pedagogy or “specialist” tutors with insider knowledge about a course’s content or discipline-specific discourse conventions. A potential compromise that has emerged is training tutors in the purposes and features of specific genres. The writing center literature showcases many different approaches to genre training. However, little empirical research, if any, has explored how tutors’ genre knowledge affects session outcomes. The present study used a mixed-methods approach to compare session outcomes for students who worked with generalist and genre-trained tutors. We analyzed pre-consultation and …

Writing Centers And Neocolonialism: How Writing Centers Are Being Commodified And Exported As U.S. Neocolonial Tools, Brian Hotson, Stevie Bell

The Writing Center Journal

In this paper, we explore the complicity of writing centers in the Global North in global neocolonialism despite its resounding rejection within Western writing center scholarship, in which Romeo García contends that writing tutors can be “decolonial agents.” We show that higher education is used by governments in the Global North as a neocolonial tool and situate international U.S. writing center initiatives within this context. Writing centers have remained complicit in global neocolonialism involving the commodification and exportation of American English as well as Western-style institutions, curricula, and pedagogies. This is most explicit in recent writing center initiatives undertaken by …

Utilizing Culturally Responsive Strategies To Inspire African American Female Participation In Cybersecurity, Deanna Bailey, Michel Kornegay, Ladawn Partlow, Charnee Bowens, Karen Gareis, Kevin Kornegay

Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research (J-PEER)

The number of African American females participating in cyber fields is significantly low. Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education requires a new approach to student engagement to increase African American female participation in cybersecurity. The most common approach to engaging more African American females in STEM is to provide students access to professional images or role models active in STEM; however, more is needed. More race-centered strategies beyond role modeling are necessary to attract and retain African American females in STEM. Research studies show that integrating personal experiences and making cultural connections can help improve student participation in STEM …

On Linguistic Justice In The Writing Center: A Genesis Story, Ghada Gherwash

The Writing Center Journal

This essay presents a reflective account of the origin story of a linguistics justice initiative within the writing center. It concludes by posing questions aimed at promoting dialogue among writing center practitioners as they consider similar initiatives within their own contexts.

Back Matter

The Writing Center Journal

Back Matter for Writing Center Journal 42.3.

Semi-Supervised Learning Algorithm For Running-In Analysis On Compressors, Jonatan Leandro Machado, Gabriel Thaler, Rodolfo César Costa Flesch, João Paulo Zomer Machado

International Compressor Engineering Conference

No abstract provided.

Maintenance Decision Criteria In Facility Management, Deniz Besiktepe, Mehmet E. Ozbek, Rebecca Atadero

Bowen School of Construction Faculty Publications

This research report investigates how facilities management (FM) professionals make decisions about building maintenance, a central responsibility in FM that accounts for a majority of operational effort and costs. Given the complexity of maintenance activities and the many conflicting factors involved (like cost, safety, condition, schedules, and compliance), the study aims to identify and rank key criteria that influence maintenance decision-making. To do this, the authors conducted a comprehensive literature review and a nationwide survey of facilities management professionals from IFMA and APPA. The result is a set of fundamental decision criteria (e.g., health and safety, code compliance, condition, cost, …

Realigning And Revitalizing Study Abroad Programs In A Post-Pandemic World, Jinhua Li, Wei Hong

School of Languages and Cultures Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Discursive Practices In Recurring Asynchronous Writing Center Consultations, Olalekan T. Adepoju

The Writing Center Journal

This study explores the discursive practices the researcher utilizes during recurring asynchronous writing consultations to engender mutually adjusted and context-driven interactions meaningful to writers’ development during virtual tutoring. While earlier studies have critiqued asynchronous tutoring for its inability to efficiently promote the writing center philosophy, the inevitability of writing centers’ transition to online modes due to the global COVID-19 pandemic warrants that writing center scholarship rethink the effectiveness of these online spaces. This study utilizes a discourse-analytic approach to analyze textual data collected from both WCONLINE and drafts I, the tutor, worked on. Individual interviews are also collected to ascertain …

Clcweb Call For Papers: Ai And/As Form

CLCWeb Calls for Papers

We are now several years into the growing interest in “generative AI” that followed the introduction of transformer-based Large Language Models (LLMs) and text-to-image generators (Stable Diffusion, DALL-E), and more than a year from the explosive public release of ChatGPT on November 30, 2022. This special issue of CLCWeb is about how theorists and analysts of culture are approaching formal questions in the context of technologies of machine learning and generative AI, and, also, conversely, about how to theorize AI’s forms.

We seek contributions to these debates that address the question of AI and/as form, with the term “form” …

Collaborative Publishing And Multivalent Research: Writing Center Journal Scholarship From 2001 To 2020, Joseph Cheatle

The Writing Center Journal

This work examines articles published in the Writing Center Journal between 2001 and 2020 in order to understand more about the publishing, scholarship, and research practices of the field of writing center studies. Through analyzing articles published in the Writing Center Journal between 2001 and 2020, this work makes three contributions to the field. The first contribution of this work is an overview of the shift from scholarship to research in the field of writing center studies. The second contribution of this work is to highlight the growth of collaborative scholarship and research during this time. As is demonstrated in …

Slouching Towards Causality: Does Our Writing Center Tutoring Work?, Dennis Paoli, Jack Kenigsberg

The Writing Center Journal

Replicable, aggregable, data-supported (RAD) research has become standard in writing center studies. Choice of research question is determined by local conditions and exigencies, often influenced by institutional assessment policy and national mandates. The methodology of choice in most writing center research is qualitative inquiry, though quasi-experimental quantitative studies, with their inherently difficult protocols and ethical problems, persist in their effort to address the question fundamental to writing center labor: Does writing center tutoring improve student writing? In a quasi-experiment applying propensity score matching to a sample of student users of the Rockowitz Writing Center at Hunter College of the City …

Review: Writing Centers & Racial Justice: A Guidebook For Critical Praxis, Faith Thompson

The Writing Center Journal

Writing Centers & Racial Justice seeks to answer the question many writing center directors seeking to enact antiracism have: “But how do we DO it?” This edited collection is not a how-to guide but offers strategies, suggestions, and even curriculum for writing center administration. It is broken down into five parts, each tackling a different component of writing center work, such as hiring and retention practices as well as tutor education. It calls on readers to look outside the writing center and begin to expand this work through their institutions and communities, as well as directly calling out professional organizations …

Culturally Sustaining Math Word Problem Instruction With Hip-Hop Story Schemas, Michelle J. Cook, Jonte C. Taylor, Elizabeth M. Hughes, Thomas D. Deau

Journal of the Arts and Special Education

On August 11, 2023, Hip-Hop celebrated its 50^th anniversary. In honor of this milestone, we share an activity that is designed to harness the power and art of Hip-Hop to support learning in mathematics for students with and without exceptionalities. Using a vignette, we examine why culturally sustaining practices are pivotal to learning and how teachers can collaborate with middle-school students to strengthen an evidence-based practice such as schema-based instruction by honoring the funds of knowledge that students possess. The activity includes (a) the creation of culturally relevant word problems in mathematics, (b) schema-based instruction for solving additive-type word …

Socially Engaged Engineering: A Framework For K-8 Education, Christine M. Cunningham, Gregory J. Kelly, Ashwin Mohan

Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research (J-PEER)

Socially engaged engineering provides for student learning of the design, analysis, and practices of engineering as well as the ways that engineering is situated in sociocultural contexts. This paper provides a conceptual framework regarding socially engaged engineering for K-8 educators, researchers, and curriculum designers. The framework identifies ways to support youth learning of engineering and considerations of technical, social, environmental, and ethical dimensions of engineering. As engineering enters K-8 educational settings, it is important to introduce the discipline in equity-oriented ways. We draw from the field of engineering for social justice to build this framework for examining engineering at the …

Beyond Whiteness: Revisiting Jews In Ethnic America, Jonathan Karp

The Jewish Role in American Life: An Annual Review

The concept of ethnicity, once in vogue, has largely gone out of fashion among twenty-first-century social scientists, now replaced by models of assimilation defined in terms of the construction of whiteness and white supremacy. Beyond Whiteness: Revisiting Jews in Ethnic America explores the benefits of reconfiguring the ethnic concept as a tool to analyze the experiences of twentieth-century American Jews—not only in relation to other “white” groups of European descent, but also African Americans and Asian Americans, among others. The essays presented here, ranging from comparative studies of Jews and Asians as “model minorities” to the examination of postethnic “Jews …

Jews And Urban Life, Leonard J. Greenspoon

Studies in Jewish Civilization

Jews and Urban Life recognizes that throughout their long history, Jews have often inhabited cities. The reality of this urban experience ranged from ghetto restrictions to robust participation in a range of civic and social activities. Essays in this collection present relevant examples from within the Jewish community itself, moving historically from the biblical period to the modern-day State of Israel. Taking a comparative approach while recognizing the particulars of individual instances, authors examine these phenomena from a wide variety of approaches, genres, and media. Interdisciplinary and accessibly written, the articles display a multitude of instances throughout history showing the …

Women, Nationalism, And Social Networks In The Habsburg Monarchy, 1848–1918, Marta Verginella

Central European Studies

Women, Nationalism, and Social Networks in the Habsburg Monarchy, 1848–1918 focuses on the lives of women in Southeastern Europe during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, exploring the intersection of gender and nationalism. By looking at a wide range of sources and employing rich historiography, this collection investigates the currents of women’s emancipatory efforts in a climate of conflicting assumptions relating to nationhood and nationalization. This book sheds light on a time when both women and nations were working to assert themselves, and how women promoted the national cause in an attempt to assume stronger roles in the public sphere. The …

Perspectives On Changing Cultural Spaces In 19th Century Europe, Christophe Charle

Artl@s Bulletin

To define the limits of European cultural spaces requires a pragmatic and empirical approach, founded on a comparative overview of the circulations of symbolic goods, of the agents involved in the processes of diffusion and mediatization of these goods, and of their modes of transmission or valorization. In this essay, I illustrate the effects of changing conditions on the specific field of 19th-century opera, one of the first international forms of cultural practice in Europe. I then consider the origins and causes of unequal cultural circulations in other fields, notably the presence or absence of mediators in these processes of …

Linguistic Diversity From The K–12 Classroom To The Writing Center: Rethinking Expectations On Inclusive Grammar Instruction, Zoe Esterly, Hannah L.W Swoyer, Bridget A. Draxler

The Writing Center Journal

Language expresses our values and identities, but in educational spaces, multidialectical and multilingual students’ voices are often silenced in favor of Standard English (Lockett, 2019). As writing tutors and future language arts educators, we have developed a research-based inclusive grammar curriculum and classroom-based resources to expand the conversation surrounding linguistic inclusion. Guided by the principle that all students should be offered the opportunity to learn the conventions of Standard English, we advocate for inclusive teaching of Standard English grammar in K–12 classrooms and writing centers (Godley et al, 2015). Using previous research on multilingual students, linguistic inclusivity, and dialectical diversity, …

Review: Expanding Writing Center Research With Discourse Analysis, Sara Swaim, Randall W. Monty

The Writing Center Journal

Corpus-assisted discourse studies (CADS) is a growing field of study that provides for holistic understandings of written texts, spoken discourse, rhetorical strategies, and the people who use them. Organized as a discussion of the topics, methods, and their potential applications for writing center research, this essay reviews three edited collections, Corpus Approaches to Discourse: A Critical Review by Charlotte Taylor and Anne Marchi (Routledge, 2018); The Routledge Handbook of Corpus Approaches to Discourse Analysis by Eric Friginal and Jack A. Hardy (Routledge, 2020); and Research Methods for Digital Discourse Analysis by Camilla Vásquez (Bloomsbury, 2022). Each introduces a range of …

Destigmatizing Working With Dyslexic Learners, Riley N. Dandurand

The Writing Center Journal

In the field of writing center research there is a paucity of information regarding tutoring students with dyslexia. This comes as no surprise considering it is only in the last 50 years that there has been a conscious effort to include those who have exceptionalities in all areas of education. In addition to a lack of research and training there is another issue that arises with disclosing exceptionalities. Those studying dyslexia have found that students are hesitant to disclose their learning disability because of the stigma and feelings of differentiation from their peers (Brizee et al., 2012). The question then …

Front Matter

The Writing Center Journal

Front matter and editors' introduction to The Writing Center Journal 41:2 (2023).

The Impact Of Writing Center Consultations On Student Writing Self-Efficacy, Isabelle M. Lundin, Victoria O'Connor, Sherry Wynn Perdue

The Writing Center Journal

This study sought to determine the impact writing center consultations have on student writing self-efficacy and to illuminate effective consultant strategies for fostering student writing confidence. As part of a multimethods study, a survey was administered for students to reflect upon and to assess their feelings of writing self-efficacy by describing experiences in writing center consultations. Selected respondents were asked to elaborate on the strategies used by their peer consultant(s) in an optional open-ended interview. Findings suggest that writing center consultations help increase writing self-efficacy. The effective consultant strategies described by study participants are synthesized into an overarching consultant framework …

Keynote: Butting Heads And The Agency To Yield: Maverick Considerations In The Writing Center, Rebecca Hallman Martini

The Writing Center Journal

Despite their history of marginalization, writing centers need to be spaces where consultants, writers, and administrators act with agency. This requires both knowing when and how to act, as well as deciding when to yield. In challenging policies of seeming neutrality, I argue in this manuscript that writing center practitioners can center the needs and knowledge of consultants and writers alike. Finally, I call for more research about writer experiences with writing centers, which can (and should) meaningfully shape our administrative practices.

Back Matter

The Writing Center Journal

Back Matter for WCJ 41.2.

How To Cultivate A Good Character—Pragmatically: Dewey And Franklin On The Virtues, Shane J. Ralston

Education and Culture

Philosophical pragmatists rarely receive credit for their contribution to virtue ethics. But perhaps they should. How did America’s philosopher of democracy, John Dewey, and one of its most famous elder statesmen, Benjamin Franklin, advise troubled souls in search of moral improvement? According to James Campbell, Dewey and Franklin recommended the cultivation of inquiry-specific virtues, specifically imagination and fallibilism, thereby transforming the moral agent into a more effective ethical problem solver. For Gregory Pappas, open-mindedness and courage resemble Deweyan virtues, since both are integral to the pragmatist’s ideal of a balanced character. However, Pappas contends that Dewey would reject any procedure …

Editor's Note, Jessica Heybach

Education and Culture

No abstract provided.

Editorial: Reading Diversity: Engaging With Picture Books In Culturally Relevant Summer Literacy Programs, Mengying Xue

First Opinions, Second Reactions

No abstract provided.

On Gary Snyder’S Tradaptation Of Cold Mountain Poems And Its Spiritual Salvation And Literary Enlightenment In Postwar America, Hu Anjiang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Cold Mountain Poems (CMPs), which have been neglected in the history of Chinese literature for ages, captured the attention of most Americans immediately after its being translated into America by the American poet Gary Snyder in 1950s, however. It is Snyder that reconfigured and recreated a sagacious Chinese Chan Buddhist poet Han-shan (literally, Cold Mountain), the acknowledged author of Cold Mountain Poems, in his translation for the postwar Americans in the midst of varied social problems and cultural identity crisis after World War II. Snyder eventually found in his translation of Cold Mountain Poems a back-to-nature remedy of …