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Articles 61 - 90 of 314

Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature

The Idea Of A Writing Center In Brazil: A Different Beat, Ron Martinez Jan 2024

The Idea Of A Writing Center In Brazil: A Different Beat, Ron Martinez

The Writing Center Journal

This article explores the emergence and development of writing centers in Brazil, using the author’s experience founding the Centro de Assessoria de Publicação Acadêmica (CAPA) at the Universidade Federal do Paraná as a case study. The author provides some historical context about Brazilian education and its traditional “banking model” of education (Paulo Freire) that did not value individual expression—including through writing. This model persisted even as composition studies evolved elsewhere. Academic literacy development in Brazil is thus a relatively recent phenomenon, and the effects of that paucity are felt among scholars in higher education settings. This motivated the author’s research …


Review: Unwell Writing Centers: Searching For Wellness In Neoliberal Educational Institutions And Beyond, Aurora Matzke Jan 2024

Review: Unwell Writing Centers: Searching For Wellness In Neoliberal Educational Institutions And Beyond, Aurora Matzke

The Writing Center Journal

“Unwell Writing Centers: Searching for Wellness in Neoliberal Educational Institutions and Beyond” blends narrative, mixed methods research, and rhetorical analysis to make a case for the possibilities inherent in homegrown wellness practices that are “communal, political, and rooted in defiance of white supremacy.”


An Exploratory Study Of Mindsets, Sense Of Belonging, And Help-Seeking In The Writing Center, Traci Freeman, Steve Getty Jan 2024

An Exploratory Study Of Mindsets, Sense Of Belonging, And Help-Seeking In The Writing Center, Traci Freeman, Steve Getty

The Writing Center Journal

In this exploratory study, we took as our point of departure Lori Salem’s (2016) call to investigate the factors that affect students’ decisions to visit the writing center. Rather than exploring student decision-making through a sociological lens, as Salem does, we drew on insights from social psychology to understand students’ motivations. We explored two self-theories drawn from social psychology that are associated with students’ academic achievement and with students’ help-seeking: (1) implicit beliefs about intelligence or “mindsets”; and (2) sense of belonging. Using questions from previously validated scales, we measured first-year students’ mindsets and sense of belonging and tested the …


Timely, Relevant, Practical: A Study Of Writing Center Summer Institute Alumni Perceptions Of Value And Benefits, Julia Bleakney, Mark Hall, Kelsey Hixson-Bowles, Sohui Lee, Nathalie Singh-Corcoran Jan 2024

Timely, Relevant, Practical: A Study Of Writing Center Summer Institute Alumni Perceptions Of Value And Benefits, Julia Bleakney, Mark Hall, Kelsey Hixson-Bowles, Sohui Lee, Nathalie Singh-Corcoran

The Writing Center Journal

Since its inception in 2003, the IWCA Summer Institute (SI) has been understood within the writing center field to be an important professional development opportunity for new and experienced writing center professionals (WCPs). Publications on the SI to date have focused on anecdotal perceptions of the benefits to leaders and participants or on a single outcome, such as research output. Thus, the writing center field knows little about how and in what ways participants perceive the SI’s benefits across cohorts and across a variety of professional areas. By gathering quantitative and qualitative data from every SI cohort from 2003 to …


Writing Centers And Neocolonialism: How Writing Centers Are Being Commodified And Exported As U.S. Neocolonial Tools, Brian Hotson, Stevie Bell Jan 2024

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 …


Effectively Affective: Examining The Ethos Of One Hbcu Writing Center, Karen Keaton Jackson, Amara Hand Jan 2024

Effectively Affective: Examining The Ethos Of One Hbcu Writing Center, Karen Keaton Jackson, Amara Hand

The Writing Center Journal

Over the past several decades, writing center scholarship has evolved to include multiple theories and pedagogies that led to widely used best practices. As is the case in many disciplines, often writing centers at large, research PWIs are most often cited and highlighted within the scholarship. While many of those readings do offer helpful strategies for working with students at all levels, often they do not account for the unique contexts and diverse student populations that make up many HBCUs. As a result, more research from a variety of writing centers is needed so practitioners see there are multiple ways …


Accidental Outreach And Happenstance Staffing: A Cross-Institutional Study Of Writing Center Support Of First-Generation College Students, Beth A. Towle Jan 2024

Accidental Outreach And Happenstance Staffing: A Cross-Institutional Study Of Writing Center Support Of First-Generation College Students, Beth A. Towle

The Writing Center Journal

First-generation students (FGS) make up a significant percentage of college populations. However, they experience hardships that are less common for their continuing-generation peers. They struggle to understand the “rules” of college and lack the cultural capital that can help students succeed through generations of knowledge about how to navigate college. Writing centers attempt to lessen these burdens by providing outreach to marginalized student populations, including FGS. However, there has been a lack of cross-institutional research that examines exactly how writing centers support FGS. This article presents a mixed-methods study that begins to close that knowledge gap and demonstrate common patterns …


Back Matter Jan 2024

Back Matter

The Writing Center Journal

Back Matter for Writing Center Journal 41.3.


Slouching Towards Causality: Does Our Writing Center Tutoring Work?, Dennis Paoli, Jack Kenigsberg Jan 2024

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 …


On Linguistic Justice In The Writing Center: A Genesis Story, Ghada Gherwash Jan 2024

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.


Review: Writing Centers & Racial Justice: A Guidebook For Critical Praxis, Faith Thompson Jan 2024

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 …


Review: A Working Model For Contingent Faculty, Courtney L. Werner Jan 2024

Review: A Working Model For Contingent Faculty, Courtney L. Werner

The Writing Center Journal

In his book A Working Model for Contingent Faculty, Robert Samuels presents multiple ideas for helping contingent faculty organize to gain equity on campus: in their careers, working conditions, and pay. Samuels critiques current prominent, negative discourse on contingent faculty, offering instead ways to emphasize contingent faculty’s diverse and positive experiences and opportunities. I offer additional insights spurred from Samuels’s ideas, including connecting with student government and finding ways to make writing center work and research more public and apparent to institutional stakeholders (e.g., students, faculty, donors, administrators, boards/trustees).


Back Matter Jan 2024

Back Matter

The Writing Center Journal

Back Matter for Writing Center Journal 42.3.


Disability Untheorized: Critiques Of Eugenics, Then And Now, Maren Linett Jan 2024

Disability Untheorized: Critiques Of Eugenics, Then And Now, Maren Linett

Department of English Faculty Publications

Critiques of Anglo-American eugenics from the turn of the twentieth century through today demonstrate that the people swept up by the colossal eugenic broom were not biologically “unfit” without questioning either the notion of biological inferiority itself or the “menace” eugenicists saw in disability. They therefore imply that what was wrong with eugenics was its inaccuracy—that it was only ethically problematic because it did not correctly identify “unfit” people. Such critiques, while offering social models of race, poverty, criminality, and/or gender, leave disability untheorized and neglect the rights of disabled people.


Discursive Practices In Recurring Asynchronous Writing Center Consultations, Olalekan T. Adepoju Jan 2024

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 …


Collaborative Publishing And Multivalent Research: Writing Center Journal Scholarship From 2001 To 2020, Joseph Cheatle Jan 2024

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 …


“Hopes And Fears”: What Do Writing Center Administrators Think Of Merging With Or Converting Into A Learning Center?, Jenny Goransson Jan 2024

“Hopes And Fears”: What Do Writing Center Administrators Think Of Merging With Or Converting Into A Learning Center?, Jenny Goransson

The Writing Center Journal

This article shares findings from a survey study (n = 73) focused on writing center administrator (WCA) perceptions of two phenomena we see on many secondary and postsecondary campuses in recent years: writing centers expanding to become learning centers, and writing centers consolidating or merging with other tutoring services on campus. Through analysis of the qualitative, open-ended survey responses, the study revealed that WCAs’ views of these trends are greatly impacted by local conditions and levels of autonomy, as well as WCAs’ beliefs about expertise. Also, consolidation and expansion are seen by WCAs as shifting writing center identity in …


The Impact Of Writing Center Consultations On Student Writing Self-Efficacy, Isabelle M. Lundin, Victoria O'Connor, Sherry Wynn Perdue Nov 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 Nov 2023

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.


Keynote: Story Culture Live: Black American Story Spaces As Actionable Antiracism Work, Clarissa J. Walker Nov 2023

Keynote: Story Culture Live: Black American Story Spaces As Actionable Antiracism Work, Clarissa J. Walker

The Writing Center Journal

“Story Culture Live: Black American Story Spaces as Actionable Antiracism Work,“ was a keynote given at the Northeast Writing Centers Association Conference at the University of New Hampshire in spring 2023. The keynote details the genesis of my podcast, Story Culture Live, which reimagines storytelling as actionable activism in antiracist work and explores concepts such as Black teller agency, kinship, and collective responses to tensions through storytelling that can inform and build new stories in writing centers.


Keynote: Notions Of Writing Center Community And Some Challenges To Them, Carol Severino Nov 2023

Keynote: Notions Of Writing Center Community And Some Challenges To Them, Carol Severino

The Writing Center Journal

It is crucial for writing center professionals who discuss community to ask ourselves what we mean by the term as applied to writing centers. In this keynote, I explore various notions of community that are influenced by writing center growth, expansion, and complexity, especially in relation to Iowa’s writing center. After relating a personal story about our new tutors’ traditional notion of community and an account of our own center’s expansion and growing complexity over the decades, which challenges their traditional notion, I discuss other obstacles to community, bringing in the critiques of writing center scholars. Finally, I synthesize what …


Front Matter Nov 2023

Front Matter

The Writing Center Journal

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


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 Nov 2023

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 Nov 2023

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 …


Calling In Antiracist Accomplices Beyond The Writing Center, Hillary Coenen Nov 2023

Calling In Antiracist Accomplices Beyond The Writing Center, Hillary Coenen

The Writing Center Journal

A reflective, ethnographic study of a grassroots, antiracist educational workshop (The Conversation Workshops, TCW) reveals that writing center (WC) pedagogy and feminist invitational rhetoric’s (FIR) influence on TCW enables participants to recognize their own and their partners’ expertise, meaningful experiences, valuable perspectives, and their need to be listened to, accounted for, and understood. In an invitational model, particularly one based on a one-with- one, interpersonal dynamic, participants are more like collaborators than audiences, an approach that can be applied in diverse educational settings, and which reflects the WC’s model of one-with- one pedagogy. This dynamic also reveals one of TCW’s …


Back Matter Nov 2023

Back Matter

The Writing Center Journal

Back Matter for WCJ 41.2.


Keynote: Looking At Writing Centers Through Scientific Spectacles: The Expertise And Commitments That Characterize Contemporary Writing Centers, Bradley Hughes Nov 2023

Keynote: Looking At Writing Centers Through Scientific Spectacles: The Expertise And Commitments That Characterize Contemporary Writing Centers, Bradley Hughes

The Writing Center Journal

This article is adapted from a keynote address at the July 2022 European Writing Centers Association (EWCA) conference, sponsored by the University of Graz in Austria, whose theme focused on writing centers as spaces of empowerment. Designed for peer tutors as well as writing center faculty, this talk first celebrates some examples of writing centers empowering student writers and tutors. It then attempts to articulate what scientific spectacles allow us to see when we look deeper into these examples of empowerment: some of the big ideas, the abstract principles, the constellation of expertise and commitments that underlie our contemporary writing …


Prison: The New Frontier Of Collaborative Learning, Jamal Bakr Nov 2023

Prison: The New Frontier Of Collaborative Learning, Jamal Bakr

The Writing Center Journal

This essay explores writing center theories and collaborative praxis from the perspective of an individual who has experienced long-term isolation and incarceration. This writer reflects on how participation in his college-in- prison community, including his service as a writing tutor and teaching fellow, has led to his immersion in prosocial healing behaviors that come with liberative and collaborative pedagogical processes.


Destigmatizing Working With Dyslexic Learners, Riley N. Dandurand Nov 2023

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 …


Embedded Vs. Drop-In Tutors In Developmental Writing Contexts: Course/Tutoring Perceptions And Impact On Student Writing Efficacy, Kendon Kurzer, Anna Hayden, Jennifer Nguyen Nov 2023

Embedded Vs. Drop-In Tutors In Developmental Writing Contexts: Course/Tutoring Perceptions And Impact On Student Writing Efficacy, Kendon Kurzer, Anna Hayden, Jennifer Nguyen

The Writing Center Journal

Many higher education institutions offer drop-in tutoring programs hosted by writing specialists to support struggling students while others may also/alternatively embed tutors directly into courses. In this quasi-experimental study, we compared survey results from 100 students in basic/developmental courses that featured embedded peer tutors with 78 students who experienced tutoring via a walk-in writing center. Variables explored included writing efficacy and course/tutor perception survey items. While students generally found both embedded and walk-in tutoring to be helpful, the ratings for embedding tutoring tended to be statistically stronger for most variables we investigated, suggesting that students responded more positively to embedded …