This meta-analysis of writing center scholarship surveys the last twenty years of empirical work from The Writing Center Journal, WLN: A Journal of Writing Center Scholarship, and Praxis: A Writing Center Journal. Writing centers are traditionally predicated on treating writers as both beneficiaries of tutoring and active collaborators in its success. Our pedagogy is tutee-centered in its practice and the benefits it produces, and although we pride ourselves in acting as team players in tutoring sessions, does the same quality emerge in existing research? This paper finds writing center scholarship is rife with studies where the writer-as-beneficiary takes precedence over the often-absent writer-as-collaborator. Put another way, we often attend to writers as recipients of tutoring, but we rarely address their perspectives as active participants in testing our pedagogical assumptions. This paper demonstrates historical trends in scholarship and recent moves to center writers in rigorous, participatory roles in evidence-based inquiry. By engaging with tendencies in data collection in writing center research, this project addresses an unconsidered gap between existing principles and the role of tutees in our evolving research practices. This project offers a custom taxonomy for tutee-based studies, and a thematically organized table of findings.

International and multilingual student enrollments are growing around the world. Because 73% of international students in the United States come from countries where English is not an official language, the number of L2 students is likewise growing. Writing centers are on the frontlines in academically supporting L2 students, but tutor anxiety in sessions with L2 students is apparent. Empirical research on L2 student satisfaction with writing centers is only slowly emerging. Our quantitative study compares satisfaction of English-L2 students to those of English-L1 students through a common exit survey of student perceptions of writing center visits; perceptions are essential as they connect to achievement and learning outcomes. Overall, we find both groups are equally satisfied with their writing center visits, equally likely to return to the writing center, and have equally intellectually engaging sessions. Adding greater resonance, this study was conducted at three different types of institutions in the United States—a small liberal arts college; a medium, private, doctoral university; and a large, public land-grant university. Our study directly points to tutor-training strategies, including sharing empirical studies about satisfaction, increasing a focus on intellectual engagement for students and tutors, and incorporating global English strategies into sessions.

When writing center administrators (WCAs) consider educating tutors, they do so with a range of perspectives in mind. Tutors need to first be confident in both their tutoring and writing abilities. However, new tutors must also be able to put themselves in the perspective of a struggling student writer who they may work with in a tutoring session. In this article, we conceptualize this issue dealing with self-efficacy or “people’s beliefs in their abilities to produce given attainments” (Bandura 307). Research has begun to explore this topic (Nowacek and Hughes), but has not specifically called this “self-efficacy.” Composition research has a long history of examining self-efficacy, but little research has explored tutors’ self-efficacy. This research has not examined the relationship between tutoring and writing self-efficacies, nor has previously research considered how tutoring experience may impact self-efficacy. To extend this conversation, we developed and administered a survey to writing center tutors across the US to answer the following research questions: What are tutors’ writing and tutoring self-efficacies? Do tutors’ writing and tutoring self-efficacies correlate? Do experienced tutors have different writing and tutoring self-efficacies than new tutors? Results indicated that tutors had high writing and tutoring self-efficacies (mean scores were from 80-100), but the range varied pretty significantly (ranges for writing were 40-100 and ranges for tutoring were 49-100). Writing and tutoring self-efficacy scores were strongly correlated (r=.815 and p =.001). Finally, tutoring self-efficacy and tutoring experience were weakly correlated (r=.186 and p =.025). These results suggest that tutoring and writing self-efficacies inform one another and that tutors have different experiences with developing self-efficacy with their tutoring and writing, which suggests that tutoring and writing self-efficacy is very individualized.

If the two of you are sitting there together, your reading silently squanders the interaction time on something that is very one-sided. If you respond to the text as a reader, as you proceed, the writer can get a better sense of what happens for a reader as the text unfolds. When you read aloud, the student can hear how the writing will sound to someone else (1-2). --William J. Macauley,“Paying Attention to Learning Styles in Writing Center Epistemology, Tutor Training, and Writing Tutorials.” [W]hile tutors had been trained to consider and discuss the intersections among audience, genre, and discipline with their students, their working understanding of the role of audience in this relationship seemed to operate on a global level with only fleeting or intuitive (and therefore inaccessible) considerations at the local level. Thus, while tutors had a conceptual understanding of readerly dynamics. . . they had less practice articulating the impact that discrete elements of a text have on a reader (14). --Amanda M. Greenwell, “Rhetorical Reading Guides, Readerly Experiences, and WID in the Writing Center.”

This essay argues that institutional ethnography, a methodology LaFrance and Nicolas (2012) describe and advocate for in writing studies, provides a means by which writing center scholars can add to their maps of how their writing center programs coordinate with other writing programs at their institutions. From these maps, we can better articulate what writing center work is and what it is not, advocating for an institutional culture of interdependence. The essay extends the findings from a local institutional ethnography to add insights from multiple institutions. The findings suggest that writing center administrators may advocate for our work not only by arguing for parity with other writing programs, but also by communicating with others within the institution to align our internal narratives with external images. In addition, the findings imply that methodologies such as institutional ethnography are critical for examining the radical relationality central to writing center work.

My article reports on an annual series of workshops I launched as director of my writing center. This ongoing initiative, titled Workshops on Real World Writing Genres, aims to introduce undergraduates to genres they will practice in their prospective careers. It is part of a larger effort at the University of Toronto to support students as they think ahead to life beyond their degrees. Drawing on material from workshops covering print journalism, law, public policy, medicine, and fiction, the article reflects on how well our theoretical presuppositions about genre help us prepare students to apply in their professional lives those critical thinking skills we seek to foster in our teaching. By regarding all knowledge as socially situated, contemporary genre theory has raised doubts about the capacity of our students to transfer even knowledge from one context to another. Insofar as genre theorists focus on the social creation of meaning, their account of genre, like their account of knowledge, must, I argue, remain incomplete. An exclusive focus on writing as social practice reflects a problematic division of labor in the academy between the sciences on the one hand and the social sciences and humanities on the other. The notion of writing as radically situated has always posed a problem for writing centers, since we do not typically find ourselves situated in the same communities of practice as our students. The recent interest in transfer in writing center scholarship reflects a promising shift towards a vision of the disciplines as interconnected.

Abstract From fall 2013 through spring 2016, 1,301 students were enrolled in composition courses on our regional campus, with 349 of these enrolled in developmental courses. Our writing center serves approximately 14% of the campus population every year, a number we have seen increase since two professors in 2013-2014 began requiring students in their developmental courses to attend a minimum number of writing sessions each semester. The D-F-withdrawal rates for developmental writing courses on our campus have averaged 32.7% over the past six semesters, an improvement over previous years. Analysis of data from a study of student outcomes during this period demonstrates that requiring frequent visits to the writing center in early semesters results in a statistically significant, positive relationship with increased passing rates and voluntary usage of the writing center.

Abstract Because of the author’s experience hearing from other writing center professionals at community colleges that community college students are not capable of serving as peer tutors, as well as survey data demonstrating that community colleges do not hire peer tutors at the same rate as other institutions of higher learning, the author conducted exit interviews of peer tutors at Salt Lake Community College in order to determine what peer tutors learn from their work experiences in a community college writing center. The purpose of the study was to establish what peer tutors learn, in order to correlate not simply what they take away from their experience, but also to substantiate that peer tutors can indeed help the writers they work with to learn. Since the results of this analysis were broad and represented a wide variety of concepts that are learned by peer tutors, the author designed a more specific survey to explore what they learned about writing and being a writer. The resulting data lead the author to conclude that peer tutors learn much from their work experience, allaying concerns that community college students are not capable of serving as peer tutors.

Abstract This longitudinal mixed-methods study assesses students’ perceptions of the writing center at a large (approximately 11,325 students) multi‑campus two‑year college. The survey was collaboratively designed, with faculty and student participation; it presents findings from 865 student respondents, collected by peer tutors‑in‑training. The study offers a baseline assessment (Fall 2014) of the writing center, prior to wide-sweeping changes in recruitment, staffing, and training models, as well as a post-assessment (Fall 2015) analysis of the changes in student knowledge of the WC and its purpose. It also offers data on the trajectory of student development in relation to number of sessions attended. In 2014, students’ experiences at the writing center were inconsistent; the poorly articulated mission of the WC adversely affected students’ knowledge scores, and the center’s reliance on editorial-like feedback, given predominately by adjunct faculty, contributed to inconsistent reportage in perceived learning by attended sessions. Many of these trends, however, reversed in 2015. This paper seeks to demonstrate the important role that RAD research can play in evaluating student learning within writing center contexts and articulating how and at what moments, and under what conditions, learning and development occurs in the student-writing center relationship. It also offers a replicable experimental method that researchers at other institutions can adapt and apply to their own institutional contexts and programmatic needs.

Abstract After a decade of working in writing centers as a tutor and administrator, I have experienced and witnessed many challenging consultations. A particularly vexing type of consultation occurs when tutors work with advanced students writing in unfamiliar disciplines and genres. In this article, I consider whether the reading method employed during such consultations supports or detracts from tutors’ efforts to offer helpful advice. Specifically, I ask: When and how should writing tutors read students’ drafts to best support and engage them? How do the specific needs of student writers factor into selecting the best reading method? To respond to these questions, I first describe the results of a review of 70 well-known universities’ writing center websites, which reveals that the majority of centers require tutors to read students’ writing for the first time during consultations. Next, I posit some limitations of during-consultation reading models and argue that the read-ahead model may better meet the needs of some student-writer populations. To provide a framework for the read-ahead model, I illustrate strategies that may be implemented to prepare tutors for consultations, drawing on research-based techniques that a more-senior director and I used at a private doctoral-granting university as we established the first writing center on the campus. I conclude by suggesting that directors consider the read-ahead method as yet another tool in their vast arsenal of pedagogical techniques, particularly when tutors must work with advanced writers from unfamiliar disciplines.

Abstract In an attempt to create more meaningful and effective assessment, the Howe Writing Center at Miami University implemented a new post-consultation/exit survey. During the course of the Fall 2012 semester, over 800 students responded to the post-consultation survey. Writing center theory has documented the limitations of the post-consultation survey; however, this type of feedback still represents the best and most accessible way to assess and expand the knowledge of writing centers. This assessment project provided important feedback concerning the writing center at Miami University about student demographics that use the writing center, including academic year and classes students wanted to work on. The assessment project also contributes to writing center theory and discourse by providing a different narrative for non-native English speaking students and native English speaking students that use the writing center. The assessment challenges the view that writing from non-native English speaking students is only concerned with so-called "lower order" writing issues and writing from native English speaking students is primarily concerned with so-called "higher order" writing issues. Instead, it was found that non-native English speaking students are interested in working on many "higher order" concerns and were very similar, after sentence-level concerns, in their writing needs to native English speaking students.

Abstract As our discipline’s scholars, we must recognize that ours is a history “that is best recognized as an always incomplete narrative” and continue to delve the past as we seek to inform our future (Lerner 25). In this article, I delve into Plato’s use of “elenchus” or cross-questioning for the purpose of achieving “aporia”—the sense of perplexity or confusion that usually accompanies the discovery that language does not have the ability to mean in any stable sense” within Theaetetus (Raign 90). In addition to extending our narrative history, studying the process of elenchus will allow us to share this methodology with our tutors, so that they can develop the ability not to merely engage in conversation with their students, or lead them to a truth not their own, but engage in the type of inquiry about language and its ability to mean that leads students toward the sort of self-discovery present in the Platonic dialogues.

Drawing on the experiences of two case study participants who were international multilingual graduate students, I argue that multilingual graduate writers’ budding identities as disciplinary experts sometimes hampered them from recognizing the kind of writing support they needed. As their identities shifted between expert and novice, disciplinary outsider and disciplinary insider, their perceived needs from writing centers changed as well. I suggest ways that writing centers may consider shifting their practices in order to meet multilingual graduate writers’ needs, wherever they are in their writing development.

Across the country, colleges and universities are reporting an increased enrollment of students on the autism spectrum. This is in part thanks to increased efforts in early detection during childhood, where students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are then enrolled in services outside and within public schools to help integrate them into mainstream classrooms. Yet such integrative services, by and large, fall short in higher education, and many students find themselves without the support they once received in their primary school years. Writing demands are indeed challenging for many—without securing basic college-level composition skills, the likelihood of student success is placed in jeopardy. Writing centers can be regarded as gatekeepers for autistic students, since their assistance can greatly impact student success. Yet problems remain with access and inclusion based on rhetorical situations, as well as a lack of tutor education. This paper provides suggestions based on April Mann’s methods of inclusion for writing center tutees with ASD, including spatial awareness and tutor education. I also outline other possible methods, including outreach to students with ASD to prevent further isolation among the university population.

As a pedagogical tool, “style” in writing center lore has been cast as a lower-order concern. This marginalization stems not only from the difficulty of defining the word itself, but also from a persistent belief that “style” exists in a vacuum separate from “content,” “development,” and grammar, thus being of secondary importance to tutors and administrators. In this article, Edward Santos Garza challenges this clinical framework, arguing that style, a vital, permeating force, has much to offer those in writing center work. He positions style as a tool to help WC visitors more fully discuss, assess, and strengthen themselves as writers. Asserting that style is equally valuable for thinking about writing with regard to identity, Garza envisions how WC staff could productively foreground it in sessions and training.

In recent decades, writing centers have moved from the margins of campus power toward the center (Essid 2014). Because our connections to professors and administrators have increased, students may be less likely to speak freely during consultations, on surveys, and in focus groups. Where, then, might we hear students’ “real talk” about writing centers? In the latter half of July 2015 and the beginning of August, I aimed to find out. My hypothesis was that Twitter might be a space to find “voices that are often left out of our surveys of satisfaction” (Lerner 4). Therefore, I spent a month surveilling Twitter, trying to listen in and access what students say about us when we aren’t likely to be listening. I found Twitter to be a public space in which students feel comfortable talking frankly about school matters, including writing center matters.

Writing center scholars and tutor-training manuals historically emphasize the importance of tutors and writers collaboratively negotiating consultation agendas to maintain writers’ ownership over their writing. However, when tutors encounter advanced student writers, writers from unfamiliar fields, or writers with complex linguistic repertoires, they may struggle to read student writing, identify writing issues, and negotiate effective, mutual agendas. One tool for navigating these challenges is the “read-ahead method”—in which tutors read student writing in advance and prepare for consultations (Scrocco 10). While this method offers potential advantages, a brief survey reveals that some writing center administrators worry that tutors who read student writing in advance may hijack consultation agendas. This exploratory mixed-methods study examines thirteen tutor-supervisor planning conversations and subsequent consultations to assess the correspondence between tutors’ plans and consultations and to consider what factors may support or undermine writers’ agendas. Results suggest that tutors who use the read/plan-ahead method do not fervently push their planned agendas over writers’ agendas. However, very detailed or particularly vague pre-consultation planning may set tutors up for sessions that fail to negotiate and carry out cohesive, well-prioritized shared agendas. The most collaborative, coherent consultations in this study balance tutor and writer agendas. They begin with writers’ submitted concerns, identify high-priority global writing issues, engage in substantive agenda-setting with writers, explicitly link tutors’ plans with writers’ agendas, and abandon tutors’ plans when needed. The read/plan-ahead model works best when tutors remember to place writers at the heart of building, revising, and enacting consultation agendas.

The Burkean parlor has been integrated into the lore of writing centers, showcasing how writing centers have both conversational and collaborative elements. However, the ease for students to enter into the academic conversation is not as simple as this metaphor suggests. To rethink this concept, kairos, or the opportune moment, must be considered. This article will investigate kairos as spatial and how that conceptualization can deepen the Burkean parlor and the conversations within it. Breaking down the Burkean parlor into three stages—questions, metacognition, and choices—can benefit the practicality of the tutoring session. Kairos complicates each of these three points of the student writer’s integration into the conversation. The creation of kairos depends upon the student and tutor being mindful of these conscious and unconscious interactions and understanding how to most effectively disrupt the spatial boundaries of the tutoring session. Connecting kairos into the Burkean parlor metaphor differentiates the perspective of the tutoring session, encouraging both student and tutor to become more aware of the spatiality of tutoring and to redefine these boundaries.

This essay considers the present degree of the writing center field’s engagement with labor activism in the age of the corporate university and argues that writing center practitioners are well positioned to reconstitute their identities: to re-envision themselves and their colleagues as poised to engage in activist rhetorics and live lives as academic activists. By employing a rhetoric of labor activism and thereby addressing labor issues in more robust ways alongside professional organizations that represent them, writing centers can work to revitalize shared governance and academic freedom, both of which are threatened by corporatizing forces, and they can influence emergent institutional and professional histories.

This study provides a new framework for thinking about the value of writing center work by illuminating how tutors define and negotiate their various and emergent identities as students and as professionals. We build on conversations about tutor identity to argue that tutors’ multiple roles affect the dynamics of the writing center as a whole. From interviews with graduate and undergraduate tutors about professionalization and the writing center, we reveal that the tutors’ level of resistance to or acceptance of writing center work impacts the extent to which they see themselves as burgeoning professionals within that space and, concomitantly, affects the sense of community in the writing center. At our site of study, undergraduate tutors who self-selected into writing center employment generally had much more positive associations with their writing center experiences than their graduate student counterparts, who were often compelled to work in the center as part of their assistantships. We argue then that while writing centers can be valuable in building the professional identities of both undergraduate and graduate tutors, the ways in which these different populations affect our centers is significant. As such, writing center professionals at all levels should work to acknowledge different identities and foster community among tutors who come to us with multiple backgrounds, purposes, and agendas.