Whether we are building on a knowledge network of who and what has come before or are showing the gaps and spaces that our work fills, citing sources is at the core of intellectual work. For The Writing Center Journal ( WCJ ), a previous study found that 81% of works cited appeared only once, and the remaining set of references refer largely to insider sources, limiting the field's uptake in research and scholarship outside of writing center studies. This follow-up survey and interview study investigates more closely the social scene of citation and finds that in a field as relatively young as writing center studies, WCJ authors' allegiances to any particular body of knowledge do not necessarily overlap, thus precluding true disciplinary formation. Still, writing centers might represent anti-disciplinary spaces in their practices, their research, and their core beliefs, offering potential collaborations with other on-campus partners outside of disciplinary structures. Knowledge making in writing centers, then, potentially offers a new model of academic and

critical challenges for many writing center administrators (WCAs), who interrogate their "marginal" status with questions about how position type, education, oversight, responsibilities, resources, and support impact individual WCAs and writing centers as well as their research practices and production.

Being an African American woman for almost 40 years, a secondary education teacher for three years, and a three-time college student, I am well versed in the micro aggressions that plague students in education, which is why I feel it's important to always be aware of new information meant to combat the systems of oppression found in learning environments. Through my research, I realize what is needed is a way to help individuals see and acknowledge discriminatory practices in the educational field, especially when it comes to writing and the writing process. Culture, nationality, beliefs, biases, and stereotypes are not like layers of clothing that one can check at the door and pick up later. We have all been exposed to the unfair dynamics that form the race relations in society, and we carry those understandings with us everywhere we go, even if we are not completely aware of them. However, awakening this awareness is prevalent to promote a beneficial learning environment for students both in the classroom and in the writing center.

Working in writing centers is a great gig. We get to lead units committed to making collaborative learning happen in a host of ways: students gaining access to or refining disciplinary literacies, faculty and administration discovering more effective ways for writing to demonstrate learning and transfer, and tutors becoming conscious of their voices as mentors of communities of practice, both disciplinary and sociocultural. Many of us "graduate" from being students who have been tutored in writing centers to serving as writing tutors ourselves; some of us inspired by all of that labor decide to pursue graduate education in and become directors of these amazing units, charged with sustaining and growing these amazing units and all those who teach and learn within While our field has plenty of resources for educating tutors, for coaching faculty across the disciplines on using writing for teaching

Writing center practitioners have long debated the efficacy of mandatory tutoring. In her seminal article on required tutoring, Irene Lurkis Three decades later, a recent conversation on the WCenter listserv shows that the dilemma is far from resolved. The conversation began with the following email:

We're celebrating. Historically, WCJ published only two issues per year. But right now, you're holding issue 35.3 in your hands. We are delighted to see so many manuscripts -and so many strong manuscripts -arriving in our inbox. This "extra" issue is our attempt to make as much space as possible available for as many important articles as possible. To that end, we'll cut

This study considers five different tutor note styles and reports on how the three primary audiences for such notes -student writers, faculty, and tutors -assess their efficacy in terms of length, voice, purpose, and content. Surveys and focus groups reveal that all stakeholders take tutor notes seriously and that collectively they prefer notes that are about a paragraph long, address students directly in the second-person, maintain an institutional rather than colloquial voice, and include a detailed summary and revision plan. To put this study in context, the article also traces the history of writing center scholarship on session reports.

This article reports the results of a study of undergraduate research practices and mentoring practices of 107 writing center professionals and 102 undergraduate peer writing tutor researchers. Survey responses from these 209 tutor researchers and professionals provide insight into what they consider to be the benefits of peer writing tutor research and the challenges faced by tutor researchers and their mentors. The article concludes that while both tutor researchers and professionals agree on one significant challenge (time needed to complete projects) and one significant benefit (the positive effects of tutor research on peer tutoring), other benefits and challenges were not consistently identified and discussed by both groups. Implications for tutor research and research mentoring are discussed, and a general call is made for the writing

In the wake of research showing failures in transfer of writing skills, the question of how to help students see how their learning goes beyond individual learning experiences has become a pressing concern in composition.In addressing this concern, scholars have primarily focused on improving our classroom pedagogy so that we are teaching for transfer.However, with the finding that transfer often needs to be cued and guided in order to be successful, we need to begin focusing on writing centers as crucial spaces for the facilitation of students' understanding of the transportability of writing-related knowledge.This article presents findings from a study that examines the effects of teaching writing center tutors about transfer theory.Findings suggest that educating writing center tutors about transfer theory can positively affect their ability to facilitate the transfer of writing-related knowledge.

This study builds on extant replicable, aggregable, and data-supported (RAD) research to posit and examine correlations between writing center intervention and improved student writing. The authors review three decades of quantitative writing center scholarship and provide data resulting from four writing center assessments. These assessments include two pre-and post-intervention studies and two intervention/ non-intervention studies. Results are mixed. The pre-and post-intervention studies show statistically significant improvements in student writing. The intervention/non-intervention studies show considerable to limited improvements in student writing. Possible reasons for these results are discussed, including study protocols, self-selection bias, and the difficulty of imposing controls. Impacts on the practice of one writing center are shared, and suggestions for further research are provided.

Motivated by increasing international student writing center use to learn more about second language writing development and its assessment, we conducted a case study of an undergraduate writer who submitted drafts to online tutoring over two years. Synthesizing the perspectives and methods of Applied Linguistics with those of First-Language Composition, we assessed the writer's short-and long-term progress in the rhetorical, linguistic, and writing process components of her writing development. We found linguistic improvement in accuracy, especially short-term between drafts and revisions more so than over time, but only modest long-term improvement in both rhetorical and other linguistic components. We attributed these results to the writer's expedient writing process and her narrow conceptions of writing development and of her tutors' role in it. These expedient processes and narrow concep-

We discuss the benefits of using corpus linguistic analysis, a quantitative method for determining the "aboutness" of talk, in conjunction with discourse analysis in order to understand writing center talk at a micro-and macrolevel. We exemplify this mixed-method approach by examining a specialized corpus of 20 writing center conferences totaling more than 75,000 words. Our analysis also uncovered words that differentiated writing center talk from reference corpora and thus helped reveal the aboutness of the writing center talk. For example, student writers said "I don't know" far more frequently than any other 4-gram, and tutors said "You're going to" far more frequently than other 4-grams. We close by discussing the possibility of creating a corpus of writing center talk that researchers could use to ask and answer a broad range of research questions.

Over a three year period beginning in 2011, our writing center conducted IRB -approved empirical research on the role of tutor-posed and writer-posed questions in writing center dialogues. Using a corpus comprising three linguistically accurate transcripts and 25 glossed transcripts, we1 painstakingly identified and coded writers' and tutors' questions using a question taxonomy based on Arthur C. Graesser & Natalie K. We also identified and coded the cognitive moves revealed in both writers' and tutors' resultant answers using an answer taxonomy, the revised Bloom's taxonomy proposed by Iowa State's Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (Heer, 2012). 2 While we intend future articles to discuss our findings, especially those significantly informing our internal practice and staff development, our research plays a different role in this article. In a typical research write-up, the data reveals the plot; that is, researchers start with a question that leads them to collect data. Researchers then handle the data, analyze it, and interpret it to answer their research questions. But for the purposes of this article, which is a metacognitive reflection on our research process, Data plays a different role. In a way, this is the story of how Data handled us.

In this participatory article (with suggested activities, check-ins with the body, and freewriting), we use collaborative narrative inquiry to unpack considerations that underlie the planning, facilitation, and processing of a series of movement-based workshops. Critiquing liberal multiculturalist approaches in writing centers, we argue against the all-too-common flattening of differences and think through how embodiment helps us "work the hyphens" (Fine, 1998) or find "third ways" In contrast to role-playing scenarios that characterize many tutor education practices, we suggest that centering the body through movement allows for an alternative and more generative way to interrogate and restructure racial power. In total, we argue for attention to the body and embodied practice to engage tutors (and all writing center staff, directors included) in developing critical praxis for racial justice. For us, praxis comes in the form we call "critical tutor education," which is essential for writing centers committed to more equitable relations and practices, as we continue to strive for the "ought to be" (Horton as cited in Branch, 2007).

Examining 200 word choice errors from Chinese students' drafts submitted to a writing center's online asynchronous tutoring program, the present study demonstrates that second language writers need help with word choice. Word choice problems, a natural part of second language learning, can negatively affect rhetorical effectiveness and readers' comprehension and evaluation. The study showed that 11% of online tutors' marginal comments related to word choice problems, among which 18% were due to translation. (Other error types were Wrong Context, Synform, Idiomaticity, Precision, and Register.) Direct corrections were the most common type of tutor comments -35%. (Other comment types were Explanation, Options, and Questions.) These numbers show that word choice errors are indeed critical, that even experienced writers rely on their first language, and tutors need more knowledge about word choice issues and how to provide instruction and feedback on them.

i n g o f r e f l e c t i o n e s s a y s f r o m three semesters of the tutor education course revealed four themes:

r c h ( L i g g e t t , J o r d a n

own right. Fitzgerald argues that we should pursue

These researchers examine how questions function in a corpus of eleven writing center conferences conducted by experienced tutors. They analyze the 690 questions generated in these conferences: 81% (562) from tutors and 19% (128) from students. Using a coding scheme developed from prior research on questions in math, science, and other kinds of quantitative tutoring, they categorized tutors’ and students’ questions. The researchers found that questions in writing center conferences serve a number of instructional and conversational functions. Questions allow tutors and students to fill in their knowledge deficits and check each other’s understanding. They also allow tutors (and occasionally students) to facilitate the dialogue of writing center conferences and attend to students’ engagement. In addition, tutors use questions to help students clarify what they want to say, identify problems with what they have written, and brainstorm. Based on this analysis, the authors make some recommendations for tutor training. 85891-Writing Center-text.indd 37 3/10/14 2:52 PM Thompson & Mackiewicz | Questioning in Writing Center Conferences 38 Introduction To resist the role of teacher-surrogate in favor of the role of helpful peer or collaborator, to get students to do the talking, and generally to achieve a student-centered focus, tutors have been advised to use questions as primary tutoring strategies in writing center conferences (Brooks; Harris). In other words, tutors are supposed to use questions to indirectly guide students to improving their writing. In these oftenidealistic conceptions of writing center conferences, questions are “real,” genuinely reflecting an interest in who the students are and what they want to say rather than leading students to a particular point of view. Moreover, students’ satisfaction with writing center conferences has been connected to their perceptions of having their questions answered (Thompson, Whyte, Shannon, Muse, Miller, Chappell, & Whigham; Thonus, “Tutor and Student Assessments”). Tutors are supposed to encourage students to ask questions freely, and it is assumed that students will ask more questions in writing center conferences than in the classroom (Harris). However, beyond encouraging students to talk and beyond directing tutors toward students’ areas of confusion, questions are important prompts for learning and for maintaining students’ engagement in writing center conferences. Research about question asking and answering in the classroom has typically focused on how teachers can pose questions to enhance critical thinking for students. This research has shown that the dialogic Socratic method, with its back-and-forth questions and answers, is a more effective teaching strategy than didactic teacher talk (Rose, Bhembe, Siler, Srivastava, & VanLehn; see also Kintsch; Tienken, Goldberg, & DiRocco). Today questioning is one of the most frequently used classroom teaching techniques, with elementary and high school teachers asking as many as 300 to 400 questions per day (Tienken, Goldberg, & DiRocco). Research suggests that if used effectively either in the classroom or in one-to-one tutorials, questions can enhance students’ learning in at least three ways. First, as shown in Socrates’s questioning of his student about the concept of justice, questions can direct students in their efforts to “construct and reconstruct knowledge and understanding” (Smith & Higgins 486). By discussing what they are thinking with a more expert tutor or teacher, students engage in self-explanation, a process shown to deepen their understanding (Chi; Chi, Bassok, Lewis, Reimann, & Glaser; Chi, De Leeuw, Chiu, & LaVancher; Rose, Bhembe, Siler, Srivastava, & VanLehn). Second, questions can enhance students’ motivation, stimulate curiosity, and encourage active participation in learning (Lustick; Smith & Higgins). 85891-Writing Center-text.indd 38 3/10/14 2:52 PM The Writing Center Journal 33.2 | Fall/Winter 2014 39 Third, teachers’ and tutors’ questions may become models for selfquestioning, important for students in regulating their own learning processes. Further, in both the classroom and in tutorials such as writing center conferences, learning typically occurs within a conversational context, and along with stimulating understanding, questions are vital linguistic components of an educational conversation. Besides helping tutors identify what students do not know, questions allow tutors to understand students’ goals for coming to the writing center and to politely facilitate the flow of the tutorial conversation. We will consider all of these types of questions in this article. We examined how questions function in a corpus of eleven writing center conferences conducted by experienced tutors. In these eleven conferences, we found a total of 690 questions, mostly asked by tutors but some asked by students as well. Incorporating research about questions in classroom teaching, we adapted a scheme for analyzing questions in tutorials that was developed by the psychologist and linguist Arthur C. Graesser and his associates. This scheme has been used to analyze questions in math, science, and other kinds of quantitative tutoring, with a range of students from elementary school to college (Golding, Graesser, & Millis; Graesser, Baggett, & Williams; Graesser, Bowers, Hacker, & Person; Graesser & Franklin; Graesser & McMahen; Graesser & Olde; Graesser & Person; Graesser, Person, & Huber; Graesser, Person, & Magliano; Graesser, Roberts, & Hackett-Renner; Person, Graesser, Magliano, & Kreuz). Through our analysis, we show how questions can function in writing center conferences so that we and our tutors can understand the potential impact of questions on students’ learning and, subsequently, pose questions more consciously. Previous research about questions in writing center conferences has focused on what questions reveal about tutors’ roles and control over conferences. For example, Kevin M. Davis, Nancy Hayward, Kathleen R. Hunter, & David Wallace analyzed four types of “conversational moves” (47) teachers use in classroom discourse—structuring the interaction, soliciting responses, responding, and reacting—to determine the extent to which tutors took on teacher roles. According to Davis, Hayward, Hunter, & Wallace, tutors are usually in control of conferences, but sometimes they do assume less teacher-like and more conversant-like roles (see also Willa Wolcott’s “Talking It Over: A Qualitative Study of Writing Center Conferencing”). Susan R. Blau, John Hall, & Tracy Strauss considered the nature of the collaboration that occurs in writing center conferences by analyzing “three recurring rhetorical strategies” (22) relating to tutors’ directiveness—questioning, echoing, and using qualifiers. They found that in conferences considered satisfactory, tutors 85891-Writing Center-text.indd 39 3/10/14 2:52 PM Thompson & Mackiewicz | Questioning in Writing Center Conferences 40 demonstrated “informed flexibility” (38) in the strategies they used. Other studies have evaluated tutors’ use of mitigated and unmitigated interrogatives (Thonus, “Dominance in Academic Writing Tutorials”), “question–answer interrogation sequences” (Thonus, “What Are the Differences” 231), and leading versus open questions (Severino). A few studies have included questions in analyzing tutors’ politeness strategies (Bell & Youmans) and self-presentation (Murphy). These studies of writing center conferences tend to analyze questions as signals of assumed role and that role’s concomitant right to control the discourse as opposed to examining all the ways questions can function—including but not restricted to the ways they help construct role and maintain control. We analyzed questions to determine the extent to which experienced tutors ask questions that push students’ thinking, check their understanding, facilitate conversation, and model the types of questions students should ask of themselves in order to assess and develop their own writing. Simultaneously, we speculated on the relationships between questioning and students’ and tutors’ roles. After delineating the question types we found, we examined question-answer patterns according to initiation-response-evaluation (IRE) instructional dialogue (Mehan), a classroom discourse pattern largely unexamined in writing center research (for an exception, see Porter). We examined writing center variations on the IRE pattern, showing how experienced tutors used different types of leading and scaffolding questions in tandem with common-ground questions in a cycle of promoting students’ thinking and engagement and of checking students’ comprehension.

e p r o v e d t r u e . D i s c i p l i n a r y e x p e r t i s e d i d r e s u l t in increased tutor directiveness, but this directiveness was used to facilitate rather than hinder effective collaboration.

This article examines how the broader political-educational climat in the United States impacts the presence of writing centers on university campuses as well as the shape(s) those writing centers take Using a representative sample of nearly 400 accredited institutions, th researcher explores the relationship between individualized writin support offered on university campuses and stratification of education opportunities in the U.S. Through an examination of such variable of university structure as enrollment size, sector (public, private, or for-profit), institutional type, and location, the researcher correlates the structure of writing centers to the structure of their surroundin institutions. Ultimately, the essay suggests that universities' differen approaches to supporting student writing are reflective of the larger legislative environment in the U.S. as well as what the universit perceives its role to be in relation to its students.

This essay argues for a broad theoretical perspective in writing center work that simultaneously contextualizes tutoring practices and complements research agendas. Writing center scholarship shows considerable resistance to both empirical research agendas and theoretical perspectives. Confronting this, the author chooses to examine the issue of directive/nondirective tutoring to evaluate theory as a framework.

This article traces authorship and citation patterns in The Writing Center Journal ( WCJ) from 1980 to 2009, a data set that consists of 241 WCJ articles containing 4,095 total citations. What these data demonstrate is that WCJ has been dominated by single-authored articles that are citing sources that largely appear just once -except for Stephen North's "The Idea of a Writing Center," which appears in nearly every third article's list of works cited -and that the most frequent source for citations is WCJ itself. This inward gaze is an indication of a tight-knit genealogy, an unpromising present that does not quite seem healthy for the biodiversity of future generations, as well as a missed opportunity to oifer writing centers as sites of intellectual engagement to composition studies as whole.

2002b), Neal Lerner (2009),

55 resources, the authors report studying 54, and the bibliography identifies 62. It seems odd in such a meticulous study that the sources of the data are not exact.

Tiffany Rousculp's Rhetoric of Respect: Recogniz ing Change at a Community Writing Center (2014) is an important book for writing center studies.Not only does Rousculp draw our attention to widely-growing though seldom-recognized community writing centers, but she also helps us see the positioning involved in making these centers sites of social change.This positioning she calls a "rhetoric of respect," or "a different type of relationship, one that is grounded in perception of worth, in esteem for another-as well as for the self" (pp.24-25).Using ecocomposition theory to recognize change, Rousculp contributes to a deeper understanding of micro-changes that emerge and are sustained over time through conditions of flexibility, self-awareness, uncertainty, failure, collaboration, and relationship.These conditions characterize many campus and community writing centers and can be cultivated to greater degrees .when we recognize their purposeful impact for our everyday, local work.Through metaphors of ecocompositionorganism, environment, relationship, place, web-Rousculp identifies and shows the importance of attending to moments of transformation for