The present study analyzes how role conflict, or distress or negative sentiments about tutoring work, are expressed in tutor post-session notes. Through corpus and linguistic analysis of session notes, researchers found that role conflict was not only present in many session notes–especially from tutors with more training and experience–but it often resulted from tutors’ feelings of powerlessness, time limitations, or other constraints around their work. In analyzing session notes’ linguistic features, we focused on hedging and boosting, or any words which reduce or amplify certainty in speech respectively (Lakoff, 1973). From this, we identified distinct “communication identities” among tutors wherein those who reported positive outcomes in tutoring work often using boosting language, and those who reported negative experiences used hedging language. Tutors overwhelmingly relied on hedging and non-constructive language to articulate role conflicts in their session notes, which suggests a discomfort with directly addressing work-related conflict. We found that tutors gravitate towards indirect politeness strategies (such as hedging) to discuss conflict in their work which paradoxically hinders their reflective processes and forestalls more meaningful engagement with conflict in professionalization contexts. This paper provides alternative and more generative ways to talk about role conflict, politeness strategies, and tutor work identities. Keywords : Writing Center, Session Notes, Politeness, Role Conflict, Linguistic Analysis

We focus on a corpus of around 2 million words and four types of data visualization to make arguments about the larger field of writing center studies. We also address the value of cross-institutional work for writing center studies, particularly related to documents (e.g., sessions notes) that are often under-utilized at individual institutions.

This article demonstrates the important role that student researchers play in developing two-year college writing center assessment. As part of a tutoring practicum assignment, students from Bristol Community College co-designed a survey that assessed the perceptions of students who do and do not utilize a writing center at their mid-sized community college. Students collected 865 responses between 2014 and 2015. This article provides a road map to developing student-led RAD research through a two-year college writing center and its attendant course; it also shares positive pedagogical and programmatic outcomes from the project.

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.