Heeding previous scholars' calls for a critical investigation of the role of reflection in the professional development of tutors, this article examines reflections written by tutors in the context of conference records. More specifically, the authors investigate the consequences of incorporating a prompt to reflect on tutoring strategies into our online conference-records database. The authors first present the results of their opening coding of nearly 300 conference records, offering a taxonomy of specific types of reflections found in the conference records. The authors then identify three shifts in the content of conference records written after the introduction of the reflection prompt. Finally, the authors draw on analysis of tutor interviews to illuminate how the positive influence of the reflection prompt is inextricably linked to a larger culture of reflection that is often collaborative and leads to transfer of learning within and beyond the writing center.

This essay identifies the definitional confluences between transfer and translingualism and then reflects on the ways that each term might benefit from considering the other’s research questions, theoretical frames, and methodologies. While translingualism challenges assumptions about how to recognize and evaluate transfer, the transfer literature demonstrates the value of fine-grained, long-term, naturalistic studies of writing, a value productively taken up in research on a translingual approach. Ultimately, the essay suggests that both transfer and translingualism might best be understood not as prescribed pedagogies or policies but as terms with explanatory value: small theories that help open up changing practices in our writing lives.