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.

But theorizing also helps me break through frustration and inarticulateness and turn the chip on my shoulder into an instrument of analysis.

Nicolases book, Writing Groups Inside and Outside the Classroom , I am still marveling at the impressive array of writing-group contexts represented by the articles included in this edited volume. As a writing center director whose program has made several fledgling (mostly failed) attempts at facilitating group work, I began the book eagerly, expecting an authoritative prescription for structuring meaningful writing-group experiences. When no such prescription emerged in the reading, however, I quickly adjusted my expectations. At times frustrated and at others enchanted by the scrumptious complexity, I savored the book as a meal, one layered with flavors that enrich my appreciation of writing groups in all their manifestations.