Browsing by Subject "tutor"
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Item Analyzing Scaffolding in Writing Center Interactions: Beyond Descriptions of Tutors’ Interventions from Praxis: A Writing Center Journal Vol.19 No.3(Praxis, 2022) Thompson, Isabelle; Mackiewicz, JoItem From A Service-Learning to A Social-Change Model(2019) Savini, CatherineTutor education courses that prepare students to serve as peer writing consultants often include service learning; a typical servicelearning tutor education course involves sending students to tutor in local schools, usually in underserved neighborhoods. Existing writing center scholarship on service learning tends to overlook the limitations of this model. This article advances a radically different approach for tutor education where the course acts as an incubator for social change on campus. Informed by the principles advanced by the critical service learning movement, the course described here invites students to design and implement campus-based community building projects. Ultimately, this article demonstrates that a course focused on community building, rather than tutoring theory and strategies, can effectively prepare students to serve as peer writing consultants while imparting a heightened awareness of social inequities and a deep investment in the campus community.Item Helping Undergraduate Tutors Conduct and Disseminate Research: A Practical Guide for Writing Center Administrators from Praxis: A Writing Center Journal Vol. 20 No. 1(Praxis, 2022) Keaton, Megan; Schoppe, Ashley; Oliver, DaishaIn recent years, the field of writing center studies has begun to recognize the value of undergraduate research (McKinney; DelliCarpini and Crimmins; Fitzgerald and Ianetta). Additionally, scholars have begun arguing that the writing center itself is a prime research site. As tutors ask questions about the writing center and its work, the center becomes a place in which the tutors can look for answers (McKinney; DelliCarpini and Crimmins). In this article, we argue that writing center administrators should encourage and mentor undergraduate tutors to conduct and disseminate research. To this end, we offer specific practices for doing so. We begin by discussing the benefits of undergraduate research to tutors, to the institution, and to writing center studies as a field. Together, these benefits serve to make a case for administrators to devote time and resources to mentor their undergraduate tutors in research. Then, we list practical strategies for helping tutors conduct research and disseminate that research in the form of professional conference presentations and publications. Finally, we speak to potential challenges. We acknowledge that undergraduate research involves sacrifice, as too often writing centers are understaffed and underfunded. Yet we firmly believe that this work amply repays this investment, as our personal experiences attest.Item ‘I was kind of angry’: Tutors Receiving Feedback in Order to Understand Writer Resistance(2019) Bleakney, Julia; Mattison, Michael; Ryan, JenniferThis article examines the literature on writer resistance to feedback (Elbow, Sommers, Straub) and presents the results of a study designed to examine how tutors-in-training can develop a greater understanding of that resistance. In this study, we asked students in two writing center education courses at two different schools to provide written feedback on each other’s writing and then followed up with two interviews with selected participants. The exchange invited the tutors-in-training to engage in the challenging experience faced by every writing center client: receiving feedback on their writing. Our purpose was to identify whether this exchange improved the tutors’ ability both to give feedback and to understand how to receive feedback effectively (Stone and Heen). Could engaging in an exchange with tutors-in-training from another school help them appreciate feedback as a problematic form of communication? Does the experience of receiving such feedback— and reflecting on it—influence future tutors’ thinking about their approach to tutoring others? We found that the experience enhanced tutors’ awareness of writers’ resistance to feedback and the need to tailor feedback respectfully and responsively.Item Listening to the Friction: An Exploration of a Tutor’s Listening to the Community and Academy from Praxis: A Writing Center Vol.19 No.1(Praxis, 2022) Valentine, KathrynThis article explores what it might mean to listen to the “friction,” here understood as ideological contestations of writing, as a part of writing center work. For my purposes, listening to the friction focuses on how tutors’ listen to what haunts writing in the academy and therefore what haunts writing center work. In particular, I focus on how one tutor, who was a research participant in a qualitative study I conducted, shows the possibility of listening to the haunting of remediation by drawing on a blend of community and academic listening.Item Overcoming The Girl Tutor Complex: Gender Differences in the Writing Center(2008) Mudd, SamanthaItem Reading and the Writing Center: Tutor Education and Praxis(2020) Greenwell, Amanda; Lavoie, Renée; Campos, Gissel; Gerrish, Sarah; Joerg, MaryItem Review of the Writing Center as Cultural and Interdisciplinary Contact Zone By Randall W. Monty(2018) Dadugblor, Stephen K.Item Too Confident Or Not Confident Enough?: A Quantitative Snapshot of Writing Tutors' Writing and Tutoring Self-Efficacies(2018) Powell, Roger; Hixon-Bowles, KelseyWhen 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 selfefficacy. 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 selfefficacies 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.Item The Tutor Exchange Project: A Multi-Institutional Tutor Education Project(2020) Klein, Sipai; DiPaula, LaurenItem Tutor Talk, Netspeak, and Student Speak: Enhancing Online Conferences(2020) Werner, Courtney L.Item What’s Your Plan for the Consultation? Examining Alignment between Tutorial Plans and Consultations among Writing Tutors Using the Read/Plan-Ahead Tutoring Method from Praxis: A Writing Center Journal Vol. 20 No. 2(Praxis, 2023) Awad Scrocco, DianaWriting 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.