19.3: Transformations in the Writing Center

P R A X I S

Transformations in the Writing Center

WRITING CENTER

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHORS COLUMNS

From the Editors: Transformation in the Writing Center

Kiara Walker and Kaitlin Passafiume

FOCUS ARTICLES

Measuring the Effect of Writing Center Visits on Student Performance Joseph Zuccarelli, Nicholas Cunningham, Colleen G. Eils, Andrew Lee, and Kevin Cummisekey

Analyzing Scaffolding in Writing Center Interactions: Beyond Descriptions of Tutors’ Intervention Isabelle Thompson and Jo Mackiewicz

Peri pandemic Graduate Writing Mentorship Xuan Jiang, Adrian R. Salgado, and Courtney Glass

Disrupting the Narrative: Cross National Consultants in a U.S. Graduate Writers’ Studio Yvonne R. Lee, Sinenhlanhla Zungu, and Varun Joseph Andrews

Inclusive Sentence Level Writing Support

Bridget Draxler, Anne Berry, Manuela Novoa Villada, and Victoria Gutierrez

BOOK REVIEW

Review of Queerly Centered: LGBTQA Writing Center Directors Navigate the Workplace by Travis Webster Jacob Herrmann

THE AUTHORS

Varun Joseph Andrews, MEng served as a graduate writing consultant at Lehigh University’s Graduate Writers’ Studio at the time that this article was written. He has since graduated from Lehigh University with his master’s degree in Healthcare Systems Engineering, and currently works at a major health system.

Anne Berry, MA & MS is the Assistant Director of Multilingual Student Language Support in the Center for Advising and Academic Support and a writing instructor in the Writing Program at St. Olaf College. Anne approaches her work with international student writers with a background in English language instruction and college readiness programming. She is a long time member of TESOL and has presented frequently at the international convention and at regional conferences.

Kevin Cummiskey, PhD earned his PhD in Biostatistics from Harvard University and is an assistant professor at the United States Military Academy. His primary interest is in innovative teaching approaches in undergraduate statistics courses. Specifically, he’s been nationally recognized for his work in introducing ideas from causal inference in the undergraduate curriculum. He is also involved in a wide range of applied research in statistics and data science. Dr. Cummiskey is a Colonel in the United States Army and has served in a variety of positions in the Corps of Engineers and Operations Research and Systems Analysis (ORSA) branch.

Nicholas Cunningham, BS recently graduated from the United States Military Academy with an undergraduate degree in Mathematical Sciences with minors in Applied Statistics and Cybersecurity. While pursuing his undergraduate degree, Nick worked as a Senior Writing Fellow in the West Point Writing Program. Nick is passionate about using machine learning and causal inference to address knowledge gaps in human performance. His extracurricular research includes work with the National Security Agency, the United States Army Special Operations Command, Army Research Labs, and the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre. Nick is a First Lieutenant in the United States Army and is currently serving within the Infantry branch.

Bridget Draxler, PhD is Associate Director of Writing, Speaking, and Academic Support and an adjunct assistant professor of writing at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. Bridget’s teaching and research focus on public humanities, writing centers, and the scholarship of teaching and learning. Along with Maggie Epstein, she is a co author of How to Be a Peer Research Consultant (2021). She is also the co author, with Danielle Spratt, of Engaging the Age of Jane Austen: Humanities in Practice (2018).

Collen G. Eils, PhD is the Deputy Director of and Associate Professor in the West Point Writing Program at the United States Military Academy. She earned her PhD in English with a portfolio in Mexican American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin, where she gained her first writing center experience. Her work in writing program administration, in the classroom, and through scholarship in writing studies, pedagogy, and literary studies is committed to advancing equitable, socially just institutional practices. She is the author of The Politics of Privacy in Contemporary Native, Latinx, and Asian American Metafictions (the Ohio State UP, 2020).

Courtney Glass is a visiting assistant teaching professor of Writing and Rhetoric at Florida International University. She is a former Graduate Consultant at the Center for Excellence in Writing where she also served as a mentor and facilitator in the GWMP. Her research interests include writing pedagogy, first year writing, multilingual writers, graduate writing, writing center practices, and 19th century literature.

Victoria Gutierrez is a recent graduate from St. Olaf College, where she majored in Political Science and Sociology/Anthropology. Since her second year of undergraduate, she worked as a Writing and Research tutor and upon graduation, she worked as the temporary Writing Center Coordinator. Along with Manuela Novoa Villada, she is a co author of “Balancing ‘Correctness’ With ‘Voice’ For Linguistically Diverse Writers: Training Modules For Inclusive Writing Support” (2021).

Jacob Herrmann, PhD is the Assistant Director of the Center for Academic and Professional Communication (CAPC) at Rice University. He holds a PhD in English literature from The University of Kansas. His research interests include writing center pedagogy and practice, LGBTQ+ studies, and first year composition. His publications include "Brave/r Spaces vs. Safe Spaces for LGBTQ+ in the Writing Center: Theory and Practice at the University of Kansas" in The Peer Review (2017).

Xuan Jiang, PhD is the Assistant Director of the Center for Excellence in Writing at Florida International University. Her research interests include writing tutoring, writing pedagogy, writing tutors’ growth, graduate student writing, issues and strategies in academic writing, and transnationalism and translingualism in TESOL. She has published her studies as peer reviewed journal articles and book chapters in these fields.

Andrew Lee, PhD earned his MA and PhD in Transportation from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has expertise in a wide variety of operations research and transportation models focusing on military applications, unmanned aerial systems, and disaster relief. At the United States Military Academy, Dr. Lee is an innovative educator in the classroom implementing novel pedagogical approaches such as discovery learning assessments in the mathematical modeling course. He also leads summer faculty workshops to mentor and train new junior faculty members. As the Director for West Point’s Center for Leadership and Diversity in STEM (CLDSTEM), he is passionate about bridging the underrepresentation gap in STEM, especially with career fields centered on the Department of Defense modernization priorities like computer science and cybersecurity. Dr. Lee is a Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Army and has served in a variety of positions with increasing responsibility in the Military Intelligence and Operations Research and Systems Analysis (ORSA) branch.

Yvonne R. Lee, PhD directs the Graduate Writers’ Studio at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. She holds a PhD in Rhetoric and Composition from Kent State University in Kent, Ohio. Her current research interests revolve around the experiences of graduate writers, including how they seek out and utilize campus based writing support services.

Jo Mackiewicz, PhD is a professor of rhetoric and professional communication at Iowa State University. Her recent book, Writing Center Talk over Time: A Mixed Method Study, won the International Writing Centers Association’s Outstanding Book Award.

Adrian R. Salgado, MA is a second year PhD student at The Ohio State University who studies nineteenth century American literature. He holds a BA and an MA in English from Florida International University. During his time there, he was a writing consultant who tutored undergraduate and graduate students at the Center for Excellence in Writing. In addition to tutoring, he served as a mentor and facilitator in the GWMP and presented in various writing center conferences. His research interests include nineteenth century American literature, maritime literature, transoceanic studies, sound studies, performance studies, queer studies, archival studies, and material culture.

Isabelle Thompson, PhD is Emeritus Professor of Technical and Professional Communication and former director of the English Center at Auburn University.

Manuela Novoa Villada, BA is a recent graduate from St. Olaf College, where she majored in Sociology/Anthropology and Philosophy. During her third year of undergraduate, she began her position as a Supplemental Instructor for the Introduction to Academic Writing course tailored to ESL international students. As part of the Magnus the Good Fellowship, she co researched inclusive sentence level practices that were implemented in training modules at St. Olaf’s College writing center. She currently works as a victim advocate in the Twin Cities.

Joseph Zuccarelli, BS is a Draper Laboratory Scholar pursuing his MS in Data Science at Harvard University. He recently graduated from the United States Military Academy as a Mathematical Sciences major and Cyber

Security minor. While pursuing his undergraduate degree, Joseph worked as a Senior Writing Fellow in the West Point Writing Program. In his undergraduate studies, Joseph focused his research on applied mathematics and technical communication. His internship experience includes working with the Florida Panthers sports analytics team studying National Hockey League data. Joseph is a Second Lieutenant in the United States Army and will serve within the Cyber branch following the completion of his studies at Harvard.

Sinenhalanhla Zungu, MA & MS served as a graduate writing consultant at Lehigh University’s Graduate Writers’ Studio at the time that this article was written. She holds an MA in Clinical Psychology and an MS i n Social Psychology. She is currently a social psychology PhD student at Lehigh University.

EDITORS’ INTRODUCTION: TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE WRITING CENTER

Kiara Walker

University of Texas at Austin

praxisuwc@gmail.com

Praxis is proud to present our Summer 2022 regular publication, “Transformations in the Writing Center.” As Co Editors of writing center scholarship, we have perceived a pointed effort on the part of you, our fellow collaborators, to present the many changes our writing centers have undergone and are undergoing with relation to how we serve writers in our respective institutions. Many of us call for greater representation within our writing centers, while still others demonstrate their efforts to serve students under new dichotomies offered by a post pandemic society. We review the results of your centers’ newest policy enactments, in tandem with your efforts to best serve translingual members of our writing center societies. What seems homogenous across both quantitative and qualitative scholarly works is the mood of transformation that our centers are undergoing, whether policy based or pandemic related. With the scholarship that follows, we hope you find support and precedent for your own centers even as you undergo personal periods of transition.

Herein, Zuccarelli et al. apply propensity score matching, otherwise known as a complex statistical method to gauge factors associated with student writing center attendance and overall effects on students’ writing performance after visiting the writing center. In “Measuring the Effect of Writing Center visits on Student Performance,” the authors identify individuals who are most likely to make use of writing center resources, and outline very real result figures for these writers. They propose that their article could serve as a quantitative guideline for writing center administrators to assess their own center’s effectiveness, thus enabling policy makers to enact informed decisions for future programming.

In “Analyzing Scaffolding in Writing Center Interactions: Beyond Descriptions of Tutors’ Interventions,” Isabelle Thompson and Jo Mackiewicz extend existing work on tutor student interactions by examining the value of scaffolding for both tutors and students. Applying insights from education and psychology to writing center conferences, the authors define and demonstrate characteristics of scaffolding that occur, in the moment, during conferences. Based on their illustrative analyses, the authors argue that using scaffolding not only benefits writing center practice and professionalization but also offers a conceptual lens that

Kaitlin Passafiume

University of Texas at Austin praxisuwc@gmail.com

can inform and improve discussions about directiveness.

In “Peri pandemic Graduate Writing Mentorship,” Xuan Jiang, Adrian R. Salgado, and Courtney Glass argue for an approach to graduate writing support that better attends to understudied and under supported factors integral to the writing process. From their mixed methods study of two cohorts of writing groups, the authors found factors within, across, and for writing that signal a need for more strategic guidance in graduate writing center support. Particularly, support that engages with temporal and spatial circumstances of these writers, especially for first generation graduate students and multilingual writers.

The authors of “Disrupting the Narrative: Cross National Consultants in a U.S. Graduate Writers’ Studio” contribute to the discussion of how predominant whiteness in US writing centers affects the wellbeing of multicultural center participants. Yvonne R. Lee, Sinenhlanhla Zungu, and Varun Joseph Andrews address a gap in scholarship, proposing that US writing centers are the ideal space to interrogate colonial perspectives through autoethnography, wherein personal experiences can catalyze policy changes in our writing spaces.

In “Inclusive Sentence Level Writing Support,” Bridget Draxler, Anne Berry, Manuela Novoa Villada, and Victoria Gutierrez argue that linguistic justice efforts must permeate our approaches to sentence level writing instruction, particularly when working with translingual writers. The authors present findings from a grant funded research undertaking in which they created a series of training models which ultimately provide a heuristic guide to tutor decision making based on sensitivity to the relationship between the type of error, the writer, the tutor, and the context.

We close with Jacob Herrmann’s review of Queerly Centered: LGBTQA Writing Center Directors Navigate the Workplace by Travis Webster. Herrmann finds Webster’s book to be a thought provoking work that combines narrative and data. To Herrmann, Webster recognizes and demonstrates the significance of LGBTQ+ experiences in writing centers and encourages readers to engage critically with the day to day experiences and practices of LGBTQ+ laborers.

Finally, we here at Praxis are proud to share these explorations of writing center transformation. We look

forward to the conversations and changes this scholarship will contribute to or begin.

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MEASURING THE EFFECT OF WRITING CENTER VISITS ON STUDENT PERFORMANCE

Joseph Zuccarelli

Harvard University joseph_zuccarelli@g.harvard.edu

Andrew Lee

United States Military Academy andrew.lee@westpoint.edu

Nicholas Cunningham

United States Military Academy nicholas.cunningham@westpoint.edu

Colleen G. Eils

United States Military Academy colleen.eils@westpoint.edu

Kevin Cummiskey

United States Military Academy kevin.cummiskey@westpoint.edu

Abstract

Given the recent rise of data science, a growing number of scholars are publishing quantitative studies on the impacts of writing centers. Typically, these studies aim to answer assessment style questions such as “Who visits the writing center?” and “Are writing center visits effective in terms of increasing student performance?” The majority of these studies feature the application of common statistical approaches such as correlation and regression analysis, which provide useful but limited results. In this article, we apply a more complex statistical method known as propensity score matching in order to identify factors associated with writing center attendance as well as the effect of visits on student written performance. In total, we analyzed two semesters of visits to the Mounger Writing Center (MWC) at the United States Military Academy at West Point and over 2,500 student records of signature writing assignments. We found statistically significant evidence that race and gender are associated with attendance, specifically that women and historically underrepresented students are more likely to visit the writing center for signature writing assignments. We identified the presence of a causal relationship between MWC visits and student grades on signature writing assignments, as those who visited the MWC multiple times received grades approximately 2% greater on average compared to those who did not visit. Ultimately, this article provides administrators with a more robust quantitative framework to assess the efficacy of their writing center, thus enabling for more informed programmatic decisions.

Introduction

Undergraduate consultants at the Mounger Writing Center (MWC) at the United States Military Academy (USMA), better known as West Point, are relatively distinct in two ways: we staff the MWC as part of academic coursework, rather than for pay, and as a group we major in programs from every department on campus. Roughly a third humanities, social sciences, and STEM majors, respectively, we bring uniquely multidisciplinary perspectives to the seminar courses we take in the pedagogy and practices of college writing and to our writing center consultations. The interdisciplinary connections that start as part of our writing fellows courses, which are grounded in foundational and

contemporary scholarship in writing studies and writing center studies, often extend beyond the two course sequence and into our respective disciplinary research interests. This was the case for me, the first author.

As a mathematical sciences major and a cadet writing fellow, as our undergraduate consultants are called, I quickly became interested in quantitative writing center studies, specifically those aimed at assessing the efficacy of writing centers. Although qualitative methods of study are more prevalent, a few key scholars have used quantitative methodologies in their assessments of writing centers. Recently, Lori Salem made waves within the field with the article “Decisions...Decisions: Who Chooses to Use the Writing Center,” in which she studied the differences between users and non users of the writing center at Temple University through correlation analysis. Salem was not the first scholar to carry out a quantitative study, however, as others such as Neal Lerner and Stephen Newmann did as well a few decades before. Both Lerner and Newmann sought to evaluate the effect of visiting the writing center by comparing grades of students who used the writing center versus those who did not, positioning students at similar starting points by using SAT Verbal scores.

The three studies mentioned above all involved quantitative approaches aimed at answering two key questions within the field: (1) What factors affect writing center attendance? (2) What is the effect of writing center visits on students’ performance on written assignments? The answers to these two questions enable writing center administrators to assess the effectiveness of their services, as they speak to a center’s ability to attract clients as well as the quality of visits. Although the traditional purpose of a writing center is clear, “to produce better writers, not better writing,” scholars have yet to agree upon the best way to assess centers’

ability to achieve this objective (North 438). Regardless, writing center administrators must assess something student satisfaction, students’ self reported learning outcomes, writers’ confidence levels to highlight their successes, justify program budgets, and drive pedagogical innovations (Lape 1). In this article, we offer a more complex statistical framework known as propensity score matching that can provide writing center administrators with more accurate causal inferences using data driven answers to these typical assessment style questions concerning writing center efficacy.

The rest of the article is organized in the following format. First, we highlight a few noteworthy quantitative studies aimed at assessing the effectiveness of writing centers. Second, we describe the process used to carry out our statistical analysis, from data aggregation to propensity score matching. Third, we lay out the results of our data analysis, including important data visualizations and tables that indicate the major factors concerning writing center attendance and the effect of attendance on students’ written performance. Fourth, we discuss the implications of our results in terms of writing center studies and identify a few limitations of our study that future researchers should consider. Finally, we assess the significance of our study as a framework or statistical approach that other writing centers can follow.

Literature Review: Quantitative Writing Center Studies

Conventionally, authors of writing center studies use qualitative methodologies such as focus groups, case studies, and surveys, in their assessments of writing centers (Gofine 41). Increasingly, however, scholars and administrators have sought out quantitative methods to provide a different perspective on writing center operations. Thus far, these quantitative methods have largely ranged anywhere from basic descriptive statistics all the way to correlation and regression analysis (Newman; Lerner; Salem; Bielinska Kwapisz).

Descriptive statistics are simple quantifications commonly used by writing center administrators to report matters such as how many students visited their writing center, each student’s major, and the number of tutoring hours completed by each consultant. Although these numbers are often a necessary component of writing centers’ annual reports, administrators cannot rely on them to assess the efficacy of their services. Such basic statistics may be used to gauge whether or not a center is attracting clients; however, they in no way indicate the quality of services that clients receive during

visits (Bell 9). Therefore, in order to draw useful insights from data, scholars have turned to more refined quantitative analysis methods.

Two of the first scholars to carry out such analysis within the field were Newmann and Lerner. In “Demonstrating Effectiveness” and “Counting Beans and Making Beans Count,” Newman and Lerner, respectively, sought to determine if students who use the writing center achieved higher first year composition (FYC) grades than those who did not. To do so, the two scholars used a similar methodology compare the grades of those students who used the writing center with those who did not, while adjusting for students’ SAT verbal scores. Both Newmann and Lerner reported similar results. Newmann found that significantly fewer students who visited the writing center received unsuccessful grades than those who did not visit (8). Likewise, Lerner claimed that those with lower SAT verbal scores benefited most from visits, as this group performed about five percentage points better on average than those in the same SAT range who did not visit the writing center (“Counting Beans and Making Beans Count” 3).

Although these two researchers used similar methods and found similar results, Lerner later acknowledged that both studies were not statistically sound. According to Lerner, both studies were grounded in three invalid assumptions. First, both assumed that students with lower SAT verbal scores were at a disadvantage in FYC courses. Lerner found at his institution the relationship between students’ SAT verbal scores and FYC grades was extremely weak, even weaker than the relationship between SAT math scores and FYC grades ("Writing Center Assessment" 62). Second, both assumed that a student’s final FYC grade was a proper indication of his or her writing ability. This assumption is also troublesome, as we cannot be certain that a student’s final course grade is a fair assessment of the goals that a writing center holds for its visitors. As mentioned previously, the purpose of a writing center is to improve students’ writing ability, and FYC grades also measure student’s diligence in class participation and ability to complete assignments on time. Third, both assumed that grading was consistent across FYC sections. Lerner found at his institution that instructors were not using the same grading criteria, thus invalidating this assumption ("Writing Center Assessment " 63). Given these flaws, Lerner concluded that both his and Newmann’s findings were unreliable. Recently, several scholars carried out studies with similar objectives using more traditional statistical approaches. For instance, in "Impact of Writing Proficiency and Writing Center Participation on

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Academic Performance," Agnieszka Bielinska Kwapisz analyzed data for appointments and graded assignments from 315 undergraduate business students at Montana State University to investigate the effect of writing center attendance on student performance (385). Using regression analysis, Bielinska Kwapisz indicated that students in the top 40th percentile of the grade distribution who visited the writing center had significantly higher grades on written assignments than those who did not visit the writing center. However, students below this threshold did not seem to benefit from the writing center (391). Based on these findings, Bielinska Kwapisz recommended that writing centers find more ways to aid students in the lower portion of the grade distribution (392). Although this recommendation seems to follow at first glance, the study does not adjust for all possible confounding variables such as study habits that could themselves explain the difference in performance on writing assignments. For example, those students inclined to visit the writing center may have been disproportionately inclined to start their assignments well in advance.

Similarly, Lori Salem studied factors associated with writing center attendance using data from 4,202 students at Temple University. Salem analyzed several potential factors associated with writing center attendance such as prior academic performance, beliefs and preferences, and financial status. Using a data mining technique known as CHAID, or Chi Squared Automatic Interaction Detection, Salem found that certain variables such as race, gender, and class were correlated with writing center visits. Specifically, students most likely to visit the writing center were those “historically excluded from full access to higher education: women, students of color, English language learners, and students with less inherited merit” (160). As a result, Salem suggested that we fundamentally rethink writing center pedagogy to ensure that it better serves a more diverse population of students. Although this suggestion seems to follow from Salem’s analysis, this study is limited in that Salem only identifies associations between variables.

Although these authors used well known statistical methods to arrive at their conclusions, both studies are limited in terms of their ability to identify causal relationships. Methods involving correlation or regression techniques often ignore unexplained sources of variation, which is a key criterion in establishing causal relationships. As a result, it is possible that other variables such as gender, race, or prior academic performance may impact findings concerning the effect of visits on student performance. Hence, in this study

we apply a method rooted in causal inference literature known as propensity score matching to better measure writing center effectiveness.

Data

The population under observation in this study is students who were enrolled in Freshman Composition, US History, or International Relations three of the more writing intensive core courses required of all students at USMA between 2019 2020. Importantly, all three courses are linked to the West Point Writing Program, which requires signature writing events (SWEs) as part of its Writing Across the Curriculum approach to developing undergraduate writers. This means that each of these courses has a standard, course wide writing event, which, in accordance with the principles of “signature work” as outlined by the American Association of American Colleges and Universities, focuses students’ attention on a particular assignment.1 The final data set used in our statistical analysis is the aggregate of data from three unique sources. The first data set is 3,351 SWE grades by student and course. The second data set consists of information concerning 1,389 student visits to the MWC, to include the student’s name, the date of the visit, and the course of the assignment for which they are visiting the writing center. The third data set contains background information available (gender, race, standardized test scores) for 6,817 students from institutional admissions records.2 We merge these three data sets into one using a unique student identifier, creating a final aggregated data set composed of 2,662 complete records with the student’s SWE grade, an indicator of the student's number of visits to the MWC, and various demographic and academic characteristics concerning the student.3

The variable whose effect we are interested in measuring, or the “treatment variable,” is MWC Visits, which represents the number of times that a student visited the writing center for a given SWE. MWC Visits is a categorical variable with three treatment groups never, once, multiple times in which multiple times is defined as more than one visit for a given SWE. Students at any stage in the writing process are encouraged to visit the MWC. Prior to any visit, students are required to fill out an appointment form that indicates, among other elements, their preferred focus for the visit. Visits are typically 45 minutes in length, during which writing fellows engage clients in productive conversations about their ideas and how to express them more effectively.

The variable that we are observing in order to determine the effect of our treatment, or the “outcome

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variable,” is SWE Grade, which represents the score that a student received on their signature writing event. SWE Grade is a quantitative variable that ranges from 0 100. The SWE represents a significant writing assignment in the course, as determined by the program or course director. They usually occur in the latter stages of a course, providing time for students to develop as thinkers and writers within the given discipline. SWEs are prepared writing assignments, meaning students are provided time to engage in a full writing process. Each of the assignments included in this study is formally scaffolded and affords students weeks to plan, draft, and revise the essay. All instructors within each course are required to use the same criteria and grading scales to assess students’ SWEs. While they may not achieve perfect interrater reliability, each of the core courses represented within our dataset run regular calibration exercises for faculty.

Our aggregated data set has the following inclusion criteria. First, we only consider student records of SWEs for the following courses: First Year Composition, History of the United States, International Relations, and the advanced versions for each of these courses. Other courses did not possess large enough sample sizes to conduct meaningful analysis. Second, we only consider records of students who received a SWE grade of greater than 50%. We found six instances of SWEs that did not meet this criterion, and all of them came from students who did not visit the writing center. SWEs scored below this threshold are typically incomplete or late assignments; therefore, these grades may not indicate poor quality of writing.

Methods

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are considered the “gold standard" approach when it comes to estimating the effect of a treatment, such as a writing center visit, on an outcome, such as a student’s SWE grade. In RCTs, as the name suggests, subjects are randomly assigned to treatment groups, which simply represent the degree of treatment that they must receive. This property of RCTs allows researchers to estimate treatment effects through direct comparison of the outcomes between treatment groups (Greenland, Pearl, and Robins, 1999). Although arguably every writing center administrator would be interested in estimating the effect of visits to their center on students’ written performance, it would be unfair to mandatorily assign students at random to a certain number of visits. Furthermore, the pedagogy of many writing centers requires that students come of their own accord, which is fundamentally at odds with making random assignments as part of an experiment. Therefore,

administrators are limited to another quantitative approach known as an observational study.

Observational studies are those in which the researcher observes individuals without any form of intervention, oftentimes due to ethical concerns or logistical constraints. Unlike RCTs, these studies do not enable researchers to directly compare an outcome between treatment groups to estimate the effect of a treatment. This is due to the fact that in observational studies treatment selection is often influenced by subjects' baseline characteristics, meaning that students of a specific gender, race or standardized test score range may be more likely to seek out a treatment such as visiting the writing center than other students (Greenland and Morgenstern 193). In statistics, this is known as confounding, which occurs when the set of variables that predispose subjects to receive a certain degree of treatment are also related to the outcome. Researchers must properly account for potential sources of confounding in order to accurately estimate treatment effects (Greenland and Morgenstern 199). One method to account for these differences is propensity score matching.

Propensity score matching (PSM) is a statistical technique used in observational studies to reduce bias caused by confounding in order to more accurately estimate the effect of a treatment on an outcome. For example, in our study we use PSM in order to estimate the effect of visiting the MWC on student SWE grades. However, we cannot estimate the effect of visits by directly comparing the SWE grades of those who did and did not visit the MWC, as this estimate would be biased by variables that are associated with the number of times that a student visits and their SWE grade (e.g.: gender, race, ACT/SAT scores). These variables are typically referred to as confounding variables, as they influence both the treatment and the outcome. For example, students who were high performers on standardized tests might visit the writing center more often and also earn a higher score on their SWE than the average student. PSM attempts to control for confounding variables by making the groups receiving treatment and those not receiving treatment comparable with respect to these variables.

PSM requires a three step approach that can be carried out using any common statistical programming language such as R, which is open source and freely available (Bryer). First, we estimate the probability, i.e., propensity score, that a student visits the MWC for a given SWE based on their gender, race, and standardized test scores. There are a few different methods to carry out this estimation we use a common statistical technique known as the logistic

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regression model.4 Second, we match students from different treatment groups (MWC Visits never, once, multiple times) who possess similar propensity scores.5 Note that it is important to evaluate these matchings to ensure that the confounding variables included in our model gender, race, standardized test scores are evenly distributed amongst the matched groups. Finally, we assess the effect of writing center visits by observing the difference in mean SWE grades across the treatment groups amongst matched observations. This requires carrying out t tests to determine if there is a significant difference in the mean SWE grade between the treatment groups.6 These tests enable us to measure the effect of visiting multiple times versus once, once versus never, and multiple times versus never.

Results

Prior to our PSM approach, we first carried out some exploratory analysis of our dataset. Of the 2,662 records in our dataset, 95 students visited the MWC for an assignment multiple times, 207 students visited the MWC for an assignment once, and 2,360 students never visited the MWC. Table 1 (see Appendix A) provides a breakdown of students’ academic and demographic characteristics by number of MWC visits. This table indicates that, in terms of gender, women are overrepresented among the population of students who visited the MWC once or more (16.5%), and in terms of race, Asian American (17.5%) and African American (14.4%) students are disproportionately likely to visit the MWC. This table also indicates that there is not a significant difference in standardized test scores between students that went to the MWC and those that did not.

Figure 1 (see Appendix B) provides a visual indication of students’ SWE grades by the number of times they visited the MWC. Note that those who visited the MWC multiple times received an average of 83.9% on a given SWE and those who visited the MWC once received an 83.0%, whereas those who did not attend received an 81.8%. Although this direct comparison across our treatment groups suggests that more visits to the MWC is associated with greater performance on SWEs, we did not adjust for any of the confounding variables mentioned previously. Therefore, while it appears that visits to the MWC are improving students’ SWE performance, we cannot determine if this enhanced SWE performance is entirely attributable to MWC visits or if there are other variables such as students’ gender, race and/or standardized test scores that are confounding our findings. In order to properly adjust for these confounding variables, we employ PSM.

Recall that the first step in our PSM approach is to use logistic regression models to estimate the propensity of each student to visit the MWC given their demographic and academic characteristics (gender, race, standardized test scores). Table 2 (see Appendix A) contains summary information concerning each of these models. These models provide several useful insights concerning the factors affecting attendance at the MWC Specifically, we find a statistically significant association between gender and MWC visits, as men are less likely to visit the MWC multiple times versus once compared to women. Similarly, we also find a statistically significant association between race and MWC visits, as Hispanic students are less likely to visit multiple times versus once, and white students are less likely to visit multiple times versus once. These same conclusions all hold when comparing those who visit once versus never as well: men are less likely to visit once versus never compared to women, Hispanic students are less likely to visit once versus never, and white students are less likely to visit once versus never.

Moving along in our three step PSM approach, the second step is to match students with similar propensity scores across the three treatment groups: never, once, and multiple times. In order to ensure quality matchings, our algorithm only matched observations from the same course for which the difference in propensity scores fell below a given threshold (see Endnote 5). Using this threshold, our algorithm matched 1,000 (37.6%) of the 2,662 observations included in our dataset, leaving 1,662 (62.4%) observations not considered in the final comparison of treatment groups Table 3 (see Appendix A) provides a full breakdown of unmatched observations by treatment group. Although the number of unmatched observations may seem large, we must consider that the majority (68.4%) of these unmatched observations came from those who never visited the MWC, which is much less concerning than if they had been from the two treatment groups (those who visited the MWC one or multiple times). Figure 2 (see Appendix B) consists of balance plots that provide a visual indication of the quality of our matching procedure.

The third and final step in our PSM approach is to use t tests to estimate the effect of visiting the MWC on students’ SWE grades. Table 4 (see Appendix A) summarizes the results of the three paired t tests used to determine if there is a significant difference in the mean SWE grade between treatment groups. These t tests indicate that there is a mean difference of 2.061 percentage points between those who visited the MWC multiple times versus never, 1.619 percentage points between those who visited the MWC multiple times

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versus once, and 0.443 percentage points between those who visited the MWC once versus never. Figure 3 (see Appendix B) graphically depicts the mean differences between each treatment group. Note that all three mean differences were statistically significant.

Discussion

The study outlined in this report is significant given its novelty within the field of writing center studies in terms of both scope of data and statistical analysis. The final cleaned and merged data set contained two semesters’ worth of data, resulting in a total of 2,662 observations. This large number of observations provided our analysis with greater statistical rigor than most other quantitative studies in the field. Not only was our data set relatively large, but it was also rich, as it consisted of features from three unique sources of data the MWC, USMA Admissions, and three core curriculum courses. This aspect of our data set enabled us to adjust for more sources of confounding than most other quantitative writing center studies, leading to a more accurate estimate of the effect of writing center visits on students’ SWE grades.

Most importantly, our study utilized a more complex analytical approach in propensity score matching. In the context of writing center studies, the level of quantitative analysis has been relatively straightforward, with most researchers applying standard techniques such as chi squared tests or regression analysis. Although these techniques can certainly be useful, they are limited in that they often can only quantify how changes in a treatment are associated with changes in an outcome. On the other hand, propensity score matching is a more powerful method, as it better controls for confounding variables than traditional techniques in order to produce a more accurate estimate of the treatment effect on an outcome. This methodology enabled us to identify a significant causal relationship between writing center visits and student performance.

Our propensity score matching approach, when tailored to an institution’s specific contexts, is advantageous in that it provides evidence backed answers to two key questions for writing center administrators: (1) Who visits the writing center? (2) Are writing center visits effective in terms of student performance on signature writing assignments? Our analysis provides several valuable insights concerning the demographic and academic characteristics of those who frequent West Point’s MWC. In terms of gender, our results suggest that women are more likely than men to visit the MWC once or multiple times. Similarly, in terms of race, our results suggest that Asian and African

American students are more likely to visit than students of other racial backgrounds. Given these findings, MWC administrators can now alter or reinforce their advertising and pedagogy appropriately.

Our analysis also provides MWC administrators with informative results regarding the effectiveness of visits, as our findings suggest that more visits to the MWC for a core curriculum course resulted in a better grade on the SWE within that course. Specifically, we found that visiting the MWC multiple times for a given SWE had a larger effect than only visiting once. This is further indicative of a significant causal relationship between MWC visits and SWE performance, as performance increased with more visits. Knowledge of this relationship can be used to inform major administrative decisions within the MWC.

Although these findings are both accurate and informative, there are a few limitations to our analysis. First, there are likely confounding variables for which we did not adjust, and thus the effect that we measured on student SWE grades may not be entirely attributable to writing center visits. While it is impossible to ensure that there is no unmeasured confounding in these models, there still might be other variables that would improve the resulting estimates. For instance, future studies should consider including students’ instructors and academic majors in their statistical models, as this may explain more variation in the observed outcome, SWE grade.

Second, our analysis was directed at measuring the effect of visits on assignment grades as opposed to writer development. The general consensus in the field of writing center studies is that the objective of visits is to ensure that writers, not necessarily their papers, are improving. Although writing center staff members are certainly pleased when clients perform better on their written assignments, their overarching mission is to help individuals become more effective written communicators in the long term. Therefore, future studies should seek to measure the cumulative effect of regularly visiting the writing center over time. This would perhaps provide a better indication of writing center performance towards creating better writers than a related outcome such as SWE grade.

Overall, our study provides an effective statistical analysis on the population who attends the writing center and the effectiveness of visits in terms of student performance on signature writing assignments. Other existing writing center studies have attempted to do the same, yet with less scientific rigor. Our study introduces quantitative rigor to the field through the use of propensity score matching a more complex statistical method that had yet to be applied to writing center

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studies. Although the results of our study are specific to the MWC at West Point, the methodology and framework used to produce these results can be replicated to carry out a similar study involving data from any writing center, accounting for specific institutional contexts. Such a study would provide other writing center administrative teams with useful insights concerning attendance as well as visit effectiveness. Ultimately, studies such as this one will enable undergraduate writing centers to make more informed programmatic decisions that are based on data driven evidence.

Notes

1. The Association of American Colleges and Universities defines “signature work” as an individual project related to a significant issue, problem, or question that students’ define for themselves immersing themselves in exploration, applying what they learn to real world situations, and preparing to explain the significance of their work to others (“Integrative Learning and Signature Work”).

2. This data set contains both ACT and SAT scores for each student. USMA does not require its applicants to submit scores for both tests; therefore, we infer any missing scores using a common multivariate imputation approach (Smits et al.).

3. This study was approved by and complied with the regulations of the Institutional Review Board (IRB).

4. In total, we fit three logistic regression models to assign propensity scores to each observation in our data set. These models estimate the probability of attending the writing center multiple times versus once, once versus never, and multiple times versus never, given a student’s gender, race, and standardized test scores (SAT and ACT).

5. There are several different matching techniques. In this study we use caliper matching, wherein the algorithm matches observations from the treatment groups when the distance between their propensity scores is less than a designated caliper. Our algorithm uses a caliper of width equal to 0.25, as recommended by Rosenbaum and Rubin (37). Our algorithm also ensures that matched observations are within the same course, as this accounts for the fact that courses from different academic departments have different established standards and grading scales.

6. Austin recommends using paired t tests when using propensity score matched samples for making inferences on the effect of a treatment (1298).

Works Cited

Austin, Peter C. "Comparing Paired vs Non paired Statistical Methods of Analyses when Making Inferences About Absolute Risk Reductions in Propensity Score Matched Samples." Statistics in Medicine, vol. 30, no.11, 2011, pp. 1292 1301. https://doi.org/10.1002/sim.4200.

Bell, James H. "When Hard Questions are Asked: Evaluating Writing Centers." The Writing Center Journal 21.1 (2000): 7 28. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43442109

Bielinska Kwapisz, Agnieszka. "Impact of Writing Proficiency and Writing Center Participation on Academic Performance." International Journal of Educational Management, 2015. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJEM 05 2014 0067

Bryer, Jason M. “TriMatch: An R Package for Propensity Score Matching of Non Binary Treatments.” The R User Conference, Use R, 2013, pp. 10 12. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=1 0.1.1.398.4972&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Gofine, Miriam. "How are we Doing? A Review of Assessments within Writing Centers." The Writing Center Journal 32.1 (2012): 39 49. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43442380.

Greenland, Sander, Judea Pearl, and James M. Robins. "Causal Diagrams for Epidemiologic Research." Epidemiology, 1999, pp. 37 48. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3702180

Greenland, Sander, and Hal Morgenstern. "Confounding in Health Research." Annual Review of Public Health, vol. 22, no. 1, 2001, pp. 189 212. https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/full/10.1146/ann urev.publhealth.22.1.189

“Integrative Learning and Signature Work.” American Association of Colleges and Universities, 2022. https://www.aacu.org/office of global citizenship for campus community and careers/integrative learning. Lape, Noreen. “The Worth of the Writing Center: Numbers, Value, Culture, and the Rhetoric of Budget Proposals.”

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, vol. 10, no. 1, 2012, pp. 1 4. http://hdl.handle.net/2152/62143. Lerner, Neal. “Counting Beans and Making Beans Count.” Writing Lab Newsletter, vol. 22, no. 1, 1997, pp. 1 3. https://wlnjournal.org/archives/v22/22 1.pdf

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Lerner, Neal. "Writing Center Assessment." Hold: Critical Perspectives on Writing Center Scholarship, edited by M. Pemberton, & J. Kinkead (2003): 58 73. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt46nxnq.

Newmann, Stephen. “Demonstrating Effectiveness.” Writing Lab Newsletter, vol. 23, no. 8, 1999, pp. 8 9. https://www.wlnjournal.org/archives/v23/23.8.pdf.

North, Stephen M. “The Idea of a Writing Center.” College English, vol. 46, no. 5, 1984, pp. 443 446. https://www.jstor.org/stable/377047.

Rosenbaum, Paul R., and Donald B. Rubin. "Constructing a Control Group Using Multivariate Matched Sampling Methods that Incorporate the Propensity Score." The American Statistician, vol. 39, no. 1, 1985, pp. 33 38. https://doi.org/10.2307/2683903

Salem, Lori. “Decisions....Decisions: Who Chooses to use the Writing Center?” The Writing Center Journal, 2016, pp. 147 171. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43824060.

Smits, Niels, Gideon J. Mellenbergh, and Harrie CM Vorst. "Alternative Missing Data Techniques to Grade Point Average: Imputing Unavailable Grades." Journal of Educational Measurement, vol. 39, no. 3, 2002, pp. 187 206. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745 3984.2002.tb01173.x.

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Table 1. Demographic

Characteristic

Gender no. (%)

Baseline.

(N = 2662) Multiple Times (N = 95) Once (N = 207) Never (N = 2360)

Male 2056 (77.2%) 66 (69.5%) 136 (65.7%) 1854 (78.6%)

Female 606 (22.8%) 29 (30.5%) 71 (34.3%) 506 (21.4%)

Race no. (%)

Asian 229 (8.6%) 15 (15.8%) 25 (12.1%) 189 (8.0%)

Black 369 (13.9%) 18 (18.9%) 35 (16.9%) 316 (13.4%)

Hispanic 243 (9.1%) 4 (4.2%) 14 (6.8%) 225(9.5%)

Native American 34 (1.3%) 1 (1.1%) 2 (1.0%) 31 (1.3%)

Other 40 (1.5%) 2 (2.1%) 3 (1.4%) 35 (1.5%)

White 1747 (65.5%) 55 (57.9%) 128 (61.8%) 1564 (66.3%)

SAT score (200 800)

Math 652 ± 71.6 661 ± 71.3 652 ± 75.2 651 ± 71.3

Verbal 617 ± 78.5 612 ± 92.0 614 ± 81.6 617 ± 77.6

Writing 602 ± 82.9 600 ± 94.1 600 ± 86.1 603 ± 82.2

ACT score (1 36)

Composition 28.6 ± 3.77 28.5 ± 4.17 28.5 ± 3.87 28.6 ± 3.75

English 28.5 ± 4.89 27.8 ± 5.19 28.5 ± 5.00 28.5 ± 4.87

Math 28.3 ± 3.66 28.6 ± 3.83 28.3 ± 3.67 28.3 ± 3.65

Reading 29.3 ± 4.86 29.1 ± 5.97 29.2 ± 4.91 29.3 ± 4.81

Writing 26.0 ± 4.17 25.7 ± 4.63 26.0 ± 4.22 26.0 ± 4.14

SWE Grade score (0 -100) * 82.0 ± 8.64 83.9 ± 8.64 83.0 ± 9.06 81.8 ± 8.59

Plus minus values are means ± SD. Percentages may not total 100 due to rounding.

Missing values were recorded using imputation.

< 0.05;

p < 0.01;

0.001

A

(2022) www.praxisuwc.com

Intercept 1.668 0.869 1.919

Gender (Male) 0.713 0.165 4.318

0.654 0.245 2.666 0.008

1.519 1.435

0.015 0.293 0.050 0.960

Race (Black) 0.167 0.307 0.544 0.586 0.129 0.410 0.314 0.754 0.153 0.517 0.296 0.768

Race (Hispanic) 0.772 0.359 2.153 0.030

1.373 0.585 2.346 0.019

0.631 0.696 0.907 0.364

Race (Native American) 0.672 0.770 0.872 0.383 0.721 1.068 0.675 0.500 0.042 1.330 0.032 0.975

Race (Other) 0.387 0.647 0.598 0.550 0.130 0.790 0.165 0.869 0.030 1.016 0.029 0.977

Race (White) 0.467 0.240 1.949 0.050* 0.706 0.315 2.240 0.025* 0.162 0.408 0.397 0.691

SAT Math 0.002 0.002 0.976 0.329 0.004 0.002 1.513 0.130 0.001 0.003 0.422 0.673

SAT Verbal 0.001 0.002 0.152 0.880 0.001 0.002 0.629 0.530 0.001 0.003 0.311 0.756

SAT Writing 0.002 0.002 1.136 0.256 0.001 0.002 0.272 0.786 0.001 0.003 0.510 0.610

ACT Composition 0.071 0.105 0.674 0.500 0.009 0.153 0.060 0.952 0.005 0.191 0.025 0.980

ACT English 0.021 0.044 0.488 0.626 0.104 0.065 1.598 0.110 0.120 0.078 1.532 0.126

ACT Math 0.033 0.050 0.654 0.513 0.048 0.073 0.665 0.506 0.057 0.092 0.620 0.535

ACT Reading 0.023 0.042 0.544 0.587 0.049 0.061 0.802 0.422 0.053 0.076 0.697 0.486

ACT Writing 0.003 0.039 0.084 0.933 0.030 0.058 0.517 0.605 0.020 0.075 0.269 0.788

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ANALYZING SCAFFOLDING IN WRITING CENTER INTERACTIONS: BEYOND DESCRIPTIONS OF TUTORS’ INTERVENTIONS

Isabelle Thompson Jo Mackiewicz

Auburn University

Iowa State University isabelle.thompson1950@gmail.com jomack@iastate.edu

Abstract

This article examines the tutor student scaffolding interaction as a means for writing center tutors to help students move forward in their development as writers and for tutors to develop expertise in teaching. To describe how scaffolding might operate effectively in student tutor interactions, it defines six characteristics: intersubjectivity, where tutors and students develop a common goal for the conference; ongoing diagnosis, where tutors determine students’ current understanding; contingency, where tutors tailor their interventions according to students’ existing understanding and willingness to learn; interactivity, where the interaction occurs with the back and forth of tutors’ interventions and students’ responses; zone of proximal development, the intellectual space where students’ learning can occur; and fading, transfer of responsibility, and checking, where tutors are ready to pass on responsibility for completing a task to students but check back to see if the students can successfully move forward on their own. The article also provides four illustrative analyses to demonstrate tutors’ scaffolding interventions and students’ responses. It concludes by discussing the usefulness of analyzing scaffolding in an interaction, by making connections between scaffolding and directiveness, and by suggesting future data driven research.

Introduction

What goes on during tutor and student interactions is a hallmark concern for writing center research. So far, investigations have considered these interactions from a variety of perspectives for example, practical (Brooks; Harris), linguistic (Thonus “Dominance,” “Tutor”; Blau, Hall, and Strauss), social constructionist (Bruffee), social justice (Babcock, “Disabilities,” “Interpreted”; H. Denny). Here we assume a sociocultural perspective focused on learning and based on research by Lev S. Vygotsky (Mind, “Thinking”) and David Wood, Jerome S. Bruner, and Gail Ross, and we extend previous research about the interventions tutors use to scaffold students’ learning to a comprehensive look that considers students’ responses.

Scaffolding is a metaphor used to describe a situation where someone with more expertise (the tutor) guides someone with less expertise (the student) to achieve predetermined learning outcomes, thereby enhancing the student’s learning development. A scaffold in this learning situation works like a scaffold used during building construction a support to get

the job done and removable once the task has been completed. One important characteristic of scaffolding a student’s learning is contingency, where the tutor tailors interventions to what the student wants and is able to achieve at a certain moment. Contingent tutoring is comparable to locating a scaffold exactly according to workers’ needs during a certain time in the building process. A well placed but static scaffold is not enough. The tutor and the student need to move toward the student’s increased understanding of the task and the student’s ability to take over full responsibility for completing the task. Scaffolding focuses on the process of active knowledge construction.

This article is a review of research, primarily from education and psychology, about scaffolding and an application of that research to writing center interactions. As such, it extends current writing center investigations beyond a focus on tutors’ interventions (Mackiewicz and Thompson, Talk) to a focus on the interactional back and forth that includes students’ responses as an equal component. We begin by reviewing research about six characteristics of scaffolding. To demonstrate how the characteristics might work in writing center conferences, we analyze four selected illustrative excerpts of writing center dialogue, taken from research we conducted previously. Finally, we conclude by making further suggestions about how our framework might be used, particularly in tutor training, and some suggestions about future research. The conclusion shows a table of the six characteristics and questions that might be used by tutor trainers and by tutors themselves to assess the in the moment effectiveness of intended scaffolding. We hope to spur research that operationalizes the discussion of scaffolding presented here and eventually to inform best practices in writing center tutoring.

Characteristics of Scaffolding

Scaffolding denotes a particular learning process and certain roles for its participants (Danli; Dennen; Nguyen and Williams; Nordlof; Wood et al., “The

Role”). As a process in writing instruction, its goal is to further students’ writing development, with accurately completed writing tasks as a tutor led means for achieving this larger intention (Chaiklin). More generally, scaffolding assumes that performance precedes development. Helping students complete a task they cannot complete without assistance makes it more likely that when faced with the same or a similar task again, students will be able to complete it alone (Shanbi et al.). More difficult tasks or more difficult versions of the same task follow, creating a learning spiral of development (Bruner). This process seems to accord with Stephen North’s often repeated admonition to focus on the student (development) rather than only on the current writing task.

Scaffolding also designates certain roles for the tutor and the student expert novice roles that indicate an asymmetrical relationship. Although scaffolding has been investigated in peer group collaborations, results have indicated unsatisfactory learning outcomes (Bliss and Askew; Danli; Fernández et al.; Nguyen and Williams). Tutors’ roles require that they take control of the tutoring situation by using their expertise to develop and implement a “theory of the task and how it must be completed” and a “theory of the performance characteristics of [the] tutee” (Wood et al. “The Role,” 97). In deciding where to begin scaffolding, the tutor has two related considerations: (1) how strongly to intervene and (2) how much responsibility for the task to take on. Strength of the intervention is based on how directive the tutor decides to be. An imperative such as “Put a comma here.” is a high strength intervention. A question such as “What should go here?” is a low strength intervention. In itself, strength of intervention is not important for promoting learning. Instead, the tutor’s strength of intervention low, medium, or high has to meet the student’s current needs as determined by the tutor’s ongoing diagnosis of their understanding. The stronger the intervention, the larger the tutor’s contribution and consequently the higher the level of responsibility the tutor takes on. The smaller the tutor’s contribution, the more responsibility the student must take on. Even though the tutor and the student are not likely to be peers, the scaffolding process is collaborative, with both participants actively contributing to completing the task. In a successful scaffolding attempt, the tutor’s expertise does not depose the student’s responsibility; rather, the relationship is student centered (Dennen).

To clarify the process by which writing tutors scaffold students’ development, in the sections that follow, we examine six characteristics of scaffolding:

● intersubjectivity

● ongoing diagnosis

● contingency ● interactivity

● zone of proximal development (ZPD)

● and (grouped together) fading, transfer of responsibility, and a final check for students’ understanding.

Intersubjectivity

For scaffolded learning to proceed, tutors and students must first develop a shared understanding of the task at hand, or intersubjectivity, and account for students’ motivation to participate in the scaffolding process and to complete the task generally (Boblett; Brownfield and Wilkerson; Dennen; Puntambekar and Hubscher; Shabani et al.). Intersubjectivity begins in a writing center conference’s opening stage or perhaps with a previous conference, but it continues throughout a conference as tutors and students readjust their understanding of the current task. Without intersubjectivity, tutors cannot diagnose students’ ability to complete the task at hand or know where to begin the scaffolding.

Ongoing Diagnosis

The second characteristic of scaffolding is ongoing diagnosis. Rico Hermkes, Hanna Mach, and Gerhard Minnameier discussed this concept in terms of “dynamic assessment” and “procedural facilitation” (147). Dynamic assessment refers to the importance of diagnosing students’ understanding before and after intervention, while procedural facilitation refers to the importance of regulating the strength of tutors’ interventions according to students’ needs. Ongoing diagnosis allows tutors to determine how strong their intervention should be and how much responsibility they should assume for completing the task (De Sousa; Koole and Elbers). As Katherine Brownfield and Ian G. Wilkinson pointed out, “tutors calibrate in flight the help they provide” (180). An initial diagnosis is followed by verification, where tutors determine that they have understood students correctly. Afterwards, they may explicitly check the diagnosis so that tutors and students reconfirm their shared conference goals, an important step in establishing and maintaining intersubjectivity (Van de Pol et al., “Promoting”; Hermkes et al.). Diagnosis first occurs during the opening stage of a conference, when tutors and students work together to establish an agenda, but it continues throughout the conference. However, tutors sometimes skip diagnosis and go immediately to interventions, providing support without a foundation (Elbers et al.; Lockhorst, et al.; Van de Pol et al., “Patterns”).

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Contingency

Contingency, the third characteristic of scaffolding, encompasses four of the other characteristics intersubjectivity, diagnosis, interactivity, and ZPD excluding fading, transferring responsibility, and checking students’ understanding. Contingency is the cornerstone of scaffolding research. In contingent instruction, tutors work on the edge of students’ existing knowledge and willingness to learn (e.g., Reynolds; Reynolds and Daniels; Van de Pol et al., “The Effects”; Wischgoll et al.; Wood and Middleton; Wood and Wood, “Commentary”). They increase and decrease the strength of their interventions and the responsibility they assume for completing the task according to their diagnoses of students’ needs. Janneke Van de Pol, Monique Volman, and Jos Beishuizen (“Promoting”) described contingency as “tailored adaptation to students’ existing understanding” (194). David Wood discussed three dimensions of contingency: domain, which relates to the appropriateness of the content or skill the tutors teach next, given students’ input (intersubjectivity, diagnosis, and ZPD); temporal, “deciding when to give help” (Rodgers et al., 346), which relates to tutors’ sense of students’ motivation, including their frustration level (intersubjectivity and ZPD); and instructional, which relates to the extent of the support that tutors give to students upon diagnosis, from a little to a lot (interactivity). If tutors miss their windows of opportunity by waiting too long to intervene, students may become frustrated and lose motivation to participate actively in the conference, but if tutors intervene too early or offer too much support, students lose their chance to make their own revisions. Therefore, as previously stated, the strength and direction of support shifts, depending on the student’s level of understanding.

These three dimensions of contingency are difficult to maintain simultaneously. Diagnosis can be especially difficult with students who already have a high level of competence (Rodgers et al.) as is the case with many students who frequent writing centers. In addition, students sometimes do not follow tutors’ leads. In that case, contingency requires that tutors redirect their intervention, adapting to the direction taken by students (Wood and Wood, “Vygotsky”). However, although it is necessary (Van de Pol et al., “Promoting”), contingency does not guarantee that attempted scaffolding will be successful (Wischgoll et al.). For example, tutors may fade too soon and leave unprepared students on their own.

David Wood, Heather Wood, and David Middleton, Janneke Van de Pol and Ed Elbers, and

Hermkes, Mach, and Minnameier discussed the contingent shift principle, or CSP. According to the CSP, tutors should strengthen their intervention and assume more responsibility when students fail, for example, by telling students what to do, and decrease the strength of their intervention and lessen their responsibility for completing the task when students succeed, for example, by asking a question with a largely open response. Strength of an intervention does not affect whether scaffolding takes place; rather, an intervention has to adapt to the student’s understanding (Van de Pol and Elbers). Further, putting a support in place is not enough; contingency requires participation that actively changes students’ thinking (Dix).

Interactivity

The fourth characteristic of scaffolding, interactivity, refers to the back and forth of tutors’ interventions and students’ responses. Interactivity is the means through which tutors diagnose students’ understanding and respond to what students have said. Interactivity allows the tutor to intervene in the student’s current understanding and the student to respond to that intervention. If the interventions from tutors are effective, students can move their understanding forward toward internalization, hence increasing and developing control over their current learning. For internalization to occur, students need to be active participants in the tutoring (Daniels; Salonen). In the illustrative analyses provided later, we discuss interactivity in terms of the reciprocal exchange of tutor interventions and student responses. We project that tutor interactivity can be discussed on a continuum of tutors’ strength of intervention and assumption of responsibility for completing the task in a tutoring interaction. At one end are scaffolding interventions (Mackiewicz and Thompson, Talk), that require the least strength of intervention and the least assumption of responsibility by tutors (pumping, reading aloud, responding as a reader or listener, prompting); in the middle are those that require a medium strength of intervention and responsibility (hinting, referring to a previous topic, forcing a choice); and at the other end are strong interventions that consequently exert strong tutor control over the student’s expected response (suggesting, telling, explaining, and giving examples).1

Most research in education about contingency and scaffolding has used learning tasks with specific answers easily identified as correct, referred to later as closed world domain tasks. For those tasks, Van de Pol and Ed Elbers put forth a fairly simple scheme for coding students’ responses: poor, partial, and good.

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Hermkes et al. added a little complexity: no understanding of the task; misunderstanding; correct understanding but no solution; false solution; false solution, but realizing it is false; and correct or appropriate answer. Based on an extensive review of research to discuss 6 to 7 year olds’ responses to teacher scaffolding, Stephanie Dix identified seven types of student responses: comprehension of task/learning; active engagement; offers of additional information; repetition/recapping; questioning, challenging, negotiation; use of metalanguage; and evidence of learning/transfer/meeting of the minds. As tutors lessen the strength of their interventions and back off on responsibility, students are required to take up the slack in order for the exchange to be contingent.

We suggest that two requirements are necessary to classify a student’s responses: (1) the student’s demonstrated increase in understanding and (2) the student’s assumption of greater responsibility in completing the task. In the illustrative analyses presented later in this article, we evaluate a student’s understanding on a continuum with a range from lack of understanding, to partial understanding, and finally to good understanding. The student’s assumption of responsibility can be represented similarly on a continuum with a range of low responsibility, to medium responsibility, and finally to high responsibility. We add Dix’s more detailed descriptions as often as possible.

Zone of Proximal Development

The fifth characteristic of scaffolding is the zone of proximal development (ZPD), a concept introduced by Vygotsky (Mind, “Thinking”), similar to David Wood and David Middleton’s “region of sensitivity to instruction” (181). ZPD defines the target area for scaffolding, bounded on one end by the student’s current level of mastery and on the other by what the student is capable of doing with more expert assistance from the tutor (Chaiklin; Daniels; Dennen; Shabani et al; Walker et al.). Here performance leads to competence and to development. The ZPD demarcates a shifting area for growth toward full mastery (Wells). Vygotsky argued that the size and character of a student’s ZPD is a more important predictor of intellectual success than a high score on a traditional one time test because the ZPD “highlights potential for emerging behavior” rather than focusing on knowledge confined to a particular time (Shabani et al., 239).

Fading, Transferring Responsibility, and Checking

Even though we discuss them together, fading, transferring, and checking are each characteristics of

scaffolding. Fading occurs when tutors believe that students understand and can accomplish the task at hand alone. Then their responsibilities diminish, and they can withdraw support and pass the responsibility on to students (Dennen; Van de Pol et al., “Promoting,” “Scaffolding”). The speed with which tutors can fade depends on the rate and extent of students’ understanding and willingness to take on responsibility. Transfer refers not just to cognitive abilities but also to affect; students become responsible for staying motivated and regulating their emotional state.

The possibility of fading likely depends to some extent on the type of task the tutor and student are working on. “Closed world domain” tutoring (Person et al.,185), the subject of most research about scaffolding, is exemplified most exactly by math or other single answer domains. The test of mastery for closed world domain tasks is whether the student can perform the task successfully or remember what was learned in another context. Discussing closed world domain tutoring, Hermkes et al. laid out two rules for assessing contingency:

Rule 1: At the beginning … tutors exert only minimal strength of intervention, for example, merely pointing out an aspect of the task or judging correctness.

Rule 2: Before revealing or explaining a solution, tutors should introduce new information that may allow students to figure out a new move on their own. (150) These two rules appear to describe what writing center research has referred to as “minimalist tutoring” (Brooks, 1) and satisfy the admonition against telling that has long constituted nondirective tutoring.

However, most writing tasks are not closed world domain tasks, but rather, they are “open world domain” tasks. Unlike closed world domain tasks, open world domain tasks are not as clearly structured. Instead, tutors dispense advice and co construct ideas and revisions rather than evaluating the accuracy of facts. In addition, the tutor may not completely fade in open world domain tasks (see Dix; Many); instead, “[T]he threads of scaffolded conversation become an interwoven pattern” (Many, 401). In tasks where tutors and students are both “participants in socially constructed meaning” (401), tutors increasingly transfer responsibility, and students begin to exert more control and to self regulate their performance (Brownfield and Wilkerson, 2018; Walker et al.).

Finally, Van de Pol et al. (“Promoting”) argued for the importance of checking on a student’s learning when a task seems complete before fading. With these

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checks, tutors determine the extent to which their efforts at scaffolding have worked. The need for this check emphasizes the importance of diagnosis throughout the tutoring interaction.

The conclusion includes a framework showing the six characteristics of scaffolding discussed here and some questions to determine if these characteristics occur in particular writing center interactions. This framework can be used to evaluate transcribed conferences as illustrations of effective (or not) scaffolding during tutor training or as a tool for self assessment.

Illustrative Analyses

Below, we analyze four excerpts2 of attempted scaffolding in writing center conferences drawn from previously collected data. In these excerpts, we identify attempts at scaffolding as contingent or noncontingent (Van de Pol and Elbers; Van de Pol et al., “Patterns,” “Promoting”; Walker et al.). In addition, we identify a tutor’s interventions according to a previously developed coding scheme (Mackiewicz and Thompson, Talk) and discuss these interventions on a continuum in terms of their strength and the level of responsibility the tutor assumes (Hermke et al.). We discuss a student’s responses on a continuum in terms of the student’s understanding as lack of understanding, partial understanding, and good understanding (Van de Pol and Elbers) and in terms of their assumption of responsibility as low responsibility, medium responsibility, and high responsibility. We also use Dix’s scheme of students’ response types to clarify how students’ responses revealed students’ level of understanding and responsibility for their own learning.

In excerpt 1 below, we examine writing center tutoring in a closed world domain. In contrast, excerpt 2 shows tutoring in an open world circumstance for brainstorming, while excerpt 3 shows tutoring in an open world domain for revising. Finally, in excerpt 4, we examine an example of failed scaffolding, one in which the tutor’s intervention is not contingent and the student becomes confused. The appendix provides a list of the transcription conventions used.

Closed world Domain Tutoring

The tutor student exchange in excerpt 1 below demonstrates scaffolding in a closed world domain circumstance. In this closed world domain exchange, the tutor held responsibility for the interaction via the question he asked and eventually transferred that responsibility to the student because the student’s answer to the question was correct. Such an exchange constitutes what education researchers have called an

IRF (initiation response feedback) pattern (e.g., Carillo et al.; Mehan; Nassaji and Wells). Excerpt 1 shows an expansion of the pattern: IRIRIRF. If the student’s final answer had not been correct, probably the most efficient intervention for the tutor would have been to tell the student the answer. Doing so, however, would have run counter to the tutor’s sustained attempts to avoid usurping the student’s own responsibility to participate actively.

Before the talk excerpted below, T1 had been reading the draft aloud to help S1 with proofreading. This process continued in excerpt 1. Excerpt 1

T1: “In Tobacco Road,” Now, what do we do when there’s a title? <<Reading aloud. Pumping question. Low strength interventions and low responsibility.>>3

S1: What do you do?<<Cannot answer T1’s question. Not contingent.>>

T1: Mmhm.<<Backchannel, which avoids answering the question for the student.>>

S1: [2s] Um [6s]<<Filler. Still no contingency.>>

T1: What did we do earlier when we had a title? <<Referring back to a previous topic. Medium strength intervention and medium responsibility.>>

S1: Underline it. Right? <<Good understanding and high responsibility. Ends with a confirmation question. Contingent.>>

T1: Ok. Yeah. <<Confirms correct response.>>

When he spotted an error, T1 stopped and asked, “Now, what do we do when there is a title?” In response, S1 repeated the tutor’s question, signaling that he had understood the question and was thinking about his response but also showing a lack of understanding about how to answer the question. Rather than rush in to answer the question himself, T1 waited for S1 to remember the answer. When S1 hesitated in his response, T1 asked a more constrained question, “What did we do earlier when we had a title?” This question referred back to an earlier part of the conference, pushing S1 to recall what they had discussed before in order to apply it to the current situation. S1 is able to do so, indicating good understanding and high responsibility. T1’s final turn showed that T1 accepted S1’s answer as correct. At the moment at least, S1 seemed to know how to indicate titles in written text. No further discussion about titles was needed at this time. The exchange was contingent. Open world Domain Tutoring for Brainstorming

More commonly, though, tutors and students work in the realm of open world domains, where the two co construct the student’s writing through dialogue.

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Excerpt 2 is taken from a conference focused on brainstorming ideas for a critical analysis of an article called “The Soup Nazi” assigned in a first year writing course. The opening stage of the conference was brief and devoted to gaining intersubjectivity about the agenda brainstorming ideas for the critical analysis.

At the beginning of excerpt 2, which is also the beginning of the teaching stage, T2 responded to S2’s description of the article’s context with a question designed not to lead the student to a predetermined answer, as in excerpt 1, but instead to push S2 to think about the importance of author’s anonymity.

Excerpt 2

S2: I was like When I was writing I was writing more about like the author. He’s like he’s anonymous and he was published in The New Yorker and The New Yorker was like a big magazine but it’s like Usually they don’t publish anonymous essays or whatever. <<Introduction of the topic.>>

T2: Ok. Well why do you think that’s important? <<Diagnosis via pumping question. Low strength intervention and low responsibility.>>

S2: Well, they just thought the type of the writing was good. <<Partial response and medium responsibility. Contingent.>>

S2 responded to T2’s question with a contingent but vague answer: “Well, they just thought the type of the writing was good.” The conference continued, and T2 became more explicit in her questioning.

T2: Ok. Alright, tell you what, grab a piece of paper and let’s start making some notes for you to work with. [S2 gets paper] Ok, so here we have this idea of the author and the author is anonymous. So ok the one thing you said that was important about that is that The New Yorker doesn’t usually publish that so um what are some possible reasons that they have published this even though it’s anonymous? <<Telling and explaining. Strong interventions and high responsibility. Pumping question. Low strength intervention and low responsibility.>>

S2: Maybe because it’s like intriguing in that the way he acts to his customers but he still gets like good reviews and um everybody still comes to his place. <<Good understanding and high responsibility.>>

T2: Ok. <<Signals the student’s correct answer. Transfers responsibility for this information to the student. Contingent.>>

Responding to this second, again contingent, question, S2’s answer showed good understanding. Dix would call this response an offer of further

information in that it articulated the contradiction of a restaurant that thrives despite the ill temper of its owner. This appropriate response suggests that T2 had accurately diagnosed S2’s level of understanding. However, although S2 provided appropriate information and the exchange was contingent, the brainstorming continued, with the student being led by the tutor through the conference. The tutor did not fade from her role.

Open world Domain Tutoring for Revising

Excerpt 3 shows scaffolding that occurred in a conference focused on sentence level revising. The tutor used the strategy of reading aloud, a strategy that tutoring manuals (e.g., Ryan and Zimmerelli) have advocated.4 T3, a native English speaker, and S3, a native speaker of Korean, had worked together before. In their previous conferences, T3 and S3 had established a shared goal, and, because they had, they started the teaching phase of the conference immediately, without first discussing an agenda. The approach seemed to work for them; throughout excerpt 3, T3’s diagnoses of S3’s understanding seemed accurate.

Reading aloud, as opposed to more high strength interventions, namely, telling, suggesting, and explaining, manifests a low strength of intervention (Mackiewicz and Thompson, Talk, 36); that is, in terms of contingency, reading aloud provides less support than do other stronger interventions. Throughout excerpt 3, S3 responded to T3’s reading aloud with questions and possible revisions to her draft, signals of student participation according to Dix’s scheme (i.e., questions, offers of further information, and evidence of learning). S3’s interactivity through such responses sanctioned T3’s use of reading aloud. During the conference, S3 generated suggestions for wording, what Mackiewicz and Thompson have called spoken written language, or SWL (“Spoken Written Language”).5 At the end of the excerpt, T3 also generated SWL.

Excerpt 3

T3: “I became one of the regular customers at Caribou. I always need coffee. When I have a writing assignment, I order twenty ounce Americano.” <<Reading aloud. Low strength intervention and low responsibility.>>

S3: Can I add more like, ‘I always need more than a cup of coffee’? <<Question and SWL. Good understanding and high responsibility. Contingent.>>

T3: Yeah. Yeah, I can’t survive on a cup of coffee either. [laughs] You need the large. <<Off task talk.>>

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S3: Yeah, I need always. <<Off task talk.>>

T3 began with reading aloud, to which S3 responded with a question about adding content to her paper: “Can I add more like, ‘I always need more than a cup of coffee’?” The student questions, which occurred throughout the excerpt, indicated that the student had assumed a high level of responsibility for her essay. They also demonstrated good understanding of the writing task and what the outcome should be. After responding affirmatively and with some solidarity building small talk, T3 used another reading aloud strategy, and this one garnered more draft related input from S3.

T3: “I always need more than a cup of coffee. When I have a writing assignment, I order a twenty ounce Americano at Caribou. The last semester I always prepared lots of snacks to get energy.” <<Reading aloud. Low strength intervention and low responsibility.>>

T3: Yeah, why aren’t you doing it this semester? <<Pumping question. Low strength intervention and low responsibility.>>

The reading aloud and the pumping question pushed S3 to elaborate on the idea about avoiding snacks. Since it built on what S3 had said previously, the pumping question ratified S3’s assumption that she needed to explain why she wasn’t making snacks to take to the library.

S3: How can I say like ‘energy to make me,’ ‘but not this semester because’ <<Question and SWL. Good understanding and high responsibility.>>

T3: Mmhm. <<Backchannel.>>

In responding to T3’s pumping question, S3 began to struggle a bit, working to string together a way to phrase her reason for going to the library without snacks. S3’s hard work reflects her high level of responsibility, and the response along with those that follow show her increasing understanding. When S3 broke off her SWL, T3 encouraged her to continue, backchanneling with “mmhm,” a signal that T3 was prepared to listen rather than speak.

But in continuing, S3 repeated what she had said before and broke off once again at the same place in the SWL:

S3: ‘But not this semester because’ <<SWL. Good understanding and high responsibility.>>

T3: ‘I gained weight’ maybe? <<Suggestion and SWL. Strong intervention and high responsibility.>>

S3: ‘Almost ten kilograms.’ <<SWL. Contingent.>>

Responding contingently, T3 provided more support, moving from the low strength of

interventions of reading aloud and pumping that she had used before to a high strength of intervention suggesting strategy, specifically, a suggestion of SWL. With this additional support, S3 was able to continue to generate content for her paper, latching more SWL onto what T3 had suggested.

Besides the ongoing diagnosis and contingent intervention T3 used throughout the talk in excerpt 3, this interaction also shows the critical role of interactivity. Throughout this exchange, S3 presented ideas, asked questions, and contributed SWL, all of which signaled the responsibility she took for her own learning. Her interactivity enabled T3’s ongoing diagnosis and contingent interventions. The tutor and student continued to move through the student’s draft, with the tutor reading aloud and the student responding by asking questions or trying out SWL. The tutor did not fade.

Failed Scaffolded Teaching

To further clarify the moment to moment development of scaffolding, here in excerpt 4 we examine a noncontingent exchange. T4 was knowledgeable and enthusiastic about the S4’s topic: fashion during the sexual revolution of the 1960s. Ironically, T4 was so interested in what S4 was writing about that she neglected to diagnose S4’s current level of understanding, for example, S4’s plan for the paper. Without such understanding, contingency could not occur. Instead of diagnosing and then providing a targeted intervention, T4 confused S4, who spoke English as an L2, by directing the conversation toward topics that appeared to be unfamiliar to the student.

T4 and S4 had worked together previously, a context that suggests they had developed some rapport. Indeed, in an earlier conference, they had worked on this same assignment about 1960s fashion. For this conference with T4, S4 brought the feedback she had received from her instructor about this fashion related topic. Her instructor suggested that S4 address these questions: “How did the sexual revolution inspire unisex clothing, and did the spread of this fashion loosen gender boundaries?” Despite these guiding questions and even though they had discussed this assignment before, T4 and S4 did not have a shared understanding intersubjectivity of the task for this latest conference.

As the talk in excerpt 4 began, S4 had just explained to T4 what she had done so far, including finding and reading some scholarly articles (high level of responsibility). Then, T4 took the floor for a long turn at talk, a turn in which T4 stated some assumptions about what S4 might be thinking and potentially writing about.

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Excerpt 4

T4: Yeah. How these trends kind of emerged and when. If you’re already talking about the sexual liberation movement and you’re only talking about unisex clothing and you’re talking about the feminist discourse around using clothing and like taking on a more masculine, more covered up image to get by in the workplace and to be taken seriously by sexism and counterparts, but then also to have like this other camp of prefigurative, radical, you know, “I want to wear stuff that's revealing not to cater to male gaze, but just because I like it.” Right. Like where those kind of disagreements wear or Yeah? <<Suggestion and explanation. Strong interventions and high responsibility. Asks S4 to confirm understanding.>>

S4: I <<Lack of understanding.>> T4 described two “camps” of sociologists one camp that sees unisex clothing as a way to get by in the workplace and the other “prefigurative, radical, you know.” The turn consisted primarily of explaining interventions, with a possible suggestion to include the prefigurative camp in order to discuss “those kind of disagreements.” Throughout, T4 assumed a high level of control for S4’s understanding and a high level of responsibility for the task. But S4 seemed overwhelmed by the tutor’s ideas.

T4: Ok, get it. <<Response to S4’s question about getting something out of her backpack.>>

S4: I’m so sorry. I I want to make sure I’m understanding correctly. <<Lack of understanding but high responsibility. Not contingent.>>

After T4’s long turn, S4 left briefly to get something from her bag. When she returned, she apologized to T4 for not fully understanding what T4 was trying to suggest.

T4: Sure, and I could also be just like going off on a tangent, too. <<Hedge on prior suggestion.>>

S4: No, no. <<Reassures the tutor.>>

T4: I want to make sure you and your ideas are focused. I just think, given how prevalent a lot of these themes <<Explaining and suggesting. Strong interventions and responsibility.>>

S4: Yeah. <<Backchannel. S4 understands that T4 wants her to focus her ideas, but she does not indicate that she understands how. Not contingent in terms of the conference agenda.>> This excerpt demonstrates that students can assume high levels of responsibility (finding and reading secondary sources) but low levels of understanding during conferences. If S4 had understood what T4 said, the strength of the

intervention might not have interfered with contingency; S4 might have been able to take over some control and responsibility for the rest of the exchange. However, in response to T4’s long turn, S4 could not respond beyond “I.”

Rather than trying to diagnose S4’s current understanding in order to provide contingent scaffolding, T4 justified her approach. She did so first when S4 left to grab something from her bag. While S4 was gone, T4 turned to the camera and said: “I hope I'm not like taking over and trying to write the paper for her, I just think that’s like the question kind of arose.” T4 justified her approach again after S4 reassured her that she had not spun off on a tangent by saying that she wanted to be sure that the S4’s ideas were focused.

And rather than ask a question, S4 went along with T4’s approach (as many undergraduates probably would). The exchange in excerpt 4, then, shows that tutors sometimes fail to diagnose students’ level of understanding even in situations where the two have already established a relationship. When the diagnosis fails or fails to occur and the student is unable to respond to what the tutor is saying, scaffolding can’t proceed.

Conclusion

This article moves forward writing center research by focusing closely on what can happen during a writing center interaction, the heart of writing center tutoring. To achieve its goal, it discusses six characteristics of scaffolding and demonstrates the working of these characteristics with illustrative excerpts of writing center dialogue. It adds to research that moves beyond tutoring interventions toward a broader and more comprehensive look at the junction between tutor intervention and student response.

Scaffolding allows writing center tutors to guide students without relieving those students of the responsibility to control their own learning. It occurs in a context where learning is both social and individual. In the social aspects, tutors assume the responsibility and control for completing the tasks. They support students’ learning by keeping frustration low and by not allowing students to fail. They relinquish control and transfer responsibility as students demonstrate good understanding and assume high levels of responsibility for completing tasks that is, able to regulate their writing processes individually. Although it has been discussed in classroom teaching and teacher led small group instruction, scaffolding seems particularly well suited for tutoring, where a tutor can focus on diagnosing the needs of one student and

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ensure interventions are targeted and contingent based on one student’s response.

The important dual focus on students’ responses as well as tutors’ inventions will inform our discussions of an old but on going writing center bugaboo: directiveness (See Eckstein for a recent discussion). Examining tutors’ interventions according to strength of intervention and assumption of responsibility and students’ responses according to their understanding and ability to take on responsibility brings directiveness into a less pejorative light. The focus is then on the juxtaposition of the student tutor interaction, and if a student is able to remain motivated and move forward in understanding and taking over responsibility for completing a task, the exchange is contingent. The notion of contingency is more descriptive and goes beyond loaded discussions of directiveness.

A summary of the six characteristics of scaffolding along with related questions appears below in Table 1 (see Appendix B) The table presents a framework to analyze exchanges that are deemed effective or ineffective based on their in the moment contingency. How might the potential, in the moment success of scaffolding be determined? By taking into account the student’s response as well as the tutor’s intervention, the contingency of the tutoring exchange can be determined: If the tutor has correctly understood the shared goal and diagnosed the student’s current understanding correctly, the tutor’s interventions should lead the student to an appropriate response in most cases. The framework can be used during tutor training with a previously transcribed conference to demonstrate a tutor’s potentially more and less effective interactions with a student.

Transcribing their own conferences and applying these questions can also help tutors assess the effectiveness of self chosen interactions with students in the moment. Hence, this framework can encourage and perhaps lead tutors in reflecting on their own behaviors. This reflection may enhance tutors’ in conference experience and move tutors along in developing expertise. It can provide a personal look at tutoring unavailable in tutoring manuals and unachievable via listening to general (or perhaps even personalized) advice.

We hope to open up areas for future inquiries. Most obvious are large scale data collecting studies. Likely in large scale data collecting studies, we will find instances in a single conference where numerous exchanges of tutor and student turns at talk are required before the tutor and student can move along to a new topic. We wonder too how tutors and students co construct scaffolded learning across two or

more conferences. To begin to answer such questions, researchers should look for patterns across conferences, using robust, replicable coding. Certainly many more questions will arise, but we believe that an increased effort to closely examine scaffolding in tutor student conferences can yield extensive benefits for the professionalization of writing center research and practice.

We end by echoing John Nordlof’s argument for the importance of theory. The theoretical perspective and tutor practices in the research discussed here are well established almost fifty years since Wood, Bruner, and Ross’s 1976 article and 100 years since Vygotsky’s research. In spite of its age, the relevance of the research remains as shown by the recent research from which we’ve drawn our analysis. The Vygotsky Wood Bruner sociocultural perspective can provide ways of discussing tutors’ roles, mastery versus development, success of tutors’ moves based on students’ responses, and other important aspects of tutoring interactions.

Notes

1. In previous research on tutoring interventions, Mackiewicz and Thompson (Talk) separated tutors’ cognitive interventions into two categories scaffolding and instruction following other researchers at the time (Cromley and Azevedo). However, this research follows the discussions of researchers investigating contingency (Hermkes et al.; Van de Pol and Elbers; Van de Pol et al., “Patterns,” “Promoting,” “Scaffolding,” “The Effects”) by referring to both scaffolding and instruction as scaffolding.

2. Excerpts 1 and 2 were collected during 2005 2008 with Institutional Review Board approval and were published in several works previously (e.g., Mackiewicz and Thompson, Talk). Excerpts 3 and 4 were collected in 2017 with IRB approval and also were published in several works before this one (e.g., Mackiewicz).

3. We use less than and greater than symbols to denote our comments on each excerpt. These comments refer to Dix; Hermke et al.; Mackiewicz and Thompson (Talk); and Van de Pol and Elbers.

4. However, advice about who should read out loud the tutor or the student varies (see Block).

5. Melody Denny, too, has studied tutors’ and students’ oral generation of words intended for students’ texts, which she calls oral revision.

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Van de Pol, Janneke, et al. “The Effects of Scaffolding in the Classroom: Support Contingency and Student Independent Working Time in Relation to Student Achievement, Task Effort and Appreciation of Support.” Instructional Science, vol. 43, 2015, pp. 615 641. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11251 015 9351 z

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Wells, Gordon. Dialogic Inquiry: Toward a Sociocultural Practice and Theory of Education. Cambridge UP, 1999.

Wischgoll, Anke, et al. “Scaffolding How Can Contingency Lead to Successful Learning When Dealing with Errors?” ZDM Mathematics Education, vol. 47, 2015, pp. 1147 1159. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858 015 0714 3

Wood, David. “The Why? What? When? and How? of Tutoring: The Development of Helping and Tutoring Skills in Children.” Literacy, Teaching and Learning, vol. 7, nos.1/ 2, 2003, pp. 1 30. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ966143

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Appendix A: Transcription Conventions

This study employed orthographic transcription. The following extralinguistic features were transcribed in addition to the spoken words:

• Silent reading, with “reading silently” in brackets, as in [reading silently]

• Occurrences of unintelligible talk, with “unclear” in brackets, as in [unclear]

• Laughter, with “laughs” in brackets, as in [laughs]

• Pauses longer than one second, with the number of seconds in brackets, as in [2s]

• Pauses one second or less, with a comma

• Rising intonation for an inquiry, with a question mark

• Cut off speech, with a hyphen

• Reference to a word as a word, with double quotation marks, as in the following example:

S: I had “tell” but the computer wouldn’t let me do “tell.” It kept underlining it and saying “tells.”

• Occurrences of overlapping talk, denoted with brackets as in the following exchange:

T: Ok. Alright. Well, thanks for coming by. I’ll give you your stuff back here. And I just keep this so I can put it in the computer. [So. But, um, you have a good day

S: [Uhhuh.

T: and I hope that it goes well for you.

• Occurrences of reading aloud, with double quotation marks, as in the following example:

“For example, in the article, there is an example.” Uh, you could say…

• Spoken written language (SWL), with single quotation marks, as in the following example: ‘Like, one character, Momma Gump,’ dot dot dot.

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Table 1: Proposed Framework for Analyzing Scaffolding

Characteristics Questions

Intersubjectivity

● Did the tutor and the student demonstrate that they worked from a shared agenda?

Ongoing diagnosis

● Did the tutor correctly diagnose the student’s understanding and motivation before intervening?

● Did the tutor verify the diagnosis?

● Did the tutor check the diagnosis after intervening to ensure understanding of the student’s response, to check the student’s motivation to continue, and to reaffirm the agenda?

Contingency, Interactivity, and ZPD

● Did the tutor follow the spirit of the contingent shift principle by (1) strengthening the intervention (low, medium, high) and taking on more responsibility (low, medium, high) when the student does not understand and (2) decreasing the strength of intervention and taking on less responsibility when the student understands or makes an appropriate response?

● Did the tutor’s response clearly lead the student forward in understanding, as determined by the student’s response?

● Did the student demonstrate understanding (lack of understanding, partial, good) and take on more responsibility (low, medium, high)?

Fading, Transferring of responsibility, Checking

● Did the tutor move forward to a new interaction when the student provided a correct/appropriate answer?

● Did the tutor pass on some responsibility to the student during the interaction or series of interactions?

● Did the student show signs of self regulation?

● Did the tutor check back on the student’s ability to self regulate?

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PERI PANDEMIC GRADUATE WRITING MENTORSHIP PROGRAM

Xuan Jiang

Florida International University xjiang@fiu.edu

Abstract

Adrian R. Salgado

The Ohio State University salgado.34@buckeyemail.osu.edu

Courtney Glass

Florida International University cglas004@fiu.edu

Writing support is provided to graduate students in many universities worldwide. This support includes writing classes and advisors’ mentorship, as well as writing center tutoring and organized writing groups, all of which are well documented in the literature. However, the current literature does not represent the diverse population of graduate writers, including international and multilingual students, first generation college and graduate students, and their more significant writing support needs during the COVID 19 pandemic. The current study aims to share the missing voices as a contribution to the literature. In this IRB approved mixed methods study, we, the three authors, collected fourteen surveys and ten interviews from two cohorts of writing groups in Summer 2021. Via data analysis, we were able to thematize inter language and affective factors not only within writing but across and for writing. We argued that those factors which have been largely neglected are vital to writing as a process. The temporal and spatial factors resulting from the pandemic also offer more considerations for other writing centers to implement or further refine their forms of support to cater to graduate writers.

Introduction

In anticipation of completing their programs within the required time, graduate students are tasked with producing original research in the form of dissertations, theses, publications, and other long term writing projects. Graduate level writing is often completed in solitude. As such, it requires a great deal of time, focus, and self discipline beyond the responsibilities students already have in the classroom, in the lab, and in research and Teaching Assistant (TA) positions. The many commitments graduate students have inside and outside academia can make academic writing more challenging, and the many pressures of daily graduate school life may lead to anxiety and frustration (Brooks Gillies et al. 7; Fredrick et al. 146). To further complicate things, the current COVID 19 pandemic has posed many challenges for graduate students, including the logistics of attending class, limited or loss of childcare, and intensifying feelings of loneliness and isolation. Graduate students needed additional writing support before the pandemic; our historic moment, however, has laid bare just how necessary it is to provide additional support for graduate students beyond the classroom and faculty mentorship.

One possible form of additional support is found in writing groups. These groups have been discussed, studied, and acknowledged as needed and a “safe space

for cultivating a culture of collaboration and critique among graduate students as colleagues” (Kelly 28). Moreover, by having these writing groups hosted in writing spaces, the advantage of having a “space between” (Shapiro 125) graduate students’ inner and outer academic lives establishes a sense of support, where the peer aspect takes place in the form of writing consultants as facilitators of these writing groups (Bell and Hewerdine 53; Radke 10). Having said that, the concept of writing groups in the space of collaboration between graduate students and the writing center needs a more solid foundation for success (Gray 236). With the current COVID 19 pandemic underway and intermingling throughout these graduate students’ lives along with other affective factors (i.e., anxiety and vulnerability; Fredrick et al. 146; Micciche and Carr 482), there is a need for more structure and guidance for these students’ ultimate success and completion of their graduate programs.

This paper builds our conceptual foundation by reviewing the existing literature about graduate students’ writing needs and writing centers’ supportive programs, followed by the exigency of our current study, including its institutional context and graduate student population, and our writing center and its writing group program. This paper contributes to the writing center scholarship with its connection between practice, theory and research, its Replicable, Aggregable, Data supported (RAD) approach, its particular COVID 19 context, and its participants featuring multilingualism and first generation graduate students. It helps drive research studies on graduate writing beyond factors in writing, but those across and for writing. Besides scholarly contributions, the paper might also shed light on practical considerations about further “carefully and strategically designed programs” for graduate students (Gray 236).

Literature Review

The high attrition rate of doctoral programs in the United States (i.e., 40% 60%) is well studied over the decades (Cassuto par. 1; Harris 600). Rebecca Schuman (par. 10) pinpointed “the inner hindrances, the ones that cause procrastination, and then shame, and then paralysis,” including over researching and insisting on

perfection before submitting any writing (Bell and Hewerdine 51). The case mirrors the situation of master’s students who need to complete theses or other capstone writing projects to complete their programs. Among those students, first generation graduate students who do not have models in their families to follow may be “at greater risk of failure and attrition” (Bell and Hewerdine 50), and many “don’t know the institutional ropes” (e.g., institutional resources and academic protocols; Thesen 164). The following text will review the academic writing process for graduate students, what the features of academic writing are at the graduate level, challenges in graduate writing to multilingual writers, and how graduate writers tackle their academic writing with institutional support that mainly comes from writing centers.

Graduate Academic Writing

Academic writing is a complicated process for all students, as it involves many factors such as developing an argument, researching, and using reliable sources to create a concrete and appropriately styled text that is deliverable and understandable to multiple audiences. While all of this is true about academic writing in general, graduate academic writing entails more demands on students, such as producing original research (Harris 602). Not only are the demands of academic writing greater on graduate students, but Ellen Lavelle and Kathy Bushrow also note that academic writing at the graduate level requires more advanced skills to meet the expectations of academia (807).

There has been limited research into graduate level writing and the various processes and approaches involved. To help fill this gap, Lavelle and Bushrow conceived a seven factor analytic model and inventory measure, "Inventory of Processes in Graduate Writing,” to better understand the graduate level writing process (812 813). The seven factors were determined by identifying the writing strategies and beliefs of graduate students found to be most representative of graduate student writing processes. Of the seven factors they identified, “Intuitive…was found to be predictive of the quality of an academic writing outcome” that is not observed among undergraduates (Lavelle and Bushrow 816; for the whole list, see Appendix A). Furthermore, the Intuitive factor indicates that some writers have an understanding of writing that exists on “‘another’ level, or beyond the cognitive plane” (816). Lavelle and Bushrow hypothesize that Intuitives may have more familiarity with academic writing from their exposure to literature at the graduate level.

Another factor of Lavelle and Bushrow’s Inventory focuses on writing as a science with guidelines and rules

(812); however, rules vary in different languages. Such rules would track back to an expanded contrastive rhetoric, first described by JoAnne Liebman, which is not only embodied in writers’ finished written products, but also in the contexts in which writing occurs as a process (141). Liebman describes contrastive rhetoric as the differences in writers’ “approach to audiences, their perception of the purpose of writing, the type of writing tasks with which they feel comfortable, the composing processes they have been encouraged to develop, and the role writing plays in their education” (142). As such, multilingual writers might need more support to situate themselves in English academic writing. Rosemary Wette and Clare Furneaux, in their study, reported the multilingual group’s “unfamiliarity with aspects of source based, critical, and writer responsible writing” (186), possibly because the group had not been encouraged or was unaware of such expected rhetoric. Moreover, the writer responsibility is one of the possible challenges multilingual writers from Eastern Asia, where a large portion of international students come from according to The Open Doors Report on International Educational Exchange 2020/21 (Institution of International Education), have in common; they do not know how to approach their new audiences while writing their first research article in English. The reason behind this is the cultural differences of reader responsibility versus writer responsibility (Jiang 97 98), or alternatively, high context communication versus low context communication (Hall and Hall 151 162). Many multilingual students are from a culture of high context communication (e.g. Arab countries and Latin America; Nishimura et al. 786), which relies on “indirect and digressive communication, use of few words, reliance on contextual cues…” (Nishimura et al. 790). Those multilingual students tend to apply their communication norms to the rhetoric organization of their English writing, whereas English speaking culture features a low context communication where “meanings are explicitly stated through language” (Nishimura et al. 785). Multilingual students writing across cultures need not only to translate their thoughts into English but also to make efforts to write in a straightforward, explicit, and writer responsible way as a low context communication.

According to the November 2021 report from The Power of International Education, international student enrollment went up 68 percent in Fall 2021 after a 46 percent decrease in 2020 (Martel 2; for the enrollment of 2011 2021, please see Appendix B for the figure in the report). As the number of international student enrollment continues to grow, so does the number of

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multilingual students matriculating at universities in the U.S. It should be noted that many multilingual graduate students learn writing skills and the English language at the same time (Thesen 164). Multilingual writers in Margarita Huerta et al.’s study experienced statistically significant higher writing anxiety and lower self efficacy in academic writing of their graduate studies, compared to native English counterparts (725). Similarly, multilingual students, as Amy Whitcomb has witnessed, showed low confidence in writing in their target language (i.e., English) “they feel like they just can’t know enough vocabulary or syntax to sound smart” (11). The role of sound in English writing does not speak to one subset of multilingual writers mostly international writers or any English language learners who have acquired the language visually (Nakamaru 112). The other subset, as auditory learners of English, has mainly been immersed in the language in English speaking countries and can sense the sound and the flow of their writing (Nakamaru 112). The auditory learners perhaps possess more of the “Intuitive” factor described by Lavelle and Bushrow (816).

The writing process is neither linear nor easy and, as Elliot Shapiro notes, is often something that advanced graduate students are expected to know how to do (125). However, writing involves processes of multifaceted literacy skills. When it comes to factors within writing, rhetorical awareness is critical in graduate students’ academic writing. Dorren Starke Meyerring defines rhetorical awareness as the process in which Ph.D. students acculturate to the established genres and discourses of their specific disciplines (66); Colleen Harris notes that there is a point that when students reach the dissertation stage, they should feel comfortable “in their ability to practice their scholarship” (600). Though some scholars believe such awareness is intuitive (Lavelle and Bushrow 813), they all seem to agree that it can be taught or honed through experience. However, how to develop rhetorical awareness or scholarly competence is yet to be fully considered in many graduate programs.

In addition to gaining more rhetorical awareness of writing in their fields, graduate students, in general, are expected to “project an authoritative scholarly identity to audiences” in the writing they produce (Lawrence and Zawacki 12). Their very identities as scholars are constructed through their writing, publications, and dissertations. In academia, developing and asserting one’s identity as a scholar is vital to success in their graduate program and future career. In turn, graduate students become better able to develop a clearer understanding and grounding of their roles and growth as writers. All graduate students “continuously construct

and (re)construct their identities as readers, writers, and scholars within their disciplinary communities as they participate in a range of academic literacy practices” (Kim and Wolke 214).

Writing Support

Many universities have implemented various writing support programs to help students assimilate to graduate level academic writing. Such groups may help “demystify the practices and processes” of academic writing (Shapiro 124). Furthermore, graduate writing courses, or its modified form of workshops, can “create space, community, and rhetorical awareness/flexibility to brainstorm, create, and sustain a wide variety of critical writing projects” (Micciche and Carr 478). Some universities have formed writing support groups that are outside academic programs but still situated within the respective academic units. For instance, at an Australian university, Damian Maher et al. characterized the year long writing group they participated in as “a community of discursive social practice” (263). Some benefits they noted include enhanced peer learning and a shift in participants’ “thinking and experience of writing from seeing writing as an essentially private and implicit process to writing becoming a matter of public and shared work” (Maher et al. 263). The writing group helped transform Maher et al.’s journey of academic writing from solitude to companionship. Similarly, at a Canadian university, Shelley Murphy et al. conducted a self study after participating in a writing support group with colleagues in the school of education. They found that the benefits of a writing group extend beyond the initial purpose of aiding in the completion of the dissertation by also preparing participants for their roles as future educators and researchers (Murphy et al. 245). Murphy et al.’s study highlights the synergistic effect of the writing group on graduate writers’ academic and professional identities.

In addition to any departmental support they receive, other resources may be available to graduate students. For example, doctoral students at Harris’s university partnered with academic librarians to improve their research skills for their dissertations (599 620). However, Harris concludes that there may be challenges in providing individualized long term research assistance for dissertations (613).

More frequently seen, writing centers are one of the main university resources in graduate writing. Writing centers are “a cultural ecotone,” embodied by their linguistic diversity, civic engagement, and developmental leadership, authorship, and scholarship (Kells 27). The writing center extends the academic space beyond classrooms and adds comfort via

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interactions with peer tutors (Kells 28). Furthermore, as Marilee Brooks Gillies et al. (191) argue, writing centers are greatly needed as they provide judgment free zones that still fulfill the institution’s writing needs. Talinn Phillips remarks that traditional tutoring in writing centers cannot always meet the unique needs of graduate students working on long term projects (45). Bethany Mannon highlights that writing centers are the ideal location to host writing groups, and they should have a facilitator “committed to organizing meetings,” because one on one appointments involve “academic and emotional labor” (63). Writing groups and other specific programs, such as affinity groups and writing support networks, are merited by multiple scholars in the sense of decreasing attrition rates, fostering peer collaboration, cultivating peer review, and producing reciprocal benefits (e.g., Bell and Hewerdine 51; Kells 28).

Attending to the multifaceted needs of graduate writers by providing general and specific writing support aforementioned, U.S. writing centers have supported graduate writers’ development of their “scholarly identities and disciplinary socialization” (Kranek and Regidor 64). When it comes to institutional support for writing, writing groups, first and foremost, help validate “the emotional aspects of students’ graduate experiences…about not knowing, doubting oneself, resisting the discipline, or failing to enculturate” (Fredrick et al. 162). For instance, in Marilyn Gray’s study, the dissertation boot camp participants shared their “increased confidence and motivation” (Gray 235). Furthermore, writing groups can help graduate students fully “integrate into all aspects of academic life: writing, research, teaching, and service” by fostering an identity that is largely informed by the discursive practices of their field (Shapiro 124 125). Writing groups may also help graduate students develop a concept of academic life built on the exchange of ideas and collaboration with others, such as what is seen in the peer review process (Shapiro 137). Within writing, the doctoral students who had participated in a series of writing support programs perceived improvement in writing skills, writing progress, and themselves as writers (Gray 235). In summary, writing groups are not a “panacea for all that ails graduate education, but they can offer specific and targeted instruction to reduce the challenges graduate students face in their writing” (Busl et al. 259) and empower academic writers with more self efficacy and less anxiety (Huerta et al. 727).

The Current Study

Eligible Participants: Graduate Students with Concrete Writing Projects

At the current study’s Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI; see more information on U.S. Department of Education), there are over 56,000 students (approximately two thirds as Hispanic/Latinos) and over 9,800 graduate students, including approximately 1,350 international graduate students, from more than 120 countries enrolled during the 2020 2021 academic year (analysis & information management). Many students, including graduate students, are first generation college students, are connected with immigrant families, and 90% live off campus. Many graduate students have complained about long commuting times and parking issues on campus; some have shared that their familial roles involve taking care of the young and/or the old. The institutional data indicates that the pandemic was a considerable hindrance for doctoral candidates moving forward with their dissertations. The pandemic worsened the obstacles graduate students at large would face the isolation from peers and faculty after the coursework stage, lack of motivation, and little knowledge of available resources (whether still physically existing or transferred online or discontinued) along the ‘solo’ journey of academic writing. The loneliness also included the linguistic challenges faced by many of the university’s bilingual and multilingual graduate students. They needed to make an extra effort in mitigating the effect of their first language on their academic writing in English at this large urban research university. The Writing Center: A Hub Offering Support beyond Writing

The graduate tutors at the HSI’s writing center are current graduate students and recent graduates of their programs. They offer one on one tutoring sessions in person and virtually. The tutor tutee mentorship, developed via sessions, is a multi layered and complex dynamic that extends beyond writing (i.e., socially, academically, and professionally). In addition to tutoring, the writing center offers approximately 20 graduate workshops per year, a dissertation retreat week twice a year, and recently the Graduate Writing Mentorship Program (GWMP) in two to three cohorts a semester for graduate students over the institution’s 120 graduate degree programs.

Exigence of the GWMP

During a meeting with the associate dean of the University Graduate School (UGS) in Fall 2019, the first author proposed the idea of adding a graduate writing group as a weekly activity to their regular consultation service. A trial group was piloted in November 2019.

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The exit survey results from the GWMP participants, the feedback from facilitating graduate consultants, and the retention rates of GWMP were the three main factors for both the writing center and the UGS to consider moving forward with the program. The second author, who had worked in the writing center since 2018, facilitated the GWMP from January 2020 to July 2021; he left to begin his Ph.D. in English in Fall 2021. The third author, who has worked in the writing center since 2010, has facilitated the GWMP in 2021. The GWMP graduate consultant mentors were chosen based on their experience in long term high stake graduate level writing projects as writers and writing consultants.

GWMP: Our Implementation Endeavors and Take Aways

As an extension of the dissertation retreat week, our initial stage of the writing group program aimed at providing a physical space and maximizing time for writing. The program was born from a collaborative effort between the graduate school and university’s writing center in November 2019. The graduate school sent a call via email for all graduate students, inviting them to join this free program. The three hour long weekly GWMP was deemed conducive to writing with an assigned graduate consultant on site for participants’ questions. Students came and left at their discretion. This structure resembles the first of Sohui Lee and Chris Golde’s two models “Just Write” (2), a less structured model which prioritizes granting writers autonomy.

The second iteration of the GWMP, which began in Spring 2020, implemented an application based cohort of 10 graduate students with no attendance requirement. The graduate school sent a call via email for all graduate students and selected participants via Qualtrics responses. Initially, the group met exclusively in person but was moved entirely online due to the COVID 19 pandemic. The third version, which began in Fall 2020 amid the height of the pandemic, consisted of two virtually run application based cohorts of 10 students selected from over 100 applicants. Attendance was mandatory to secure a spot in the program; two unexcused absences yielded an available spot for over 80 applicants on the waiting list. In the three hour long session, one on one breakout sessions were used for setting and achieving goals as a means to further participants long term writing projects. Participants could engage with their writing center consultant mentors to determine their goals and improve their writing, resulting in the timely completion of their capstone projects. The current version of the GWMP resembles features of Lee and Golde’s second model “Writing Process” (2). “Writing Process” emphasizes

writing as a progressive process and encourages “consistent and ongoing conversations about writing” within the time and space (Lee and Golde 2).

The evolution of our GWMP practices corresponds to the guidelines in the existing literature of writing groups, including “...personal goal setting, timelines, and accountability...navigating relationships and networking...knowledge sharing...encouragement”

(Remmes Martin and Ko 14 15). The added structure and accountability enhanced the participants’ engagement and retention. Participants also revealed their liking of the one on one conferences and brief moments of peer interactions during this weekly three hour long program.

With factors affecting graduate students such as long commuting, familial obligations, job commitments, and COVID related challenges, we suggest a hybrid model of the GWMP. Providing students with the option of a physical or virtual cohort would contribute to retention rates and students’ continued success. It is expected that once students have selected their cohort, they will commit to attending all of the scheduled sessions, barring special circumstances.

Method

We conducted an IRB approved mixed methods study (Approval #: IRB 21 0291) to explore GWMP participants’ perceptions of the program during COVID 19 and their expectations of the program post the pandemic. We successfully recruited 14 participants from the 2021 summer GWMP cohorts (N=30) for surveys and 10 for one on one interviews. The survey questions were informed by the GWMP exit survey in Spring 2021 and the existing literature (e.g., Bell and Hewerdine 50; Kells 29; Kim and Wolke 238 240; Mannon 60; Radke 11; Remmes Martin and Ko 13). For instance, there were options in the survey about the purpose of the GWMP, including a modified option as “Set personal goals, timelines, and accountability” from the list of Kathryn Remmes Martin and Linda Ko (13). Another example is a modified question of “What forms of feedback are you looking for?” to “What forms of support are you looking for?” in our survey (Mannon 60). Some of the demographic questions included graduate students’ language experiences, first generation college/graduate students, and their fields of study.

Data Collection

We conducted a pilot study on Spring 2021 GWMP participants to finalize the survey validation. We conducted purposeful sampling and then disseminated the Qualtrics survey with close ended and open ended questions in Summer 2021 (see Appendix C). This

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online survey took participants approximately 20 minutes to complete; the final question gauged their willingness to participate in a subsequent interview by providing the option to leave their email address. We followed up with the respondents who consented to be contacted by email by employing nested sampling and conducted ten one on one interviews via Zoom with audio recording only. The interview questions included follow up questions to the survey responses (see Appendix D). The quasi structured interviews (with mostly prepared questions) were scheduled to grant interviewees’ availability in Summer 2021 and lasted 25 minutes on average. Data from the survey and interviews remained confidential. All the following names used are pseudonyms.

Data Analysis

Qualtrics helped analyze the quantitative data from the survey; Zoom audio transcripts provided raw interview transcripts. We verified the qualitative data from the survey and interview transcripts and agreed to leave our first thoughts by inserting comments in our own saved files. We continued our qualitative data analysis by converging words into different coding categories (via different color highlights). The coding categories were words and phrases that represented the regularities, patterns, and topics covered by the data and derived from the survey and interview questions. We then discussed those categories together to collapse and refine our categories into themes, to resolve discrepancies (Van Scoy et al. 573), and to triangulate our analyses from our individual perspectives one as a writing center administrator who helped establish the GWMP and two as graduate consultants who had led GWMP sessions over multiple semesters. For instance, we merged growth in writing and growth as writers into one theme. We also merged planning and time management into one theme. In addition, we subdivided writing factors into those within, across, and for writing and exemplified and visualized the three subcategories in our findings.

Based on findings from both quantitative and qualitative data, a meta inference was made. The meta inference, as an integration of the findings, would improve our understanding of “how” GWMP worked and “not just if” it worked or not (Hitchcock and Newman 48). That is to say, whatever the quantitative results were, looking at individuals’ answers to those open ended questions via survey and interviews might tell us why the results were as such (i.e., explain and interpret the quantitative data). We threaded the draft with themes and categorized answers and evidence from

the analyzed data to further organize and interpret the findings.

Findings

Demographic Information

The 14 survey respondents lived off campus and were in their respective programs anywhere from half a year to four years. Their graduate programs ranged from humanities to STEM to social sciences. Twelve were full time students, nine were first generation graduate students, and six were first generation college students. They represented diverse racial/ethnic groups: 7 White, 3 Black, 3 Hispanic, and 1 Asian. Eleven of them spoke more than one language, including Turkish, Spanish, Italian, German, Latin, Russian, Greek, and Hebrew; six were multilingual writers, stating that English was not their first language (i.e., Spanish, Turkish, Russian).

Among the ten interviewees nested from the 14 survey respondents, some of them held the university’s Teaching Assistantship (TAship), some were full time employees, and some mentioned their responsibility when childcare was not available and/or when the lab experiments relied on them.

Overall Perceptions of the GWMP

None of the 14 survey respondents showed dissatisfaction with the current GWMP; they were all interested in continuing the GWMP in the following semester, either virtually or in person. The ten interviewees showed their generic liking of the current virtual GWMP in the following aspects: easy accessibility, a familiar and comfortable writing space, helping prioritize writing time and having a consistent writing schedule, giving accountability, and exhibiting peer motivation. Most of the interviewees envisioned a virtual GWMP for the future, citing convenience and accessibility, along with the reasons mentioned above. A few did prefer in person GWMP meetings when applicable; one interviewee, Roxie, felt that “it's easier to get distracted in a virtual environment.”

Two of the 14 survey respondents participated in the GWMP for the second time. The remaining 12 were first time participants; they all acknowledged that the GWMP and the writing center were their only resources for writing at the university. One of the interviewees, Eddie, mentioned online writing groups they joined during weekends along with the GWMP. This participant stated that the Friday GWMP served “as the kick off of the weekend...plan what to write over the weekend.” Then this person used weekend online writing groups to implement their writing plans.

Nine out of 14 survey respondents agreed they saw improvement in their writing, and 10 out of 14 agreed

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there was an improvement in themselves as writers. In the interviews, the interviewees elaborated on both aspects: Nickolas and Eddie found their writing was clearer to readers; Dexter asserted that “I think being able to outline a flow of logic for, like my introductions….” was particularly useful. The enhanced sense of writers’ responsibility was evident. The interviewees expanded on their growth as writers. Nickolas, for instance, mentioned several cognitive strategies they gained in academic writing: paraphrasing, writing resources utilized, and breaking tasks into small manageable sections; Dexter noted they were better able to focus on proofreading their writing and editing for clarity (i.e., “make sure that everything I wrote was saying what I wanted it to say”). Bradford and Katrina highlighted their growth in metacognitive ability to manage time for writing efficiently; Lyn articulated that “[The GWMP] made me sit down and collect my thoughts”; Roxie was more driven and strategically self paced and feels that “I've gotten better at setting more specific goals and holding myself accountable to those goals.... I've gotten better with a writing routine.”

Writing along the GWMP

Most of the participants were working on a dissertation and were at the write up stage, either proposals or dissertation chapters (i.e., literature review and/or data collection). They typically achieved one quarter to over three quarters of their writing goals during each three hour long GWMP session; some of them used the GWMP and the corresponding week as an interval to plan and manage their writing goals. For instance, the interviewee Nickolas remarked that their writing week started with the GWMP and ended with the writing week until the next GWMP session. They usually fulfilled 90% of their writing goals in each writing week. All the interviewees perceived the completion of their writing goals above three quarters over the semester.

Needs and Support within, across, and for Writing

During the GWMP sessions, participants expected mentor support on common needs: literature review, formatting, sentence structure, organization, time management, breaking up a more extensive project into manageable sections, stress and anxiety, and communication with committees/advisors. Their survey responses show that the needs range from linguistic patterns to rhetoric development and from metacognitive strategies to emotional and interpersonal factors impacting writing. Eleven out of 14 survey respondents believed the support was sufficient from GWMP, and three chose “maybe.” They found the GWMP most useful in the following aspects: more

knowledge in how to write, more confidence in making progress with a project, more self regulation to motivate themselves in writing, more confidence in graduating (on time), more awareness of writing resources from the university and online, less anxiety about deadlines, less anxiety to let others read their writing, and less nervousness to talk about their writing with peers and mentors. Almost every participant chose the metacognitive change “more self regulation to motivate myself in writing,” and half of them chose “more confidence in making progress with a project” and “more awareness of writing resources from the university and online.” One response about self regulation, for instance, was how “[The GWMP] assisted [them] with keeping a writing schedule and developing smaller goals.” One of the resources from the survey response was “software for plagiarism checking.” All the themes emerging from responses helped the authors identify the relationship among the three aspects (needs and support within, across, and for writing) as shown in the Figure 1 (see Appendix E). This iceberg figure has been developed and agreed by us, because of our review of the existing literature and our research participants as multilingual and first generation graduate writers and their multi layered needs, from linguistic patterns to rhetoric development (i.e., within writing) and from metacognitive strategies (i.e., across writing) to emotional and interpersonal factors impacting writing (i.e., for writing).

Within Writing. As a core of the writing process, the participants in the GWMP benefited from and expected more knowledge about how to write. For example, Dexter said, “I think being able to outline a flow of logic for like my introductions and what I'm trying to say…[so] that someone who is not in my line of research could understand” was a notable improvement. Nickolas sought more specific feedback (including formatting, phrasing, clear and concise language) to make their writing “clearer to readers.” It should be noted that the GWMP was not a replacement or substitute for the graduate tutorials the writing center provided; it aimed to enhance graduate writers’ writing progress in a cohort based community. Both Dexter and Nickolas developed their writer responsibility, which emphasizes the awareness of target readers.

Across Writing. As revealed in the demographics, around half of the participants were multilingual writers. For instance, Raven stated clearly that they expected the GWMP to embed “the opportunity to ask some specific things about English as a Second Language”; Raven contextualized their writing background as “writing and publishing for almost ten years in Spanish.” Raven’s need for guidance on contrastive rhetoric applied to

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other participants in navigating academic writing standards across cultures.

For Writing. The external factors for writing would include the following: metacognition, emotional support, confidence, and identity. Compared with the first two elements: within and across writing, the third one is more process oriented. In other words, the factors for writing seem irrelevant to the final academic writing product but matter significantly in reality. The GWMP participants liked the program and would like to continue because of the positive experiences with those external factors. Almost all of the participants complimented the role of the GWMP in regulating their writing schedules in terms of planning and managing their time. For instance, Katrina strategically did the following: “I met the day before with the Professor to discuss the things I needed to work on...and then I would work on them during [the GWMP]”; on the other hand, Eddie used the GWMP on Friday as a kick off to their weekend planning what to write over the weekend with two online writing groups. Eddie stated that “...last weekend like I already did this, on Friday, so this weekend I can work on X, Y, Z, so it definitely has helped me to kind of make sure [I'm] continuously moving along.”

Some of them also felt a sense of belonging in this virtual community where they could share resources, strategies, and feelings. More importantly, they felt comfortable sharing their vulnerability and celebrating each other’s achievements, even small ones. The weekly check in and wrap up enhanced their perceived identity as emergent writers and supported scholars.

Expectations of the Program

From the survey, the expectations of the future GWMP included: setting and sharing goals to be shared as a group at the end; inviting some “prolific writers” to come for talks to further inspire and motivate; allowing for longer one on one time (in the event that fewer people sign up for that time); reading some students’ work together and providing some feedback if necessary. The interview results echoed the survey responses. In summary, they expected more “peer engagement and accountability” as well as writing tools and strategies.

The Effect of the COVID 19 Pandemic

The COVID 19 pandemic, which was mentioned in the data collection as a temporal context, caused many obstacles for the GWMP participants: physical isolation and unavailable daycare, in addition to their loneliness and anxiety. Take Nickolas, for instance; this participant was reconnected academically after disconnections with their lab members and mentor during COVID 19.

Eddie, who worked full time during the pandemic, still felt forlorn and lost because of “[a] struggle with...no sense of community...because we don’t meet periodically or anything like that we all had our classes, the same our first year and then we all kind of went our own separate ways.” Eddie referred to their own disciplinary cohort “where they hadn’t met other three students in the same cohort for at least a year and a half” during the pandemic. The GWMP, a multidisciplinary virtual cohort amidst the pandemic was “more active and engaged as a connected community,” as Eddie complimented. Also, the virtual GWMP during the pandemic was more reasonable and accessible for graduate participants since some participants were out of town, some needed to attend to their children due to daycare closures or lab work at times, and several held full time positions. It should be noted that COVID 19 was also an era when some online writing groups were formed voluntarily; the scale was yet to be known.

Discussion

Multilingual Writers’ Growth across Writing

The current study’s findings have substantially enriched the existing literature on multilingual graduate writers. Eleven of the participants spoke more than one language, including Turkish, Spanish, Italian, German, Latin, Russian, Greek, and Hebrew; six stated that English was not their first language (i.e., Spanish, Turkish, Russian). These multilingual writers may have faced extra challenges in navigating graduate writing in English and needed more targeted support. For instance, Raven clearly stated that they expected the GWMP to embed “the opportunity to ask some specific things about English as a Second Language.” The “specific things,” connected to existing literature, include Lavelle and Bushrow’s Intuitive, a factor as “predictive of the quality of an academic writing outcome” (Lavelle and Bushrow 816). Lavelle and Bushrow acknowledge that some writers have an understanding of writing that exists on “‘another’ level, or beyond the cognitive plane” (816). Perhaps the “Intuitive” factor points to a challenge unique to multilingual writers who need more explicit guidance and immersive exposure to scholarship than their peers. The GWMP graduate consultants have been trained to notice a spectrum of multilingual writers’ needs. For instance, Sarah Nakamaru’s categorization of multilingual writers into two groups visual and auditory (117), informed the GWMP consultants that multilingual writers’ previous language acquisition could yield some common mistakes and various self correcting strategies in their revising process.

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Depending on the acquiring styles of those multilingual writers, some of them who had learned English visually could not “hear” their voice in writing and correct unnatural phrasing (Nakamaru 112) by sounding out. The auditory learners would have more “Intuitive” to make sure their sentences flow (Nakamaru 112). Accordingly, the GWMP consultants shared relevant resources and encouraged their graduate writers to reserve sessions at the writing center.

Moreover, Raven’s “specific things” also echo Liebman’s new contrastive rhetoric. Such an expanded contrastive rhetoric is embodied not only in writers’ finished written products in terms of their organizations, but also in writers’ writing processes at a metacognitive level why to write, to whom to write, what to write, how to write, and what to write for (Liebman 142). That is why when asked, Raven, an established multilingual scholar, still felt challenged in composing academic writing in English. The approach to audiences was mentioned by GWMP participants as an aspect of their growth. For example, interviewee Dexter imagined their reader as “someone who is not in my line of research could understand.” Similarly, interviewee Nickolas tried to make their writing “clearer to readers.” Both aforementioned responses also confirm with one part of Liebman’s contrastive rhetoric: to whom to write (142), The content knowledge in their writing projects, though within specific disciplines, should be conveyed as clear and understandable text in a broader academic discourse. Such cognitive awakening aligns with Starke Meyerring's rhetorical awareness in which Ph.D. students acculturate to their specific disciplines’ established genres and discourses (66).

The Submerged of an Iceberg More about and for Writing

Writing is a complicated process for graduate students (Shapiro 125), which is a belief shared by the participants of the current study and shown in Figure 1 (see Appendix E). At the bottom of the figure, there are four salient concepts derived from the data: metacognition, emotional support, confidence, and identity. In this interdisciplinary platform of GWMP, the participants’ growth as writers embraces enhancement in metacognitive ability in the interviews, such as efficiently managing time for writing efficiently (Bradford and Katrina), sitting down and collecting thoughts (Lyn), and being self paced (Roxie). Moreover, almost every survey respondent chose the metacognitive change “more self regulation to motivate myself in writing.”

The GWMP also has offered emotional support naturally in one on one consultations and peer sharing moments. The peer like safe space within the GWMP,

as an extension of classrooms and coursework, has built peer learning, peer mentoring, peer cheering, and peer networking. As Eddie expressed, the GWMP is “more active and engaged as a connected community,” where graduate writers could feel free to share their vulnerabilities and achievements as well as other moments “about not knowing, doubting oneself,...or failing” (Fredrick et al. 162). Those graduate writers, many of them multilingual writers, credited GWMP with relieving their anxiety about writing as a process as well as their timelines and deadlines. It should be noted that first generation college students or first generation graduate students, even as native English speakers, might have similar anxiety because of their lack of previous exposure to scholarly literature or highly conventional writing. The emotional support from GWMP has transformed the participants’ writing journey of solitude into solidarity.

In terms of their scholarly identities, all the participants could see themselves and their peers in the process of developing “scholarly identities and disciplinary socialization” (Kranek and Regidor 64), by sharing and hearing obstacles and progress. The participating graduate students “continuously construct and (re)construct their identities as readers, writers...” (Kim and Wolke 214), by sharing resources and peer review. Interactions with their own texts and their peers’ texts in the collaborative space of the GWMP all helped promote the establishment of their scholarly identities.

Confidence, associated with the scholarly identity, was the fourth factor for writing shown from the current study’s findings. The majority of the GWMP graduate students had more confidence in making progress with a project and graduating on time. The consensus echoes Gray’s study about boot camp participants and their “increased confidence and motivation” (Gray 235).

Accountability within Uncertainty Affected by COVID 19

At the last stage of their academic journey, the participants needed and welcomed contextual structure to incentivize their writing regulation, especially amidst the pandemic crisis. COVID 19 has caused more obstacles and challenges for graduate writers being away from their scholarly network, physical isolation, emotional toll, financial crisis, and changes in personal and familial responsibilities. Approximately two thirds of the participants were first generation graduate students and over 40% were first generation college students. As their families do not have academic experience, they could neither easily notice their struggles, sympathize with, nor support them.

Participating graduate students expressed a desire for more accountability. They could see the merit of

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accountability in their growth, managing time, timelines, writing projects, and planning and prioritizing. Such accountability supports Lee and Golde’s second model “Writing Process” (2), where “consistent and ongoing conversations about writing” are encouraged within the time and space (Lee and Golde 2). Derived from GWMP’s accountability and those participants’ growth in their managing skills, the participants could regulate their writing and life pace and further help prompt emotional well being. In other words, accountability, the external factor, was internalized to help stimulate those graduate students’ self motivation and self autonomy to move towards these students’ ultimate success and completion of their graduate programs.

Conclusion

The current study, like other empirical studies, has its limitations. All the data were from GWMP participants’ self reports, which might lead to the validity issue of the data. Also, through convenience sampling and nested sampling, the 14 survey respondents and ten interviewees in Summer 2021 might not represent the whole population of the GWMP participants over the years. Besides, the participants recruited from the HSI might not reflect student (linguistic and familial) demographics at other institutions.

Nevertheless, the study has contributed to the writing center field in practice and scholarship. In terms of practical application, the authors call for more explicit and targeted workshops for first generation graduate students and multilingual writers and/or for dissertation writers at large that cover topics such as English writing conventions, novelty moves, and academic rhetoric; social hours, and mindfulness practices can be considered to better meet graduate writers’ needs, as the bottom part of the iceberg. Graduate students are expected to complete high stake writing projects on time and there needs to be more support and guidance in, about, and for writing at this level, as the iceberg figure emphasizes. Our GWMP, with its contexts COVID 19, diverse student writers, and an HSI, echoes and foregrounds the merit of other writing groups studied in various contexts. It also helps shift scholarly and administrative attention to writing groups from Yes/No to “how.” Our institutional context as an HSI provides pioneering thoughts for other institutions with increasing diversity, mirroring the growth of the national trends.

The next step of the empirical study regarding the writing group at large would be to examine those

graduate writing group participants’ progress in their academic programs and other evaluation items of graduate students in general (graduation rate/dissertation completion and years of completion). The quantitative data can be used in a comparison to equivalent data of students without participation of writing groups (i.e., the GWMP); the quantitative data can also be used in a combination with the perceptions of those former writing group participants to present a whole and longitude picture of how writing groups support graduate students.

This study gives graduate student writing the attention that is long overdue. Even though our study cannot fully represent the U.S. graduate student population, as other studies, its temporal and local contexts call for more inquiries about how to support diverse graduate writers with various needs and circumstances. This study’s contextual factors could be a reference for other institutions with similar multicultural and multilingual contexts and growing diversity. Our GWMP at a large HSI could serve as a model to other institutions on how to accommodate the multifaceted needs of graduate student writers.

Acknowledgement

We thank all the consenting participants for sharing their thoughts. We also thank Dr. Vanessa Kraemer Sohan and Dr. Glenn Hutchinson (Florida International University) for their advice and comments.

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Appendix A

Table: The Inventory of Graduate Writing Processes

Factor 1: Elaborative

45. At times my academic writing has given me deep personal satisfaction

4. Writing academic papers makes me feel good

46. The main reason for writing an academic paper is just to get a good grade on it

30. Writing assignments in graduate courses are always learning experiences

61. Writing an academic paper helps me develop my ideas

62. Academic writing is cold and impersonal

50. Writing an academic paper is like a journey

44. Academic writing helps me organise information in my mind

58. My intention in writing is just to answer the question

21. Academic papers usually have little to do with what I do in my career or my life

40. Writing an academic paper is making a new meaning

15. I worry about how much time my paper will take

Factor 2: Low self-efficacy

53. I worry so much about my writing that it prevents me from getting started

63. I need special encouragement to do my best academic writing

13. I can write a term paper without any help or instruction

56. I do well on tests requiring essay answers

32. Having my writing evaluated scares me

64. I can't revise my writing because I cannot see my own mistakes

35. I like to work in small groups to discuss ideas or to do revision in writing

49. I expect good grades on academic papers

27. I am familiar with the components of a research paper or thesis

18. Writing an essay or paper is always a slow process

23. Studying grammar and punctuation would greatly improve my writing

Factor 3: No revision

60. Often my first draft is my finished product

66. I do not normally expect to make significant changes to my text by revising it

41. My revision strategy is usually making minor alterations, just touching things up

16. I tend to write a rough draft and then go back repeatedly to revise it

7. Revision is a one time process at the end

3. I reexamine and restate my thoughts in revision

17. Revision is the process of finding the shape of my writing

51. I plan, write and revise all at the same time

29. I never think about how I go about writing

Factor 4: Intuitive

25. I can hear myself while writing

57. I often think about my paper when I am not writing (late at night)

24. I visualise what I am writing about

33. I tend to spend a long time thinking about my writing assignment before beginning

6. I can hear my voice as I reread papers that I have written

36. I imagine the reaction that my readers might have to my paper

5. I closely examine what the essay calls for

31. In my writing I tend to use some ideas to support other, larger ideas

22. It is important to me to like what I have written

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28. I put a lot of myself in academic writing

26. My prewriting notes are always a mess

34. When writing a paper, I often get ideas for other papers

Factor 5: Scientist

9. When faced with an academic paper, I develop a plan and stick to it

67. It is important to me to have my ideas or arguments clear before writing

1. When writing an academic paper, I stick to the rules

10. I keep my topic clearly in mind as I write

43. The thesis or main idea is the heart of the academic paper

2. I set aside specific times to do academic papers

55. I start with a fairly detailed outline

54. I like written assignments to be well specified with details included

12. The thesis or main idea dictates the type of paper to be written

Factor 6: Task-oriented

65. When writing an academic paper, my idea or topic often changes as I progress

39. My writing rarely expresses what I really think

37. I complete each sentence and revise it before going on to the next

8. There is usually one best way to write an academic paper

38. I cue my reader by giving a hint of what is to come

48. My essay or paper often goes beyond the specifications of the assignment

47. When given an assignment, I immediately know which side I will take

42. I am my own audience

Factor 7: Sculptor

59. I just write off the top of my head and then go back and rework the whole thing

11. When writing an academic paper, I tend to write what I would say if I were talking

52. I usually write several paragraphs before rereading

20. Writing academic papers reminds me of other things that I do

19. Academic writing is symbolic

14. Originality in writing is highly important in academic writing

Source: Final Items and Loading, “Writing Approaches of Graduate Students.” Lavelle, Ellen, and Kathy Bushrow, 2007, pp. 812 813, Table 1. https://doi.org/10.1080/01443410701366001.

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Source: International Students at U.S. Higher Education Institutions, Fall 2021. “November 2021: Fall 2021 International Student Enrollment Snapshot.” Martel, Mirka. The Power of International Education, Institute of International Education, Nov. 2021, p. 3, Figure 2. https://www.iie.org/Research and Insights/Open Doors/Fall International Enrollments Snapshot Reports

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Appendix C

Post-Pandemic Graduate Writing Mentorship Program (GWMP) Survey

have read the information in the consent form provided to me and agree to participate in this study. I have had a chance

ask any questions I have about this study, and they have been answered for me.

I agree

I disagree

Graduate Writing Mentorship Program (GWMP) participants,

you for spending your time answering the following questions. This should take approximately 25 minutes.

What is your writing project for the GWMP?

Where are you in this process as of now?

Brainstorming

Reading/literature review

Data collection

Data analysis

Write up

Formatting

Revision

How much of your writing goals do you usually achieve during each session?

1 25%

26 50%

51 75%

76 100%

Which area do you mostly need mentors’ support? You may choose more than one.

Literature review

Formatting

Sentence structure

Organization

Time management

Breakup a larger project into manageable sections

Stress and anxiety

Communication with committees/advisors

Other

Was the support provided sufficient?

Yes

Maybe

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● No

6. How do you feel about the improvement in your writing skills?

● Strongly agree

Slightly agree

Neutral

Slightly disagree

Strongly disagree

Not applicable

7. How do you feel about your improvement as a writer?

● Strongly agree

Slightly agree

Neutral

Slightly disagree

Strongly disagree

Not applicable

8. Which part of the GWMP do you find most useful? You may choose more than one.

● More knowledge in what to write

● More knowledge in how to write

● More confidence in making progress with a project

● More self regulation to motivate myself in writing

● More confidence in graduating (on time)

● More awareness of writing resources from FIU and online

● Less anxiety about deadlines

● Less anxiety to let others read my writing

● Less nervousness to talk about my writing with peers and mentors

● Other

9. Why?

10. Which part of the GWMP do you find least useful? Why?

11. How can we improve the GWMP?

12. How satisfied or dissatisfied are you with the GWMP?

● Extremely satisfied

● Moderately satisfied

Neutral

Moderately dissatisfied

Extremely dissatisfied

13. Would you be interested in the GWMP next semester?

● Yes, preferably virtual

Yes, preferably in person

Yes, preferably hybrid

● Maybe

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● No

No, because I will have graduated by then

14. Why?

15. This is my _____________ (e.g., first, second, third, etc.) time participating in the GWMP.

16. How does your experience in the GWMP differ from your experience in other forms of writing support (e.g., advisor’s mentorship, peer support, external writing groups, online writing resources, etc.)

Demographic Information

17. What is your program and level (master’s or doctoral)?

18. How long have you been in this program (years and months)?

19. What is your first language?

20. What are your other language experiences and proficiency levels? Please provide the name of the language(s) and proficiency level (native or native like, fluent, basic).

21. Are you a first generation college student?

● Yes

No

Are you a first generation graduate student?

● Yes

No

Are you a full time or part time student?

● Full time

● Part time

What is your race and ethnicity?

● White (Hispanic)

● White (Non Hispanic)

● Black (Hispanic)

● Black (Non Hispanic)

● Asian and Pacific Islanders

25. Do you live on or off campus?

● On campus

● Off campus

26. Please leave your email address for an individual 30 minute long Zoom interview this summer. You will receive a follow up email soon.

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Appendix D

Questions for One-on-One Zoom Interviews

1. How do you feel about the GWMP being in a virtual setting?

2. Could you imagine the same program in an in person setting?

3. What obstacles would you face if this was an in person program?

4. If you had more one on one time with your mentor in this program, what kind of feedback/assistance would you like to be given?

5. In terms of time management, how does the GWMP fit into your writing schedule?

6. How much of your writing goals do you usually achieve during each session/throughout the week? How possible would it be to achieve the same goals in the same hours without the GWMP?

7. How much do you agree with the GWMP being effective in your planning?

8. How much do you agree with the GWMP being effective in your time management?

9. What else did you expect the GWMP to offer/support?

10. What else did you expect the GWMP consultant(s) to offer/support?

11. What aspects of your writing improved, due to the GWMP?

12. What aspects of you as a writer improved, due to the GWMP?

13. How much do you agree with having more time in peer interaction and peer learning during the GWMP?

14. How many devoted hours do you usually have for your writing beyond the GWMP every week?

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DISRUPTING THE NARRATIVE: CROSS NATIONAL CONSULTANTS IN A U.S. GRADUATE WRITERS’ STUDIO

Yvonne R. Lee

Lehigh University

yrl219@lehigh.edu

Sinenhlanhla Zungu

Lehigh University siz517@lehigh.edu

Varun Joseph Andrews Lehigh University vaa219@alum.lehigh.edu

Abstract

Much scholarship on working with multilingual writers at the undergraduate and graduate levels has been published in Writing Center scholarship. However, there is a dearth in literature regarding how the whiteness that haunts writing center spaces through the idealization of standard U.S. English may affect the experiences of members of minoritized communities (e.g., people of color, international students, non native English speakers) working in the context of the writing center. This article attempts to fill space in that gap. We approached this project with the belief that writing center spaces can choose to either perpetuate whiteness as the global standard, or they can challenge such a colonial perspective. We believe that writing centers are the ideal spaces for such interrogations to begin. Thus, in this article, we present a conversation between one white, U.S. born, monolingual writing center director and two writing consultants who are people of color, polylingual, and international, in an effort to inspire others to engage in similar reflexive practices. We believe our stories are most valuable when presented from our personal perspectives. Therefore, we utilize an autoethnographic approach, combining our autobiographical perspectives with research, as we begin to develop a theory of practice for our own space. Our goal is that what follows resonates with those for whom whiteness remains a haunt, whether they have lived in the U.S. their entire lives or have only recently arrived.

In the introduction to their edited collection, Writing Centers and the New Racism: A Call for Sustainable Dialogue and Change, Greenfield and Rowan ask the question, “How do we [the Writing Center field] persevere through the difficulty and messiness of negotiating race and racism in our writing centers?” When this question is answered, it is often through the frame of the writer who comes to our center for assistance or from the safety and distance of a theoretical perspective. In our piece, we try to turn the lens on ourselves to respond to this question, to be vulnerable and honest in our depictions of our own struggles and experiences with language being used by others and by ourselves as an identity eraser.

The impetus for this reflexive piece is to help ourselves and hopefully others grapple with understanding that the idealization of U.S. academic English language and native U.S. speakers of it can foster neo colonialism the colonization of a people through indirect means. The entrenched connection

between English as the language of educational instruction and colonialism is already highly studied as language was one of the tools weaponized by imperialist Europeans in their subjugation of the nations they colonized (Bhattacharya 1; Viswanathan 1; Nieto 233). The process of colonization framed the acquisition of the language of the colonizers and their cultural standards as a key method for the colonized to be viewed as civilized (Fanon 17; Nieto 235). Post colonization, English continues to be used by Western countries as a neocolonial tool. English continues to enjoy dominance through the contemporary framing of English as the language of globalization and as an essential skill for members of former colonies to be able to engage in economic mobility and with the global political community (Probyn 153; Majhanovich; Tupas 55). A consequence of this neo colonial behavior is that those who are not native speakers of U.S. academic English experience an erasure, an override of their identities a sense of what Fanon (19) describes as “absolute mutation” in an effort to force themselves into social practices that emphasize the supremacy of a language inextricably connected with whiteness.

The use of English as a neo colonial tool has also bulldozed its way into the academic writing space. In the neo colonial context, academic standards emerge to meet the needs of the colonizing population, often becoming what is considered to be the “norm.” This standardization, which has now been set in place within the institution, can make it difficult to detect the barriers of policies and practices that systematically disadvantage certain groups of people, leaving these groups to be considered anomalies that require special accommodations (Nguyen et al 110). As a result, the variations in English apparent in other and non native (NNES) English speaking communities are blatantly invalidated, thereby causing an anonymization of their identities (Geib et al.).

In our endeavor to actively combat this neo colonial conservatism from pervading our writing center space, we tried to tackle the question of whether our writing center should be a comfort zone or a contact zone. In

order to think through this question, we used Mary Louise Pratt’s definition of contact zones as being “social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power, such as colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived out in many parts of the world today” (Pratt 34). This allowed us space and opportunity to reflect on the ways in which our own identities make contact, clash with, and resist the hegemony of academic English. Ultimately, we want our space to be a contact zone, especially for us in our praxis as writing consultants. In order to challenge the underlying ideas and thinking behind the lionization of U.S. academic English within the writing space in a manner representative of the contact zone, we questioned how best to approach our own understandings about language considering that for even our small group, U.S. English was not our first language. We questioned how U.S. academic whiteness, and its corresponding English informed our choices and approaches to working with writers in our Graduate Writers’ Studio.

To help us navigate the complexity of these questions, we also adopted Mary Louise Pratt’s conception of the autoethnographic text, “a text in which people undertake to describe themselves in ways that engage with representations others have made of them” (35). In our case, this autoethnographic text is a collaboration between cross national writing center consultants who are learning to thrive in a culture we feel does not always value the cultural tools we bring with us.

Before we proceed, it is worthwhile to spend some time defining what we mean when we use the labels “white” or “whiteness” because it appears frequently in our narratives. In this piece, when we talk about “whiteness,” we are referring to the construct scholars such as Sara Ahmed have described as “an ongoing and unfinished history, which orientates bodies in specific directions, affecting how they ‘take up’ space” (150). As such, whiteness works as a system that continues racial discrimination by maintaining white privilege. U.S. constructs of whiteness thrive in the unchallenged normativity of cultural and social U.S. academic institutions, particularly when foreign domestics and people of color continue to be marginalized by the colonial academic encounter (Shome 366; Ahmed 149).

In this way, whiteness has its power in the violent normativity of life as practiced through the privileged lens held by people who have never had their identity questioned by systems and individuals who press the importance of acclimatizing to white ideals (Shome 366; Ahmed 149). What makes this construct dangerous is

that it is enforced and maintained through the quotidian and mundane tasks of life. Tasks as unremarkable as how we use language; how, even at writing centers, we promote U.S. academic English as the legitimate way of communicating.

Methodology

In order to poke at our questions, we chose to craft an autoethnography. Thus, we engaged in “research and writing that seeks to describe and systematically analyze (graphy) personal experience (auto) in order to understand cultural experience (ethno)” (Ellis et al. 274). We chose this approach because we felt it allowed all of our voices to be represented truthfully, and it allowed us to open up our own writing center to highlight the effects of the behaviors and attitudes that we believe currently pervade U.S. academic spaces.

To gather and integrate our narratives, we met virtually and assigned ourselves questions to answer regarding our own thoughts and experiences in our newly formed center. After our first meeting, we continued to meet and to discuss the similarities and differences in our stories, and we once again assigned ourselves reflective writing tasks to try to drill down even farther into our experiences. By our third virtual meeting, we had started drawing connections between our experiences and the literature, and we jumped into creating the article even while we continued to reflect. Each time we met, it was more than just a writing or revising discussion. Each discussion became a contact point where we could express our frustrations and learn from one another, a kind of co mentoring (Burrows; Tang & Andriamanalina).

Because the three of us represent a diverse community of cross national writers, albeit a small one, and because we wanted to call attention to and provide witness to our experiences, we believed that highlighting our voices and our stories was the best way forward. Our approach was informed by ideas similar to those of Ellis and colleagues who state, “Writing personal stories thus makes ‘witnessing’ possible the ability for participants and readers to observe and, consequently, better testify on behalf of an event, problem, or experience . . . As witnesses, autoethnographers not only work with others to validate the meaning of their pain, but also allow participants and readers to feel validated and/or better able to cope with or want to change their circumstances'' (Ellis et al. 280).

Introductions & Deciding to Work in Writing Centers

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Yvonne: I guess I will start. Not for any other reason than this particular story does start with me since I began the writing center in which we all work.

When I was 30 years old, I was a single mother of three, and I was fleeing from an abusive boyfriend. I fled back into the welcoming arms of my working class, White, Appalachian area family a people whose English included words like “warsh” and “red up” and whose sentences included non standard phrases like, “I seen that woman.” My flight simultaneously took me back to university to earn that bachelor’s degree I had always wanted but never completed. There, my sense of self and the communication skills I developed over 10 years of waiting tables for a living and that I had gleaned from my family’s grammar didn’t quite make the grade. Pun intended. But I adapted, loving all of the reading, writing, and learning I was doing to earn my degree. I very quickly found a home working as a peer tutor in the writing center at a satellite campus populated predominantly by other white, non traditional, domestic students. What I appreciated most about that space was how welcome I felt. Part of the reason I felt so comfortable was that I saw myself reflected in the others who worked there and in the writers who came to us for assistance.

My work there birthed my own personal mission I wanted to create more spaces that felt welcoming to even more people.

Had that center primarily consisted of non white, traditional, or international students, my comfort and my story would likely be quite different. Thus, I knew that if I wanted spaces that felt inviting to a more diverse student body, I needed to purposefully work to make sure those students could see reflections of themselves in the people who work there. 16 years and 3 degrees later, in the midst of a global pandemic I graduated with my PhD in Literacy, Rhetoric, and Social Practice from Kent State University, moved to a new state, and started a position as the inaugural director of a writing center devoted to serving graduate students. As expected, I needed to interview, hire, and train writing consultants. I was lucky enough to have two amazing graduate students apply. Together, we worked to build a Graduate Writers’ Studio that is multifaceted and accessible to as many students as possible.

Varun: Since I was not yet privy to the vision that Yvonne had created for the Graduate Writers’ Studio, I was apprehensive about how welcoming such a space would be for me. In most ways, I do not resemble what is considered to be the archetype of the white, middle class American who is presumed to have a command over the English language in the way that is required for

a consultant at a writing center. I have observed that people in the U.S. are generally disconcerted to find that I am fluent in English, even though it is one of my first languages and my medium of education throughout my matriculation. I would ascribe this to preconceived notions of what it means to be “Indian” based on exaggerated or false portrayals by the media. This faulty physiognomic perception of me, and its consequences, dissuaded me at first from applying as a writing consultant at a predominantly White institution (PWI).

I questioned how writers would perceive an international person of color (POC) writing consultant. My concern was whether they would be comfortable with having me as their consultant. Would they feel that I may not be able to assist them substantially with their writing needs, and hence hesitate to approach me? Would their notions of me hinder them from being receptive to the feedback that I provide? Would my linguistic styles and expressions translate well in terms of feedback? These insecurities stemmed from a place of otherness and a place of skepticism about the acceptance of my unconventionality. I also wondered if the white, U.S. professors and Writers’ Studio staff would consider me capable of providing the services that their student writers would require. I was, after all, a stranger to U.S. academic discourse. Perhaps it would be easier for a white, U.S. writer who embodied the institutionalized standards to be assimilated into the system. Perhaps my credentials, if they were deemed worthy at all, would only allow me to cater to certain needs of multilingual learners and non native English speakers. My diffidence regarding my worth as a consultant haunted me tremendously as I contemplated applying for the position.

Thus, I can also identify with Yvonne’s need to acclimate her language to an environment that has established benchmarks that one must measure up to in order to be considered worthy of merit. Growing up in post postcolonial India meant that I had to adapt my language to the institutionalized standards that western colonialism had left in its wake. English took precedence over my native languages and being proficient in the ideal style of English as defined by Western standards was deemed necessary to help me stand in good academic and professional stead in a still developing country. In addition, unconventional expressions in English that are influenced by the regional language forms, albeit commonplace in everyday conversation for non native English speakers, were considered by the Western eye to be peculiar and erroneous and were used as societal markers to dismiss an individual's linguistic dexterity. Therefore, I found myself making conscious efforts to ensure that my language was unadulterated by

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such influences, in order to live up to the caliber that was expected of me. I saw myself in a constant struggle to try and live up to these standards and found that it was easier to conform my linguistic styles to what is considered the norm by the West. This was exacerbated by the fact that I faced a continuous conflict in identity that stemmed from the plethora of influences on my language. There was discord between the British way of English that influenced my upbringing, the U.S. style of English that was slowly, but definitely, becoming commonplace in the professional setting, and the aforementioned flavors of the language influenced by my native tongues and diverse native cultures. I resorted to settling on an ambiguous and fluid identity that best catered to the situation and the environment.

When I moved to the U.S. to pursue my graduate education, my positionality as an international POC student at a PWI made it obvious to me that my most common interactions would be with white professors and scholars. As a writer, I found myself veering toward the institutionalized, neo colonial academic standards due to my disinclination to counter the norms, thereby allowing my language to be appropriated by my peers or allowing the “norm” to appropriate my rhetoric. Having moved to a foreign land, I considered it my duty to adapt my language to the existing climate, since that would provide me with more opportunities in both the academic and professional settings. During my academic discourse, I have had my linguistic expressions questioned and invalidated by my peers and professors on various occasions. How could I expect anything less from audiences who did not know me? Therefore, I acquiesced to using a whitewashed persona to express my rhetoric and avoid being an anomaly. Consequently, I ended up cultivating a language that was appropriated within me through neo colonial means, that was considered by U.S academic standards as a paragon free of blemishes. However, this came at a cost the risk of losing the authenticity in my voice and an anonymization of my already vague identity.

Whiteness has always been a constant in my life, lurking around on the edges of my subconscious and plaguing me with the need to work harder at every step of the way in order to prove my critical faculties to my peers. It is a reminder that I am an oddity and that I must strive every day to meet the standards that it has imposed upon me just so that I can affirm my worth. Language, for me, is an integral part of self expression, a tool to assert my individual truth in situations where my existence struggles to find a voice; however, my particular form of expression is riddled with hurdles that I must constantly overcome in order to be heard and accepted by a domineering community. Perhaps if

fortune had aligned itself differently, I may have conceded to the conviction that the haunt of whiteness was my cross to bear, and hence would have never persuaded myself to follow my vocation as a writing consultant.

Sinenhlanhla: Applying for the position of graduate writing consultant was an action that required great courage and the impetus of necessity for me to undertake. I do not believe that I would have applied for the position had I not needed the financial resources it would provide. Like Varun, I experienced insecurities based on stereotype threat the fear of not being adequate and, instead, confirming the stereotypes that others might have about my abilities (Steele and Aronson 797). This stereotype threat was aroused by the full understanding that I do not hold the typical white U.S. English speaking identity common in most writing centers. Thus, my decision to apply revealed the victory of necessity and knowledge of my own abilities over the white supremacy inspired fear that caused me to doubt what I am capable of.

In many ways, I can relate to Varun’s felt pressure to negotiate identity with the expectations of the environment in order to adapt to a new cultural context. It is common for minoritized people moving into a dominant culture to feel the need to assimilate and forgo the customs (linguistic and otherwise) of their culture of origin in order to gain acceptance in their new home (Rudmin). However, coming from South Africa, a country with 11 official languages, with diversity on almost every marker of social difference, what I sought was integration instead of assimilation. In many ways, in the South African context, language is intimately connected with cultural identity; Zulu people speak isiZulu, Venda people speak Tshivenda. Language is the tool through which the culture teaches and maintains its customs and worldview. To learn a language of a tribe is to learn its way of seeing and speaking about the world. This is why I’ve sought the opportunity to develop a multicultural identity within myself; learning the different languages of the cultures around me without feeling as if I have to forsake the affirming worldview taught to me through the language of my culture of origin.

Even though I feel like I have been able to integrate within myself a useful learning of a variety of languages and worldviews, whiteness as expressed through U.S. academic English has always felt like a specter rather than a space of comfort and acceptance. In my life, whiteness has presented itself as unexamined assumptions about whose culture is acceptable and whose culture should be changed rather than permitted

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to coexist in a respectful way. Language has been the arena on which this false casting of cultural hierarchy has taken place in my life. I’ve found myself witnessing and at times abetting the promotion of the language of whiteness at the expense of my own identity. For example, in academic spaces, I’ve been asked to shorten my name in order to make it easier for native speakers of English to pronounce. In a culture where being able to correctly pronounce “Dostoevsky” is a sign of being cultured, being able to pronounce “Sinenhlanhla” seems to be an awkward inconvenience. I have consented to this even while knowing the value and meaning of names in my culture. Knowing that a name is not merely a way of referencing the person in question, but that names are descriptions of blessings that remind us of our identity, purpose and capabilities.

This has been my experience with whiteness; living under the hover of a strange spirit that is reluctant to accept me neither as I am, nor as I would like to be. Instead, whiteness has often presented itself as the specter of not measuring up enough to gain acceptance and access to the resources I need in order to thrive. Whiteness has haunted me as a spirit of unworthiness. A ghost that whispers its existence at the most unexpected of times, like lunch meetings where my white U.S. colleagues have corrected me by telling me “It’s called a napkin, not a serviette” as if there is only one way to refer to something. Small innocuous moments that remind me that my success in academic, and even social, spaces is dependent on me being able to adapt and adopt a language that is not my own and refuses to be in so many ways.

I experience the language of whiteness as a reminder that I have to negotiate my identity with my environment in order to be able to be my most empowered self. I navigate academia as a working class black woman who is foreign to the United States of America. In a predominantly white university, I am different. Even amongst black people in the U.S., my accent betrays my belonging. As any work inspired by Crenshaw would put it, the oppressed categories I inhabit in terms of income level, immigrant status, race, and gender intersect to create a confluence of marginalization. In order to thrive despite the forces of oppression intended to act as barriers to my success, I have had to learn the work of whiteness and the tools its practitioners weaponize. I have had to learn how to differentiate between my own human imperfections, and the failures I experience due to the efficacy of white imperialism, even as it is expressed through language.

The weaponization of English in the neo colonial encounter seems obvious to me when I consider how I came to learn the language. I was taught to speak

English between the ages of 5 6 by teachers in a former British colony. It was taught to me in a postcolonial context where being able to speak English with the accent of English South Africans was still seen as a sign of intelligence and worth, particularly in the academic setting. I noticed that my teachers would tell me that I “spoke so well” when I would imitate their speech patterns. I noticed that other black students who did not follow this imitation did not receive the same praise or grades. As a student navigating school in bilingual academic spaces where my home language was never either of the official ones, I became fluent in English as a system of rules for acceptance and praise more than a language I could use to understand others and feel fully understood.

Reflections on Our Own Practices

From our conversations that began to center around the idea of language as a neo colonial tool, we discussed how our stories and theories have impacted, or even been invisible, in the work we have done in our writing center.

Sinenhlanhla: The one benefit of negotiating with whiteness from my youth is that I understand on a personal level how to mitigate its harm. In the context of my work as a writing consultant, I use the self doubt that white supremacist ways of thinking bring about to drive myself to work harder than expected. For instance, I go over the recommendations I make to the writers who consult with me multiple times. Perhaps, my double checking is another example of an experience lived by many people of color; the felt understanding that I have to work twice as hard for my work to be considered acceptable. However, the concept of working hard is not exclusive to whiteness. Excellence and hard work are values that were socialized into me by my culture of origin. In fact, my ability to work hard affirms my worth, despite the pressures of white spaces.

Varun: I share similar sentiments as Sinenhlanhla on how whiteness influences my practice as a consultant. My positionality in the writing center space has subconsciously coerced me into being aware of the sly ways in which whiteness asserts itself in the academic writing space by masquerading as institutionalized standards of writing. I stay cognizant of the many ways that the intersection of my varying identities as a POC international student hailing from a non native English speaking community disadvantages me, as well as other writers in similar positions, whose work is subjected to scrutiny through the lens of the U.S academic standards. These musings have coalesced in me developing certain

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reservations in my practice as a consultant within the writing center, especially while consulting with typical U.S writers who effortlessly embody the institutionalized standards of language through no reason other than the circumstances of life.

As a result, in my praxis in the writing center, I have found myself to be cautious, even hesitant at times, while consulting with white or white adjacent writers. The idealized linguistic norm of the native English speaker makes me question my adequacy, not only as a writer, but also as a consultant, from the perspective of the writer that I am consulting with. I constantly fear that my feedback would pander to the writer in a way that placates what I presume to be their prejudices against me. For instance, my insecurity that I may be perceived by writers as a non native English speaker could cause me to steer clear from any feedback that would make them, as native English speakers, defensive about their writing. In doing so, my feedback would fail to align with my virtues as a consultant, which is to enable the writers to master their own individual writing voices.

Yvonne: In my own work as both a peer and a professional writing tutor, this concept of giving writers space, time, and guidance on “mastering their own writing voice,” as Varun so eloquently puts it, is something that I have found myself struggling with as a White, U.S. born, native English speaker who, as such, finds herself with a certain amount of privilege in our academic spaces. I am not saying that my experience has been one completely without strife or conflict, but when compared to the experiences of others with whom I have worked and whom I have tutored, I have learned that I may have been given certain leniencies that they may not have been given, and it has been a constant struggle to find the perfect balance between helping writers navigate an unjust system and helping them navigate their own stories with their own voices within that system. For example, as part of my master’s program, I taught a first year English course for a group of students who had been considered “basic writers.” I discovered what was “basic” about their writing abilities was that they had not yet fully adopted the academic English championed by the university. As their instructor, I wanted to be their champion, to allow them to tell their own stories and to use their own words. The next semester, I was serving as a writing tutor in the campus writing center when one of the women who had taken that course with me came to me for writing tutoring for her second semester English course. She complained that her new instructor was not as accepting as I was, and as a result, she was failing the course. I felt

like the failure. I knew that in some way I had failed that student and the others in my class because I had encouraged the use of their own English over the use of the academy’s English, and I was not the one to pay the price, the students were.

This experience haunts me to this day, and I wish I knew what had become of that student. Even now, as I work with graduate writers from across the university and train other graduate students to serve as writing consultants, I wonder if what we are doing is enough, is right.

Varun: Reflecting on my experiences working with writers in the Graduate Writers’ Studio has helped me understand that the insecurities that I encounter as a result of my intersecting oppressed identities also plague the multilingual learners and non native English speakers who approach the writing center with hopes of having their writing “fixed.” Since they feel the need to cater to the whims of the U.S. audiences and professors for the most part, they expect to have their writing whitewashed, and are thereby allowing their rhetoric to be appropriated by the institutionalized hierarchy. My foremost intention during such a situation is to actively challenge the hegemonic standards that have been entrenched within the institution over the course of centuries and consequently doing a disservice to writers who dare to reject such canons. I contemplate on the best ways to approach such a piece of writing in which I see flairs and deviations from the norm by questioning the validity of said normalized standards. I formulate my feedback in a way that is appreciative and encouraging of such creative uses of language. I have observed that linguistic variations, like the commonalities evident in the romance languages for example, are quite apparent in the rhetoric of non native English speakers. Does this mean that their rhetoric is erroneous, and hence needs fixing? I do not think that is necessarily true.

Sinenhlanhla: Similarly to Varun, I do not consider it problematic when non native English speakers use English in ways that indicate a creative flair that might be influenced by their home language. Therefore, I commend writers when they use language in innovative and unique ways. I acknowledge their effort when they use feedback in a way that is constructive to them, and always make sure to phrase my feedback only as suggestions and explain how I think they might help improve the communication of their thoughts. I consider this particularly important because through the act of writing about the ways they see the world, they challenge the monopolizing effect of white idealizing spaces. Rhetoric is how reality is created, how worlds are

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shaped, and how lived experiences are acknowledged and shared. Therefore, through the rhetoric created by people of multicultural and international identities, the monopolized dominance of U.S English and whiteness can also be challenged, and spaces can be shaped to make room for a plurality of identity experience. In this way, I attempt to resist the pitfalls of thinking of English as a system of acceptance by thinking of my work as play, where grammar informs the rules, but the true joy is in empowering writers to say what they deeply wish to communicate in order to be understood for how they authentically see the world.

My support for how non native English speakers use English is not without the knowledge of the fact that whiteness pushes back. Those with power do not hand it over joyfully, and systems of domination will resist those who hope to achieve their freedom. Yvonne’s detailing of the first year student whose writing she championed ended up failing in a different English class is evidence of this fact. However, the rejection of hegemony requires that those who are subjugated refuse to consent to their subjugation. The fact that those who benefit from oppressive systems will resist when they are challenged is precisely why these systems should be challenged. Without writers and writing consultants to challenge the idealization of English as practiced by those in power, the status quo will continue. That being said, as a consultant, my main goal is to support writers as a resource they can use to tell their stories in the ways that are best for them. I do my best to support them as they navigate the paths that privilege whiteness through academic English without forsaking the authenticity of their identity.

Varun: My foremost intention while consulting is to maintain and uphold the integrity of the writers. I ensure that my feedback does not suggest that they conform to any standard, but rather, equips them with means to amplify their own voices. The aim is to find the right balance in catering to the requirements posed by the writing assignments while also preserving the identity of the writer through their expression and rhetoric. A failure to do so results in writers losing defining aspects of their identity that can potentially enrich their writing. The internal conflicts that I face as a consultant are especially significant since I tend to face with my own writing the same predicaments as the writers I work with. I am still on the journey of trying to figure out how to apply this praxis in my writing, and thereby translate that to writers with different identities and experiences.

Yvonne: As the identified leader of our space, consultants often come to me looking for answers on how best to strike that balance to which Varun refers. As can be seen in the narratives we present here, for those of us who work in writing centers, those answers do not come easily. They are not readily at hand in the pages of a tutoring manual or in the paragraphs of a journal article. We do not know how to answer the question, “What is truly best for the student?” From my own personal experience, I can also say that being a director provides no more concrete answers. I do my best to encourage the consultants to continuously examine and question their own positionalities within our space, our universities, and the consultations in which they find themselves. I also ask them to do the same kind of questioning in regard to the positioning of the writers with whom they work and to make decisions about what is “best” within that given moment, that consultation. For me, there is no one size fits all approach. Each consultant, each writer, each situation is fraught with its own convergences and as such must be handled accordingly. Maybe in some ways I did fail the student to which I referred earlier, but maybe in others, in ways I will likely never know, I didn’t. Maybe my acceptance and encouragement lead to insights for her that she carried into other courses or other spaces. Maybe not. What I do know that I did in that situation was open a door, even if only a crack, to the conversation about language and race and identity, and that is no small thing.

Sinenhlanhla: In our practice at the Graduate Writers’ Studio, the challenge of exorcizing the language of whiteness leaves us with many questions. What are best practices for working in writing centers in ways that do not center whiteness? How can our Graduate Writers’ Studio serve the community in ways that promote the identities of all our members and increase their feelings of belonging? How can we work together with professors and administrators to realize our ideals for decentering the white, U.S. experience, particularly considering the difficulties of engaging in conversations about racial injustice? These are some of the questions to which we hope to find answers through the work we do in our center.

Moving Forward in Our Own Space

Royster & Williams wrote, “[We] need to be critically disposed to see the negative effects of primacy, the simultaneous existence of multiple viewpoints, and the need to articulate those viewpoints and to merge them in the interest of the larger project of knowledge making in the discipline” (568). In our writing center, we believe in these words. Therefore, to answer our

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previous question on whether the writing space should be a comfort zone or a contact zone, we see our space as a multicultural contact zone, where we consciously question and challenge the primacy of U.S. academic English, and we welcome and celebrate the variety of identities writers bring from cultures around the U.S. and from countries around the world. We believe that as writing center practitioners, we must be aware of and embrace the fact that such a significant portion of the populations we serve are not white, are not U.S. born, and often do not blindly accept as “normal” the cultural and language indoctrinations the U.S. system of higher education embraces (Edwards). We believe we must constantly work to integrate those identities into the soul of the institution in which we work.

More than anything, we seek to be a space wherein all people, consultants and writers alike, feel seen, respected, and appreciated, irrespective of whether they are U.S. born or not, or whether their English is empowered by flairs and deviations from the academic standards that are influenced by their cultural and linguistic milieux. It is our opinion that the only way such a non prejudicial ideal can be achieved is by challenging the normativity of U.S. academic English that often haunts such spaces. One of the reasons we decided to use an auto ethnographic approach for this piece was our desire to engage with how our lived experiences with privileged language has influenced the kind of writing center staff we have become. In the space of this paper, we wanted to examine our own humanity in a manner informed by theory and praxis as we come to an understanding of how the ways in which we work are influenced by how we define ourselves, and how we have been defined by others in spaces that take comfort in and prioritize white, U.S. experiences. Perhaps this self inspection and reflexivity might be useful tools for others who may be on a similar journey. Yet still, we recognize that the path that we are aspiring to advance towards is still a utopian one that is filled with hurdles and lessons at every turn. Thus, we remain open to learning and hope to share in creating non prejudicial spaces.

Since the original drafting of this piece, Sinenhlanhla and Varun have left the Graduate Writers’ Studio. Varun graduated and is working full time in a large U.S. metropolis, and Sinenhlanhla received a fellowship that has given her teaching opportunities. Our space, however, continues to work to destabilize privileged standards of U.S. whiteness in language, knowledge, and being. Because we continue to encourage, even rely on, participation of students from around the globe, we work to acknowledge and subvert the imperial hauntings of our space. As Royster and

Williams argued, “When we render stories of composition [read writing center work] from points of view other than dominant academic perspectives, we have the opportunity . . . to set the terms of historical engagement with a more critical view, to shift locations, and to raise questions, previously unasked, that might more fully animate knowledge and understanding” (568). The goal for our writing center is to add to the work of others who have begun to advance the writing center conversation beyond the realm of “standardized” and to continue to raise questions that promote a critical view of the work we do and the kind of work we can do. We also hope those who take the time to read this piece find something of themselves and their own spaces reflected in these pages and feel welcome and invited to continue the conversation in their own and in our shared spaces.

Works Cited

Ahmed, Sara. “A Phenomenology of Whiteness.” Feminist Theory, vol. 8, no. 2, 2007, pp. 149 168, doi:10.1177/1464700107078139.

Bhattacharya, Usree. “Colonization and English ideologies in India: A Language Policy Perspective.” Language Policy, vol. 16, 2017, doi:10.1007/s10993 015 9399 2.

Burrows, Cedric D. “Writing While Black: The Black Tax on African American Graduate Writers.” Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, vol. 14, no. 1, 2016, doi:10.15781/T2S17T854.

Edwards, John. Language and Identity: Key Topics in Sociolinguistics. Cambridge University Press, 2012, https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511809842. Ellis, Carolyn, et al. “Autoethnography: An Overview.” Historical Social Research, vol. 36, no. 4, 2011, pp. 273 290, https://doi.org/10.12759/hsr.36.2011.4.273 290 Geib, Elizabeth, et al. “Problematizing Paradox: Institutionalized Barriers Across, Within, & Outside the Center.” NCPTW Online 2020: A Virtual Conference, 2020, https://www.thencptw.org/online2020/ Greenfield, Laura and Karen Rowan. “Introduction: A Call to Action.” Writing Centers and the New Racism: A Call for Sustainable Dialogue and Change, edited by Laura Greenfield and Karen Rowan, University Press of Colorado, 2012, pp. 1 16. Majhanovich, Suzanne. “English as a Tool of Neo Colonialism and Globalization in Asian Contexts.” Critical Perspectives on International Education, vol. 15, edited by Yvonne Hébert and Ali A. Abdi, Sense Publishers, 2013, pp. 249 261 Comparative and International Education: A Diversity of Voices.

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the Narrative: Cross

Fanon, Frantz. Black Skin, White Masks, translated by Charles Lam Markmann, Grove Press, 2008.

Nieto, David Gonzalez. “The Emperor’s New Words: Language and Colonization.” Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self Knowledge, vol. 5, no. 3, 2007, pp. 231 237.

Nguyen, Phuong Mai, et al. “Neocolonialism in Education: Cooperative Learning in an Asian context.” Comparative Education, vol 4, no.1, 109 130, doi:10.1080/03050060802661428

Pratt, Mary Louise. “Arts of the Contact Zone.” Profession, 1991, pp. 33 40, https://www.jstor.org/stable/25595469.

Probyn, Margie. “Language and the Struggle to Learn: The Intersection of Class Room Realities, Language Policy, and Neo Colonial and Globalization Discourses in South African Schools.” Decolonization, Globalization: Language in Education Policy and Practice, edited by Angel Lin and Peter Martin, Multilingual Matters, 2005, pp.155 174.

Royster, Jacqueline Jones and Jean C. Williams. “History in the Spaces Left: African American Presence and Narratives of Composition Studies.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 50, no. 4, 1999, pp. 563 584, https://doi.org/10.2307/358481

Rudmin, Floyd W. “Critical History of the Acculturation Psychology of Assimilation, Separation, Integration, and Marginalization.” Review of General Psychology, vol. 7, no. 1, Mar. 2003, pp. 3 37, doi:10.1037/1089 2680.7.1.3.

Shome, Raka. “Outing Whiteness.” Critical Studies in Media Communication, vol. 17, no. 3, 2000, pp. 366 371, doi:10.1080/15295030009388402.

Steele, Claude Mason and Joshua Aronson. “Stereotype Threat and the Intellectual Test Performance of African Americans.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, vol. 69, no.5, 1995, pp. 797 811, doi:10.1037//0022 3514.69.5.797.

Tang, Jasmine Kar, and Noro Andriamanalina. “‘I Cut Off My Hand and Gave It to You, and You Gave It Back to Me with Three Fingers’: The Disembodiment of Indigenous Writers and Writers of Color in U.S. Doctoral Programs.” Learning from the Lived Experiences of Graduate Student Writers, edited by Shannon Madden, et al., Utah State University Press, 2020, pp. 139 155.

Tupas, T. Ruanni F. “The Politics of Philippine English: Neocolonialism, Global Politics, and the Problem of Postcolonialism.” World Englishes, vol. 23, no. 1, 2004, pp. 47 58, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467 971X.2004.00334.x.

Viswanathan, Gauri. Masks of Conquest: Literary Study and British Rule in India. Columbia University Press, 1989.

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INCLUSIVE SENTENCE LEVEL WRITING SUPPORT

Bridget Draxler

St. Olaf College draxler@stolaf.edu

Manuela Novoa Villada

St. Olaf College novoav98@gmail.com

Abstract

Writing Centers have struggled historically with the question of addressing sentence level concerns, caught between opposing obligations to affirm student voices and provide access to mainstream language conventions a tension that can be particularly fraught when it comes to supporting translingual students. A year of grant funded research led us to create a series of training modules that explore the history of grammar in the Writing Center, present institutional research about student desires and expectations, consider how language and identity affect our work as writers and tutors, and practice whether and how to address non standard language usage. This article, like the training we do with our tutors, argues that sentence level corrections should be approached as an issue of linguistic social justice and provides a heuristic to guide tutor decision making in ways that are sensitive to the complex relationship between the type of potential error, the writer, the tutor, and the context.

When it comes to sentence level corrections in the Writing Center, the research used to be clear: in order to avoid being seen as a proofreading service, good peer tutoring should focus on higher order concerns (argument, evidence, structure) rather than lower order concerns (grammar, syntax, punctuation). Building on Jeff Brooks’ classic 1991 essay on “Minimalist Tutoring,” this hands off approach emphasized asking questions rather than giving answers, teaching rather than fixing, and making better writers rather than just better papers. By not correcting grammar, we saw ourselves as inclusive and empowering for all writers. However, as Writing Center research has continued to grapple with issues of equity and inclusion and more openly faced the complexities of Standard Written English [SWE] as a language of power marked by privileges of race, class, and nationality, the conversation has become less straightforward. More recent contributions to the field, including work by Sharon A. Myers (“Reassessing the ‘Proofreading Trap’: ESL Tutoring and Writing Instruction”) and Lori Salem (“Decisions… Decisions: Who Chooses to Use the Writing Center?”), along with an edited collection of

Anne Berry St. Olaf College berryag@stolaf.edu

Victoria Gutierrez St. Olaf College victoriagutierrezpereira@gmail.com

essays titled Writing Centers and the New Racism: A Call for Sustainable Dialogue and Change, have either explicitly challenged or at least complicated the supposition that Brooks’ idealistic approach is actually serving all students in an equitable way. Increasingly, Writing Center directors are asking whether our policies have implicitly favored students who already have writing skills that just need drawing out and inadvertently made it difficult for students with less formal preparation to ask for help with sentence level concerns.

Many of us have slowly shifted our policies on sentence level concerns over the years, often quietly and with some hesitation. When a student comes looking for sentence level help, we used to explain why we prefer to focus on higher order concerns. Now we may ask students why those concerns are important to them right now. We used to be as non directive as possible, and now we try to recognize when being more directive would be appropriate. We used to help students only with patterns of error, but many of us have become more flexible on that rule. We’re still not a proofreading service, but in an effort to be more equitable and provide access to the language of power when students desire it, our Writing Center has more sessions that address lower order concerns than we used to.

But while we’ve shifted the way we treat requests for sentence level support, in terms of giving students more choice and agency in how and when we help with lower order concerns, the tutor training at our college had done little to coach tutors in terms of how to actually help when students seek this kind of feedback. We gave tutors “permission” to help students with sentence level concerns, without specifying what that sentence level support would look like exactly. And the vague flexibility of this policy is a reflection of the fact that many directors are working through these significant questions alongside our tutors. How do tutors function both inside and outside institutionalized systems of linguistic prejudice? How do we help

students with sentence level concerns in a way that is empowering, rather than simply policing conformity to the somewhat arbitrary and potentially harmful conventions of SWE? How and when do undergraduate writing tutors typically tend to address sentence level issues in student writing? How do tutors differentiate between patterns of error, variations in style, and expressions of voice? How do student writers interpret feedback when the focus is on their word choice, grammar and mechanics? How do our approaches to tutoring shape students’ identities, skills, context awareness, confidence, and feelings of belonging? And perhaps most importantly, how can we address sentence level issues effectively and equitably, especially for multilingual or linguistically diverse students?

In seeking the answers to these questions, we assembled a research team that included a Writing Center Director (Bridget), a Multilingual Student Language Support Specialist (Anne), and two multilingual/international student tutors (Victoria and Manuela), and we spent a year working collaboratively on a grant funded research project related to sentence level support in our Writing Center. Initially motivated by a desire to better serve translingual students, we developed an approach to sentence level attention grounded in linguistic social justice that better serves all writers. Our work culminated in a multi session training workshop for fifteen experienced Writing Center peer tutors which took place over three days in the middle of the academic year. Informed by the scholarship of Rebecca Day Babcock, Nancy Grimm, Asao Inoue, Christine Pearson Casanave, Vershawn Ashanti Young, and others, and contextualized with institutional data and our own individual experiences as writers and teachers/tutors, our goal was to give tutors the tools both to teach SWE and to empower student writers to self advocate when choosing non standardized usage. This balanced approach, we argue, is both structural and activist, as it lets tutors and students engage with and disrupt the systems that would discriminate against them.

This article follows the structure of our tutor training modules, which included preparatory reading and writing, and a mixture of lecture, discussion, and practice. We begin here, as we did with our tutors, by outlining the complicated history of grammar in the Writing Center and then reviewing our own institutional data on student desires and expectations. Next, we move into the topic of language and identity. During the training sessions, we used a combination of think/pair/share and storytelling activities to guide tutors through a reflective discussion of how our relationship with SWE shapes our writing and our

tutoring. Finally, we offer some of the sample sentences and paragraphs that we used during training as a way to identify errors and distinguish them from variations of style and voice. Using a real time quiz tool, we prompted an interactive discussion of use of language in context, which we partially summarize here. We also share the Decision Tree that we developed to help tutors decide whether to address an instance of non standard usage with a writer. Tutors practiced using this tool as they considered each potential error, its context, and the tutoring relationship. In addition to outlining our training, this article also describes our own journey toward a more linguistically just approach to sentence level concerns and toward more effective strategies for training writing tutors to do their work in a way that is equitable, inclusive, and empowering.

How Writing Centers Approach Grammar: A Historical View

Writing Centers proliferated in higher education during the 1970s, at the same time that universities became more accessible to first generation students, low income students, and BIPOC students. The confluence of these two events has fueled perceptions of Writing Centers, by faculty and students alike, as remedial providing a gateway to linguistic belonging in higher education. From this perspective, supporting students’ use of SWE is giving students access to power, and this approach has a pragmatic reality to it. Scholars like Patricia Ann Hill have argued that one of the goals of higher education is to produce graduates that fit employers’ expectations. As writing is a highly important skill for many jobs, she notes, it is important that universities focus on teaching “standard English” (11). When Writing Centers take this approach, they empower writers; however, they simultaneously uphold the status quo, which in turn perpetuates the “communicative burden,” where non mainstream voices (in terms of class, nationality, or race) are expected to accommodate linguistic norms and must do the work of changing to fit other people’s expectations.

The critique of this approach since then has been swift and sharp. Carter equates the “forces that compel the marginalized to assimilate into the dominant discourses of the more powerful” to all of the other “systematic and institutionalized forces that oppress the powerless” (W135). Greenfield and Rowan echo the criticism, arguing that “the work of and in writing centers is always implicated in the institutional racism that shapes all our work in higher education” (124). Writing Centers must grapple with Grimm’s “paradox of literacy.” As Carter paraphrases, “Traditional literacy is said to ‘empower writers’ by helping them find success

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in a given rhetorical space, but to find success in that space these marginalized writers must learn to write in ways the academy values. If literacy education itself is a political enterprise rather than a neutral one, learning to manipulate the dominant cultural codes requires once marginalized writers to become someone else embody the dominant culture instead of their own” (144). Scholars now agree that this drive for assimilation perpetuates power imbalances, systemic oppression, and a silencing of student voices.

In the 1990s, the Writing Center theory around sentence level support shifted to one of minimization, an approach which became a touchstone for Writing Centers’ resistance to perceptions of remediation and standardization. SWE, of course, is not a universal, objective, neutral standard, but at best an imaginary standard and at worst an expression of white language supremacy (Inoue). The solution, perpetuated by Brooks and others, was one of avoidance: a focus on higher order concerns and the use of non directive tutoring. If students bring up grammar concerns, we minimize their importance and redirect the student to things like argument and structure. When pressed, tutors are only allowed to help with patterns of error.

Avoidance of sentence level support, however, has also been increasingly questioned in Writing Center scholarship. Here is the double bind: to enforce SWE is to be complicit in protecting the dominant discourse at the expense of linguistic minorities, but to not teach grammar is to withhold access to that language of power. Scholars like Nancy Grimm have reminded us that these individualist approaches to writing, which focus on higher order concerns and nondirective approaches that put the onus on writers, may benefit least or inadvertently harm the linguistically diverse writer and perpetuate the structural racism surrounding language and literacy. She says, “If tutors continue to be advised to ‘make the student do all the work,’ then dominant discourses will remain impenetrable to students who are true outsiders, and structures of privilege will remain unchallenged” (84). She goes on to explain that, for students whose cultural or linguistic backgrounds “are not congruent with the backgrounds they are imagined to have as college students, … the dominant forms of language and academic ways of making arguments are not already lodged in their heads, waiting for the gentle coaxing of a mainstream, probably white and well intentioned tutor. ... [and] Indirect approaches in these situations can be perceived as insulting, frustrating, and patronizing” (84). In other words, the problem with minimizing sentence level errors is that it over corrects. Rather than forcing students through the door of SWE, as with remediation,

we lock the door and hide the key, refusing to engage with sentence level issues at all. Students that want sentence level help have nowhere to go.

As Grimm notes, avoidance ultimately reinforces a system of insiders and outsiders. This color blind/grammar blind overcorrection led to another shift in Writing Center theory in the 2000s to refocus on student choice. The idea was to affirm writers’ identities and give them choices: the choice to learn SWE, or, the choice to use a non standard style of English. The tutor’s role is to give writers information about that choice. For example, Shafer posits that we can help writers “to see writing as a series of choices rather than a transmitted set of rules, stages, and regimens to which to adhere” (296). Tutors share the rules of grammar without enforcing them.

At the same time that Writing Centers have embraced writer choice, scholars of writing and writing center theory have simultaneously become more attuned to recognizing and valuing the ways that writers’ identities are expressed through language. Cox reminds us that terms like “international student” and “ESL writer” reductively categorize students in ways that dissolve important differences in linguistic identity, and scholarship on writing center studies and composition increasingly focus on the distinct writing identities and experiences of generation 1.5 learners (Harklau; Thonus), African American writers (Young), and others.

A tutoring approach centered around writers’ identities and choices enacts post process theory, framing all writing as inherently personal and political, and rejecting or at least questioning the prescriptive rules of SWE. This attention to identity and personal choice is also grounded in translingualism, recognizing that there is no single standard and that language differences are natural and meaningful. Finally, it promotes code meshing, which is not switching between a home language and SWE, but intentionally blending and combining them (Young 139). Building on this identity conscious approach to discussing language, tutors can empower student writers not by enforcing SWE or by pretending sentence level concerns don’t matter, but by developing students’ critical awareness in their language choices.

Yet this identity driven approach is not uncomplicated, and it “risks the sort of stereotyping, overgeneralizing, and, indeed, racial profiling” that can cause tutors to make problematic assumptions about writers’ skills or goals (Greenfield and Rowan 133). One problem with this approach is that we, as tutors, are the ones framing the choices, even when we are not always the target audience. On the one hand, students may come to us and feel affirmed in expressing their

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authentic language identity, only to be criticized and maybe graded down by a professor for those same choices, after which the student may rightfully feel betrayed by our encouragement. On the other hand, we may present the choice in a way that is more honest about the possible consequences of choosing to write in a non standard style, but then the choice doesn’t really feel authentic, and we become tacit enforcers of the status quo. By focusing on choices, and by being the person to frame those choices for writers, tutors may inadvertently be building up their own power instead of their writers’, as we can too easily steer writers to the choice that we think is best for them.

In surveying this history, our research team and our tutors were better prepared to identify our own blind spots. Prior to this research project, training at our center effectively prepared tutors to enact one half of this approach: affirming students’ language. We took this approach one step further, from offering choices to cultivating self advocacy: it is not enough to just give students choices; we must also give them the tools and confidence to defend those choices. We don’t just say, “we like the way you write” and send writers out into the world hoping others will, too. We invite students to understand, engage with, and potentially disrupt the systems that would discriminate against them. As an example, the singular ‘they’ was, until recently, still a somewhat contentious choice in some academic contexts. While many style guides and disciplines have embraced the form, there are still faculty who would mark it as an error. So, in a poster campaign from a few years ago, when we encouraged students to use a singular ‘they’ and we modeled it in our own advertising, we also provided template language for an explanatory footnote (fig. 1). By using a footnote to defend their choice, the professor knows that the student is being intentional and can even see a rationale, including references for academic style guides that affirm the choice. In this way, we’re not just offering students a choice and hoping for the best; we’re helping them understand a choice and then giving them the tools and confidence to stand by their choice. The footnote example here is a way to model resistance to standards and norms of language, and our tutors were well prepared to offer writers similar tools and strategies to self advocate for non standard forms.

But what about the other half of the choice? What about the students who wanted to learn SWE? We were so eager to avoid complicity in the racist and colonialist legacy of SWE, that we hadn’t made space in our center to help writers who wanted that kind of support, or tutors who wanted that kind of training. We were giving students choices, presumably, but everything from our

advertisements to our training signaled which choice we thought was the “right” one. We wanted to be forward thinking and inclusive in our center, but we found ourselves stuck in the 90s avoidance mindset. So, what is the equivalent of self advocacy for writers who are interested in learning about and using SWE? What is an updated approach to grammar that is grounded in the tenets of linguistic justice? And maybe most importantly, what kind of sentence level support do students actually want?

Grammar in the Writing Center: A Survey of Student Goals

In order to discover what students want in terms of sentence level support, our research team gathered student feedback and tutor observations at our own institution, and we shared a summary of this data with our tutors as part of this training.1 For context, St. Olaf is a selective, residential, liberal arts college in rural Minnesota. Students are required to take three courses (writing and rhetoric, writing across the curriculum, and writing in the major) which offer an applied and cumulative approach to writing. To support students in their writing, the Writing Center at our college is staffed by 40 student tutors who offer appointments and drop in tutoring along with embedded writing support in first year courses.

Our research painted a complicated portrait of students’ relationship with sentence level concerns. On the one hand, some students express frustration with a perceived over emphasis on sentence level issues:

“One time, I gave my paper to my roommate. He read it, and he just corrected all the grammar and I was like ‘Ah! I was not really looking for grammar, more like ideas,’ but then he was like, ‘Yeah, um, if someone reads it, they can see like what you're trying to say, but like the grammar is like, you know, everything.’"

At the same time, others express a desire for more attention at the sentence level:

“I would ask [my tutor] questions and Specific about writing, about some small things, like, what do you think about the paper? What do you think about this specific thing? And she would never answer. She said it's not her job to do that, and I was like, okay. And I would ask, how do you think is the best way to phrase something? And they'd be like, this is your work to do that. And I was like, okay. Then what was the point of me coming here at all?”

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Finally, some students described the satisfaction they felt when they received sentence level support:

“I don't think I have, like, good amount of vocabulary for adjectives, so like, I can't really explain the person I see in the book and I was like, ‘uh…’ (Laughs). And then I try to explain in a way and my professor gave me lots of, like, ways to say that in one word, so like, it was really helpful.”

This mixed feedback is reflected in our analysis of the top reasons that students listed for visiting the Writing Center, as noted both in responses to a tutor survey (fig. 2) and in data collected from tutors’ visit notes (fig. 3). For example, almost half of approximately 2,000 session reports in 2020 signaled student interest in sentence level concerns most frequently requests for help with punctuation and sentence structure, but often more vaguely described in tutor notes as “working on grammar.” Interestingly, we found no predictable trends related to discipline, class year, or demographics. Any student, it seems, may desire additional help with sentence level concerns, and we can’t assume that major, year, or identity will shape who does and doesn’t want sentence level support.

After reviewing the data with our tutors, we asked them to reflect on feelings of discomfort in addressing (or not addressing) sentence level concerns during their tutoring experiences. We brainstormed how to preserve a collaborative community of practice while being responsive to moments that call for more directive tutoring. Some tutors were eager to talk about grammar, while others steered students away from sentence level concerns. Although most tutors thought that sentence level issues are important for us to address, and increasingly recognized these concerns as an issue of social justice and inclusive pedagogy, only 40% of our tutors were comfortable or very comfortable offering this kind of support. In addition to lacking confidence in terms of their knowledge of grammar rules and terminology, many expressed anxiety about when, whether, and how to correct:

“I was not at all confident in my ability to address this issue [proofreading] just because it can be hard to know what all I can/should correct. At one point when the writer was reading through her work she started stopping at every sentence to ask if it sounded okay.”

The historical context and institutional data, combined

with the tutors’ own discomfort with grammar, demonstrated the need for tutors to have a stronger understanding of the rules of SWE and also more practice with addressing sentence level concerns during tutoring sessions. The next part of our training prepared tutors to offer more effective grammar support by first exploring the ways in which their own language and identity shape their own relationship with SWE.

Language, Identity, and the Writer/Tutor Relationship

In framing grammar instruction that would be grounded in linguistic justice, we next asked tutors to think about their own languages and identities. When tutors understand their writing identities, they are better equipped to help writers develop their own self awareness. This identity informed approach to tutoring is at the heart of what Writing Center work must be about, especially when looking at grammar and SWE. Oliveira writes, “Asking writers about their process of writing, their motivations for the paper they are writing, what they want their paper to show readers and how they want it to be done might reveal aspects of their academic literacy practices relevant for the sessions. Moreover, learning about those aspects may help tutors concentrate on the possibilities for self hood inside the social context of academia which a writer might not be aware of or has not yet explored” (45). In other words, by asking questions about their writing identities, we can help shift writers’ mindsets about their writing from a kind of performance to meet some imagined ideal to an authentic expression of who they are. Instead of seeing academic writing as something that hides or denies their true self, it can be something that expresses and affirms that true self.

We invited tutors to share a story about their identities as writers, and we participated as well, in order to model the ways in which identity shapes language at the sentence level. For instance, Anne described how diagramming sentences in middle school Language Arts class, which she enjoyed, inspired her study of language and linguistics in graduate school. Victoria talked about attending bilingual school since the age of 3 and growing up with an idealized perception of grammar conventions and American accents; it was not until she was surrounded by people using a variety of Englishes that she realized that SWE was neither superior nor standard. We found common ground in a love of language conventions and the puzzle of English grammar, but also in the complicated feelings of inadequacy and othering tied up in language.

Along with storytelling, we explored themes of

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identity through a think pair share activity, which asked tutors to reflect on the following questions:

1. What parts of your identity are most important to you?

2. What are the ways in which your writing or speaking is an expression of your identity? This could be your race/ethnicity, class, major, gender… Try to think specifically about grammar, syntax, vocabulary as you answer this question.

3. Do you code switch? When and why?

4. What are different ways that identity (yours or the writer’s) might enter a writing tutoring session? Try to think specifically about grammar, syntax, vocabulary, etc. as you answer this question

Throughout these conversations about writing identity, the idea of SWE emerged again and again. Tutors referenced ideas from the assigned readings that challenged the supremacy of SWE, including Vershawn Ashanti Young’s “Should Writers Use They Own English?”, Jamila Lyiscott’s TED Talk “3 ways to speak English,” Christine Pearson Casanave’s “What and Whose Standards for L2 Writing?”, Nancy Grimm’s “Retheorizing Writing Center Work,” and Asao Inoue’s CCCC keynote address “How do we language so people stop killing each other, or what do we do about White language supremacy?” Tutors saw SWE as the preferred language of academia, but also as neither neutral nor static, or even common. SWE is problematically determined by “powerful people and institutions” and “implies homogeneity and oversimplifies linguistic realities” (Hudley 20), and the concept of ‘correctness’ is inherently biased, “only definable in terms of conformity or divergence of expectations” (Newman 25).

Tutors latched onto the idea of the communicative burden in particular: “in situations where there is a perceived language barrier… the person with the non mainstream accent is often expected to do more work to help the other person understand” (Hudley 47). They came to understand how “the educational system expects students from nonmainstream backgrounds to accommodate to the social and linguistic norms of mainstream students without much, if any, instruction on how to do so" (Reaser et al. 4). They also recognized the ways in which language use remains one of the most socially acceptable ways to perpetuate covert racism, classicism, and sexism: a coded way of discriminating against others that seems to be about language but can more often be about the identities signaled by that language use. This shared foundation let us approach sentence level support with

a set of common values, particularly around affirming writers’ style and voice, even when, and maybe especially when, it varied from SWE.

Grammar in Context: Addressing NonStandard Usage

Our social justice goals were complicated by the reality of putting these grammar concerns in context. For example, whether we think that non standard usage is problematic or not, it is absolutely the case that readers have expectations. Disciplines adhere to agreed upon conventions that convey meaning. Genres are recognizable and follow predictable patterns that allow readers to access content quickly. Not only that, writing at college is graded, and rubrics often evaluate both higher order and lower order aspects of writing. Professors have expectations and pet peeves. Grades matter to many writers, and meeting expectations is often important to them. Standing up for these truths may feel less heroic for a social justice warrior, but they are important considerations that challenged us as we thought about our practices both for teaching grammar and for teaching self advocacy. In addition to understanding writers’ goals, reimagining inclusive sentence level support requires understanding writers’ intentions. When writers use non standard forms, it might be because they are using their own English (their own dialect or variety or register) and not wanting or trying to use SWE. Or, it might be that they are using non standard forms intentionally, perhaps creatively, or even politically. Or, it also might be the case that they are intending to use SWE but either don’t know the correct form, are applying the rule incorrectly, or were busy thinking about the message and not attending to rules. Tutors are tasked with identifying and addressing sentence level concerns in a way that affirms natural variations in language, yet gives writers the opportunity to learn from and correct their errors. This process relies on tutors’ abilities to distinguish between style (linguistic preferences or expressions of personality that reflect contextualized and conscious choices, such as sentence length, use of metaphor, denominalization, or formatting choices), voice (linguistic variations that are rooted in an expression of self or identity, such as written accent, code meshing, or “interlanguage”), and error (unintentionally breaking rules which may impede meaning to the point of miscommunication). Of course, the line between style, voice, and error is contextual and open to interpretation, which is why our training invited tutors to consider sample sentences, and answer two connected but distinct questions: 1) Is this an error? and 2) Should we address it?

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To illustrate this activity, we will reflect on five of the sample sentences we analyzed together as a group. During the workshop, we projected each sample sentence on the board and polled tutors to see what percentage of our group believed each sentence had an error. Then, we asked tutors to explain their answer and created space for debate before offering some guidance. Finally, if they agreed it was an error, we discussed whether and how they would address it with a writer. For instance, we began with this sentence:

1. How do we language so people stop killing each other…?

Is this an error? The construction breaks a rule because the writer is using a noun in the verb position. But at the same time, this is intentional and creative. Nouns are used as verbs as a natural part of language change all the time. For example, a gold medal is an object, and “medal” is a noun, but many athletes have been heard saying they’d like “to medal” in an upcoming competition.

Should we address it? Since tutors had watched Inoue’s CCCCs keynote address with this title in preparation for the workshop, they recognized this move as intentional. In this context, tutors agreed we would not point it out as an error. If we saw something similar in a student paper, however, we might ask about it. It might be a typo, it might be a mistranslation from a first language, or it might be a choice. So, we might just say “I notice you are using a noun as a verb here. Are you doing that intentionally?” Context heavily determines whether denominalization such as this is an error.

2. The debate continued between my colleague and I.

Is this an error? Tutors disagreed on this example, and we acknowledged that a writer who writes this probably thinks that the sentence is correct. In fact, they might insist that it is correct. But technically, this construction breaks a rule. It uses the subject pronoun (I) in the object position in this case, the object of the preposition between. To many ears, the correct version of the sentence (“The debate continued between my colleague and me”) sounds wrong, but in fact, it follows the rule because “me” is an object pronoun in an object position. This confusion is common with the preposition “between” because “between” requires two objects. Imagine the same sentence with “behind” “I walked away, but the debate continued behind me.” We would not likely say “The debate continued behind I.”

Should we address it? The problem here is that this error is widespread, and to many ears, the first sentence sounds like something a more educated person would say. So, the question is, who will be reading this sentence, and will this reader know the rule? Will this reader hear the “I” as educated or as overcorrection? If this is a context where it matters (and sometimes it is and sometimes it isn’t), we would address it, but we would also suggest ways to rewrite the whole sentence and avoid this construction altogether. For example, does it work in the paragraph to say “My colleague and I continued to debate the issue” or “The debate continued between us.”

3. I’m feeling sick at my stomach.

Is this an error? This construction sounded incorrect to many of our tutors, because in Minnesota, we typically say “sick to my stomach” or maybe “sick in my stomach.” If we were working with a student who was still acquiring English (and we reminded tutors that prepositions and articles are some of the last elements to be acquired), we would probably teach the writer the more typical idiomatic expression and ask them about changing the “at.” However, in Appalachia, the correct preposition for that expression is “at.” So, it is possible that the writer was using their own patterned, rule bound, native English correctly, and this might be an opportunity to lift up that voice.

Should we address it? Just as people have different accents when they speak, they can also have a written accent. Depending on the context and the relationship that the tutor has with the writer, this might be a conversation or a point of interest, rather than a correction.

4. In the first section of the chapter, the author achieves to introduce her main point about waste disposal systematically.

Is this an error? Here we agreed, yes, this is an error, though not all tutors could explain why. This particular sentence was written by a student whose first language is Spanish, and we happened to recognize this construction as a direct translation that shows strategic competence. The student used the English verb “achieves” in place of the Spanish verb “consigue,” which is a correct translation if that verb is followed by a direct object, but in this context, the English construction would be “the author is able to introduce” or “the author successfully introduces” or “the author succeeds in introducing.”

Should we address it? In this example, we

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recommended providing the writer with multiple ways to rephrase, partly because it is a good opportunity for the writer to acquire more language. If we provide options, the writer can choose the one that sounds most like what they want to say and maintain ownership of the text.

5. The idea of attending St. Olaf College is thrilling to me. And I would love to continue my academic journey as part of its vibrant and caring community.

Is this an error? The rule broken here is that you shouldn’t use a conjunction to start a sentence. While tutors disagreed on the seriousness of the error, they were all familiar with the rule.

Should we address it? Using “and” in this way makes the text sound more conversational and more stream of thought, and that might be the style that is desired. But at the same time, context clues suggest that it might be part of an application. Because a polished and proofread CV and cover letter are often the way to make a strong first impression, that is one context where careful attention to sentence level issues may be desired and warranted.

Examining these sentences2 helped us demonstrate that whether an error should be addressed (in fact, whether an error even exists) is heavily context bound. In addition, deciding to address an error is only the first step in determining how to address it with a writer. For that reason, we also looked at longer passages and gave more context about the writer, assignment, and audience, and we asked tutors to consider not only whether there is an error and whether they would address it, but also how they would approach the conversation with the writer. For example, we analyzed this introductory paragraph to an essay written by a first year multilingual international student in a Introduction to Academic Writing course who was responding to the question of who should be held accountable for overconsumption:

There a big problem in our society, whenever we go out we see a lot of shops and a unconscious force make us want to buy things that we might not need. This is overconsumption and it has been raised up together with us. We are bombed with a lot of advertisements since we are children. Overconsumption is destroying the world that we know because of our “needs” to buy anything. Because in order to satisfy that necessity of buying has a price, that most of the

time the nature and the environment is taking it. This process of destruction has three main characters in the problem; Consumers, government and producers.

In this particular example, tutors decided that they would point out the missing word in the first sentence, partly because even though it’s a small error, it distracts the reader right at the start. We might also correct the article before “unconscious force,” remembering that articles are acquired later than other grammatical structures but that they tend to be errors that are noticeable to some readers. Some tutors said they would ask the writer if the use of “bombed” (rather than the more typically idiomatic “bombarded”) was intentional. Others said they would not mention it because they felt it was visceral and descriptive, and an effective stylistic choice that may reflect the students’ multilingual background. The conversation helped us to consider not just the context of the rhetorical situation writer, reader, text but also, crucially, the relationship between the writer and the tutor. The tutors increasingly acknowledged that pointing out particular instances of non standard usage would depend on the writer’s goals but also on the existing relationship at the time of the session. They knew that this student would be working with an assigned tutor all semester for this particular course, and they guessed that, at the point in the semester when they would be writing this paper, the writer and tutor would have had time to develop the trust necessary to discuss sentence level issues.

To emphasize the centrality of the writer/tutor relationship to the decision process, Anne shared a story about a student who was applying for jobs after college and considering using her initials instead of her name, well aware of the unfortunate truth that an applicant’s name is sometimes part of what determines whether they will be called for an interview. The student’s advisor was able to give helpful advice partly because they had a long trusting relationship and partly because the advisor had shared experience with this situation. What might have been a face threatening conversation was, in this context, a safe conversation for the student. Within this context, the student and her advisor had a clear eyed understanding of the meaning and purpose of the advice. In other words, the student felt that if she decided to make this change, she would not be giving up or selling out or losing herself; she would have critical awareness of what she was doing and why, guided by a trusted advisor. The story gave tutors a concrete example of how language and identity are powerfully intertwined and of how the rhetorical context, the writer’s goals and the writer/tutor relationship are all

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relevant when the objective is to truly see and support the writer.

A Decision Tree for Addressing SentenceLevel Concerns

Tutors became intensely invested in (and palpably enthusiastic about) picking apart sentences, debating the rules in play, and articulating their own opinions and preferences with language use. But identifying a non standard use of language, of course, does not necessitate (or even allow) that a tutor discuss it with a writer, and as we provided more context for the writing samples, tutors became increasingly uncertain about labeling non standard forms as errors. What if the writer doesn’t want grammar help? What if the writer wants grammar help, but this particular usage is an expression of their identity? What if it is an expression of their identity but they want to learn the rule in SWE anyway? And what if the paper deadline is in an hour? As tutors increasingly recognized the importance of context and relationships in these conversations about errors and non standard usage, the layers of possibility within any given sentence became overwhelmingly varied. We reminded tutors to understand each writer’s goals and to ask writers to paraphrase their writing or clarify their intention before deciding whether to address an error. But we also introduced a heuristic to guide them in this process: a Decision Tree for Addressing Sentence Level Concerns (fig. 4).

The first question in the Decision Tree asks tutors to consider whether the non standard form is an error. It is followed by a series of additional questions, though, signaling that error identification is the first but not the only condition to consider. We noted that there are many off ramps in the Decision Tree. If the tutor doesn’t know the rule, if sentence level correction doesn’t fit the writer’s goals, or if the construction doesn’t interfere with meaning in all of these cases, the answer about whether to address the non standard form would be “no.” Moreover, if the writer is on a tight schedule or if the tutor doesn’t have a trusting relationship with the writer, sentence level issues are often not the appropriate focus. We tell tutors that they do not need to memorize all the steps but that, in any given session, this tool can help them remember and consider the importance of context and relationships in deciding whether to address a potential error in student writing. The Decision Tree operationalizes the advice of scholars like Grimm and Shafer to centralize student choice and agency, and it gives tutors permission, when students ask for it, to spend time considering sentence level choices.

Our training in inclusive sentence level support was

reviewed positively by tutor participants, who overwhelmingly noted that the sessions contributed to their learning of equitable tutoring practices, their perspective on offering sentence level support, and their engagement in antiracist tutoring (fig. 5).3 The best measure of success, however, may be that tutors, recognizing the value of providing sentence level support as part of becoming a more inclusive Writing Center, have asked for additional training on grammar and mechanics. We continue to expand our training for tutors in standard usage, but not because we are becoming more prescriptive in our approach to grammar. Giving tutors a stronger command of the rules of SWE, with the caveat to prioritize context and relationships when deciding to address grammar, ultimately serves the larger goal of giving writers more agency in choosing the direction of the tutoring session and taking ownership of their writing.

Notes

1. Student focus group data was collected by Bridget Draxler and Diane LeBlanc as part of a separate IRB approved study of our first year writing preparation courses. Other data were collected through TutorTrac, our tutor reporting software, and tutor surveys collected prior to our training on inclusive sentence level support.

2. Other sentences that led to fruitful conversation included the following:

This is the story of my brother, my best friend and my childhood nemesis.

The chairman was charismatic, and the board members who supported him wholeheartedly approved his proposals every time.

The voters have several options; mailing in the ballot, dropping off the ballot early at City Hall, or voting in person on election day.

I provided documentation to the subjects who I interviewed.

If a consumer focuses on the organic label alone, he is not necessarily “thinking green.”

The athlete lost the tournament and the trophy. This was his last.

Humans are over consuming the boundary natural resources that we have.

From wildfires in Los Angeles to flash floods in Indonesia, Nature is reacting to the man made damage being done.

3. We also conducted a pre and post test with tutors in which we asked tutors to assign a number to each word

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in the list of crucial vocabulary (fig. 6). They chose from 0 to 2 based on their knowledge of each word ‘0’ means that you have never heard the term, ‘1’ means that you recognize the term or you know what it is, and ‘2’ means that you could explain the term to someone without any difficulty. The growth in tutor knowledge of these concepts can be seen in the results of the post test (fig. 7).

Works Cited

Babcock, Rebecca Day. “Outlaw Tutoring: Editing and Proofreading Revisited.” The Journal of College Reading and Learning, vol. 38, no. 2, 2008, pp. 63 70. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1079 0195.2008.10850309

Brooks, Jeff. “Minimalist Tutoring: Making the Student Do All the Work.” The Writing Lab Newsletter, vol. 15, no. 6, 1991, pp. 1 4.

Carter, Shannon. “The Writing Center Paradox: Talk about Legitimacy and the Problem of Institutional Change.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 61, no. 1, 2009, p. W133 152. ProQuest, https://www.proquest.com/scholarly journals/writing center paradox talk about legitimacy/docview/220694703/se 2?accountid=351.

Casanave, Christine Pearson. Controversies in Second Language Writing: Dilemmas and Decisions in Research and Instruction University of Michigan Press, 2004. Cox, Michelle. “Identity Construction, Second Language Writers, and the Writing Center.” Tutoring Second Language Writers, edited by Shanthi Bruce and Ben Raforth, Utah State University Press, 2016.

Greenfield, Laura and Karen Rowan, editors. Writing Centers and the New Racism: A Call for Sustainable Dialogue and Change. Utah State University Press, 2011. Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/stolaf ebooks/reader.action?docID=3442874.

Grimm, Nancy. “Rethinking Writing Center Work to Transform a System of Advantage Based on Race.” Writing Centers and the New Racism: A Call for Sustainable Dialogue and Change, edited by Laura Greenfield and Karen Rowan. Utah State University Press, 2011, pp. 75 100. Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/stolaf ebooks/reader.action?docID=3442874.

Harklau, Linda. “Generation 1.5 Students and College Writing.” ERIC Digest, Oct. 2003.

Hill, Patricia Ann. “Making Writing Invisible: A Study into the Complexities of Standard Written English Acquisition in Higher Education.” Doctoral thesis, University of Huddersfield, 2008.

Hudley, Anne H. Charity, and Christine Mallinson. We Do Language: English Language Variation in the Secondary English Classroom. Teachers College Press, 2013. Inoue, Asao. Chair’s Address: “How Do We Language So People Stop Killing Each Other, or What Do We Do About White Language Supremacy?” Conference on College Composition and Communication. David L. Lawrence Convention Center Spirit of Pittsburgh Ballroom A, Pittsburgh, PA, 14 Mar. 2019. YouTube, 4 Apr. 2019, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brPGTewcDY Lyiscott, Jamila. “3 Ways to Speak English.” TEDSalon, New York, 2014. TED: Ideas Worth Spreading, https://www.ted.com/talks/jamila_lyiscott_3_ways_to _speak_english?language=en#t 56175 Myers, Sharon, A. “Reassessing the ‘Proofreading Trap’: ESL Tutoring and Writing Instruction. The Writing Center Journal, vol. 24, no.1, Fall/Winter 2003, pp. 51 70.

Newman, Michael. “Correctness and Its Conceptions: The Meaning of Language Form for Basic Writers.” Journal of Basic Writing, vol. 15, no. 1, 1996, pp. 23 38. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43443666. Oliveira, Diego. "The Development of Writing Identity Through Writing Center Tutorial". Transcommunication, vol. 3, no. 1, Spring 2016. Reaser, Jeffrey et al. Dialects at School: Educating Linguistically Diverse Students. Routledge, 2017. Salem, Lori. “Decisions … Decisions: Who Chooses to Use the Writing Center.” The Writing Center Journal vol. 35, no. 2, Spring/Summer 2016, pp. 147 171. Shafer, Gregory. “Living in the Post Process Writing Center.” Teaching English in the Two Year College, vol. 39, no. 3, March 2012, pp. 293 305. ProQuest Literature Online, https://bridge.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/01

BRC_INST/es0tl/cdi_gale_infotracacademiconefile_A 309020413

Thonus, Therese. “Serving Generation 1.5 Learners in the University Writing Center.” TESOL Journal, vol. 12, no. 1, Mar. 2003, pp. 17 24.

Young, Vershawn Ashanti. “Keep Code Meshing.” Literacy as Translingual Practice: Between Communities and Classrooms, edited by Suresh Canagarajah, Routledge, 2013, pp. 139 140.

"Should Writers Use They Own English?" Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies, vol 12, no. 1, 2010, pp. 110 117. doi:10.17077/2168 569x.1095.

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Appendix A: Figures

Figure 1: Singular They Poster from St. Olaf College Writing Desk advertisement

Figure 2: Frequency of requests for sentence level support from St. Olaf tutor survey, Fall 2020

Figure 3: Most common student concerns from St. Olaf TutorTrac Reports, Fall 2020

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Figure

Critical

Figure 7: Results of pre and post test

Pre test: 0: 151 responses 1: 158 responses 2: 124 responses

Post test: 0: 22 responses 1: 99 responses 2: 247 responses

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REVIEW OF QUEERLY CENTERED: LGBTQA WRITING CENTER DIRECTORS NAVIGATE THE WORKPLACE BY TRAVIS WEBSTER

Jacob Herrmann Rice University jh115@rice.edu

Webster, Travis. Queerly Centered: LGBTQA Writing Center Directors Navigate the Workplace. Utah State UP, 2021. ISBN: 978 1 64642 148 0. $22.95.

Recent scholarship, such as Nicole Caswell, Jackie Grutsch McKinney, and Rebecca Jackson’s The Working Lives of New Writing Center Directors (2016), has paid increased attention to writing center administrative labor. However, issues of identity are frequently omitted from such discussions. Travis Webster’s Queerly Centered: LGBTQA Writing Center Directors Navigate the Workplace brings new light to the discussion by focusing on the personal accounts of queer writing center administrators. In a field that reveres personal stories and narratives, Webster nicely combines qualitative story telling practices with data driven research. Webster, now an assistant professor of writing and rhetoric at Virginia Tech University, showcases his nearly twenty years of writing center experience and his intimate knowledge of LGBTQ+ scholarship in the field. To date, Queerly Centered is the only book length project exclusively concerned with LGBTQ+ studies in the writing center field.

In Queerly Centered, Webster records and examines twenty interviews with gay, lesbian, transgender, and queer administrators to examine visible and invisible labor in the writing center. He positions his research among discussions of intersectionality (e.g., Denny; Hallman Martini and Webster), and racial dynamics (e.g., Riddick and Hooker; García; Green). Participants come from differing professional backgrounds and herald from a variety of institution types, including community colleges, public research institutions, and private schools. Their administrative positions also differ greatly, from staff administrators to tenured faculty. Yet, the study is limited in terms of participant gender and race. As Webster notes, most of the participants are white and cisgender. Only one participant identified as transgender and two were gay men of color. However, these demographics are more representative of the lack of diversity in the writing center field, rather than issues with participant recruitment methods.

The book builds its narrative through participant voices on three central themes concerned with queer

writing center labor as capital, activism, and tension. Each central chapter begins with historical vignettes that highlights the personal stories, experiences, and perspectives of his participants At the start of “Queer Writing Center Labor and/as Capital,” we see among the narratives Madeline, a writing center director at a southern university who operationalizes “lesbian humor” for productive administrative means; Mike, a former grassroots AIDS organizer; and Matt, a gay man who learned at a young age to read the room for the sake of queer survival. Webster discusses these histories and embodied experiences that queer directors bring with them as capital or “resources gained, lost, rendered, transacted, traded, and heralded in an institutional economy” (29). He argues that the origins of these practitioners that is where and how they first came to writing center work creates a sense of rhetorical readiness for taking on such work. Interestingly, Webster complicates the queer writing center origins by examining black queer capital towards the end of the chapter. As compared to the “nurturing” pedagogical approaches of white gay men in the writing center field, Brian, a gay black writing center director at an HBCU, describes exactly the opposite. Brian learned from his mentor, also a Black writing center director, that to best serve Black students he needed to adopt a queer, tough exterior. As Brian’s narrative shows, discussions of labor and queerness primarily center on white bodies at PWIs. Webster writes that “Blackness is erased, [Brian] tells me, and I agree” (43).

Perhaps the most emotionally charged chapter, “Queer Writing Center Labor and/as Activism,” deals with, in Webster’s own words, “condoms, dental dams, LGBTQA parade marches, promoting sexual and mental health initiatives, ‘calling [people] out on their shit’ (but ‘politely,’ says a participant), leading us, as practitioners into relatively uncharted writing enter research territory” (53). At times both uncomfortable and widely eye opening, this chapter tells how queer administrative labor often exceeds the confines of expected writing center work. Writing centers become de facto sites of sexual health education where a dearth of resources exists. Diverse minority administrators disproportionately engage in social justice work and advocacy both in and outside their centers. Often,

queer administrators are faced with supporting the mental and emotional health of tutors amid violent and oppressive local, national, and global contexts, such as the 2016 Pulse Nightclub shooting or the numerous homophobic tweets of former president Donald Trump.

Webster carries over the discussion of oppression and violence towards LGBTQ+ administrators in the workplace in his following chapter, “Queer Writing Center Labor and/as Tension.” As he argues, navigating instances of explicit and implicit bullying, disciplinary erasures of LGBTQ+ voices, and national tensions is labor intensive work. Despite the reputation of universities being primarily left leaning and narrativizing social progress, they are still made up of people, and thus, are reflective of larger trends of societal violence towards queer people. Many of the participants recount instances of mobbing or bullying, and one administrator, Mike, is even referred to as the “fag” by one of his colleagues. In one particularly striking moment, Webster directly addresses non queer readers:

I pause to comfort nonqueer readers. If you’re reading this book, I don’t think you’re the quintessential oppressor [. . .] Most of us are good people, and that’s not the point. Such claims are dangerous. In moving toward antiracism, these sentiments absolve white people of complicity in inherently racist systems. I learned that such a mindset one of “we’re good people” sidesteps white complicity in systemic oppression, and further, “good white people” are dangerous because of such complacent mindsets. (93) Like many moments of this book, this calling out is both uncomfortable and necessary. Despite the well meaning intentions of “good people,” being complicit in oppressive systems is a form of violence. By engaging the audience, Webster opens the text up for moments of self reflection and asks his readers to interrogate their own ideals of activism regarding LGBTQ+ and racial minorities.

Queer readers will find themselves nodding in recognition to the experiences and stories told throughout this book. While at times self confirming for queer readers, Webster’s study also speaks to the multiplicity of queer experiences which transcend cultural and regional expectations. Several of the East Coast participants, for instance, recounted explicit bullying, despite being in regions typically deemed more “queer friendly” than the South or conservative Midwest. Tenured appointments also seemed to offer little protection from implicit workplace harassment or

bullying as well. For non queer readers, this book is a testament of the need for greater support for LGBTQ+ administrators and students and provides a sense of recognition of the unequal distribution of labor that falls on the shoulder of queer and racially diverse minorities.

An absence of voices haunts Queerly Centered a fact that seems all too apparent to Webster throughout the text. This is just a small sampling of queer stories; so many voices still go unheard. Writing center studies has yet to fully explore how queer labor intersects with other identity factors such as race, disability, and class. To his credit, Webster does a remarkable job of highlighting the voices of the two black participants, often providing explicit subsections that add nuance to the queer administrative experiences. In the concluding chapter, he also addresses the noticeable absence of transgender, gender nonconforming, and pansexual identities among the participants. As he notes, Queer, Lesbian, and Gay issues are distinctly different from transgender ones. Speaking from my own experience, for those administrators with bisexual or pansexual identities, the complicated liminality of these sexual identities often offers “passing” privilege, but at the risk of feeling neither entirely part of the straight nor gay community. This makes me wonder how labor differs for those administrators with such liminal passing identities from those administrators who are more explicitly “out” in their centers.

Queerly Centered asks us to interrogate complicated questions about the everyday labor practices of queer writing center labor. Queer writing center administrators draw from their queer histories and engage in university activism, often while navigating workplace tensions. This book is a valuable read for all writing center practitioners and higher education administrators queer and non queer alike. We should not take this study as representative of all queer writing center voices, nor does it try to be. Instead, it challenges how we talk about writing center labor and breaks new ground by amplifying diverse queer voices.

Works Cited

Caswell, Nicole I., Jackie Grutsch McKinney, and Rebecca Jackson. The Working Lives of New Writing Center Directors. Utah State UP, 2016. Denny, Harry C. Facing the Center: Toward an Identity Politics of One to One Mentoring. Utah State UP, 2011. García, Romeo. “Unmaking Gringo Centers.” The Writing Center Journal, vol. 36, no. 1, pp. 29 60, 2017. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44252637

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 19, No 3 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com

Review of Queerly Centered: LGBTQA Writing Center Directors Navigate the Workplace

Green, Neisha Anne S. “Moving Beyond Alright: And the Emotional Toll of This, My Life Matters Too, in the Writing Center Work.” The Writing Center Journal, vol. 37, no. 1, pp. 15 34, 2018. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26537361

Hallman Martini, Rebecca, and Travis Webster, editors. “Special Issue: Writing Centers as Brave/r Spaces.” The Peer Review: A Journal for Writing Center Practitioners, vol. 1, no. 2, 2017. https://thepeerreview iwca.org/issues/braver spaces/writing centers as braver spaces a special issue introduction/ Riddick, Sarah, and Tristan Hooker eds. “Special Issue: Race and the Writing Center.” Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, vol. 16, no. 2, 2019. http://www.praxisuwc.com/162 from the editors

Webster, Travis. Queerly Centered: LGBTQA Writing Center Directors Navigate the Workplace. Utah State UP, 2021.

Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol 19, No 3 (2022) www.praxisuwc.com