Nan’s Prospectus
Just to get started, I’m going to toss out the following prospectus. Bradley, please let me know if I need some other format or more information. The bottom line is that I see a valuable connection between writing center pedagogy and WAC programs. I had to write this at work without the benefit of having my sources at hand, so I have not quoted any experts. But, as you can see from the bibliography, there are lots of theories on the subject. I will appreciate any ideas on direction or scope for my project.
Thanks!
(Incidentally, as I write this, the sky is rumbling with at least one Blue Angel practicing for the coming show).
Nan
Prospectus
Title: The Partnership of Writing Center Pedagogy and Writing Across the Curriculum Programs
The discussion of writing center pedagogy has been around for many years, with much of the resulting scholarship peaking during the 1980s and early 1990s. Similarly, writing-across-the-curriculum scholarship has been prevalent since the 1960s. Less, however, has been written specifically about the benefits of combining writing centers with writing across the curriculum. My interest lies in how university writing centers—and perhaps the Western Writing Center—can play an integral role in the success of a WAC program, including Western’s WID requirements.
As a novice tutor with little experience with university politics or writing center theory, I hope to bring a fresh (although perhaps idealistic) perspective to writing center pedagogy. A writing center’s “classroomless” atmosphere promotes a unique relationship with faculty, students, and administration, making it a neutral, safe harbor for writing on all levels and in all curricula and a natural environment to support writing across the curriculum. In the purest sense, a writing center should be a crossroads of exchange for knowledge, writing skills and styles, and various discipline pedagogies in order to enhance all curricula and to benefit a university’s personnel and academic goals.
In Strengthening Programs for Writing Across the Discipline, the author says that “top down decrees” to establish WAC programs are often resented by those called on to carry them out; however, the opposite is often true if WAC programs are created at the grassroots level and eventually supported by upper faculty and administration. In that vein, the writing center could serve as a impartial liaison among curricula, personnel, and students in the development of a WAC program.
Not every expert agrees, however, on the strategic role of writing centers or on the value of WAC programs, let alone the practicality of combing their pedagogies. Therefore, I am interested in exploring various perspectives surrounding the issue through my own experiences as a tutor and by the scholarship of experts who have juxtaposed writing center pedagogy with WAC programs and conclude that writing centers and WAC programs can form a beneficial partnership.
Bibliography:
Burnett, Robert W. and Blumner, Jacob S. Writing Centers and Writing Across the Curriculum Programs. Westport, CN: Greenwood Press. 1999.
Elbow, Peter. Writing Without Teachers. New York: Oxford Press. 1973.
Gillespie, Paula; Gillam, Alice; Brown, Lady Falls; & Stay, Byron. Writing Center Research: Extending the Conversation. Mahway, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 2002.
Holdstein, Deborah H. “Writing Across the Curriculum and the Paradoxes of Institutional Initiatives.” Pedagogy 1.1 (Winter 2001)
Kreth, Melinda L. “Comments on and Addenda to Holdstein’s WAC Paradoxes.” Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture 1.2 (Spring 2001): 287-295. MLA International Bibliography.
Martin, Eric. V. “WAC Paradoxes Revisited: A Program Director’s Response.” Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture 1.2 (Spring 2001): 275-286. MLA International Bibliography.
McLeod, Susan H. (ed). Strengthening Programs for Writing Across the Curriculum. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Inc. 1988.
________ & Soven, Margot (eds). Writing Across the Curriculum: A Guide to Developing Programs. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications. 1992.
Mick, Connie Snyder. “Little Teachers, Big Students: Graduate Students as Tutors and the
Future of Writing Center Theory.” The Writing Center Journal. Fall/Winter 1999. 33-50.
Myers-Breslin, Linda (ed.). Administrataive Problem-Solving for Writing Programs and Writing
Centers. Urbana, IL: National Coucil of Teachers of English. 1999.
Sheridan, Jean (ed.). Writing-Across-the-Curriculum and the Academic Library. Westport, CN: Greenwood Press. 1995.
Spiegel, Dixie Lee. Classroom Discussion. New York: Scholastic, Inc. 2005.
June 21st, 2008 08:18
Nan, this looks great. Some comments and suggestions:
You make a lot of strong assertions here, which I like; better to take a bold position than hedge. You’ll want to put some pressure on your ideas and see if they hold. I’m thinking, in particular, of the neutrality of the WC and its strategic value; I wonder (1) if the first is true; (2) given #1, if both are possible simultaneously.
I’m not sure working specifically with Western is a good idea. You can use experiences in the writing center to focus and educate your work, and they can serve as examples in your essay. On the long term, if the WC folks are willing, you could even implement some of your ideas, conduct surveys, and do other kinds of direct research. However, two reasons to keep it more general: (1) given the short time frame, it will be difficult to explore any serious WID/WC connections; (2) Western doesn’t really have a WAC program; we do some WID and some folks talk about it like it’s the bees-knees, but it’s really limited.
Strong list of sources. To update the list of scholarship (a disadvantage of the Guide; it’s 10 years old) I also suggest looking at a few journal indexes–there are specific journals for writing centers and WAC. For starters, try the WAC Clearinghouse, which includes quite a few journals and other resources. And remember what I said at lunch about skimming…
June 21st, 2008 17:16
Nan,
Fascinating topic. I graduated from high school in ‘83, college in ‘87. Several friends and I, all liberal arts majors, made money on the side “guiding” engineers (my specialty) and science majors with their papers. For an additional fee, we even typed the papers. Seems we had our own version of “writing centers” going then, but how much the guys truly benefited from our guidance I am sure was short-lived. What a wonderful service to provide for students. I utilize in my College Writing classes O.W.L.s, Online Writing Labs, an offshoot of the WC and electronically availble 24/7. These are only tools and do not develop the relationships you refer to, which I agree are highly valuable. I look forward to reading more about what you discover is out there and new to me!
June 21st, 2008 21:18
I dig OWLs. Purdue’s is great. The best encourage a high level of communication between writers and tutors–synchronous or asynchronous.
June 27th, 2008 22:39
Nan, I’m finding a lot of my research ties into your topic. If you haven’t found it already, you might find the following resource helpful:
Constructing Collaborative Writing Assignments. ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report, 2002, Vol. 28 Issue 6, p37, 13p; (AN 10296685)
It discusses a need for professors to have specific guidelines written into their writing assignment handouts so students (and tutors) know what the heck they’re supposed to do.
June 27th, 2008 23:40
I am a big believer in having a rubric available alongside an assignment. Typically, pagelength is not included
However, my students do get a sense of format expected and what to strive for in elaboration, argumentation, and such. When dealing with collaborative constructions, I think students too should set the assessment upfront so clearly defined expectations for each member of the group are defined. I did attend a workshop at which the assessments were written before the lesson plans, a backward approach to creating the lesson, but keeps the assessment true to the presentation. I believe it was called “Crisping,” an acronymn I am at a loss to define right now.
June 29th, 2008 07:50
Assessment before lessons doesn’t sound that unusual; don’t many courses come with goals statements or more explicit requirements?
June 29th, 2008 09:35
I remember studying Grant Wiggins’s “Backwards Design” concept in college, which was just that–deciding what the goals of the unit are before planning the lessons. This has become second nature for many, but I think there are teachers who think a particular lesson/activity/book sounds cool, so they pursue it. Students may love the lesson, but when the time comes for the test, and teachers have to decide what it is the students learned and what to test based on what they taught. The test, then, doesn’t necessarily match up with specific goals or standards and instead might just cover novel plot, etc.
As our high school English department moves towards a skill-based curriculum rather than a content-based curriculum, this backwards planning is essential. We have to determine the skills students need to acquire and then figure out the best way to get there. We can no longer just teach Romeo and Juliet because it’s part of the canon, but we teach it in order to help students improve upon certain reading skills. In writing, rather than just assign an essay, it would make sense to identify for students specific skills they will need to master for a successful grade. This way students have certain elements to work on and might not be overwhelmed by all they’re expecting to do incorrectly.
So, no, it’s not new, but it’s still an approach that many instructors fail to take and a paradigm shift for some.
June 30th, 2008 09:20
Katherine, the “backwards” concept is interesting to me as a tutor because that’s exactly what I have to do to make the most of a brief tutorial. After our summer readings, I’m determined to do even more of it this fall in an effort to force students to take responsibility for their own writing. Rather than just plop a paper in front of me and expect me to take over (which I’m sorry to admit I’m prone to do), I’ve had to learn to ask, “How can I best help you?” and stick with the problems a student names–even though I may see a dire need in another area–such as organization, thesis development, etc. I see that as a way of tranferring power and responsibilitly for learning to the student. In “Ethics” there is a good article on “Refiguring Classroom Authority” related to that subject. But that might be more difficult on the high school level, as a teacher who is under duress to accomplish a mandated curriculum.
June 30th, 2008 16:39
Katherine’s response is right on target. Beginning with the assessment, especially one that is data-compilation friendly, is essential to the progression of the lessons and the overall success. Ironically, I was just discussing with my department head how we will have to rewrite the course descriptions because we will no longer retain the same focus on literature. She went so far as to say we are ethically obligated to send out a written addendum to the parents letting them know of the curriculum change effective with the start of the ‘08/09 school year. Our feelings are to hopefully activate the parents in a lively discussion over the choices the administation is making for their students.
Nan, I often ask my own writing students the same question. “What difficulties are you having that I may help you with?” or “What specific area are you concerned with on this essay?” works well when they want me to read a draft and tell them how they are doing. Time is limited and quite often, they want to just be told how to “fix” it. I do think the concept of student-led conferencing (what is going well? Where do you need guidance? What are you confused about?) works better and they are more invested in the drafts.
July 1st, 2008 13:36
Y’all have already settled on topics, but it’s worth noting that assessment is a pretty active area of writing studies. And given NCLB and the general accountability push in education, folks are more often demanding formal (or less informal) assessment and reporting.
July 1st, 2008 14:08
Regarding settling on a topic…I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that! The more I read–and try to write–on my topic, the more I realize that I bit off a little too much with my original topic of writing centers AND WAC programs. Since I would like to lay the groundwork for an eventual master’s thesis on WC’s and WAC programs, I think I’d like to start by concentrating on the importance of the role of an individual tutor in a writing center, which eventually will lead to the tutor’s role in successfully combining WC and WAC programs.
How does that sound?
July 1st, 2008 17:25
“individual tutor … the tutor’s role in successfully combining WC and WAC programs”
Do you mean “tutor” or “WC administrator?” I’m not sure what an individual tutor’s role would be; sure, tutors could work in a manner which generally benefited WAC, but the real work has to come from someone with institutional credibility. Most tutors just don’t have the power (unfortunately, that’s true of many WC directors, too).
As you originally presented it, I thought the issue wasn’t writing about WC *or* WAC but WC *and* WAC, which would seem to be a smaller subset of practices and texts. What sorts of things have you found? Perhaps I could look at some specific texts.
July 2nd, 2008 15:59
Bradley, rather than the administration angle, I was thinking more about the grassroots connection between tutors and students and how that same connection could work in the WAC program. You’re right–tutors have no power to implement change, and often no credibility with faculty, sometimes for a reason. Maybe I’ve just read enough Muriel Harris that I’m turning into a cheerleader for tutors. There is a fair amount of scholarship on strategies about how wc’s and WAC’s can work cooperatively and the tutor’s role in making it successful. The McLeod/Soven “Writing Across the Curriculum” is especially good, but there are others, too. I’ll keep plugging away and show you what I have on Sunday night.
July 2nd, 2008 22:44
Now I understand. Of course, I welcome a “Damn the torpedos, this is the way things should be” argument; that’s how I roll. I’m looking forward to seeing what you have to share.