This collection introduces the reader to the ideas that have shaped writing center theory and practice. The essays have been selected not only for the insight they offer into issues but also for their contributions to writing center scholarship. These papers help to chart the legitimation of writing centers by providing both a history and an examination of the philosophies, praxis, and politics that have defined this emerging field. They demonstrate the ways a clearer profile of the discipline has emerged from the research and reflection of writers, like those represented here. This volume charts the emergence of writing centers and the growing recognition of their contributions, roles, and importance. As a nascent discipline, writing centers reflect the concerns with marginality and with finding a respected place in the academy that characterize any new field of academic inquiry, practice, and research. Concomitantly, professionals in these fields seek standing within the academy and a way of defining and validating their contributions to the educational process. Contemporary writing center theorists look to interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary investigations to interpret the work they do and to clarify their aims to the academy at large. Their work employs a variety of philosophical perspectives -- ranging from sociolinguistics to psychoanalytic theory -- to show the complex nature and potential of writing center interactions. The idea has now become the multidimensional realities of the writing center within the academy and within society as a whole. What its role will be in future redefinitions of the educational process, how that role will be negotiated and evaluated, and how professionals will shape educational values will constitute the future landmark directions and essays on writing center theory and practice.

Writing Centers and Learning Commons presents program administrators, directors, staff, and tutors with theoretical rationales, experiential journeys, and go-to practical designs and strategies for the many questions involved when writing centers find themselves operating in shared environments. The chapters comprehensively examine the ways writing centers make the most of sharing common ground. Directors, coordinators, administrators, and stakeholders draw on past and present attention to writing center studies to help shape the future of the learning commons and narrate their substantial collective experience with collaborative efforts to stay centered while empowering colleagues and student writers at their institutions. The contributors explore what is gained and lost by affiliating writing centers with learning commons, how to create sound pedagogical foundations that include writing center philosophies, how writing center practices evolved or have been altered by learning center affiliations, and more. Writing Centers and Learning Commons is for all stakeholders of writing in and across campuses collaborating on (by choice or edict), or wishing to explore the possibilities of, a learning commons enterprise. Contributors: Alice Batt, Cassandra Book, Charles A. Braman, Elizabeth Busekrus Blackmon, Virginia Crank, Celeste Del Russo, Patricia Egbert, Christopher Giroux, Alexis Hart, Suzanne Julian, Kristen Miller, Robby Nadler, Michele Ostrow, Helen Raica-Klotz, Kathleen Richards, Robyn Rohde, Nathalie Singh-Corcoran, David Stock

Peripheral Visions for Writing Centers aims to inspire a re-conception and re-envisioning of the boundaries of writing center work. Moving beyond the grand narrative of the writing center—that it is solely a comfortable, yet iconoclastic place where all students go to get one-to-one tutoring on their writing—McKinney shines light on other representations of writing center work. McKinney argues that this grand narrative neglects the extent to which writing center work is theoretically and pedagogically complex, with ever-changing work and conditions, and results in a straitjacket for writing center scholars, practitioners, students, and outsiders alike. Peripheral Visions for Writing Centers makes the case for a broader narrative of writing center work that recognizes and theorizes the various spaces of writing center labor, allows for professionalization of administrators, and sees tutoring as just one way to perform writing center work. McKinney explores possibilities that lie outside the grand narrative, allowing scholars and practitioners to open the field to a fuller, richer, and more realistic representation of their material labor and intellectual work.

In this collection writing program and writing center administrators from a range of academic institutions come together to explore their work through the lens of sensemaking. Sensemaking is an organizational theory concept that enables institutions, supervisors, teachers, tutors, and others to better understand the work they do by using narrative, metaphor, and other theoretical lenses. The book is divided into two sections: Sensemaking with Tutors and Teachers, and Sensemaking and Institutional Structures. Chapter authors employ several theoretical approaches to sensemaking, ranging from individual experience to institutional history to document design, providing readers with ideas for how to administer and teach within their programs more effectively; how to advocate for their programs within larger university contexts; and how to positively influence the lives and careers of those they work with. Sensemaking for Writing Programs and Writing Centers theorizes daily experiences from working lives and suggests problem-solving strategies. Writing program administrators, writing department chairs, and writing center directors, tutors, and staff will find value in its pages.

Writing centers are places where writers work with each other in an effort to develop ideas, discover a thesis, overcome procrastination, create an outline, or revise a draft. Ultimately, writing centers help students become more effective writers. Visit any college or university in the United States and chances are there is a writing center available to students, staff, and community members. A Guide to Creating Student-Staffed Writing Centers, Grades 6-12 is a how-to and, ultimately, a why-to book for middle school and high school educators as well as for English/language arts teacher candidates and their methods instructors. Writing centers support students and their busy teachers while emphasizing and supporting writing across the curriculum.

This book addresses issues surrounding writing centers in the Arabian Gulf region. Including a foreword by Professor Ken Hyland, it brings together a number of thought-provoking chapters on the history, concept, and ground realities coupled with critical comparative discussions of writing centres in the region. The book begins by offering critical historical accounts of writing centers in the Gulf countries, before moving onto empirical research and reports on pedagogical practices that vividly capture the on-the-ground realities faced and experienced by different actors. These accounts serve to highlight how the writing centers vary between countries, as well as how they differ from the more well-known writing centers in the US and the UK. Finally, the book explores what sort of commonalities and differences the current trend of writing centres is producing within and between the six countries of the Arabian Gulf. This book will be highly relevant to those involved with writing centres along with directors, policymakers, researchers and teacher educators in the fields of Education and Sociology, particularly those with an interest in the Arabian Gulf area.

Writing Centers at the Center of Change looks at how eleven centers, internationally, adapted to change at their institutions, during a decade when their very success has become a valued commodity in a larger struggle for resources on many campuses. Bringing together both US and international perspectives, this volume offers solutions for adapting to change in the world of writing centers, ranging from the logistical to the pedagogical, and even to the existential. Each author discusses the origins, appropriate responses, and partners to seek when change comes from within a school or outside it. Chapters document new programs being formed under changing circumstances, and suggest ways to navigate professional or pedagogical changes that may undermine the hard work of more than four decades of writing-center professionals. The book’s audience includes writing center and learning-commons administrators, university librarians, deans, department chairs affiliated with writing centers. It will also be useful for graduate students in composition, rhetoric, and academic writing.