In the literature of writing centers, and in particular the literature around online peer tutoring, the voices of the tutors themselves are conspicuously silent. We read the perspectives of writing center administrators, but not those of the people actually providing the service. As administrators of writing centers, we are at a loss as we attempt to prepare our tutors for the online environment because there is little data that addresses the tutors' perceptions of what it is like to conduct a tutorial in a virtual environment. Thus, we are left with theory and practice that is little more than an adaptation of face-to-face tutoring pedagogy. This study began with the premise that the perceptions of peer tutors of their tutoring experiences, especially those experiences in the online tutoring environment, are a valuable resource. To tap this resource, this study asked tutors to reflect on their perceptions of the online tutoring environment, their perceptions of their own tutoring in the online tutoring environment, and their perceptions of any changes they felt necessary to accommodate the online tutoring environment. This was a situated exploratory study conducted at the Washington State University Vancouver Writing Center, which focused on 4 tutors at that site. It drew on Jim Bell's (2001) “reflection on practice” model in which peer tutors reflect on their face-to-face tutoring practices. The goal of this study was to address the gaps in the literature of tutor training through an understanding of the perceptions of these tutors as they negotiate tutoring online. Data for this study was collected over a period of two semesters. The researcher took the role of participant/observer/interviewer for these semesters. Interviews with tutors were audio taped, transcribed, and coded according to a scheme created from the transcripts. The significance of this study is the inclusion of the often silent voices of the tutors who perform online peer tutoring in the body of literature covering that task. It presents first-hand perceptions of online tutoring that can add to our understanding of the nature of online tutoring and, in turn, assist in the development of training programs for peer tutors.

This dissertation combines research in neuroscience, psychology, inter-cultural communication, and teaching with technology to envision a more balanced approach to teaching writing. Many composition scholars have proposed theories about the cognitive processes that support writing, and have suggested pedagogies based in these theories, but too often this work has evolved in isolation from the research carried out in other fields. I hope that by taking this interdisciplinary approach, I can rough out some avenues for fruitful future exploration and lay to rest some misperceptions that currently hinder our teaching. I introduce this study by sharing a brief literacy narrative, and then in Chapter One lay out the range of theories held in the composition community about writing, learning, and thinking processes. In Chapter Two, I examine how Multiple Intelligence (MI) Theory can add to our understanding these processes, and consider recent attention to cultural context. China stands out as a particularly useful example by demonstrating very a different but effective pedagogy. Recent neuroscience research supports MI Theory, and I consider how it explains the existence of multiple intelligences in Chapter Three. In Chapter Four I shift to more practical concerns; the media required by non-verbal intelligences are hard to bring into classrooms, but computer technology offers solutions to some of these difficulties. I discuss my own experiences designing an on-line writing tutorial as an example of how neuroscience can be applied to teaching with technology, then describe an introductory literature class in which I used technology to address multiple intelligences. I suggest paths of further inquiry, identifying gaps in current research on teaching with technology. When discussing computer technology, we must ensure that students can cross the “digital divide.” I look at recent studies of access to computers and the internet; analysis of these results gives a clearer picture of how we might ensure that technology serves our students, rather than acting as another stumbling block. To close, this study looks forward, suggesting questions to be addressed in the future, as well as practical steps teachers can take now, to begin addressing multiple intelligences in their college writing classrooms.

In this dissertation, I explore this question: why are students silent? My interest was sparked by the stories most teachers have heard and told—that “quiet students” are shy, resistant, hostile. While discourses focusing on the politics of silencing are critical, we also need to consider how students see their own silences. This study provides alternate visions of silence as imagined by students. The project draws on many sources to explore silence, including the dominant critical perspectives represented in teaching narratives and feminist and cultural theories, as well as my own experiences that shape my teaching and this research. In addition to my own autoethnography and the thinking of scholars in various fields, the study focuses on the perspectives of students. Drawing on written reflections and interviews with five students, I examine students' vision of the influence of teachers and pedagogies on the decisions to speak or be silent. Often, practices designed to invite students' speaking (requirements, etc.) are experienced as silencing. Students suggest they are more encouraged to speak by “smaller gestures”—the cultivation of teacher-student relationships, a teacher's presentation of “self,” and focused attention to how questions are asked and responded to. Such efforts positively alter the dynamics of power, knowledge, and authority. I examine the intersections of identity and community and their impact on a student's speaking or silence. Many cite the “openness” of the community and how speaking invites evaluation of one's response, intelligence, identity. This is troubling, but not because they fear conflict. Rather, they perceive such interactions as demanding risky self-revelation in anonymous communities; they are conscious of the lessons about voice and audience we try to teach in writing classes. Finally, I investigates the alternate constructions these students use to understand classroom silence, including the communal sense that silence is not necessarily problematic. Instead it can provide space for intellectual work through internal dialogue. This research suggests possibilities for moving students “beyond silence.” But it also leads me to conclude that we should work to foster generative silences as well as dialogue in our classes.

The performance objectives of professional education are often more explicit, and the relationship with the world of work more immediate and comprehensive, than those of other university majors that are frequently the subject of writing-across-the-curriculum scholarship. This cross-sectional study of samples of both students and professors in the basic undergraduate program leading to the Bachelor of Science in Nursing degree seeks (1) to determine how they view the roles of writing in the major; (2) to ascertain the assumptions that inform how both groups handle writing within the context of classroom and clinical settings; and (3) to discover what practices result from these views and assumptions. Information was gathered from students through questionnaires, interviews and writing samples, and from faculty through a course writing inventory, course materials and interviews. The data show how writing serves individual, course and program goals; describe some of the ways in which writing is related to the theoretical frameworks and evolution of the discipline; and provide insight into how students conceive of and approach the writing required in their coursework. The final chapter outlines the interconnected roles of writing in this academic program and discusses how writing is used in fashioning professional identity, in teaching, in curricular structure, in fostering individual development, and in advancing professional nursing, and possible links between feminist epistemological studies and the roles of writing in professional education are suggested.

My dissertation explores an approach to the teaching of college writing that coordinates expressivist and social constructionist pedagogies. An expressivist orientation, usually associated with Peter Elbow and Ken Macrorie, foregrounds individual experiences of invention, sensitizing teachers to the nuances of students' motivations and creativity. A social constructionist orientation, which enjoys wide consensus in contemporary composition studies, foregrounds the ways in which the oral and written practices of discourse communities, and the broader contexts of power in which they occur, construct identity and knowledge, so that the solitary writer's text is actually dialogical because of the social nature of language. In my dissertation, I turn to theatrical metaphors and practices in order to coordinate these orientations. From the works of Kenneth Burke, Mikhail Bakhtin, Victor Turner, and a variety of feminist theorists, I borrow a dramatistic rhetorical approach that values the dynamic interdependence of individual and context. This orientation guides my teaching, and helps me explore the results. I turn to theater practices themselves, such as role-play and dialogue, in order to provide writers a range of oral and textual experiences, in a way that allows for group inquiry into what Burke called the "scenic" or contextual, cultural dimensions of communication. To establish a context for my work, my Introduction traces parallel tensions in both composition and theatre about the nature of agency and identity, represented in the works of Peter Elbow, David Bartholomae, Bertolt Brecht, and Constantin Stanislavski. Chapter One seeks a solution to these tensions in contemporary community theatre and solo performance art, which provide both metaphors of transactional agency and dialogic identity, and actual practices adaptable to a college writing context. My remaining chapters explore in more detail various teaching approaches predicated upon my introductory, theoretical material. In Chapter Two, I narrate and analyze three classroom events of role- and voice-play, and conclude with a larger view of composition, role-play, and student and teacher roles. Chapter Three considers the social and interpersonal dynamics of a dialogue written by two students, analyzed according to the "interpretive theme" of adversarial and non-adversarial argument. In Chapter Four, I try to maintain a productive tension between expressive and social dimensions of one student's writing by sharing ideas about voice with her in a tutorial setting, especially Bakhtinian ideas about dissonance and negotiation. And finally my Conclusion attempts to enact or "perform" the very tensions I have explored throughout the dissertation, through a playful, multi-voiced dialgoue on dialogue. In effect, this dissertation tries to open a conversation between theory and practice, and between composition and theatre disciplines. My main thesis, which I explore through practice, is that college writers can benefit from highly contextualized, expressive play.

This study examines the writing requirements and structures for administering writing at 54 small, selective liberal arts college. After a brief introduction to the theory and practice of writing across the curriculum, I place writing in the context of these small colleges. I base my research on these colleges' primary documents as well as data from an extensive qualitative survey in which all 54 schools participated. I define three of the most common types of writing requirements at these institutions: (1) Composition Courses in their different forms; (2) First-Year Seminars; and, (3) Writing Intensive Courses. I discuss the self-reported advantages and challenges of each approach. I focus on the role of writing in a liberal arts education and the distributed nature of teaching writing at such schools. I then offer an overall view of writing requirements and administrative structures at these schools, noting the advantages and challenges of teaching and administering writing in these distinctive institutional settings. Finally, I move towards developing a theory and practice of writing at the small liberal arts college and propose a framework for thinking about writing that helps cultivate an overall culture of writing. I suggest some "best practices" for writing at such colleges, and include recommendations for the structure of student writing experiences, support for faculty in the teaching of writing, and the administration and oversight of writing. I end with a vision of writing across the curriculum at the small liberal arts college that integrates teaching, writing, and learning.