While attitudes are difficult to assess, a qualitative research study can produce results to give insight into how a student feels a writing center has improved his or her confidence and attitude towards writing. This study reviews the minimal discussion of students‟ attitudes towards writing in past and current writing center research and builds upon the conversation by following three students‟ journeys in the writing center and discussing whether their experiences with the tutors has improved their attitudes about writing.

Not all students who enroll in postsecondary institutions have the skills needed to be successful in higher education in reading and writing. At a for-profit, online university in Minnesota, many students were not completing 4 weeks of a remedial writing program, Intervention Editing (IE). According to internal surveys and personal communications, students' struggles to complete IE were partly due to academic entitlement (AE). AE is defined as students placing the responsibility for their academic success on third parties rather than on themselves. Using the theory of self-efficacy as a framework, the purpose of this intrinsic case study was to determine the editors' best practices for addressing student AE and the additional training that they needed to mentor students who exhibited AE in IE. Data were collected using semistructured interviews with a purposeful sample of 5 editors who had completed at least 1 year of IE, a semistructured interview with the IE manager, and a document review of the IE application and university student handbook. The data from the semistructured interviews and archival documents were coded for emergent themes. The following best practices emerged on mentoring students with AE in IE: exhibiting a respectful tone with students, outlining student responsibility, stressing student personal agency, and refusing unreasonable student demands. The editors also outlined the following training needs: assistance in revising the mission and application for IE and professional development on identifying student AE. A white paper was written to document and improve editors' pedagogical strategies for mentoring AE students. This study provides editors with best practices for helping AE students in IE reclaim their self-efficacy, which may lead to improved quality of capstone writing at the local study site and reduce time to degree completion.

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This dissertation examines Swedish writing centers’ pedagogical positions in relation to surrounding conditions through a case study of organization, attitudes and learning potential in a pedagogical collaboration project on writing with many multilingual students. The data consists of steering documents, students’ texts, interviews, observations, and recorded tutorials. The general aim of the thesis is to explore the learning potential for participants in the collaborative project. The theoretical framework has a sociocultural approach drawn from New Literacy Studies, Wenger’s Social Learning Theory and Dialogism. Three studies are included. The first study examines organizational conditions in the specific context and shows that the writing center and its tutors have marginalized positions separated from relevant research. The second study finds that conceptions of writing as a skill, alongside those of writing as a process limit students’ opportunity for meaning-making and contesting. The third study focuses on tutorial interaction and results show that  tutors support students by i) discussing norms and conventions, ii) strengthening students as writers and second language learners and iii) stimulating meaning making and participation, which seems to increase potential for negotiation and developing academic writing. General conclusions suggest that writing centers have potential to be sites for pedagogical development where tutors can share, with students and staff, their expertise gained when working with a diverse student population. To strengthen writing centers’ position at universities professionalization of tutors is needed and most importantly research needs to be conducted in writing centers. Students from diverse backgrounds are entering higher education and to value their knowledge and experiences is crucial, not least from a democratic perspective. The writing center can play an important role in this effort.

The objective of this study was to develop a profile of writing centers in twelve community colleges governed by the Tennessee Board of Regents. This profile included how they were established, how they are funded and staffed, what services are provided and to whom, how training is provided for staff, and how technology is incorporated. More important than the profile itself, however, was an analysis of successful and unsuccessful practices, especially those related to governance, structure, and training of staff, as revealed through the perceptions and experiences of writing center directors. Because electronic technology has transformed the craft of writing, and its teaching, the analysis extended to the ways in which this technology should be integrated into writing center programs. To construct a profile of current writing center structure and practice, a survey instrument was created and administered by telephone during the spring of 1998. The survey was followed by on-site interviews with four writing center directors which focused on strategies for improving campus support for services, recruiting and training tutors, and providing services electronically. Tennessee community college writing centers vary in their primary clientele with almost half providing comprehensive services to all writers on campus and half serving primarily developmental writers. Perhaps because of this developmental orientation there continues to be a stigma attached to writing centers. Community colleges in Tennessee could enhance the stature of their writing centers by conferring faculty and full-time status on the director, offering more comprehensive services, especially tutorial services, to writers of all levels of ability and from all departments. While a substantial body of literature on writing center philosophy and practice has developed during the last twenty years, much of it failed to address the limitations inherent in community colleges pertaining to admissions policies, non-residential and part-time students, and length of time required to complete a degree. This study identified assumptions, practices, and goals which are universal as well as those which are unique among community college writing centers within the Tennessee Board of Regents system and attempted to anticipate future needs as these centers continue to evolve into the new millennium.

Writing center tutors work in a field with a long tradition of fostering meaningful interaction between tutor and tutee. However, as university demographics change and more and more international students and second language users utilize writing centers, our long-held notions of meaningful interaction have been called into question as tutors struggle to reckon the needs of students with the implicit demands of their field. Using data taken from real writing center sessions, I use qualitative and quantitative methods to explore how tutors negotiate this necessarily changing paradigm, looking in particular at the way these changes manifest themselves in who reads a text aloud, how that influences session content, and who talks and when. Based on the data and analysis, I make suggestions for tutor practice, education, and further research.

Student writing skills are a growing concern in secondary schools given the current focus on common core standards and college readiness. This qualitative case study addressed the growing problem of high school students being unprepared for the rigor of college level-writing. The study used a series of 10 interviews with writing center directors and teachers in 2 secondary schools with writing centers. This research adds to the literature on peer-managed writing centers and contributes to the body of knowledge of writing centers as a specific conceptual framework of response to intervention (RtI). The broad research questions were focused on 3 topics: student's writing abilities, the effectiveness of the intervention of the writing center, and possible improvements to the writing center. Three directors and 7 teachers were selected for interviews through purposeful sampling. Inductive analysis was used to identify emergent themes: establishing a peer-managed writing center, function of the center, student writing, effectiveness of the writing center, and suggested improvements. The culminating project for this research was the establishment of a professional development program designed to provide a foundation for schools that are creating a peer-managed writing center at the secondary level. This study promotes the development of these centers across the school district of the study and provides evidence for RtI as a method to address the problem of secondary students being unprepared for writing at the post-secondary level. Positive social change can be achieved for the local school district by expanding the use of peer-managed writing centers with a focus on using RtI to address the problem of students being unprepared for the rigors of college writing.

abstract: Writing centers are learning settings and communities at the intersection of multiple disciplines and boundaries, which afford opportunities for rich learning experiences. However, navigating and negotiating boundaries as part of the learning is not easy or neutral work. Helping tutors shift from fixing to facilitating language and scaffolding literacy learning requires training. This is particularly true as tutors work with second or subsequent language (L2) writers, a well-documented area of tension. This mixed methods action research study, conducted at a large university in the United States (US), centered on a tutor training intervention designed to improve writing tutors’ scaffolding with L2 learners by increasing tutors’ concrete understanding of scaffolding and shifting the ways tutors view and value L2 writers and their writing. Using a sociocultural framework, including understanding writing centers as communities of practices and sites for experiential learning, the effectiveness of the intervention was examined through pre- and post-intervention surveys and interviews with tutors, post-intervention focus groups with L2 writers, and post-intervention observations of tutorials with L2 writers. Results indicated a shift in tutors’ use of scaffolding, reflecting increased understanding of scaffolding techniques and scaffolding as participatory and multidirectional. Results also showed that post-intervention, tutors increasingly saw themselves as learners and experienced a decrease in confidence scaffolding with L2 writers. Findings also demonstrated ways in which time, common ground, and participation mediate scaffolding within tutorials. These findings provide implications for tutor education, programmatic policy, and writing center administration and scholarship, including areas for further interdisciplinary action research. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Educational Leadership and Policy Studies 2019

Lorsqu’ils éprouvent des difficultés en écriture, les cégépiens peuvent se tourner vers les centres d’aide en français, où le service le plus répandu est le tutorat. Peu de chercheurs se sont intéressés à cette mesure d’aide. Ainsi, cette recherche vise à mieux comprendre comment les tuteurs se représentent leur rôle et quels sont les dispositifs avec lesquels ils cherchent à soutenir les tutorés en écriture. À la suite d’une recension des écrits, nous avons opérationnalisé une définition du tutorat pour situer les représentations des tuteurs. Nous avons ensuite répertorié les dispositifs pédagogiques et didactiques susceptibles d’être utilisés lors des rencontres de tutorat. À partir de ce cadre de référence, nous avons conçu un questionnaire qui a été rempli par 116 tuteurs provenant de 12 cégeps différents. Des analyses quantitatives descriptives ont été effectuées et nous ont permis de cibler des questions à approfondir lors d’entrevues semi-dirigées qui ont été effectuées auprès de six tuteurs ayant des profils variés. Des analyses de contenu ont été menées. Les analyses des données quantitatives et qualitatives ont révélé que les tuteurs se voient comme des apprenants qui offrent surtout du soutien scolaire et motivationnel aux tutorés. Leur posture de tuteur-apprenant influence la façon dont ils entrent en relation avec les tutorés et le soutien qu’ils leur offrent. Lors des rencontres de tutorat, ils privilégient surtout des dispositifs de grammaire et de correction pour répondre aux attentes des centres d’aide en français, mais fondent aussi leurs choix des dispositifs sur les demandes des tutorés ainsi que sur leurs propres représentations et leur compétence scripturale. / The most common service for college students from CEGEP who have writting difficulties in French is tutoring. This institutional service is offered by writing centers. Few researchers have looked at the tutoring offered by these centers. The present research aims to describe and understand how tutors see their role and methods through which they seek to support the tutees in writing. Drawing inspiration from the literature on the subject, we operationalized a definition of tutoring to situate the tutors' representations. Then, we listed the pedagogical and didactic devices likely to be used during tutoring sessions. Based on this, we designed a questionnaire that was completed by 116 tutors from 12 colleges. Descriptive analyses were carried out. As this study seeks a deeper understanding, we target from those analyses questions to be explored during interviews. Thus, semi-structured interviews were conducted with six tutors of various profiles. Content analyses were conducted. The quantitative and qualitative data analyses revealed that tutors see themselves as learners who primarily provide academic and motivational support. Their tutor-learner posture influences how they relate to their tutees and support them. To help tutees in writing, tutors use grammar and correction devices. They base their choice of devices on the expectations of the writing centers, the requests of the tutees and their own representations and scriptural competence.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / While a writing center tutor may view her role as a coach, a commentator, and a counselor, the tutor actually serves as scaffolding, a temporary, supportive replacement of the processes more experienced writers can manage alone without a tutor, namely, the metacognitive processes of self-assessing, self-monitoring, and self-motivating. Metacognition then becomes the essential factor in adapting writing center practices into the composition classroom. By re-conceptualizing the three roles of a writing center tutor and re-visioning the classroom into a more “pure” learning space, tutor-teachers improve students’ writing skills, increase their engagement, and redirect students’ focus toward the writing process rather than the grade. To demonstrate the efficacy of this adapted writing center approach in the composition classroom, I created an authentic, challenging project in which the pre-project activities, task design, work process, and reflection assignment enact my proposed theory. By adopting this approach, tutor-teachers ultimately empower students and design compositional tasks that act as a catalyst for transforming the way students understand themselves as writers and as students.