• Muriel Harris, editor

...INSIDE...

Disciplinary Writing, Disciplinary Environments: Ethnographic Exploration within Writing Centers

• Kristin Walker 1

Reviews of Writing Center Resource Manual, Ed. Bobbie Bayliss Silk

• Patricia Gillikin, Bethany Fox,

Writing Center Ethics:

“‘Special Needs’ Students

and Writing Centers”

Introduction

Establishing a new writing center is not an easy task: budgets necessitate approval, tutors have to be hired, space has to be acquired, staff training strategies need to be implemented, departmental/university politics need to be understood, etc. Establishing a disciplinary writing center involves all of the issues listed above, plus the added dimension of learning about that discipline, specific writing needs students in the discipline have, genres of the discipline, and even the culture of the discipline and its impact on all of these concerns listed. Even though university-wide writing centers and those that serve a variety of students address the cultures, politics, and needs of many disciplines, the discipline-specific writing center presents the opportunity for a heightened focus on these areas.

As disciplinary writing centers continue to spring up in colleges and universities, more attention needs to be paid to their success and survival, since these centers face different circumstances than centers that serve a greater variety of students. For example, our writing center in the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Department at the University of South Carolina (USC) was established for many reasons. One of them was the increased focus in engineering education on both integration of engineering courses with other disciplines and expanded Accreditation Board of Engineering Technologies (ABET) 2000 Criteria which

emphasize the importance of communication skills. Our writing center’s survival has depended on how well we help accomplish these specific goals.

Among the many tasks our writing center and other disciplinary writing centers must attend to, one of them is studying disciplinary writing. Learning more about this writing is a necessary and complicated task, and there is no one “correct” way to do it. Here, I propose that it can be done through various forms of ethnographic exploration. In addition, ethnography can help writing center staff become more familiar with disciplines’ goals and standards (such as mission statements that reflect disciplines’ educational philosophies and ways those philosophies impact education within the discipline). By ethnography, I mean ethnographic research which emphasizes immersion within the community being studied. (See Shirley Brice Heath, Janice Neuleib and Maurice Scharton, and Carmen Werder and Roberta Buck for examples and discussion of ethnographic research and its relationship to writing and writing centers.) The community can be analyzed using a variety of participant-observer techniques such as note-taking, transcript analysis, interviewing, observing and documenting activities within a community, etc. While this is not an exhaustive list of research techniques, it gives an idea of some methods for exploring a community. This ethnographic exploration can take place not only at the initial establishment of a writing center but also throughout the center’s operation, since academic and disciplinary cultures change over time, and disciplinary cultural knowledge has a cumulative effect the longer staff work within a discipline and become accustomed to its characteristics.

Ethnographic exploration: Collecting and interviewing, talking and listening

Collecting and interviewing

When our staff of three (a director and two graduate students) began a writing center in the ECE Department, we were completely unfamiliar with ECE writing. In order to learn more about the discourse strategies of this discipline, we collected past lab reports from several courses taught in the department. At first, our analysis was somewhat unsystematic: we weren’t sure what were effective writing strategies, what were expected/required characteristics, and what were ineffective ones that students should be discouraged from using. What made matters more difficult was that at that time, there were no models or guidelines for learning about disciplinary writing (specifically engineering writing) and connecting that information to writing center practice.

Eventually, we learned about the value of genre theory in both providing a theoretical framework for disciplinary writing study and establishing a means for practical application. Specifically, Carol Berkenkotter and Thomas Huckin’s work Genre Knowledge in Disciplinary Communication, Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis’s The Powers of Literacy, and Dorothy Winsor’s Writing Like an Engineer: A Rhetorical Education provided guidance on both the theory and practice behind genre analysis. From these works and others, we learned that genres are social and dynamic, that they are composed of both form and content, and that they are part of and constructed by a community and therefore have a situated quality about them. The politics of disciplinary communication became evident as well: using certain discourse features gives novice student writers entrance into their discipline’s discourse community; not using these features causes these students to be excluded. Implementing generic features, therefore, enables students to attain power within their academic situation. Strategies such as using models during tutoring sessions and analyzing professor comments on students’ lab reports are tools consultants can use to help students adjust to writing unfamiliar discourse.

Both collecting written examples of this discipline’s discourse and interviewing course professors helped us to learn about ECE discourse strategies and the expectations behind the ways professors teach writing in ECE. Knowing professors’ expectations has allowed the ECE Writing Center to assimilate itself into the ECE Department more easily than if we had arrived with the mindset that we were coming in to “convert the natives.” We knew from the beginning that we had valuable ideas and strategies to contribute, based on our experience working in writing centers and studying composition theory and practice, but we realized also that we needed help from the members of the ECE community. After all, we were not there to help students communicate within the discourse community of Composition and Rhetoric; we were there to help students adjust to writing within ECE. Our presence within the department allowed us to realize how very different the two discipline’s cultures and discourse strategies are, and these differences prompted us to research more about ECE writing’s genres and ways to communicate genre knowledge in writing center consultations.

Talking and listening

Our realization that we couldn’t simply transplant ourselves, our philosophies, and our practices from the English Department to ECE prompted us to recognize the value of talking in order to learn more about the ECE environment. By talking, I mean mainly informal conversation that occurs just walking down the hall or briefly conversing with professors in the writing center or in their offices. This accepted way of giving and receiving information when conducting ethnographic research is one way to gain knowledge about a community.¹ Such communication is similar to Stephen North’s term lore, the concept that talk and informal discussion build up a body of information that becomes part of a discipline’s knowledge base. During these conversations, we usually don’t have our notepads and pens poised to begin taking notes. Instead, we talk spontaneously about general concerns, departmental events, or writing center activities. Such talking has yielded even more information about the ECE environment, information that has become crucial to our survival as a writing center.

For example, through conversation with engineering professors, we learned that engineering education in general has been moving toward two goals that directly relate to the writing center: integration with other disciplines and emphasizing communication skills more through ABET 2000 Criteria. Engineering educators would like for students to have a more well-rounded education that involves other disciplines besides engineering. They believe students will be more equipped to work in a diverse workforce doing a variety of tasks if they have a more comprehensive educational background.² As a reflection of these changing engineering education needs, ABET has issued new guidelines which emphasize skills engineering undergraduates should have when they graduate. (See “A Framework for the Assessment of Engineering Education,” published by the Joint Task Force on Engineering Education Assessment.) Included in these guidelines are “communication skills” and “teamwork.” The writing center can assist with students’ acquiring both skills, since the center fosters communication skills as well as teamwork through individual and team consultations.

When our writing center first began, we had a vague idea of the importance of cross-disciplinary instruction and ABET 2000 Criteria within ECE, but we were unaware of the large role they played in the desire to establish a writing program. Through informal conversations in the hall, talking in staff meetings, and discussing engineering education with the department chair, we began to learn how far-reaching these communication goals were for the department.

Two other issues we have discovered through conversation within the ECE environment are the continued application of business and education philosophies and the concept and practice of visual literacy. Both have implications for ECE Writing Center practice. Because the field of engineering is tied so closely with business, many times business and other non-academic philosophies can be applied to engineering education to create a unique business-education philosophical hybrid. Robert Pettus, the current chair of the ECE Department, studies business philosophies regularly and applies them when possible to the operation of the department. Recently, he has applied Carnegie Mellon’s Software Engineering Institute’s Capability Maturity Model to the operation of the ECE lab courses. The model involves a five-point scale (Initial, Repeatable, Defined, Managed, and Optimizing) which aids in assessing the maturity of software development within an organization. The last level, Optimizing, indicates the highest level of success regarding capability and maturity.³ Pettus, in a recent article for the center’s newsletter The Write Connection, states:

Prior to writing this article, Pettus had talked several times with us about ways the writing center could become involved in materializing this philosophy within the department. Once we became familiar with the philosophy and Pettus’s goals, we were able to begin thinking about ways the center could be involved more in the departmental advisement process, through reading and responding to the content of students’ writing. This close connection between the writing center and meeting the department’s needs has helped solidify the writing center in part of the department’s mission.

Finally, through observation and just listening—two other commonly accepted practices within ethnographic research—much information can be gained by disciplinary writing center staff. If you were visiting our writing center and took a break for a few minutes to wander the halls of faculty offices, chances are that you would witness communication taking place between faculty and students. Most of the faculty has white boards in their offices. Many times, instead of attempting to explain an engineering problem using oral communication alone, the professor will go to the white board and begin sketching a circuit. Not much is said during this time: the professor draws; the student watches. After the professor is done drawing, he or she points to the board and explains some principles or processes. The whole communicative situation is very visual.

Such a process is not unusual in engineering, which relies on diagrams, computer images, and pictures to communicate. But this emphasis was new to those of us in English, who, as students, did not gather around white boards in their professors’ offices to visually learn a literary or pedagogical principle. We quickly realized the power of visual literacy within the ECE culture and began using it in the writing center whenever possible. We, too, have white boards within the center, and we use them to illustrate the relationships among parts of a lab report, to attempt to understand an engineering concept, or to jot down ideas as they occur within a consulting session. In addition, we have tried to emphasize the importance of talking in the visual learning process and have encouraged teaching assistants, for example, to use this pedagogical strategy in their classes. Since visual literacy is an integral part of education within ECE, we have tried to incorporate visual learning strategies into writing instruction. In addition, by emphasizing visual literacy in the writing center, the consultants demonstrate that visual communication can be important during the writing process.

³ For more information on the Capability Maturity Model, see Mark

C. Paul, Charles V. Weber, Bill Curtis, and Mary Beth Chrissis’s book The Capability Maturity Model: Guidelines for Improving the Software Process.

Baum, Eleanor, et al., eds. Engineering Education for a Changing World. American Society for Engineering Education, 1994.

Berkenkotter, Carol, and Thomas Huckin. Genre Knowledge in Disciplinary Communication: Cognition/Culture/Power. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1995.

Bordogna, Joseph, Eli Fromm, and Edward Ernst. “Engineering Education: Innovation through Integration.” Journal of Engineering Education 82.1 (1993): 3-8.

Coffey, Amanda, and Paul Atkinson. Making Sense of Qualitative Data: Complementary Research Strategies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1996.

Cope, Bill, and Mary Kalantzis. The Powers of Literacy: A Genre Approach to Teaching Writing. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh P, 1993.

Ernst, Edward. “Workplace Changes and Engineering Education Reform.” Proceedings of Frontiers in Education, Salt Lake City, 6-9 November 1996. Ed. Magdy Iskander, et al. Salt Lake City: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, 1996. 882-85.

Heath, Shirley Brice. Ways with Words. New York: Cambridge UP, 1983.

Joint Task Force on Engineering Education Assessment. “A Framework for the Assessment of Engineering Education.” ASEE Prism May-June 1996: 19-26.

Metts, Stephanie. Personal interview. 3 March 1997.

Neuleib, Janice Witherspoon, and Maurice A. Scharton. “Writing Others, Writing Ourselves: Ethnography and the Writing Center.” Intersections: Theory-Practice in the Writing Center. Eds. Joan Mullin and Ray Wallace. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1994. 54-67.

North, Stephen. The Making of Knowledge in Composition. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 1987.

Patton, Michael. “Fieldwork Strategies and Observation Methods.” Qualitative Evaluation and Research Methods. 2^nd ed. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1990. 199-276.

Paul, Mark C., Charles V. Weber, Bill Curtis, and Mary Beth Chrissis, eds. The Capability Maturity Model: Guidelines for Improving the Software Process. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1995.

Pettus, Robert. “Toward a More Capable and Mature ECE Department.” The Write Connection 3.2 (1997): 1.

Walker, Kristin. “Assessing Students’ Genre Knowledge in an Engineering Writing Center: An Analysis of Sophomore Lab Reports in Electrical and Computer Engineering.” Diss. University of South Carolina, 1997.

Werder, Carmen, and Roberta Buck. “Assessing Writing Conference Talk: An Ethnographic Method.” Writing Center Perspectives. Eds. Byron Stay, Christina Murphy, and Eric Hobson. Emmitsburg, MD: National Writing Centers Association Press, 1995. 168-178.

Winsor, Dorothy. Writing Like an Engineer: A Rhetorical Education. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1996.

The Writing Center Resource Manual, ed. by Bobbie Bayliss Silk. Emmitsburg, MD: NWCA Press, 1998. (To order, send checks to Carl Glover, Managing Editor; NWCA Press; P.O. Box 7007; 16300 Old Emmitsburg Road, Emmitsburg, MD 21727. $15 + $2 per book for shipping and handling. For information, e-mail: glover@msmary.edu; phone: 301-447-5356.)

Reviewed by: Patricia Gillikin, Bethany Fox, and Kathy Zirckel, College of West Virginia (Beckley, WV)

Eavesdropping: Writing consultants as users of the Manual

(IV.2) is not directed to an administrative audience, is not as contextual as the rest of the chapters, and takes a directive (rather than suggestive) tone. All of these differences make this chapter much less useful or appropriate for this type of manual. Thus, there is a fine line between the open-ended advice provided by the majority of The Manual and the directive commands provided by the ESL chapter. While we much prefer the former, a few more concrete examples would enhance the current material.

Surprisingly, The Manual also contains a number of proofreading errors and occasional discrepancies between chapter references to Appendix items and the Appendices themselves. While we understand the negative implications of a grammar-heavy writing pedagogy, we are concerned that these errors will not represent our field to outside readers (such as university administrators) in the best light. In a couple of cases, these minor errors lead to some confusion or an inability to locate a source. Finally, a few suggestions for additions to The Manual: 1.) Appendix items listed in the Table of Contents and more clearly labeled (the word “safety” should be in the title for the safety self-assessment, for instance), 2.) A sample budget in the Appendix, and 3.) An index that cross-references the entire work.

What’s here for the graduate student

As noted above, The Manual’s success is due in large part to its consistent and careful attention to the innumerable contexts in which writing centers operate. However, one perspective missing from this Manual’s current manifestation is the graduate student administrator, as well as any serious attention to graduate TA-tutors or training. While perhaps not common, graduate students do take on administrative duties, ranging from clerical assistance to directorships. Furthermore, these are often opportunities for interested graduate students to do advanced research or to pursue academic interests related to the work of a writing center. As such, they need as much support and as many resources as possible. However, while The Manual addresses a variety of administrative concerns and devotes an entire chapter to research, it does not address or even acknowledge the unique position of a graduate student who is in the writing center—not to tutor or to get help with a paper—but to direct, lead, and/or conduct research. The Manual addresses graduate students as writing center clients (see, for example, chapter IV.3, “Working With Graduate Students,” which could more accurately be titled “Tutoring Graduate Students”) and mentions graduate students as tutors. Certainly, there is useful information for the latter group, not the least of which is “Philosophy, Methods, and Ethics” (II.1), a nice overview of basic pedagogies and typical conflicts faced by tutors and/or administrators. However, in most cases, the graduate student reader must work hard to find applicable information, usually by extrapolating useful material from a chapter designed with a different audience and purpose in mind.

“Assessing Needs, Identifying an Institutional Home, and Developing a Proposal” (II.2) may be useful to a graduate student tutor interested in the complex network of institutional entities and personalities that determine the fate of a writing center. Other chapters, such as “Establishing and Maintaining Writing Centers in Middle, Elementary, and Preschool Settings” (II.3) and “The High School Writing Center: An Identity of Its Own” (II.4) will appeal to graduate student tutors interested in secondary and/or elementary education careers. Finally, Paula Gillespie and Jon Olson’s repeated claim in “Tutor Training” (III.3) that tutors are writers, too—and thus constantly learning themselves—is profitable to both experienced and inexperienced graduate tutors. But in all of these cases, the chapters are written for those with decision-making power. As such, it is unlikely that many graduate student tutors will take the time to read through The Resource Manual when the rewards are relatively few and difficult to reap.

My own response to chapters and the manual is contextual, of course. Besides the general statements about our context in the introduction, there are some important changes in the writing center I administer that influence my reading. Changes in the composition program here, among them a merger back into the English Department, have wrought changes in how we are staffed. In the past, the graduate TA staff were thoroughly trained in composition pedagogy and had at least a year’s experience teaching composition in their own classrooms before they came to the Writing Center. A series of changes has led to this year’s TAs being largely inexperienced in the classroom, and with far less composition-specific training.

Therefore, I found the chapter on training quite helpful. Still, the emphasis in the chapter seemed to focus primarily on peer tutor-training. Graduate TAs might well be unusual in writing centers, and much of what applies to peer tutors might apply to graduate tutors as well, but graduate TAs are in many ways more like colleagues than students, so much of what can (and should) be done with peer tutors does not translate. I can and will work through some of these differences myself, but it would have been nice to have some of this addressed within the chapters more directly.

Another part of our context has to do with changes that are about to take place next year. These include the aforementioned shift from quarters to semesters and implementation of a writing-intensive requirement that will mandate writing across the curriculum in many departments which have not in the past emphasized writing very much. Therefore, we anticipate major changes in use of our Writing Center starting next year. I will need to propose changes in the Writing Center to accommodate these.

For this reason, Jeanne Simpson’s chapter on developing a proposal proved useful to my need to propose changes. Again, I would like to have seen more details and specifics about revising a center, as opposed to starting from scratch or completely starting over. But I found some of those details in Penny Bird’s chapter on assessment and reporting. While I have established a good database system for collecting information as students sign in and out of the Writing Center, I found her use of tutoring portfolios and her discussion of how to use collected data helpful. Katherine Fisher’s Monopoly game trope entertained, while her article on budgeting helped provide some insight into how to make requests for changes in a writing center budget that I will probably use in my proposals.

Final thoughts

The most useful parts of this manual ultimately may be the references to further information in most of the articles, along with Appendix A, which is an extensive bibliography. We especially appreciate Joe Law’s chapter that included an annotated bibliography, and would recommend this for all chapters in any extensions or revisions of the manual. We also look forward to that aspect of the manual—its extensibility, both from NWCA Press and by our adding materials specific to our Center and our context. We will add what we need, as we expect NWCA Press will do what it can to fill gaps and keep the information current. We expect that the three-ring binder The Manual resides in will grow quite fat in the next few years as we use the manual and its format to meet our own challenges.

The student climbs white stone steps up to the red-brick building and pushes open the massive door, walking quickly with squeaking sneakers across the marble floor. She thinks she might be late. She glances briefly at the wooden clock suspended from the rotunda-like ceiling, an ugly clock very much out of place in all that domed and columned splendor, but which matches most of the other clocks in the building.

The girl passes through a set of mahogany doors and enters a room filled with hard, spindle-backed chairs and long, heavy tables, a room devoted to 24-hour studying and filled with the restless hush of students poring over texts, notebooks, calculators, worksheets, bills, letters from home. She walks more slowly through the silent murmuring, through the stares of the other students. They all know where she’s going. Faced with the final set of doors, the girl sighs and pushes their polished brass handles. Walking through, she says to the assistant, “Hi, I have a ten o’clock appointment?” But she’s thinking, “I really don’t want to be here. I can handle this on my own. I’ve dealt with this by myself for years. I don’t need their help. I’m only here because someone is making me come. Maybe it will be over soon. I hope.”

No, you imaginative reader, she’s not about to be the test subject of some human mind control experiment, and she’s not going to be led through the dark and scary realms of her subconscious by some loony psychiatrist. She’s going to the writing center, and she is dreading that soon her worst nightmares will come true. She fears that the tutor will either “rip her paper

Learning to listen

to shreds” with criticism, while he displays his superior gifts of writing, or worse, the tutor simply will not care about helping her learn to write a little better. Maybe he is just there for the paycheck. This student thinks she’s doomed. I know how this student feels; I’ve been there myself, and now that I’m a tutor, I’ve learned how important it is to be sympathetic to the student, and to listen.

I think most of the students who come to the writing center are concerned about the same things as the student I described above. Most of the students are truly conscientious, they really want help, and they are worried that the tutors will ruthlessly criticize their work. Many times they are shy and reluctant to talk. They simply slide their papers to the tutor across the table and look up with thinly-veiled anxiety in their eyes. That’s when the tutor has to “listen between the lines.” Often the student is not going to come out and tell the tutor what kind of help she needs, but really wants to be helped all the same. This type of student needs a sympathetic ear, an encouraging word, and non-threatening suggestions.

Looking back at the beginning of my first year as a tutor, I realize that I often dominated the tutorial, instead of allowing the student to talk more or listening to what the student was trying to tell me. The tutorial would go something like this: I would read the draft and then immediately make suggestions, without even asking any questions about what the student wanted the paper to do or convey. I would say, “I think that here you might want to think about developing your ideas. You know what I mean? [no pause] You might want to discuss X here and Y down here. Do you see what I’m saying? [no pause] The reason I think so is because you’ve listed X, Y, and Z in your introduction. It makes more sense this way. I think that this might do well here and don’t you agree?”

The poor student could not get a word in edgewise. Now I can imagine the thoughts that probably ran through her mind: “But that’s not what I’m interested in. My professor doesn’t want to hear about that. I don’t have enough information on X and Y. I wanted to talk about something totally different! This isn’t helping at all. My paper must really be awful if I haven’t even written the right things. NO, I don’t see what you mean!”

Then I started thinking about what I would have liked tutors to say to me when I came to the writing center for help. I did not want to be talked at ; I wanted to discuss my problems, but I sometimes felt intimidated by what I saw as the tutor’s superior knowledge. Sometimes I would leave with the tutor’s remarks rattling around in my head, thinking that I had not really been helped because I had not been able to articulate what problems I was having with my paper. The tutor had never asked me; he had told me. The last thing I wanted was to have someone’s opinion forced on me. I realized that this was the last thing that I needed to do to a student.

Gradually I came to see that I needed to ask more open-ended questions, not questions asking whether or not the student agreed with my interpretation of her work. Now I not only ask to see the assignment sheet, or at least for specific details about the requirements, but I also ask questions about previous suggestions the professor may have made. This gets the student talking about writing style and “chronic” writing problems, which are things the student may feel insecure about. I ask, “What do you want your reader to learn from your paper?” Often I’ve found that I only need to listen and detect the student’s insecurity, then give an encouraging word.

This tutorial is memorable because Daisy also reminded me of myself as a freshman, when a word of encouragement meant so much to me. After that, I found myself focusing on listening and encouraging. I asked myself, “What is the student’s real concern, beyond just the paper?”

Next semester, I hope to be able to quell some of the students’ fears, to give more encouragement and less of my own opinion or influence. I’ve learned to work with what the student wants to do. The lessons I’ve learned will help me become not only a better tutor, but a better student, reporter and colleague.

Calendar for Writing Centers Associations

_{Feb. 3-6: Southeastern Writing Center} Contact: Sally Crisp, University April 15-18: National Writing Centers _{Association, in Charleston, SC} Writing Center, Dept. of Association, in Bloomington, IN _{Contact: Tom Waldrep, Director,} Rhetoric and Writing, U. of Contact: Ray Smith, Campus _{The Writing Center, The} Arkansas at Little Rock, 2801 S. Writing Program, Franklin 008, _{Medical University of South} University, Little Rock, AR Indiana University, _{Carolina, AA 113 Harper} 72204; fax: 501-569-8279; e-Bloomington, IN 47405; phone: _{Student Center, 45 Courtenay} mail: sccrisp@ualr.edu 812-855-4928; e-mail:

Street, Charleston, SC 29401. ^{nwca99@indiana.edu; http://}

_{Fax: 843-792-9179; e-mail:} March 20: Middle Atlantic Writing www.indiana.edu/~nwca99. _{motenb@musc.edu.} Centers Association, in Dover, DE November 5-6: Pacific Coast Writing

_{Feb. 26: Northern California Writing} Contact: Renee Young, English Centers Association, in San _{Centers Association, in Redding,} Dept., Delaware State Univer-Bernardino, CA _CA sity, N. DuPont Hwy. Dover, DE Contact: Carol Peterson _{Contact: Maria Madruga,} 19904. For further information: Haviland, English Dept., _{Writing Center Director, Shasta} http://www.english.udel.edu/wc/ California State University, San _{College, P.O. Box 496006,} mawca (or) ryoung@dsc.edu. Bernardino, 5500 Univ. Pkwy., _{Redding, CA 96049-6009.} San Bernardino, CA 92407; _{Phone: 530-225-4689; e-mail:} April 10: Northeast Writing Centers phone: 909- 880 5833; fax: 909_{mmadruga@shastacollege.edu.} Association, in Lewiston, ME 880-7086; cph@csusb.edu

March 5-6: South Central Writing ^{Dean of Freshmen, Connecticut} Centers Association, in Little ^{College, 270 Mohegan Avenue,}

_{Rock, AR} New London, CT 06320. E-mail:
tpamm@conncoll.edu.

“Special needs” students and writing centers

And beyond these concerns for the relative significance of cultural, gendered, or racial features that should be shared by tutors and students, writing centers must also grapple with the issue of how important specialized training and/or specialized knowledge is to successful writing conferences. If a student with disabilities—be they physical, such as blindness/deafness, or cognitive, such as dyslexia or attention deficit disorder—comes into the writing center for help, for example, what should the writing center do? Should this student conference only with a tutor who has been specifically trained to understand and work with disabled students? Should all tutors be trained to work with such students? Should the student be allowed to work with tutors who have not received specialized training? Should the student be referred to other campus units or services which are better prepared to work with the disabled? Cheryl Hofstetter Towns addresses some of these questions in her article, “Serving the Disabled in the Writing Center,” arguing that writing centers should serve disabled students “because serve is what we’re here to do, for all students. It’s our underlying principle” (15). Even if tutors have not been specifically trained to work with physically disabled students, says Towns, there is much that the writing center can do. She recommends such steps as locating other campus support services, starting a reader/taping service, providing access to writing center computers, and fostering self-advocacy among the disabled. In response to the question, “But are all these ‘special favors’ fair to the other students?” Towns says, “The best answer is ‘Yes.’ Fairness is an individual matter” (15).

Brian Huot thinks that extending such special treatment to students with learning disabilities is ethical as well, since the special needs of LD students often require a unique, individualized approach that is fully in keeping with the overall mission of the center. Describing his experience with Charlotte, a “special learner” with severe epilepsy, he argues that LD students can profit a great deal from the kind of intensive help and extensive attention that would not normally be given to other students in the writing center.

One marked difference in working with a special learner such as Charlotte and working with a nonspecial learner is the need for the tutor to provide a structural framework within which the special learner can function. Charlotte lacked experience and know-how about what needed to be done and how to do it. She also required someone to tell her when things should be done, and she needed someone to supervise her while she worked. This is quite a different approach than working with students who have no special needs as learners and writers, since often our immediate job is to make the student take charge of her own writing and achieve a certain degree of independence. With the special learner we must walk a fine line where we supply the necessary structure without usurping the student’s ownership of the task or text (10-11).

More recently, Cornelius Cosgrove has reviewed current literature on learning disabilities and come to the same conclusion as Brainard: “[W]hen working with learning-disabled students, writing instructors who make use of conferencing should not change their pedagogical approach in any significant way” (“Conferencing” 100).

Where does the “right” ethical decision lie, then? Disabled students—of whatever stripe or character—are different from the non-disabled, but does that mean that they should be treated differently in the writing center? Do they deserve special considerations and specialized tutoring? It seems there is little agreement about the answers to these questions, and that makes it a bit more difficult to offer advice. Ultimately, I think writing centers tutors have to listen to the experts, listen to their students, and do the best they can with the resources they have available. But it is especially important that tutors be fully aware of what those resources are. If that means contacting the disabled student services center on your campus and finding out how to coordinate your services with them, do it. If that means contacting the ESL department or an ESL specialist and arranging for training workshops, do it. The best way to tutor students, particularly those with special needs, is to be the best informed tutor you can be, and that will often mean knowing something about teaching units and academic services outside the center itself.

Brainard, David. “Tutoring and Learning Disabilities.” Writing Lab Newsletter 17.9 (May 1993): 15-16.

Cosgrove, Cornelius. “Conferencing for the ‘Learning-Disabled’: How We Might Really Help.” Dynamics of the Writing Conference: Social and Cognitive Interaction. Eds. Thomas Flynn and Mary King. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1993. 95-102.

Huot, Brian. “Working with Charlotte: A Close Look at Tutoring the Special Learner.” Writing Lab Newsletter 13.3 (November 1988): 9-12.

Neff, Julie. “Learning Disabilities and the Writing Center.” Intersections: Theory-Practice in the Writing Center. Eds. Joan A. Mullin and Ray Wallace. Urbana: NCTE, 1994. 81-95.

Powers, Judith. “Bending the ‘Rules’: Diversifying the Model Conference for the ESL Writer.” Writing Lab Newsletter 17.6 (February 1993): 1-3, 8.

Towns, Cheryl Hofstetter. “Serving the Disabled in the Writing Center.” Writing Lab Newsletter

Talk about talk on WCenter

Listserv for graduate students in writing centers

Kendra Banks Perry announces the birth of a new discussion list for graduate assistants in writing center administrative or supervisory positions.

Anyone who would like to join this list may visit our web page: http://www. andrews.edu/~banks/wc.htm or e-mail me directly at banks@andrews.edu

Given the lead time the Writing Lab Newsletter needs to bring each issue to our mailboxes on a regular schedule, I play an interesting rhetorical game in this month’s NWCA News column. I speak as NWCA’s “official” voice a full month before Al DeCiccio hands me the President’s gavel following the NWCA Executive Board meeting at the NCTE conference in Nashville, November 21 (I will summarize and comment on that meeting in January’s column). At the same time, however, as you read these words, that administrative transition has occurred. As Alice says, “It’s getting curiouser and curiouser.” Writing then as pseudo-President, an interloper or bounder of sorts, I offer the following:

The past month or two has been busy period in the writing center community. In addition to winding down the Fall term, our colleagues in the Midwest and Rocky Mountain Writing Centers Associations assembled at their annual conferences—both of which I hear were quite successful. Likewise, the National Peer Tutoring Conference, held in Plattsburg, NY allowed many of our colleagues and our students to meet and share their knowledge and experience. The NCTE convention in Nashville continues to provide a great forum for showcasing writing centers to a diverse group of educators. NWCA’s booth, while not as glitzy as many in the exhibit hall, is a hot spot.

The past few weeks have also seen many of us working hard to finish and mail abstracts for the 4th National Writing Centers Conference to be held at Indiana University, 15-18 April. Ray Smith, Conference Chair, and his colleagues from the East Central WCA report that everything is in place and the meeting will continue the tradition of excellence and fun maintained by the previous NWCA national conferences. It’s time to start making plans to attend. IU’s location in the college-dense Midwest should ensure that this meeting includes large numbers of students, thus adding to the richness of the dialogue I look forward to engaging in. Spring in Indiana is beautiful.

Writing Center Director Willamette University

Please send curriculum vitae, a letter of application addressing the relationship between teaching and writing and your vision for a writing center in the liberal arts setting (not more than 10 pages), and the names of three references to Professor Michael Strelow, English Department, Attention: Writing Center Director Position, Willamette University, 900 State Street, Salem, Oregon 97301; (mstrelow@Willamette.edu). We are an equal Opportunity Employer and embrace excellence through diversity.

Finally, I wish to thank Al DeCiccio for his stewardship during the past year. His ability to juggle many tasks without ever seeming to get flustered made his presidency particularly productive. With his guidance and prodding, several long-term NWCA projects—particularly NWCA writing center accreditation—are reaching closure. He also had the honor of making NWCA international by moving that we admit the European Writing Centers Association as a regional affiliate of NWCA. Al’s only disappointment was that his beloved Boston Red Sox didn’t make it to the World Series. Please let Al know how much his efforts have meant to NWCA as a whole and to those who have benefited directly from his tireless work this past year.

Following in his and the previous Presidents’ footsteps will be a challenge. And, so I begin. . . .

Kellogg Summer Institute

Kellogg Institute for the Training and Certification of Developmental Educators, at Appalachian State University, in Boone, NC, is holding its twentieth summer institute from June 25-July 23, 1999. The four-week series of seminars covers current topics for operation of developmental and learning assistance programs, and graduate credit is optional.

For information and applications, write

or call:

THEW RITING LAB

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