The Tutoring Book - California State University, Sacramento

The Value of Writing Center Tutors as Writing Tutors
127
Laura West and Beth Pearsall
Spring 2009
Current pedagogy attempts to define effective practices in writing centers in response to the
perceived potential of this ‘other’ space. Operating outside institutionally imposed expectations, but
charged with supporting the less powerful individuals within that institution, tutors and writing center
administrators are confronted with a tremendous challenge: support the ‘man’ or fight the ‘man?’ Tutors
find themselves at the center of a tug-of-war as theorists vie to define their methods and rescue writing
instruction from its quandary of whether to focus on teaching standards or honoring diversity. Much of
this discussion stems from differing views on what the purpose of a writing center and, more specifically,
a tutor are. In particular, theorists (and practitioners in our class) do not agree on the basic tenets of how a
writing center should be structured: most basically, in what subject areas tutors should be trained.
Although this seems like a fairly basic question (i.e. we are writing tutors, so shouldn’t we be trained in
writing?), it actually poses a subject for much discussion in the world of theory. Most notably, this
discussion plays out in the debate between having discipline-specific tutors that focus on particular areas
of study and generalized tutors who are trained in the discipline of writing.
The first step we wish to take in order to enter into this conversation is to establish a vocabulary
with which to discuss this issue, and, in so doing give a sense of the purpose of this paper. There is no
reasonable distinction between what has been described as a “discipline-specific” tutor and a
“generalized” tutor. A “discipline-specific” tutor is trained in a specific discipline. So too is the
“generalized” tutor. The “generalized” tutor is trained in the discipline of writing and will for our
purposes be called a writing-specific tutor, a term that we feel more effectively captures the expertise of
tutors working in most writing centers today. Furthermore, this nomenclature is more appropriate for
those who staff writing centers, the purpose of which is to tutor students on writing-specific tasks.
In Tutoring Writing: A Practical Guide for Conferences, Donald McAndrew and Thomas
Reigstad propose that tutoring is best performed by tutors with specialized training in the disciplines of
their tutees. This proposal is based on a 1993 study performed by Jean Kiedaish and Sue Dinitz in which
they observe that “students writing papers for upper-level courses would be best served by carefully
trained tutors with knowledge of the discipline,” a position McAndrew and Reigstad support (McAndrew
72). The authors argue that although generalized tutors can help writers in all disciplines well enough,
“well-trained tutors who are knowledgeable about a discipline can be of even more help because they can
read like the audience for the piece, in this case experts in the discipline” (73). Further, although
McAndrew and Reigstad recognize the benefits of specialized and writing-specific tutors, they pose that
“the best would be to acknowledge areas of expertise among all tutors and cluster that expertise into
specialty teams based on academic areas” (73). They conclude that a writing center would function best
if it were broken up into schools of study, like “colleges in a university” (73). This, they assert, would
allow tutors to have a greater knowledge base of the subject matter students are writing about as well as
the conventions of discourse expected in the discipline.
Although the benefit of discipline-specific tutors might be seen as their ability to converse more
confidently with the tutee about the area of study, we might conclude from this, however, that the
discipline-specific tutor is in greater danger than a writing-specific tutor of focusing on content rather
than the writing process of the tutee. This concern is echoed again and again by theorists attempting to
address perceived problems of writing centers. If North’s contention is correct and tutors improve writers
and not texts, then discipline-specific tutoring can have a negative impact on tutoring sessions.
Potentially, these tutors could harm a tutee’s development as a writer by focusing on helping her or him
create a text that is adequate in regards to content, instead of helping the tutee become a more successful
writer over all. In the seemingly never-ending battle to discourage academia from seeing the writing
center as a “fix-it” shop, there is a de-emphasis on grammar and other mechanical concerns. To tell tutees
that we won’t fix your grammar but we’ll be happy to fix your content will certainly impair efforts to