The Tutoring Book - California State University, Sacramento

expectation of their disciplines more clearly through discussion. If we come to a session aware that there
are other ways of thinking and knowing in various colleges around campus, then we can help students
become more knowledgeable members of the academic writing community, as well as the language and
knowledge community they wish to belong to, no matter what community that is.
In her essay, “Collaboration, Control, and the Idea of a Writing Center,” Andrea Lunsford
advocates for a writing center based in collaboration, specifically “collaboration that is attuned to
diversity” (Lunsford 51). From her extensive research, Lunsford enumerates many benefits of
collaborative learning, including enhanced problem solving skills, interdisciplinary thinking, and a
“deeper understanding of others” (49). A collaborative view of the writing center such as this would
capitalize on the benefits of a feminist approach for tutoring described above that “redefines subject
mastery as seeking knowledge on personal terms and in concert with others” (McAndrew 7). Here, the
question is not how do we overcome differences between tutors and tutees, but rather, how do we
capitalize on them. Lunsford connects this benefit to the demands of the workplace by citing reports from
the Labor Department indicating that to be successful in today’s workforce, students “will need to be able
to work with others who are different from them and to learn to negotiate power and control” (52). The
idea that students need to learn to “negotiate power and control” is not new, and the question remains to
be definitively answered if learning happens best in an environment that is teacher-led, student-led, or
defined by power-sharing/decentered authority. Writing center advocates invariably come out on the side
of a decentered authority. When tutors and tutees are both able to approach a tutoring session as learners
and experts, who each have valuable knowledge to contribute to academic discussion, tutoring sessions
can become a place where difference is not simply “dealt with,” but rather where it is what ignites the
academic curiosity and discussion that is necessary for learning to occur.
When tutoring takes place with discipline-specialized tutors, the equal exchange of differing
questions and expertise is lost, for the ownership lays with the tutor, as that is where the knowledge
resides. Tutors would clearly know more about the subject matter and the writing conventions than the
tutee, leaving the tutor in the power position. In tutoring sessions with writing-specific tutors, on the
other hand, knowledge resides in both parties and opportunities to generate new, shared knowledge
emerge, a benefit expressly acknowledged by feminist theory. A writing-specific tutor can offer the kind
of audience that asks the tutee to take authority over the subject she or he is addressing, for in most cases,
the tutee will know more about their content, even if the tutor knows more about the writing process in
general. Instead of offering another audience similar to the instructor, one who knows the content and
conventions better than the student, the writing tutor can provide a much safer space that gives more room
for the tutee to be the expert. This equalizes the subject positions between tutor and tutee, for they both
possess a level of expertise and can therefore work collaboratively as learners. This can allow students to
develop the “voice” feminist theory calls for because it respects the knowledge and worldview of the
tutee, not just the expert tutor or instructor. According to Rebecca Moore Howard, in her essay
“Collaborative Pedagogy,” “students can teach each other; more important, they can discover things that
individually they might not” (59). Howard quotes Lunsford and Ede, who claim that “successful
collaboration … allows not only for ‘group cohesion’ but also for ‘creative conflict’ and the protection of
‘minority views’” (65). When generalized tutors place students as “responsible for their own learning”
and expect them to contribute their own “life experience” in a meaningful way to the session, then
collaboration can be successful because the tutor’s and the tutee’s views are both placed as the “minority
view.” Neither viewpoint is privileged if both come as equals who have expertise in differing areas of
study. They can each contribute and thereby create new knowledge, not just reaffirm the knowledge
supplied by instructors.
Writing center tutoring is based on the idea that collaboration is an effective learning method.
Ideally, collaborative learning decenters authority, reduces the stakes for writing, and fosters growth
through an appreciation of differences. However, this appreciation of difference has not always been the
focus of collaborative learning. According to Lunsford and Ede, “collaborative learning theory has from
its inception failed to challenge traditional concepts of radical individualism and ownership of ideas and
has operated primarily in a traditional and largely hierarchical way” (Howard 61). In her essay “Peer
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