The Tutoring Book - California State University, Sacramento

Response in the Multicultural Composition Classroom: Dissensus—A Dream (Deferred),” Carrie Shively
Leverenz also explores this deficiency. She states that “although (early collaborative) pedagogy does
give students practice in how to become members of established knowledge-making communities, it does
not give them a mechanism for critiquing those communities” (2). How to teach this ability to question
the institution in which one operates is keeping theorists everywhere awake at night. Luckily for us, as
writing center tutors, we are inclined to encourage this kind of questioning, whether we mean to or not.
Because of our ‘in-between’ role—not quite instructors, but not quite devoid of all authority—the
collaborative environment we create will naturally be a place where standards and value systems are
challenged. Collaboration at its roots encourages questioning because people share their systems of
thought and in this transaction, thinking changes. We do not need to become experts in the disciplines of
our tutees, but rather become experts in sharing and receiving knowledge, for in order for collaboration to
really work, both parties must come to value the knowledge of the other. If one contributor is the expert
in everything, it is not collaboration, just another classroom.
Perhaps to answer our question of how exactly our tutors should be trained we should consider
why we have a writing center at Sac State in the first place. In general, we think it is fairly safe to say that
most of the tutors in our writing center are tutors because they feel that writing is an important process
that students should learn, and believe that through discussing the process of writing with a peer, students
can become better writers and more confident thinkers. Through approaching the concept of the writing
center with respect for the discipline of writing and for the learning process of students, we should not
feel the need to convert our center into a biology or history tutoring center. Providing an environment that
values collaboration and shared experience and expects students to be responsible and active learners in
their own writing process will encourage learning among both tutor and tutee in a way that allows both to
succeed in and out of the institution.
Works Cited
Leverenz, Carrie Shively. “Peer Response in the Multicultural Composition Classroom: Dissensus—A
Dream (Deferred).” Journal of Advanced Composition 14.1 (1994): 167- 86.
Lunsford, Andrea. “Collaboration, Control, and the Idea of a Writing Center.” The St. Martin’s
Sourcebook for Writing Tutors, 3 rd ed. Ed. Christina Murphy and Steve Sherwood. Boston: Bedford/St.
Martin’s, 2008.
McAndrew, Donald A. and Thomas J. Reigstad. Tutoring Writing: A Practical Guide for Conferences.
Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 2001.
Moore Howard, Rebecca. "Collaborative Pedagogy." A Guide to Composition Pedagogies. Ed. Gary
Tate, Amy Rupiper, and Kurt Schick. New York: Oxford UP, 2000. 54-70.
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