The Tutoring Book - California State University, Sacramento

This interaction accomplished the goals of social constructivism on several levels. As Andrea
Lunsford states, writing centers built on social constructivism will “place control, power, and authority
not in the tutor or the staff, not in the individual student, but in the negotiating group” (52). In the
example of Joel’s reading, no one party had more power than the other. The input from Lord Byron
(through his text), from Joel, and from the tutor all were part of the construction of Joel’s understanding
of the poem. Even the instructor for Joel’s class played a role in creating meaning as Joel reviewed his
lecture notes on the poem from the previous day. All of these pieces work together in order to create a
new text that was more understandable, and ultimately created Joel’s knowledge of the poem.
Techniques for Implementing Social Constructivism
For tutors who want to implement social constructivism into tutor sessions, there are many
techniques that you are probably already addressing that work toward the goals of social constructivism.
If students seem to be struggling with how to start an essay, there is a chance they do not quite understand
the text to which they are responding, and may therefore benefit from collaborative active reading as I
have outlined in the vignette. Collaborative brainstorming during the pre-writing stage is an important
task that can be done during tutoring sessions with the student writer. This strategy will help students gain
better insight through negotiation with the tutor about what students already think about the topic, what
they want to say, and what they need to discover before writing. In the revision stage, tutors can use
Elbow’s “Movies of the Mind” to give students their reactions to the writing without imposing a set idea
of what is wrong or right, what is working or not working in the student’s writing. This will allow the
student writer to assess if the tutor’s reaction and response are what was intended by the writing. These
activities empower students with the authorial authority over the paper, and also allow for discussion and
negotiation with another party (the tutor) to help guide students through the drafting and revision process.
This will, in turn, allow students to construct a better understanding of writing prompts and their own
writing through collaboration. There are many techniques that you can choose to implement a social
constructivist tutoring framework, but hopefully these strategies give you a place to start. Happy
collaborating!
Works Cited
Lunsford, Andrea. “Collaboration, Control, and the Idea of the Writing Center.” The St. Martin’s
Sourcebook for Writing Tutors. Ed. Christina Murphy, Steve Sherwood.
Bedford/St.Martins: Boston, 2008. Print.
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