Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol. 18, No. 2 (2020)

From the Editors: Learning From Responses in the Writing Center

Fiza Mairaj
University of Texas at Austin
praxisuwc@gmail.com

Kiara Walker
University of Texas at Austin
praxisuwc@gmail.com

We here at Praxis are proud to present our spring 2021 issue. This issue includes pieces that address the ways we can study, explore, and learn from the various types of responses that take place routinely in the writing center. As this past year has further enhanced and exposed many of the flaws in our current systems and practices, with this issue, we put our focus on listening and learning. 

Our issue begins with Bonnie Devet’s column “When Faculty Know You’re a Writing Center Consultant.” In this column, Devet explores how consultants navigate their experience as consultant-students in classrooms. Using John R.P. French and Bertram Raven’s bases of power, the author analyzes survey responses from consultants about the dynamic between consultants and faculty. In doing so, Devet shows how consultant-students demonstrate their own negotiation skills across domains and use strategies in the classroom that benefit their classmates and their writing centers.

From consultant-student response strategies in the classroom, we move to response strategies from students during writing center sessions. Our first focus article in this issue, “Turn-Initial Minimal Responses in NES and NNES Student Writers’ Talk in Writing Center Conferences,'' by Jo Mackiewicz discusses how tutors might better understand student writers’ minimal responses (MRs) and learn from them. This study explored the differences between the MRs of native English speakers (NESs) and non-native English speakers (NNES), and how they used some free-standing MRs far more than NESs, suggesting that the NNESs may have extended its use to a greater array of discourse contexts.

Cultural and societal responses and the (lack of) responsiveness to menstruation form the basis of Xuan Jiang and Natalie Casabone’s “Menstruating Tutors’ Perceptions of Having Free Menstrual Product Access in a Writing Center.” In their focus article, the authors report findings from their mixed methods case study introducing free menstrual products at their writing center. Jiang and Casabone examine both the significance of taboos, myths, and stereotypes about menstruation in writing centers and writing centers as a space for intervening in status quo views on menstruation. Following from consultant surveys and individual interviews, the authors argue that the introduction of free menstrual products is a significant step toward accessibility and mindfulness in writing centers that paves the way for affecting university norms about mensuration.

Courtney Buck, Emily Nolan, and Jamie Spallino draw our attention to the effectiveness of consultant asynchronous responses in “I Believe This is What You Were Trying to Get Across Here”: The Effectiveness of Asynchronous eTutoring Comments.” To improve writing center feedback practices, the authors explored a stored cache of re-submitted eTutoring papers, observing and classifying consultant feedback and student revision in response to said feedback. Based on their findings, the authors suggest a need for consultants to further incorporate scaffolding in their feedback and a need for future research on student satisfaction with consultant feedback. 

We then turn to focus articles that encourage writing centers to be responsive to writing center axioms. In “‘A Moveable Object’: Props and Possibility in the Writing Consultations,” Olivia Tracy argues that the materials, bodies, and their relationship are essential to writing center practice. In this qualitative study, the author reframes consultant orientations by considering objects as “props,” as things consultants and writers can use to create access and multimodal possibilities in the consultations. The findings suggest that when props are engaged during a writing consultation,  consultants can co-construct differently embodied approaches, and create opportunities for encouraging new orientations, turnings, and possibilities.

Allison A. Kranek and María Paz Carvajal Regidor continue to rethink facets of writing center sessions by introducing the concept of “present others” in “It’s Crowded in Here: ‘Present Others’ in Advanced Graduate Writers’ Sessions.” Arguing that “present others” (e.g. advisors, colleagues, editors, etc.) in graduate student feedback networks are significant to graduate student socialization and disciplinary identity, the authors call for writing centers to foster better awareness of how these networks influence graduate student writing processes’ and writing center sessions. Based on their study with graduate writers, Kranek and Caravakal Regidor present the act of writing centers consciously and deliberately engaging with “present others” in sessions as an opportunity to help graduate students further manage their writing process and feedback network. 

We move on to a focus article by Stephen Kwame Dadugblor, “Collaboration and Conflict in Writing Center Session Notes.” The author studied writing consultation session notes from a large public university, and argues that there is a discrepancy in the reportage of conflict in writing center sessions. The findings suggest that the conflict in session notes from tutors to tutees tends to be concealed in linguistic markers of agreement, and the instances of disagreement are generally easily acknowledged to writing center administration, but not to the students. The author calls for more research to study the session notes as a site of writing center practice. 

From thinking anew about the presence of conflict in sessions, we turn to a new perspective on the relationship between writing centers and libraries. In our last piece “Turf Wars, Culture Clashes, and a Room of One’s Own: A Survey of Centers Located in Libraries,” Lindsay Sabatino and Maggie Herb draw our attention to the location of writing centers within university libraries. The researchers gather survey responses from 100 center directors, and ask about theoretical, pedagogical, and practical concerns that stem from centers physically relocating to libraries. In the findings, authors discuss how physical space and institutional location can impact the pedagogies of the writing centers. 

Finally, we here at Praxis want to take a moment to thank our readers and our most brilliant and diligent review board for their continued support, especially in these uncertain times. On a more personal note, I (Fiza) must also take a moment to say goodbye. I have been serving as a Praxis editor since 2019, and, with this issue, am reaching the end of my term. Although my two years with Praxis were filled with uncertainty, turmoil, and sometimes despair, I take away with me the wonderful and continued support we received from our readers, reviewers, and writers. I have been so proud and grateful to be with the Praxis team, and to be part of all of the wonderful conversations we’ve had here, on our website, and in person. In the summer, my wonderful co-editor, Kiara, will continue, and our in-coming editor will introduce themselves to you to begin the next phase of Praxis. We’re all so grateful to be here with the writing center community, and we thank you all for being part of it, too.