Grand View University on Group Appointments Part IV: Third Space and Tutor Authority
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This series of four collaboratively written blog posts by undergraduate tutors in the Grand View University Writing Center shares experiences of implementing and navigating a new context for Writing Center sessions: group appointments. To read more about the project, as well as previous entries in this series, click here for the first post in the series.
Part IV: Third Space and Tutor Authority
Relationship between Tutor and Teacher in Group Appointments
In a case like ours, where writers are in a group appointment “class” attached to their composition course, tutor to student relationships are equally as important as tutor to instructor relationships in the writing center’s success. According to Carpenter et al. in the article “Guest Editor Introduction: Revisiting and Revising Course-Embedded Tutoring Facilitated by Writing Centers,” for course-required Writing Center appointments to be successful, students must be able to see the connections between the classroom environment and the Writing Center space. To navigate this appropriately and effectively, there are many approaches that may be helpful including: the tutor meeting with the instructor before the course begins to discuss syllabi, major assignments, and course expectations; attending class sessions to understand the instructor expectations; and finally, consulting with the instructor throughout the semester to inform and create action plans for particular students (Carpenter et al.).
Such relationship-building methods could have serious benefits in Grand View’s Writing Center. Our tutors have not yet built relationships with their group appointment instructors. However, we do aim to have a designated tutor as the line of communication to many of the instructors. In future consideration to enhance students’ writing, we may think about having tutors and instructors meet at the beginning of the semester to at least discuss major assignments, expectations, and timelines. This may prevent confusion on what could be most helpful to work on during specified Writing Center time.
While this may be a great start to building relationships, there are further steps that should be explored. Having tutors attend class sessions, hold in-class workshops, and observe the instructor give tutors access to helpful information. The tutor can enhance their own group appointments by observing teaching techniques done by writing professors. Tutors can also delve into the content by hosting workshops that allow peer assistance for students and become a productive hand for teachers. On the other hand, teachers also may learn writing techniques from tutors, and tutors can be an open line of communication between the writers and their teacher. The knowledge gained from in class sessions would then spill over into weekly writing appointments, as tutors would know and fully understand the course continuation.
Being available for one-on-one conversations with those in charge can also be beneficial for tutors. Holding conferences with instructors builds the relationship between tutor and teacher that best supports the students (Carpenter et al.). Some students need consistent pressure to comply, and instructor/tutor conferences could give time for action plans to become more tangible. Action plans could also push particular writing skills as well as general academic skills such as time management, completion, etc. These action plans could become extremely individualized, which is the way education seems headed holistically.
Obviously there is no way to completely avoid such issues; however, open communication between tutor and instructor can provide more successes than downfalls. Student success can be extremely heightened when all mentors are on the same page while still maintaining autonomy. (We are not advocating that tutors become “teacher clones,” for instance.) All methods would promote building relationships between tutor and instructor to ensure students’ growth and success.
Group Sessions and Thirdspace
Group Writing Center sessions differ from their one-on-one counterparts for a variety of reasons; one of the biggest reasons being the variety of personalities and backgrounds that can accumulate with multiple students in one setting. This is why it is important for a relationship between the multiple writers and tutors to be established early in the semester. From this stems the exploration of multiple topics and writing or learning styles that come from independent personalities of students, leading to added pressure on the tutor to make sure all of the individuals involved are receiving the amount of help they need during the designated time. From the student’s perspective, group appointments can seem like too much of an extension of the classroom setting. This may cause them to not interact or participate. In exploring how to eliminate these problems, an outlook of the Writing Center as an example of third space and how that third space can be deciphered by both writers and tutors is important to obtain. In the text, Teaching/Writing in Thirdspaces: The Studio Approach, written by Rhonda C. Grego and Nancy S. Thompson, a deeper look at social scientist Doreen Massey’s theory on studio thirdspace is studied to help students in the group session setting realize and talk about the larger rhetorical situation and dimensionality of their writing.
From the outside looking in, there is a definitive binary that is produced outwardly in the physical space of a Writing Center and internally through the thoughts, feelings, and centralized roles of the tutor and writer. The first of Massey’s ideas that Grego and Thompson discuss aids in this destruction of spatial binaries is drawing on the concept of “simultaneous multiplicity of space” (Massey qtd. in Grego and Thompson 89). This idea focuses on working with students from a variety of academic, learning, and cultural backgrounds. Through the inclusion of this concept, Massey is showing how Writing Center group leaders and tutors should encourage students to share and explore these differences. Incorporating group discussion and conversation will help create new perspectives in the Writing Center space and will rely on students to share and be leaders themselves within the group setting (Grego and Thompson 90).
Stemming from the concept of multiplicity of knowledge, comes the problem of resistance and the outlook that the Writing Center is merely an extension of the classroom. This outlook can be detrimental in the Writing Center space and lead to a sense of resistance in students mentally and physically. To prevent this, Massey stresses the importance of recognizing power and resistance struggles within writers (as Harris discussed previously) and of evening out the dynamic by giving more power to the students themselves. Massey encourages discussion of previous academic, writing, and English experiences, as well as students exploring their own strengths and weaknesses (Grego and Thompson 91). This can also include students relating to tutors and other writers about what they do or do not think that they need to work on. Implementing this into the group session will lead to students viewing the center as a separate environment from the typical classroom.
The third concept that Massey introduces is called “externalizing internal differences and conflicts” (Massey qtd. in Grego and Thompson 91). Behind this idea is the thought that differences between students need to be shared with other writers and tutors in the group setting, not internalized by the individual. In exploration of this, Massey states, “When awareness of such multiplicity, differences, and conflicts rises to the surface of an interaction between two or more people, then there is thirdspace” (Massey qtd. in Grego and Thompson 92). This shows that embracing and sharing the inevitable differences between writers in a group session setting will aid in creating a space that is entirely separate from the classroom setting. In this redesigned space, there is no risk to expressing differences, such as detriment to grades and status, and students are able to adopt a more social outlook on writing.
The next aspect that Massey discusses is the history that can be explored in the group Writing Center setting. This theory encourages the exploration of the group’s accumulated history, especially from a tutor’s standpoint. In taking a deeper look at a student or writing group’s history, tutors can take what is originally viewed as student writing problems, errors, and deficiencies and transform them as creative connections and responses to the student’s history (Grego and Thompson 93).
In connection to this aspect of Massey’s theory, her idea of the Writing Center as “an extra-verted sense of place” helps create a better platform from which the student and the tutor can change the individual’s internalized writing space from, as Grego and Thompson put it, “a place of imprisonment or a kind of purgatory into a sense of possibility and potential empowerment” (Grego and Thompson 94). This shows how a combination of all the aspects that Massey explores, such as externalizing differences, exploring personal histories, and the dynamic of reader autonomy, can come together to create a thirdspace within the tutor’s writing practice and process that helps them view writing in a more social and extendable light (Grego and Thompson 95).
The Grand View University Writing Center has brought the group session dynamic into a variety of early English classes as a way to better equip students with the tools they need to succeed during their first year of college and beyond. These classes require Writing Center sessions as a place to practice their skills outside of the classroom setting while also meeting a credit requirement. It is one of the jobs of the tutor in this set up to get the students to share their individual strengths and weaknesses to help the group dynamic thrive. Through these appointments, the writing center embraces Massey’s “simultaneous multiplicity of space,” (qtd. in Grego and Thompson) where in students are using their own skills to help themselves and each other learn.
The point of these group sessions is to stimulate sharing and discussion among students, allowing for a sense of thirdspace, or new ideas, to be created. This creation of thirdspace, though usually unrecognized by students and tutors in the moment, is what flips the dynamic of the writing center space from a place of forced learning to a place of power and insight. In this redesigned space, writers gain the autonomy that they do not always receive through the typical student-teacher dynamic. This allows them to view writing in a more social way and in turn gain the ability to make the use of writing prominent throughout a variety of fields and settings. Helping the writer reach this point by establishing strong relationships all come together to help the tutor determine the authority needed within a particular session. This understanding of authority, as seen through how much guidance, communication, and leadership is necessary, helps the tutor understand what role they play and how that role is always changing due to the variety of students, instructors, and classes the Writing Center helps.
Tutor Authority
As is the standard in many Writing Centers, all of our tutors undergo a semester-long training course to prepare them for their role as a tutor. In this course (and the ongoing tutor development opportunities we have), tutors work to become “better acquainted with the conventions of academic discourse than students in peer-response groups” (Bitzel). In other words, peer tutors are trained more extensively in the expectations of academic writing discourse than the average student. As a result of the tutors acquiring “the knowledge and skills necessary for becoming effective students, writers, and tutors in the traditions academic structure, they are imbued with… ‘a certain institutional authority’” (Bitzel). Tutors are sought after for help in one of their areas of expertise, and therefore naturally carry authority when guiding a group writing session. Due to the fact students are required to attend group sessions at Grand View, this authority is even more directly implied.
Yet tutors identify as more than just tutors; tutors are often peers and are more relatable. Teachers’ points of view can be limited, while tutors offer a variety of viewpoints regarding academic writing discourse. Tutors are writers, teachers, students, and peers; with all of their diverse experiences in the world of academia, they are better equipped to empathize with their peers as students and translate teacher expectations into student-friendly language. In fact, Bitzel states that “tutors possess personal and social identities, which carry and compound privilege and power in different contexts,” and should therefore not shy away from the ‘inevitable presence of power and authority’ in the Writing Center” (Bitzel). In the group setting, then, we find it important to not shy away from tutors’ positions of authority, but to use those in productive ways. As tutors are also students themselves, they are more relatable to the students in the group appointments. Thus, the students are more open to listening and opening up to the tutor because they are not teachers, but they still have valuable experiences and knowledge to share.
Works Cited in this Series
Bitzel, Alanna. “Who Are ‘We?’ Examining Identity Using the Multiple Dimensions of Identity Model.” Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, www.praxisuwc.com/bitzel-111/?rq.
Carpenter, Russell, et al. “Guest Editor Introduction: Revisiting and Revising Course-Embedded Tutoring Facilitated by Writing Centers.” Praxis: A Writing CenterJournal.
Geller, Anne Ellen. The Everyday Writing Center: a Community of Practice. Utah State University Press, 2007.
Grego, Rhonda C. and Nancy S. Thompson. "Institutional Critique and Studio as Thirdspace." Teaching/Writing in Thirdspaces: The Studio Approach. Southern Illinois University Press, 2008. pp. 59-96.
Harris, Muriel. “Talk to Me: Engaging Reluctant Writers.” A Tutors Guide: Helping Writers One to One, Ed. Ben Rafoth. 2nd ed. Heinemann, August 2005. 24-32
Jones Royster, Jacqueline. “Academic Discourses or Small Boats on a Big Sea.” ALT DIS: Alternative Discourses and the Academy, Boynton/Cook - Heinemann, 2002. pp. 23-30.
Lape, Noreen."Training tutors in emotional intelligence: toward a pedagogy of empathy." Writing Lab Newsletter, October 2008, https://wlnjournal.org/archives/v33/33.2.pdf, pp. 1-6.
Mirabelli, Tony. “Tutor-Student Relationship.” Berkley, Jan. 2015, bcourses.berkeley.edu/files/54211423/download?download_frd=1..
Rose, Sheldon. Working with Adults in Groups. Jossey-Bass, 1989.
Steinert, Yvonne. “Student Perceptions of Effective Small Group Teaching.” Medical Education, vol. 38, no. 3, 2004, pp. 286–293.