From the Editors: Assessing Writing Center Practices

Tristan Hanson
The University of Texas at Austin
praxisuwc@gmail.com

Emma Conatser
The University of Texas at Austin
praxisuwc@gmail.com

As teachers of writing, writing center practitioners are often tasked with the difficult work of assessing their practices from a multitude of perspectives and with numerous stakeholders in mind. With this issue of Praxis, we offer a series of articles that address pedagogical assessment aimed at the everyday practice of the writing center. The first three articles address specific aspects of tutorials–anti-racism, learning outcomes, and student motivation–providing insights into how tutors might assess the work they do in specific pedagogical contexts. The issue ends with a call to make assessment a part of the everyday work of both administrators and tutors. Each article frames assessment practice as a way to create better, more equitable outcomes for students seeking help in the writing center. Crucial to this is fostering an environment where assessment is expected, welcome, and meets the needs of those who labor in our centers.

This issue begins with Faith Thompson’s article, “‘How to Play the Game:’ Tutors’ Complicated Perspectives on Practicing Antiracism,” where the author explores the manner in which tutors employ antiracist pedagogy in their sessions. Thompson uses interviews to collect the experiences of several tutors, surveying them to determine the way they position anti-racism in sessions with students. Here, the author offers tutors’ anecdotal evidence as a pulse check for the way anti-racist practice takes shape in the writing center and beyond.

In “Intended and Lived Objects of Learning: The (Mis)Aligned Purpose and Reported Effects of Writing Center Instruction,” Matthew Fledderjohann reports on the results of tutor/student survey data that indicates that the intended outcomes of a given writing center consultation often do not align with the lived outcomes. Despite the divergence of tutors’ “intended objects of learning” and students’ “lived objects of learning,” Fledderjohann is encouraged by “the fact that so many writers reported having learned about so many different issues suggest[ing] that tutorials can flexibly respond to writers’ learning concerns.” Fledderjohann’s work offers writing center practitioners a means for reflecting on what they expect to accomplish in a given consultation, encouraging them to embrace the tutorial process even if it seems like intentions and effects may misalign. 

Elizabeth Buskerus Blackmon follows, examining the state of student motivation and offering a new theoretical intervention in, “The Writing MAP: A Primer for Facilitating Motivational Habits in the Writing Center.” Blackmon notes that in order to properly assess student motivation in writing centers, tutors and admin should “primarily center on identity as a core aspect of motivation.” Blackmon’s model, the Writing Motivation Assessment Pathway (MAP), claims that “the intersectionality and formation of students’ identities, especially for underrepresented writers, can help tutors to visualize their motivations when writing.” In the article, the author offers a closer look at this framework, acknowledging the five traditional aspects of motivation (identity, beliefs, perceptions, context, and interactions) and centering on the role of identity.

The issue concludes with Marilee Brooks-Gillies’s and Trixie Smith’s “Everyday Assessment Practices in Writing Centers: A Cultural Rhetorics Approach.” Here the authors make the case for a set of  consistent, flexible, collaborative assessment practices that account for the lived, embodied experiences and shared values of writing center practitioners and administrators. Key to this work is making sure that assessment is woven into the specific cultural dynamics and everyday activity of individual writing centers, lending assessment practices value and transformative power.

The articles featured in this issue reflect the hard work of scholars who are deeply invested in writing center practice and discourse. In addition to these authors, we also want to recognize our readers and our review board for their continued support. This issue would not have been possible without the dedicated authors, reviewers, UT Austin faculty, and network of scholars who are dedicated to making innovative writing center scholarship more accessible to all.