As the population of international--and particularly Chinese--students grows in US academic institutions, it is critical that writing center tutors be able to address these students' needs. However, whereas writing tutors at the author's institution are often taught to be indirect and focus on higher order concerns, such strategies are not always…

In this article, the author offers cautionary advice to help avoid some tempting morasses to unwittingly fall into as well as some more solid ground to stroll along when composing institutional prose. Ultimately, drawing on concepts from the fields of business, linguistics, social psychology, and professional writing, the author wishes to…

Writing centers are places not only of practices and policies but also of inquiry. Increasingly, research conducted in writing centers is informing the theoretical bases as well as the day-to-day goings-on in our various local contexts. In turn, the situated daily activity of each writing center as well as the theory or principles behind it…

Examines what happens when writing center directors ask tutors to enter conversation, not just with clients, but with other writing center ractitioners--when tutors move beyond advice and into the professional discourse of writing centers. Suggests that writing centers need to consider a dialogic approach that invites tutors and their disparate…

Continues a discussion of critiquing peer tutoring groups by underscoring a typically unacknowledged component: the way in which an emphasis on "peerness" disguises the inherent aggression in tutoring relationships. Defines "peerness" as a complicated relation that involves power and aggression as well as equality. (SG)

Suggests that students and tutors resist conference summaries because they maintain a hierarchy between student and tutor. Proposes that tutors and students need to embrace the resistance that they feel toward conference summaries and rethink how tutoring sessions are "written up." Concludes that tutors must be willing to believe that students can…

Suggests that all stakeholders should share a focus on "innovations," referring here simultaneously to technologies and their social, cultural, political, and historical contexts. Introduces a new perspective through which writing center professionals can approach collaborative relationships with other stakeholders in the move towards…

Argues that the challenge for writing centers to continue to be viable lies not so much in responding to changing educational demands as to continuing to meet the ongoing demand for competent writing in the academy. (NH)

Offers an analysis of the ways in which the structure and practice of writing centers may be uncomfortable, difficult, even anathema to many boys and young men. Describes ways the author's writing center at a boys' school has changed some of its practices in an attempt to address this issue. (SR)

Argues that the writing center is an ideal place to teach and practice a critical and self-reflective form of acculturation, encouraging underprepared students (especially those marginalized by race, class, and ethnicity) to adopt critical consciousness. Discusses acculturation verses the goals of critical consciousness, the traditional writing…

Considers the evolution of writing-tutor pedagogies, from the job-specific training of tutorial-centered "practical" manuals to the professionalizing approach that establishes awareness of the specialized discourse of writing-center scholarship. Suggests that the latter approach also writes tutors into the field's most painful and factious…

Develops a comparison between writing tutors and prostitutes. Suggests that the intimate arrangement of people that places one in the position of professional and the other in the position of client works against collaboration. (NH)

Argues that those who work in and support writing centers must have a sense of how their potential roles are changing if they are to provide institutional leadership. Looks at why the deeply traditional structure of universities is not working well in a postindustrial economy. Describes four things that writing centers should and must do to take a…

Raises the complementary issues of faculty/tutor collaboration and tutor-writing confidentiality at writing centers by relating a serious dilemma involving a student's blatant attempt at plagiarism of an online text. Raises concerns regarding conflicting roles of the writing center in upholding itself as a safe place for students and/or as a place…

Offers a short history of how one writing center integrated technology into its practices. Relates how the center kept pace with changing times, while maintaining the integrity of its writing-center philosophy of student-directed pedagogy. Describes how its classroom presentations/workshops used technology to extend classroom conversations, to…