Dissertation
Graduate Peer Writing Consultants as a Community of Practice: A study of how genre-based writing tutoring in a writing center affects international dissertation writers and their writing
Abstract: As graduate writing centers emerge as a specialized resource, research on the practices employed in these spaces and the impacts perceived by those who engage with them is necessary for understanding the needs addressed and evaluating the effectiveness of approaches. The proposed study aims to describe the practices of graduate students and writing tutors at a graduate writing center as they relate to the goals of the students, tutors, and other members of disciplinary academic communities. Adopting a Communities of Practice theoretical framework, this study further aims to investigate whether and how consultations provided by the center promote situated learning for a group of graduate students—non-native speakers (NNS) of English—who have been shown to have less access to participation in scholarship compared to their native speaker (NS) peers. The study adopts an ethnographic qualitative approach to describing the practices within the graduate writing center and will use mixed methods to investigate situated learning in consultations between NNS graduate students and graduate writing center tutors. Specifically, this investigation will involve triangulating data from observed consultations, text analysis of in-progress draft texts discussed in consultations, think-aloud data collected from students during draft revision, and follow-up interviews that will attempt to understand connections between practices observed in consultations with students’ writing and revising processes and products. The results of this research are expected to establish a descriptive model of practices in graduate writing centers and enhance our understanding of the role of peer engagement in academic language socialization.