Around the Texts

Winner of the 2018 International Writing Centers Association (IWCA) Outstanding Book Award, Around the Texts of Writing Center Work examines the conceptual frameworks underpinning and created by ordinary writing center documents. The values, assumptions, and beliefs underlying these texts critically inform writing center practices, including the vital undertaking of tutor education.

Each chapter focuses on a particular everyday document or document set. I explore its origins, its use by writing center administrators and tutors, and its engagement with persistent disciplinary challenges in the field of writing studies, such as tutoring and program assessment. I then analyze each document in the contexts of the conceptual framework at the heart of its creation and day-to-day application: communities of practice, activity theory, discourse analysis, reflective practice, and inquiry-based learning.

Around the Texts of Writing Center Work approaches the analysis of writing center documents with an inquiry stance—a call for curiosity and skepticism toward existing and proposed conceptual frameworks—in the hope that the theoretically conscious evaluation and revision of commonplace documents will lead to greater efficacy and more abundant research by writing center administrators and tutors.