[Download] "Tutors Behaving Badly: Negotiating Authority in Writing Centers (Tutor's Column)" by Writing Lab Newsletter # Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Tutors Behaving Badly: Negotiating Authority in Writing Centers (Tutor's Column)
- Author : Writing Lab Newsletter
- Release Date : January 01, 2008
- Genre: Education,Books,Professional & Technical,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 57 KB
Description
We recently attended the National Conference on Peer Tutoring in Writing (NCPTW) held at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where the theme was authority in the writing center. We were part of a larger group of tutors who decided to narrow down the general theme of authority to negotiating authority. The two of us focused on negotiating authority between tutors. We commonly read about and discuss the relationships between tutors and students, but we never hear about the relationships between tutors. Negotiating authority between tutors can affect how a writing center is run and may factor into tutoring sessions. The starting point for our work largely came from an assignment from Jessica Lott's class on ethnographic research methods. She asked three tutors to rank the tutors at our Writing Center about how much influence each one had in how the Writing Center is run, which naturally brought up the issue of authority. We began to discuss factors such as seniority, experience with writing, professionalism, motivation to make change in the Writing Center, and others. We also explored how all of these ideas affect the Writing Center. By bringing up these issues, we hoped to start a dialogue about a topic that, though often touchy, has a great impact on the Writing Center and the work that we do there. We would like to look at the hierarchies that may develop between tutors, authority's role between tutors and directors, what happens when a tutor renounces his/her responsibility, and how tutors respect each other's authority. Drawing upon experiences in our Writing Center, we will discuss how these topics may play out in writing centers at large. Hierarchies