Beyond Dichotomy: Synergizing Writing Center and Classroom Pedagogies

  • multimodal, Pedagogy, collaboration, composition studies, writing center

By Steven J. Corbett
Copy edited by Don Donahue. Designed by Mike Palmquist.

CoverHow closely can or should writing centers and writing classrooms collaborate? Beyond Dichotomy explores how research on peer tutoring one-to-one and in small groups can inform our work with students in writing centers and other tutoring programs, as well as in writing courses and classrooms. These multi-method (including rhetorical and discourse analyses and ethnographic and case-study) investigations center on several course-based tutoring (CBT) partnerships at two universities. Rather than practice separately in the center or in the classroom, rather than seeing teacher here and tutor there and student over there, CBT asks all participants in the dynamic drama of teaching and learning to consider the many possible means of connecting synergistically.

This book offers the "more-is-more" value of designing more peer-to-peer learning situations for developmental and multicultural writers, and a more elaborate view of what happens in these peer-centered learning environments. It offers important implications—especially of directive and nondirective tutoring strategies and methods—for peer-to-peer learning and one-to-one tutoring and conferencing for all teachers and learners of writing.

Table of Contents

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Front Matter

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Sharing Pedagogical Authority: Practice Complicates Theory When Synergizing Classroom, Small-Group, and One-to-One Writing Instruction

Chapter One: Tutoring Style, Tutoring Strategy: Course-Based Tutoring and the History, Rhetoric, and Reality of the Directive/Nondirective Instructional Continuum

Chapter Two: Methods and Methodology: Locating Places, People, and Analytical Frames

Chapter Three: Macro- and Micro-Analyses of One-to-One Tutorials: Case Studies at the University of Washington

Chapter Four: Conflict and Care while Tutoring in the Classroom: Case Studies at the University of Washington and Southern Connecticut State University

Chapter Five: Conclusion: Toward Teacher/Student, Classroom/Center Hybrid Choices

Works Cited

Appendix

Index

About the Author

Steven J. Corbett is Assistant Professor of English at George Mason University. He received his Ph.D. in English Language and Rhetoric from the University of Washington-Seattle in 2008, and he was assistant professor of English and co-coordinator of composition at Southern Connecticut State University-New Haven from 2008-2013. He is co-editor (with Michelle LaFrance and Teagan Decker) of the collection Peer Pressure, Peer Power: Theory and Practice in Peer Review and Response for the Writing Classroom (Fountainhead Press, 2014). His essays on teaching, writing, and rhetoric have appeared in The Writing Center Journal, Rhetoric Review, Pedagogy, Kairos, The Writing Lab Newsletter, Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, The St. Martin's Sourcebook for Writing Tutors 4th ed., On Location, Diversity in the Composition Classroom, ePortfolio Performance Support Systems, Inside Higher Ed, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and elsewhere. He is currently co-editing (with Michelle LaFrance) a forthcoming critical sourcebook on student peer review and response for Bedford/St. Martin's, co-editing (with Betsy Cooper) a special multimodal issue of the journal Across the Disciplines on writing in the performing and visual arts, and co-authoring a monograph (with Paul Rogers) on listening and responding to writers and writing.

Publication Information: Corbett, Steven J. (2015). Beyond Dichotomy: Synergizing Writing Center and Classroom Pedagogies. The WAC Clearinghouse; Parlor Press. https://doi.org/10.37514/PER-B.2015.0599

Publication Date: January 3, 2015.

ISBN: 978-1-64215-059-9 (pdf) | 978-1-64215-060-5 (epub) | 978-1-60235-631-3 (pbk.)
DOI: 10.37514/PER-B.2015.0599

Contact Information:
Steven J. Corbett: scorbet3@gmu.edu

Reviews

Review by Travis Webster, Pace University, Winter, 2020

Perspectives on Writing

Series Editor: Susan H. McLeod, University of California, Santa Barbara

Acrobat Reader DownloadThis book is available in whole and in part in Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF). It will also be available in a low-cost print edition from our publishing partner, the University Press of Colorado.


Copyright © 2015 Steven J. Corbett. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License. 160 pages, with notes, illustrations, and bibliographies. Available in print from Parlor Press online, or at any online or brick-and-mortar bookstore. Available in digital format for no charge on this page at the WAC Clearinghouse. You may view this book. You may print personal copies of this book. You may link to this page. You may not reproduce this book on another website.