Thanks to Cynthia Burgess for finding this (blessedly brief!) article. It addresses a population we haven't work with extensively: graduate students. However, as Madonna adds graduate programs, we're likely to see more demand for this specialized tutoring.
A couple of ideas I'd like to discuss are:
1. More tutor/faculty communication and training; and
2. More faculty/student interaction.
Jeri Ann has made the point that to develop a true writing community, we need to involve not just students, but faculty and staff, too. However, as is probably true at many universities, these three groups at Madonna feel overworked and stretched to the limit (and then some).
I suspect we all agree that we need more collaboration among students, staff, and faculty. Tutors need additional training in tutoring for specific disciplines, graduate students need more direction about the writing process in these disciplines, and professors need to touch base with their students' needs.
So how do we do this?
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Monday, October 12, 2009
"Formative Assessment and the Paradigms of Writing Center Practice"
I have to admit this article took me a while to wade through. (That's what I get for reading only murder mysteries.)
Some of the central ideas I took from it were:
1. Writing centers help change the writer;
2. Real education changes the learner;
3. Social constructionist theory argues that we need to help students not to just fit into an academic paradigm but to challenge it; and
4. It's time to question our traditional standard of literacy, which penalizes nonstandard discourse communities.
Although nos. 3 and 4 are interesting and valid points, I don't know that we're ready to tackle them.
I'm intrigued with the idea that to really have an impact, we need to change the writer/learner. As Ann has said repeatedly, we focus on the writer more than on the paper. One key seems to be promoting reflection on the writing/learning process itself. I was especially struck with the quotation, "Writing centers...focus on another important component of formative assessment: generating in the learner a capacity for introspective evaluation of the writing process and the quality of written work created through that process." This is why we ask our student writers so many questions: We learn to write better by thinking about our writing.
What ideas did you take away from this article?
Some of the central ideas I took from it were:
1. Writing centers help change the writer;
2. Real education changes the learner;
3. Social constructionist theory argues that we need to help students not to just fit into an academic paradigm but to challenge it; and
4. It's time to question our traditional standard of literacy, which penalizes nonstandard discourse communities.
Although nos. 3 and 4 are interesting and valid points, I don't know that we're ready to tackle them.
I'm intrigued with the idea that to really have an impact, we need to change the writer/learner. As Ann has said repeatedly, we focus on the writer more than on the paper. One key seems to be promoting reflection on the writing/learning process itself. I was especially struck with the quotation, "Writing centers...focus on another important component of formative assessment: generating in the learner a capacity for introspective evaluation of the writing process and the quality of written work created through that process." This is why we ask our student writers so many questions: We learn to write better by thinking about our writing.
What ideas did you take away from this article?
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