Cultivating Solidarity through Writing Center Spaces
Some of my most recent research examines writing center scholarship from the early 1940s to the late 1960s, focusing on tensions that emerged during the Interim Period of Clinics. These tensions contributed to the long-standing Clinic vs. Laboratory dichotomy that continues to shape perceptions of writing center work. Drawing on Third-generation Activity Theorist Yrjö Engeström’s principle that new forms of activity can disrupt and transform existing systems, this research explores how the practices of the Clinical Period generated both contradiction and innovation—rearticulating the resilience of nurturing, flexible writing environments found during the previous Formative Period (1887-early1940’s).
Although the Laboratory model had remained dominant during the Clinical Period, the CCCC’s mid-century reports on Laboratory and Clinical instruction prompted important reflection among practitioners. These reports served as an incubator for solidarity, encouraged reappraisal of the past, and laid groundwork for future directions. With this, Lilian Naydan’s (2017) call for a “rhetoric of labor activism” offers a contemporary lens for advancing writing center work through strategic, justice-oriented rhetoric.
As the Clinical Period’s reports illustrate, writing center practitioners have long held the capacity to influence institutional and cultural change. In an era of rising authoritarianism and systemic inequality, the rhetorical choices we make in writing center spaces take on renewed significance. Thus, this research calls for a return to the activist potential embedded in our professional origins—reframing historical documents as tools for present-day labor advocacy and equity.
Exploring the Territory: Writing About Writing, Embedded Writing Consultants, and Laboratory Teaching in Curating WAC/WID Programs
Through the remix of a First-year writing (FYW) curriculum, this research offers an eclectic mix of strategies to begin closing gaps between FYW and Upper Division (UD) writing courses, thus, offering avenues toward the development of a Writing in the Disciplines (WID) program. From Psychology, Cultural historical Activity Theory (Engeström 1999) helped identify and mediate system tensions; from the Writing Center, Embedded Consultants were adopted as peers and professionals, who provided examples for peer review and collaboration; from Composition Studies, Writing about Writing (WAW) was the classroom pedagogy, and from Education, Laboratory Writing was employed as a teaching methodology. This research, then, looks to narrativize how my FYW remix created a dynamic first-year composition ecosystem for students and a professional development course for writing faculty and writing consultants.
Beginning with the premise that Writing About Writing (WAW) offers composition practitioners ways to present writing as a gateway to learning about writing in discipline-specific contexts, I offer my development of an ENG101 WAW/Laboratory writing course with the intention of filling the chasm that existed at a previous institution where I served as a WPA. With the help of the newly developed Writing Center, which I also developed and directed, embedded consultants augmented in-class writing instruction offering myriad teaching models for students. I believe this model created the potential to prepare students for the upper division writing which they would ultimately engage, but I also believe this course presented writing as a field of study to my colleagues while, simultaneously, developing students’ self-awareness about writing in their fields of study. This, in turn, helps build confidence and self-efficacy as students, and teachers, engage in the transfer of knowledge through writing and teaching writing through established composition scholarship.
To evaluate the effectiveness of my revised ENG101 course, I employed a comparative model inspired by Bommarito and Chappelow (2020) and implemented large-scale writing assessment practices. I compared eight FYW course sections taught by two contingent faculty members (each teaching four sections total): four standard sections taught during Fall 2023, which largely employed Current-Traditional (CT) methods of instruction (Connors, 1981), and four experimental sections taught in Spring 2024, which followed WAW philosophies and incorporated writing center peer consultants and laboratory teaching principles.
Assessment criteria were developed by bridging the WPA Outcomes for First-Year Composition with L. Dee Fink’s Taxonomy of Significant Learning (Council of Writing Program Administrators, 2019; Fink, 2013). This framework allowed for a robust evaluation of learning outcomes and writing transfer, aligning with the goals of the Meaningful Writing Project (Eodice et al., 2016).
References
Bommarito, D. and Chappelow, B. (2020). Voicing Student Attitudes in Writing- About-Writing Courses: A Comparative Study. Journal of Teaching Writing 35(1), 57-82.
Connors, R. J. (1981). Current-traditional rhetoric: Thirty years of writing with a purpose. Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 11(4), 208–221. https://doi.org/10.1080/02773948109390614
Council of Writing Program Administrators (2019). WPA Outcomes Statement for First-Year Composition (3.0). https://wpacouncil.org/aws/CWPA/pt/sd/news_article/243055/_PARENT/layout_details/false
Engeström, Y. (1999). Expansive Visibilization of Work: An Activity-Theoretical Perspective. Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 8(1–2), 63–93. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008648532192
Eodice, M, Geller, A. E., & Lerner, N. (2016). The Meaningful Writing Project. Utah State University Press.
Fink, L. D. (2013). Creating Significant Learning Experiences. John Wiley & Sons.