dept.writing.wisc.edu Open in urlscan Pro
128.104.80.63  Public Scan

Form analysis
2 forms found in the DOM

POST https://dept.writing.wisc.edu/blog/wp-comments-post.php

<form action="https://dept.writing.wisc.edu/blog/wp-comments-post.php" method="post" id="commentform" class="comment-form" novalidate="">
  <p class="comment-notes"><span id="email-notes">Your email address will not be published.</span> <span class="required-field-message" aria-hidden="true">Required fields are marked <span class="required" aria-hidden="true">*</span></span></p>
  <p class="comment-form-comment"><label for="comment">Comment <span class="required" aria-hidden="true">*</span></label> <textarea id="comment" name="comment" cols="45" rows="8" maxlength="65525" required=""></textarea></p>
  <p class="comment-form-author"><label for="author">Name <span class="required" aria-hidden="true">*</span></label> <input id="author" name="author" type="text" value="" size="30" maxlength="245" required=""></p>
  <p class="comment-form-email"><label for="email">Email <span class="required" aria-hidden="true">*</span></label> <input id="email" name="email" type="email" value="" size="30" maxlength="100" aria-describedby="email-notes" required=""></p>
  <p class="comment-form-url"><label for="url">Website</label> <input id="url" name="url" type="url" value="" size="30" maxlength="200"></p>
  <p class="form-submit"><input name="submit" type="submit" id="submit" class="submit" value="Post Comment"> <input type="hidden" name="comment_post_ID" value="10989" id="comment_post_ID">
    <input type="hidden" name="comment_parent" id="comment_parent" value="0">
  </p>
  <p style="display: none;"><input type="hidden" id="akismet_comment_nonce" name="akismet_comment_nonce" value="7f22321528"></p>
  <p style="display: none !important;"><label>Δ<textarea name="ak_hp_textarea" cols="45" rows="8" maxlength="100"></textarea></label><input type="hidden" id="ak_js_1" name="ak_js" value="1662132369817">
    <script>
      document.getElementById("ak_js_1").setAttribute("value", (new Date()).getTime());
    </script>
  </p>
</form>

GET https://dept.writing.wisc.edu/blog/

<form role="search" method="get" class="search-form" action="https://dept.writing.wisc.edu/blog/">
  <label>
    <span class="screen-reader-text">Search for:</span>
    <input type="search" class="search-field" placeholder="Search …" value="" name="s">
  </label>
  <input type="submit" class="search-submit" value="Search">
</form>

Text Content

Skip to content


ANOTHER WORD


FROM THE WRITING CENTER AT THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON

Menu
 * writing.wisc.edu
 * About
 * Contact
 * Archives


UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH AS TRANSFORMATION: WRITING FELLOWS BUILD AND SHARE
KNOWLEDGE

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Big 10 Writing Centers, Collaborative Learning, Peer Tutoring, Undergraduate
Students, Writing Fellows / Monday, May 18th, 2020

Introduction: On Writing Center Work and the Big Picture 

Hello from the UW-Madison Writing Center as the summer term begins! In this
uncertain time, we have both continued to serve our students and considered the
ways our work might fit into the big picture—of a transformed world, of
education for social justice, and of new practices in teaching of writing. As
one of the assistant directors of the undergraduate Writing Fellows program and
an instructor for English 403, our peer tutor education class, I have found
myself thinking more about how undergraduate research advances our understanding
of that bigger picture. I would like to share this post as a way to both
showcase undergraduate research and consider how it can contribute to change,
lighting a path forward into our work.  

Students in Brenna’s section of English 403, Seminar on Tutoring Writing Across
the Curriculum, pose for a group photo.

To help frame the conversation, I’ll begin by drawing some connections between
writing center work and the theories of the Brazilian educator Paulo Freire,
which reveals how doing original research can be empowering for learners and
communities. I’ll then “open up the floor” to Writing Fellows themselves, who
have generously shared their own perspectives on their recent research
experiences with me (responses have been edited for length). 


Peer Collaboration, Research, and Critical Consciousness 

Each year in English 403, the Seminar on Tutoring Writing Across the Curriculum,
new Writing Fellows here at UW-Madison discuss Freire’s evocative definition of
the “banking model” of schooling. According to Freire, the founder of the
critical pedagogy movement, the banking model treats learners like empty vessels
to be filled with bits of knowledge from a “bank-clerk educator” (76). Knowledge
given out by this bank-clerk educator is fragmentary, leaving students without a
full picture of the world or the opportunity to tell their own stories. The end
result, Freire wrote, is oppression—a system of education that “fits” students
into society without the chance to reshape it (76). 

Freire’s theories seemed to resonate deeply with the new Writing Fellows I
taught in English 403, a course they take while beginning their work as tutors.
We identified examples of the banking model from our own educational
experiences—tests that ask us to regurgitate decontextualized facts, textbooks
that present dominant narratives as truth when in actuality there are many
stories to be told. 

Freire offers us some useful insights into the ways that peer collaboration can
resist the banking model. In fact, his thinking influenced the development of
writing centers (Hobson) and has more recently informed antiracist approaches to
writing center work (e.g., Diab et al.; Greenfield and Rowan). In Pedagogy of
the Oppressed (first published in 1968), he explained how learners can transform
the world through praxis, a cycle of theorizing, reflecting, and taking action
through language. In Freire’s model of praxis, teachers guide students in
problem-posing—the process of raising questions about their world and
collaboratively investigating those questions. Their dialogue generates new
understandings and new stories; students come to see that oppression is not the
natural state of the world but a social construction subject to change. This
perspective is what Freire called conscientização, or critical consciousness
(35).  

The cover of Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, first published in 1968.

Freire’s definitions of praxis and critical consciousness can also help us
understand the power of undergraduate research in writing center work. It’s
important to note that Freire, whose pedagogy was developed for impoverished
adult learners in Brazil, was working in a far  different context from tutor
education classrooms in the United States. Some educators have argued that
mainstream critical pedagogy approaches in the U.S. have ignored racial
inequality (Ellsworth) or watered down the radical potential of his theories
(Darder). However, I think we can build on the radical potential of Freire’s
work whenever students create knowledge collaboratively and when they use that
power to question the systems of racism and ableism that operate in education. 

Building that critical consciousness is one of our goals in training Writing
Fellows to work with peers and in assigning a semester-long research project in
English 403. For their projects, students investigate topics of their choice
related to the tutoring or teaching of writing. In a process of problem-posing,
they develop an original research question, synthesize secondary sources,
collect their own data through interviews or surveys, and make suggestions for
change. This is one example of praxis, a way for new stories to be written in
writing center studies.  


Writing Fellows Share Perspectives on Research and Knowledge-Building

In Freire’s model for critical pedagogy, dialogue with other learners is crucial
to knowledge-building. Each year, to provide more opportunities for dialogue
between members of our writing center community, we invite some Writing Fellows
to share their original research projects with other Fellows and graduate
student teaching assistants. Here are the Writing Fellows who shared their
research this year, along with the titles of their presentations: 

 * Lily Campbell, “Anti-racism in Writing Assessment at UW-Madison”
 * Ethan Dickler, “The Writing Experiences of Transfer Students at UW-Madison”
 * Collin Dott, “Listening and Non-Directive Tutoring”
 * William Kamm, “Intersection of the Generalist and Specialist: Effective
   Tutoring in STEM Genres”
 * Adrienne Oliva, “Negotiating Pronouns and Social Justice in the Writing
   Center”
 * Madeline Peterson, “Using Preparation Time to Prioritize Meaning in the
   Peer-Tutoring of ESL Texts” 
 * Berit Thorson, “Writing and Self-Efficacy in Postsecondary Correctional
   Education”
 * Thea Valmadrid, “Bridges of Support: Investigating the Experiences of Female
   Asian American Tutors to Support Tutors of Color”

In the weeks that followed their presentations, I asked Writing Fellows to share
their perspectives on the process of problem-posing, researching, and engaging
in conversation with audience members. I was impressed by the degree to which
Fellows used their projects to question the norms behind exclusion in our
spaces. For example, Lily Campbell, a Fellow majoring in English, chose to
investigate how writing assessment perpetuates racism and linguistic oppression.
She interviewed professors about their views and ultimately built a powerful
argument against assessment practices that uphold white linguistic hegemony
(Inoue). After her presentation, she described how doing original research had
fundamentally changed her own role as a learner—and how presenting her work
pushed her thinking even further: 

When this project was first introduced in English 403, I was nervous about
conducting my own research because I didn’t feel very qualified to be
interviewing people and drawing my own conclusions from that data…But once I
started reviewing literature about my topic (anti-racism in writing assessment),
I realized that I was capable of using those frameworks to design a research
approach that would allow me to uncover and analyze data about my topic, which
led to a sense of increased agency and confidence in my ability to participate
in academic discourse.

Presenting my research at the meeting was an awesome experience because it
allowed me to re-engage with my project after I had spent some time away from
it…I think the best part of presenting was fielding questions from the audience
afterwards because I got to use my knowledge base to quickly contextualize and
consider new implications about my research. For example, someone asked a
question along the lines of how anti-racist writing pedagogy can apply to STEM
since those genres are often much less receptive to differences in writing
style. I had a great time answering that question because it forced me to apply
the conclusions of my research to a discipline where the entrenched norms of
discourse make challenging style and assessment expectations difficult, and
working through that problem helped me think about my research from a different
angle than what I’d started with. 

As Lily’s instructor for English 403, I saw how her project both deepened her
own awareness of linguistic oppression and invited audience members into the
kind of dialogue that can build critical consciousness. Developing critical
consciousness often shifts our understanding of our own identities. For example,
Ethan Dickler, a Writing Fellow majoring in English, found that his research
project on transfer students helped him better understand his experiences as a
student who transferred to UW-Madison from another campus. By interviewing
peers, he found that some transfer students shared his sense of being excluded
or “othered.” He described how conducting his research and engaging his audience
was a process of intellectual growth that was at times challenging and at times
exhilarating: 

I found myself learning how to actually do the research while it was happening,
so there was a steep learning curve…The presentation went very well for me. I
practiced every night for about a week and the first session went well. I got
several laughs during it and so many questions…I got the sense that if I had a
lot of questions, it meant that people were actually interested in what I had to
say.  

Writing Fellow Berit Thorson presents her research on the Odyssey Beyond Bars
project to an audience of Writing Center teaching assistants and other Writing
Fellows.

Graduate student teaching assistants who attend Writing Fellow presentations
often come away with new ideas for their work. Mike Haen, a Ph.D. candidate in
composition and rhetoric who also served as a moderator for presentations,
shared how the Writing Fellows’ projects have informed his own thinking: 

We tend to think about serving all students, which perhaps leads us to miss
specific needs of particular groups. I had a chance to moderate presentations by
Ethan Dickler and Will Kamm, who discussed the experiences of transfer students
(Ethan) and some of the needs of STEM writers (Will). While I have thought a lot
about how to support STEM writers because of my work as an administrator in the
Writing Across the Curriculum program, I had not thought much about transfer
students. Both presentations sparked thoughtful questions and discussions from
writing center instructors, and I think our center can do more for both groups
of students. I thought those presentations were solid starting points for
longer-term discussions.

Starting long-term discussion was also the goal of a project by Thea Valmadrid,
a Writing Fellow who interviewed Asian American Fellows and Writing Center
teaching assistants. She found that greater attention to the experiences of
marginalized Fellows and TAs is needed in our tutor education programs. Erica
Kanesaka Kalnay, a Ph.D. candidate in literary studies who moderated
presentations by both Lily and Thea, describes the impact of their work below:

It was wonderful to see such engaged undergraduate students thinking critically
about the institution we inhabit while offering up their ideas for transforming
it into a more inclusive and equitable place. This made me think about how vital
a role undergraduate student teaching and research can play even in a large
university like ours. As an Asian American woman and longtime Writing Center
tutor, I was especially proud to moderate as one of my former Asian American
Studies students [Thea] presented her research on the experiences of Asian
American women tutors and fellows. She was able to take her classroom knowledge
and use it to cast light on perspectives that I think our program has not fully
considered. 

Erica’s words have caused me to further consider how we can engage in
reflection, dialogue, and changemaking every day in our work in writing centers,
whether we serve primarily as tutors or administrators. Praxis in a time of
deepening inequality never has an end point; the process of transformation in
our spaces must be ongoing. 


Writing Fellow Collin Dott presents his research on non-directive tutoring to an
audience of Writing Center teaching assistants and other Writing Fellows.

A Call to Action

By way of concluding this post, I’d like to share some thoughts from Berit
Thorson, a Writing Fellow whose research project focused on the Odyssey Beyond
Bars project at the Oakhill Correctional Institution. Odyssey Beyond Bars is a
prison education program incorporating composition courses and writing center
tutoring. Berit surveyed students who took composition courses with Odyssey
Beyond Bars and found that they gained a sense of confidence through their
writing. Berit, who is majoring in philosophy, sociology, and environmental
studies, had this to say about her growth as a researcher and the importance of
education in our current time of crisis:    

At first, doing original research was pretty intimidating. Once I started doing
it, with the help of some wonderful mentors, I felt much more confident. I
underwent a similar process before presenting. I was terrified to present, but
once I started, that fell away because of my passion about my topic….

I don’t think that my perspective on my research has changed that much [since my
presentation]. I read somewhere that they’re paying New York inmates from Rikers
Island $6/hour to help dig mass graves, and I thought about all the ways that we
fail to treat incarcerated individuals as humans. I am horrified by that. So I
think that this has reinforced for me just how important education is in helping
prisoners to recognize themselves as still human and still valuable. It has
reminded me that correctional education matters for more than just the
educational value. It matters because it makes a difference in people’s lives.

I find Berit’s words powerful because they suggest that education for social
justice has become an even more urgent project and that now more than ever, we
must act on what we find in our research. Berit’s work also suggests the need
for writing center practitioners to continue thinking beyond our own walls to
how we are connected with our communities. Research projects done on our
campuses are only the beginning; writing center researchers must continue to
seek out voices that have traditionally been excluded from our spaces and
collaborate to question the systems of power that keep it that way (Ozias and
Godbee). As Freire said, it is time for us to work together, “name the world”
(88), and write a new story. 

Acknowledgments: Thank you to Emily Hall, director of the Writing Fellows
program and interim director of Writing Across the Curriculum at UW-Madison, for
her thoughtful feedback on an earlier draft of this post! 




Brenna Swift is a former undergraduate writing tutor and a Ph.D. candidate in
composition and rhetoric at UW-Madison, where she also serves as an assistant
director of the Writing Fellows program. Her work focuses on disability justice,
critical pedagogy, writing centers, community engagement, trauma-informed
practices, and education for social justice.  




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Works Cited 

Darder, Antonia. “Paulo Freire Fifty Years Later: An Afterword.” In Reinventing
Pedagogy of the Oppressed: Contemporary Critical Perspectives, edited by James
D. Kirylo. Bloomsbury, 2020. 

Diab et al. “A Multi-Dimensional Pedagogy for Racial Justice in Writing
Centers,”  Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, vol. 10, no. 1, 2012.  

Ellsworth, Elizabeth. “Why Doesn’t This Feel Empowering? Working Through the
Oppressive Myths of Critical Pedagogy.” Feminisms and Critical Pedagogy, edited
by Carmen Luke and Jennifer Gore, Routledge, 1992, pp. 90-119. 

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Translated by Myra Bergman
Ramos. Continuum, 2005. 

Greenfield, Laura, and Karen Rowan, editors. Writing Centers and the New Racism:
A Call for Sustainable Dialogue and Change. Utah State UP, 2012.

Hobson, Eric H. “Writing Center Practice Often Counters Its Theory. So What?”
Intersections: Theory-Practice in the Writing Center, edited by Joan Mullin and
Ray Wallace, National Council of Teachers of English, 1994, pp. 15-24.

Inoue, Asao B. Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies: Teaching and Assessing
Writing for a Socially Just Future. The WAC Clearinghouse and Parlor Press,
2015. 

Ozias, Moria, and Beth Godbee. “Organizing for Antiracism in Writing Centers:
Principles for Enacting Social Change.” Writing Centers and the New Racism: A
Call for Sustainable Dialogue and Change. Utah State UP, 2012, pp. 150-174. 



May 18, 2020September 8, 2020 Brenna SwiftBig 10 Writing Centers, Collaborative
Learning, Peer Tutoring, Undergraduate Students, Writing Fellows


2 REPLIES TO “UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH AS TRANSFORMATION: WRITING FELLOWS BUILD
AND SHARE KNOWLEDGE”

 1. Mia Alafaireet
    August 6, 2020 at 2:12 pm Reply
    
    Thank you for this fascinating post, Brenna. As I read through the different
    fellows’ perspectives on the research process, I was especially interested
    in how they built confidence as they developed original questions, collected
    data, and crafted original arguments. It seems that on the one hand,
    embarking on an original research project helps undergraduate writers build
    faith in their skills as individuals. On the other hand, seeing how often
    fellows mention their mentors also makes me think about undergraduate
    research as a catalyst for meaningful relationships between students and
    faculty/instructors. In other words, your post makes me think of
    undergraduate research as a means of community-building on a large (and
    sometimes intimidating) campus.

    
 2. Rachel Write
    December 15, 2020 at 2:12 am Reply
    
    As I read through the different fellows’ perspectives on the research
    process, I was especially interested in how they built confidence as they
    developed original questions, collected data, and crafted original
    arguments.

    


LEAVE A REPLY CANCEL REPLY

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Comment *

Name *

Email *

Website





Δ


POST NAVIGATION

Previous Post How are you doing?
Next Post What Makes a Writing Group? Undergraduate Writers Model Compassion and
Acceptance
Search for:


ABOUT THIS BLOG

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Reflections on writing center practice, research, and theory from the students,
staff, alumni, and friends of the Writing Center at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison


RECENT COMMENTS

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 * Darren Koma on Two More Cultures: Or, Fostering a Writing Culture at a STEM
   University
 * HNR Speech and Hearing on Writing as Learning: Our Writing Center Blog
   Celebrates 13 Years and 300 Posts
 * Sarthaks eConnect on Vulnerability and Mutual Disclosure through the Use of
   Personal Pronouns in the WC Space
 * Rebecca Nowacek on Writing as Learning: Our Writing Center Blog Celebrates 13
   Years and 300 Posts
 * Steve Sherwood on Writing as Learning: Our Writing Center Blog Celebrates 13
   Years and 300 Posts


RECENT POSTS

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 * Introverted Engagement: Exploring the Experiences of Shy Writing Center
   Tutors
 * “No, Thank You”—Your Friendly, Neighborhood Writing Center Chimera 
 * Pandemic Transitions: Be(com)ing a New Writing Center Director During
   COVID-19
 * Vulnerability and Mutual Disclosure through the Use of Personal Pronouns in
   the WC Space
 * Honoring the Writing Center’s Instructors: 2022 Awards for Excellence in
   Teaching


LINKS

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 * Connecting Writing Centers Across Borders
 * DePaul University Center for Writing-based Learning
 * Eastern Illinois University Writing Center
 * The University of Michigan Sweetland Center for Writing
 * University of Louisville Writing Center

Proudly powered by WordPress | Theme: lucienne by ThemeFurnace.

Share
Tweet
Email
Share