Skip to Main Content
 

Global Search Box

 
 
 
 

Files

File List


osu1117636352.pdf (686.55 KB)

ETD Abstract Container

Abstract Header

From training to practice: the writing center as a setting for learning to tutor

Stonerock, Krista Hershey
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1117636352

Abstract Details

2005, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Educational Theory and Practice.
Although tutorial programs have become key components of college freshmen writing programs, few studies have considered how students learn to tutor their peers. This study is a qualitative examination of a first-year writing tutorial program situated within a college writing center with a mission to ensure student retention in the college. In the tutorials, peer tutors consulted biweekly with basic writers throughout their first year of college. The peer tutors were trained in a three-week tutor training program designed to introduce them to both writing center theory and tutoring strategies which are aligned with the writing center mission and goals. Case study methods were used to consider the transfer of teaching tools from tutor training to the tutors’ practices in the writing conferences. Through an activity-theory analysis of tutor training sessions, audio-taped and transcribed conferences, field notes, observation-based interviews, and other data, the two tutors’ decision-making was interpreted as a function of their participation in tool-mediated action—both conceptual and practical—in a range of settings. The research employed ethnographic methods to follow the peer tutors through a three-week training program and a fifteen-week semester of tutoring. The study identified the principal settings—both educational and personal—which shaped tutors’ developing roles and practices; explored the way tutors negotiate tensions which arise as they attempt to appropriate the teaching tools presented in tutor training; and considered the contextual factors (e.g., outside settings, personal goals, prior experiences) which may shape the tutors’ appropriation of the teaching tools. The results describe how the various activity settings affected how the tutors developed their own approaches to tutoring in the writing center as they negotiated the competing motives and emerging tensions at work in conference activity over a semester. In acknowledging these powerful tensions, the study suggests the need for critical and continual reflective practice on the part of both tutor trainers and peer tutors. The study also documents how various settings, including the tutors’ personal and academic backgrounds, mediate what they appropriate from tutor training and, in turn, the extent to which training mediates their ability and willingness to support basic writers.
George Newell (Advisor)
241 p.
Education, Language and Literature
writing center research; tutor training; teaching writing; activity theory; first-year composition; basic writing programs

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Stonerock, K. H. (2005). From training to practice: the writing center as a setting for learning to tutor [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1117636352

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Stonerock, Krista. From training to practice: the writing center as a setting for learning to tutor. 2005. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1117636352.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Stonerock, Krista. "From training to practice: the writing center as a setting for learning to tutor." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2005. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1117636352

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1117636352
1,341
© 2005, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.