Summary

         The readings for this week centered on the two styles of tutoring in the writing center, directive and nondirective, as well as feelings of guilt in tutors over how a session played out. The first reading that pertained more heavily to this feeling of guilt covered Jennifer Nicklay's short essay in which she gathered data via surveys to other writing center consultants in an attempt to better understand why her colleagues were expressing feelings of guilt after sessions. After writing a literature review to better explain the meaning behind her concepts of directive tutoring and collaboration, Nicklay explains the results of her survey and how it helps determine the reasons for these guilty feelings. She comes to the conclusion that most tutors believe that collaboration in these tutoring sessions is a peer to peer effort, but feel guilty as they, the consultants, can be seen as experts in the field by their peers, effectively dismantling the balance of power in a session, and therefore hampering collaboration. 
          The second reading pertained to a mock session in which we read about a tutor and tutee that were not prepared for each other. To elaborate, the tutee entered the session with a misunderstanding as to what help a writing tutor may/will provide, and the tutor herself was not given the time to explain this, nor did she understand how to reach a person such as the one presented. In the end, both lamented how the session went, though neither knew how they could have better resolved the situation. This may be interpreted as poor collaboration on both parts.

Comments

          The idea of collaboration being a peer effort, which both readings referenced, is much more difficult to facilitate when incorporating the directive tutoring method. Whether tutors like it or not, they are seen as experts in their field for the purpose of tutoring by first-time arrivals to the writing center. This is not to say that tutors are actually experts or in any way infallible, but rather that they must be aware of students coming into the writing center with this bias. If they truly want to keep an equal collaborative conversation, then they must do away with active suggestions and telling students what they think they should do. As far as my own observations go, I have seen this method used in tutoring and students will latch onto these suggestion because they think the tutor knows better than they do, even when this is not necessarily true. And yet the readings mention that the directive method of tutoring is the most efficient/time friendly. Is this an inherent flaw in the writing center? Due to the brevity of tutoring sessions, and an inability to schedule back to back sessions, are tutors therefore given unfair incentive to use the directive method rather than the nondirective?

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