Tutors’, Spanish-Speaking Students’, and Writing Center Directors’ Dispositions Toward Literacy and the Effect of their Dispositions on Tutoring Sessions
Tutors’, Spanish-Speaking Students’, and Writing Center Directors’ Dispositions Toward Literacy and the Effect of their Dispositions on Tutoring Sessions
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Date
2023
Authors
Ellis, Marina
Advisor
Wilder, Sara
Citation
Abstract
University composition classrooms and writing centers have continued to see an influx ofmultilingual students, particularly self-identified Hispanic students entering the academy and
bringing with them a plethora of knowledge and experiences of their lived realities within and
outside of academia. Yet these experiences are often overlooked for the sake of identifying one
particular system for aiding them in their writing needs.
This study uses semi-structured narrative inquiry-based preliminary interviews,
observations of tutoring sessions, and follow-up interviews to examine the ways in which writing
center tutors, heritage Spanish-speaking writing center tutees’, and writing center directors’
attitudes toward language and literacy are formed from their academic, sociocultural, linguistic,
and cognitive experiences to understand the effects their lived realities have on tutoring sessions.
In this way, this interdisciplinary study responds to calls from researchers in education, rhetoric
and composition, and writing center studies for more research and expands upon current
scholarship that highlights multilingual students’ lived realities as assets to the writing classroom
and writing center rather than as deficits.
Results from this study highlight the ways in which tutors and Spanish-speaking tutees’
dispositions toward literacy do have a positive impact on tutoring sessions, whether it is specific
teaching styles the tutors have developed over time that are influenced by their own learning
experiences, taking small moments within sessions to find commonalities with one another that
therefore facilitate a collaborative rapport, utilizing techniques that encourage tutee agency,
finding ways to empathize with tutees so that they feel comfortable enough to return to the
center, and much more. These findings then have implications for improved tutor training
initiatives that emphasize individualized instruction for multilingual students who attend writing
center sessions, and assignments that require tutors to examine and reflect on their own literacy
learning practices.