Scholarship – Page 7 – Online Writing Centers Association

Technology Professional Development of Writing Faculty: The Expectations and the Needs (2020)

Not only is the current scholarship on technology professional development (TPD) of writing faculty at the periphery of Writing Studies, there doesn’t seem to be a clear conceptualization of the scope of knowledge and skills needed to teach writing with technology critically and productively. In this study, I address these issues using two research questions: a) What are the teaching with technology-related expectations for college writing faculty as stipulated in 11 CWPA, CCCC, and NCTE position statements? b) What are the characteristics of technology professional development programs, as identified in these statements, that train teachers to meet these expectations?

Addressing Erasure: Networking Language Justice Advocacy for Multilingual Students in the Rustbelt (2020)

As the number of multilingual students increases at small campuses in rural areas that lack multilingual composition programming, there is a need to explore pedagogical and institutional strategies that help to pool limited or emerging resources to promote language justice for multilingual students.

Taking Long Night Online: A Six-Part Series (2020)

This series tells the story of two writing centers and their Long Nights Against Procrastination.

Changing Conditions for Multilingual Writers: Writing Centers Destabilizing Standard Language Ideology 2020

Writing centers provide a crucial site for multilingual writers to experience generative and productive conversation about their writing projects and for their language and cultural experiences to be appreciated as sources for meaning-making. For this to be possible, tutors must understand the phenomenon and problems of standard language ideology (SLI) and should have opportunities to develop practices that reflect translingual perspectives on language and communication.

Working Toward Social Justice through Multilingualism, Multimodality, and Accessibility in Writing Classrooms 2020

This article threads together multilingualism and disability studies research in writing studies, and introduces composition pedagogies that embrace multilingualism, multimodality, and accessibility simultaneously. We argue that writing teachers can work toward social justice in writing courses by considering accessibility through intersectional (Crenshaw; Martinez) and interdependent (Jung; Wheeler) approaches that put language diversity and disability in conversation (Cioè-Peña).

Critical Translation and Paratextuality: Translingual and Anti-Racist Pedagogical Possibilities for Multilingual Writers 2020

This article affords insights into the interdependence between writing and critical translation to inform implementations of antiracist and translingual writing pedagogies. Promoting linguistic and social justice for multilingual writers, it presents a writing assignment design that focuses on critical translation across asymmetrical power relations between languages, texts, writers, and readers.

Dissertation Boot Camps, Writing as a Doctoral Threshold Concept, and the Role of Extra-Disciplinary Writing Support (2020)

This article seeks to answer two questions: what kinds of expertise are needed to lead an effective dissertation boot camp; and how can those outside the graduate student’s discipline support their writing? Drawing on four years of application data and post-camp interviews, I reveal how writing process knowledge—similar to that described in the scholarship on first-year composition—is a fundamental reason dissertators seek help from the boot camps.

Addressing the Challenges and Opportunities of a Feminist Rhetorical Approach for Wikipedia-based Writing Instruction in First-Year Composition (2020)

Wikipedia’s gender gaps are both well-established and well-challenged, and while Wikipedia-based assignments have become more common in composition, teacher-scholars have not fully explored the opportunities for feminist pedagogy offered by the encyclopedia. This article reports on a teacher research study designed to examine the efficacy of the feminist rhetorical approach for understanding critical literacy learning through Wikipedia-based assignments in First-Year Composition (FYC).

Is Feedback on Grammar Harmful or Helpful? Questionable Answers and Unanswered Questions (2020)

Current composition practice relies on a decades-old summary of research concluding that a focus on grammar in students’ writing is useless, or even harmful. Conversely, hundreds of recent studies from the fields of second-language writing and applied linguistics claim to provide evidence of the benefits to providing feedback on grammar in students’ writing.

The University of Limerick’s Writing Centre’s Emergence from a Knowledge Economy: An Interview with Íde O’Sullivan (2020)

In this interview, Rachel Riedner and Íde O’Sullivan discuss the context in Ireland that has motivated a shift to US process-based curricular and the emergence of Irish writing centers that incorporate both American-style WAC and WID elements.