Collaboration, Control, and the Idea of a Writing Center

Andrea Lunsford, Stanford University.

(A chapter in The St Martins Sourcebook)

Her essay, which originally appeared in 1991 in The Writing Center Journal, is especially helpful for tutors in providing an overview of social constructionism and its impact on writing center philosophies. In essence, the essay establishes a theoretical context for the work tutors do by contrasting the collaborative writing center with earlier writing center models, shaped by expressivism and current traditional rhetoric. Ab+stract, 47




The shift involves a move from viewing knowledge and reality as things exterior to or outside of us, as immediately accessibly, individually knowable, measurable, and shareable--to viewing knowledge and reality as mediated by or constructed through language in social use, as socially constructed, contextualized, as, in short, the product of collaboration. -48

[The above theory threatens the following...]
This idea of a writing center, what I'll call "The Center as Storehouse," holds to the earlier view of knowledge just described--knowledge just described--knowledge as exterior to us and as directly accessible. -48

[She calls another type Garret centers]
Garret Centers are informed by a deep-seated belief in individual "genius," in the Romantic sense of the term. (I need hardly point out that this belief also informs much of the humanities, and, in particular, English studies.) -48

[Garret Centers] see knowledge and interior, as inside the student, and the writing center's job as helping students get in touch with this knowledge, as a way to find their unique voices, their individual and unique powers. This idea has been articulated by many, including Ken Macrorie, Peter Elbow, and Don Murray. . . -49