Keeping Body and Soul Together: Inclusion, Contingency and Methodology in the College Writing Center

Writing centers have become commonplace on college campuses. Traditionally, writing centers were primarily staffed by undergraduate peer tutors, and writing center literature continues to focus on peer tutoring. More recently, these spaces are increasingly staffed by professional tutors, who have advanced degrees and often work in the writing center as part of adjunct teaching both of which are contingent on enrollment. The increase of professional tutors challenges assumptions in writing center literature about how tutors foster inclusion within the tutorial. Because professional tutors have a different working reality than peer tutors, it is important to examine how conventional tutoring methods enact inclusion. This research is interested in how contingent employment impacts professional tutors’ work and how they work with community college students across ability levels. Drawing from Disability Studies and the sociocultural process of creating bounds of inclusion, known as othering, this study uses qualitative methods to explore the relationship of student experience and the working conditions of eight professional tutors in a community college writing center. Using interview data, this dissertation examines the following questions: (1) How do professional tutors experience contingency in relation to their work in a community college writing center? (2) How do professional tutors perceive students who have been assigned to remedial courses preceding first year composition? (3)How are professional tutors trained to work with students with a broad range of abilities? (4) How do professional tutors replicate and/or challenge ideals of normalcy? This study specifically seeks to examine how tutors’ working conditions may influence their work with students across ability levels. Finally, this study reflects on these professional tutors’ experiences to discuss implications for future research and labor practices regarding professional tutors in the collegiate writing center.