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From abstract: "This dissertation theorizes the writing center as bridge-as an institutional resource that supports second language graduate writers as they journey from outside the academy to the inside-including its strengths and limitations, both locally (for these writers at this writing center) and for the field more broadly. I offer the metaphor of the writing center as bridge, both as an alternate writing center identity and therefore as an alternate approach to tutoring, and as an approach that privileges the multiple subject positions that students hold as they use the writing center.  [...] Based on the literature, the experiences of these participants, and my own experiences as a tutor-turned-coordinator, I ultimately argue that nondirective tutoring is rooted in practice with native-English-speaking undergraduates and that this practice so dominates many writing centers' identities that it has left little room for other subject positions, including those of second language graduate writers."

This open-access book by Steven J. Corbett, Beyond Dichotomy: Synergizing Writing Center and Classroom Pegagogies, is available to be downloaded free. it is described as follows: How closely can or should writing centers and writing classrooms collaborate? Beyond Dichotomy explores how research on peer tutoring one-to-one and in small groups can inform our work with students in writing centers and other tutoring programs, as well as in writing courses and classrooms. These multi-method (including rhetorical and discourse analyses and ethnographic and case-study) investigations center on several course-based tutoring (CBT) partnerships at two universities. Rather than practice separately in the center or in the classroom, rather than seeing teacher here and tutor there and student over there, CBT asks all participants in the dynamic drama of teaching and learning to consider the many possible means of connecting synergistically. This book offers the "more-is-more" value of designing more peer-to-peer learning situations for developmental and multicultural writers, and a more elaborate view of what happens in these peer-centered learning environments. It offers important implications-especially of directive and nondirective tutoring strategies and methods-for peer-to-peer learning and one-to-one tutoring and conferencing for all teachers and learners of writing.

a discussion of directive vs. non-directive methods and other techniques for working with developmental writers

Created by members of the University of Maryland's Writing Center, this video instructs tutors to ask questions that prompt student thinking but direct students when they are struggling.