Conor Hilton: Blog 9

 I am conflicted about the importance of writing center research—largely I feel that research is vital and important for the flourishing of various communities and our communal intellectual health. Yet, I don’t find myself personally very compelled by most of the research surrounding writing centers, which is particularly strange because I enjoy tutoring and helping students with their writing. I do think, overall, that research should be pursued by writing centers, though perhaps some of my reluctance is over the ways in which I feel like I am turning the students that I tutor into lab rats of some kind, when I conduct research in tutoring, even if I am not directly using them or their work. 

I am interested broadly in questions of teaching analysis and critical thinking, as well as transfer—that is, I am intrigued by thoughts on how to make skills transfer from one context to another (be that one paper to the next, one class to the next, school to ‘the real world’, etc.). I’m also interested in how to effectively structure workshop and peer review and what a more workshop-oriented Rhetoric course would look like. I want to know the answers here, but I’m less interested in personally seeking them (which is the opposite of how I tend to think about research, where I am animated by the uncertainty and the journey of discovery and far less interested in the outcome). 


Comments

  1. David KimeNovember 3, 2020 at 6:06 PM

    Your concern about turning students into "lab rats" strikes a particular cord with me. I agree that we want to ensure that we prioritize our students, not the research. However, I think this comes down to transparency. Or, better yet (maybe?), not having the tutor be the one conducting the research. That separation feels particularly important to avoid these feelings. The goal isn't necessarily to test things on them, but rather to improve things for them. Some of the concepts you mention here that you're interested in exploring also point away from that kind testing research. It feels more like trial-and-error based on what you already know or what others have experienced.

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  2. Carol SeverinoNovember 4, 2020 at 1:13 PM

    It turns out that transfer is a huge area of composition and ESL research. Findings are often depressing--that what is learned in the typical Rhetoric or Composition course doesn't meaningfully transfer to courses in the disciplines and in one's major. The ESL research shows that what's learned in ESL Writing doesn't transfer to regular Composition or especially to writing in the disciplines.

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