THE ECOLOGY OF PEER TUTORING: PERSPECTIVES OF STUDENT STAFF IN ONE HIGH SCHOOL WRITING CENTER

THE ECOLOGY OF PEER TUTORING: PERSPECTIVES OF STUDENT STAFF IN ONE HIGH SCHOOL WRITING CENTER

By Cynthia Dean

Thesis Advisor: Dr. Julie Cheville

An Abstract of the Thesis Presented

 in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the

Degree of Doctor of Education

(in Literacy Education)

May, 2010

In high school writing centers that employ students as tutors, those tutors can face challenges as they move between their roles as student and tutor. The purpose of this study was to document the challenges high school writing tutors may encounter.

Two conceptual frames, performance theory and social ecology, guided this study. Performance theory framed analysis of peer tutors’ performance in the writing center while social ecology showed how the acquisition of identity in one context affects a peer tutor’s activity in others.

This qualitative study used a case study design and ethnographic methods. Data were collected through individual interviews, focal group interviews, document analysis, and observation.

This study of how tutors in a student-staffed high school writing center understand their identities as tutors revealed that writing center work empowered these tutors in deep and transformative ways. This study also documented how becoming a tutor complicated participants’ understandings of their roles as students, writers, and tutors. Through their tutor training, participants came to understand other ways of learning and teaching, which interrupted what they had previously perceived as “normal” school-based writing and writing instruction. Tutors reported struggling to educate others about collaborative tutoring and voiced significant reservations about clients’ and teachers’ attitudes towards writing and about what they felt was overly directive writing instruction in their school.

This study highlighted the degree to which a tutorial identity empowered students and the degree to which the institutional climate constrained them. This study did not document the perspectives and/or practices of other individuals (e.g., students, teachers, administrators). Future studies could expand the participant sample to include these groups. Documenting the perspectives of all those within a given institution would deepen the understanding of the challenges not addressed in this study.