Praxis: A Writing Center Journal • Vol. 22, No. 2 (2025)

From the Editors: Communities in the Writing Center

Alexandra Gunnells
The University of Texas at Austin
praxisuwc@gmail.com

Samantha Turner
The University of Texas at Austin
praxisuwc@gmail.com

As much of our field’s scholarship reminds us, studies of what goes on in the writing center are so often studies about the communities that keep our centers functioning. Across the board, the authors in our Spring 2025 issue are concerned with who does the labor of writing center work. From in-depth looks at tutor training, education, and self-efficacy to alliances and  relationship building across tutor communities and administrative teams, this issue refocuses our attention on the people at the heart of writing center work. 

This issue begins with “Affordances of Mixed-Designation Faculty and Staff Administrative Teams in the Writing Center” by Kara Poe Alexander, Lauren J. Short, and Claire Seekins. The authors use their center’s administrative transition to a mixed-designation leadership team to build upon scholarship that examines the configuration of WC administration. Building on the theme of administrative reflection and responsivity, Katharine Brown and Jonah Breed offer “LGBTQ+ Alliances and Allies: Affinity Groups as Queered Professional Development for Writing Centers” as a case study for developing more equitable staff communities and filling gaps in field-wide knowledge about how theories of inclusivity translate into practice. 

Several articles in this issue are focused on tutor education, offering a variety of perspectives that center the experiences of current and previous tutors. Bree Johnson invites us to slow down in “Take a Breath: Building an Emotionally Mindful Writing Center through Mindfulness Education for Tutors,” which extends the WC’s turn towards tutor wellness to reflect on Johnson’s development and implementation of an original mindfulness training for tutors. Next up, Tyler Gardner, Madilyn Abbe, Gabbie Schwartz, and Olivia Drew Swasey present a study of how tutors grow as collaborators through their tutor training in “Tracking Dispositional Development in Tutor Education: An Experiment in Tutor-Led Assessment.” 

Highlighting tutor perspectives on the relationships between tutor training and institutional context, Amanda M. May, Omolola Ayegboyin, Rose Gonzales, and Katherine Lundebjerg contribute “Across Times and Spaces: Tutor Perspectives on Asynchronous Training Components at a Hispanic-Serving Institution” in order to make a multi-vocal argument foregrounding where knowledge-making about tutor training happens. Alex Drozdoff, Maureen McBride, and Elisabeth L. Miller pay similar focus to the context in which our tutors’ work takes place in “A Guide of One's Own: How Writing Center Training Manuals Fail to Support Writing Fellows Needs.” Rounding out this section, Kendyl Harmeling, Alexandria Degner, Jennings Collins, and Laura T. Cox reflect on the pedagogical importance of time in “Navigating Writing Center Timescapes: Reflections on Tutor-Self Efficacy at University and Community Sites,” which offers opportunities for connecting to communities of practice.

We finish off this issue with a section attuned to power relations between people in the writing center. In “Looking Back to Get Ahead: Student Need and Social Justice in the Writing Center,” Tyler Sehnal pushes us to re-familiarize ourselves with the histories of the field in order to implement more radical praxes going forward. Next up, Lisa DiMaio offers “Accidental Power: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Writing Center Interactions Between Tutors and Multilingual Tutees” as an examination of how discourse choices may reinforce linguistic dominance in tutor-tutee interactions. 

This issue ends with Mary Hedengren’s review of Reconstructing Response to Student Writing: A National Study from Across the Curriculum. As Hedengren notes, Melzer’s book offers invaluable insights into best practices for responding to student writing across curricular contexts and departments, including writing centers. 

This issue is chock-full of exciting insights from practitioners across the spectrum of who inhabits the writing center, and we hope you enjoy it. We here at Praxis remain deeply grateful to the reviewers, authors, and copy-editors who helped make this issue a reality. We especially want to thank our brilliant undergraduate interns, Audrey Fife and Ava Vano, who helped prepare this issue for publication. We wish a restful summer break to all of our authors, reviewers, and readers.