A Writing Center Journal
What happens when we write? Why do we teach writing the way we do? How does writing education engage with questions of race, gender, accessibility, and cultural difference? How does the writing center function as an interdisciplinary space?
Axis extends the writing center conversation from Praxis, our peer reviewed scholarly journal, into a public forum. Exploratory, experimental, and informative, the blog speaks to questions on the cutting edge of writing center theory and practice. Axis features writing from undergraduate and graduate educators at the University of Texas at Austin, and guest writers from universities across the United States.
As part of our monthly Consultant Spotlight series, today we sit down with David Vaughan DeVine, a graduating senior and long-time writing consultant at the University of Texas at Austin's University Writing Center, to talk about his experience as a writing center consultant, as a scholar, and as a colleague.
Read MoreIn Writing Center Studies we have plenty of data, both quantitative and qualitative, on how to best work with writers. Techniques for working with specific populations, ways of theorizing the uniqueness of writing center work in higher education, and strategies for continual improvement are our stock in trade, and over the last fifty years Writing Center Studies has become an academic field characterized by longevity and supported by substantial research. While research on how to best perform writing center work is ongoing, one area of Writing Center Studies has received almost no attention: the labor conditions in which writing center work is done. A new study currently soliciting for participation aims to change that.
Read MoreToday the Praxis editorial team is pleased to announce the theme for a Guest-Edited Fall 2016 issue! The topic on which Praxis 14.1 will focus is one close to the hearts of the Praxis editorial team, and one we feel the journal is particularly well-suited to showcasing.
Read MoreAs the field of Writing Center Studies matures and the institutional settings in which the work is done slowly change, there seems to be a research hierarchy emerging - one in which quantitative research is valued over qualitative research. While institutional pressures and the desire to improve writing center efficacy feed into this phenomenon, it remains unclear what is driving the 'quantitative turn' in Writing Center Studies. It is also unclear what, if anything, is lost by it.
Read MoreThis week Robert Cochran, a veteran Front Desk staffer, describes his experience at the University of Texas at Austin's University Writing Center.
Read MoreFor many years, Praxis regularly featured “consultant spotlight” columns – brief interviews where an individual writing center worker was invited to reflect on their background as a writer, their consulting style, and their experiences in their home writing center. In conjunction with the recent issue on “Writing Dis/Abiltiy,” I asked the Praxis editors if they would be interested in a consultant spotlight column focused on a writing center worker who experiences disability in some way. They graciously said yes, and so a few months ago I sat down for a conversation with Lizzie Picherit, a graduate student in the department of English at the University of Texas at Austin and consultant in UT’s University Writing Center.
Read MoreWe are enormously proud to be publishing this issue. While previous issues have always included one or two articles, columns or features focused on what could be considered non-traditional or non-typical subject matter for the study of writing center research and practice, this issue takes as its focus just that: the non-typical.
Read MoreAs part of our ongoing series on dis/ability, today we revisit a post by Elizabeth Picherit, former Praxis archivist, as she describes her experience "putting her disability cards out on the table" with a consultee requesting accommodations.
Read MoreToday we return to Katie Logan's blog post from February 2015, which describes ongoing training UT's disABILITY Advocate Program, administered by Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD), offers writing center consultants. In the coming weeks we will be revisiting blog posts on dis/ability as the publication date for our upcoming special issue on dis/ability in the writing center approaches.
Read MoreNo. The answer is no. Please don’t stop reading. However…
Read MoreI come here to confess: I’m pretty sure I’m an SJW. At least sometimes. And I think maybe writing centers aren’t the place for that kind of thing.
Read MoreWith that laughably optimistic title it’s clear from the start: this blog post is in trouble. I have no idea how to teach people to write, and it’s a big part of my job.
Read MoreOne of the recurrent questions we ask ourselves as writing center practitioners is what we’re doing: basically, what our theoretical assumptions are about our work, and how they inform (or fail to inform, or even hinder) that work. Today I will ask what it means to be non-directive and non-evaluative in the context of the theory of educative discourse laid out in Basil Bernstein’s Pedagogy, symbolic control and identity: Theory, research, critique (1996), which assumes pedagogic practice to be a “fundamental social context through which cultural reproduction-production takes place,” thus necessarily taking part in power relations originating outside itself.
Read MoreThere is new evidence that anthropogenic climate change may be drawing us all ever closer to a sixth mass extinction. This dramatic event, entailing changes to the planet that are vast and irreversible, is driven by shifts in human resource use and the expansion of human populations. On a much smaller and less dramatic scale, shifts in university governance are driving changes in the demographics of the campus community and in the ways writing centers do their work. These changes are having an early effect on graduate students.
Read MorePraxis managing co-editor James Garner reflects on his experience at the 2015 International Writing Centers Association conference.
Read MoreGun violence has become more prevalent over the last fifty years, and now seems to be almost ubiquitous, with more than 30 incidents since 2010. Today Praxis suggests that writing centers begin a conversation about what we, as safe places for students, can do.
Read MoreToday Praxis Managing co-Editor Thomas Spitzer-Hanks interviews his new colleague and co-Editor, James Garner, about his past in the writing center and his future plans for the journal.
Read MoreIn her July 21st blog post on AXIS, Kathryn Raign asked whether writing centers housed in insalubrious environments, and their directors, are being unfairly evaluated by student users. She posited that they are, due to her opportunity to measure student satisfaction with the space in a new location when the center she directs was moved. In the center that houses AXIS and its parent journal, Praxis, we have recently had a chance to evaluate Raign’s argument for ourselves.
Read MoreThe best high-risk climbers became the best because they had good mentors. The best writing lab tutors also had the best mentors—in most cases (I hope) their writing center director.
Read MoreIn her recent post on the subject, Melissa Nicolas notes that “writing centers sabotage themselves everyday by continuing practices that feed into our perpetual marginalization.” I, and many others like me, represent the result of staffing practices that lead to problems in writing centers. If we halt these practices, though, where would we turn in order to appropriately staff a writing center? The English department? Who exactly is qualified to work in a writing center?
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