The Oxford Guide for Writing Tutors: Practice and Research

The Oxford Guide for Writing Tutors introduces two conversations to the tutor's preparation, one about the creation of knowledge in writing programs, the other about tutor research. This approach to tutor training provides several benefits. First, it allows tutors to test their theories of what might work in a writing centre session and helps them to move professional conversation towards why such things happen. They bridge the theory-practice divide that often frustrates both novices and experiences tutors.

By conducting research to answer such questions, tutors can help themselves, the writers with whom they work, their fellow tutors - and the writers with whom they work. And, further, this approach gives the reader new methods for appreciating and critiquing scholarly work, making it easier to understand the best ways to help writers and to move the field forward.

As writing tutoring programs take on a variety of forms and pursue a range of missions, this book aims to create a flexible text whose contents can be easily rearranged to support a broad spectrum of reader needs. Each chapter, accordingly, can be read independently; the text does not rely on a sequential reading to create meaning.

The book also includes intra-textual and extra-textual references for the reader who wants to inquire further. That is, throughout the book are references to material in other chapters that might be of interest to the reader intrigued by the topic at hand. So too, in each chapter, we include references to and citations of the scholarship that supports much of the "common knowledge" of the field, including, in the Handbook, both previous tutor education textbooks and research from the field. The aim is to aid the interested reader's inquiry into the scholarship of the field as well as to ground advice about practice in research that testifies to the effectiveness a range of tutoring practices.

Much of the scholarship cited throughout the book is authored by undergraduate tutor-researchers as well as several former tutors who were graduate students when they published their articles. This crucial aspect best models the ways in which tutors themselves can bring together practice and research, in their day-to-day work and in their informed thinking about this work. Including tutor voices is an important tradition of the tutor education textbook because these are voices that speak to the issues concerning tutors in a range of institutions and programs across the country.

Distinctive Features
* Includes scholarship authored by undergraduate tutor-researchers
* Provides extensive references to and bibliographic citations of the scholarship of the field
* Offers references to research that supports and challenges disciplinary common knowledge
* Contains assignments designed to support discussion, writing, and inquiry