Researching the Writing Center

Acknowledgments - List of Tables - Chapter One: Theory, Practice, and What's in Between: Writing Center Scholarship - Research Basics in Evidence-Based Practice - The Contexts of Tutoring - Tutoring Diverse Populations - The Interactions of Tutoring - A Sample Research Question: What Is a Successful Writing Tutorial? - An Agenda for Writing Center Research - Appendix A: Sample Informed Consent Form - Appendix B: Sample IRB Form - Author Index - Topic Index.

Rebecca Day Babcock (Ph.D., Indiana University of Pennsylvania) is William and Ordelle Watts Professor and Chair, Literature and Languages Department, University of Texas of the Permian Basin. She is the author of two other books on writing center research, the co-editor of Writing Centers and Disability, and the winner of the 2012 IWCA outstanding article award.Terese Thonus (Ph.D., Indiana University) is Professor and Director of the Writing Program, Klein Family School of Communications Design, University of Baltimore. She has published articles in writing center and applied linguistics journals.

"In their well-earned revised edition of «Researching the Writing Center», Rebecca Day Babcock and Terese Thonus offer the writing center community a rich resource for the next stage of our field's research and development. No longer is the writing center community simply calling for replicable, aggregable, and data-supported research. Rather, the field is now producing more empirical research, a fact that Babcock and Thonus illustrate with their updated and comprehensive survey of new scholarship. Continuing to recognize the need for empirical data that bridges the gap between theory and practice, Babcock and Thonus again synthesize a vast, exhaustive range of scholarship focusing on writing centers, composition, and related studies from other relevant fields. Importantly, Babcock and Thonus call for writing centers to investigate other disciplines, urging us not to isolate ourselves nor imagine our work too unique to forge interdisciplinary connections. Their survey of writing center practices is the most up-to-date collection of important scholarship we have in writing centers and includes unpublished dissertations and theses. The references alone make «Researching the Writing Center» an essential part of any writing center practitioner's library. Babcock and Thonus's grasp of writing center scholarship uniquely positions them to understand the field's research opportunities and needs, and they offer a variety of informed suggestions for relevant projects and methodologies. With a keen eye for trends, Babcock and Thonus also point out emerging areas that writing centers must be ready to investigate, including globalization, multiliteracies/multimodality, and professional issues. «Researching the Writing Center» is a go-to book for the newest writing center practitioner to the most veteran writing center director." Steven Price, Professor of Writing and English Secondary Education; Director, Writing Center, Mississippi College