Shaping Writers in the Center: How Identity is Acknowledged and Influenced

Abstract

When examining writing center pedagogy and teaching composition practices within the center, it is necessary for consultants to focus on employing practices that are tailored to each specific session. I analyzed scholarship and my own experience working in the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa’s (UHM) Writing Center to unravel the complexity of identity politics and how they are influenced by tutor/writer relationship and binary structures that exist within modern writing centers. Research has shown that claiming identity as a writer is what sits on the forefront of identity politics, but certain tutoring strategies can privilege certain groups when employed within the center. When examined and critiqued together, scholarship demonstrates the controversy about identity politics and binaries in writing center settings. Analyzing the tutoring practices of consultants in UHM’s center when working with native English and second language students, however, explains how different factors come together to encourage positive identity practices within sessions.