Research Questions
For my research project in Research Design, I have settled on continuing a study I began investigating last semester (Fall, 2013) on the discourses used in writing centers. Namely, my research will seek to address how the implementation of marketing and business rhetoric conflicts with the pedagogical aims of writing centers. Researchers in education have found that as universities conform to “objectives lined-up with mercantile orientation” and “abdicate [their] function of training and educating […] in favor of organizing production” (Lucchesi, 2008), education misplaces its “collective sense and ability of creativity, initiative, genuine innovation, critical thinking, etc” (Larrasquet & Pilnière, 2012), which hinders students in their ability to collaborate. In summary, I argue that collaboration and non-directive methods are problematically challenged in writing centers where commidification, its discourse and implementation, takes place. As I will discuss further in the Design section, there has been a lot of research done on the conflation of business and education domains, but my project is the first to look specifically at writing centers, using writing center theory and pedagogy.
Thus, so far, my research questions are as follows: How does the use of business rhetoric, i.e. referring to students as customers, influence the space of the writing center? How does the use of such rhetoric affect the relationship between tutors and students? How does the use of such rhetoric (re)shape the pedagogical mission of the writing center, its aims and long-term goals? In particular, I am interested in how interactions and professional behaviors change with the use of business rhetoric: when students are customers, how does that change the interactions and dynamics between the institution and the department? Administrators and tutors? Tutors and student writers?
During the course of “selecting the 'things' of the situation[s],” (Takayoshi, et al, 2012), and in these beginning stages of research, I am hoping to narrow the focus or scope of the project to include perceptions of changes occurring at the writing center site as well as account for measurable changes in how tutors and writing center administrators see themselves in terms of how they interact with students and address their needs. The process of narrowing the focus while also allowing for the collection of a lot of different types of data—language data, interview answers, etc—will be difficult but necessary, as I want the “formation-in-action” to speak to concerns that are bigger than myself.
Research Design
My proposal will eventually serve as the following: an introduction and articulation of a felt difficulty I have experienced within the context of working as a writing center administrator and consultant, examining the overall implications of the felt difficulty in terms of the use of business discourse in a space that purports to embrace writing center theory and its roots in critical pedagogy. I foresee this project taking several years to complete, because of the amount of data that will be collected and interpreted. While the felt difficulty began with one writing center, where I worked for three years, pending IRB approval, I plan to discuss how business rhetoric is also adopted in other writing centers in Ohio. (The sites used for this project will be writing centers housed in public institutions of higher education.) I will also give examples of each domain's discourse – business and education – and describe why, using responses gathered from interviews along with information collected from relevant literature and other text-based data, the wholesale adoption and use of customer service rhetoric is antithetical to writing center pedagogy.
Thus, my research design will incorporate mixed methods: I will interview current and former writing center administrators to gather reflections and opinions on the use of business discourse, and I will use Critical Discourse Analysis to interpret language data from writing center promotional materials, websites, and correspondence between the host institutions and their writing centers as well as the writing center administrators and their tutoring staff.
Given the objectives of the business and marketing domain, there are educators and researchers who find it problematic that the same objectives are used within educational domains. Gary Miller's article, “The Two-way Street of Higher Education Commodification,” discusses the concerns that result from conflating the two domains; because each domain has origins in different ideologies, the results of their mixing are potentially problematic. According to Miller (2005), this use of business and marketing discourse serves a purpose in shifting the focus away from the Whitmanesque perspective of “the common good” that is the individual's learning about one's capabilities through exploration, and toward “[seeing] the common good as synonymous with the corporate good. Under this rubric, schooling is useful only as it benefits economic prosperity.” The student's personal growth may be an unintentional side effect, but it is by no means the main goal of educational settings that perpetuate the equating of the “common good” with “corporate good.”
Additionally, this project seeks to address a gap in existing research. Of the articles and books written about one domain influencing the other, none have been written with writing centers in mind; all of the research studies done thus far on the topic have discussed education as a whole (in particular Giroux, 1998; Miller, 2005) and not focused on writing centers in particular. However, I believe that what occurs in the microcosm of the writing center can serve to illustrate how the use of business and marketing rhetoric undermines the pedagogical aims of improving student writing. Here, I make plain my own ideology: It is my hypothesis that in order for students to challenge ideas, to think critically and engage compassionately and intelligently with the world at large, education must not be treated as a product but as a community interested in fostering creative development.
Due to conflicting goals of each discourse, this overlap of domains is potentially harmful to the pedagogical mission of writing centers – that mission, according to Wulff, Henderson, et al. (2011), is “to create a collaborative space that empowers all university students and a joint learning experience that benefits both writers and tutors.” A specific side-by-side comparison of each domain's rhetoric highlights the differences in aims, goals, and ideologies between the two domains. For example, within the business/marketing domain, according to Dën Hartog and Vurburg (1998), who are writing to instruct international business leaders how to use “corporate charisma” to be more successful,
Management processes and attitudes are seen as the key to successful implementation of a unilateral nicht pluralistischen [non-pluralist] idea of corporate vision.... A strong force of unification is needed in such a context. The understanding and acceptance of [this] vision and the result in increased identification and commitment at the level of the individual manager can act as “global glue.” (pp 358)
The Dën Hartog and Vurburg piece is considered among those in the business world to be a seminal work in business studies. This idea of “global glue” and the context surrounding it contradicts the mission of the University of Toledo's Writing Center, which states the following:
We believe that writing is a recursive activity involving several steps that include generating ideas, organizing thoughts, developing a first draft, rewriting, and editing.
We believe in non-directive tutorial styles that provide the opportunity for writers to maintain ownership of their own papers; writing consultants serve as an audience instead of as editors or proofreaders.
We believe in the importance of being responsive to the individual needs of a student at whatever cognitive level s/he may be as a writer.
We believe that writers develop writing skills best when they are in a supportive environment surrounded by other writers who seek to encourage clear expression of ideas.
We believe that writers should learn to use the vocabulary, organization and format specific to the academic discipline in which they are writing.
These beliefs, listed on the Writing Center's website and on their promotional materials, align well with conventional writing center discourse and its expectations, particularly as outlined in Irene Clark's (1990) scholarship, that writing centers serve to empower students through self-motivated, “non-directive” process, meaning that tutors serve as guides and not managers, emphasizing personal development through collaboration. The emphasis on creating and maintaining a supportive, collaborative environment runs contrary to the business/marketing language of maintaining a “unilateral non-pluralist idea of corporate vision” (Dën Hartog & Vurburg,1998).
The above comparison is a brief example of a text-based interpretation using Critical Discourse Analysis as a method. I will be performing more text-based analyses of promotional materials during the course of the project. Once I receive IRB approval to interview writing center administrators, I plan to ask them how they use business discourse in their writing center spaces, including in meetings with their tutoring staff and other administrators. I want to better understand their feelings on such discourse use and its influence on the pedagogical missions of the writing center: Do administrators believe that the “leadership” approach outlined by Dën Hartog and Vurburg should be modeled in educational settings? Why or why not? How do they interpret such an approach? What does it look like in action at their writing center? I hope to learn more about the complexity of the conflation of these domains through interviewing and developing relationships with other writing center administrators during the course of this project.
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