Mapping Tutorial Interactions: A Report on Results and Implications

At the University of Rhode Island (URI), we believe that assessment of writing center interactions can be useful beyond conventional efforts to measure the effects and effectiveness of tutoring strategies in sessions with student writers. In fact, we believe that assessment may be useful for developing knowledge about tutoring interactions in ways far more general but no less applicable to our field. Elsewhere, we have argued that engaging groups of tutors in assessment of tutoring strategies can yield multiple benefits for writing centers as organizations, such as establishing a writing center as a center for research in the University and fostering the disciplinary knowledge of tutors (Siegel Finer, White-Farnham, and Dyehouse). As a second step in reporting on a multi-year writing center research project, this article shares some results using a new instrument for assessment: tutorial interaction maps. We offer our model of assessment as one that shows promise for facilitating tutors’ understanding and discovery of the work that happens in writing centers, and we suggest that such a model might form a basis for new kinds of tools for use in writing center assessment.University Writing Cente

Predictors of programme adherence and weight loss in women in an obesity programme using meal replacements

Objective: To explore predictors of programme adherence and weight loss in patients participating in a weight management programme using meal replacements (MR).Design: One hundred and fifty healthy obese women, age 48.5 years (s.d. = 8.3); weight, 97.6 kg (13.4); body mass index (BMI) 36.5 (3.7), participated in a longitudinal study with a 16-week acute weight loss phase (Phase 1) followed by 1 year of a trial of weight-loss maintenance (Phase 2). Energy intake during Phase 1 totaled 900 kcal (3.7 MJ) a day from a diet including two MR. Energy intake during Phase 2 consisted of either MR or a low-fat diet with a calculated energy deficit of 600 kcal/day (2.5 MJ).Methods: Weight, height and waist circumference were measured and body composition assessed by air plethysmography (Bodpod). Glucose and insulin were measured by standard immunoassays and insulin sensitivity assessed by homeostatic model assessment.Results: At the end of 16 weeks, 114 subjects (76%) completed Phase 1 and achieved a mean weight loss of 8.95 kg (3.38). Adherence to Phase 1 was predicted by weight loss over the first 2 weeks (p < 0.001). Weight loss during Phase 1 was predicted by initial weight and initial systolic blood pressure. Adherence to Phase 2 was not predicted by physiological measures. Weight loss maintenance in Phase 2 (not gaining more than 3% of the weight at start of phase 2) was predicted by cholesterol and triglyceride measured at the start of Phase 2 but otherwise was not predicted by the physiological measures. Initial insulin sensitivity did not predict weight loss in either phase.Conclusion: Participants whose weight loss over the first 2 weeks falls in the bottom third may need additional intervention if they are to continue in this type of programme. A battery of physiological measures at entry to a MR weight loss and maintenance programme explains only a very small proportion of the variation in weight loss

Two Natures Translated from the Russian by Emily Finer

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“I don’t mix much” : language mixing in transnational Polish-British culture 2012-18

This research was supported by the University of St Andrews, Byre World, and the Santander Research and Travel Fund.Language mixing by migrants in the process of acquiring a new language is often treated as a symptom of their linguistic deficit, a stage to be overcome on the way to full bilingualism. Yet language mixing is also a creative process, a way to build community, maintain the transnational family, and restore cultural capital lost in migration. The cultural representations of the lives of post-EU accession Polish migrants in the UK discussed in this article – in an advertisement for an online shopping website, a novel for teenagers in English and Polish translation, and a series of illustrations with captions – use different strategies to tell stories of language acquisition and loss. I argue that ten years after Joanna Rostek and Dirk Uffelmann asked “Can the Polish Migrant Speak?” it is time to ask how the Polish Migrant speaks, and to offer an answer with more nuance than “in Polish” or “in English” by taking code-switching and translanguaging into account.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Lo‐tech tools as episteme: rethinking student engagement in the writing process and beyond

In this paper, five teacher‐scholars describe pedagogical inquiry into the use of ‘lo‐tech’ tools and what we discovered about the affordances of these tools. These include but are not limited to technologies like sticky notes that help students to organize written thoughts and physically move them around, crayons that allow students to highlight, trace, and categorize different types of thoughts on their paper, and index cards that they can use in a variety of interactive ways for their own writing and to write collaboratively. We found that the use of lo‐tech tools complemented our work with digital technology, engaging the kinesthetic learners in our classrooms and encouraging a spirit of play in students and teachers alike. We also discuss how teachers can encourage the use of lo‐tech tools epistemologically to help students process information, create knowledge, and to come to their own understandings or demonstrate understandings of course content ‐ with no product in mind other than knowledge‐making