Tutor Attitudes Toward Tutoring Creative Writers in Writing Centers

Abstract

This study concerns itself with tutor attitudes toward tutoring creative writers in writing centers. In it, I look at these attitudes and compare tutor definitions of creative writing, tutor comfort with tutoring writers, and tutor training. Tutors attitudes toward their training and their beliefs about what training to tutor creative writers should entail tell a great deal about the privileging of creative writing and creative writers in writing centers. This study is an important first step in considering that privileging, its source, and its effects. For the study, tutors completed an online survey. They were not asked for any identifying information, and online software allowing the tracking of IP addresses and email addresses was disabled so that no identifying information could be collected. It is my hope that this study will aid the writing center field in reconsidering the ways in which writing center theory and practice meet, and in constructing a better way to bring ideals and practice together. Because writing center tutors are in a unique position as frontline practitioners and reader/writers of writing center theory, understanding their attitudes is an important step towards lessening the gap between our ideals and our realities