Community of Practice

The authors of The Everyday Writing Center share some of the same concerns that Grimm does eight years earlier in that they still sense a move toward knowledge as containment (8). This sense is a result of their struggle to justify and demonstrate what they do and why they do what they do to both tutors and institutions. They ask, how can writing centers explain that “technical rationality can neither predict nor explain the ‘intelligence that begins by being tacit and spontaneous’” (20)? The answer to such a question is not an easy one; it is often misunderstood, often overlooked, and even not cared about. But, the authors say that it must be cared about. For in the answer lies the story of the shameless Trickster, the one who will say aloud which is forbidden (19), the story of the tutor who sees with Coyote eyes, the story of the writing center that develops teaching as learning, as becoming, the story of writing center director who does not rely on a tutoring manual to train tutors but on stories, shared experiences, discussion from all who work in the writing center. These are the stories that demonstrate a writing center as a community of practice.