Writing Center as Global Pedagogy

The writing center is a common writing support service in North America with uniquehistorical and theoretical underpinnings (Boquet 1999; Bruffee 1984; North 1984). In the lastcouple of decades it has truly become a global pedagogy being implemented in around 65countries worldwide (e.g. Archer 2007; Bräuer 2002; Tan 2011). Although writing centershave been well received by international scholars more studies are needed to discuss theeconomic and political imperatives of establishing writing centers in respective contexts andpossible impacts on different student populations as a result. To address this issue this multilayeredcase study explores how the educational philosophy pedagogical rationale and conceptsof the global writing pedagogy are interpreted by administrators and enacted in pedagogicalpractice at Maple Leaves University (MLU)1 an internationalizing university in Japan. Toexamine the language planning stage data were collected from interviews with fiveadministrators and relevant university documents. For pedagogical practices primary dataincluded audio-recordings and student interviews from four tutor-tutee dyads concerning threetypes of writing tutorials: (a) Japanese students seeking consultation on Japanese writing (b)Japanese students seeking consultation on English writing and (c) international students seekingconsultation on Japanese writing.