Tutoring Writing, Transmitting Culture: Investigating Tutors' and Students' Beliefs about Good Writing and a Writer's Voice in an Afterschool Literacy Program

Using an ethnographic case study approach, this thesis investigates what multilingual adolescent writers and their adult tutors in an afterschool literacy program believe about good writing and a writerâ s voice, and how their beliefs about writing and voice both reflect particular linguistic and cultural values and shape attitudes towards language use, the writer, and writing development. Grounding the research in social constructivism (Vygotsky, 1980, 1986) and theories of language socialization (Duff, 2007a; Schieffelin Ochs, 1986), legitimate peripheral participation (Lave Wenger, 1991), and symbolic capital (Bourdieu, 1991, 2006), I addressed the following three questions: 1) What do tutors and students believe about good writing and a writer's voice? 2) How do tutors conceptualize their identities, purposes, and actions in responding to students' writing and voice in this context? and 3) In what ways do students see their tutoring sessions contributing to their overall development as writers? I observed 4 writing tutors and 5 of their students for 4 months, triangulating data that included observing and digitally recording the tutoring sessions; conducting semi-structured interviews and stimulated recalls with the participants; and collecting print-based materials produced by the participants. The findings show (a) that participants considered good writing as a moral imperative and that they saw good writing and voice both as interconnected and as something that produced writer capital; (b) that volunteers constructed an ad hoc tutoring identity marshaled from personal and professional experiences to tutor effectively; (c) that learning to write was a transformative, bidirectional undertaking with experts (tutors) being affected as much as novices (students); and (d) that students exhibited strong convictions over what makes an ideal writing tutor. These four observations suggest that writing and tutoring writing transmit cultural knowledge, language values, and principles of appropriate verbal and physical conduct.Ph.D