Apologia for undergraduate peer-tutors in writing

peer-reviewedWhen Kenneth Bruffee said ‘The beginnings of peer tutoring lie in practice, not in theory’ (Bruffee 2001, p.206), he was pointing out that ‘ancilliary [writing support] programs staffed by professionals’ weren’t working. ‘Students’, claimed Bruffee, ‘avoided them in droves’ (Bruffee, 2001: p.206). Students were avoiding lots of things in droves. It was, after all, the sixties. Back then, peers tutoring one another in writing was the trialling of a hunch. ‘Some of us guessed’, Bruffee recounted, ‘that students were refusing the help we were providing because it seemed to them merely an extension of the work, the expectations, and above all the social structure of traditional classroom learning’ (Bruffee 2001, pp. 206-07)