Bawarshi and Pelkowski offer a postcolonial critique of Stephen North's "The Idea of a Writing Center," arguing that writing centers should not change writers by unreflectively initiating students into academic discourse. Writing centers that function as spaces of acculturation contribute to the "othering" of basic writers and ignore the effects that acculturation into academic discourse has on writers' home discourses. Instead, writing centers should become postcolonial spaces. The postcolonial writing center encourages writers to develop what Edward Said terms "critical consciousness," an understanding of why discourses have particular conventions and how the parameters of those discourses naturalize the reproduction of specific social relations, values, epistemologies, and ideologies. Helping students to realize critical consciousness does not mean discouraging them from participating in academic discourse. Rather, critical consciousness allows basic writers to analyze their own positions in discursive formations. Postcolonial writing centers should also promote Gloria Anzaldua's concept of "mestiza consciousness," the consciousness that emerges from simultaneously positioning oneself in multiple, often contradictory, discourses. Because writing centers exist both within and on the margins of the academy, they are uniquely suited to the task of encouraging writers to deconstruct the institutional discourses in which they must engage.
Collins describes a method of teaching secondary and graduate assistant writing teachers by putting them into an undergraduate laboratory situation with basic writing students, where "actual work with writers, careful analysis of that work, and a lot of writing . . . can help teachers become sensitive to the needs of writers" (433). Collins offers common-sense observations about helping writers achieve a transition from "everyday spoken language" to meaningful writing by providing an "interlocutor, a person who takes an active part in the communication process and who responds cooperatively and helpfully to what has been stated" (427).
Using two case studies of writing center tutors, Fletcher demonstrates contradictions between writing ideals and actual teaching and tutoring practices. He sees that reflective, collaborative dialog between writing center tutors and writing instructors can be used to identify such contradictions as diffuse assumptions that each holds about the other, the assignment, and the student writer. Reflective discussion of writing histories and ideals in relation to actual teaching and tutoring practices is a step toward reconsidering how tutors' and teachers' practices can better assist basic writers in becoming authoritative, self-sufficient, college writers.
Using the Johnson County Community College Writing Center as a model, Mohr argues that a successful writing center must move beyond developmental approaches to include all students, build confidence, help students use academic language successfully, and provide a haven for students beyond the margins. Successful writing centers require tutor training that draws on Howard Gardner's intelligence theory and other learning theories, consistent financial and collegewide support, and a full-time director. Mohr notes that because writing centers provide opportunities for dialogue about writing, teachers who use writing centers only as supplemental or remedial resources miss the opportunity to support democratic interaction on their campuses.