Looking Up: Mapping Writing Center Work through Institutional Ethnography

Abstract

Extending LaFrance & Nicolas's (2012) call for institutional ethnography, this essay argues that institutional ethnography widens the focus of writing center research, potentially bringing into focus the disconnect between writing center scholars' own understanding of writing center work and the understandings of others within the academy. Through the lens of institutional ethnography, we can map how writing center work coordinates with and affects the other work being done within the institution. Using interviews and textual analysis and working from the standpoint of a relatively new writing center director, the author offers her own local study as an example of an institutional ethnographic study and illustrates how the study helped her to better map her work within the institution. She argues that as a method of inquiry, institutional ethnography can help those of us in writing center work advocate for our visions of writing center work with a more complex understanding of writing centers in the institution writ large.