Valentine, "'Acting Out,'" in Strickland and Gunner, _The Writing Program Interrupted_

Summary: Valentine relies on Wenger's understandings of communities of practice to examine authority and agency in a writing center (and, by extension, in writing programs). She looks at three "disruptive" acts by graduate student consultants in the center and re-contextualizes them as examples of students trying to claim agency in an overly authoritarian environment. Valentine suggests that WPAs should attempt to structure programs to encourage agency from constituents (graduate students, in her examples, but her argument can be expanded to include pretty much everyone, especially those lower on the hierarchy such as part-time faculty). To return to Wenger, encouraging agency helps traditionally disempowered parties become more legitimate participants in the CoP.

Response: Valentine had me at her use of Wenger, whose concept of CoPs has been one I've found myself going back to a lot over the past year. I am surprised at how many of these readings have to do with writing centers--it reveals a blind spot I had prior to this course in that I had not conceived of writing-center directors as WPAs. This article (and the others I've read) was useful in opening my eyes to this bias. I think the argument is sound and necessary, especially for the newer WPA who might, due to feeling unsettled in the role, be over-authoritarian. This is similar to the new-teacher problem, where one feels as though one needs to hold on too tightly to one's authority and sees challenges everywhere. A key solution to both situations is a relaxing of the grip, as Valentine points out here.

Uses: Writing centers, WPA administrative structure and how our concepts influence our actions.