Abstract
My pilot study has analyzed tutor notes practiced at a four-year institution, and my findings show that tutees respond positively to directive style tutor notes. While this claim is new and insightful, writing center scholars have not fully explored directive style tutoring or tutor notes. Thus, this finding needs to be further explored before it can make significant changes to tutor training. Despite the amount of research done, this pilot study can help writing scholars have a better understanding of the directive approach. To begin this study, I first explored the non-directive style tutoring and directive style tutoring. These two subject matters were necessary to explore as they offer different perspectives to tutor training. Being the most prominent in writing center scholarship, the non-directive style has been favored because of the impacts it is believed to have. Though the non-directive style dominates the field, directive style tutoring is beginning to be discussed by scholars. Though the directive style is starting to be explored, not a lot of claims have been made on it, so this pilot study was needed to begin understanding the complexities of it. The claims in my pilot study offer some insights on where future research needs to hone in on to fully understand the impacts of directive style tutor notes. Further exploring this subject matter can help reshift tutor training from the commonplaces it has focused on since the 1980s.