Ken Bruffee: Peer Tutor to the Masses

It seemed as though Bruffee’s major concerns were with the ideas of socially constructed knowledge and peer tutoring as collaborative learning. Bruffee began exploring these ideas in the 1970’s when he observed the current writing centers and found them to be lacking.

Before looking at “what” Bruffee wanted to do with the writing centers, an examination of “why” will clarify his actions. Bruffee saw knowledge as socially constructed; therefore, for students to go gain knowledge, they have to connect themselves with a discourse community that validates what knowledge is. As Kuhn put it, “Knowledge is not what individuals believe, but rather what groups and knowledge communities believe.” Bruffee saw these writing centers as an excellent opportunity to establish discourse communities that would appear welcoming to students who were new to the academy and seeking access to “knowledge.”

The problem with the writing centers, as Bruffee saw it, was at the time they were simply an extension of the classroom, where students were uncomfortable and not seen as participants, but rather students to be talked at. Though the writing centers were staffed by “students,” the power structure was the same as that of the classroom. Bruffee’s solution was to decentralize the power structure of the writing center and make it as student centered as possible. He began by staffing the centers with real students. These students were charged with facilitating discuss, rather than delivering “the answer.” Bruffee argued that this discussion-style approach would lead the students to bring out higher level concerns than they would if they were simply going to a superior for the right answer.