Reimagining Writing Centres Practices: A South African Perspective

In light of the changing face and internationalisation of our student body and their concomitant needs, this book attempts to foreground both the strides made in the field, as well as the important questions and debates confronting writing centre practitioners in the South African higher education arena. The latter demands that we review and reimagine the support we currently provide. Reimaging, however, forces us to wrestle with the challenges that are inherent in work of this nature and to be vocal about the difficult questions that must be asked and answered if we want to provide socially just solutions to our students’ writing challenges. The onset of COVID-19 also imposed on our daily practices and required a hasty re-evaluation of our service provision. The aim of this volume is to further conversations and research on the notion of the internationalisation of writing centres and the necessity to focus on the key issues of multilingualism, discipline-based writing, social justice, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as specialised consultant/tutor training. Writing centres at South African universities have established themselves as fundamental to the support and development of our students. Thus, the time is ripe for us as writing centre practitioners in the South African context to continue writing our own writing centre narrative, grapple with context-specific issues and questions, and provide context-specific answers and solutions that speak to the lived realities of our students. We hope to achieve this through this book.