Kail,+Harvey+and+John+Trimbur.+The+Politics+of+Peer+Tutoring

Kail and Trimbur suggest that simply using peer tutors is not enough to get past the "traditional" models of education operating within the writing center. A curriculum model (where tutors are assigned through classes) works from a Generation and Transmission ideology (gen/tran, as they call it) in which information is generated by those higher up and transmitted down the line. Adding peer tutors to the mix only makes the transmission line longer before reaching the students, while still leaving faculty firmly in control of knowledge. They posit that by dis-identifying with the authority structure and instead coming to terms with their shared status as undergraduate who exist at the bottom of a hierarchy can allow students to "experience their own power as learners" and "understand the structures of authority they have internalized" (208).