Theory—or at least the term “theory”—can be highly problematic.  Let me say upfront that I don’t make this claim lightly, for I feel as though I have spent much of my academic career pondering the relationship of theory and practice (primarily because I initially found the term theory to be so vexing).  Subsequently, I have made emphasizing theory along with practice an inherent part of the classes I teach; I address it in much of my writing and in my conference presentations; it was the focus of my dissertation.  I would like to think of myself, then, as being rather enlightened when it comes to understanding “theory” in sound, down-to-earth ways.

Yet, when leaders at the IWCA Summer Institute at the University of Wisconsin, Madison this past July asked participants to reflect on “what you think of when you think of theory,” my first few minutes of freewriting conjured up nothing but three alarming anecdotes:

•    When I was in graduate school, one of my professors greatly befuddled a fellow student by politely but firmly telling her that “I always need you to put your ideas in a theoretical lens in order for me to understand them.”
•    Last summer, I led a teacher workshop focusing on “bridging theory and practice.”  One participant—a veteran composition instructor—frequently and unequivocally condemned all things “theory” throughout the three-week session, finally proclaiming that to solve the problem of theory, she was going to create an “anti-theory theory.”
•    One of my graduate students (in our Professional Writing program), read on the syllabus that we would be examining the theory and practice of writing pedagogy and subsequently exclaimed, “Why are we always talking about practice in this program and not focusing only on theory?  Isn’t this supposed to be graduate school?”

Alas, none of these reminiscences moved me toward a very productive (or happy) consideration of theory in my writing center work.  So as my fellow Institute participants fervently continued their own reflections, I decided to refocus.  Looking at my three anecdotes, I tried to parse out a thread, a commonality, an element that would help me make sense of the fact that after years of learning, researching, and teaching about the ways in which a unified notion of theory and practice made sense, my thinking was still plagued by the same old notions of that dreaded dichotomy—a view of theory and practice as disparate, opposite, even opposing.  It was then that I noticed the obvious commonality in my recollected examples: not one of them dealt with writing centers!  For a fleeting moment, I imagined that the theory-practice problem simply did not exist in the world of writing center studies:  we had evolved and successfully joined theory and practice in a perfect, seamless union in which all writing and writers flourished.

But, of course, evolution rarely comes so easily, and context, while important, rarely removes all complexity from an issue.  Nonetheless, it seemed a very real possibility that something in the nature of writing centers lends itself to avoiding many of the typical problems associated with the term “theory.”  So, in my last few minutes of writing that afternoon at the Summer Institute, I tried to move beyond the limiting notion of theory as something abstract.  I wanted—instead of holding theory at arm’s length and smiling at it in polite understanding—to embrace it, to really get to know it and what it could do.

And in that image of lessening my own distance with theory, I began also to see an image of the writing center and how, in so many ways, we constantly strive there to lessen distances of all kinds for students.  Certainly in the writing center, students are physically closer to us than in a traditional classroom, but we also do all we can to prevent elements like authority, rigidity, and formality from distancing us from them as well.  Perhaps it is our willingness to limit distances of all kinds in the writing center that allows us to be concerned not with particular notions of theory or practice but rather with the human being sitting next to us who seeks our help.  And when we focus on that person, that writer, that reason we are there, we have perhaps found the most true and meaningful bridge between theory and practice.

Surely this small revelation one beautiful summer day in Madison does not resolve the ongoing tension that exists between theory and practice.  It does not even wholly resolve the ways in which our theories and practices in the writing center sometimes seem at odds (for as enlightened as we may be, such difficulties do still happen).  But it has helped me to understand more fully that theory and practice exist not for each other but for the impact that—together—they can have outside of themselves and us.  For me, this was a powerful lesson, one made even more powerful by another realization I took from my Institute experience:  the fact that in our writing center community and often in our very own writing centers, we can find the answers—and, yes, the theory—we may not even know we seek.

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