This dissertation attempts to address three areas of significance to the current academic zeitgeist: 1) the disciplinary re-characterization of English composition in consideration of its ability to aid the transfer of writing practices, 2) the increasing theorization of writing in academic settings as sets of social practices, 3) the repeated calls for serious research to be conducted in college and university writing centers. Using ethnographic methods and tools, I conducted a semester-long study in which I observed participants in a first-year composition (FYC) class and the required tutorials in the school's writing center. This dissertation focuses on the work done for one assignment, the Primary Source Analysis (PSA). Grounded in the academic literacies model of Lea and Street (1998, 2006), my research looks at how the literacy practices of the PSA are theorized, taught, and taken up in three contexts. First, the institutional and curricular context: How do the school's course curriculum and the school's writing center conceive the teaching and learning of writing academically? Second, the classroom context: How does the classroom instructor reflect and refract institutional literacy practices? And third, the tutorial context: How do the case study students and writing tutors reflect and refract both institutional literacy practices and those literacy practices constituted in Dr. Joyce's classroom as the students move between the classroom and the writing center? In response to these questions, I identified a list of practices associated with the PSA and analyzed these practices through the frame of reflection and refraction (e.g., Bloome & Brown, 2012). I use classroom documents, administrator interviews, and the class text to characterize the practices within the institutional and curricular context. Then I trace how the classroom instructor, peer writing consultants (PWCs), and students reflect and refract the FYC practices prescribed and imparted by those in higher levels of the institutional hierarchy by observing those practices in the instructional events in the classroom and writing tutorials. I found that the classroom instructor refracts and intensely reflects particular practices for the PSA to adapt his teaching to the members of his class. I further argue that identifying the theoretical and experiential lenses of student and PWC refractions offers teachers and researchers opportunities to investigate what is often assumed to be students engaging in "negative transfer" or "getting it wrong" and instead reclassify these refractions as principled, purposed, and agentive acts. This study has further implications for literacy research in its units of analysis (observe literacy practices) and analytical frame (reflection and refraction). It has implications for teaching composition by offering a model to create a taxonomy of practices expected for any given assignment and by illustrating adaptive teaching practices. And it has further implications for writing center work by highlighting the benefits of a corequisite tutoring model and providing an analytical frame for tutor training. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]