Exam 1. The Exam question is posted to the right, and we decided that it would be a take-home exam. I did not set a time limit, or a page limit, and you are expected to use your books as references while you write. The completed exam is due before class on March 9. Because you will be writing your exam at home, you will be free to leave during the portion of class originally reserved for the examination. That is, class on March 9 will be from 7:30-8:45 pm. Although this plan was not necessarily any individual's first choice, it was an effort to set forward an approximation of consensus. Good luck and I am looking forward to reading your essays.
We spent the next section of class discussing issues affecting internal and external validity, and considering some of the ethical, epistemological, and "world-view" assumptions and issues associated with experimental studies.
Ethics: In terms of ethics we considered what justifies writing research in general - and experimental research on writing in particular. Our answer seemed to be that it was a trade off: then balance between the exploitation of or imposition on research subjects - and the benefit to the subjects themselves, to the discipline, or to the "world" at large. For education research - the eploitation factor is immediate and personal - and the benefits (even if they are significant) are generally long-term and abstract. I think we agreed that teachers (and writers) need to collect and share information about what works, what it's like to teach in different context - but that studies had to be "well designed" and "not a waste of subjects' time" to be justified. The line between justified + unnecessary in this discussion was both hazy - and critical. I suggest that for better or worse - where it is drawn will connect to individual researchers' values.
Epistemologies. We also talked about the four paradigms' perspectives on theories about what counts as knowledge - and how knowledge is created. In the Brand study - (and in the list of factors that could affect validity) there seemed to be an assumption that "truth" and knowledge were connected to clearly defined categories, objectivity, and appropriate statistical sampling + analysis. As our discussion pointed out - this list left off "human" features that affect research validity (or at least how it should be interpreted) - features such as rich, complex (even conflicting) descriptions of research contexts, differences in group dynamics, personal (as opposed to historical) circumstances, and increased awareness of the "myth of homogeneity" that underlies acceptance for assigning "numbers" to complex behaviors, attitudes, and feelings.
Ontology (assumptions about the way the world is) connected to both ethical assumptions (axiology) and assumptions about how we can know things (epistemological assumptions). Postpositivists assume there is "one" underlying pattern or principle that can be approximated through studies => that there is a "statistical mean" that the study of a given subject will "regress" to or approach. Social constructivists and transformative researchers see this idea as one perspective on how the world "is" among many other perspectives = perspectives where there are "local" or individual patterns - but not necessarily "universal" patterns; as well as perspectives that assume that the patterns we see are socially conditions so that we "learn" to see what is there (rather than actually seeing what is there). And so on. Assuming that there is NOT one universal truth casts the value of experimental research in a light; from constructivist, transformative, and pragmatic perspectives - the fact that there may be multiple "realities" and theories of reality suggests that findings from experiments will be local - and generalization is always going to be viewed with skepticism.
The discussion of Brand's study of emotions provided discussion of many of these issues in terms of a particular research project (similar to what you will write for your exam).
We breezed through the data collection chapter. I drew your attention to the overview page on 352 and we supplemented the list of methods to include some of the approaches/combination actually used in the studies you have read so far. I also pointed out that in addition to the secondary data sources Mertens lists (359 ff), there are also databases relevant to writing and education on p. 176.
Appling Mertens to your own work: Finally, we talked about how you might work through your understanding of study design and data collection in terms of your own project. One place to start might be to write to the following questions. .
What concepts do you want to gather information about?
How have others gathered information on the concepts/practices/attitudes you want to study?
What is the purpose of your data collection process/instrument?
What variables will you need to measure?
What kind of "evidence" will you need to interpret/understand these variables?
For Wednesday, March 9
Read: Chapter 9 - History and Narrative Study of Lives; Miller, Literacies and the Complexities of the Global Digital Divide p 1499
Write: Exam 1.
In class next week we will begin with some work on setting up your concept paper. We will then discuss oral history and literacy narratives.
