3.25 History, oral history, interviews & review for the exam

Deborah Brandt's essay is posted to the right, under readings, and Hawisher and Selfe is available through the data bases at the Kean University library (for complete reference info you can click on the link under readings).

History and Oral History.  We had a theoretical discussion about why you might choose to do historical research, about how hard it can be to step out of our present perspective and "see" the past - or someone else's perspective on the past - in a way that allows "facts" that we may not necessarily believe in, and about alternatives to Mertens' step by step guide to "how to do historical research".  Mertens is extremely well organized and methodical - and she has clear guidelines/answers for most questions researchers might ask.  The point of our discussion was to allow that there might be other ways to look at doing research, and to re-think the material from within our individual perspectives. 

Becoming aware of assumptions.Within our discussion of assumptions that might be difficult to be aware of - or to step out of - we made a list.  Below are some ideas/perspectives on eductation, teaching and the world in general, that might be difficult to "allow" from a middle class 21st century, New Jersey perspective.

• the "correctness' or usefulness of teaching practices = the structure and focus of teaching from earlier time periods
• the way learning disabilities were talked about and dealt with within the educational systen
• some of the more ethnocentric assumptions about "the way the world is" that were associated with more homogeneous, less fragmented, less "global" & interdependent, less diverse communities
• assumptions about entitlement (who was expected to have power)
• the way "intelligence" was defined - and who got to define it
• whose voice/opinions/perspectives dominated media & assumptions about "the way the world is"
• who has the right to speak
• what counts as "fact" - or the assumption that there are unequivocal facts
• who owns history - and ideas of what counts as history and what history is

You  also created an alternative lists for research processes - the organization of tasks you would undertake to complete your research project.  Your lists included different tasks set up in an order that was different from the list in Mertens.  The point of this discussion was to notice that:

• the focus of your inquiry & the order in which you undertake your research process will both reflect and define your axiology + epistemology (if you are a transformative researcher - you would probably begin your work through conversations with your group - rather than archival research or surveying disciplinary journals to define a problem)
• research process is almost always recursive - rather than a single set of steps

Interviews
After these discussions we quickly reviewed the interview protocol developed by Hawisher & Selfe for the literacy narrative research they conducted for Literate Lives - a collection of literacy narratives documenting changing literacy practices accompanying the move from print to the screen.  You took notes on the protocol to characterize how it was "built" - and we then discussed how the structure of the protocol would allow for talk that would produce rich, storied data relevant to Hawisher and Selfe's  focus. 

Exam. We spent the rest of the evening reviewing what we have read so far - mostly the readings rather than Mertens, and talking through the exam question.  It sounded to me like you all have a good hand on the material.  The best advice I can give you is to read & re-read the exam question, ask questions (by email) if you are confused, and write to the prompts.  I will evaluate the answers in terms of whether they answer the questions posed by the prompt and the quality of "evidence" used to support the answers.  Good luck!

For next week.
Due before class by email: Exam 1
Read: Deborah Brandt (pdf) posted to the right; Hawisher & Selfe (available through Kean Library)

We will spend the first part of class discussing oral history/literacy narrative studies, and the second part of class will be devoted to work on your research proposals. 

Focus: You have some drafty writing from the beginning of the term. If you have changed your mind or "tweaked" your ideas - great!  There is still time to change.  Your focus should: be of some importance to the discipline (writing studies); be something you are interested enough in to spend some time with; and have a "window" or perspective which will allow you to design a "doable" project => where doable means you can complete it in about 6 months, and that it can provide a basis for a 30 page paper (not a book).

Methods. By this point you should be able to select from a "buffet" of methods (literature review, comparative, survey, ethnography, autoethnography, phenomenological, grounded theory, case study,  interview, oral history, historical, and so on) - in addition to the methods for close readings and textual analysis you brought from your background in English.  Think about which methods are the best match for your paradigmatic leanings - and for your project.

We will talk about this next week. 

Exam reivew

Berlin (1982), 235 

historical review of the development of composition
literature review (sort of)

identified himself as a new rhetorician

Berlin idenfitied oedoagogies that (roughly) coirrelated with the research paradigms

provides an overview of the field 

Brodkey  (1989) p 621.

comparative methods

literacy letters between teachers and adult basic writing students

people who have power control the information/direction of conversation

class + gender partly define who has power

check out the intro=> what we can say/how we will say it  is determined by our identities

= our identities are socially constructed

what do composition teachers need to do in light of what she finds in the literacy letters

Anderson et al (2006, pdf on Course Blog); 

survey= very long

quantitative methods

classifying different kind of uses of new media in writing pedagogies - what kinds of courses, assignments, where taught, etc

purpose= characterize the use of new media in writing programs

methodology?  

look at findings at the end = agenda?

Royster (1996), 555

focus on voice = who has the right to define it. thoerize it and etc

autobiographical= autoethnographic, phenomenological

reflects on three past experiences

strenghts & weaknesses

method + findings work well together

Elbow (1999), 641

advocated multiple revisions to work towards standard English

support for mother tongue

transformative? make college writing more acessible

qualitative/reflective  = autobiographical

is this research?

is this a case study? personal essay?

Perl (1976), 17

grounded theory/case study

composing practices of unskilled college writers

two different kinds of writing

talk aloud protocol

mixed methods?

findings were? 

Castillo & Chandler (2013), pdf

interview/oral history=> literacy narrative

participatory/collaborative analysis

narrative analysis = connects to power structures + cultural stories/forms=social constructivist

case study

Bartholomae (1985),523 
purpose = point out need to focus on discursive features rather than on "correctness"issues
voice/auhority "privilege" = look at Rafael's notes
transformative? social construction too
discourse analysis of student papers

Heath (1983) pdf;
ethnographic = participant observation supplemented with interviews
literacy  events
societies that rely on oral traditions not inferior to written 
can't judge value of written/oral out of context
social constructivist? transformative?

Material covered by Exam 1

Berlin (1982), 235 

Brodkey  (1989) p 621.

Anderson et al (2006, pdf on Course Blog); 

Royster (1996), 555;

Elbow (1999), 641

Perl (1976), 17;

Castillo & Chandler (2013), pdf

Bartholomae (1985),523 ;  

Heath (1983) pdf;

Mertens, Chapters 1, 5, 6, & 8.

To study, you should notice the main concept of the essay, the methodological choices, and whether the methodological choices of the essays were a good choice for the researchers' purposes. 

During the review session in class I will answer any questions, and  we will go over the essays in terms of these issues listed above.

See you tomorrow.

3.18 Heath & Bartholomae and review of qualitative methods

Important note:  I gave the wrong assignment for next week at the end of class. See note below for the correct assignment (Tobey pointed out to me that I was referring to the wrong syllabus).

 We started class with a review of the qualitative methods listed on page 230.  The point was to notice that this is a non-exclusive, non-categorical list.  For example, you might design a participatory, ethnographic case study that uses grounded theory to analyze the data.  Ethnography is defined both by its focus on the identities/values/belief systems/etc as understood by insiders to a particular group, and by its use of participant observation.  Case study, as discussed in class, is defined by focus on a bounded set of participants or data.  Phenomenological research focuses on the moment-by-moment "becomings" within subjective (personal) perceptions of experience.  Grounded theory is a method for data ANALYSIS and can be applied to data sets collected through different methods included ethnographic participant observation, interview, oral history, and focus group practices.  Participatory research is identified by the relationship between researchers & participanbts, and focus groups are defined by the configuration of the data collection situation and attention both to "what is said" and the dynamic social interactions which contribute to what is said.  So in preparation for the exam, look over the list of methods and think about what methods were used by which researchers in the essays we have read so far.

Ethnography.  Before Rafael and Lewis gave their presentations, we had a brief review of ethnographic methods as presented in Mertens - and supplemented it with information in the handout on Ethnographic fieldnotes (posted to the right).  We talked about "jottings"- how to take them, the tensions between participating and writing, and what kinds of "jots" to write down.  We also talked about supplementing jottings with "headnotes" (everything you can remember) as soon after you finish your time in the "field" as apossible.  This is all covered in the first 2 chapters of Emerson.

You then were asked to take ethnographic notes on one of the presentations - either Rafael's or Lewis'. 

Heath and Bartholomae.  Discussion covered the main points in each essay for Heath we observed how she redefined literacy in a way that eliminated the polarization betwen "oral" and "literate" and how she noted the cultural component in terms of the way literacy was practiced and valued.  For Bartholomae, we noted how the essay's purpose & audience (college writing teachers) may have been "revolutionary" in its time, and how current traditional teachers (where teachers are expected to teach correctness rather than discourse => language move for stepping into "academic" authority) may still disagree with the approach to teaching basic writing advocated in this essay. 

For next week:
We will begin with a review of your ethnographic notes.  Be prepared for a conversation about what you noticed, your strategy (or strategies) for writing notes, what went easily, what was hard, and what you might try next time.
Read: Mertens, Ch9 Historyt and Narrative study of lives; review Appendix (research proposal) p451

In class we will discuss Ch 9 + try out some of the methods, re-visit the research interests list and set up the research proposal assignment, and review for the EXAM.

As per your request, it will be a take-home exam, and I will distribute it at the end of class.

Fun class tonight - and see you next week.

3.4 Qualitative research: grounded theory and par

Elbow:  We began class with Vanessa's presentation on Peter Elbow's take on how best to support speakers of nonmainstream English in learning Standard Written English.  Elbow points out in his introduction that writing teachers can feel torn between conflicting goals + obligations.  Specifically, writing teachers goal to teach "the written language of power and prestige" and their obligation to respect students' rights to their home languages.  The essay focuses on practices Elbow hopes will negotiate that conflict.

His approach - which is provided in detail - is to encourage/support students in writing in their home language by abandoning current traditional practices for focusing on "correctness" and shifting to practices for receiving an validating work written in home language, and fosterring concrete practices for working through successive drafts in terms of conferencing, copy-editing and modeling revision practices so that students cultivate a process for creating SWE - when they choose to.

He poses a (sort of satisfactory) answer to objections by linguists - that moving from home languages to SWE is NOT simply about copy editing - but rather a move from a mother tongue to a foreign tongue which will cause students to need to "rewirte much of the substance and even thnkihng of there essays" in order to approximate SWE.  This objection could be read as making the idea of conferencing -copy editing irrelevant - since students will essentially need to compose a new essay. Elbow claims this is not the case because 1) he is not talking about ESL speakers, 2) anxiety is a significant obstacle in composing, and writing in home dialect can reduce anxiety; 3) the use of a dialect is not necessarily a way of seeing the world (he cites the dismissal of the Sapir-Whorf view of language)- and points out that SWE is not the exclusive owner of academic writing. 

Vanessa questioned whether Elbow's approach -regardless of its intention - continued to overwrite students' home language, and we (sort of) addressed this concern in terms of Elbow's position (stated in the last paragraph).

This issue remains a thorny problem in teaching writing at all levels.

Qualitative methods.
The beginning of our discussion focused on what counts as a qualitative method and what features identify an approach as qualitative.


We noted that defining words for qualitative research included:

• observational, critical, descriptive => representations of individual experiences
• empirical, in the real world, complex, situational
• inductive discovery for focus/theory
• in-depth look at a microcosm

We then discussed how qualitative methods fit into the purposes/practices of the four paradigms (with a side-discussion of what we felt Merton's preferred approaches were).

We wrapped up with some quick-one phrase definitions of the methods Mertons covers in this chapter.

Ethnographic –describe-analyze of social/cultural practices in terms of systematic connections among different components of the system
Case study – study of a bounded system
Phenomenological research- individual-subject's study of (reflection on) unfolding experience
Grounded theory –coding, characterizing, constant comparison of data =theory emerges from data
Participatory research – everyone is a researcher-participant
Clinical research-application of qualitative methods to biomedical problems (we will not deal with it)
Focus group-patterns of interaction within the conversational presentation become part of the data

Evaluation of qualitative studies: Although I discussed features for evaluating qualitative research as part of our discussion of Castillo & Chandler, they really belong here.  Merton's discussion is on p 255.

Credibility (internal validity)=> prolonged persistent engagement, member checks(who has authority to be representative); accounting for/acknowledging what doesn't fit; reflective analysis of researcher's perspective; triangulation

Transferability (external validity); =sufficient detail so readers can guage applicability to other contexts – multiple cases useful

Dependability (reliability)=(the idea that the concept/context understudy will remain the same)=documentation of details

Confirmability(objectivity)= evidence so that data can be tracked to their source=> good fieldnotes/transcripts etc.

Perl

For our discussion of Perl, we started off by making a list of the points from her discussion that absolutely needed to be part of any useful summary of her work. 

Our discussion also considered Perl as an example of grounded theory and case study.  It is an example of grounded theory since the features that are the basis for the patterns and theory she described "emerged" or were "grounded" in her data.  That is, she looked at the talk alouds and the timelines they created, and named what she saw the unskilled writers doing.  She then made a list of all the actions/interactions/etc she had named, and placed them in groupings of similar features.  the names are her "codes" and the groupings are her "categories".  She then looked for patterns in relationships among the codes and catefories.  She connected patterns through correlating them with higher-order patterns in the writing process (planning, drafting, and revising).  Her findings were all about patterns described in terms of relationships within her coded material.

As a case study, Perl examined a small group of writers (a bounded case) and looked for patterns within each case. 

We then reviewed the assignment sheet for the reaction paper, and took a look at the student essay posted for Perl.

I posed thefollowing prompts:

• what does the writer need to add?
• what needs cutting?
• what feednback would you give the writer?
• what grade? (assess the focus, organization, development and depth of analysis)

You noted that this essay was all summary and no response, and that the summary was in many ways too extensive and all over the place in terms of its response.  I agreed. 

The summary in this essay needs to be focused in terms of how the writer plans to respond.  You were fairly generous in terms of grades.  I gave it a "R" : meaning that as it was written it did not meet the demands of the assignment.

Castillo & Chandler
Nikki gave an excellent presentation in a very short time.  She drew our attention to the features of participatory research that contributed to its reliability and credibility,  and asked us to take a critical look at the essay's use of language analysis (and close attention to narrative forms) as a way to discover connections to larger cultural constructs. 

For March 18
Read: review ethnography, case study and phenomenological approaches in Mertens, and read Bartholomae (1983), 523; and Heath (1983) => I am still working on finding the pdf - but it should be in your email by the end of the week.

In class we will discuss ethnography & case study, and work on data analysis for transcripts.

Thank you for your good participation in class, and have a great break.

3.4 Grounded theory & PAR

Sorry this is taking so long - I am working on it.