Mertens points out that surveys strengths are that they can handle large #s of responses, and their weakness is that they provide "self reporting" = indirect rather than direct evidence. In our discussion we emphasized a further weakness: that because of the form of survey information (quantifiable, clearly categorized), it can elide or obscure important contextual information necessary for its interpretation. As we all know from our life experiences, the answer "no" to any given question can mean many different things.
Mertens identifies 3 kinds of surveys(177), simple descriptive (one shot) cross-sectional (several different groups at one point in time); and longitudinal (one cohort at different points in time).
In her discussion of collection methods, Mertons reviews a number of phone, electronic, and f2f approaches - and indicates that usually initial contacts with follow-ups provide the best response.
Factors that Mertens identified as influencing response rates included:
- topic salience
- incentives
- length
- and timing of request
Anderson et al
Anderson et al's essay on Multimodality reviews how composition studies researchers have used sureveys historically, describes methods for creating a survey for their project, reports findings, and discusses conclusions based on their data. They also acknowledgd the study's limitations.
In our discussion of the survey we speculated about the use of surveys in composition studies (whether or not it was a frequent/preferred method) and thought, given the relatively small number of studies cited over the past 50+ years, that it probably was not. Discussion suggested that this may connect to the nature of the activities and relationships compositionists are interested in. At the same time, as Anderson et al point out in their review, writing studies teachers frequently use surveys to evaluate courses, assignments, find information about the major, and so on.
As pointed out in class discussion, Anderson et al's survey present a certain kind of snapshot of who taught multimodal composing in 2005 (mainly fulltime, tenure-track faculty at universities), how they taught and assessed it - in terms of their own assignments & their own (as opposed to programmatic or disciplinary) standards), what kinds of departmental and institutional support these instructors had (pretty good at the level of making computers available - not so great in terms of professional development). We wondered how accurate this picture was in light of their response rate + distribution (and so did they) - and in some ways the response rate + the profile of responders in and of itself suggests something about "what it took" to teach multimodal composing 9 years ago.
In terms of designing an online survey - while they outlines a useful process - we agreed that their choice to give such a long survey may have limited the survey's distribution, and in that way - its usefulness. A series of shorter, more tightly focused surveys might have helped.
So there was much to think about here.
You then took a look at the two reaction essays and made some excellent suggestions about how the writers might write stronger papers.
Comments included suggestions to condense discussions and state them in terms of one of the essays main points (make connections, point out the take away); clearly identify the essay's main "findings" and develop a "reaction" that responds to these points; include discussions of paradigmatic assumptions; and develop discussion questions that provide opportunities to deepen/expand on/find applications of the ideas from the essay. Goodl
Royster
Larissa's reaction gave a clear presentation of Royster's main points and our discussion of her questions =could have gone on much longer. Royster points out three "limitations" of dominant discursive (unconscious) assumptions about voice . These assumptions deal with who has authority to speak; who has authority to interpret or theorize (negotiate - as Larissa put it) the identities and theoretical positionings associated with that voice; and what constitutes "authenticity" (or indeed whether authenticity is a useful term). These are important concepts for teachers to be mindful of as the work the boundaries that define reader-reality-audience-language within student teacher relationships.
We also talked at some length about the use of first person in writing composition research. We noted that Royster's identity was a "feature" of this essay that resonated for the original audience (in her talk to CCCC at their 1995 meeting) somewhat differently that it did of our class. Maybe this is a limitation of first person research essays? Something to think about.
Elbow
Elbow: Mary Ellen's presentation on Peter Elbow focused 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 and using whatever means available/necessary.
Mary Ellen led us in an interesting discussion about the ethics of copy editing, and I don't think we came to complete agreement about whether, when, and under which circumstances it is OK to "hire" a copyediter.
Elbow's essay also allows that there are objections by linguists and other language teachers concerning the 'editing at the end' approach. This objection has it 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 thinking of there essays" in order to approximate SWE. This objection could be read as making the idea of conferencing & copy editing irrelevant - since to approximate SWE, 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. He also posed two conferencing models which make students aware of rhetorical differences and provide experience negotiating between the different rhetorics.
We spent some time questioning whether Elbow's approach -regardless of its intention - in fact was a productive approach to helping students code-switch through providing them with adequate experiences stepping out of the rhetorics and syntactic patterns of their home language. I don't think we came to an answer concerning this.
Discussion of the questions attached to this essay applied Elbow's ideas (and then kind of extended them) within a discussion of today's "clear, universal goals/high stakes testing approaches.
For next week
Read: Ch 8 Mertens = qualitative methods with a focus on grounded theory and participatory research
Perl (1976) p 17, and Castillo & Chandler (pdf)
