4.8 More discussion of research proposals, reflecting on the midterm, + Breuch & Bruffee

Tonight's class spent time on a range of topics and hopefully helped you get the big picture of where we are going for the rest of the term.

Research proposals:  We started by applying the rubric to the second research proposals.  The purpose of this exercise was to give you a chance to think in detail about features that make a good proposal - and to see how they look in writing.  Your comments on this proposal indicate to me that you have a good idea about the different moves you will have to make, and are getting a more clear idea about what those moves entail. As we noted in class, the particular voice, kind of authority, organization and development for your proposal will depend on your topic.  We noted that if your work is reflective, if you are working with a group where you are a member, and for any other kind of work where your sensibility needs to be explained + explored to validate and authorize your work, you will probably write from the first person.  Other projects (surveys, literature reviews, and "objective" approaches) will work better from the distanced third person of more cientific writing.

We noted on the calendar that we did not do the drafty writing for the proposal, but that the Draft proposal (ready for feedback) would be due April 21.  For this draft you should write the whole way through as best you can (including the timeline).  This means you will need to have located the sources you will use to identify your niche, and to develop the detailed discussion in your literature review. See what you can do using the data bases/strategies identified at the end of the term, but if you are stumped or you want to check on whether you have identified the "important" sources - stop by my office and we will do some looking around.

Reflection on the midterm.  Writing the midterm was meant to provide a chance to consolidate and use the concepts we have been working with this semester.  You have read about a range of approaches to writing studies research along with some expamples of those approaches - and more importantly we have spent a lot of time thinking about the assumptions embedded within those different approaches and research projects.  As you illustratd in your midterm writing - the "paradigms" suggested by Mertens are not really a perfect fit for most research; at the same time, the work as general classifications for typical groupings off assumptions about: the way the world works (ontology); the ways knowledge is realized or created (epistemologies); what is fair and moral in research practice (axiology); and appropriate means for envisioning, collecting, analyzing, and representing data (methodology).

Because these assumptions determine the kind of knowledge you will "discover", it is essential for you,  as a researcher, to know how to identify the assumptions that underpin both the research you read and the research you do.  So that is what we have been working on.  So in some sense, the paradigms are names for the kinds of research different groupings of assumptions will produce.  While sometimes the grouping make sense, as when someone with a worldview where there is one reality values precision and objectivity in data collection.  But sometimes our assumptions are more muddy, as in some of the midterms, where you wrote that you believed in constructionist principles for the creation of knowledge, but yet felt that the broad studies with many participants produce more reliable or important knowledge.  In theory, this is a contradiction - since social constructionist "facts" are highly contextual, and the results from very large studies usually need to be categorized in ways that erase or otherwise lose the differences within specific contexts.  So it is important for us, as researchers to think about that: to know our own biases for what counts as "good data" - and decide how we want to conduct our studies in light of that thinking.

Keep on this. It really is some of the most important work of the course.

Breuch & Bruffee
Really, we spent 15 minutes on this. I think we did a reasonable job cutting to the essential points.  For Breuch - it is the dilemma of how (and whether it is possible) to apply about post-modern theory in the classroom.  Her set up indicated that post-process writing theory's real benefit was providing new ways to conceptualize definitions of writing, methods for teaching (as "indeterminate activities rather than a body of knowledge); and communicative practices (98).
Bruffee's focus in one sentence, is that providing learners/writers (structured) opportunities to engage in the discourses they will use in the academy is an important ground for learning.  Discourse is internalized => needs places where it is modeled and practiced; directed, peer-peer encounters work for this.

Statistics a la Writing Studies, courtesy of Dr. Sutton
The rest of class was spent working with some of the quantitative data that writing program administrators often find themselves confronted with.  I am sure this portion of the class was entertaining.

For next week:
Read: Selfe & Selfe, 739;  Wysoki, 717   In addition to reading Wysoki, you might want to watch "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence"

We will also spend some time working on your researh proposals = specifically making sure everyone has references for the literature review - so come to class with material to work with and questions,

Good class and see you next week!