2.23 Surveys and First Person essays

We started class by reviewing the general focus fset up inyour thesis concept papers (listed below).

Melissa - new literacies for creative writing

Maria - autoethnography - issues for multilingual speakers and composing

Matt - something about video gaming and teaching writing (?)

Andre - code-meshing and comics/ discourse + identity

Laura - habits for composing (in terms of technologies), testing and assessment of writing 'level' for middle school writers

Christina - high school students, response to literary texts in terms of how those texts are written

After checking in to make sure I had the right focus for your topics, I suggested some books from writing studies that might be useful (by topic). You are welcome to browse through what was offered (some are foundational work, some not so much - use your judgment), and if you come across a reference that the library doesn't have - you might want to ask me if I've got it.

Melissa presented on Anderson et al's survey on who was teaching multimodal composing back in 2005 (and what they taught when they taught it). She asked us to rate our technology skills back in 2005 - which led to comments and reflections which raised issues about the self-assessment features inherent to surveys! We hit the study's main conclusions (but did not spend much time on study design or the findings from individual categories - so check back through these so you are familiar with them) and briefly considered the paradigm (pragmatic). Most of the discussion focused on how/whether leaving the term "multimodality" open shaped the study, and whether attitudes/practices associated with teaching multimodal composing have changed since 2005. In response to the first question, the class seemed to feel that leaving the term open was appropriate for this investigation in that it made room for an inclusive definition of what was an emerging term, and that it helped to open up (bring in more information) through the survey form.

After we discussing Melissa's reaction paper, we checked back with Mertens and considered points she raised about the when/why to choose a survey as a research toold, as well as discussions about selection of participants, the distribution plan, and the design of the survey instrument. The sections on the importance of piloting surveys (and interpreting the results of the pilot by revising the instrument, distribution methods etc) and on thinking about low response rates were relevant to our discussion of Anderson et al.

We spent some time discussing Royster (thank you, Maria - the essay is posted to the right). Royster's essay points out three "limitations"of dominant discourse tends to place on subjects who are "others": denial of the authority to speak, of authority to interpret, and  of the ability to code-switch (step into multiplie subject positions and be read as "authentic" in all positions).  These are important tendencies within dominant discourse for teachers to be mindful of as the work the boundaries that define reader-reality-audience-language within student teacher relationships.

Brief discussion of Elbow = see reaction paper to right.

For next class:
Read: Perl (Matt); Castillo + Chandler (Laura)


I will have comments to you on your concept papers by next class.  If you have not turned in an electronic copy (by email) do so ASAP.