Comments on Kirsch and Sullivan

I really enjoyed reading the chapter on case studies in K&S. The case study can help make research fun and exciting because, as K&S state on page 133 "We are made to feel that we are face to face with Reality itself, detailed, alive, recognizable." I imagine that this is also what makes change possible. Numbers can be staggering, but so can the story of one person whose story is emotional and real. The issue or problem becomes a face, not just a number or a bar graph or a pie chart.

It is clear that the power that be (who are THEY?) may look down on researchers who turn in to storytellers. The word "appears" as in "seems to be" is written twice in this paragraph on page 133, as in "in order to appear rigorous" and "...the account appears as the almost inevitable output of..." The subtext here is that researchers use their methodological bag of tricks, but it is impossible to be objective. They make their case studies APPEAR to be objective but that's all. There is a good explanation later in the chapter on why complete objectivity is never possible. Does that make the case study less valuable. I don't think so.

On page 135 K&S discuss excluding a young woman in a study because she came in as a strong writer and left the class as one. She did not fit the "aesthetically satisfying pattern". But wait a minute. If research is begun with a question or problem, then her exclusion is not because she was aesthetically displeasing, but because she did not have a writing problem. I'm assuming that students with writing problems were the focus of this study.

K&S finally get to their conclusion that "we find them [case studies] true or convincing, not because of careful methodology...but because of the gratification we get from seeing cultural myths being reenacted (136). The first time I read this, I wrote in the margin "this is scary" I guess because to me there seems to be a sense of putting the cart before the horse or a self-fulfilling prophecy; somehow a conclusion can be drawn that is not a true one, but one that fits into a cultural myth that fits into our narrative psyches. The three patterns he addresses we've all heard and lived, but does that mean that all research traces the lines of these narrative patterns. There's no way. The underdog often stays the underdog despite her fortitude or emotional maturity or educational thirst.

I thought the discussion of the two imperatives was compelling but problematic. K&S say that Growing Up Literate works because it relies so heavily on the rhetorical imperative. The discussion of what was left out was interesting. I agree that, yes, there was plenty that wasn't said, but that doesn't make the message less valuable. Poor kids generally do lousy on standardized tests. It's a fact. You could talk to parents, study their home lives, church activities, but you're still left with the kids that walk into your classroom. For me, as that teacher, the narrative begins when the kid enters my classroom. I can do very little about what goes on at home, but I have some control over what goes on in my class, and it may or may not be the story of Phillip Pirrip or Oliver Twist. I don't know, nor do I assume to know, what will happen to him.