If I ever become a serious researcher I will keep my copy of Lauer and Asher's book close at hand. It was technical and detailed which makes for a dry read - but I'd wager that it would be helpful. One question that I have about the confidence interval limits is the formula. Who developed that formula and how? In the actual formula which is footnoted at Table 4.1 on the bottom of page 58, I want to know where that number 1.96 came from. I'm also curious about the correction factors listed on page 61 that references Table 4.1. Who developed the tables and how? I'm guessing some statisticians did the deed... but how did they figure out the formulas? Or that may be a semester-long course in an of itself!

I wanted to talk about a practical application of confidence limits. Many teachers (or parents) may be familiar with a cognitive test that is used to determine a person's level of functioning in various academic realms - reading, writing, math, vocabulary, and even spelling. It is often documented in IEPs and is the "gold standard" used by many psychologists as one measure to diagnosis learning disabilities. On the printout of scores, there are lots of columns that report all kinds of stuff - standard scores, percentile ranks, age or grade equivalent ranks, etc. There is also a column that reports confidence levels. Those levels are always reported as a range of + or - a certain number. I find them useful because they remind me that the particular number score the student earned on one day could very easily be within that range of scores if she were given the test on any other day.

It was easy to get lost in the examples and the denseness of the conversation in this chapter and I agree with Tara that it's probably much easier to follow if you are a researcher who needs to use this information. Application is sometimes the best way to truly understand something.

One point that struck me was the pre-planning that needs to go into a study. In some ways, it is similar to the curriculum design strategy called Backwards Planning. Subsample sizes for example must be determined first because that can affect the actual sample size a researcher chooses.

I had some questions relating to the sample size as discussed on page 65. I understand what they mean when they say that correction factors come into play if your sample size comes too close to your population size. I don't remember reading anything that explains how a researcher would know if the sample size is too close to the population size. What's the formula? I don't know why I'm hung up on the formula thing. I guess it's just because they seem so random to me (although I'm sure they're quite scientific).

Normally our two readings mesh quite nicely with each other. I didn't find that this time. I'm actually thankful though because one reading of all that technical stuff was enough. My brain might have exploded if I had to read more. Gisa Kirsch's article made me ask myself lots of questions. On page 250 she asks whether studying and modeling cognitive processes involved in writing are the important kinds of composition research. I'm still thinking about that one. Is that how we figure out what makes a writer skilled? Does it belong at the highest level in a framework or not? It's so far away from the actual process. But when I think about that test that I referred to earlier, is it measuring cognitive processing or the actual process? I'm going to take a look at that and see what I can discover.

The language arts teachers at my school ask students to code their readings as an active reading strategy. One of the codes is "I appreciate." Here's what I appreciated about Kirsch's work:

• Her definition of epistemology on page 254.
• The rules of rhetoric on page 265.
• Four statements-

1. ..."(3) the researcher's agenda (it is never disinterested)" (256).

2. "Feminist researchers start with a premise that research methods are never neutral, impartial, or disinterested" (257).

3. "Researchers will need to articulate the assumptions that guide their research questions and acknowledge that research, by definition, is necessarily interested, limited, and partial, no matter the methodology used" (258).

4. "The teacher research movement, for example, is built upon just that assumption: that knowledge is to be gained- not lost or distorted- by an active engagement and interactions among teachers, researchers, and students" (262-3).