But in the real world...

I had a couple of questions about this particular pairing of readings in LA and KS. One was "why," since I didn't see much relationship between LA's concept of a "true" experiment and the Mortenson analysis of discourses (and discourse about discourse). I'm not even sure how you'd do a true experimental design to investigate oral discourse about writing, since it functions so fully in a a spontaneous intersubjective environment. The second was more personal to what I am learning about my own place in the world of research. I found myself being much more impatient with Mortenson (oddly and surprisingly) because it was so theoretical and philosophical, and I was looking for something with more practical application.

As I read Mortenson, my mind kept going to my years and years of experience doing writing conferences in composition classes. I was helpful for me to reflect on the triplet of writing conference conversation and whether it seemed accurate to my conferencing (yes). I also was intrigued by the ideas of the exercise of power (both by the student in subtle ways and by the teacher in explicit ways). I can imagine how self-conscious I'd be if an afternoon of writing conferences were going to videotaped, but I'd love to see an analysis of those interactions. It would have to be videotaping, because in my approach to conferencing, there's a great deal of non-verbal communication. I wonder how that would fit into the various paradigms of discourse analysis referenced in Mortenson. I work with a student and talk about writing very spontaneously rather than in any conscious model of intersubjectivity and intertextuality. We just talk. Of course, I have some directions and features of the writing process and the writing product that I want to come up in the conference, but I'm not sure what an actual analysis would show.

Even more interestingly, I'd like to see some research that builds on the project being outlined by Debbie (I think it's Debbie...right?) about the effect of conducting one-on-one writing conferences. It would be really fascinating to do a case study and videotape conferences for analysis. What happens? How is the dynamic shaped? What is accomplished (both in terms of the explicit purpose of the conference and more indirect or serendipitous impacts)? What are the messages of the non-verbal communication and the body language? Ultimately, for the real world of teaching writing, I'd like to know what happens in a good writing conference, how the concept of "good" as applied to writing conferences is defined, what the impact of a conference is on the immediate project, what the impact is as part of a long-term learning curve, and what the impact is on the teacher-student dynamic. What works? What doesn't work? and why?