Not so Fast...

I really enjoyed the Brodkey piece since my interview with another teacher often centered on the idea of the narrative. Before the actual study details were revealed, however, I had to get through the first three pages of the article. It's really depressing when you read something three or four times over and still don't get it. Here is one sentence I didn't understand from page 125, "The discursive subject is of particular interest to those of us who teach writing because language and discourse are understood to be complicit in the representation of self and others, rather than the neutral or arbitrary tools of thought and expression that they are in other modern theories not to mention handbooks and rhetorics." There are 54 words in that sentence and I understand each of them, but I don't understand what the writer is trying to convey in that sentence.

Having written that, here are some things I did understand:

On page 126 Brodkey says that ". . . at issue is the unquestioned power of a pedagogical authority that insists that teachers concentrate on form at the expense of content." Of course they do. It's much easier to correct errors in parallelism and fragments than it is to sit down with a student and actually try to help her say what she really wants to say. I think that many English teachers are copy editors and not writing teachers.

When Brodkey talks about unequal subject positions as stereotypes and agents, she says, "Hence, it is at least plausible to expect most, though not all, of those individuals whose subjectivity is the most positively produced by a discourse to defend its discursive practices against change." Here again, I have a problem with Brodkey's diction, but I got this one and it's a no-brainer. People with the most power in these pedagogical little worlds don't want to give it up because it benefits them the most.

When Brodkey starts writing about the actual results in the study, things get very interesting. I too was surprised by the "awkwardness from the teachers" (129) but when I read the examples I understood what she meant. I got really angry when I read the exchange between Rita and Esther. When Esther says that she can only buy a house if she hits the Lotto and Rita responds with , "Do you play the Lotto frequently?" (135) I wanted to pop Rita right in the kisser. She completely refuses to take a step into Esther's personal narrative. The obvious point here is that Esther is taking the control out of Rita's hands and Rita has to reassert herself by redirecting the flow of discourse. I don't know if I agree completely with Brodkey's conclusion that the ". . . Lotto which is not the topic but the comment is transformed into the topic, now in the form of questions about gambling. It's a familiar teacher's gambit for controlling what does and does not count as knowledge" (135). Maybe. I don't know if it's always a matter of control. It might even be about fear. Maybe it's different with adults, but I've had kids get into this area with me and I get really afraid. Another possibility is that teachers are advised so often that there is a line between them and their students that should not be crossed. We could debate this idea for days, but it is a fact, and maybe that's part of Rita's problem. I don't think it's her only problem, but it's a problem. I think a good follow up to this study would have been interviews with the teacher and student participants. Maybe they would not have been honest, but it might have afforded more information (and attitudes) about the roles of student and teacher.

Lauer and Asher
I understood the studies that were presented, but like others in the class, I really got lost with the discussion of the numbers, specifically the correctional matrix and the regression analysis equations. Please help!

Methodology and Mathematics

Methodology (K&S)
I'm all for methodological pluralism. Isn't more and varied information a good thing? I agree too that each of us brings her own biases to research, but as long as that information is part of the reporting, then that will lead to more honesty in research and that's a plus too.

I appreciate the explanation of the six levels of inquiry. This, like other pieces we've read gives me some insight into my own possible research topics.

I experienced deja vu when I read on page 250 that 'Bereiter and Scardamalia...show a preference for experimental research, stating that "a holistic ideology...poses an actual threat to writing research..." ' (250). Here we go again with the preference for quantitative research. I see its value, but I also see value in adding qualitative components to a research methodology. I don't want to try something new in my classroom that has little or no basis in natural conditions.

I found the discussion on page 250 0f "universal models" interesting and troubling. I have found over the years that there are few universal models that work for a large population, hence my preference for a pluralistic approach to research.

The discussion of case studies also raised some questions for me. K&S contend that, "Many case studies focus on unusual patterns of development or idiosyncrasies of writers, not on patterns common to a large number of writers" (251). This is not a problem, then, with the case study as a method, but a problem with the researcher's choice of subjects.

Isn't this similar to the discussion of Newkirk's study from last week's chapter in K&S? The woman from Wyoming was not "typical" so they took her out of the study. I would guess that a case study would focus on a subject who is "typical" of the group being studied under a theory or hypothesis.

My favorite line from this chapter was on page 253. Karen Shriver contends that, "Because any one window can provide only a partial view on what we want to know, an empirical inquiry into rhetoric and composition must be pluralistic..." (253). Isn't this like a crime scene? One witness may give you facts A, B and C. Other witnesses, however, can give you different perspectives from different points of view. DNA evidence is the quantitative evidence, and that evidence can be used to point the finger in the right direction, but eyewitnesses can tell you what they heard, and the order of events. They can offer the how and the why. Quantitative evidence can't do that. I think if you really want to get at the root of the problem, you need they how and the why.

For example, I've noticed the disappearance from student writing of the apostrophe in the last two years. Quantitative research could be conducted on student writing to tell a researcher how many times an apostrophe is missing, but a case study or ethnography (qualitative research) would provide the reasons why this is happening. Perhaps the emergence of texting in students' lives is the reason, but how are you going to find that out without qualitative research? Doesn't this constitute an argument for pluralism in research?

My last comment on the K&S chapter comes from page 259 where North and Sullivan offer different interpretations of a graduate student who failed her comprehensive exams. K&S contend, "...these readings [their differing interpretations] can create layers of narrative and interpretation that point to the complexity of human interaction without resolving or oversimplifying diverse issues or reducing them to a single truth" (259). The human being is complex. It is not a machine. There are so many facets of human behavior that a pluralistic approach to research seems to make the most sense.

Math (L&A)
Lauer and Asher presented problems for me this week. I was hanging in there for a while, but I got so confused that I had to go talk to my friend who teaches probability and statistics. I understood sample selections and confidence intervals, but I lost it with correction factors and rank order data. I'm hoping that the class discussion will help me understand these terms.

I read the section on survey and questionnaire construction before I wrote my questions for my interview, but I still had problems. I ended up editing questions for "directness, simplicity, and clarity...(65) while I was actually interviewing. This was really awkward, but I'm guessing that the question-writing quality improves with experience.

The Ups and Downs of Ethnography

It seems to me that ethnographies have great value as qualitative research when a researcher wants to study a behavior and then look at why, how, and to what extent that behavior occurs.

When we did our observations last week, I thought of myself as an observer only, but after reviewing my notes and sharing my paper with a peer editing group, I realized I had become a participant-observer. I felt compelled to ask questions of a few of the subjects I was observing and OH what a difference it made. Without going into the details, I would have drawn an inaccurate conclusion if I had not asked those questions. That little experience made me realize the value of the participant role. So, based solely on my very brief encounter with observation, I can see the value in multiple observations, questioning, surveys, etc. which leads me to my second point.

On page 40 L&A discuss triangulation as "...varying their observations, and gaining multiple perspectives by mapping the setting, selecting observers, and developing a relationship with them, and establishing a long period of investigation." What is considered a "long period"? Several days? Weeks? Months? I'm sure the longer the period of observation, the more valid the study may be, but is this always possible?

L&A state that one of the problems the ethnographer faces is coding the data. I'm still fuzzy on this. I need some further examples.

The role of the observer or observer-participant and what Kirsch and Sullivan term the "informant" is a precarious one. In L&A one of the conclusions that Florio and Clark came to was that "the use of technical terms disturbed the relationship between the consultants and the teacher" (45). This was similar to the problem that Beverly Moss in K&S encountered when she discussed "shared knowledge" (165) with one of the African American preachers she was using in a study. She found herself in a Catch-22 when the preacher said, "You know what I mean..." (166). So shared information, or the lack thereof, can be a sticky wicket. Even observing in your own community isn't going to solve these problems, and in fact, may create them.

I appreciate the detail that L&A put into their description of difficulties and problems with ethnographies. One that caught my eye was the fifth concern, "interval consistency, redundancy, and novelty of information" (47). When I was doing my observation, I was not drawn to what I consider the mundane, i.e. groups of men sitting at a bar, watching basketball and drinking beer. I was drawn to the noise, where the action was. I ended up watching the people playing the video games. In the classroom setting, I need to focus on the mundane, or rather those behaviors that get repeated over and over again so that I can do something about them. This is something I'm going to have to watch out for. I would say that there lies another difficulty in being the teacher living in the community where you teach. We get so used to seeing certain behaviors in student writing that it doesn't shock us or even surprise us. Perhaps that's the beauty of having a team, or at least someone who is completely divorced from that community come in and observe that same community.

Beverly Moss' piece in K&S was enlightening. I loved the excerpt she took from Gloria Naylor's Mama Day. I think what I learned from this discussion was tread lightly and be sensitive to informants and subjects alike.

This chapter also brought something from my past to light. Several years ago, our last superintendent brought in Max Thompson, a best practice guru from what he called "90-90-90" schools. These schools were populated by students who fall into these three categories: 90 percent scored below basic in reading and math, 90 percent got free or reduced lunches, 90 percent were minorities. We were supposed to use the same practices that had been successful in the 90-90-90 schools. We embraced them, like we always do, but saw only marginal improvement. My guess is that these two populations of students are so inherently different that another ethnography needs to be done in predominantly white rural schools like mine and a completely different theory needs to be tested. The ethnography study can be valuable but the theories generated from one population don't always transfer to another population. Isn't that the whole point of doing an ethnography study? Sounds like a no-brainer, right? It seems to me this administration should have done their homework on research practices before spending taxpayers' money on a system that was never going to work.

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.

Comments on Adler and Adler

I really enjoyed the Adler and Adler piece. A major part of the teacher's job is observation. Who's not looking well today? Who's not getting enough to eat at home? Who is doing the reading? Who is faking it? Who is attempting to text her best friend during class? Who is having trouble with understanding the reading? Who is finding this class too hard? Who is finding this class too easy? We're constantly changing our teaching methods based on the behavior of the students in our classes. All good teachers change their approach if they find that it's not working. You can see it in their faces. Okay this isn't working...they're not getting it, try plan B.

At the beginning of the article, A & A state that, "One of the hallmarks of observation has traditionally been its noninterventionism" and at the end of that paragraph they write that, "Behavior and interaction continue as they would without the presence of a researcher, uninterrupted by intrusion." I guess this could work in some instances, but anyone who is a teacher knows what happens when the principal walks in. The behavior of the students usually changes to a "best behavior" pattern. I've appreciated this on occasion, but sometimes, the kids clam up and I wished someone would say something! So, if a relative stranger walks into a close-knit group and starts taking notes, things are definitely going to change. As the teacher, accepted by the students, it's obviously going to be easier for us to observe and record observation. I guess that would make us, under Gold's observer roles, either periphery members or active members.

I agree with many of the others in class who asked if we can ever be completely objective. It's like the teacher in the last article we read. She was blaming the students until an outside observer came and truthfully said what she was observing. I don't think that means that the observations are not meaningful. When test results come in, it's easy and I will admit, sometimes valuable to look at results and try to find out how we can change to better serve our students. But if I know that Mike's family has been living out of a van for two months, then I can do something about the outcome because of my active membership in his school life. Objectivity doesn't always mean accuracy.

Okay, I'm thinking about that last statement I made. Mike's scores may be lousy and that is accurate. But the WHY in Mike's case is fundamental to changing the outcome.

As a compulsive note-taker I agree with what Denzin suggested, "that all observation notational records should contain explicit reference to participants, interactions, etc" (380). Good idea. Waiting too long, even an hour, after the observation can lead to vague notions and inaccuracy. Instead of the "Aha!" moment, you get the "Oh Shit!" moment. I know this for a fact. AP kids are often unsure of themselves and they want to peer edit with the same group all of the time. This doesn't always work to their advantage. A few years ago, I decided to choose the groups to see what would happen and took notes on what I observed. It went well the first time, but with my second class, I got so absorbed in watching the kids and listening to their conversations that I completely blew off the notes. That's an "Oh Shit" moment.

I liked the discussion of the observations and how they change over time on page 381. I've never done this kind of research before, so this whole thing sounds fascinating. The idea that the research gets more specific over time and eventually funnels into a narrow and direct point is something I look forward to trying.

Another positive facet of the observation model is the fact that the researcher can change direction. You are not limited to one idea because as observations happen, theories morph and change and "At any point in the process, observers are free to alter the problems and questions they are pursuing as they gain greater knowledge of their subjects" (382). This is encouraging.

As enticing as observation sounds, I can understand that other forms of research need to accompany observation. All of the problems that A&A discuss can be called into question, so some cold, hard facts are going to be needed to convince anybody of anything. I can just see me going to the school board armed with my observations, and telling them we need more books, or better desks. They would laugh me right out of the room.

I was fascinated by the Humphrey's study...okay, call me twisted. I just couldn't believe that he got the license plate numbers and then called subjects a year later. I kept thinking several things, like "This guys got cahones" and then "He's nuts" followed by "Is this all legal?"

Finally, the question of private places and sensitivity (3887) is a big one. I hope we discuss this in class because I don't really know where I stand on this, and I'd like to hear what everyone else has to say.

Comments on First Readings

The first thing that caught my eye in Kirsch and Sullivan was the quote from Jane Flax, "How is it possible to write?  What meanings can writing have when every proposition and theory seems questionable, one's own identity is uncertain, and the status of the intellectual is conceived alternately as hopelessly enmeshed in in oppressive knowledge/power relations or utterly irrelevant to the workings of the technical/rational bureaucratic state?  This sounds like a line right out of "Waiting for Godot", but I'll take a crack at the existential question.  Isn't writing all about power?  Writing is constructing meaning, so when we write, we are constructing our own meaning about us and the world in which we live.  When I cover a poem with my students, for example we're reading "Totally" by Tony Hoagland today, what they get out of this poem says a great deal about who they are as people.  When they write a response to this poem, they are constructing meaning and thus gaining power, right?  

As a teacher with many years of experience, the readings for this week's class really made me think about the way (is there one?) by which new methodologies are chosen and used in the classroom.  When K and S discuss the "competing methodological contexts" I thought about how often that is true where I teach.  There is no vision, just a haphazard throwing out into the void.  We don't really have to time to dig into the research that makes Collins, for instance, a viable option for our students.  Where's the research to back up the premise of Collins?  And what happens when Reading Apprenticeship comes along?

It was interesting and assuring that K and S bring up Friere in their discussion of theory and practice.  That idea that there is a symbiotic relationship between the two is enlightening and positive.  I think I agree with what Phelps says...that, "theory as defined by the natural sciences, cannot govern daily teaching practices, but that conceivably it might work the other way around.  The practices that Alvarez explores justify that idea.  She has to start with what is happening in the classroom now, then go to the thereoretical drawing board, ask the right questions, and come back to the classroom with new methodologies.

My last comment on the K and S reading comes again from Flax (I'm going to have to find some of her stuff and read it) as well. On page 325 she writes about the "paradoxes and ambiguities that multiplied as our research progressed..."  She intimates that these problems had been avoided, but she promotes the idea that we have to embrace these problems, not avoid them.

Julie asked us to come up with some questions in last week's class.  When I was reading L&A I couldn't stop thinking about questions.  They detail modes of inquiry and really they are describing ways of exploring questions, and after reading K&S, I couldn't help thinking that you better be darn sure and damn specific in the question you want to pursue, especially if you opt, as they recommend, to do multidimensional research.  

I've never done this kind of research so I appreciated the general principles of empirical research outlined in the book.  I had to offer a hollow laugh, however, when L&A discuss the 400 (or more) basic dimensions of human behavior.  I think it would have been beneficial to give an example of an empirical research topic and then outline a few of the behaviors that the researcher would have to monitor.

The discussion of meta-analysis on page 17 was interesting and a little formidable.  Once a theory has been posed, research conducted, and ideas put into practice, how often does meta-analysis happen?  Who's to say if a practice has been successful?  Like Vicki, I ask that in my classroom when I try something new, but these big programs that my district buys into...it seems they don't want to spend the time or energy in reflection or analysis that would indicate whether a program is successful or not.

The narrative of Deborah Alvarez was a nice change from reading inquiry theory.  Several things came to mind as I was reading it.  The idea of detachment is important.  If we tenaciously  cling to what we love, it's hard to be objective; it's hard to clearly look at what our students need.  When Pam came into Deborah's class and made the comment, "You don't like them" she was offering that detached judgment that Deborah would never have been able to see on her own.  She was made to see what was obvious to someone from the outside.

I liked the chart that Alvarez provided.  I think that most veteran teachers have gone through the same processes, although it was nice to see it outlined so clearly.  I would have like to hear more about the ideas that Alvarez used in her classroom. There seemed to be big gaps in the information she provided in the article.