Spring 2007 Field Methods Research ideas (#1)

Copy of email sent to Dr. Becky Rickly 1/3/07
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Hi Becky,

I'm so glad to hear from you. I've been having a metaphysical crisis because my accd.edu email is not working and my dad even said a TTU email he sent to me got bounced, so I've been fretting horribly about not getting email. I've also noticed that I am signed up for the course (or so I think), but I don't have a balance to pay. I'll look into my registration situation today.

I'm writing you (and cc:ing Rich, my diss chair) because I'd like whatever research I do in this class to count in some way toward my eventual dissertation research. What follows will be a summary of what I am thinking of doing with a lot of messy ideas/possibilities. I will REALLY appreciate your help and feedback as I decide what to do this semester. Since what I plan to do may require me to set up certain conditions within my own classes for this semester, your response (at least in a broad sense) will help a lot.

Here it goes:
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Lennie's diss research

Disciplinary Focus--Composition/Rhetoric

General Area of Research Interest--reflection, reflection in the writing process

Focused Target of Research Interest--post-draft reflections (called Writer's Reviews in TTU TOPIC)

Research Question: (rephrased in various ways)

What is happening in terms of the writer's "process" (activity and progress with writing a text) within writer's reviews?

What affect do writer's reviews have on a writer's process of writing and eventual end product?

Do writer's reviews have a significant impact on a writer's writing process and activities in writing?

Can we see evidence that writer's reviews are a form of invention for writers?

Who Gives A Rat's Ass (WGRA factor)

Reflection may not be "trendy," nor is research into the writing process (since post-process ideas have complicated our view of the writing process), BUT reflection is a powerful tool for developing rhetorical sensitivity and practical wisdom (phronesis) for writer's within the activity of writing. It parallels the practice of usability testing within the field of tech comm. for an iterative development process. I think, also, that rhet/comp's views toward reflection are too narrowly focused on portfolio reflection (or a final student self evaluation as in Service Learning) and not on the role reflection plays WITHIN a process/activity rather than AFTER it is completed. The other area of significance for this project is that it may lead us to look at invention differently because my feeling is that these writer's reviews constitute a heuristic extension of invention within the writing process. Invention within writing instruction too often gets pigeoned-holed into "pre-writing" and methods and means of identifying how invention continues throughout the activity of writing are too little defined within our view of the writing process. Post-draft reflections (writer's reviews) are one formalized activity prompting (or re-prompting) invention. Also, poststructuralist views of "the subject" have basically castrated our sense of invention—much to the detriment of our conception of rhetoric (in my view). This study (perhaps naively in the poststructuralist view) tries to recover our conception of the subject and its potentialities for invention.

Previous Work:

In Spring 2005 I did a Case Study on post-draft reflections for students in my Fresh Comp II classes. I examined the writer's reviews for four students through two writing cycles which constituted three writer's reviews for each cycle (three drafts, three writer's reviews—parallel to TTU). I used Marcia Baxter-Magolda's "Constructivist Interpretation Process" to guide my methodology and my methods. Here is a link to my paper:

http://www.accd.edu/sac/english/lirvin/TTech/5363LLIpaper.htm

Here is a summary of Baxter-Magolda's constructivist interpretation process:

http://www.accd.edu/sac/english/lirvin/TTech/5363paper/Appendix2.htm

--RESULTS of Case Study:

I found that the most significant thing happening within writer’s reviews is that students were working on their “rhetorical stance” and you could see signs of how they either transformed or confirmed their stance. “Rhetorical stance” is a term signifying a metaphor that describes all the constraints a writer balances and brings into alignment as they write (the writer’s situation, Kinnevey’s communication triangle—writer, subject, text, audience, situation). Reflection is where students in some respect seek to adapt general principles to specific situations (a la Kant’s Reflective Judgment). This result led me to conclude that these acts of reflection occurring “in and amongst the drafts” represented an extension of invention—testing, adapting, identifying and solving problems. Something is also happening because this is done in writing (i.e. discursively).

SUBSEQUENT WORK (leading to where I am now):

Summer 2005—Rhetorical Analysis class with Sean Zdenek. Learned more about discourse analysis; did paper on metaphor. Since the notion of “rhetorical stance” is itself a conceptual metaphor, I am interested in the conceptual metaphors used by students to represent their writing and writing activity.

Fall 2005—Theory’s of Invention class with Amy Koerber

I made my class paper project an exploration of what invention is and how it might or might not relate to invention. I wrote a paper identifying direct connections between invention and reflection, building the case that reflection represents a heuristic extension of invention.

Summer 2006—Classical Rhetoric with Rich Rice

Since my whole research interest presupposes a “writing process,” I felt I had to learn more about post-process theories which often are interpreted as a negation of the writing process. What they reject is a formulaic, generalizable writing process (the science of writing). Post-process is actually an affirmation of rhetorical principles in communication. My course paper debunked some of the more extreme post-modern views of communication by grounding and tempering some of its views with classical rhetoricians. Phronesis, practical wisdom applied in contingent situations involving uncertain knowledge, became a strong focus for my work. It is my belief that our ultimate goal as writing instructors is to develop this capacity for phronesis in our students.

Additional subsequent work:

I have gathered more data from students

10-12 sets of writers reviews from two writing cycles from four different sections of 1301 students. (I just have the data; I did not do the full constructivist interpretation process including interviews and checking my interpretations with this data. In fact, I haven’t closely analyzed it yet, just glanced at it.)

4 sets of writers reviews from two sections of Developmental English for on writing cycle. (unanalyzed at this point)

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RESEARCH PROJECT POSSIBILITIES

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General Goal:

Ideally, I’d like to get the core of my dissertation research done this semester. Hah! Realistically, I would like to do something that would in someway move me forward in doing the eventual research I will do for my dissertation.

Eventually, I really would like to tap into the TOPIC Vault because it offers such a vast amount of data and it is in a form that allows for some new and innovative approaches to research. My original thinking was to do qualitative research that might lead me to do something more quantitative within TOPIC. Last May, Susan Lang and I talked about some possibilities for data mining or even setting up some special treatments within TOPIC. That might mean that my eventual dissertation might include a mixture of methods???? I think I am still at the stage of doing qualitative research that might help inform whatever I do with TOPIC in a quantitative way.

What to do this semester?

Option A) Case Study Redo (either with my students or with TTU students—I assume that Fresh Comp at TTU is still using the three draft, three writer review writing cycle?)

This would involve getting two writing cycle’s worth of data for four to six writers. What might be adjusted and improved this time are my research methods. I could do a mix of SAC and TTU students?

My thinking for this option is that I should try to do TTU students in a 1301 class, but this makes it harder to do interviews. One big value I found in my other case study was interviewing my subjects and testing my own interpretations with their impressions. I could ask about specific things they had written in their reflections. I could do interviews via TTU MOO or I could fly up one day for interviews (if I could manage to get interviews with all my subjects in that time). This project might be more do-able because I would get writer’s reviews from the second and third essay or just the second essay; that way, I would have the time period of the first essay cycle to set up my research study before I began gathering data.

Option B) Survey/Focus Group Study

If I were to use TTU students, this study would again depend upon TTU still using writer’s reviews with its composition classes.

I could design a survey to gather student impressions about doing reflections. I could also survey document instructors and teachers about them. Then I could do a number of focus group discussions with these subjects to flesh out the surveys. This could be matched with some individual interviews perhaps. Focus group discussions could be held in the MOO!

Option C) Data-mining

I’m not sure this qualifies as “field methods” because I’m thinking our class will involve more qualitative methods, but this option involves identifying “key terms” (which may signify important conceptual metaphors used in reflections hammering out rhetorical stance) and doing a broad TOPIC data-mining for the prevalence of these terms. Analyzing the results sounds tricky to me.

Option D) Quasi-Experimental (or even Experimental Study)

This would be more work, and might not fit for this class, but I’ll outline this study too. This, again, presupposes TTU still using writer’s reviews. In this study, I could establish a “special treatment” for a class or cohort of students. Pre- and post-tests could be established in the form of writing samples, but this is labor intensive as far as holistically scoring these. The special treatment could be either a )one cohort not having to writer writer’s reviews (so you could compare them to the overall population of TOPIC students) or b) this cohort could get a different set of writer’s review prompts that might have been specially designed to illicit deliberation of rhetorical stance and this group could be compared to the general population. What we would compare would be key. As I mentioned, we could do the laborsome task of getting pre- and post- test writing samples as well as pre- and post- course surveys.

The cool thing about TOPIC is that this kind of study possibly could be turned into a true experimental study since TOPIC might allow for a random sample.

The problem with this kind of study is that it will take a long time to set up, and lots of labor to pursue and I don’t think I am positioned to pull all this together at this late date. The question remains, too, about whether this kind of method will truly show in a reliable and valid way what I am hoping it will show.