tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-13623924004857560232024-03-13T09:35:12.915-06:00From the Mirrormusings on reflection, writing, research, teaching, and lifeLenniehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553164711914465201noreply@blogger.comBlogger143125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1362392400485756023.post-60590575409996641022014-03-07T05:34:00.001-06:002014-03-07T05:34:09.981-06:00About WritingWriting is always more precise and less precise than our thoughts: that is why our writing pieces glow with being and beckon with the promise of becoming.Lenniehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553164711914465201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1362392400485756023.post-38097252736326916552013-07-29T06:26:00.000-06:002013-07-29T06:26:49.116-06:00The Future of Invention--of knowledge and learningLearning is certainly a kind of "invention" or discovery, and Muckelbauer delves deeply into this topic in his chapter 5 "Itineration: What is a Sophist?" He continues his own inquiry into rhetoric's relation between the Model and the Copy, but as he says "on a different terrain" (79). I think this is a key quote: "Both the sophist's and the philosopher's knowledge are images insofar as they are derivative of the <i>Original</i> or the <i>Model</i> (what Plato elsewhere calls the Idea)" (88). Each one holds knowledge that is a pretender, but the Philosopher's is better because it a "true resemblance" rather than a "resemblance-effect." However, the key term in the above quote is "derivative." Muckelbauer uses the word "filiation," but something that is granted the status of "knowledge" must have some grounding, some backing, some warrant, some family resemblance or genes to confirm that it is "true." Today we attempt to construct this basis for knowledge from scientific research. In any case, what counts for knowledge is based upon some authority.<br />
<br />
But as Muckelbauer states distinguishing between the "two pretenders to the Model's image" is difficult, and puts the entire enterprise of dialectical thought at stake (i.e. the search for truth). The two types of images, he labels,<br />
Copies= true resemblences, products of Copies<br />
Resemblance-effects= products of Simulacra-Phantasms<br />Simulacra appear proportional to the Model from the outside, but are not internally proportionate. As I wrote last time, M. says that something must be added to our vision to distinguish between these two images--the movement of differential repetition where the subject's beliefs must be at stake in the encounter (93).<br />
<br />
Later in the chapter, M. discusses the metaphor of "itinerant travel" (as it relates to invention and learning). He says, "in order to hunt down the sophist, one must travel--but <i>not because the sophist is located elsewhere, rather, because itinerant travel is the necessary condition for the act of locating</i>" (94). I have already compared this itinerant travel to grounded theory's orientation toward theory creation and its methods of constant comparison and theoretical sampling (what could be more itinerant than theoretical sampling?). But this may just be me and not true to what M. is indicating. Although I can't say I fully understand M here, he equates the Simulacrum with the differential movement of the sophists: "the sophist is, quite, simply, the differential movement of the Simulacrum" (95). While this gets a bit confusing for me, the next chapter is very interesting. So let me move on.<br />
<br />
In a section titled "Future Travels" I think M. gets at the heart of the meaning of "future" in his title. One might be mistaken in thinking of future as some new creation or iteration on the horizon--a new dawn of invention. But notice that he includes the word "travels" with future. Future travels might be an entirely different way of saying "invention" or "discovery" or "learning" for that matter. In this section he discusses the relation between the Model and the Copy and the idea of preexistance and knowledge. At this point, I think I am going to string together key quotes:<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
"The Copy recognizes quite clearly that, at the very least, the Model cannot be known in advance, that as we have seen, knowing true reality requires the repetition of differential encounters. In terms of lineage, the Copy insistently demonstrates that one cannot know the father except through the act of paying tribute.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
...</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
"But further, if the Model cannot be known in advance, then neither can its existence be apprehended. There is no way to know, before the differential encounter, if the Model even exists at all--nor would their be any reason to suspect that it did. In fact, if the Model does preexist, and out guide repeatedly insists that it does, one can only know of this preexistence through traveling. In other words, the preexistence of the Model must come later, it must be an effect of sophistic travel. ... through the Copy the Model is simultaneously realized and posited as preexisting. More precisely, <i>through the Copy, the Model is realized as preexisting</i>: the future is differentially encountered as the past. In other words, the exterior movement of the Copy produces the very existence of the past in its gesture toward the Model. This is why Socrates' [sic] consistently articulates learning as recollection: within the dynamics of the Copy, the future-oriented movement of learning is necessarily linked to the simultaneous emergence of the past." (96-97)</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
He refers to this "temporal movement of the Copy" as "retroactive production" (97). It is a form of recognition. We don't know where we started from until we arrive, and we don't even know where we have arrived until we fully comprehend where we started from. This is learning. But notice that it has this recognition to it that seems to come only later after some reflection. I believe this quote captures in more Platonic terms why post-task retrospective reflection is so powerful. The future is differentially encountered as the past. In my beginning is my end; in my end is my beginning. The future of invention, as the future of learning, is only "known" or experienced through this retroactive production. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
What I think M. is getting at is a way in which knowledge and learning is constructed (or invented). This construction happens through this "itinerant travel" that is a style of dialectic that he calls differential movement. My last connection to M.'s ideas here is to Linda Flower's idea about how "task representation" is constructed with her model of Noticing and Evoking Within the Process of Task Representation. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9u7Eb2dcWmU/UfZbBdAY7BI/AAAAAAAAANU/61Sg8AKxMRg/s1600/NoticeEvoke.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9u7Eb2dcWmU/UfZbBdAY7BI/AAAAAAAAANU/61Sg8AKxMRg/s1600/NoticeEvoke.png" height="310" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Interestingly, Flower has at the bottom "Updating the image." The image is the writer's understanding of the "model" within their understanding and in their text (i.e. "the copy). Flower recognized just what M. discusses in this chapter--the Model/image is not "known" in advance but is constructed through the learning process (the differential encounter). Noticing and evoking are here terms for the dialectic that goes on: the writer notices something in the draft and compares it to the mental image they have of the Model. Then adjust: plan, review, and update. Repeat. Based upon this updated image, then the "representation" (the text) is revised. </div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Whereas M. seems to present this learning as retrospective recollection, Flower presents a model closer to my sense of rhetorical reflection that happens all along the way. It isn't just that we only understand where we have been once we arrive--we figure out where we have been, where we are, where we are going as we "travel." Perhaps the discovery that comes with this post-task recognition then is deeper when we have been uncovering, learning, bringing the image more and more into focus through the entire writing process. </div>
Lenniehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553164711914465201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1362392400485756023.post-5934964872564320722013-07-27T07:13:00.001-06:002013-07-27T07:14:18.573-06:00The Future of Invention--mimesisAs I review chapters 4 and 5, I see that the single theme of these chapters is the relations between the model and the copy. He starts in chpt. 4 with Imitation (or mimesis) and Invention. The demise of classical imitation pedagogy in the face of the romantic sense of subjectivity and emphasis on creativity positions imitation and invention in opposition to each other: imitation = repetition/reproduction and invention = novelty/creativity. But Mucklebauer believes this story of opposition is too neat (52).<br />
<br />
Mimesis, he says, deals with the power of appearances and traditionally has had three meanings with fit with three domains:<br />
PHILOSOPHY--"the Platonic notion of an image making faculty which produces extensions of ideal truth in the phenomenal world"<br />
LITERATURE--"the Aristotelian notion of the representation of human activity" (think "hold the mirror up to nature"<br />
RHETORIC--"the rhetorical notion of copying, aping, simulating, emulating models" (54)<br />
<br />
Muckelbauer says that this catagorization of mimesis "lends itself to an anachronistically rigid sense of disciplinary boundaries" (55). He looks to Terry Givens to offer another approach: "Rather than focusing on the type of imitated object (the model) or the nature of the imitation's product (the copy), such an approach would attend to the dynamics of repetition and variation that circulate through any given practice of imitation" (56) Givens notes there are three basic components of mimesis:<br />
<br />
The MODEL -------------------------------------The COPY<br />
|<br />
some relation of likeness<br />
<br />
We have not attended as much to "the relation that exists between the model and the copy"(56), and Muckelbauer proposes applying his affirmative inquiry approach to create a different taxonomy of mimesis. Through this work, he identifies three "rhythms"--which he also calls "inclinations" and "orientations" within imitative repetition.<br />
<br />
The three "singular rhythms" of imitation are:<br />
<br />
<b>Repetition-of-the-same</b>--the copy is an exact duplication of the model. Plato talks a lot about this kind of reproduction of the "idea" in the phenomenal world (which is of course inferior to the ideal). Variation in the copy is seen as bad or as a failure.<br />
<br />
<b>Repetition of difference</b>--"variation is necessarily an internal principle of imitative repetition" (65). This form of imitation or repetition does not have to deal with "the regulating ideal of identical reproduction" but operates by other laws: "in order to repeat, one must vary" (66). Muckelbauer quotes Aristotle's statement about how poets don't have to narrate events as they happened. Tolstoy famously discussed the same thing in how novelists in recounting historical events are not limited by facts and actual events. For repetition of difference "it can no longer be concerned with simply reproducing the model as accurately as possible..., but must attempt to reproduce the effect of the model"(68). This form of mimesis is "primarily concerned with appearances ...[and] on the capacity to produce effects (70).<br />
<br />
<b>Inspiration: Difference and Repetition</b>--"the nature of the model changes... . Within this inspiring encounter, the model becomes responsiveness itself" (73). The previous two types of imitation "offer two different ways in which subjects might respond to their models in order to repeat them" (73). I must admit that this third form of repetition is a bit unclear to me. He speaks about the "dynamic of losing oneself in response to a model" and quotes Quintillian about how what students learn from imitation "is the capacity to respond itself" (74).<br />
<br />
I should wrap this post up, but I want to process these rhythms of imitation in terms of my own teaching. I can see how much of my teaching hinges on the "repetition-of-the-same." And this includes the grading. I grade off of an internal ideal model, and (of course) the real thing can never rival this model. It is interesting to contemplate the possibility of "learning" as a form of imitating or repeating. When we ask students to "apply" principles or things they have learned, we really are asking them to repeat them. Let me show you. Now, here, you do it. I will have more in my next post about this relationship between the Model and the Copy and how it relates to learning and reflection.<br />
<br />
<br />Lenniehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553164711914465201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1362392400485756023.post-52013816210426797722013-07-26T07:15:00.002-06:002013-07-26T07:15:28.338-06:00Future of Invention--the affirmative stance not so strangeMuckelbauer outlines in his book a style of scholarly engagement which he describes as a way to extract singular rhythms and read and write affirmatively. Leaning on Deleuze and Guattari, he makes a distinction between "being oriented toward the dialectic (proof and argumentation) and being oriented toward the singular rhythms secreted through the dialectics" (42). He brings up D&G's distinction between "tracing" and "mapping." I can't say I fully understand this distinction, but quoting D&G he says, "the map has to do with performance, whereas the tracing always involves an alleged 'competence'" (qtd. in Muckelbauer 42). Attending to singular rhythms "requires a kind of performance, an immersive response [a form of inhabiting]" (42-43). This immersive inhabiting, again pointing to D&G, Muckelbauer describes a fundamentally a form of experimentation and exploration. Contrasting it with "tracing" and a scholarly engagement shaped by negating and filling in gaps, he says, "Rather than extracting claims to be advocated, critiqued, or developed, and rather than just diagnosing the performative movement within the writing, an affirmative inclination encounters writing as an experimental pathway on an intensive, inventional circuit" (43). Although Muckelbauer used different language (and metaphors), I believe his ideas are familiar to me.<br />
<br />
I can think of two similar descriptions of a "scholarly engagement" that resemble Muckelbauer's ideas. The first is grounded theory with Glaser and Straus's dictum that grounded theory is about theory generation rather than testing. Their entire approach to "coding" and data analysis resembles this goal of extracting singular rhythms. Another loud bell ringing in my ear is Donna Qualley's book <i>Turns of Thought: Teaching Composition as Reflexive Inquiry</i>. Qualley goes back to the roots of the definition and history of "the essay" to see the word as a verb--to essay. To attempt. She describes an essayistic stance which is fundamentally making writing a form of exploration--an attempt. Crucial to this "attempt" is reflexivity which she generally describes as a reflective encounter with an "other." This "other" should be different and through this contrastive experience help lead the writer/inquirer to new, transformative responses. <br />
<br />
Muckelbauer's affirmative strategies/styles are<br />
<ol>
<li>Principle of generosity--a generous, fair reading</li>
<li>Avoid orientation toward intentions--for the same reason reader-response theory avoids the intentional fallacy, but here also the reader does not want to be limited by the author's intentions (or perhaps even the readers intentions)</li>
<li>Principle of Selective Reading--not oriented toward providing some kind of adequate representation of a work. A "slice of data" (using GT terms) is examined for what it will show and reveal.</li>
<li>Principle of connnectivity--proposition does not govern structure of the writing, connections and openness to other contexts does</li>
<li>Principle of non-recognition--from the best I can tell, this means not naming and fronting theories or theoretical frameworks, but let them work from the background as they inform (but not define) the inventive exploration</li>
</ol>
I can say that this engagement with a scholarly project and these strategies seem to resemble grounded theory to me. I'm not sure I have summarized his strategies fairly (or generously), but this is what I am taking from them. <br />
<br />
I will probably have another post digging into his ideas about repetition and the relation of the model and the copy, but I want to connect her his complicated notion of the "differential movement of repeated encounters" that he says is the means by which "true clarity" is achieved and some distinction made between a copy that is a "true resemblance" and one that is a false resemblance (or a "simulacra"). He says that "to encounter reality, something more than mere perception must be involved: in the encounter, the subject's beliefs must be at stake" (91-92). He characterizes this encounter as a "movement of difference ... characterized by the very movement differential repetition ... in which the subject must consistently be at stake" (93). As I read this, I am thinking about grounded theory and its method of constant comparison. Within constant comparison is Dewey's double-movement of reflection from data to theory and back again and again. If the researcher allows his beliefs, preconceptions and theories to be open (and "at stake") with each act of coding and constant comparison, they will be more open to discovery and growing their theory. Qualley highlights the crucial factor of "reflexivity" in this process and how encountering the other and the different can be one of the strongest catalyst for this discovery and growth in inquiry.<br />
<br />
Missing from this "differential encounter" (at least from the perspective of grounded theory and reflection theories) is the importance also of confirmation within this encounter. Perhaps this puts things too much in Mezirow's terms of "negation and confirmation," but even in grounded theory the basic movement of constant comparison looks fundamentally for likeness and differences, and examining likenesses can be as revealing as examining differences. My last thought here is to express a bit of anxiety over the movement of difference (and similarity) as too simplistic. Ian Dey in his book exploring grounded theory (with a fairly good affirmative stance) opens up more complex ways of coding and encountering reality (data/phenomena). Unfortunately, I was more on the basic level for my coding and found the difference/similarity lens enough for me, but Dey points to much more complex things happening in this differential encounter. Lenniehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553164711914465201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1362392400485756023.post-86257642069372340032013-07-25T06:56:00.000-06:002013-07-25T06:58:01.993-06:00The Future of Invention --response 1<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4ycHSGP-I6o/UfESO9Bvg_I/AAAAAAAAAM4/oE5k6XFzEhU/s1600/futureinvent.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4ycHSGP-I6o/UfESO9Bvg_I/AAAAAAAAAM4/oE5k6XFzEhU/s1600/futureinvent.jpg" height="200" width="200" /></a></div>
John Muckelbauer's book (2008) is a challenging and enriching text for any scholars interested in invention and postmodern thought. As someone caught in modernist thinking, this book has been fairly mind-blowing for me. In the next few blog posts, I plan to offer some responses to the text that will help me understand the text better.<br />
<br />
What is gratifying, even welcoming, about Muckelbauer's book actually is his fundamental thesis. So much of deconstructionism, post-process theory, and other postmodernist views seem off-putting because in putting forth their propositions and philosophical perspective they destroy, undercut, denigrate, and even ridicule the "foundationalist" thinking they are "rising" above. At least, these are the kinds of emotions I have felt in the presence of postmodern thinking--I am a dull, ill-witted idiot to still think this way (or not to understand what they are saying). But Muckelbauer's book begins offering a different form of invention and responding to the "problem of change." What he notices in BOTH foundationalism and antifoundationalism (modernist and postmodernist thinking and scholarship) is a common pattern of invention:<br />
<br />
"foundationalism and antifoundationalism ... actually share a common 'foundational' commitment to a dialectical image of change and to the movement of negation that engineers it. ... difference and novelty only emerges by somehow overcoming or negating particular others." (x)<br />
<br />
What he identifies as common within all this scholarship is the firmly entrenched binary of "the same" and "the different" and that both groups operate on the same style of dialectical change: "a style of engagement in which negation is the generative principle of transformation" (4). Here in a nutshell is the scholarly movement of "making knowledge" with a dissertation (or other scholarship). You start with a problem or a gap, and to answer/solve that problem or fill in that gap you have to show how something is wrong or misunderstood. You have to define your "problem" to initiate your inquiry which by definition sets the scholarly operation of novelty (of generating knowledge) as an operation of overcoming and negating what has come before.<br />
<br />
Instead, Muckelbauer offers a style of invention that is "not simply different from"(12) this movement of invention via negation which he calls an affirmative style of invention. Here is where he gets fairly frustratingly postmodern himself by claiming that this affirmative style of invention can't be explained representationally (i.e. defined) but he suggests it might be "demonstrated performatively" (xi). I reveal my own tension with understanding Muckelbauer by seeking to present some representational understanding of what he means in this blog (when I suppose I should be following his affirmative style of engagement). As he says at the end of the introduction, "[the] content of the propositions that I was reading ... may be of less importance than the 'how' of the movement through those propositions" (xii). He is after provoking with his book a style of engagement that challenges the traditional scholarly endeavor which is built on novelty through negation.The affirmative style of change, as he says, is not different from "the appropriative movement of dialectical negation"(30)--we can't seem to transcend this repetitious movement of dialectic--but is about what he terms a style, and inclination, a modulation of this repetition. He notices within the "appropriative repetition of humanism" a logic of identity that enables appropriation (a sort of colonialism within the dialectical movement) that he says has at its core "the extraction of constants" (35). However, affirmative invention has a different "rhythm": "On the other hand, within any given encounter, an inclination toward intensive, singular rhythms functions through the extraction of variation" (35). Here I have done things he probably would disapprove of as I have tried to define this affirmative sense of change and clarify how it is different in my efforts to appropriate his ideas and label the constants in his discussion. Oh, the postmodern trap.<br />
<br />
Yet I think his ideas are very important. I'm going to follow a train of connections that is helping me understand Muckelbauer's different style of engagement with change (novelty, invention). His chapter 2 focuses on why he engages with rhetoric in his book, and in this discussion he charts the rise of rhetoric and postmodernism and their connections. He cites Stanley Fish's statement: "another word for anti-foundationalism is rhetoric" (25). So perhaps different styles of rhetoric may parallel Muckelbauer's different styles of engagement with the repetitious movement of dialectic. He has noticed a single style that seems to dominate, and he is saying another style (that is not just different) exists. This reminds me of Wayne Booth's discussion within <i>The Rhetoric of Rhetoric</i> of different kinds of rhetoric. He talks about "Win-Rhetoric" which is about "the intent to win at all cost" and then "Bargain-Rhetoric" which is likewise a form of "win-win" rhetoric (43-45). Both seem to operate via forms of negation. But he presents another approach to rhetoric that he calls "Listening Rhetoric" where "I am not just seeking the truth; I want to pursue the truth behind our differences" (46). For me, I see something of a parallel between Muckelbauer's affirmative style of invention and Booth's style of listening rhetoric. Both are responsive to the "other" and embrace difference and variation to provide insight (i.e. novelty, discover, invention).<br />
<br />
More to come...<br />
<br />
<br />Lenniehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553164711914465201noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1362392400485756023.post-27098644655360849212013-05-30T06:45:00.000-06:002013-05-30T06:45:16.526-06:00Reflecting on the Sting of RejectionSo I just had word that my "revise and resubmit" submission to a journal (that will remain nameless) was rejected. These moments of failure (if we can call it that) are painful and instructive. On the one hand, looking at the two peer reviews I can see that the reviewers fundamentally misunderstood parts of my argument and thinking. Badly. Yet, on the other hand, their misunderstanding is not their fault, but mine. How could I have expressed these concepts and ideas better? The other possibility is that no matter how well I express these ideas the reader will reject or dismiss them. Reflection is no longer trendy, and what I have to say is neither significant or that new. <br />
<br />
Processing feedback is an important part of rhetorical reflection, so I want to spend a bit of time reviewing and thinking about this feedback. Reviewer one was the most curt and stinging. His first critique was that "The theories used to support the author's 'rhetorical reflection' don't support it." His main complaint was with my use of Schon and my link with Schon's sense of "surprise" or of the "problem" and the problem that is central to rhetorical reflection. The reviewer narrowly understood Schon to be talking about "in-the-moment" sensibilities of "expert" practitioners. As he says, "adapting to a specific writing situation after a draft is written is not the kind of problem Schon is writing about." It is like the reviewer did not read my section specifically addressing this issue of what constitutes the "action present" of reflection-in-action.<br />
<br />
So what do I learn from this feedback? I learn that many scholars in Composition often have a particular view of Schon that is fairly rigid and to my mind uninformed. He has been pigeon-holed. If I am to use Schon's ideas, then, I believe I need to position his theories as ones of resemblance and not equation. I can't base my theory on Schon's ideas, but use his theories as metaphors or springboards for understanding my own. The whole issue of expert and novice thinking when discussing Schon must also be dealt with. <br />
<br />
The second main critique was that "the distinction between 'retrospective' and 'rhetorical' reflection breaks down in the author's own discussion of Writing Reviews which require students to <i>look back</i> on a draft <i>already written</i> for purposes of self-evaluation." The reviewer correctly points out the retrospective nature within rhetorical reflection--yes, the writer is looking back. But the reviewer misses totally, again, my distinction about what constitutes the "action-present." The draft is not finished, but will be rewritten, so the reflective thinking (like that thinking I am doing now) is different than retrospective reflection. This concept evaded reviewer 1.<br />
<br />
One big change in this draft was the decision to shift from "curricular reflection" to "retrospective reflection" to describe this post-task reflection. Perhaps I need a different name for it? The Janus face of reflection is as John Muckelbauer would say an itinerant rhythm of differential encounter. Its "double-movement" travels within contexts, and describing its distinct features within these different contexts is difficult. That the reviewer felt that the "distinction cannot be sustained" and therefore the "exigency for the author's argument is not a persuasive one" speaks in one sense to the reviewers shallow reading of my article, but it also speaks to the importance I need to place in establishing this distinction between retrospective and rhetorical reflection even more. Making this distinction is probably the single most important goal of the article, and right now the article is obviously failing in making this distinction. <br />
<br />
The second review was more generous in their reading of the article in that they seemed to have a better understanding of it. Her first critique was about the slow start to the article. I take too long to establish composition's "portfolio-centric" perspective on reflection. I have kept in my critiques of Yancey and Sommers, spending elaborate time trying to fairly summarize their viewpoints and then countering them. I agree that this characterization regarding compositions post-task view of reflection could be condensed.<br />
<br />
The following critique by this reviewer is much more insightful: "I was most interested to see where the essay would go from this observation/assertion [that composition has a portfolio-centric view of reflection], and it seems that the author is arguing that the <i>moment</i> of reflection should change, not its process or results. This seems at odds with the idea that 'rhetorical reflection' is somehow something different and innovative." The review is right on target to say the moment of reflection is different, and she tells me that I also need to highlight how the PROCESS and RESULTS of rhetorical reflection are different and innovative (since novelty and originality are the "exigency" that sustains interest and warrants publication). What this feedback tells me is that the reader has an interest in a more detailed description of my research results, and that somehow I need to include these more inside this article (without getting bogged down too much).<br />
<br />
The second reviewer also finds a contradiction in my earlier description of reflection as being self-sponsored and then later prompted in the classroom. This point is well taken. How do I communicate my sensibility that the writer write's rhetorical reflection for their own purposes rather than for the teachers. I need to work on expressing this concept. Maybe the constructivist nature of this thinking is what I am getting at. I want to make the distinction that the writer is not performing or trying to display for the teacher, but thinking on the page. I need to work on this one since many people and even students see anything they do as being for the teacher. Perhaps I can tap into theories of androgogy to articulate this sense of self-owned (if not self-sponsored) learning.<br />
<br />
The second reviewer lost some credibility with me in their third critique when she stated in reference to the review of Schon and Dewey, "I didn't see it tied to the rest of the argument in the essay." I thought I had tied them well into the argument, using them particularly to distinguish rhetorical reflection from retrospective reflection, but obviously this distinction (as reviewer 1 states) did not come through, nor did the relevance of this distinction in terms of the overall argument get across. Similar to the first reviewer, the second reviewer states, "I didn't find this essay persuasive in its larger theoretical argument about the role/practice of reflection."<br />
<br />
So I was not persuasive. What does this mean not being persuasive? I think that reader 1 was simply disagreed with my ideas and discredited them and hence was not persuaded. Reader 2 was willing to entertain my ideas but I did not provide them with enough substance for these ideas to be persuaded.<br />
<br />
I have invested enough in this article that I know I will revise it one more time and submit it to another journal. It is painful to receive a rejection for publication, but I am hopeful that this feedback will help my eventually create a stronger article. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Lenniehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553164711914465201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1362392400485756023.post-69411878830750793492013-02-10T08:31:00.002-06:002013-02-10T08:33:03.845-06:00Writing Review on Rethinking ReflectionI am at something of a stuck place with my rewrite of the "rethinking" article, and I believe I need to engage in some rhetorical reflection myself to see if it can help me become unstuck. I am having trouble with the very last section of the article before the conclusion. In this section, at least how I see it now, I need to give a picture of rhetorical reflection in the classroom and a stronger rationale for why it is important. My difficulty is how to condense the classroom picture and not begin to wander off into a completely other article (in fact, I have an entire draft of the What'sit; Howto for rhetorical reflection that goes into more detail on classroom practice). I am already over 7K words. Ack!<br />
<br />
It is funny how I have gone multiple times from start to my stopping place, refining the draft. It seems I could go endlessly through these parts refining them, and my revisions from the previous draft are making a difference. But I can't seem to get over this hump. I need so cut the gordian knot somehow. First, I think I need to untangle the knot. What are the conflicting strands that are stymieing me.<br />
<br />
Let's see:<br />
<ul>
<li>how can I sum up a picture of classroom practice without it getting too long?</li>
<li>more challenging is how can I pull together a condensed rationale that taps into more contemporary scholarship. I love Linda Flower, but I feel like I can't lean only on her.</li>
<li>Also, I have some text I have already written that I feel somehow is not leading in the right direction. I believe part of the problem is that I start down its path and reach a dead end. </li>
</ul>
OK. What to do about the classroom practice summary. I set up this section well by saying the two things left to do are give a picture of what RR looks like in the classroom and a rationale. What is the bare minimum that I need to do to show classroom practice. These seem like they are important:<br />
--define RR<br />
--describe Writing Reviews and pedagogical placement<br />
--provide and example and illustration<br />
The challenge is doing this in less than a thousand words and in such a way that it doesn't seem too short.<br />
<br />
Now about condensing contemporary scholarship. I think the key problem here is that I did some more reading over break and collected some good additional scholarship to add, but I have not gone back through it to pick out what I can use in this article. I think it will make a big difference to fill my leggo box with some pieces I can use and then I will be able to write. One thing I am struggling with is exploding into the areas of invention and heuristics. I need a way to summarize Kathy Pender's article on Invention and its tendrils into Bryan Hawk's ideas on invention. Ah, avoiding getting stuck in the postmodern swamp.<br />
<br />
The one additional thing I have thought about that I think I must do is qualify my classroom picture saying that a full description of writing reviews is beyond the scope of this article.<br />
<br />
I know also that I will need to reorient my conclusion to reemphasize the basic shift or expansion in our thinking about reflection I am advocating.<br />
<br />
Whew! I think this helped. I now see a path forward. I have a game plan for the classroom practice summary, and I know that I need to review some literature before I am ready to get a final draft of the rationale piece. <br />
<br />
So doing rhetorical reflection really does help--even me.Lenniehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553164711914465201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1362392400485756023.post-79164903786116851962013-01-06T10:07:00.002-06:002013-02-10T08:34:50.934-06:00Muddled and MuddlingHow is it that I am on vacation, and I don't seem to have enough time? No stacks of papers to grade. No class announcements or essay cycle assignment sheets to put together. Yet no time. Time, clearly, is relative.<br />
<br />
I'm working now on trying to revise an article submission that I got a "revise and resubmit" on, and right now I seem to be spinning my wheels. Muddling, I call it. I think the deeper I feel muddled the better the overall end product (I hope) will be. The root of this muddling is questioning my thinking and evaluating what I have written, and most importantly sitting like a chess player staring at the chess board imagining fifteen possible moves and the trajectory for each. The danger in this muddle business is paralysis.<br />
<br />
The foundation for revision, as I articulated for my students this semester, is <a href="http://www.lirvin.net/WGuides/rethinkrevision.html" target="_blank">rethinking</a>. Changing your thinking, deepening, rounding out, adding to, recasting, clarifying your thinking becomes the basis for revision. To accomplish this rethinking, I've been reading a number of Fall 2012 Composition Forum articles on transfer, Kelly Pender's article on invention in <i>The Changing of Knowledge in Composition</i>, and Bryon Hawk's<i> Counter-History of Composition </i>which has led to numerous references to other work. Hence, the muddle.<br />
<br />
My reading has been focused on deepening the "So What?" answer I might have to rhetorical reflection by linking it to contemporary notions of invention as tying into complex systems. I've also been looking for more anchors to my statements that reflection is predominantly a retrospective practice in our pedagogy. I've found some additional ammunition in the literature on transfer, but I've also found some support for the idea of in-context, in-task reflection and its connection to transfer.<br />
<br />
My biggest challenges for revision so far are my desire to restructure the piece. I believe I start down a path with the concept of "frameworks" and then sets up a binary that is not useful. However, I want to provide some picture, some perspective, some recognition of our current commonplace for reflection. I am struggling as well with the term of "curricular reflection." I think I need to let it go because it has detracting and confusing connotations. I'm thinking "retrospective reflection" will work better, but I am still staring at the chess board on that one and thinking of alternate moves (and not really coming up with any).<br />
<br />
So the big challenge is to create this "thinking" section which is intended to reveal our current practice and provide some recognition. Then set up the rethinking section which presents the framework of rhetorical reflection.<br />
<br />
I think currently the Dewey/Schon section needs tightening, and I need to highlight the connections between Schon's reflection in action and the dialogic conversation of rhetorical reflection. Then I need to position this pedagogical activity more clearly as an act of invention, as a heuristic designed to promote invention or re-invention within the writing process.<br />
<br />
One last point, Yancey poses an interesting question in her discussion about transfer by observing that we are not clear about the difference between awareness and knowledge. This question made me immediately think of my conceptual code related to "coming to know" that "to see is to know." Recognition, which we could say is a form of awareness, represents knowledge. I don't know. I have to think more about it.<br />
<br />
This muddle still is confused, but I am staring at the chess board and soon to move. Lenniehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553164711914465201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1362392400485756023.post-30326861811223707702012-03-12T08:50:00.001-06:002012-03-12T08:52:59.655-06:00Replication Study of Rhetorical ReflectionI want now to outline the basic research design of my replication study of my dissertation research.<br />
<br />
<b>General Goals of Study:</b><br />
I have to ask my self seriously whether this replication is really targeted at verification at this point. If so, it changes the whole nature of the study. Grounded theory is about theory generation, not verification, so if I tip over to verification I would be altering my original study to greatly. I must maintain a sense that I am still evolving and discovering this theory. If I want to "verify," I think that needs to be another study.<br />
<br />
However, I think verification has a double-meaning within grounded theory methodology. Verification runs through out the method of constant comparison and what might be called the double-movement of grounded theory data analysis (or coding). Here is how it works. I observe the data closely, naming phenomena, and beginning to state understandings or meanings about what is going on. When I go from my sense of "what is going on" and then look again at the data to see if what I think is going on is really going on--that is a kind of verification. As I do this same checking by comparing one instance with another instance--that is verification too. Selective coding, at least as I understood it, was a form of verification around a core concept. You took that core concept and then checked to see if it fit and worked through various instances. Hence, I think I need not be afraid of verification because it is within the fiber of grounded theory methodology, but I don't think I should start there.<br />
<br />
<b>Outline of Research Design:</b><br />
<br />
<b>Sample:</b><br />
Six "essay cycles" from my students between Essay #2 draft 1 and draft 2.<br />
This might be followed with another set in either draft E3-2 to E3-3 or E4-3 to E4-3. <br />
(I'm thinking for this round I will keep it smaller and more manageable).<br />
Data includes: assignment, draft 1, peer responses, writing review, and next draft<br />
<br />
<b>Coding Procedure:</b><br />
recode a fresh set of data following the procedure I used for slice 5<br />
--initial coding and memoing<br />
--perhaps chart the dynamic of rhetorical reflection (?)<br />
--create problem-analysis chart of essay cycle<br />
--further memoing and diagraming<br />
--attempt to replicate selective coding around comparison, assessment, judgment made in terms of essay success<br />
<b><br /></b><br />
<b>Member Checking:</b><br />
Since I have access to students this time, I am able to talk to them about their writing, reflections, and thinking. Once I have my data and some conclusions, I will talk to them.<br />
<br />
Final Memoing comparing my impressions with those thoughts stated by the students.<br />
<br />
This replication can not be called "exact" and perhaps not even "approximate" or "adaptive." So my categories fall apart this quickly! This research is really an extension. If seeks replication but it also seeks to follow the initial trajectory of the original research--taking it to the next step or level that the original research did not reach.<br />
<br />
Hmm... So is extension really replication? In this case I believe so because grounded theory is a set of repetitions and replications of constant comparative analysis over an over again. <br />
<br />
One complicating factor that definitely makes this replication study approximate is that I am using my own students. I already feel some anxiety about who to choose to include in this study. I know these students. How do I pick this sample based on theoretical reasons and not any sort of rationale based on getting a "representative sample" as in experimental designs?<br />
<br />
What will be the theoretical basis for my selection? Could I base this selection upon my theory of the spectrum of reflectiveness? Between reflections that predominantly tell/report vs. those that consider/evaluate? I would anticipate to see either a high or low degree of reflectiveness (in the form of comparison, assessment, and judgment made in terms of essay success) within these different populations. Am I setting up to great a "checking" with this hypothesis testing sample section rationale?<br />
<br />
I think at this point I will have to ponder my sample section a bit more. Perhaps continue to review my previous research up to this point and see what I wanted for the next slice of data.Lenniehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553164711914465201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1362392400485756023.post-39827359155543939632012-03-11T11:35:00.003-06:002012-03-12T08:52:16.089-06:00Principles of Replication in Composition StudiesBecky Rickly spoke to me often about the importance of RAD research designs--replicable, aggregable, and data-driven. I believe this term goes back to a <a href="http://wcx.sagepub.com/content/22/2/198.abstract" target="_blank">Richard Haswell article in Written Communication</a> back in April 2005, but it likely has a wider circulation and history. I admit my philosophical acceptance of this approach to research as well as my high regard for Haswell's thinking and scholarship. But it has all been abstract for me--I've never replicated a study. I attempted to set up my own dissertation research as "RAD," but to date I have not replicated it.<br />
<br />
So this post will begin the articulation and planning for my own replication study. I need to put up or shut up (even in my own mind) when it comes to replication. I tend to focus on replication because the other two elements of RAD seem to me to be basic parts of any legitimate research design. It will be emperical (or data-driven) and the sampling and analysis of this data should be presented in such a format that it could be compared to other similar studies. I have often wondered why composition studies has resisted replication so much. It gets no respect. I believe it is getting more respect now, but so far I have not seen it highlighted in any CCC articles.<br />
<br />
Before I chart out my own replication study, I want to state a few principles of replication that occur to me. I have not as yet read any literature or scholarship on replication other than Haswell (and Johanek discusses it as well). I think for composition studies replication does not have to mean "exact reproduction" of a previous research study to be meaningful. Replication might exist along a spectrum that might run from exact to approximate reproduction to adapted reproduction.<br />
<br />
<b>Spectrum of Replication in Composition Research</b><br />
<br />
Exact reproduction----Approximate----Adapted<br />
<br />
Which place along this spectrum any replication study would inhabit would depend upon the type of study and the goals of the researcher. My impression of scientific research that is more experimental and positivistic is that exact reproduction is very important. The study can not be called a replication unless it is exactly done as the previous study. However, I am sure that compromises happen even in the most diligently pursued exact replication study. Composition though is not a hard science, but as Louis Wetherbee Phelps states a "human science." That means it is a highly interpretive, social, and contextual "science" that should not seek the same kinds of exact knowledge as that found in the physical sciences. Psychology, sociology and some education research certainly can serve as models for a more scientific approach to the study of writing, but I don't necessarily think we need to go back to the control group experimental studies of the 60s and 70s. Where that method seems warranted, yes. Let's experiment. The first principle of replication, then, for composition studies is that exact replication is not a prerequisite for engaging in a replication study. As long as the researcher is open about the new limits--and possible adaptations--to the study and can articulate a good rationale for the reduction of the scale of the study (approximate) or the changing of some of the research design (adapted), then I think this replication is allowable. Going too far in reducing the scale or changing the design will result in nullifying the link between the two studies, so there is a degree of change from the exact reproduction that can go too far. What that degree of change is obviously would be a subject for debate among researchers. <br />
<br />
<b>Can we replicate qualitative research studies?</b><br />
Why not? Although qualitative research is founded (sorry for that word...) upon the subjectivity of the researcher and her interpretations, I think that we gain tremendous value by having another researcher bring her subjectivity to the same research question. Just because previous research was based upon another's individual and subjective interpretations, does not mean someone else could not consider the same phenomena or data.<br />
So another principle of replication in composition studies is that ANY methodology (not just experimental designs) can be replicated.<br />
<br />
<b>But what about sampling? </b><br />
Unless the replicating researcher has access to the same data, it will inevitably be the fact that replication studies will use different samples. Does that then invalidate the replication? I think it depends. For a replication study to be credible, it must find a sample that is similar enough to the original sample to be comparable. I should note that in some cases one of the most interesting part of a replication study might be the change of the sample taken. For instance, what if we replicated Emig's study of the composing process of 12th graders, but instead of middle class whites from a good school constituting the sample we used 12th graders at a poor predominantly hispanic population at a high school from the West side of San Antonio. That would be an example of an interesting "Adapted" replication study. <br />
I think the third principle of replication for composition studies is the acceptance that sampling will diverge from the original study, but the researcher should seek comparative and approximate samples to the original (unless the study moves to adapt the sample).<br />
<br />
<b>How about methodology and methods?</b><br />
Theoretically, I believe that replication should take special care to follow the methodology and methods of the previous research study. In practice, however, this may be quite difficult for two reasons: 1) the scale of the original study may be so large that following the exact methodology could be difficult (in that case, the replication study becomes "approximate" at a smaller scale), and 2) the original research design may have flaws in either its methodological approach or implementation of methods (an all too frequent occurrence in composition research). In this case, the researcher has some decisions to make. I would say that if a researchers did make minor changes to the methodological orientation and use of methods the replication could still be called "exact" or "approximate." However, if some significant adjustment to the methods is made then the study must make clear it is "adapting" the study to improve its research design. Perhaps subsequent replications would then benefit from these methodological fixes. The fourth principle then has to do with methodology. <br />
<br />
<br />
<b>How about results?</b><br />
Aggregable is the term RAD uses to describe how results from various replicated studies could be compared and put together. I want to suggest that aggregation may be possible in a lot of cases, but too forced in others. We have to allow for a principle of "interpolation" between results of different studies. This interpolation between different replicated studies constitutes the most interesting reason why we would want to replicate in the first place. The principle of interpolation acknowledges various contexts and various subjectivities and seeks for meaningful convergences, divergences, and patterns between them. <br />
<br />
Now that I have these principles in mind, my next post will articulate the replication study I am embarking on this Spring.Lenniehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553164711914465201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1362392400485756023.post-33980850252514258882011-12-30T09:19:00.001-06:002011-12-30T09:19:27.319-06:00Pounding the RockA number of sports teams, including the San Antonio Spurs, use a motivational device to promote persistence and determination in the face of unsatisfactory results. It is the term, "Pounding the rock." Keep pounding the rock and eventually it will break. You pound and you pound and nothing--and then finally, something. This saying seems to capture how I am feeling post-phd. I have been pounding the rock and not gotten anywhere so far.<br />
<br />
Most notably, I was thinking of this saying this morning as I returned to working on an article. This is my basic "rethinking" article on rhetorical reflection. I think I tugged over two sentences for two hours. Pounding and pounding. I think I finally pulled through that section, and so I am finally moving into sections that I hope will be easier to write. Somehow I need to find a way to weave in and leverage my diss work more easily, but constructing the essay is like weaving a complex tapestry with so many strands and a larger picture and pattern that I don't have completely in focus yet. I need to remind myself to keep pounding and pounding. At a certain point in the diss, I felt like I had direction and a clear path. But here I feel as if I have a dim direction and the path is choked with a jungle of brush. Perhaps it is the different context of writing for publication that has me stymied. So far I have not done so well on the publication front since my article for Pedagogy was rejected, though at least they reviewed it. The objections are well warranted, and I think I might be able to present my "how to" article to them. When I can get around to writing it. That is article #2.<br />
<br />
One issue that I have not been able to resolve is what to call "curricular reflection." This term has no legs and was specifically disliked in my reviews. The two alternatives I am thinking of right now are comprehensive reflection (from Ramage and Bean) and constructive reflection (from Yancey). Comprehensive fits best, but then I am not sure I want to use someone else's term. Constructive is not quite right when we think strictly in Yancey terms because she has the second category of Reflection in Presentation, and I want this term to cover both. Constructivist Reflection? Ack. I don't much like that one either. So I am presently stuck thinking of a better term. Constructionist Reflection? What's the difference between construct -ivist and -ionist? I must think more. And keep pounding the rock. I'd like to have a draft of this essay done before we return to the semester.Lenniehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553164711914465201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1362392400485756023.post-15715499400646524122011-12-04T07:51:00.001-06:002011-12-04T08:32:17.334-06:00Dreaming of My Digital Writing Workshop<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZGJxrKAilPI/TtuDVFwfe3I/AAAAAAAAAII/lD0Oi8i7Hls/s1600/hicks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZGJxrKAilPI/TtuDVFwfe3I/AAAAAAAAAII/lD0Oi8i7Hls/s200/hicks.jpg" width="150" /></a></div>
I am near the end of Troy's book <i>The Digital Writing Workshop</i>. It is filled with excellent ideas, and my mind is twirling and swirling with ideas. I know from many previous experiences integrating technology and attempting various other kinds of digital writing that conceiving digital writing assignments is easier than implementing them. The road to ruin is created with the best intentions and the most well laid out plans. My sense is to craft a course that has an elegance or simplicity to it where digital writing is simply there and constantly done. My current writing classes happen within digital learning environments, but they seldom get beyond text and image on the page--I have not made the leap to video and voice on the screen. <br />
<br />
So let me for a few moments here imagine a new direction for my teaching. I wonder if a useful approach to start is to explore how a single subject or "theme" (in good traditional composition terms) might be re-presented and repurposed in various mediums. Write a piece first as text fitting and fulfilling the various textual conventions such as form, organization, development and standard edited English. (Reaching competency with this written communication often is difficult enough in a writing class.) But then take that theme and re-present it as a podcast. Make a Powerpoint presentation of the piece. Make a digital video expressing the ideas. I wonder then about going the opposite direction. Create a digital video about a topic and then go backwards. Turn it into a Powerpoint. Create a podcast of the piece. Write it up as an "essay." This cross-medium approach might be really interesting, but it goes against some of our concepts regarding genre and how the shape or medium of the piece will fit the medium. Some genres work best for certain kinds of messages. Still this approach would engage students in experiencing and learning about the differences in these media for communicating. The problem is the material production for each media is fraught with peril in terms of functional literacy using the technology. I wonder also how shifting into different media complicates students' task representation, making it more likely that they will misunderstand and mistake the composing task.<br />
<br />
Another element I would love to incorporate is an actual Writing Workshop where students picked what they wrote about and progressed independently in their writing. Many composition classrooms, including my own, seem to be an all-class forced march through the writing process, draft to draft, due date to due date. It is refreshing and scary to think of "letting go" the curriculum in terms of dictating writing assignments and process. Perhaps I am only thinking of letting go some and creating a more "open structure" to my curriculum and thinking. I wonder about how digital tools might help this effort. I might still have general goals and requirements to a writing task, but students then seek to fill those requirements and reach those goals on their own.<br />
<br />
One thing I'd like to try is student blogs as the foundation of the Writing Workshop. Students regularly must post blogs that are not like this (ideas splashed on the page), but carefully thought out pieces of digital writing on topics of their choice. I think the idea blogs are important too, but these might be more formal "texts." Ideally, these also would go into a larger publication space like Youth Voices where college writers from across the country might also be posting their writing. College Voices. This online space would be a rhetorical forum where students would enter a writing community larger than just our class. Certainly, these writers could post other kinds of digital writing as well such as podcasts or digital videos. It would be nice if the interface could also accommodate the publication of compilations or e-zine like pieces. Since my two composition classes next semester are online, I wonder if I could try any of these new approaches. <br />
<br />
I've dreamed enough for the moment. Thanks Troy for your book.Lenniehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553164711914465201noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1362392400485756023.post-16010809065746340822011-11-13T08:35:00.001-06:002011-11-13T08:41:30.100-06:00Form and Surprise in Composition<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uPcd71ndeEY/Tr_W9OUgVZI/AAAAAAAAAIA/IyincCvYFng/s1600/formsurpr.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uPcd71ndeEY/Tr_W9OUgVZI/AAAAAAAAAIA/IyincCvYFng/s200/formsurpr.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>I have been continuing my tutelage under Troy Hicks and the Digital Writing Workshop, but I also began my study of Ramage and Bean's work, particularly Bean. I am planning to study Ramage and Bean with the thought to use their ideas to craft some workshops for faculty in other disciplines at my school (also, I hope to get me to rethink my own assignments).<br />
<br />
They begin their textbook, which I did not realize was a textbook, discussing why college freshmen who are inexperienced writers do not go through the entire writing process. They focus on two reasons. One reason they label as "alienation" to describe the disconnectedness of the classroom assignment from a real writing situation. The writing is only a game played by the professor's rules, and these rules seem arbitrary and incomprehensible. The student puts little investment in real communication because it is a silly game they are forced to play to get a grade. As long as writing is a school activity, this first hindrance to writing is hard to overcome completely.<br />
<br />
The second reason, though, is interesting to me given my focus on rhetorical reflection. I will quote a part of their text:<br />
<br />
"For some reason, they [students] don't seem obsessed by the need to write successive drafts. Why is this so?<br />
<br />
" Inexperienced writers, we believe, don't go through the writing process because they haven't learned to pose for themselves the same kinds of problems that experienced writers pose. ... they have not learned how to 'problematize' their experience" (4).<br />
<br />
The entire writing process involves problems and choices, and the awareness of some standard or criteria for what is working or not working, right or wrong, that then defines when something is problematic. I've tagged this standard for the writing classroom as the "idea of essay success" and the "ideal text/writer." Part of why I believe Writing Reviews and rhetorical reflection have value is because it engages students in this thinking about their writing and prompts them to work through the problems and choices of writing as a way to develop a "habit of mind." The practice of Writing Reviews as a way of prompting rhetorical reflection "poses" for inexperienced writers some of the kinds of problems that experienced writers pose.<br />
<br />
Hopefully, it would help develop unaided and unprompted habits of rhetorical reflection for writers as they become more experienced. This capacity for unprompted rhetorical reflection would constitute transfer.<br />
<br />
I look forward to learning from Ramage and Bean.<br />
<br />
Before I leave today's post, I want to bring up one other point they discuss and relate it to something I was reading in Troy's book. While defining their understanding of the book's chief concepts--form and surprise--they use the law of thermodynamic as a metaphor to describe surprise in writing. Basically, this law says that the greater the degree of temperature difference, the greater the amount of energy transferred. They say, "Writers aiming for 'surprise' in their essays might imagine themselves conveying energy (the writer's view of a topic) across a gap to a reader existing at a different temperature (a different view of the topic)" (16). As I begin working on my general article on rhetorical reflection, I feel that I can certainly build on the "temperature" difference that lies between the typical way of viewing reflection and that or rhetorical reflection. I saw more evidence of curricular reflection in the description of Dawn Reed's curriculum for creating a podcast in Troy's book. Included at the end of the six page curriculum description is an assignment titled, "This I Believe Informative Speech and Podcasting Reflection." The prompt for the written reflective piece starts this way: "Compose a one-page-minimum typed reflection explaining what you learned from the This I Believe podcasting project" (71). There it is--post-task reflection designed to promote constructivist learning within a context of evaluation. I feel that the "temperature" difference between the common portfolio-centric view of reflection and that of rhetorical reflection is fairly large. Hence, I believe my article can build on a strong element of surprise.Lenniehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553164711914465201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1362392400485756023.post-26852498802298059482011-11-06T09:20:00.001-06:002011-11-06T09:28:29.702-06:00Reflection Saturday<div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fCzIHQKR4lU/TraXHLCN6pI/AAAAAAAAAH4/PndUWK0LTjk/s1600/reflwordle.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="175" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fCzIHQKR4lU/TraXHLCN6pI/AAAAAAAAAH4/PndUWK0LTjk/s320/reflwordle.png" width="320" /></a></span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Yesterday was a <a href="http://www.sanantoniowritingproject.org/Sat3.html" target="_blank">San Antonio Writing Project Super Saturday that focused on reflection</a>, and I thought I would process the event a bit. Mainly, I want to process my own keynote presentation and the presentation on reflection in the Summer Institute by Chelsea Silvas.</span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I really think Chelsea is on to something important regarding the kind of learning that participants experience in the five-week NWP Summer Institutes. Her foundational perspective on reflection comes from Jack Mezirow's notions of Transformational Learning and the role that reflection plays. Mezirow believed that through reflection upon our assumptions or beliefs we are able change these beliefs (which he calls "meaning schemes") or more importantly our "meaning perspectives" (which he labels "meaning perspectives): </span><style>
p.<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">MsoNormal</span>, <span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">li</span>.<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">MsoNormal</span>, div.<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">MsoNormal</span> { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }
</style> <span style="font-size: small;">“Critique and reassessment of the adequacy of prior learning, leading potentially to its negation, are the hallmarks of reflection” (110). So far Chelsea has not surfaced Mezirow's notions of reflection at this level or dug into his notions of content, process, and premise reflection. Also, so far she leans on Higgins et. al. for a definition of "critical reflection" to refer to this evaluative aspect at the heart of the "critique and reassessment" generated through reflection. I believe she will sort these things out. </span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">But I think she is right in line with Mezirow's emphasis in the importance of "validation of knowledge" for learners and the crucial role reflection plays in this validation process.</span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">What Chelsea has identified is three sites for this reflection and validation process to happen. I am going to put her labels for these sites and then the spaces within the ecology of a Summer Institute where these reflections happen:</span></div><ol style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><li><span style="font-size: small;">Other's Experiences--throughout the SI teachers share their classroom experiences in the morning journaling and in countless other informal instances of talk. It could happen in the discussion after a teaching demo, at lunch, or even in peer groups, but it all has the fundamentally similar characteristic of teachers sharing specific instances of teaching and specific experiences from their professional life as teachers.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">Narratives--I believe Chelsea is focusing this site of reflection around the writing participants do for the writing pieces. I am not sure that this label will work because not all participants write narratives (at least I didn't). Perhaps Writing or Teachers as Writers would work better. Nevertheless, this site focuses on teachers put in the role of writers.</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">Community Learning--Three aspects of the SI fall into this category: the teaching demos, writing groups, and reading groups. In some ways, teaching demos are different from writing and reading groups, but if we see the demos as community presentations and including the coaching that goes along with the presentation, then I think they all fit together. </span></li>
</ol><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">What Chelsea needs to identify is what is reflective about each of these sites of reflection? What is the nature of this reflection she says is transformative and how would we identify instances of this reflection to study it? </span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">My initial thoughts are that the double-movement of reflection is a bit different in each instance, and elaborating on the characteristics in each setting will be very interesting. Generally speaking, though, the double-movement is between self and other. </span></div><ol style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><li><span style="font-size: small;">my teaching experience >< other's teaching experience</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">me as writer >< my students as writers (writing teacher >< writing student)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">me as scholar, writer, teacher >< others as scholar, writer, teacher</span></li>
</ol><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">In each of these sites, the interplay between self and other causes teachers to expand beyond their previous thinking and practices and experience "validation of knowledge." </span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Since the interplay of reflection appears to be so much between self and other in this context, I'm thinking that Donna Qualley's notions of reflexivity might not apply. I'm going to tack in a passage I wrote on Qualley from a graduate paper:</span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><style>
@font-face {
font-family: "Times New (W1)";
}p.<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">MsoNormal</span>, <span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">li</span>.<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">MsoNormal</span>, div.<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">MsoNormal</span> { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }
</style> <span style="font-size: small;">"Qualley defines reflexivity this way: 'reflexivity involves a commitment to attending to what we believe, think, and feel while examining how we came to hold those beliefs, thoughts, and feelings. This kind of monitoring and self-awareness seems critical for enabling us to grasp new ideas and information'(41). <sup>1</sup></span><span style="font-size: small;"> She contrasts 'earned insights' with 'ready-made conclusions': 'I comprehend an earned insight to be a kind of understanding whose essential truth is only realized or more fully grasped as it is made manifest through the individual's experience and contemplation of that experience' (35). Ready-made conclusions, in contrast, are packaged truths received uncritically by the learner. Reflection upon experience is one important means of crystallizing 'earned insights.'"</span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Qualley distinguishes reflexivity from reflection. She sees reflection as self-oriented, but reflexivity is a "bidirectional contrastive response" to an "other" (12). Reflexivity is triggered by this dialectical engagement with the other--"an other idea, theory, person, culture, text, or even an other part of one's self" (11). Along with Elizabeth Chiseri-Strater, she believes this "reflexive dialogue" has incredible power--like opening Pandora's box. </span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I believe what Chelsea is identifying in her study is the "reflexive dialogue" between self and other that occurs in these three different ways within the SI experience of NWP. I know that her discussion has helped me see my SI experience in another light that helps to explain why it was so powerful.</span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I've spent most of my post talking about Chelsea's presentation, so I'll now turn briefly to my own presentation. Working on this presentation was a good experience for me because I finally was able to get down some of the thinking I have been having for an article I have had in my head for at least four months. I see now that the overall structure of this article will flow this way: </span></div><ol style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><li><span style="font-size: small;">Display our current bias toward viewing reflection in post-task ways (curricular reflection, portfolio-centric view of reflection)</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">Broaden our perspective on reflection by exploring the views of Dewey, Schon, Boud, and Kolb</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">Elaborate on the added perspective of rhetorical reflection: define it, how it works, and why it is important</span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: small;">I guess I should add in the additional part of how to use this kind of reflection in the classroom</span></li>
</ol><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">I don't know that this article will go into depth about the research and research results. I need to think of target journals but of course I'd like to get in CCC, but perhaps Comp Forum, Comp Studies or even English Journal might be a target. Beyond that, I could trim it to go in TETYC and forfront the pedagogy more. </span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Anyway, what I discovered when I woke up today was that by doing this presentation I had finally begun working on this article. Hurray!</span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><style>
p.<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">MsoNormal</span>, <span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">li</span>.<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">MsoNormal</span>, div.<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">MsoNormal</span> { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">MsoBodyText</span>, <span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">li</span>.<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">MsoBodyText</span>, div.<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">MsoBodyText</span> { margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }span.<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">BodyTextChar</span> { }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }
</style> </div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size: small;">Mezirow, Jack. <i>Transformative Dimensions of Adult Learning</i>. San Francisco: Jossey-</span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Bass, 1991.</span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><style>
p.<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">MsoNormal</span>, <span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">li</span>.<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">MsoNormal</span>, div.<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">MsoNormal</span> { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">MsoBodyText</span>, <span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">li</span>.<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">MsoBodyText</span>, div.<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">MsoBodyText</span> { margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }span.<span style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% yellow;" class="goog-spellcheck-word">BodyTextChar</span> { }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }
</style> </div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="font-size: small;">Qualley, Donna. <i>Turns of Thought: Teaching Composition as Reflexive Inquiry</i>.</span></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook, 1997. </span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Qualley, Donna and Christine Chiseri-Strater. </span><span style="font-size: small;">"Collaboration as Reflexive Dialogue: A Knowing 'Deeper Than Reason. "</span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: black;">JAC Vol. 14, 1.</span><b><br />
</b></span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><cite></cite></span><span style="font-size: small;"> </span></div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></div>Lenniehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553164711914465201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1362392400485756023.post-67562614147460907902011-09-05T07:04:00.002-06:002011-09-05T07:05:24.375-06:00More thoughts on MoffettI just finished <i>Detecting Growth in Language</i>, and I'm still trying to swallow his Conclusion. He gets almost religious at the end, taking his thoughts about language and language growth into the realm of spirituality (and perhaps psychology). Here is the statement that seems to capture it the most:<br />
<br />
"In fact, the abstractive process carries within it the means to regain paradise. Pursuing differentiation and integration far enough leads out the other side, back in the the nonverbal world. The more people interrelate the things of experience by one logic or another (including metaphor) the more they are rebuilding the world within" (69).<br />
<br />
Differentiation according to his diagram of The Forms of Thought on page 67 would be Analysis into parts and discriminating differences. This deductive form of thought is more literal, explicit and seeks to elaborate particulars. This kind of analysis is grounded in experience. Integration would be a form of Synthesis into wholes that is more figurative and implicit in nature. Generalizing similarities, this form of inductive thought is about integrating particulars. Moffett is clear that mental growth moves in both directions at once.<br />
<br />
His diagram of the Forms of Thought closely resembles Dewey's concept of the double-movement of reflection from and to meaning. I am not sure about regaining paradise through growth in this capacity. Perhaps he is making a reference to the kind of original linguistic nature humans possessed before the fall, a kind of preternatural blessedness that Plato and then Wordsworth hallowed when we were truly in contact with the Ideas. I suppose I am more comfortable with Dewey's goal of learning proficiency in thinking rather than Moffett's spiritual goal. Dewey is more practical and civic in his rationale for becoming skilled at thinking.<br />
<br />
It is interesting to see Moffett end by bring up concepts that so resemble what I have been dealing with related to rhetorical reflection. His Growth Sequence 26 (the last one) is labeled: "Toward increasing consciousness of oneself as a language user and of the language alternatives one has to choose from" (66). He states that the result of all the other ways of growing (all 25) is "a sort of master growth that is meta-linguistic." Since the quote is so good, I'll go ahead and include it all here:<br />
<br />
"That is, one becomes detached from language, conscious of oneself as a language user, and able to verbalize about one's verbalization. This is inseparable from becoming meta-cognitive--able to think about one's thinking. Both are major ways that consciousness itself grows, since consciousness inevitably includes forms of self-consciousness.<br />
<br />
"With awareness of oneself as a chooser goes greater choice. ... In other words, metalinguistic growth is a form of consciousness-raising, which depends not merely on grasping some concept but on taking personal action"(66).<br />
<br />
Bless Moffett for his last statement. Rhetorical reflection, as a concept related to writing, moves beyond mere awareness to critical evaluation and judgment. That judgment forms the basis for personal action. Rhetorical reflection is directly related to action, to problems and choices and necessities and limitations and possibilities and finding the appropriate with the available means.<br />
<br />
I wonder, however, is we could jump students too quickly toward this metalinguistic awareness. Moffett says it is the result of all the other growth. Could we expect this metalinguistic awareness too soon when our students have not grown into it yet? I have to find an excellent research article I found on metalinguistic development, but I seem to recall that this kind of awareness comes late in development. So if this meta-linguistic, meta-cognitive capacity emerges late in growth, what kind of expectations can we have for seeing and prompting this level of thought?<br />
<br />
A good question for research...Lenniehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553164711914465201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1362392400485756023.post-30239833335516138892011-09-04T06:34:00.002-06:002011-09-05T07:06:24.496-06:00James Moffett--Detecting Growth in LanguageThis past summer has been something of a Moffett summer for me. I spent time in June reading through <i>Teaching the Universe of Discourse</i> so I could pull together some broad statements about the development of writers. I paralleled Moffett's levels of abstraction with Bereiters and Scarmandalia's "knowledge telling" and "knowledge transforming" model with King and Kitchener's growth in reflective judgment. What I produced probably served to confuse my workshop attendees more than enlighten them, but for me these various models represent interesting perspectives on the same phenomena of growth.<br />
<br />
Most recently, I've been reading through Moffett's thin (but very dense) book on <i>Detecting Growth</i>. He discusses 26 different "growth sequences," and his premise in the book is that instead of standardized tests (which provide a inadequate measure of growth) these growth sequences indicate real development. If we could get good at identifying these growth sequences (and fostering them), then we would not need these tests because we could easily demonstrate learning and growth in our students.<br />
<br />
The problem, as I have been finding, is that Moffett's growth sequences are complex and difficult to grasp. He also has a dizzying number of these sequences, so that though he may have an overarching sense of development in writers, we would all need to be James Moffett to see them too. I have just finished his section on "chaining" and sentence combining. I was pleased to see that the sequence I have my students work though in the sentence combining and editing exercises I typically use, fits with his notions of a growth sequence in how to relate ideas in sentences: from modifying to conjoining, to reducing, to embedding.<br />
<br />
As I read Moffett, I experience a grasping of importance in a partial sense, but not the whole. I also desire this whole sense, so I can piece it together and translate it into curriculum that fosters development. I can't help but wonder if others have done this same thing (he does have his own textbooks), and I wonder if anyone has researched his concepts of development to see if they can be identified (and verified) empirically. Moffett speaks with a philosopher's voice, like Dewey or Aristotle, stating truths seemingly out of thin air that ring true and provide deep insight, and like these other philosophers he speaks from his own experience, intelligence, and speculation--not necessarily from research.<br />
<br />
I know that I will continue to try to make sense of Moffett, and I wonder what others have said about his ideas of growth in writers.Lenniehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553164711914465201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1362392400485756023.post-68766916901328253642011-08-14T05:23:00.000-06:002011-08-14T05:23:52.933-06:00Reassessing the "Proofreading Trap": ESL Tutoring and Writing InstructionSharon Myers discusses an important dilemma I have felt many times when working with ESL writers: where to begin when confronted with a host of errors. I totally agree with Myers' point that we can't reduce the difficulties these students are facing down to mere language and errors. In a Shaunessey type way, we must understand the source or rationale for their linguistic problems and work with them with that awareness centrally in mind.<br />
<br />
In one way, the trap becomes something like this: "Oh my, there are a ton of errors. OK, let's fix them one by one." The tutor or teacher diving into this bog of error, indeed, falls into a trap because the errors are so numerous and so difficult. Work to correct each of these errors can take hours. I like, however, Myers' description of the trap: "There is indeed a 'trap.' It is created by the contradictions between what ESL learners need and are capable of and what an uninformed perspective leads us to suppose they need and are capable of"(233). We suppose they need the paper fixed, but their needs may be for more fundamental lexical or syntactic understandings about language. The tutoring session is in fact a teaching session. Ultimately, the paper is not important--it is the learning that can be gained for the ESL writer while they work on the paper.<br />
<br />
Myers trashes Cogie's four strategies useful for tutors to work with ESL students: learner's dictionaries, minimal marking, error logs, and self-editing checklists. Instead, she closes her article (and illustrates it too) with her recommendations:<br />
<ol><li>a more relaxed attitude toward error</li>
<li>an appreciation of second language acquisition processes</li>
<li>and better training in the pedagogical grammar of English as a second language</li>
</ol>I like these recommendations. It is the last one that is the hardest because it depends upon a level of knowledge and reflective judgment dealing with an ESL writers work that inexperienced tutors may not have. Personally, this awareness of where ESL writers are in their language acquisition and some sense of why they make these kinds of errors and what we can do to work with them regarding these problems comes from the chapters in handbooks devoted to working with ESL writers. I think these are a good starting place, and often have more detailed information that ESL writers appreciate.<br />
<br />
In terms of my new role as WC Director, I think that this article makes some significant points. It will be important to make ESL writers a prominent subject for our training and discussions as well as for the resources available from within our WC. Lenniehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553164711914465201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1362392400485756023.post-57426776009180565552011-08-09T06:47:00.000-06:002011-08-09T06:47:28.964-06:00The Concept of Essay Success in Rhetorical ReflectionOne of the subjects of extended discussion in my dissertation defense was the concept of "essay success." At the time, I don't believe I had found the words yet to adequately express what I mean by this concept; however, since I have been working on my "Picturing Reflection" article, I believe I have fleshed out the concept. Below is a section from this article I am still drafting:<br />
<br />
*****************************************************<br />
<style>
@font-face {
font-family: "Cambria";
}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoBodyText, li.MsoBodyText, div.MsoBodyText { margin: 0in 0in 6pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.FigureTitle, li.FigureTitle, div.FigureTitle { margin: 6pt 0in; text-align: center; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }span.BodyTextChar { }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }
</style> <br />
<div align="left" class="FigureTitle" style="text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;">My research discovered that rhetorical reflection involves comparison, assessment, and judgment made in terms of a writer’s conception of “essay success.” What is considered and gleaned from feedback, the identification and framing of problems, the understandings generated as well as the plans made for revision all depend on the writer’s concept of what constitutes essay success. </div><div align="left" class="FigureTitle" style="text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;">The concept of essay success closely resembles Hayes’s idea of task schema because it likewise serves as a controlling factor for the entire dynamic of reflective thinking within rhetorical reflection. If as Higgins, Flower, and Petraglia believe true reflection involves critical evaluation, the grounded theory of rhetorical reflection says that this evaluation starts with a comparison between the “real text/writer” (that is, the actual text on the page or activities performed by the writer) and the ideal text/writer (the ideal of what the text should be or the activities performed by the writer should be). The essential double-movement or dialectic of rhetorical reflection involves this comparison within the writer’s mind between the real and the ideal text/writer, as the following graphic illustrates:</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RjmGM886b5M/TkEriJn9ofI/AAAAAAAAAHw/u97ZzN_eodc/s1600/doublemovement.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="295" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RjmGM886b5M/TkEriJn9ofI/AAAAAAAAAHw/u97ZzN_eodc/s320/doublemovement.png" width="320" /></a></div><div align="left" class="FigureTitle" style="text-align: left; text-indent: 0.5in;"> <style>
@font-face {
font-family: "Cambria";
}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoBodyText, li.MsoBodyText, div.MsoBodyText { margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }span.BodyTextChar { font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }
</style> </div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: 0in;">The diagram also portrays the important place of feedback in providing the writer with an outside representation of the real and ideal text/writer for consideration. </div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: normal;">Within rhetorical reflection, writers constantly interpret, transform, and confirm their conceptions of the real and ideal text/writer. Although essay success equates to the ideal text/writer, the concept of essay success differs because it represents the practical and tangible expression of the ideal text/writer in actual writing. Essay success is the closest alignment writers can manage between the real text/writer and the ideal/text writer—acknowledging that the real never matches absolutely the ideal. Despite Knoblauch and Brannon’s critique of the “Ideal Text” as reductive and an expression of teacher authority, this idealized conception of the text need not be either fixed or in the sole possession of the teacher (120). As the diagram below illustrates, aspects of essay success are multiple and exist along a spectrum from being fixed and definite to more various and contingent: </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mc1B8RreVyQ/TkEr6yO5WEI/AAAAAAAAAH0/OZDie_qD2hA/s1600/spectrumessaysuc.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="95" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mc1B8RreVyQ/TkEr6yO5WEI/AAAAAAAAAH0/OZDie_qD2hA/s320/spectrumessaysuc.png" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: normal;"> <style>
@font-face {
font-family: "Cambria";
}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoBodyText, li.MsoBodyText, div.MsoBodyText { margin: 0in 0in 6pt; text-indent: 0.5in; line-height: 150%; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }span.BodyTextChar { font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }
</style> </div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: 0in;">For instance, task requirements such as page length or the requirement to incorporate quotes from research constitute fixed aspects of essay success for that particular assignment. Standard conventions for the use of punctuation or documentation are similarly more certain characteristics of essay success. However, how to create an engaging opener for the essay or how to provide adequate and convincing support are much less definite and abstract. The contingent side of essay success is open to a greater variety of options and is subject to context to determine appropriateness and success.</div><div class="MsoBodyText" style="line-height: normal;">Wherever the concept of essay success may fall within writers’ thinking, it exists as a kind of measuring stick against which writers make the comparisons, assessments, and judgments that constitute the reflective thinking of rhetorical reflection. Any knowledge generated or validated within these reflective writings originates from the writer’s representation of essay success. Also, the assessments and judgments that occur within these reflections are based upon this concept of success or failure, and writers constantly orient themselves toward this goal of essay success and try to move in its direction (similar to McAlpine’s et al.’s model). A problem in the text won’t be acknowledged as a problem unless it is seen to be out of alignment with writers’ understanding of the ideal text; likewise, a plan for revision won’t be considered or devised and accepted unless it is moving the real text toward essay success. Resembling the notion of <i>to prepon</i> from classical rhetoric, “fitting-in-bounds” is the term that describes this reflective thinking made in terms of essay success. </div><br />
<br />
Lenniehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553164711914465201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1362392400485756023.post-75442333749931845442011-08-04T06:13:00.000-06:002011-08-04T06:13:50.681-06:00New Vistas: The SAC Writing CenterI will be starting a new adventure this next semester as the SAC Writing Center Director. I only have a two course release-time for a position that can easily suck 40-60 hours a week, so I am a bit anxious about this work load, but I am excited about this new experience in writing and writing pedagogy. I've begun reading some of the (vast) literature on writing centers, and I feel my head spinning.<br />
<br />
What is the SAC Writing Center, as a center? How will I shape it?<br />
<br />
Is it a fix-it shop, a garret, or a Burkian parlour? Is it a product oriented, process oriented, or post-colonial writing center? I prefer it to be a Burkian parlour, but we shall see if I can succeed in shaping it that direction. I like the notions of the writing center being something like a "cafe" where writer get fed. All writers are hungry, all writers are welcome at the cafe--it isn't a place for just one group (deficient writers or struggling writers). A writing center is a place to feed writers!<br />
<br />
Yum!<br />
<br />
I know that in the future I will have more posts related to writing centers and their theory and practice.Lenniehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553164711914465201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1362392400485756023.post-71181872990755796492011-07-10T11:07:00.001-06:002011-07-10T11:09:16.921-06:00Student views on reflection and feedbackThe summer I session is over, and I am evaluating final portfolios, giving me the chance to read final reflective thoughts written by my students about the semester and what they have learned. I always love reading these final reflections. I thought I would share some thoughts on peer response and reflection written by two of my students and then comment on them because they are so interesting:<br />
<br />
"I didn't realize this before this class, but I found that I am able to get moving and develop my own essays more when I get help from my peers. When I was even just reading their stories, like during the second essay again, I found motivation and a new outlook on where to take my own essay. By reading their essays, I was able to develop my own into something I am proud of. By doing peer response, I found the problem areas I didn't know I had in an essay so I could address them."<br />
<br />
This student validates the concept of sharing student writing and making it all public. All drafts are posted for all students to read. <a href="http://www.alamo.edu/sac/english/lirvin/CW2K%5CCW2Kpaper.htm">I have written before</a> that this stance of "spectator-participant" causes students to observe each others' work more reflectively and critically. As they observe others, they are thinking and comparing the work of their peer to their own work. Students also tap into the the multiplicity or wisdom of the crowd, and they gain a sense of perspective or orientation on how to proceed. This student by making the comment that she "found motivation and a new outlook" also makes the point that this viewing and responding to peer writing was inventional for her.<br />
<br />
"Reflection helped me formulate insight that I applied to my writing particularly the 2nd essay about description. When I finished my writing, I began reading other people's writings in order to give them feedback. There were many writings in which I had many questions abou tthings such as, "why this?" or "what was the setting?" It was not until I read what other people had written that I realized I had done the same thing. I had gone full circle. I saw people asking questions like, "where were you when the moose started chasing you?" and "what were you thinking as you were running down the hill?" It was because of this reflection on others' writing and my own that I realized there were pieces to the puzzle that were missing. Pieces that I needed to fill in order to become a better writer."<br />
<br />
This student expresses the same value in observing the writing of peers, but he experienced an additional revelation when he turned to observe and reflect upon his own writing. The reflective observation and critical thinking he performed upon others became amplified when he turned his rhetorical reflection upon his own writing. The most important line in his reflection is this one: "I realized there were pieces to the puzzle that were missing." Through his reflective thinking he "came to know" something he did not before. I like his metaphor of the puzzle and missing piece because it implies that the writer is constructing something and that this between-the-draft peer response and reflection has helped him obtain something or see something important for this construction that he did not have before.<br />
<br />
Interestingly, this writer made minor revisions on his descriptive story by adding two sentences of additional description. These were important places to "show" more, and his improvements did make a positive change for the story, but they were not very extensive changes. The degree to which he followed his insight was low. He saw what what needed, but on a scale of 1-10 only went to level 3. Why? Why was he not able to follow through more deeply on his insight.<br />
<br />
I want to speculate that he went as far as he was able for his developmental stage. In his own mind, he went very far. He described the moose and his father scaring the moose more, and so he made significant changes. However, he did not have the experience or perspective to see greater potential for expanded description. Does his low level of revision diminish the value of the insight gained from refection? --definitely not! This same knowledge and discovery he made will, when he is ready, lead him to make much more extensive changes in future situations. In the gap between thinking and action, we do what we are ready and able to do.Lenniehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553164711914465201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1362392400485756023.post-74579953742100467312011-06-02T07:45:00.000-06:002011-06-02T07:45:55.185-06:00Picturing Reflection and Dewey's Double-movement of ReflectionIt has been a while since I posted to this blog. I have survived the long tunnel of the dissertation, and I have emerged finally ready to reengage with my subject from a new vantage point and in new ways. I want to share an excerpt of an article submission I just sent out today titled "Picturing Reflection: Diagrams and Models of Reflective Thinking." In the article I pull together and examine multiple graphical representations of reflection. These models, at least for me, work as visual metaphors for reflecting upon the nature of reflection. Below is one section on Dewey's concept of the "double-movement of reflection" (diagram made by me):<br />
<br />
<b>Dewey and the Double-Movement of Reflection </b><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ju04FQZfuzA/TeeTXd-kfLI/AAAAAAAAAHs/_Ws_L-FmOdk/s1600/deweydoublemov.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ju04FQZfuzA/TeeTXd-kfLI/AAAAAAAAAHs/_Ws_L-FmOdk/s320/deweydoublemov.png" width="309" /></a></div><br />
<style>
@font-face {
font-family: "Cambria";
}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }
</style> <br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">One of Dewey’s greatest contributions to our conception of reflection is his labeling of this dialectic as the “double movement of reflection.” In his chapter “Systematic Inference: Induction and Deduction,” he describes this double movement as a shuttling between facts and meaning: “There is thus a double movement in all reflection: a movement from the given partial and confused data to a suggested comprehensive (or inclusive) entire situation; and back from this suggested whole—which as suggested is a <i>meaning</i>, and idea—to the particular facts” (79).<span> </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> <style>
@font-face {
font-family: "Cambria";
}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }
</style> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12pt;">The “double movement <i>to</i> and <i>from</i> a meaning” constitutes the fundamental dynamic of reflection (80).<span> </span>The discovery of induction pieces together meaning from facts or data, while the testing of deduction takes conclusions or premises and checks them against the facts or data: “The inductive movement is toward <i>discovery</i> of a binding principle; the deductive toward its <i>testing</i>—confirming, refuting, modifying it on the basis of its capacity to interpret isolated details into a unified experience” (82). Judgment remains crucial to this double-movement of reflective thinking, both at the level of selecting and making sense of facts and at the level of assessing how well this larger understanding fits back with the facts. Genuine judgment, Dewey believes, involves the weighing of facts and the withholding of conclusions until they have been thoroughly examined. Discussing his understanding about the importance of judgment, he states: “But if the meaning suggested is held <i>in suspense</i>, pending examination and inquiry, there is true judgment. We stop and think, <i>we de-fer</i> conclusions in order to <i>in-fer</i> more thoroughly” (108).<span> </span>Thinking that shortcuts the resolution of the perplexity by accepting a suggested meaning without examining it carefully, or that accepts uncritically a dogmatic belief, involves no judgment and for Dewey involves no reflective thinking. </span> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><span><br />
</span></span></div>Lenniehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553164711914465201noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1362392400485756023.post-49574617163335111332010-06-14T06:48:00.000-06:002010-06-14T06:48:04.139-06:00Selective Coding Memo 6/14/10<!--StartFragment--> <br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px;">I think I could do another couple weeks of selective coding, but I don't know that I will necessarily see that much new. I'm feeling a bit saturated, so it is time to start pulling my findings together. This selective coding stage has pulled together as I never imagined it would. It has provided a very interesting lens through which to view my data. </span></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">It originated in some of my abstract thinking about why Writing Reviews were not providing the stimulus for reflective thinking. It has increasingly become clear that I will have to articulate more clearly what I consider to be "reflective" and what is not. I would need to be able to identify within my data instances of reflective thinking and non-reflective thinking. So I went back to some basics about the dynamics of reflection. There are different levels<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">--thinking<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">--thinking about something (what is the difference between these first two?)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">--thinking about your thinking about something<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">It is this third level that I would consider to be reflective thinking. There is a certain level of reflection involved with thinking about something, particularly if that something involved some degree of previous thinking, so it can be hard to draw the line and clearly identify "thinking about your thinking about something." <o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">So armed with this concept of what defined reflection, I went back through slice 2 data (14 WRs), reprinted fresh copies, and used yellow highlighter to identify examples of thinking about your thinking about something. I then copied and pasted all of these together and did a comparative analysis where I noted similarities and differences in these examples. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">From a list of the concerns of each of these reflective episodes, I can state that what they were thinking about what highly rhetorical. Many wrestled with audience and how best to reach or persuade them. A number were about finding the best information (to best persuade their audience). I don't think this insight says a whole lot except that they are dealing with important writing issues. But the WRs as a whole do this, so I don't think these reflective episodes are different <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">except in the manner and depth</i> with which they engage with these rhetorical issues.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">The reflective gaze is one of comparison and assessment in terms of essay success.</span></i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">I wrote this statement, and it seemed to encapsulate my insight into these reflective episodes. To test this statement, I made a chart where I had three columns:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Comparison Assesssment Essay Success</span></i><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">I allowed two rows for the comparison cell, so I could list the two things being compared. I then went back to see if I could chart out these reflective episodes into these three columns, and I could. In most cases, the comparisons articulate some sense of not fitting in bounds sort of like trying to fit a square peg in a round whole. The comparison involves often a coming to know that is rooted in an assessment or judgment about the situation. This assessment/judgment is made based upon the writer's sense of essay success. I thought it was very interesting that the term "judgment" came back into my thinking at this point. Through this reflective thinking, students are making some judgment about their writing situation and from that judgment determining a new course of action. The reflective episodes divide neatly into two halves: the "no fit" half and then the "to fit" (as in what to do to fit). Significantly, the basis for this judgment is the writer's concept of essay success. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Let's look at one as an example, and I will "code" it. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;"><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Example:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;"><strong><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">A solution for my research paper has been hard to come by. </span></strong><strong><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt;">The problem is my claim supports the current status quo, and it is the public at large that disagree with the status quo. </span></strong><strong><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">So at this point in the draft cycle my solution will be to look for a compromise between the two sides. </span></strong><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;"><strong><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">I put in bold what I consider to be the reflective portion of this statement. The writer starts by telling/reporting their problem. The next sentence expresses their thinking about this problem. Notice how this reflective statement is an evaluative statement containing their judgment about the source of the problem. Also, notice that there seems to be comparison going on: Claim supports X >><< public does not support X. The writer certainly could have written more about this problem, but through this comparison they are seeing how their claim is mismatched with the public view on the claim. The last line is their expression of what they will do to work through this problem in order to make their claim “work” in terms of essay success. Their way to solve this problem with their claim is to find a solution that each side can agree on—they want to please everyone. The important thing is not their particular revision goal but to see how the writer is working on fitting in bounds. We see in these reflective episodes a neat division between the no fit/to fit. <o:p></o:p></span></strong></div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;"><strong><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12.0pt; font-weight: normal; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Armed with these insights into reflective episodes inside these WRs, I began to ask the question: What, then, distinguishes “non-reflective” episodes. Looking back at the data to identify non-reflective episodes, I noticed that they remain at the level of reporting/telling. They may express an awareness or even self-awareness of something, but they don’t dig deeply into questioning or explaining this awareness further. <o:p></o:p></span></strong></div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;"><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">To “think about” your “thinking about something” (to me) seems to involve questioning HOW or WHY or WHERE or WHEN. Is there a difference between “thinking about my problem” and “thinking about the causes of my problem?” Is it not really “reflection” until I get to my “thinking about” the “thinking about the causes of my problem?” <o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;"><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Going back to my analogy of my son in front of the hallway mirror, the non-reflective episodes follow this dynamic. He walks down the hall, looks in the mirror and sees his collar is up. In his WR, he writes, “My collar is up. I think I will turn it down.” He walks on. Notice there is no comparative assessment involved, and the judgment is simply a direct statement almost of fact. There is no explanation or elaboration about the basis for this judgment. THAT is what I see these reflective episodes providing—some basis or grounds for understanding the problem or for choosing a particular action. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;"><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Here’s one example of a non-reflective statement:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;"><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">“I was told by my peer that I needed to make this story relate to people at my school and that I needed to effectively show that the “entire company as a whole” was ruined to expose the impact of this event on society. … I will have to take these things into consideration for my next draft as I wish to make changes in these areas to improve my grade.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;"><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">Notice that the writer simply reports what the peer thinks about their paper. They SAY that they will take these suggestions into consideration, but the substance of this consideration is not included in this WR. If this reflective thinking happens, it happens outside of the WR.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt;"><span style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold;">I noticed from my first slice the prevalence of [telling/reporting what is] as well as its counterpart [considering/evaluating what is]. I have roughly held the difference between these two codes as the difference between non-reflective and reflective thinking, and what I have done with this selective coding is dig more deeply into the difference between these two categories and express that difference more clearly. </span><span style="font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><!--EndFragment-->Lenniehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553164711914465201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1362392400485756023.post-57198674894379464092010-06-01T07:48:00.000-06:002010-06-01T07:48:14.215-06:00Approaching Selective CodingI am feeling more comfortable with the idea that I am approaching the end point of my research. I have attempted to make my research "rigorous" in that I have sought to engage in Grounded Theory research following its methods. I can't say, as a novice, that I have done these methods perfectly, but I have tried to pursue the procedures and objectives as best that I could.<br />
<br />
For various reasons, I choose to follow Strauss and Corbin's sequence of "coding" or categorization (I plan to no longer use the term "coding" since I believe, like Dey, that it is a misnomer) from open, to axial, to selective. I think I can say with confidence, especially after the May workshop, that I have pursued axial coding sufficiently. I have worried, however, how to approach selective coding and how to reach the end point with an integrated theory. Now I have a game plan.<br />
<br />
Through re-reading Strauss and Corbin's (1998) chapter on "Selective Coding," I believe I have arrived at three things I can work on doing that will integrate my theory:<br />
1) Writing the storyline--using narrative to provide a way to pull concepts and variation together<br />
2) Diagramming--using the drawing of diagrams and models to conceptualize the theory<br />
3) Reviewing and sorting through memos<br />
<br />
I realize now that my "Recognition in Slice 5" memo involved all of these three activities of theory integration, so to a degree I may be redundantly pursuing my theory. However, I feel that after the last two weeks I am deeper into my understanding of the data. I also realize that my previous blog post (muddle) is about this first step of using narrative.<br />
<br />
Corbin and Strauss talk about how difficult integration is for novice researchers (like myself). They state, "The difficulty students seem to have is coming up with the more abstract theoretical scheme that explains all of their data" (155). They go on to state that unintegrated theory might contain interesting descriptions and some themes, but no theory. What is missing are statements telling the reader how these themes relate to each other. It is an uncovering of the relational terrain and dynamics of a system that distinguishes a theory.<br />
<br />
Another question has been which of my key concepts will I label as my "core category": fitting in bounds or essay success. This question is not an easy one for me, since I believe each could work as my core category, and either way they will be deeply intertwined with each other. Strauss and Corbin state that the core category has "analytic power" and that it has the "ability to pull the other categories together to form an explanatory whole" (146). I think fitting in bounds may work best because that is the dynamic--the goal and activity--at work in these writing reviews (and outside them). Essay success is perhaps as strong a concept as fitting in bounds, but it is the concept which regulated and directs fitting in bounds. Hmm.... Does that make it more central? I have to think about it.Lenniehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553164711914465201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1362392400485756023.post-23899043500142428372010-05-26T20:11:00.001-06:002010-05-26T20:16:23.431-06:00It's a grand muddleE.M. Forester in Passage to India talks about mysteries and muddles. I believe I am in a great big muddle. I have immersed myself in my slice 5 of data, and I think I have dug so deeply into the minutia of the data that I am overwhelmed with it all. Like I experienced as I prepared for phase II of my lit review, I have been busy collecting and preparing separate "items," and now I have all of these cards scattered on the floor like 52 card pick up.<br />
<br />
I am struggling with the axial coding, and how to do it in such a way that I am seeing patterns and relationships. I'm struggling with my insights to the overall draft cycle and then maintaining my focus on the reflection. I can say that these reflections present a partial and even deceptive picture of what really is going on and ends up happening. Mostly, I am intrigued by how things go astray and by my speculations about why. This mirror of reflection is a fairly cracked mirror.<br />
<br />
In my mind, I keep coming back to my analogy of my son going to school with his collar up or his hair unbrushed and a wing of hair flying high from the back of his head. The act of reflection is the act of gazing in the mirror. The mirror itself is the "other" that presents a representation of you--a peer response, a self-evaluation, a glance at an other's draft, or looking at additional research. I have recently reincorporated viewing drafts and doing research as "mirrors" along with considering/reporting feedback, and I'm not sure they exactly fit, but they do provide contrastive and additional perspectives. Hmm. I'll have to think more about how to categorize them, but I know that they impact the identification of problems and coming to know (and eventual revision goals).<br />
<br />
So now that we have the elements of this act of reflection in place, let's return to my son walking down the hall past our hall mirror and let's say he looks in the mirror.<br />
<br />
Scenario 1: He sees his collar is up, realizes that it is a problem, and reaches up and folds it down. Reflection works. He would have gone to school looking like a slob, but now he is a guapo stylish guy. He gets an A on his paper.<br />
<br />
Scenario 2: He looks in the mirror, sees his collar is up but shrugs his shoulders, says who cares, and walks on. He either purposefully decides the collar is not a problem, or he doesn't see it as a problem at all. He either does not have the appreciation (this is good/this is bad sense) of collars being down, or perhaps he doesn't think it is that bad. It fall within what McAlpine called his "corridor of tolerance." He can tolerate his collar being up. So has reflection failed? It has from the sense that we (the teachers) think all writers should have their collars down (our view of essay success).<br />
<br />
He might also not have any sense that collars should be down. The whole concept of collars is so ill-defined to him that he really doesn't even notice the collar is up. As he looks in the mirror, he might even think his image in the mirror looks good. He leaves it up.<br />
<br />
Scenario 3: He glances in the mirror, and he sees his shirt is untucked and hair unbrushed, but he doesn't even notice his collar is up. He might tuck in his shirt, but then decide not to brush his hair and not touch his collar because he has no realization that it is up.<br />
<br />
Scenario 4: He looks in the mirror, sees his collar is up, but proceeds for the door without touching it. He told himself, "I need to pull down my collar," but he doesn't because it he is late for school and doesn't have time to pull it down. The expedient thing is to leave it up so he isn't late. Or he said he will get to it later, but then when he arrives at school he is is distracted and forgets. <br />
<br />
Scenario 5: OK, once again he is getting ready for school. He puts his shirt on and the collar is up. He walks by the mirror, doesn't see the collar, but on the way to the car he feels the collar is up and then fixes it. He makes this change on his own without the aid of the mirror. Did he even need the mirror to make this change?<br />
<br />
Scenario 6: Let's say he walks by the mirror, sees the collar is up and even acknowledges that it ought to be down. However, he doesn't know how to pull his collar down. He doesn't have the strategies, tactics, and skills he needs to make this change. So the collar stays up. <br />
<br />
Scenario 7: He's back in front of the mirror, and he knows that I am standing there too, so he says the collar is a problem and that he will pull it down just because I am standing there and that is what he knows I want him to say and do. I go into the bathroom, and he proceeds to the car having appeased me but not pulled down his collar. This problem identification and setting of revision goals has been done for my benefit. And the collar stays up.<br />
<br />
I'm running out of scenarios, but I think these give a picture of the muddle I am seeing and trying to make sense of. So what role does reflection play? What is the purpose and effect of looking in that mirror? What if we had no mirror in the house? Is it necessary? Do we only gain this perspective on ourselves through this reflection?<br />
<br />
Muddle muddle muddle.<br />
<br />
I believe that the dymanic of these writing reviews is fundamentally shaped by what I am calling "essay success." I believe that will be my core category. So how do I do selective coding just for it? My axial coding is a mess right now. I think I need to spend some more time now that I have the cards all scattered about the floor. I think these scenarios point to variations I am seeing in the dynamic of reflection, but I need to refine these patterns and compare them to other patterns. What is significant in each case?<br />
<br />
I'm also confused as to what constitutes a "theory." What is it that I am creating? I've become so lost in my data I feel that I have lost sight of what my end point will be. So I am going to take a break from my data for tomorrow. I want to review my literature on grounded theory both to refresh and guide me at this point and prepare for writing my methodology chapter. I'll come back to it on Friday and see what I see then.<br />
<br />
In the meantime, I muddle on.Lenniehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553164711914465201noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1362392400485756023.post-3681753232173484132010-05-19T09:42:00.001-06:002010-05-19T13:22:04.944-06:00Processing the Annual ReviewOctober 1st. <br />
That's the date I need to have a draft of my dissertation done if I want to defend in December. OK. Sounds good to me.<br />
<br />
While things are fresh in my mind, I want to record some of the things we talked about at my annual review. Becky was double-booked with another presentation this morning, so she was not there.<br />
<br />
Rich gave me the admonition that now is the time to arm wrestle my data and the entire dissertation project and get it done. He complemented me on how I have sought to follow grounded theory's methods and remain open to my data and let it lead me where it will, but that now I need to begin to pull things together. I don't think he is advocating forcing the data, but instead saying that the time of openness and inquiry is passing and it is time to shift into analysis and findings--to develop my theory. I mentioned that while I am still open and inquirying with slice 5, I am pushing hard to get through this slice here in Lubbock and begin the end game of generating my theory. (That will be a subject of a future blog post, I am sure.)<br />
<br />
Both Fred and Rich are interested the deep picture of what is going on for students within a writing assignment that my analysis is revealing. I showed them my refined version of my categories, properties, and dimensions and I used the analogy of a rubics cube to describe how these different categories and other elements fall into and out of alignment and even embed within each other. What I am gratified to hear is that the language I have chosen for my categories (fitting in bounds, essay success, coming to know, revision goals) were used by both Fred and Rich, and they seemed ok with them. They seem to grasp the concept and phenomena that the terms describe. That's good. I have been so close to these terms and using them so much that I am losing a sense of whether they work or not. <br />
<br />
Interestingly, we had some discussion about time (or timing). Fred pointed out the diachronic and synchronic aspects of my study. I think what he is interested in is the diachronic aspect of my analysis--looking at the writing review in the context of the larger essay or draft cycle (and even the semester). Both Fred and Rich think I am digging into a perspective on student writing that has not been done very much, and it provides a unique perspective. What is often revealed are mismatches and discordances in the "system." I had just been looking at some of Spinuzzi's stuff on activity systems, so I referred to this classroom context of writing instruction as a kind of activity system. I spoke of a few cases I had seen where students misinterpreted the assignment, DI feedback did not critique following the assignment criteria, and the reflection was a total failure in terms of what we theoretically believe reflection will do (the value-added assumption of reflection). Fred referred to this phenomenon as "missing each other in the night" and as the "dark underbelly of composition." Mismatches and discordances occur due to poor views of essay success. So, Fred said, this research shows the importance of providing clear and available as well as concrete and detailed representations of essay success.<br />
<br />
I had a few excerpts from Writing Reviews that we looked at together, and I narrated what I saw going on using the language of my categories. A couple of things came up from this discussion. I wanted to show cases where resolutions/goals were made and also instances where concrete steps were proposed to follow, but the student did not follow them in the next draft. In these WR, you can see instances of "coming to know" but then that knowledge does not extend (or transfer) into changes in the draft. Rich spoke of the importance of kairos or timing--that perhaps the time gap between the moments of realization and then working on the draft again led to unfulfilled resolutions. The moment of the coming to know should then be immediately followed by the act of application. He spoke of his believe in inserting the "teaching" of essay success right at the moment of realization and application and how that is what he has been wanting to create.<br />
<br />
Fred also had some interesting things to say about the strategies these students were coming up with as their revision goals. He called them soft strategies. They mimiced the language of teachers using the words, but these were really like weasel words. They are really so vague that they are really expressing a true understanding at all. He mentioned S. I. Hayakoka's Language, Thought, and Action as having discussed this kind of use of language. <br />
<br />
I had a few questions regarding my lit review and how I had framed my inquiry. Question 1 was whether linking my inquiry back to Young and his work on invention made sense. I want to anchor my inquiry into the questions Young had about invention back in 1978, showing how my inquiry has roots in a central concern of our field. They both thought it sounded ok.<br />
<br />
The second and third questions focused on terms I had used to describe the gaps or problems in our field's understanding of reflection that in a sense justify my own inquiry. The first gap is what I call the value-added assumption of reflection and how we uncritically think that reflection will provide "value" or a benefit to students (and it is a certain kind of benefit). This gap and term for it seemed to check out ok too. I also think that our view of reflection is influenced by portfolios. We see reflection as a post-task constructivists activity, and don't conceive it in in-task terms. I call this the "portfolio-centric view of reflection." They both thought it sounded good too and rang true. <br />
<br />
I think this about covers what we discussed. I know I am missing things. They both often referred to "this is the kind of thing to put in your chapter 5." I can't say right now I saw all the things that they did for what could go in there, but I think I can return to these possibilities when I get to chapter 5.<br />
<br />
I still have a long way to go, but I am well-positioned to complete this project. But I will have to do some arm wrestling to get it done.Lenniehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553164711914465201noreply@blogger.com0