A page of freewriting about your research topic/question/motivation:

After reading Debra Journet’s chapter, “Narrative Turns in Writing Studies Research,” from Writing Studies Research in Practice: Methods and Methodologies and Joanne Addison’s chapter, “Narratives as Method and Methodology in Socially Progressive Research” from Practicing Research in Writing Studies: Reflexive and Ethically Responsible Research I have decided my teaching-focused research question will be something along the lines of to what degree does centering the focus of English 101 on narrative, particularly personal narratives, enhance the students’ engagement level as well as the quality of their work?

The first assignment that my students had to do this quarter, the literacy sponsorship narrative, has been far and away their best work and this frustrates me. The reason being that ideally in any course the quality of student work steadily increases until the end of the class whereupon the students produce a final project that is a glorious culmination of everything they learned. That is not so this quarter (if it ever is). The realization that my students’ research posters and soon-to-be webtexts while meeting the project requirements are for the most part pretty boring to both me and them has led me to wonder where did it all go wrong?

The pivotal moment I latch onto is when we had our students transition from the literacy collage to the pre-proposal letters. Students were given new partners and a new direction. Any element of the personal evaporated with the requirements for the pre-proposal being only that their topic must be related to literacy, writing and/or communication. I did not notice at the time, but in retrospect their eyes and minds alike must have glazed over at that moment.

While I am not going to abandon the mandatory connection to literacy, writing or communication (In fact I plan to be more stringent about it) I want to emphasize that whatever topic they choose, while adhering to the initial requirements, also needs to have importance to both them and their partner on a personal level. My hope is that having a more personal connection to the topic, which can perhaps be drawn from their literacy timeline will lead to a more engaged classroom that produces work that we can be excited and proud of.

A list of a few possible sources to use:

Addison, Joanne. “Narratives as Method and Methodology in Socially Progressive Research.”       Practicing Research in Writing Studies: Reflexive and Ethically Responsible Research.            Edited by Katrina M. Powell and Pamela Takayoshi, Hampton Press, 2012

Journet, Debra. “Narrative Turns in Writing Studies Research.” Writing Studies Research in      Practice: Methods and Methodologies. Edited by Lee Nickoson and Mary P. Sheridan,     Southern Illinois University Press, 2012.

A page of freewriting about your possible research process/data gathering/analysis methods:

Obviously, the first major assignment in our curriculum is already a personal narrative and the subsequent assignment is a collage based off the first assignment, so I would not be changing much there. Where I foresee implementing my experiment will in beginning the pre-proposal letter assignment where instead of them coming up with topics separately I will re-format the assignment to where they, similar to the partners in the literacy collage, find some commonality in their literacy history or barring that, some commonality of interest or passion they share currently that can be related to literacy, writing or communication.

Having the research be collaborative from the beginning will help to engage the side of the partnerships who got overpowered this quarter in the winner-take-all format that was the pre-proposal letter. I want to give provisional approval to partners who are both excited, or at least engaged with the topic instead of the person whose topic got chosen giving me the spiel and their partner awkwardly hanging out next to them (what happened this quarter). I realize that partners coming up with a topic that is personal to both of them may be difficult/borderline impossible but I want to exhaust every resource before I give up on the notion, whether that be them both looking back on their respective literacy timelines for commonalities or just having some kind of getting-to-know-you questionnaire that I put together for them to answer.

As far as data-gathering and analysis methods to have any kind of usable data I will have to teach the augmented, personalized class next quarter and then spring quarter go back to more of the traditional curriculum that I taught this quarter.  I could give out anonymous surveys/questionnaires concerning students’ happingess, engagement, satisfaction with what they are producing, etc. next quarter and spring quarter after we complete the research poster and webtext and compare the two quarters’ results.

I believe students would engage much more with the research portion of the quarter if it was personal to both students in the given partnership. This belief assumes of course that I give them the proper space and tools with which they can hopefully find that common personal ground that was lacking this quarter. As to whether this more collaborative, personal approach will lead to better projects and students; that remains to be seen.