Citation:

Jacobs, Gloria E. “Troubling Research: A Field Journey through Methodological Decision Making.” Practicing Research in Writing Studies: Reflexive and Ethically Responsible Research, Hampton Press, 2012, Print. 331-347.

Summary:

In this research study, Gloria Jacobs offers a first person account of a researcher attempting to carry out an ethically responsible methodology.

Jacobs tries to eschew the traditional impartiality of the researcher. She wants to be involved in the research she carries out, possibly through co-teaching the lesson with Sophia, the middle school teacher. She worries that her relationship with Sophia starts out on the wrong foot when her introductory interview with Sophia turns out to be less the conversation that Jacobs imagined and more like traditional research interrogation. From there, the communication breakdowns start piling up.

Jacobs wants to implement a digital storytelling lesson that will help students bridge the gap between their digital literacies outside of school [the article mentions the things they post on myspace.com as an example, apparently a social network that predates Facebook]. Instead, Sophia wants to pair the digital storytelling lesson with an existing lesson on myths. The lesson then becomes a Frankenstein of the two ideas, pleasing nobody and making little sense to the students [at least those who interact with Jacobs].

The article ends with an analysis of how messy reality can be when compared with theory, and how the qualitative methods used to collect research should acknowledge the flaws inherent in all data collection. Jacobs worries that her experience is more universal than most research would have us believe, and the tendency to believe that all research conducted is done in a sterile lab contributes to a mythology that actually undermines research in general.

The more we can see how research is done in reality, the more we can see how it could be applied in reality.

Quote Bank:

“An overarching concern in my work has been to identify how literacy and technology is used by youth inside and outside of school and to understand what the implication of those literacy practices are in relation to people’s participation in an information driven, fast capitalist society” (332).

“As my experience demonstrates, data collection is more than just identifying study participants, asking questions, and observing phenomena. It also requires skill at relationship building and also of recognizing the limitations of our own positions, both how we see ourselves and how others see us” (332).

“My hope is that by opening up discussion of the ongoing decision-making process, we can continue discussions of how to move research methodologies forward in ways that honor those who open up their lives to our inquiry as well as to dig deeper into the questions that continue to trouble us and the world” (333).

“From a feminist perspective, I wanted to position myself not as an observer and Sophia and the students as subjects, but rather as the three of us working together toward a better understanding of the issue of teaching and adolescent use of digital technologies and literacy” (338).

“As I worked with the students, I shifted between the roles of researcher and teacher or teacher assistant according to the student needs rather than the needs of my research project” (344).

Analytical Reflection:

This article interested me at first because of its narrative structure. The first person perspective draws in the reader and the way the naive researcher gets more and more frustrated reminded me of the first part of Benito Cereno.

The researcher attempts to be helpful and involves herself in the class in a way that may have been beyond the boundaries the teacher wanted. In an ironic twist, the researcher’s need to be more involved may have actually led to the problems she ends up having by existing in an uncomfortable space between co-teacher and researcher. I thought of my role as an observer last year, and what a disaster it would have been had I tried to insert myself into the management of the classroom. Suddenly, the students would behave much differently around me and therefore prevent me from doing the job I’m actually there to do. The reality is that there’s a reason why the teacher and the researcher have different roles in a classroom, and mixing up those roles only leads to confusion for all involved.

In a way, by trying to be generous in helping the teacher rather than play a more traditional researcher role, Jacobs ended up doing exactly what she was trying not to do – making it all about her and not about the students or the research. She starts the article by basically throwing her teacher-partner under the bus for struggling with classroom management, perhaps she should have implicated herself in those struggles, but she only rushes in to help out, she does not implicate herself in any of the struggles of the classroom teacher. Jacobs wants the credit of being part of the teaching process, but none of the responsibility.

The way that the article gets into the difficulty teachers face in implementing research from outside the curriculum also interested me. Fortunately for us, we are creating our research within our own classrooms so we won’t face the same external crisis, but we may struggle with the internal crisis of whether to implement our research ideas.