1. Citation Broad, Bob. “Strategies and Passions in Empirical Qualitative Research.” Writing Studies Research in Practice: Methods and Methodologies. Eds. Lee Nickoson and Mary P. Sheridan. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2012. pp 197-209. ProQuest EBook. 2. Summary Bob Broad begins this chapter from Writing Studies Research in Practice: Methods and Methodologies by beginning to […]
Your Own Life Signifies
Citation: Addison, Joanne. “Narrative as Method and Methodology in Socially Progressive Research.” Practicing Research in Writing Studies, ed. by Katrina M. Powell and Pamela Takayoshi, Hampton Press, 2012, pp. 372-383. Summary: In her study of narrative within the realm of research, Joanne Addison introduces the reader to a methodology that often draws criticism from the […]
Why we have Research IRBs
Citation McGee, Sharon J.. Practicing Socially Progressive Research: Implications for Research and Practice. p. 143 Summary McGee lays out the origin of Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) that have their history steeped in blood starting after World War II in the shadow of the Nuremburg Trials, and they follow what are known as the Nuremburg […]
Troubling Research
Contents 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 […]
“God Stories VS Coyote Knowledge”
Heather Loepp Professor Lucchesi Reflective Annotated Bib #3 11/25/18 Citation Writing Studies Research in Practice : Methods and Methodologies, Southern Illinois University Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral-proquest-com.ezproxy.library.wwu.edu/lib/wwu/detail.action?docID=1354656. Summary The selection I chose to read from the edited collection, Writing Studies Research in Practice: Methods and Methodologies was “Exceeding the Bounds of […]
“Composing Activist Research” by Stuart Blythe
Blythe, Stuart. “Composing Activist Research.” Practicing Research in Writing Studies: Reflexive and Ethically Responsible Research, Hampton Press Inc, 2012. Print. 275-290. Summary Stuart Blythe discusses the different issues and elements that sometimes arise when trying to do activist research in regards to writing. He outlines many issues that come along with researching using […]
“A Complicated Geometry: Triangulating Feminism, Activism, and Technological Literacy”
Blair, Kristine. “A Complicated Geometry: Triangulating Feminism, Activism, and Technological Literacy.” Writing Studies Research in Practice: Methods and Methodologies, Southern Illinois University Press, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central. Web. 63-72. Summary: The main objective in this article is to tie together, or triangulate, the three aspects of feminism, activism, and technology. Blair states in her essay […]
“Making Ethnography Our Own: Why and How Writing Studies Must Redefine Core Research Practices” by Mary Sheridan
Citation: Sheridan, Mary. “Making Ethnography Our Own: Why and How Writing Studies Must Redefine Core Research Practices.” Writing Studies Research in Practice : Methods and Methodologies, Southern Illinois University Press, 2012, pp. 73–82. Summary: Mary Sheridan’s article is a chapter in the larger piece of work Writing Studies Research in Practice : Methods and Methodologies. In her […]
Emphasizing Style & Extending Its Influence
Research Proposal Intro Teaching writing of any sort in a classroom environment can be a tricky endeavor to navigate through. This is in part because of the subjectivity involved in “learning” to write; the multiple variables involved in an instructor’s own experience of learning to write, and their specific sense of writing as a craft. […]
Emotional Literacy
I’ve been struggling with the formation of this project, going back and forth, questioning the practicality and concreteness of my various ideas. Always my first inclination is to return to my (Catholic) social justice background and nothing we’ve addressed in this class fits more comfortably into that space than Freire. I asked myself how I […]
Pedagogical Discovery
Research Motivation As I sit here pondering and designing a pedagogical research proposal, I find myself wrestling with my (so far) limited experience within English 101 classrooms on our campus. Or, perhaps, a better way of putting it, I struggle approaching this without the experience of a static English 101 class roster to provide […]
Personalizing the Curriculum
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 […]
Joey’s Discovery Draft For Pedagogical Research OR Discovering How Convoluted I Can Truly Sound
The question I’m interested pursuing goes something like this: Will students report increased preparedness for interdisciplinary writing and cross-genre work after working within a curriculum informed by Place Based Education (PBE) principles and participating in lessons geared towards increasing reading comprehension? Dang! That’s a pretty confusing sentence. I’ll try to unpack that a little more […]
Identity-based activities, brave and safe spaces, audience awareness discovery draft
Research question: Does the introduction of identity-based activities and conversations in the FYW classroom lead to a classroom that can be more aptly navigated as a brave and safe space? Does the introduction of identity-based activities and conversations in the FYW classroom lead to more awareness of the rhetorical situation of a written piece? As […]
How to Generate Substantial Student Revision: A Study on Effective Feedback (And Related Assignment/ Rubric Structures)
Teaching English 101 this quarter has ignited many questions for me regarding what pedagogical approaches advance student writing, specifically in the realm of feedback and revision. My motivation to understand best practices in regards to how to give effective feedback and how to assign and evaluate revision, is rooted both in wanting to provide students […]
Reading is a fun thing we can do
Questions: Since I saw the syllabus in Comp Camp, I’ve been thinking about how I can add more reading into the curriculum. As we’ve gone along, I’ve refined my ideas significantly. At first, it was just a vague desire to assign/read/talk about useful and interesting writing. I wondered: where was the place for literature in […]
Putting the audience in the spotlight
Topic speculation Do students tailor what they write for different audiences? My research will seek to answer how audience plays a role in student compositions in English 101. I think that students generally write for the same audience in all of their classes – the authority figure. Despite telling them that they should carefully consider […]
Inter-Genre Studies and Writing Outcomes
Research Motivation, Topic, and Question My interests for this pedagogical study started with personal concerns that we weren’t doing much reading in our English 101 classes. I believe that reading can be the cornerstone to good writing practices—it certainly is for me. Knowing how to read as a writer can help you identify features and […]
How Many Times Have I Told You This? A Study on Student Comprehension and Retention of Directions
Intro to the proposed research: At this point in the quarter, patience is thin. It is getting harder and harder to calmly, and civilly reply to students when they ask where an assignment is posted, when something is due, or email me a their projects because ‘they don’t know where to turn it in’– even […]
Game Based Learning Experiment in English 101
The Effects of Game Based Learning and Comprehension: What role do game-based learning activities have in the collegiate classroom and what does this tell us about comprehension skills and preferred learning styles among English 101 students. I plan to do my pedagogical research study on game-based learning and how GBL effects the class ecosystem and community learning […]
You’ve got to intersectional(ize)
The focus of this research design will hopefully to be examining the role of intersectional education, which will bring up questions of consent, safe and brave spaces, internationalized texts, and compassionate communication. Even laying all of that out, my first question is if it’s too much, and then at one point is it not enough? […]
Power Imbalances, Again
When I first considered the term “adversarial,” I immediately thought about two equals at opposition to each other–your arch nemesis in a comic book, maybe or two knights from opposing camps. But in this context, there is an inherent power differential and so in the examples above, maybe it would be the origin story of […]
Fostering and Stifling
Conflict is good. Conflict keeps us from the sheep and shepherd mentality in the classroom, but conflict is a difficult balancing act to pull off well. I encourage my students to ask questions, and to be active in their learning, but I struggle personally with walking the line between healthy conflict that fosters engaged multi-vocal […]
The Opponent
Perhaps it is all the theory, but I can’t help but look at this through an Hegelian lens — a modified Hegelian lens, perhaps. I think that the dialectic can be troublesome, and the synthesis promised in the process does not always account for every eventuality. That being said, I think that this adversarial relationship […]
Control Often Means Not Exerting It
I have been fortunate in my time as both student and instructor to never have an adversarial relationship with a teacher or student. When I think of truly adversarial relationships, I think back to substitute teachers I had between 7th and 9th grade. More often than not, my fellow students and I collectively made an […]
Knowing is half the battle
Being an adversary does not mean being an enemy. I rarely have an adversarial relationship with students that is long term and related to rigor, but I have taken classes where the teacher uses this conceit to great effect. I recall a Shakespeare professor from college who was a master of playing devil’s advocate during […]
The Hateful Slate
I could roundup a whole cast of adversarial teachers from my formative years that, if you were presented with snapshots of their wrongdoings, would shock you. I had one teacher that would pass out a math test to everyone in the room except me because “I would just fail anyway”. I had another teacher (both […]
Is Transaction Inherently Adversarial?
On the most basic level, the simple designation of “student” and “teacher” is inherently an adversarial distinction. Like any dichotomy where one side holds a significant amount of power over the other, especially in an institutional setting like a university, the basic conflict stems from necessary authority. That authority, the teacher, doesn’t have to be […]
Student and Teacher as Adversaries
I believe that the curriculum and the execution of English 101 has limited a great number of “traditional” adversities that are present in standard courses at an institution like Western. Of course, there exists the usual difficulty between teacher and student when it comes to homework and authority-but because the curriculum is permitting students to […]
The A-word
Growth requires stress. Even plants need certain stressors to produce to their fullest capacity. In many cases, the natural world delivers all the stress and adversity we need. Sometimes too much. But it is interesting to think of the role of a teacher as an agitator, an adversary. None of us want mean teachers who […]