Introduction When approaching a curriculum for the first time, especially one designed by someone else, there are going to be things that don’t mesh with students, the rest of the curriculum, or an individual’s teaching style. Implementing the Fall 2018 English 101 curriculum at Western Washington University allowed me to deeply consider my own teaching […]
Pedagogical research
How Many Times Have I Told You This? Exploring Student’s Retention of Information Through Various Methods
Introduction and Overview of Research Plan: 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 about their projects because ‘they don’t know where to turn it in’– […]
Slow and Steady, Examining Peer Feedback
The Interest and Sources and Methods In my undergraduate at Western my largest frustration came from peer feedback days. I knew I was a good enough writer that most of my class would enjoy what I wrote, and so when it came time for my piece to be critiqued a got a chorus of “it […]
Effects of Intra-Genre Compositional Studies on Inter-Genre Writing Outcomes
Introduction Studied and engaged reading practices can be a springboard for effective writing. Knowing how to read specifically as a writer can help to identify features and forms of new genres, to implement those features in writing, and to ultimately be a self-directed, adaptive, and successful writer of new genres. I believe that using reading […]
Feedback and Revision: Pedagogical Approaches to Advance Student Writing
The teaching-focused research question I propose to study next quarter is, “What type of teacher feedback generates substantial student revision?” For this study, I will require revision for two assignments: the literacy narrative and the research proposal. The literacy narrative provides an opportunity to dive deeper into creative writing and work on storytelling elements. The […]
Biweekly Game Based Learning in English 101
Biweekly Game Based Learning in English 101 Research Question: What is the effect of holding biweekly game-based learning activities in English 101 and what can these activities tell us about the comprehension levels and preferred learning methods of collegiate students? Scholarly Discourse in Writing Studies: Game Based Learning has recently made a come-back in academics. […]
The Audience Project
The Audience Project: Writing for readers rather than writing for teachers Research Question: Students are used to producing writing that will be evaluated by a teacher or other authority figure. My research design focuses on altering student perspective on writing by focusing on audience and response. Bluntly: Can focusing on audience help students free their […]
The Self and Writing: A Theoretical and Practical Examination of Identity in the First-Year Writing Classroom Through an Identity-Based Activity
Brugman, Destiny F2018 Pedagogy Research Project ENG 513
Your Story Matters: Bridging the Divide between Personal and Academic Writing
The impetus for the observational study I will be carrying out is rooted in what I perceive as a divide created within academia between personal and academic writing. I wish to help close this artificial divide as I do not see it as altogether necessary or natural. The question I aim to answer is […]
Reading is a Fun Thing We Can Do: A Research Proposal
I believe in literature. My students, however, liken reading to working out, saying that while it might be good for you, it doesn’t feel good. I want to change their minds. Reading, I think, is an inherently pleasurable activity, and it is also good for us. For literature entertains, creates myth, increases our capacity for […]
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? […]