Week 3 musings

After our discussion in class this past week, I called my sister. We seem to be living parallel lives...I joke that she does everything I do. I was an English/ Art major as an undergrad, she studied English and Art as a minor as an undergrad. Underwhelmed by the job prospects of an earnest writer/ artist, I moved to the educational field, and so did she...but she got her teaching certification in the middle of a recession, when positions, particularly in Pittsburgh, which has always had a glut of teachers, seemed to disappear altogether. Here is where our paths diverged.

She has been working full-time at a non-profit whose mission is to train "traditionally underserved" students to enter the job force. Green jobs are the platform as this is an environmental service agency. I worked both part-time and as a volunteer. It was eye-opening in that we saw students from all over the city; and often worked in educational spaces all over the city --from high schools to community colleges, 4 year public and private schools, as well as community spaces. Writing and composition was on our minds, with our training as English instructors. Even with the intent of wanting to go to college, it was soon apparent that the writing skills many of these students had would land most in a remedial class...were they to get through the application process in the first place.
I learned, last semester, to question my own assumptions about literacy as some sort of "saving force" and meekly reworked my first theme for my college composition class, in which I had once proudly named the course "Empowerment through Writing". I had made the assumption that students would buy that writing would empower them in their lives...I think that not only being exposed to different theorists, but also the very real lives of students poised between worlds in urban Pittsburgh (cultures of home/ cultures of school) -- in what ways did writing empower these students? I had simplified a very complex question.

What my sister, Lauren, and I discussed was the Haswell article (I just sent it to her). We had both subscribed to NCTE's English Journal (me for years, she for the last two years). Our conversation revealed what we had felt, but hadn't expressed before. The articles were interesting, but where was some kind of comparison of situation, of practice, of theory? I suppose we were both looking for something that leads to best practices, or to bat off the annoying programs that erupted like a blemish -- writing programs that were suddenly required to serve one agenda or another. We were raised and bred on considering qualitative research -- and were comfortable with it...yet both felt that it had only told part of a tale...Haswell's research, in which " that (by) setting some historical patterns on the table may be a step, however small and tentative, toward a more productive accord in the future" (201) and explanations of types of studies like RAD (my first introduction in this field, though I had seen it in another science degree) started reshifting my assumptions of what research could be. Even by looking at the research parameters (what was being viewed and why) as described by Haswell, I saw outlines of how research could be outlined beyond the qualitative classroom based description I had seen in the past (which many times, I found to be valuable). I don't take Haswell's assertion, but find value in the following "even when hard research into teaching practice aggregates into a strong defense of the effectiveness of the practice, the gathered wisdom is tossed out with the practice when the practice has lost favor." (217). So, as Hawell suggests, it is difficult to support, challenge or build on anything (the suggestion is RAD inquiry) when practices dissolve or fade away.
Rereading Witte's statement" the marriage of discovery and validation on composition research has till not been consummated" I recall all of the practices that were thrown into the mix -- the sort of 'anything goes' world I stepped into when beginning the career. So, an instructor could have very different definitions of what composition was. And I don't want to prescribe that definition...but I want to be working where my colleagues and students are thinking about what that is. Haswell's move to call "harder" empirical scholarship the profession's "immune system" is an interesting one. How to discuss what composition is without that systemized knowledge. In saying this ...is Haswell privileging empirical research OVER other types?
I am not sure.
In a profession, where on the one hand, I taught, for example, Hard Times with its critique of utilitarianism:
'NOW, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them.
In a sense I have been trained to be wary of fact. And yet, I read with great interest the way Hatwell by quoting Witte's: "A field that presumes the efficacy of a particular research methodology, a particular inquiry paradigm, will collapse inward upon itself." (220).

My sister and I both felt that there was not often a "body" to look to into as we work in our positions -- which is why, when non-profits, for example, want to teach composition forms for job training (a resume, a cover letter, a college application); there is some ambiguity as to how that plays out as practice. And I think these are really important questions...because historically, the pattern of privileging certain writing from certain communities happens...I can think of a dozen public schools where writing was being taught in some very different ways...and being assessed in different ways...yet when the PSSA (PA's state testing system) scores are revealed, simplistic responses to the disparities of scores were put into place....I would contend that different kinds of studies could reveal practices in a different light...again, I don't wish to find ONE prescriptive way of teaching...but to acknowledge just what is so complex about the subject and look at the complexity in some new ways (rather than qualitative research).

My questions that I am working out - How does the mix of literature and writing (composition) play out in new ways I am looking at research?

As I mentioned in class, what does empirical research look like in this field...and where has it been in the past. I need to do some sleuthing here. And where is it going?

My attitude towards research is certainly practitioner-based. I want to prove something that I have seen work in a classroom...or want to back a way of instructing. I am sensing a shift...I am pulling back that lens to instead consider other questions and problems...to observe patterns that I had not been looking for.

Week One - Journal Entry

So when I can find the time, I read books on organic farming. A previous degree in Sustainable Systems has led me to imagine, someday a small farm. Lavender? Organic veggies...something. Usually I read a chapter or two before I drift off at night. My most recent find, The Quarter Acre Farm, by Spring Warren, details a season of organic food production off of her quarter acre lot in California. She discusses her issues with cabbageworms. Her organic response? Bt - a naturally occurring biologic agent. It did the trick. And companies took notice: "Companies have now engineered plants that express the endotoxin (what applications of Bt produce to infect insect larvae) directly without the help of bacteria. Unfortunately, insects are now quickly building resistance to the plant-expressed endotoxin, something that doesn't happen quickly with the natural bacterium". While hardly a surprising scenario...I had been hearing about the development of superbugs and superweeds as a response to herbicides, pesticides, fungicides since high school. Her following musings related to how I felt about the "Positivism" as presented in the Schon piece:
"Sometimes it seems that science is the environment's brilliant little sister, watching learning growing, and is mostly incredibly cool and much loved. Yet, though brilliant, she's also sometimes a sophomoric, bratty, and irresponsible little sister, so that Environment keeps shouting to Mother Nature. "Mo-ther! Tell Science to keep out of my stuff! She keeps messing everything up!" Positivism, I suppose, at its worst. And yet, obviously, different incarnations of research has a valued place. I began to get at this in the Sustainable Systems program, where students started to grapple with a construct of a complexity of science -- systems as related to and not divorced from human practice. The concept of ecology...which, interestingly enough, seems to be a term increasingly finding its way into composition research to describe complexities of language as situated in specific human constructs (based on some reviews I started in the literacy class, I started looking at previous articles in CCC, and found the term "ecology" as a metaphor to describe complexities of literate practices. For now, the term suits my ever-expanding view of what literacy is...though I realize there is much excavating to be done on my part in pursing this comparison.