evolving research

Assessing the way in which I have viewed research, and how that is evolving:

As I had mentioned earlier, I have taught reading/ writing with varied groups (rural/ urban/ethnicities/ages)and settings – adjusting as I saw fit based on how practices worked out. But I am sensing a different approach here – really looking at what is happening, and really seeing WHY something might be working (social factors as revealed through Smith that has more of an impact than a quick observation may have revealed). Again, I find it to be quite powerful…sentence combining could work to make complex sentences…but because it was situated in a social practice…rather than overt exercises...which is pretty mind-blowing in my book.

On another note -

Currently, while at SRU finishing up my degree in reading, I work as a part-time GA with Action-Research projects…where student teachers find a research question during student teaching and observe the results. Much attention is paid to students NOT presupposing an end result...I would actually like to take a look at the guidelines for the project.

This inquiry I am seeing in a state school educational setting for student teaching bears out some of the movements from in the Berlin article you gave to me. What intrigues me is that it creates an awareness of INQUIRY ; and this is powerful stuff – interesting in that this wasn’t so much part of the discussion when I student taught years ago—this keen look at what, exactly, is being done in the classroom, and how it impacts the classroom…can shift what has traditionally happened in many classrooms.

On another note again, I am including a list of what I'd like to take a look at in terms of research (a very wide-ranging list, I might add...and very much a partial one). I got a letter this past weekend ... in which I learned I was accepted into the program. I have to say...it helps situates the way I look at research. Need I say, I am extremely excited about this opportunity.

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WWriting programs situated in job training programs, specific disciplines, community-based writing (particularly with typically marginalized writers) (Started with Moje)

- Instructors/ teachers - inquiry/ practice (started with Berlin)

- Reading (comprehension) and Composition – connections between the two? What are they? (Moje)

Ecological concepts in writing/ research

Writing - dominant discourses - science - (I looked at ways in which language was used by different stakeholders for rhetorical in the discussion of hydrofracking in Pam's class -- but I just scratched the surface)

For fun, had always meant to write a grammar book based on creative writing with a rhetorical thrust (like, write a sentence using say, a telescopic sentence to show anger - students choose speaker and, to some extent, content...practicing actually using sentences for a purpose via a made-up character might lead them to investigate using sentences for their own purposes...also, identifying these sentences (or parts of speech, usage etc. have been used with real craft -- again, that concept of "playing" with language. Interesting how much of this we did in my art courses -- playing with different elements of design -- and how those pieces emerged, sometimes years later, in art, when I had a clearer purpose for them.

Lynch Wysokci (sp) – multi modality in composition --Ok, it is funny to post this in light of part of class discussion yesterday... here is what I am curious about. Multi-modality (whatever, really, that is) has been embraced in different forms in different composition classrooms. But there are so many uncertainties about what it is. In every class I've taken here at Kent, the discussion of the term has brought about discussion of what a composition course is supposed to teach. Is it writing? Semiotics of all kinds that make an argument?

I've only seen SOME of how different instructors tackle this...and at its worst, have seen a limited scope of what it means to read and write (a student can only create so many pamphlets and powerpoints & standardized test prompts before it is ok to explore other types of writing) - which I saw in some classrooms. At its best, meaning making and literacy are woven together -- constantly evolving and feeding off of each other (but, I think it takes a fairly skilled instructor to pull this off -- and often one who is skilled in analysis of a lot of meaning making systems). I took a bookmaking class as an undergrad while an art student. The class was part of the printmaking department -- it was fantastic. We made decisions about how to bind a book, what paper to print the graphics on, what graphics to choose and even what printing process to use (we did it all by hand...back in the day ('96)) ...each of these decisions brought forth very different statements that happened to be in the form of an Artist's Book. We worked in images and words...for me, a really interesting way to combine two ways of making meaning that I loved (writing and drawing) -- and showed how the two can work together.

HOWEVER, to really delve into what it is to use language in written form to create meaning, a semiotic system in which I employ different tools...and to some extent, try to control that meaning...is a different journey. And it takes a while to build those skills. All forms of meaning-making relate (yes, a drawing can get me started on a piece of research, highlight research, etc.)...but I didn't just "know" how to use this semiotic system. It was years of negotiating my own social interactions with others which has developed my own epistemology, different compartments of higher ed that use writing systems differently (art, English, education, environmental studies -- all, I've found, have their own language patterns), and looking at and practicing at a lot of writing. Somehow, I feel this room for students to WRITE can be a casualty of some applications of multi-modality. And certain writing styles (and critical reading) can be a powerful part of making choices and setting policy.

Here is an example - my parents live in Western PA -- they have been approached by energy representatives of many stripes to gain access to their land for fracking. Their relatives, who live nearby, have signed. It has taken my siblings and I all of our rhetorical resources to get our relatives to understand why we are opposed to this practice, and why the family was also opposed to land being used as a thoroughfare for a gas well on someone else's land, or why we'd be very opposed to holding ponds of chemical crap near our home at all (even if it were not our land) and most of that was done through writing (yes, some video clips and pictures, but writing wove those pieces together). The upshot of all of this is that while fracking will most likely occur around our parent's home (which is hard, in many ways, to swallow), we convinced (mainly through weaving together an argument of words) our relatives who live nearby that we have legitimate concerns about the practice and they have backed off asking my parents if they use our land as some kind of right of way to get back to their land. It is clear through this experience how much power certain industries have -- and much of that comes through the argument they are making...and much of that comes through written language. Hey, if I am dealing with this issue, I can't help but think what others through time have had to deal with...and why writing is such a powerful tool for those situations.

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Actually, seeing how all of this is playing out (rhetoric of energy companies vs. rhetoric of several environmental groups I belong to vs. rhetoric of locals who want the industry vs. rhetoric of locals who don't. Sifting through these words and arguments has had a profound effect on me and made me even more sharply aware of the power language can have. And..in this instance, the power of language to enact certain kinds of policy that will have consequences in communities for generations to come. (My god, I think as I visit home, the dragging of feet when it comes to renewable resources...and the quick acceptance of extractive economies - language plays a large part in arguing for either, but so do embedded and constructed social attitudes).

So So what implications does this have for a research question? I suppose what I am getting at is that composition courses can be very instrumental in introducing students to the very handy skill of analyzing and making an argument through many modes...but this understanding plays out in many different ways in many different classrooms (and is tied to educational funding/ trends/ etc.) -- so investigating what the different definitions of what, exactly, this term means and implies is really interesting.

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