Last Post

I thought I'd give this blog a proper send-off with an official final entry, instead of abandoning it outright without another peep. Overall, it has been useful for me to chronicle my experiences and reflections here over the course of the semester. I still have a lot of questions when it comes to research design, but I'll figure out the answers along the way. Thank you for following along!

Week 13

I will be using mixed methods during my research about the use of business and marketing rhetoric and how it may or may not influence the domain of the Writing Center. One of the methods I would like to use is interview. Because I first experienced my “felt difficulty” while working at a university in Ohio, I decided to send some pilot questions to professionals intimately connected with that University's Writing Center and its functions. As I develop this project further to include more writing centers, if need be, I will interview additional directors and other staff members, particularly if they have been in the field for a long time. My conversations with these former directors are ongoing. I have submitted IRB materials, so until I receive approval, I cannot formally interview these professionals or use their responses in my research, but their answers to my pilot questions were interesting and helpful. Because the project itself is ongoing as well, I hope I will be able to continue to seek their guidance and expertise. To begin the conversation, I e-mailed them the following questions:

1. When you started your career directing the writing center, what were some of your educational goals and why?
2. According to your research interests included in your faculty profile, you're interested in critical pedagogy theory. Were the educational goals for the writing center shaped by certain pedagogical theories? If so, which ones? If not, why?
3. Have those goals changed during the course of your tenure? If they have, explain what changes took place and why.
4. In 2011, the president of the university started to use the term “customer” when referring to students in his weekly newsletter to the campus community. Has the rhetoric of the president changed your mission statement for the writing center? If so, in what ways? If not, have you considered employing similar terminology in the writing center? Why or why not?

Any feedback on these questions and/or potential additions would be helpful at this stage. I have not included the answers to these questions because I don't want to potentially conduct myself unethically. I have not gone through and edited, nor have I asked either of them to clarify or expand. I have only thanked them for offering their perspectives during the beginning stages of this project. I have been checking on my IRB status for about a week (as of 4/7/14). Until I receive approval, I will not proceed. In the mean time, I will continue to gather text-based data and go through secondary research. The text-based data will be analyzed using Critical Discourse Analysis as a method. The pilot research I've undertaken has been the human subject part of the research.

Week 12

While reading Marshall and Rossman for this week, I thought about my own struggles to map-out and determine the scope of the project I'm proposing this semester. I know that looking at how marketing discourse affects interactions in the writing center will be a huge undertaking that will take a few years to really understand, study, and write about, especially if I plan to incorporate some grounded theory into this research, but how do I define the technical perimeters of my research so that everything runs smoothly and efficiently? I'm used to only taking myself and chosen texts and secondary research into consideration, because I come from a literature background. The expectations of this research are much different and less isolated.

I know that I will be relying a lot on secondary research for this project as well, but because I will be conducting interviews, etc, I know that I will have to be mindful of many other factors that come into play. I actually do not know what my budget concerns should be, or what personnel to consult, for instance, other than fellow writing center administrators and tutors. And because I foresee this project as a potential dissertation topic, I know that I will have to consider factors such as personal costs. Thus, I find myself becoming increasingly overwhelmed. I feel as though I have to be prepared to account for every variable, each obstacle, and be quick to come up with a Plan B if things fall through.

There's also the matter of considering connections or lack thereof between myself and my human participants. While reading Barton, I find myself questioning my "closeness" to the project and the participants; I'm also thinking about some of my CITI training and issues of convenient populations. I'm interested in writing center pedagogy and first-year composition studies, but how much does my interest stem from an intimacy with those communities and the problems they face? Naturally, that's a leading question; it's easy for anyone to become interested in doing research in areas with which they are intimate. But while reading for this week, I've thought about how collaborative research is potentially problematic. In other words, in what ways can we safe-guard ourselves against navel-gazing and doing research that affords us the opportunity to self-congratulate? Part of that anxiety comes from my identity as a newbie researcher. I am uncomfortable and, frankly, scared. I want to do research that is exciting to me and to the field. How distant should I be from the topic in order for there to still be excitement, along with rigor? The correspondence between the two learners at the end of Chapter 9 in Marshall and Rossman was actually refreshing to read for some of these reasons. Issues of time and narrowing the focus of research questions are problems I've been encountering. I'm still struggling with knowing "my place" as well as whether what I'm asking is worthwhile and researchable.

With regards to King's questions of ethics and closeness, I suppose I struggle with some of those dynamics as well: for instance, I appreciate his ah-ha moment on page 485, that the researcher tends to have "dialectical relationship" with one's research. I feel very close to my research interests, as if they are a part of me, and I have no clue whether that's a "dangerous" prospect, although I do tend to think that we can't help but become intimately involved; that intimacy begins and ends during different stages of one's research, but I think it's impossible to conduct worthwhile research while also being completely detached. One has to at least be in constant dialogue with one's topics, participants, etc, in order to get anything meaningful out of the exchange. How close is too close, however? That is the main question. I know with a reasonable amount of certainty that a Vulcan-like absence of emotion does not inherently make a researcher's undertakings more ethical. But what about the flip-side; how can a researcher prevent himself or herself from getting too attached, especially with regards to long-term studies?

I know that this entry had more questions than usual; I guess the readings brought up more questions than answers for me. These matters will probably continue to be interesting to me as I continue my research journey.

Week 10 and Week 11

Placeholder time! We have two weeks "off" because of the C's and Spring Break, so this entry will simply function as a paperweight until my return. That way, when I start talking about Week 12, followers won't be confused. Because I have so many followers who could get confused, right? Anyway, onward!

Week 9

Because I am still sorting through what I want to ask for my research questions, I am going to use this space to spill some information as well as some context for the project I am about to undertake. A more-polished-but-still-rough version of this post will be workshopped this week. So, here goes nothing.

Research Questions

For my research project in Research Design, I have settled on continuing a study I began investigating last semester (Fall, 2013) on the discourses used in writing centers. Namely, my research will seek to address how the implementation of marketing and business rhetoric conflicts with the pedagogical aims of writing centers. Researchers in education have found that as universities conform to “objectives lined-up with mercantile orientation” and “abdicate [their] function of training and educating […] in favor of organizing production” (Lucchesi, 2008), education misplaces its “collective sense and ability of creativity, initiative, genuine innovation, critical thinking, etc” (Larrasquet & Pilnière, 2012), which hinders students in their ability to collaborate. In summary, I argue that collaboration and non-directive methods are problematically challenged in writing centers where commidification, its discourse and implementation, takes place. As I will discuss further in the Design section, there has been a lot of research done on the conflation of business and education domains, but my project is the first to look specifically at writing centers, using writing center theory and pedagogy.

Thus, so far, my research questions are as follows: How does the use of business rhetoric, i.e. referring to students as customers, influence the space of the writing center? How does the use of such rhetoric affect the relationship between tutors and students? How does the use of such rhetoric (re)shape the pedagogical mission of the writing center, its aims and long-term goals? In particular, I am interested in how interactions and professional behaviors change with the use of business rhetoric: when students are customers, how does that change the interactions and dynamics between the institution and the department? Administrators and tutors? Tutors and student writers?

During the course of “selecting the 'things' of the situation[s],” (Takayoshi, et al, 2012), and in these beginning stages of research, I am hoping to narrow the focus or scope of the project to include perceptions of changes occurring at the writing center site as well as account for measurable changes in how tutors and writing center administrators see themselves in terms of how they interact with students and address their needs. The process of narrowing the focus while also allowing for the collection of a lot of different types of data—language data, interview answers, etc—will be difficult but necessary, as I want the “formation-in-action” to speak to concerns that are bigger than myself.

Research Design

My proposal will eventually serve as the following: an introduction and articulation of a felt difficulty I have experienced within the context of working as a writing center administrator and consultant, examining the overall implications of the felt difficulty in terms of the use of business discourse in a space that purports to embrace writing center theory and its roots in critical pedagogy. I foresee this project taking several years to complete, because of the amount of data that will be collected and interpreted. While the felt difficulty began with one writing center, where I worked for three years, pending IRB approval, I plan to discuss how business rhetoric is also adopted in other writing centers in Ohio. (The sites used for this project will be writing centers housed in public institutions of higher education.) I will also give examples of each domain's discourse – business and education – and describe why, using responses gathered from interviews along with information collected from relevant literature and other text-based data, the wholesale adoption and use of customer service rhetoric is antithetical to writing center pedagogy.

Thus, my research design will incorporate mixed methods: I will interview current and former writing center administrators to gather reflections and opinions on the use of business discourse, and I will use Critical Discourse Analysis to interpret language data from writing center promotional materials, websites, and correspondence between the host institutions and their writing centers as well as the writing center administrators and their tutoring staff.

Given the objectives of the business and marketing domain, there are educators and researchers who find it problematic that the same objectives are used within educational domains. Gary Miller's article, “The Two-way Street of Higher Education Commodification,” discusses the concerns that result from conflating the two domains; because each domain has origins in different ideologies, the results of their mixing are potentially problematic. According to Miller (2005), this use of business and marketing discourse serves a purpose in shifting the focus away from the Whitmanesque perspective of “the common good” that is the individual's learning about one's capabilities through exploration, and toward “[seeing] the common good as synonymous with the corporate good. Under this rubric, schooling is useful only as it benefits economic prosperity.” The student's personal growth may be an unintentional side effect, but it is by no means the main goal of educational settings that perpetuate the equating of the “common good” with “corporate good.”

Additionally, this project seeks to address a gap in existing research. Of the articles and books written about one domain influencing the other, none have been written with writing centers in mind; all of the research studies done thus far on the topic have discussed education as a whole (in particular Giroux, 1998; Miller, 2005) and not focused on writing centers in particular. However, I believe that what occurs in the microcosm of the writing center can serve to illustrate how the use of business and marketing rhetoric undermines the pedagogical aims of improving student writing. Here, I make plain my own ideology: It is my hypothesis that in order for students to challenge ideas, to think critically and engage compassionately and intelligently with the world at large, education must not be treated as a product but as a community interested in fostering creative development.

Due to conflicting goals of each discourse, this overlap of domains is potentially harmful to the pedagogical mission of writing centers – that mission, according to Wulff, Henderson, et al. (2011), is “to create a collaborative space that empowers all university students and a joint learning experience that benefits both writers and tutors.” A specific side-by-side comparison of each domain's rhetoric highlights the differences in aims, goals, and ideologies between the two domains. For example, within the business/marketing domain, according to Dën Hartog and Vurburg (1998), who are writing to instruct international business leaders how to use “corporate charisma” to be more successful,

Management processes and attitudes are seen as the key to successful implementation of a unilateral nicht pluralistischen [non-pluralist] idea of corporate vision.... A strong force of unification is needed in such a context. The understanding and acceptance of [this] vision and the result in increased identification and commitment at the level of the individual manager can act as “global glue.” (pp 358)

The Dën Hartog and Vurburg piece is considered among those in the business world to be a seminal work in business studies. This idea of “global glue” and the context surrounding it contradicts the mission of the University of Toledo's Writing Center, which states the following:

We believe that writing is a recursive activity involving several steps that include generating ideas, organizing thoughts, developing a first draft, rewriting, and editing.
We believe in non-directive tutorial styles that provide the opportunity for writers to maintain ownership of their own papers; writing consultants serve as an audience instead of as editors or proofreaders.
We believe in the importance of being responsive to the individual needs of a student at whatever cognitive level s/he may be as a writer.
We believe that writers develop writing skills best when they are in a supportive environment surrounded by other writers who seek to encourage clear expression of ideas.
We believe that writers should learn to use the vocabulary, organization and format specific to the academic discipline in which they are writing.

These beliefs, listed on the Writing Center's website and on their promotional materials, align well with conventional writing center discourse and its expectations, particularly as outlined in Irene Clark's (1990) scholarship, that writing centers serve to empower students through self-motivated, “non-directive” process, meaning that tutors serve as guides and not managers, emphasizing personal development through collaboration. The emphasis on creating and maintaining a supportive, collaborative environment runs contrary to the business/marketing language of maintaining a “unilateral non-pluralist idea of corporate vision” (Dën Hartog & Vurburg,1998).

The above comparison is a brief example of a text-based interpretation using Critical Discourse Analysis as a method. I will be performing more text-based analyses of promotional materials during the course of the project. Once I receive IRB approval to interview writing center administrators, I plan to ask them how they use business discourse in their writing center spaces, including in meetings with their tutoring staff and other administrators. I want to better understand their feelings on such discourse use and its influence on the pedagogical missions of the writing center: Do administrators believe that the “leadership” approach outlined by Dën Hartog and Vurburg should be modeled in educational settings? Why or why not? How do they interpret such an approach? What does it look like in action at their writing center? I hope to learn more about the complexity of the conflation of these domains through interviewing and developing relationships with other writing center administrators during the course of this project.

Week 8

Behold, a disgusting, wonderful preview of my presentation tomorrow... I tried to do a comic but was in over my head. In the comments below, feel free to speculate on what all of this might mean. (A larger version is available here.)

Week 7

With Blythe's “Composing Activist Research,” I found it interesting to think about the complications of “wicked problems” and how they beget other “wicked problems.” It's vital to see the complexity before teasing-out and then addressing the different parts, with as much compassion as possible, in order to prevent more problems from emerging. Patience and dedication must come before meeting immediate deadlines. Also, how do we overcome our work being seen as service instead of research (278)? Blythe suggests that we use unconventional methods. Maybe when we come up with studies that should truly be long-term, we need be transparent in our proposals that we intend to stick with this study for the long haul. “What is true for service learning is true for activist research... Many problems that a community faces are long term exigencies that cannot be resolved in a 16-week semester” (279). If I'm reading correctly, sometimes this will mean that what we publish will have to be a snapshot or glimpse into a larger, ongoing work, in order for us to facilitate compassionate research. Certainly, no matter what, sound ethics have to be woven throughout the epistemology and methods. Ultimately, we have to employ a Edmond Jabèsian epistemology toward research practices: research is cyclical, always inviting more questions and engaging in conversations.

Meanwhile, Teston's “Considering Confidentiality in Research Design” offers more insights into how this long-term process can look. On page 315, for instance, she states, “any theories built [during the research process] are the result [...] of months' worth of data collection, coding, and comparisons and not a result of having cherry-picked specific data points in order to prove a hypothesis and x,y, or z.” This statement certainly supports Blythe's conclusions above. I think that Teston's insight is a helpful reminder that we researchers, new or seasoned or somewhere in the middle, aren't just going to pick and choose what works and what doesn't in terms of answering our research questions. However, I worry that we aren't paying enough attention to human error. Teston is requesting that we fully trust the researcher and his/her choices and rely on the researcher’s “personal worth as an observer and interpreter” (pp 308). That said, I have little issue appreciating and finding Teston’s research creditable. Her work seems thorough, complex, and respectful of the communities involved. However, I believe we should acknowledge that as readers, we assume that the researcher’s interpretation of events is “the whole truth” when it comes to researching these types of sites, especially if we readers are not fluent in the Discourses or genres that are being examined. Nevertheless, Teston does take a lot of time being transparent about her privileged position by stating that her methods allow for her research to be reviewed but not replicated. She also states that she is not presenting a protocol, and her work is quite reflexive in that she takes us through her entire research process. I simply think that we should be careful to acknowledge our own responsibility in believing someone else's research wholesale and what we compromise in doing so, particularly with regards to sites in Discourses outside our initial expertise.

Grabill’s “Community-Based Research and the Importance of a Research Stance” adds further complication to this notion of accountability and perhaps my concerns about human error. There's a difference between traditional research and community-based research, according to Grabill, and he does an interesting job explaining that dichotomy. I'm interested in his thoughts on using ethnography as a method to highlight a need for community outreach, the genuine development of relationships. So often we've read “community-based” studies that seemed to suggest that the community was abandoned after the project was finished. I'm reminded of Blakeslee and Fleischer's discussions of building rapport at the site and how developing relationships with the community you're researching is important. Considering how our research affects participants in the long-term is something that should take center stage in our planning and designing. In a sense, by keeping our 'felt difficulties' in mind throughout our research process, we're allowing for research that is richer and wider in scope and influence; I think there might be a tendency to move slightly past our initial reasons for wanting to explore something once we're out collecting and interpreting data. Perhaps we can keep those “wicked problems” Blythe talked about at bay if we're constantly checking-in and not taking participants and information for granted.

Week 6

Blakeslee, Ann M.; Fleischer, Cathy (2009-03-04). Becoming a Writing Researcher. Taylor and Francis.

First of all, I apologize for being late getting this posted. I've had a few set-backs recently, including some technical difficulties. Thanks for understanding.

Now that I have decided to expand on a research project I began last semester, about the conflation of business and education discourses and whether/how it's problematic, I find particular sections of this book really enlightening. The discussion on pp. 27-28 regarding “productive ways to formulate and phrase research questions” is an example; the authors break-down MacLean and Mohr's (1999) process into manageable baby steps that make the whole exercise seem less daunting:

They start by suggesting that you take your general topic or problem and write it as three questions beginning with each of the following phrases:

• What happens when … ?
• How … ?
• What is … ?

Each beginning, they say, implies a slightly different approach to the problem. "What happens when … " and "How … " questions imply observational and descriptive approaches to your inquiry (i.e., "What happens when students are given time in-class to work together in peer critique groups?" or "How do technical writers take their audiences into account when creating documents?") "What is … " questions, on the other hand, imply more of a re-examination of concepts in the field, often in more theoretical ways (i.e., "What are peer critique groups?" or "What is usability?"). We have found that asking researchers to start with these phrases can help reduce some of the common problems that occur with the language of questions (e.g., wording questions so the answer is "yes" or "no," or using wording that already implies the answer to the question).

Developing research questions has been really difficult for me so far, because at first, I end up implying the answer to my questions during the process of writing them, which seems disingenuous and sloppy at the same time. By re-framing the questions in the above ways, I've simultaneously made things easier on myself while also allowing for more triangulation to take place. Later, Blakeslee and Fleischer talk about the importance of researchers knowing their lenses and pre-conceived notions going into a project. Ultimately, we are venturing into unknown territory, even if we have certain expectations of how things are going to go. We can only anticipate so much. There will be many snags and “ah-ha!” moments along the way. Our research questions need to accommodate those engagements. I wonder if it's sacrilegious to have somewhat flexible research questions to start out with and modify them as you see what the initial data uncovers. While I think that some veteran researchers would say that it's perfectly OK to have specific-yet-mallable questions, deep down I worry that it's unprofessional to admit that we sometimes have to amp-up our recursiveness in that way.

On page 52 begins a conversation about choosing an appropriate and adequate setting for one's research. While picking a site for research seems like a no-brainer, this discussion speaks to my concerns about looking in my own backyard, so to speak, for researchable topics. I continue to ask myself, “Is it OK to look to my own classrooms, my own writing commons, etc, for 'felt difficulties'?” So many other researchers have done just that – explored their surroundings more closely – but, particularly upon receiving CITI training and talking with others in my field, I can't help but wonder if I need to expand my horizons. This practice seems risky, especially because I am so new to gathering my own data. Again, Blakeslee and Fleischer help ease my mind:

Identifying a setting: Think about the setting you would like to research. Why is it a good setting for your research question? What are some things you think you will need to do to negotiate entry into the setting? Consider the following:

• With and from whom will you need to talk and seek approvals? If you are not sure, whom can you ask?
• What concerns are those individuals likely to have, and how will you address those concerns?
• How will you establish rapport with these individuals? What can you do to facilitate establishing a good rapport with them?

With these questions in mind, I can decide how I want to proceed after I've chosen a setting. I also have to keep in mind the community at large, or at least the community who benefits most from my research questions and their answers. Knowing how those individuals will be affected, hopefully positively, allows me to more successfully build rapport. Because I'm looking at the discourse used in writing centers, and because I happen to be one of the new assistant directors in this setting, I have a great opportunity to build rapport with this community by trying to address their concerns with my research: with the overlap of domains taking place, with business/marketing rhetoric picking up momentum and gaining agency in educational settings such as the writing center, how will various learning communities be affected by these new situations? I want my findings to foster dialogue, but I also want these findings to positively affect the people who are intimately tied to the setting. And in an important way, I'm intimately tied as well, both as researcher and as writing center administrator. By looking over the strategies discussed by Blakeslee and Fleischer, I hope to better understand my roles and how to develop them responsibly.

Week 5

This entry will serve as another placeholder. I am currently reading Nancy Naples' /Feminism and Method: Ethnography, Discourse Analysis, and Activist Research/ and writing a book review. While searching for some books with relevant intersections for my research interests, I came across this one, and think I've struck gold. Because I'm interested in implementing a mixed method with a focus on activism/political discourse, I think that Naples' book will be helpful. Naples seems to eloquently and transparently discuss her trials and tribulations through her 20+ years as an activist feminist researcher. So far, she's woven Third Wave feminist theory, from bell hooks to Chela Sandoval, with ethnography in various case studies exploring queerness, postcolonialism, and other topics. While I may or may not be deciding to look specifically at marginalized groups in my research this semester, in the future, I probably will look at writing studies with “the other” in mind. I'm particularly interested in Naples' discussion of political discourse analysis and how it can be used to assess the damage caused by the erasure or negation of the voices of people who have little power.

Week 4

Sperling and Calfee's book /Mixed Methods/ will be a useful tool as we bridge the gap between quantitative and qualitative practices. I think the breaking-down of the specific classroom studies, particularly how the examples are used in chapter four, can help us understand ways to make pointed research questions that can be answered using mixed methods; from there, there are strategies for “constructing a research design, a plan for collecting and organizing evidence relevant to a problem” while also maintaining balance between quantitative and qualitative (pp 49). Therefore, referring to what's addressed earlier in the book, starting with a good research question, in their view, can shift us from the general to the particular, from the broad to the specific, very easily, so long as we intend to use a balanced approach (pp 19). And that's interesting, because so often in writing studies, we read about the need for the scales to be tipped in favor of quantitative research (see: Haswell), because it can potentially add more legitimacy to our claims. So, in other words, according to Sperling and Calfee, we not only have to start with a question or set of questions that /invites/ mixed methods, the deliberate use of mixed methods will be what determines the legitimacy of our research, because there will always be a variety of different types of evidence to support a claim (pp 50-51).

When we decide to make use of narratives, for instance, we can strengthen that qualitative data by complementing it with statistics that illustrate the points that are being made. I think this is a really good point and one that I've been trying to internalize as a new researcher. For the past few months, I've been working on a research project about the use of business and marketing discourse in educational settings, specifically the in writing center, and how the conflation of these two domains -- marketing and education -- is potentially problematic and may harm the relationships between tutors and students. I would like to use the approaches Sperling and Calfee outline in this book to give my claims more weight and legitimacy: I have interviewed several writing center directors with whom I've worked in the past, and I've also performed some discourse analysis of writing center promotional materials and presentations, compared to various mission statements and pedagogical aims mentioned by administrative bodies. So, I've done a lot of leg work when it comes to gathering qualitative evidence, and I'm in the process of fine-tuning my analyst abilities by attaining skills in Prof. Dunmire's Discourse Analysis class this semester. However, I think I need to recursively go back and readjust my research questions so that I can use a more mixed methods approach, because I have yet to gather quantitative data, and as it stands, my project sounds one-sided and ideologically-motivated (in ways that are distracting -- I want the ideology/epistemology to be plain, but I don't want them to dominate/distract).

Another problem: I think it would be valuable for me to assess the "context in relation to research" (pp 59). I have not placed myself in the participants' shoes, so I do not know what it's like to answer my questions from their perspective. As "the researcher," I only understand the process of recording and interpreting their answers. I don't know what it's like to choose my answers carefully; if I were participating, I would be mindful of my word choices and how I represent myself and my institution (since a lot of my interviews have been with administrators). These are all factors I'm thinking about while reading. As I mentioned, I will have to go back and re-evaluate some of my choices as researcher, think about what exactly I want to say and why I want to say it, before going through the interviewing process again (this project is on-going).

In any case, I'm hopeful that the examples this book offers will help guide me through this process and other processes along the way. I agree that employing a solidly mixed methods approach can ultimately "provide protection against threats to validity," and as as a newbie researcher (pp 80), that is one of my primary concerns: While all research is going to be at least slightly flawed, I want to limit the amount of seriously flawed research I produce. Typically, I would type "haha," or "lol" after such a statement, to indicate nervous laughter. There has been research I've read that is incredibly dated and super racist, misogynist, and/or classist, etc, for example. Not everyone's research is going to stand the test of time, but I would like my research to be competently compiled and reasoned. I guess we'll see...

Week 3

I had a little bit of difficulty sitting down to write my entry for this week, not because I dislike the material we read – in fact, I find it really helpful – but because I have a hard time not thinking to myself, “Well, that's kind of a no-brainer.” I know that it *isn't* a no-brainer, because there are researchers who do not identify as feminist researchers and who don't employ feminist methods, but I think that practices such as reflexivity, reciprocity, and accountability are so vital to human subject research practice that I have a difficult time imagining any competent research taking place without those measures. Nevertheless, because “traditional research has silenced members of oppressed and marginalized groups,” our readings for this week, starting with Marshall and Rossman, share how various progressive research methods challenge the counter-productive and sometimes even harmful ways previous research was structured and conducted (pp 22-23). Even though steps have been taken toward a more inclusive and thorough research future, there is still a lot of work to be done (or undone). That said, Halse and Honey's “Unraveling Ethics” does an interesting job detailing how sometimes being an ethical feminist researcher is difficult. It's necessary, of course, but certain compromises have to be made to ensure that research maintains its integrity and respects its participants.

According to Halse and Honey, feminist methods allow for reflexivity and awareness of culture-based influences and factors on research, as shown with their example of previous studies invoking stigma and blame re: young women suffering from anorexia (pp 2145). When the focus shifts from individuals onto factors that influence those individuals, in this case those suffering from an eating disorder, real compassionate work can take place. Part of the crux of Halse and Honey's argument is that, in order to be fair and just toward people, researchers must decide to examine not just the effects but the societal, economical, political, and other conditional/environmental situations that cause problems worth our investigation.

The desire to be thorough while gathering data to answer a research question sometimes runs contrary to a researcher's desire to be ethical and compassionate; in those instances, it's important to weigh and consider what options are available (pp 2147): “Confronted with either abandoning our anxiety or our study, we opted for a compromise by adopting the broadest, most inclusive categor[ies] available.” So, transparency about the process and goals has to go hand-in-hand with putting the participants first, the latter of which sometimes involves compromise. If any part of the study involves putting participants' agency on the line, either the study needs to be deconstructed and assessed or, if the study depends on even a slight dismissal of agency, then the study needs to be abandoned. These standards are taking the aim of “doing no harm” to another level through checks and balances.

Hesse-Biber and Piatelli's “Holistic Reflexivity” further demonstrates the need for researchers to hold themselves accountable beyond IRB approval. Valuing process and product simultaneously, there's potential for compassionate research (pp 503-504). While reading, I appreciated the authors' candor and humility, qualities which aid in the ability to be empathetic to participants' needs. From the opening line after the introductory vignettes from each author, it's clear that reflexivity plays likely the most important role in research practice: “Reflexivity exposes the exercise of power throughout the *entire* research process” (pp 495). Thus, throughout the article, it's made plain how an acknowledgment of power dynamics coincides with developing sound methods, first by articulating and legitimizing one's conceptual framework to make it more aligned with objectivity. This revealing is achieved through self criticism and discovering whether the researcher exists as an insider or outsider in relation to participants. Traditional methods are, more often than not, “detached” when it comes to the researcher's role in participants' lives; he/she only served to observe and record and not identify with participants (pp 498). Moving away from that role and acknowledging that our presence in itself is affecting their lives in some way is already a step in a more progressive direction. I'm hopeful that by employing a lot of the reflexive measures discussed in the readings for class thus far, I can become a competent and compassionate researcher. While I do think that these practices should speak for themselves, their application is sometimes difficult. I hope I don't encounter too much difficulty as I enter this new (to me) space.

Week 2

Malcolm Gladwell's “Complexity and the Ten-Thousand-Hour Rule” was a fascinating read for several reasons, some of which alarm me as an academic who's still quite wet behind the ears. The path I've chosen toward “success,” whatever that means, will require a lot of patience, time, talent, and assistance. While reading the part of the article about “experts” receiving “help,” I thought about someone I know who told me once that part of his success was determined by certain important folks in his field and their ability to say yes to him. There were many who said no, so his trajectory has been shaped by those responses, too.

Even if I become uber talented at research and facilitate/write about the most interesting, relevant studies this side of the Mississippi, I have to submit my work for publication, and there's always the chance that editors – those who could “help” me, using Gladwell's term/point – will say no to my research. Even if it's “good,” it can still get rejected by those who have the power to reject me in my field. Throughout our academic journeys, there will be gatekeepers at various checkpoints. Some of them will permit us to proceed, and some of them will force us to go back and add more hours of practice, so that we can try again. So, I am feeling intimidated.

Further, at the end of the essay, Gladwell states, “In cognitively-demanding fields, there are no naturals,” which is also intimidating but also sort of comforting: good researchers are made, not born, and thus, since I'm not inherently equipped to conduct research, I'm starting off on the same level, relatively speaking, as others who are just getting started, those who are beginning to understand the intricate trappings of undertaking research. I need to continue to practice, which involves a lot of stumbling and reassessing; I may not become the best of the best, but I can get better, particularly with reflexivity and humility.

My tendency to value reflexivity and humility is what makes me identify so much as a feminist, both within a research context and in general. In addition, Kitch's piece, “Feminist Interdisciplinary Approaches to Knowledge Building,” reminds me that the gatekeepers I described above, who I will encounter throughout my experience as a researcher, will often be men and/or folks who are determined to maintain patriarchal standards in terms of the direction of the field.

Kitch offers this as an anecdotal example (which is one of many): “Even when women were somehow allowed into the knowledge base or literary canon, Spencer (1981) observed, it was always on men's terms.” Kitch continues to describe Spencer's articulation of women “gaining permission” to “enter” constructed spaces or domains of knowledge that were seen as male, only to offer useful terminology and discourse to the discipline (in this case, literary criticism and theory). Allow me to share something from my own experience, as a newbie to Kent and to this field. I naively thought that my pursuit of a PhD would severely limit my encounters with misogyny; however, there have been a few instances that my feminist methodology, rooted in feminist theory, was questioned, not because I was using those methods incorrectly (that sort of feedback is always welcome, because I'm still learning!) but because they were seen as substandard methods, with origins in a discipline (feminist theory) that was more of a “stance” than an actual theory. Thus, I find intriguing Kitch's call to go beyond self-reflective feminist research practices as a possible way to counteract the ways in which feminist methodology is undermined: there needs to be interrogation and interaction amongst disciplines in order for change to “stick,” in order for it to be meaningful (pp 131).

Similarly, Sullivan and Porter's “Articulating Methodology as Praxis” asks researchers to be reflexive and thorough regarding the methods they choose, examining such important choices because the “traditional rules” of research should be assessed before they're used; new researchers in particular shouldn't assume that it's an unnecessary risk to challenge the status quo in terms of research practices (pp 57). That is why their call for interrogation and interaction amongst disciplines/research practices is something they identify as a feminist process: the act of constructing knowledge needs to be productive, and that productivity can only mean that those agents involved in the construction are in conversation with one another. One can reshape and radicalize “traditional rules” in order to answer more abstract questions, and the act of reshaping/radicalizing is legitimate. When feminist researchers learn how to meaningfully gather and interpret data to problematize the status quo of their field, they're able to go beyond self-reflective practice and open the door for reciprocity in other ways, namely engaging in conversations with other researchers and the studies themselves. I hope that I, as one newbie feminist researcher, can participate in these spaces without my presence and methods being called into question, and without worry that I need permission in order to practice. In the meantime, I will continue to hone my skills and ask questions, and I may reach at least 10,000 hours before I realize it. Let's hope that those hours aren't invisible.

Week 1

I'm still working out the kinks of how I would like to structure these responses. Thank you for tolerating my “feeling around”!

Bazerman, Charles. "Theories of the Middle Range..." -- The section of this article that I will probably return to frequently defines the different levels of research questions and their situation in the researcher's study; here, Bazerman is referencing and extrapolating on Merton (1963). He offers thorough and engaging examples of each level or step in the process: Originating questions, specifying questions, committing to a focused research episode, uncovering a strategic research site, and developing site-specific questions. The procedure for asking the “right” questions for the proposed study varies from researcher to researcher; the epistemology and methodology are interconnected and contingent on the aims and goals of the researcher. And there will be times that certain research questions cannot be answered given the data gathered and analyzed; so new projects are born. I'm particularly interested in what is stated about the process of asking site-specific questions, that they “shape research design and methodology” (pp 306). It sounds like a given, but the fate of any given project rests on whether the research questions are “good,” and whether they're “good” relies on many factors: how will the answers influence the field? the community at large? And again, those factors rely on the researcher's own ideology and relationship to said field and community. Thus, the researcher wields a lot of power, as I learned in Reading and Interpreting Research this past fall. How that power is used is just as if not more important than the study itself.

Haswell, Richard. "NCTE/CCCCs Recent War on Scholarship." -- Haswell makes the argument that, in order for our field to gain momentum and be taken seriously by the rest of the academy, we mustn't distance ourselves from RAD scholarship; on the contrary, it's imperative that we undertake more RAD studies to demonstrate that rhetoric scholars are also "serious about facts" (pp 219). While RAD research has enjoyed nominal support, Haswell argues, while quoting Carter (1992), that during the past twenty years, RAD has been undermined in favor of other scholarship; more recent scholarship has been more individual and narrative-like, with a tendency to simply "reveal ourselves to ourselves" without going beyond that. Although I'm a novice, I would argue that more of a balance is in order: there are instances where more individual and/or narrative-like reports are appropriate, and there are instances where RAD is better-suited; not every study can solidly be one or the other. Haswell's perspective relies on the common assumption among academics that rhetoric and other humanities-oriented subjects are somehow 'less serious' and more subjective than hard science. He is understandably concerned with how our scholarship might look more like navel-gazing than like something that can be influential beyond composition classrooms and writing studies in general. Will the push for more RAD studies better situate and legitimize our field against our more 'objective' peers? I'm concerned about the binaries in place: subjective versus objective, social science versus hard/physical science, etc. What are the implications of such dichotomies? that subjective and social are inferior? Further, while operating within these binaries, there's little room for shades of gray, which is problematic when we're talking about subjects like writing pedagogy; what occurs in the composition classroom cannot be defined in black and white terms, for instance. While I ultimately agree with Haswell, that our field needs to incorporate more RAD research, to accompany such practices as archival research, I also believe that the field benefits from a diversity of studies, not just RAD or not just narrative, or social, or theoretical.

Smagorinsky, Peter. “The Method Section as Conceptual Epicenter in Constructing Social Science Research Reports.” -- While there have been times that I've thought of the epistemology, results, and discussion sections of a study most “important” or at least the most interesting, re: the implications for the field at large, I appreciate Smagorinsky's argument that “studies work best when an author poses a limited sense of answerable questions and then aligns the paper around them” (406). The methods and questions need to be tight, otherwise the whole study and its purpose are called into question. It sounds somewhat obvious writing it out, but while reading various research articles and breaking them into their relevant sections, it becomes clear how the the methods section becomes the anchor. We really shouldn’t depend on our readers to assume how we came to draw our conclusions; it's imperative to be explicit on how we go from one point to the next. Thus, I found myself thinking about the information that is missing from studies I've read. Smagorinsky discusses that although the setting of a study is important, it often does not account for the considerations a researcher may neglect, including factors he/she may find insignificant but may impact the entire group of potential subjects. He went on to specifically talk about a set of studies he did on students involved in the witness protection program (pp 404). The context of the students’ experiences were essential to the study but could not be published. I realize that not all researchers find value in utilizing the context of their subjects’ circumstances. However, how does one do a study based on a sampling of people in witness protection without acknowledging the effect witness protection will have on the results? In the case of the students in the witness protection program, their issues with drugs and alcohol were directly related to their stay in witness protection. Not acknowledging this makes me wonder how the results of the study may have been misinterpreted by someone who lacked important bits of information. These observations are just food for thought in terms of how our methodological choices impact our take-aways.

Takayoshi, Tomlinson, and Castillo. “The Construction of Research Problems and Methods” – In this article, a feminist method is implemented, which establishes that a responsible researcher must make transparent his/her ideological perspective in order to legitimize the intentions of the researcher, the questions that are raised and why they are important to investigate; specifically, "if researchers are to be in control of their research practice, it is crucial to explore (and understand) the roles of our epistemological, political, and ideological assumptions and commitments, as well as our own experiences and knowledge, play in the shaping of our problems and questions." (pp 98) In thinking about my own epistemological choices in the little bit of research I've started to conduct, I've attempted to make plain my “motives,” so that my purposes are made clear and accessible. Like the authors, I am also interested in reflexivity while conducting my own research. I believe that their discussion of reflexivity connects well with Smagorinsky in that by making the methods section the backbone of a study, a researcher is then able to focus-in on any ethical incongruities that may arise.

I'm hoping to get a better grasp of Anderson's “Simple Gifts” through class discussion. I found the article fascinating, but I wasn't sure how to be thoughtful in talking about it here. Hopefully, my next posts will weave the articles together rather than talk about them in alphabetical order in a sterile way. As I said, I'm still trying to figure out how I best want to represent myself in this space. I look forward to finishing reading everyone else's blog.

Happy Writing and Researching!

Place Holder/Introduction

For my Research Design class, I'm supposed to keep a blog with my reflections, questions, and anything else that may crop up as I read about and eventually conduct my own research. I'm nervous; because my background is in literature, theory, and creative writing, I haven't conducted my own research involving human subjects before... So, I have a lot to learn in this class! Wish me luck!