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!