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!