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...