I found Bishop's chapters 1-2 a rather scientific introduction to ethnographic writing research. My experience with ethnography has been from an anthropological perspective, where evaluation and assessment of programs isn't the focus. Instead, cultural immersion is stressed. Bishop's book (so far) seems limited in that the ethnographic research she mentions all seems to be about evaluating writing programs. That's a fine focus for her, though I wish the book had more of a focus on cultural and historical research. P. 7 offers a great quote about living and telling stories, as well as reliving them. I find the quotes a distraction in this book, though some are useful and offer inspiration for the dissertation.
The first chapter of Lauer and Asher provided a rather detailed and positive outlook on the role of empirical and quantitative research, though somehow composition doesn't seem to so neatly lend itself to statistical analysis. The key here is neatly. We can do such research, certainly, and the results will be useful at times.
Johanek is quite pessimistic about anecdotes, and I found her outlook disheartening. She mentions we need not be numbers vs. narrative in our research methods, though she doesn't always seem to stay true to that statement. I do appreciate how she tries to think beyond the current debates in composition research, however.
Overall, I see a danger in relying too heavily on qualitative research. When does valuing all student voices and methods of writing become the point where we validate "bad" writing in our classes? On the other hand, how much trust do we really want to put in numbers? The answer is one I'll learn more about (though never completely solve) as I read on in the course.
1 comment:
Part of the way we can reconcile the qualitative and the quantitative may be through an emphasis on triangulation, the idea that it takes several methods to address a research question adequately, and that any way of seeing is a way of not seeing, as Kenneth Burke said. How might a survey, for instance, lead into other more focused research questions in a case study? How might an observation help as well? At the same time, it's true that the nature of the writing process and the student-centered nature of the writing classroom lends itself to the thick description of ethnographic and other descriptive research. Perhaps the thing to consider is what variables comprise the study and how will quantitative measures, grades, etc., complement or perhaps even confirm those less generalizable conclusions from case studies and ethnographies?
Thanks, Bethany.
Post a Comment