Chapter 3 Lauer

I'll discuss Flori and Clark's ethnography since I find writing at the elementary school level fascinating. Their research question involved asking why children's enjoyment and sense of competence declined, even though their writing improved, according to the National Assessment of Education progress in 1981. The subjects included second and third-grade students, all in a Midwestern city at a land grant university. This was an open classroom, and the economic status of the children varied. Regarding context, the researchers chose this site because they believed it would be an ideal place to study attitudes towards writing. Student backgrounds, the role of writing in building community, and the options provided by the room set up helped Florio and Clark identify four functions of writing. They include the following: participating in the community, knowing oneself and others, occupying free time, and demonstrating academic competence. To collect their data, they used ethnography, and the final report even included samples of students' writing. A lot of "thick description" was used in the data section as well. They determined that social context of the classroom helps or hinders the writing process, a conclusion that seems completely obvious. Because the open classroom was an atypical setup, I question just how we might generalize (if we do so) to a larger population. Also, the classroom seems rather progressive, and being on university grounds might mean these students are exposed to a writing program stronger than many other programs in the nation. Typically, I have found that schools connected with universities do quite well.

I'm also not convinced that the research question was exactly what needed to be studied. It seems that educators can usually raise scores or "quality" of work, but this would, I expect, often come at the expense of a student's enjoyment of the subject. Surely the massive testing common in today's elementary schools causes students to like certain subjects less, though I'm also sure their test scores go up when they are drilled on information. It seems like this study really could have touched more upon what educators might do (or do already) to help retain or create a student's sense of enjoyment and perceived competence in a subject.