Writing Research & Methods

When I started this course I knew that it was going to be challenging. I was prepared for this course to be much harder than the Writing Theories class that I took in the fall. This course was just as challenging as I expected but the challenges were manageable. If I don't remember anything else in this course I will remember how to research with a specific purpose. I read a lot of articles this semester about writing theories and practices the research part of this course led by my own interests and questions. This is where I did the most meaningful work. The work that got me thinking about what is going to happen at the end. I had no idea what I wanted my thesis to be in January. Truthfully, I still don't know what for sure but the work I've done over the course of this class has lead me in the right direction that will guide me towards my end goal in this course of my learning. I didn't have any expectations for this semester other than the fact that I kne...

It is no secret that we live in a digital world. This digital world we live in is a massive. It has become a part of our reality that we exist in every day. The articles we read this week What is Digital Humanities and What's it Doing in English Departments? by Matthew G. Kirschenbaum and The Literary, the Humanities, the Digital: Toward a Research Agenda for Digital Literary Studies gave a very interesting perspective into this particular area of study.  All semester I had heard Dr. Zamora mention this term Digital Humanities but I really didn't understand what it meant. So I was very pleased to have the opportunity to learn more about it through these works. Initially, my first takeaway from the Kirschenbaum article was this visual image of humans in the digital world.    via GIPHY As a middle school english teacher it never dawned on me that digital humanities was not welcomed in an English classroom. I welcome the opportunities to bring my class into th...

After seeing the titles of this week's reading selections I was excited to read them in preparation for Hope's presentation. We are smack dab in the middle of writing our proposals and this is extremely rigorous work. It was a welcome break to think with the other side of my brain for a moment. The Lit Review is every bit as challenging as Dr. Zamora told us it would be. I think it is because while we are considering the works that will help us with our thesis we have so many angles and lens to look through. And it is truly hard not to give every text a close read from start to finish. Knowing and understanding what you need and why this bit of information is useful and necessary to you is the   tough. It requires some serious analyzing every step of the way. I must admit that I really do appreciate the process and I am learning so much, as cliche as it may sound from doing this work. via GIPHY This first excerpt I read was from the book titled, On Writing Well by Wil...

The social climate in our country is the equivalent to a pot of stew that is on the verge of boiling over. I would go as far as to argue that the climate is more like a bomb waiting to explode. Students on any grade level of the academic spectrum are over exposed this environment. You can’t turn on the TV without hearing about the happenings of our newest President and the cast of characters starring in his presidency. This coupled with a country that has never been more racially divided in recent years. It is hard to be oblivious to the talks of terrorists, building walls, dropping bombs, women’s rights, public education and other hot button issues. So my question to this as an educator is how do we use this information or the world around us to teach? You can’t ignore it. Teachers can’t close off their classrooms from the world around them. We can thank the internet for that. So since we can’t shut it out, how do we bring it in? Those probing questions led me to the selection o...

This week Mary Kate selected the reading. Our reading were the following;  Developing Students’ Critical Literacy: Exploring Identify Construction in Young Adult Fiction  by Thomas W. Bean and Karen  Moni  Online Fan Fiction, Global Identities, and Imagination  by Rebecca Black.  In the first reading, Developing Students' Critical Literacry:Exploring Identity  Construction in  Young Adult  Fiction,  the following stood out to me:    "First, identity is no longer anchored to stable employment, communities, or institutions. Rather, identity is constructed through the properties of individual action car- ried out—more often than not for urban teens— in nonplaces like malls, train stations, and airports. Identity is now a matter of self- construction amidst unstable times, mores, and global consumerism. "(642) The idea that identity is self-constructed based on outside  global   influences ...

I have given a lot of thought to my MA thesis project. Especially since my reasons for continuing my graduate study was to become a better writer. Truthfully, I wish I could just get an MA in creative writing. But since that is not an option for me, I have to reconsider what I care enough about to research.  I'm a middle school teacher. A reading and writing teacher. This year I was afforded the opportunity to step out of that role and into the role of history/slash writing teacher. Making the move out a tested subject gives me a little more freedom to teach things I'm passionate about. This is a gift and a curse. Since I am not in a tested subject I do not get all of the resources as the ELA or Math teachers so I can't stay on trend and get the resources that I need.  So, after much consideration I think I've found something that I want to research. Given the political climate of our country I have been obsessed with all things politics. The things that are takin...

This week we read an excerpt from “Grounded Theory: A Critical Research Methodology” by Joyce Magnotto Neff in  Under Construction: Working at the Intersection of Composition Theory, Research, and Practice. It made me think that reflect on why we do the work that we do. What makes us take the theories into practice. The main takeaway from me was the grounded theory methodology. The data driven principals that the methodology is founded on lends itself to the opportunity to test this theory out. Data is important when looking at the trends in writing and trying to find a way to improve both the teaching and the actual doing of writing.  There is so much guesswork in the teaching of writing instruction because of the complexity of human activity. As a result, I think it is important to have a structured lens in which to look at the data. "Grounded theory methodology insists that no matter how general-- how broad in scope or abstract -- the theory, it should be developed in...

Joanne Addison and James Sharon McGee really picked apart and dissected everything I had been studying researching and learning in my writing instruction professional development classes. Over the past few years the Common Core Standards have taken over the world of education. And now, a little more than five years later there is talk of doing away with it all together. What the CCS ushered in was a new way in which we taught and thought about student writing in terns of their preparedness for college. In a nutshell I learned that our students, especially those coming from an urban school district are not prepared for college writing.  This information is neither surprising nor shocking. I did find it however, troubling that everyone knows this to be a a fact. " The most highly satisfied faculty are those at the private high school, and the least satisfied those at the urban high school."  Why is this? Why is it that we can recognize the disparity but we still even wit...

This week's readings were selected by Andaiye. She chose an excerpt from a book, Teacher Research for Better Schools titled, Out of Our Experience:Useful Theory and the other was a piece written by Davida Charney titled, Empiricism Is Not a Four Letter Word. Both pieces dealt with research theories and ways to analyze practices and research methodologies.  Before I could fully understand and dissect the Charney piece I had to look up the word empiricism. And in my research I discovered that it means, "t he theory that all knowledge is derived from sense-experience.  " This really put things into perspective for me. Now I was ready to tackle the article-- which was tough to read as it was loaded with jargon.  The argument that they are making in the text is that,  "the fallibility of our knowledge--or the thesis that all knowledge is guesswork..."   This really stood out to me. Through research you learn.  Research allows t...

This week, I was able to go back and give a second reading to the James P. Purdy and Joyce R. Walker article titled, Liminal Spaces and Research Identity. Clearly, I didn't read the fine print in the posted directions from Dr. Zamora's previous blog, as I referenced this article in my last post. But, nonetheless I was given another opportunity to look at this text online with an online tool whose features felt remotely familiar to me. Last week I read the article and wrote down the interesting quotes in my notebook that stuck out to me and I thought warranted further analysis. And while I was doing so I cursed myself for not having any more ink in my home printer. When I had gone to work on Monday I had hoped that I would be able to print there so I could read the text in a manner that was more familiar to me -- you know with a highlighter and making annotations in the margins. Sadly, I couldn't print there either. I had ink at work but no paper. So I was never afforde...

Dr. Zamora asked us how we identified ourself as a research student. Yikes! Talk about an open-ended question. I really didn't know how I identified myself as a researcher. And it was because I have an old school view on what it means to be a researcher. After our discussion I find that I am stuck in the past constraints of what it means to be a researcher.  This week's article titled, Liminal Spaces and Research Identity by James Purdy and Joyce Walker talks about a scholarly identity as it relates to ones research identity. Before I could read this article and fully immerse myself in the reading I had to do a bit of research to understand what is even meant by liminal spaces.  According to inaliminalspace.org, " A liminal space is the time between the ‘what was’ and the ‘next.’ It is a place of transition, waiting, and not knowing." From the definition it seems like I am caught in a liminal space of sorts. My thinking of what a researcher's identity can...