Writing Research & Methods

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...