Writing Research & Methods

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...