For my class presentation on ethnography/qualitative method(ologies) this evening:
Monthly Archives: February 2012
Unlearning a “One-Size-Fits-All” Educational Model
I’ve already blogged about Davidson’s Now You See It, but we’re reading it for my Universal Design in Education class. I responded to it on my class blog and thought I’d cross-post some ideas about the book from a DS lens.
In Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn, Cathy Davidson asks us to rethink our students’ abilities. She writes, “Where [neuroscientists] perceive the shortcomings of the individual, I sense opportunity for collaboration. If we see selectively but we don’t all select the same things to see, that also means we don’t all miss the same things” (2). There are many important threads within this book, but in terms of dis/ability, I think there are three themes worth exploring deeper: cultural values, pedagogical practices, and assessment.
First, we must unlearn our cultural values. The current 21st-century narrative blames technology for the “dumbing down” of students (10). Because of this narrative, Davidson argues that we are “more likely to label [students] with a disability when they can’t be categorized by our present system, but how we think about disability is actually a window onto how attention blindness keeps us tethered to a system that isn’t working” (10). This is where unlearning comes in.
Unlearning is a prominent theme here, “required when the world or your circumstances in that world have changed so completely that your old habits now hold you back” (19). For me, unlearning is also required when our cultural narrative devalues certain abilities. This is partially why Davidson’s notion of “collaboration by difference” is so important. She writes, “Collaboration by difference respects and rewards different forms and levels of expertise, perspective, culture, age, ability, and insight, treating difference not as a deficit but as a point of distinction” (100). Instead of devaluing students who lack particular abilities, collaboration by difference places students with different abilities together in settings where they work together on a project that requires all of their particular abilities. In order to enact this kind of participatory collaboration, though, we have to unlearn our pedagogical practices.
Davidson seeks to answer the question, “What if instead of telling [students] what they should know, we asked them?” (62). In the case of Duke’s iPod experiment, we see students in control of their own learning. Davidson describes the experiment as an investment in teaching: “one that didn’t require the student to always face forward, learn from on high, memorize what was already a given, or accept knowledge as something predetermined and passively absorbed” (69). For students, this meant new opportunities to learn information in ways that best benefitted them, providing them with technology that they could use to enhance and support their own learning—a nice reminder of the benefits of UDL and the multiple options it provides.
Davidson argues that a “one-size-fits-all model of standards” that is unbending to students’ particular needs is partially to blame for student failure (77). Perhaps this is why Manhattan’s Quest 2 Learn (Q2L) is so successful. Using gaming principles that engage students in games that require strategy, problem solving, and teamwork allows students to benefit from each other’s strengths. The same could be said for the success of the Voyager Academy. Here, each child is responsible for learning, for self-controlling and self-monitoring her learning processes. My favorite example of this participatory learning is the “disruptive” boy:
He’s been doing well today, but I learn he’s smart and energetic enough to turn the class upside down with his antics. He’s been learning, lately, how to tell for himself when he’s in a disruptive mood, and he has a deal going with Mr. Germain. If he feels like he cannot control himself, he’s allowed to just walk away and go work by himself at the computer. He doesn’t have to ask permission. All he needs to do is take himself out of the situation where he’ll be disruptive. It’s a public pact: Everyone knows it. 135
For me, this example provides an excellent opportunity to reflect on our values: What are the goals of teaching? Of learning? How do we set up our own classrooms to support and benefit all of our students? Davidson argues that all students can succeed in the 21st-century classroom as long as the curriculum moves away from standardization, focusing instead on the collaborative, intellectual work that occurs outside the classroom.
This brings me to the last point: assessment. It is clear within this book (and in her real-life endeavors) that Davidson is no supporter of standardized testing, and in “How We Measure,” she offers alternatives. First, she argues for a stop to end-of-grade exams, opting instead for tests that challenge the “complex, connected, and interactive skills” of the 21st century (125). Second, she argues that we need to imagine assessment in ways that will measure “practical, real-world skills” such as communicating with others, making sound judgments, and determining credibility (127-8). Instead of “dumbing down” students at the end of the year, Davidson suggests adding a “boss-level challenge” that would allow students to participate in decentered, challenging, and collaborative learning (131). All of these alternatives emphasize the importance of testing students not for how much they can memorize or regurgitate on a piece of paper. Instead, these alternatives push students to engage with the material, providing learning opportunities for students who are failed by standardized tests.
What I like best about Davidson’s approach to testing is her willingness to challenge what constitutes “failure.” She asks, “By what logic would failing a test in a language other than the one spoken in your home constitute a failure for you as well as for your teachers, your classmates, and your entire school?” (94), a question similar to some of the discussions we’ve had about UD assessment practices—e.g. offering technology to scaffold, providing testing accommodations for all students, and using alternative assessments such as portfolios. If we have different tests, students with different abilities have more opportunities to perform in ways that more accurately measured their knowledge. By unlearning our 20th-century values of ability, pedagogy, and assessment, we provide all of our students with more genuine and fair opportunities to learn and demonstrate that learning in 21st-century contexts.
Davidson, Cathy N. Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn. New York, NY: Viking, 2011.
Digging in the Archives: Student Disability Organizations
One of my classes this semester is the Social History of Rhetoric. For our final project, we are writing a social history. Obviously, it will be abbreviated by time and length constraints, but nonetheless, I’m excited.
I’ve decided to do a project involving the SU archives; specifically, a project that looks at disability advocacy on campus. On paper, disability advocacy seems prominent at Syracuse. It is present within academic life—through the Disability Studies Program (the first DS program in the United States) and the Disability Law and Policy Program. Disability is also widely represented through campus and community organizations. According to the DSP website, there are approximately fourteen university-affiliated organizations and centers that focus on disability, advocacy, and disability-related issues.
Center on Human Policy (thechp.syr.edu)
It is this influx of organizations—a mix between university, faculty, student, and community interests—that I plan to explore within my social history project. Specifically, I am interested in looking at the role that students have played in supporting and advocating disability rights through these organizations. I imagine the local establishment of the Center on Human Policy in 1971 has greatly impacted Syracuse students’ attention toward disability advocacy issues. The creation of the center, however, does not itself assure a strong student interest.
How did SU students become so involved, at least through organizations, with disability rights issues? How are these student organizations working toward social change?
As I’ve learned more about disability rights and (self-)advocacy, I’ve become increasingly interested in the way disability narratives are constructed:
Beyond Compliance Coordinating Committee (bccc.syr.edu)
- Who tells them?
- How are they framed?
- How is the “voice” of disability manifested?
- What do we gain from these histories?
The purpose of this project, then, is an attempt to bridge my personal interests with disability narratives with the local (and historical) establishment of student-run, disability-related organizations on the SU campus.
My research questions will depend a lot on what materials I find, but I do have some tentative originating questions:
- In many ways, students with disabilities are Othered—low percentages of students with disabilities attend college and of those who do, few receive the “reasonable” accommodations they need. In The Practice of Everyday Life, de Certeau argues that “the space of a tactic is the space of the other” (37) and is determined by “the absence of power” (38). In what ways do SU’s student disability organizations occupy tactical spaces? How do they gain power through their institutional affiliations? How is this power negotiated?
- In “Requirements, Problems, and Strategies: A Theory of Persuasion for Social Movements,” Simons defines a social movement as “an uninstitutionalized collectivity that mobilizes for action to implement a program for the reconstruction of social norms and values” (36). How do university-affiliated organizations complicate this definition? How do these student organizations identify with, and differ from, larger social movements (such as the Disability Rights Movement)?
- What social, cultural, and political factors have shaped disability organizations over the years? How do these shifts relate to a larger understanding of the state of disability advocacy, both on campuses and within communities?
- How do student disability advocacy organizations employ rhetoric to organize and enact social change? In terms of genres, how do these groups use similar or different rhetorical moves? Do these moves differ from those made by other student advocacy groups?
I recognize that, with time constraints, this is an abbreviated archival project. However, I think this will project will provide me an opportunity to learn more about Syracuse’s advocacy history and how those historical factors and events have informed contemporary understandings of disability advocacy.
Quite frankly, I’m pumped to start digging!
Extending Understandings of Archival Research
Though we all seemed to be on some level of agreement about the value of Bazerman’s piece (“Theories of the Middle Range in Historical Studies of Writing Practice”) as a practical approach to doing historical, archival work, Tim’s criticism of Bazerman’s inattention to his own positionality stuck with me during this week’s readings. These readings were an interesting reinforcement of some of Bazerman’s points and his pragmatic approach, yet all of them urged us to do more—asking us to broaden our notions of what constitutes the archive, to more carefully consider our own positionalities, and to recognize the human impact of archival work.
Broadening what counts as archival work.
In “Archival Survival: Navigating Historical Research,” Gaillet offers an extended definition of what counts as archival texts:
“a wide range of artifacts and documents, such as (unpublished and published) letters, diaries and journals, student notes, committee reports, documents and wills, newspaper articles, university calendars/handbooks/catalogs, various editions of manuscripts and print documents (books, pamphlets, essays, etc.), memos, course materials, online sources, audiotapes, videotapes, and even ‘archeological’ fragments and finds” (30).
Glenn and Enoch also ask us to move away from the “upper-case-A Archives” defined by Connors (and reiterated by Bazerman) as “‘specialized kinds of libraries’ containing those ‘rarest and most valuable of data’ that usually exist in ‘only a single copy’” (225 qtd. in 16). This could mean a spatial shift from large research-university libraries to local community archives, but it also necessitates a shift in what kind of texts we value. Glenn and Enos see archival work extending beyond the university, beyond prestigious research libraries to explore more local and situational sites (something that Stake echoes again and again). This expansion allows us to collect information and gain insights about groups and communities who are not represented within the capital-A archives.
Considering our researcher positionalities.
"Archives Shaping Man" via Randolph County Archives
I was excited by the attention to researcher positionality throughout these readings because our readings thus far have addressed it only in terms of feminist research. And certainly, Glenn and Enos have some important things to say on this topic. They “acknowledge that histories are always partial and always interested” (21), arguing that researchers must continually “try to uncover the ways our positionality operates and to consider, throughout the historiographic process, how this stance channels us to write one kind of history and directs us away from other possibilities” (22). For me, this statement clarifies some of the conversations we’ve had about the role of ideology in research and how evidence is analyzed through particular lenses. Glenn and Enos warn against allowing our personal interests to misrepresent the evidence, arguing that “the reading and the theory should inform each other” (23).
Gaillet also acknowledges that historiographic projects require the researcher to become a part of—and participant within—the project, but she also extends this argument to archival work. Framed as storytelling, Gaillet argues that archival research “[makes] clear the teller’s prejudices” (36). In order to weave together facts, stories, histories and perspectives, these prejudices must be constantly negotiated.
Stake defines this negotiation as part of what distinguishes qualitative research from quantitative. He writes, “For qualitative research, the researcher him- or herself is an instrument, observing action and contexts, often intentionally playing a subjective role in the study, using his or her own personal experience in making interpretations” (20). Because qualitative research is interpretive, the researcher must always filter observations, data, and analysis through her own experiences and knowledge. And in this way, Stake argues that positionality must be considered for all researchers. Even quantitative researchers who strive for objectivity must, at times, be interpretive and thus qualitative (30).
Recognizing the human impact.
In many ways, acknowledging the human impact of archival work is a continuation of the previous section. At the same time, though, it extends to a larger argument about the importance of who is represented (and how they are represented). Stake blends these two sides when he writes, “Human are the researchers. Humans are being studied. Humans are the interpreters” (36). The human element becomes important not only for the researcher but also for the researched.
“The topic of the research is not always human activity, but the perspective is the human perspective” (Stake 70).
In their discussion of historiographic research, Glenn and Enos argue that we must always think about the impact that the research will have on other “agents” of the archival process—namely, the people who are researched. They reference Royster (“When the First Voice You Hear Is Not Your Own”), who claims that research projects must try to both understand and benefit the communities and people who are “subject matter but not subjects” (32 qtd. in 24). Harking back to Moss, all qualitative projects must always consider how to most accurately and fairly represent the people and communities that are studied.
Glenn and Enos’s conclusion is a great way to think about some larger implications for archival research and qualitative research more generally. They write, “When we engage in research, we need to know what our self-interest is, how that interest might enrich our disciplinary field as it affects others (perhaps even bridging the gap between academia and other communities), and resolve to participate in a reciprocal cross-boundary exchange, in which we talk with and listen to Others, whether they are speaking to us in person or via archival materials” (24). As qualitative researchers, we must negotiate our own interests and positionalities with those who are studied, whether those people are studied directly (as in ethnographic study) or indirectly (through the archives).
Glenn, Cheryl, and Jessica Enoch. “Invigorating Historiographic Practices in Rhetoric and Composition Studies.” Working in the Archives: Practical Research Methods for Rhetoric and Composition. Eds. Alexis E. Ramsey, Wendy B. Sharer, Barbara L’Eplattenier, and Lisa S. Mastrangelo. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 2010. 11-27.
Gaillet, Lynée Lewis. “Archival Survival: Navigating Historical Research.” Working in the Archives: Practical Research Methods for Rhetoric and Composition. Eds. Alexis E. Ramsey, Wendy B. Sharer, Barbara L’Eplattenier, and Lisa S. Mastrangelo.Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois UP, 2010. 28-39.
Stake, Robert E. Qualitative Research: Studying How Things Work. New York, Guilford Press, 2010.
Literacy, Power, and Social Change
This morning, our class discussion of literacy moved to an argument about power—a discussion about how literacy is controlled and distributed. Then, a claim:
“If we want to use literacy development for social (or community) change, we cannot do it within traditional educational institutions.” And then a question:
“If that’s true, then what are we doing trying to teach literacy for social change in universities?”
This question followed a discussion of literacy sponsors. Brandt defines these sponsors of literacy as “any agents, local or distant, concrete or abstract, who enable, support, teach, model, as well as recruit, regulate, suppress, or withhold literacy—and gain advantage by it in some way” (166). That is, sponsors are authorial figures who hold the power regardless of whether they are doing something beneficial for others—such as enabling or teaching—or doing something beneficial for themselves—such as regulating or withholding. And in fact, sponsors hold that power regardless of whether or not they share it.
And though we, as writing teachers, are certainly sponsors of literacy, Brandt argues that we are not the only, or the most powerful, ones. Instead, we act as “brokers” who make our students aware of literacy uses and how they can best navigate a literacy economy (183). For Brandt, then, social change can’t come from traditional educational institutions because writing teachers aren’t powerful enough to make that change happen.
Community literacy is defined by Peck, Flower, and Higgins as “literate acts that could yoke community action with intercultural education, strategic thinking and problem solving, and with observation-based research and theory building” (200). More specifically, community literacy supports both social change and intercultural dialogue, presents strategies for decision-making to the conversation, and addresses a genuine inquiry (205). Within this context, then, community literacy is a collaborative effort to enact change. And according to the authors, education and inquiry are central to community literacies (214-5).
This education isn’t necessarily attributed to institutionalized education, though. Peck, Flower, and Higgins write, “When university faculty enter communities to “consult,” they often assume their expertise is immediately transferable” (219). This speaks to the power struggles between sponsors and those who are sponsored. Then, a community literacy must negotiate these power struggles and engage with them in an open, intercultural, multi-vocal dialogue to make change. From this perspective, educational institutions can support change, but they cannot control it without community collaboration.
And finally, Kates approaches power and literacy from an historical perspective. Within the segregated South, the Citizenship School founders believed that if community members learned to read and write, so that they could register vote, “they could better address the poverty and social problems faced by their community” (485). In this way, literacy became a tool for fighting social injustice (491) and also a larger community commitment: “The acquisition of literacy comes with a particular responsibility—service to others who do not possess the ability to read or write” (496).
Though the Citizenship Schools were obviously educational institutions, they were not traditional schools. There was also an extracurricular element to these schools because as the students gained reading and writing literacy, they held classes in their own homes and attracted more community members to the cause (487). Because, in this context, literacy acquisition was (and still is) dependent on very real economic and racial barriers, traditional educational institutions alone would not have been able to enact social change through literacy. And as Kates points out in her conclusion, universities still struggle with these issues through service-learning programs.
None of these three articles answer a resounding “yes” to our abilities to enact social change within educational institutions. What they do show is that literacy and its effects are always contextual and local. Who is the sponsor of literacy? Who are the sponsored? What is the historical, cultural, and political context? What is the purpose, the end goal, the “social change”?
Can we teach literacy for purposes of social change within university power structures?
Brandt, Deborah. “Sponsors of Literacy.” CCC 49.2 (May 1998): 165-85.
Peck, Wayne Campbell, Linda Flower, and Lorraine Higgins. “Community Literacy.” CCC 46.2 (May 1995): 199-222.
Kates, Susan. “Literacy, Voting Rights, and the Citizenship Schools in the South, 1957-70.” CCC 57.3 (Feb. 2006): 479-502.
Ethical Methodologies & the War on Empirical Research
I saw two major disciplinary desires emerge from this week’s readings: First, the desire to determine and defend ethical research methodologies (Barton; Haswell); second, the desire to trace empirical studies within composition histories without flattening and limiting those accounts (Roozen & Lunsford; Brandt). Still thinking about the ethical questions of Emig’s methodologies and results that Kate posed last week, I was drawn toward the first thread.
In “More Methodological Matters: Against Negative Argumentation,” Ellen Barton explores composition’s recent “ethical turn” toward methodologies that support collaborative, participatory, and self-reflexive relationships. Specifically, Barton argues against the negative methodological arguments that circulate within, and limit, our field—arguments that present close-relationship methodologies in opposition to other methodologies. This negative argumentation implies that “research that does not incorporate collaborative and reflexive design and analysis is (vaguely) ethically suspect” (Barton 401), which has led to the gradual abandonment of methodologies that do not support collaborative relationships and self-reflexive practices (402).
Because of its focus on systematic analysis, empirical research is devalued within this framework. Barton outlines three implications of devaluing empirical methodologies:
- Empirical frameworks that are ethical are ignored;
- The field is cut off to particular research-based inquiries;
- Our methodological options, as experienced or new researchers, are limited. 403
Using her own ethnographic research as an example, Barton argues that “not all studies in composition can or should be designed as collaborative and reflexive studies” (404). This acknowledgment necessitates a different understanding of how we define ethics. For Barton, ethical research requires total consent of research participants and complete representation of data (405). These requirements resituate empirical research into the realm of the ethical, positioning it is a viable, and necessary, form of research within composition studies.
Barton concludes on a hopeful note, claiming that the support of both empirical and non-empirical research methodologies will allow composition to “contribute a full range of ethically-formulated questions, methods, analyses, and interpretations from a truly interdisciplinary methodological repertoire” (410).
Barton’s article appears in 2000, and five years later, we see Richard Haswell also address the rift between research methodologies (and ideologies). In “NCTE/CCC’s Recent War on Scholarship,” Haswell examines historical trends within composition studies from 1940-1999. Like Barton, Haswell works against the idea that quantitative methodologies—”empirical inquiry, laboratory studies, data gathering, experimental investigation, formal research, hard research”—should be viewed within our discipline as “the enemy” (Haswell 200).
Haswell creates an argument for replicable, aggregable, and data supported [RAD] scholarship, which is different from empirical research—Barton’s focus. RAD scholarship avoids terms such as empirical and theory to avoid dichotomous oppositions between empirical and qualitative, research and theory (201). And unlike Barton, Haswell doesn’t overtly discuss ethics, although it is implied in his values of RAD scholarship—its ”comparability, replicability, and accruability” (202)—which allow compositionists to outline their research clearly and ethically.
Haswell himself lays out his methods clearly, looking at the historical record of three topics central to teaching college writing: the research paper, the benefits of writing courses, and peer review (206). He uses the CompPile database to find articles about these topics both within NCTE/CCC affiliated journals—College English, College Composition and Communication, and Research in the Teaching of English—and within other journals that explore these three topics.
Haswell’s research identifies a “severe decline” (215) in RAD scholarship within the three NCTE/CCCC-affiliated journals, a decline not mirrored within other disciplines, which leads to a warning that NCTE and CCCC are “letting others do their hard research for them” (217). In fact, Haswell’s entire conclusion is foreboding. He describes composition in terms of a failing immune system, claiming that it lacks the ability to ward off external criticism of its practices with the solid data that other disciplines require (219). Finally, Haswell ends with a quotation from Written Communication founder Stephen Witte: “A field that presumes the efficacy of a particular research methodology, a particular inquiry paradigm, will collapse inward upon itself” (207 qtd. in 220).
Reading Barton and Haswell together raises a number of questions about the use of quantitative methodologies within Rhet/Comp and the state of Rhet/Comp itself:
- Barton and Haswell’s articles are night and day in terms of tone (hopeful vs. bleak). What caused such a shift in the exigency of our field’s division of methodologies?
- Barton uses the term empirical, yet Haswell avoids anything that could be labeled as “scientism, fact mongering, antihumanism, positivism, modernism, or worse” (200). How do we understand these differences in language? How do empirical studies and RAD studies differ and overlap?
- Barton writes, “Fewer and fewer studies, it seems, ask questions about how people think and write, about how people compose in real time, or about how groups of people write” (407). What does this mean about the discourse currently circulating within composition? What does it say about our disciplinary values?
- Finally, Haswell asks, “Will these trends, if they continue, lead to the eventual disappearance of college composition as a legitimate field of study?” (217). What are the ethical implications of ignoring empirical/quantitative methodologies? What are the greater disciplinary implications?
Haswell, Richard H. “NCTE/CCCC’s Recent War on Scholarship.” Written Communication 22.2 (April 2005): 198-223.
Barton, Ellen. “More Methodological Matters: Against Negative Argumentation.” CCC 51.3 (Feb. 2000): 399-416.
Komen for the Cure & the Power of Rhetoric
When I was in grade school, my mother was diagnosed with, and recovered from, breast cancer. Two weeks before my high school graduation, after experiencing abdominal pain for about 4 months and trying to convince her doctors that something was wrong, my mom was diagnosed with Stage IV ovarian cancer. After four years of chemo, surgeries, and radiation treatments, my mom died nine days before I graduated from college.
I’ve been thinking about my mom a lot today after reading about Komen for the Cure’s decision to end their partnership with Planned Parenthood. This news certainly hits home for personal reasons—my mom and I walked in many Race for the Cure events before and after she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Also, cancer preventions and awareness are important to me, as the chances that I will develop one of those cancers is incredibly high.
What I keep coming back to, though, is the manipulative political rhetoric that has influenced this decision—that because Planned Parenthood provides abortions (as one of its many, many services), Komen for the Cure must be pro-choice to support everything that Planned Parenthood does.
Admittedly, I’ve been immersed in The Practices of Everyday Life for the past few days, and it has certainly influenced my thinking. de Certeau writes that “both rhetoric and everyday practices can be defined as internal manipulations of a system—that of language or that of an established order” (23-4). And in thinking about rhetoric as manipulation, of the strategies of bodies in power manipulating those without power, without place, I think of the thousands of women who will be affected by Komen for the Cure’s decision. In the ThinkProgress article I read, Marie Diamond wrote, “The charity’s decision has succeeded only in depriving low-income women of cancer screenings that could save their lives.”
With Komen’s support, Planned Parenthood has provided screenings for hundreds of thousands of low-income women and women of color. And this decision, which was pressured by powerful, conservative institutions, stinks of fear-based rhetoric that—intended or not—has serious classist and racist repercussions.
I don’t have any answers for this devastating decision, but I think it’s important to be aware of the very real repercussions that rhetoric has when manipulated by powerful institutions. More importantly, my heart hurts for the thousands of women who will be affected by this decision. Hopefully, de Certeau is right about people without institutional power finding ways to fight back.
