The Anthropology of Writing

Since I didn’t pick any specific chapters to read for this week, I thought I’d read the first two chapters of The Anthropology of Writing: Understanding Textually-Mediated Worlds to contextualize everyone else’s discussions. This collection seeks to bring together two writing research traditions: the (French) anthropology of writing and (English-speaking) New Literacy Studies (Barton and Papen 3).

In Chapter 1, David Barton and Uta Papen seek to map out the anthropology of writing—what it is and does, what methods it uses, and its scope. They argue that writing, though traditionally ignored by anthropologists for oral and more “exotic” forms of communication, is an important topic of study: “It was created by people and is passed on culturally; it has symbolic value and material aspects; and it is crucial to interaction between people and central to knowledge creation” (5). By examining writing through an anthropological lens, we can gain a better sense of how societies operate, how institutions interact with the public, and how social groups organize their experiences (5). A growing research interest in writing is seen through discourse analysis, literacy research, historical studies of writing, and educational research. Barton and Papen seem to favor the latter, which values writing as “more than skills,” positioning writing as an activity (8).

Because of this focus of writing as an activity, studying written texts is highly dependent on social and cultural contexts, which privileges research methods that account for these specific contexts. The methods favored are ethnographic and, sometimes, historical (9). These methods highlight the “users and producers of texts” and how they “engage with the broader social practices and discourses their actions are part of” (9). Typically, these texts fall into the category of the marginalized, which we have discussed throughout the semester: “incipient and ordinary, often invisible and hardly known, frequently ignored or mistakenly taken for irrelevant” (10).

Barton and Papen briefly outline the differences between the English and French writing research traditions. In the English tradition, for example, texts are often studied within a “literacy event” or “literacy practices,” which locate writing in social practices (11). Barton and Papen argue that texts must be studied beyond these categories, placed within contexts, spaces, and places that both differ and overlap (13). In France, however, researchers focus on the microprocesses of writing in relation to how they accomplish work-related tasks (22). Whereas an English writing tradition may focus on everyday life, multilingual contexts, or religion, French writing traditions may focus more on writing in the workplace and in public spaces.

In the second chapter, “Writing Acts: When Writing is Done,” Béatrice Fraenkel complicates these differences, showing both extraordinary and ordinary acts of writing. She begins by looking at revolutionary graffiti slogans and how they follow syntactic and rhetorical norms that are structured from other familiar graffiti models (33). Fraenkel argues that these graffiti slogans are “linguistic acts: orders, claims, exhortations, protests, denunciations, etc.” that are performative acts of writing (34). Then, when someone passes by the graffiti and reads the slogans, they participate in the public writing act through reading (36). What this shows is that the writing and reading acts (or processes) have value as a larger part of language and that they also have value specifically from being written, an act more permanent than speech.

Though Fraenkel describes political graffiti as an example of extraordinary writing, she argues that we can also find value in more ordinary public writing, such as signposts, notices, and road signs that both perform writing and modify the places where they appear. Her example, a “Beware of Dog” sign, warns us and labels the house as a forbidden space. I’m not entirely sure why the term label is so clearly defined here, but Fraenkel emphasizes that “labeling” refers to all acts that attach something written to a place, object, or person (38). So with the example of graffiti, labeling asks us to consider the performative uses of the written act of graffiti (39).

Fraenkel also briefly offers the example of post-9/11 memorial public acts of writing, which she designates as “writing events” that together create a collective writing act yet remain individual acts of writing. She asks, “How can we characterize these acts? How can we explain the new forms taken by reactions to such catastrophic events and their commemorations, involving writing practices which are still emerging, and writing actions which are difficult to explain?” (40). I don’t have answers for those questions, and she doesn’t really, either, but they are interesting for thinking about new and emergent forms of writing and how different elements from both the French and English writing traditions break down and rebuild within different contexts. Ultimately, Fraenkel herself makes this point, arguing that writing acts draw our attention as researchers to “the written elements of our environment, and the way in which inscriptions constitute it, manage it and disrupt it” (42).

I’m interested in hearing how other chapters in the book continue to disrupt these two research traditions, how authors use and blend research methods, and how they (and we) study these writing acts, practices, and events within their own contexts. Also, these beginning chapters really pushed the importance of context, reminding me of our heated discussion of the Purcell-Gates article “Analyzing Literacy Practice: Grounded Theory to Model” and how some of us seemed a bit…miffed by the isolation of context within the larger project. I was also reminded of an archive panel that I attended at CCCC last week, “Storying the Archive: Narrative, History, and Identity.” In the panel, Madhu Narayan argued that literacy narratives need to emphasize the historical and rhetorical exigences that allow these narratives to emerge, prompting criticism of The Digital Archive of Literacy Narratives (DALN) for stripping the stories away from their very specific, individual contexts.

Questions:

• We’ve brought this up before, but what are the values of studying writing on its own vs. researching writing as an activity within specific contexts?
• How do the other chapters work toward bridging the anthropology of writing and New Literacy Studies?
• What research methods are used by other authors in this collection that either support or work against these different research traditions? Barton and Papen mention ethnography and historical research—do any authors branch beyond these two? If not, are there other methods that we think could do this contextual work?

 

Barton, David, and Uta Papen, eds. The Anthropology of Writing: Understanding Textually-Mediated Worlds. NY: Continuum, 2010. Print.

 

 

“Mapping Knowledge-Making in Writing Center Research”

I’ve been wading around in writing center research for the past couple weeks and wanted to share one of the articles that I found most helpful for thinking about writing center research. Unlike other helpful texts about writing center research from the early 2000s (e.g. Writing Center Research: Extending the Conversation and The Center Will Hold: Critical Perspectives on Writing Center Scholarship), Sarah Liggett, Kerri Jordan, and Steve Price published this article in the most recent issue of The Writing Center Journal. As someone very new to the field, I thought this was a very useful overview of the different methodologies typically used within WC research.

From the beginning, the authors reject an argument that rearticulates the purpose of writing center research or that chooses one particular methodology over another; instead, this article seeks to show “what has been missing” in terms of discussion and assessment of research methodologies (51). The authors seek to answer, “What methodologies does the writing center community employ to make knowledge about writing, writers, and learning to write?” (51). To answer this, they use taxonomies from Composition Studies (specifically from research books that emerged between 1983 and 1994) as a model to define their own taxonomy of categories: Practitioner Inquiry, Conceptual Inquiry, and Empirical Inquiry. Though the authors discuss a bit of the quantitative/qualitative rift within the writing community, they believe that “the writing center community has moved beyond [these] either/or debates” (54). Instead, they posit these disagreements as signs of a “thriving” research community and encourage methodological pluralism to conduct substantial research (54). Ultimately, the taxonomy they propose is likened to a GPS that maps the “terrain” of writing center methodologies, allowing us to see where we’ve been and how some “unmapped locations…might intersect” (80).

"The Terrain of Methodologies in Writing Center Research" (81)

Though they make a lot of important claims about writing research generally, there are two major themes that emerge in this article that are really valuable for me in thinking about writing center research specifically. First is the much-revered, narrative-based methodology termed Practitioner Inquiry (56). Practitioner Inquiry is “reflexive, experientially based research that requires dialectic to examine experience and to arrive at carefully investigated and tested personal knowledge” (58). Though often devalued in other disciplines as faux-research, this type of research is often used as a way for other writing center researchers to make sense of their own experiences and then “springboard” toward more engaged research with other methodologies (59).

I also find it helpful that the authors distinguish between the two types of Practitioner Inquiry: Narrative and Pragmatic. Narrative values story telling, and is often the one that is devalued as too personal or too limiting. Pragmatic Inquiry takes as its focus the creation of knowledge stemming from individual, local experiences or observations that seek to address a problem. The authors warn that Practitioner Inquiry oversteps its boundaries if its researchers “attach global implications to their findings” (64). Though narrative work is valuable on its own—to see what others are doing and experiencing—grounding work in such local contexts makes it difficult to articulate value beyond that context. This can be limiting for scholars looking for disciplinary or institutional change, or even for scholars seeking connections beyond the writing center community.

The second key theme is the role of Empirical Inquiry within writing center research, something that does not appear as frequently as the familiar narrative reflection. Within Empirical Inquiry, there is Experimental and Descriptive. Descriptive Inquiry isthen broken down into Survey as Inquiry, Text Analysis, and Contextual Inquiry (67). For writing centers, Text Analysis is particularly useful for understanding more about genres or for decoding particular texts and the conversations surrounding those texts (69). What I want to draw attention to, though, is Contextual Inquiry, which includes Case Studies and Ethnography. The authors acknowledge that “strong examples of Case Study Inquiry are, ironically, difficult to locate among writing center publications” (70), and that even when people say they are conducting a case study, it is often mislabeled.

This is a really important point about writing center research that isn’t discussed further. Why is it that writing center researchers misuse these empirical terms? What does this confusion (or methodological absence) indicate about the research methods valued by the writing center community?

Liggett, Jordan, and Price ultimately argue that their taxonomy promotes “methodological pluralism,” which allows researchers to blend, blur, and employ a variety of methods in order to create more substantial research (73). I agree with them that this should be the ultimate goal of research and that a lot of writing center research takes this approach, e.g. combining narrative with theory, historical inquiry with reflection, case studies with analysis. However, can writing center research truly embrace methodological pluralism without paying careful attention to the potentials of qualitative and quantitative methodologies?

 

Liggett, Sarah, Kerri Jordan, and Steve Price. “Mapping Knowledge-Making in Writing Center Research: A Taxonomy of Methodologies. The Writing Center Journal 31.2 (2011): 50-88. Print.

 

A Contextualist Research Paradigm

Cindy Johanek’s Composing Research: A Contextualist Paradigm for Rhetoric and Composition addresses composition’s debates over the values of quantitative and qualitative research methods, creating a false dichotomy of epistemologies [e.g. narrative vs. numerical]. The showdown between quant/qual is self-defeating: it limits what research methods we can use, thus limiting the research itself. To move away from these competing epistemologies and limitations, Johanek argues for greater attention to context:

In what contexts do we construct arguments about our research? In what contexts do we conduct research in the first place? Which contexts demand certain research methods more than other methods? In what ways does the current research debate in composition decontextualize the problems we debate? (1)

Specifically, Johanek develops a Contextualist Research Paradigm that prompts us to focus on “the contexts in which we and our students need to explore fully the nature of composing, learning, and teaching” (7).

We only had to read select chapters, but I saw some “guiding assertions” while skimming the other chapters that seemed useful for grounding a discussion of context—assertions that contextualize the need for a new research paradigm. Johanek makes six major claims that are woven throughout this text:

1. Comp theorists blame a scientific epistemology for the current-traditional paradigm.
2. The field’s social-constructivist interests have shifted focus away from contexts that could benefit from scientific inquiry.
3. This shift has resulted in newly valued research methods. [Here, I assume Johanek is referencing the influx of narrative and anecdote-as-research.]
4. Humanities training does not prepare us for scientific inquiry, which means we tend to construct and value non-scientific knowledge.
5. Most of the available (comp) research guides are inadequate in their articulation of design, sample choices, and statistical gathering and analysis.
6. All research methods are limited in what questions they can answer within particular contexts. Also, all research methods are valuable within particular contexts. (27-28)

The crux of Johanek’s argument emerges in Chapter 4, “From Epistemology to Epistemic Justification: Toward a Contextualist Research Paradigm.” Here, she directly addresses some of the issues we have discussed in class: the troubles with arguing which research methods are “good” (ethical) and which are “bad” (unethical), our preferences toward narrative, and—most controversially—our inattention to context. Johanek writes, “To argue instead that narratives, anecdotes, and stories are always more true than numbers, that numbers are always for some reason out of context and narratives are not, that it is always appropriate to share a researcher’s personal voice ignores the very thing to which we claim to be rhetorically most sensitive: context” (88). I feel like this is a moment (among others) where Johanek is really calling out compositionists, challenging us to reframe our epistemological stances. In many ways, she’s calling out some of our readings for this class that try to argue which methods are sensitive to context (thus “othering” those that are not). In place of this discussion, Johanek offers a new set of questions:

“In what context does that sort of argument make sense? In what context does such division naturally occur? In what contexts do divided ways of knowing serve us well? In what contexts in other areas of our lives do we make such distinctions?” (90)

With these questions, we don’t limit ourselves to sweeping arguments about whether narrative research is better than numerical; instead, we refocus on the goals, values, and needs of the research itself. We move from Is narrative better? to Is narrative more appropriate in this particular context? This reframing challenges what Johanek defines as the “truth” of our discipline: “we live in all words, in all modes of knowing, but we are trained to understand only some, unable to discuss the ‘other,’ and unwilling to see the narrow channels of scholarship we have imposed upon ourselves” (97).

Contextualist Research Paradigm for Rhetoric & Composition (Johanek 112)

Moving beyond some disciplinary shaming (reading this book stings a little!), Johanek develops a Contextualist Theory of Epistemic Justification [CTEJ], which “is grounded in the assertion that all justification of beliefs is a social act” (105). This is valuable to our research because it emphasizes the context. A CTEJ “forces us to focus not on numbers vs. narratives, but on the questions that motivate us to learn in the first place” (109). Johanek argues that is we adopt a CTEJ and begin (again) to value diverse research methods, we can better understand “why researchers make the decisions they do” (114), an understanding that would allow us to reflect on our research choices and whether they sync up the rhetorical context of our research.

Though Johanek provides some examples of this kind of work in subsequent chapters, what I found most valuable was the matrix she provided for how a Contextualist Research Paradigm applies to Rhet/Comp specifically (pictured above). I could see this being really useful to apply to any research project, and I appreciate that it covers all stages of the research process.

Finally, Johanek concludes with one last push toward a Contextualist Research Paradigm (“In a Contextualist Research Paradigm, one kind of research is not automatically more valuable than another, and one kind of evidence does not guide our quests” [207]) and one last reminder: “Numbers alone won’t reveal everything we need to know. Stories alone can’t do it, either” (209).

Questions:

1. Johanek is direct, blunt, and—at times—scolding, which, for me, was a reflection of how urgent she sees the research situation in comp. This book was published in 2000 and awarded an NWCA Outstanding Scholarship Award, which (I assume) means that this book has had some type of impact on the field. Do we know of other notable research in the field that makes the types of research moves that she advocates? Do we still see a lot of examples of the research that she reacts against, that relies on narrative and storytelling when a scientific inquiry is more appropriate?
2. What did you all make of her mixing of research methods within this book? She provided a lot of examples of quantitative research and data, and—somewhat ironically—I found myself skimming over those examples. Does our training continue to devalue quantitative research methods?
3. This book has interesting pedagogical implications. Johanek discusses this briefly in references to how we need to refocus both our own and our students’ research practices. With the time constraints of a semester, how could we productively adopt a Contextualist Research Paradigm in a class like WRT 205? It seems like the matrix she provides would be a good starting place…

Johanek, Cindy. Composing Research: A Contextualist Paradigm for Rhetoric and Composition. Logan, UT: Utah State UP, 2000. Print.

 

Ethnography: Academic Writing & Literacy Studies

For my class presentation on ethnography/qualitative method(ologies) this evening:

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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.

 

Feminist Methods & Methodologies

For my class presentation about feminist method(ologie)s this evening:

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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:

1. Empirical frameworks that are ethical are ignored;
2. The field is cut off to particular research-based inquiries;
3. 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.