Becoming A Writing Researcher [2nd Edition] 0815359276, 9780815359272, 0815359268, 9780815359265, 1351121219, 9781351121217, 1351121227, 9781351121224, 1351121197, 9781351121194, 1351121200, 9781351121200

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“Becoming a Writing Researcher immerses less experienced researchers in two critically important aspects for learning: deep identity work and extensive practice with and reflection on research strategies. It is practical in all the best ways: grounded in the lived experience of graduate student researchers, full of purposeful exercises and reflective activities, carefully attuned to the needs of newer researchers in Writing Studies. My students are far better off for having used this thoughtful guide for their own projects.” Heidi Estrem, Boise State University, USA “An approachable but remarkably in-depth guide to qualitative research in writing. The case studies enable readers to imagine themselves becoming real researchers, and multiple examples illustrate a variety of approaches rather than just one ‘right’ way.” Cheryl Geisler, Simon Fraser University, Canada

Becoming a Writing Researcher 2nd edition

Becoming a Writing Researcher effectively guides students through the stages of conducting qualitative writing research, from the initial step of seeing themselves as researchers, to identifying research questions, selecting appropriate methodological tools, conducting the research, and interpreting and reporting findings. Exercises and activities, as well as anecdotes and examples from both novice and seasoned researchers, serve to acquaint readers thoroughly with the practice of carrying out research for scholarly or professional purposes. This second edition introduces students to research methods in a gradual and contextualized manner. Each chapter offers a discussion of a particular portion of the research process, followed by consideration of physical, conceptual, and strategic tools that allow a master’s level researcher to conduct that part of the research. Sections within each chapter also cover issues of stance and positionality that impact the researcher and the resulting research. Becoming a Writing Researcher, second edition, is an essential text for all novice researchers and is particularly well suited for use in graduate-level research methods courses in writing studies and technical communications. It is also ideal for use in other disciplines with strong qualitative methodology research programs, including education. Ann Blakeslee is a professor of written communication at Eastern Michigan University, where she directs the Office of Campus and Community Writing, which houses the Writing across the Curriculum Program, the University Writing Center, and the Eastern Michigan Writing Project. Cathy Fleischer is a professor of English education and written communication at Eastern Michigan University, where she co-directs the Eastern Michigan Writing Project and serves as Faculty Associate for the Office of Campus and Community Writing. She also serves as editor for the Principles in Practice Imprint for the National Council of Teachers of English.

Becoming a Writing Researcher 2nd edition Ann Blakeslee and Cathy Fleischer

Second edition published 2019 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2019 Taylor & Francis The right of Ann Blakeslee and Cathy Fleischer to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. First edition published by Routledge 2007 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978-0-8153-5926-5 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-8153-5927-2 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-351-12122-4 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Once again, we dedicate this book to the many graduate students whom we have had the pleasure of teaching and advising over the years and who have contributed so much to our thinking about and perspectives on research and pedagogy.

Contents

Figures and Tablex Prefacexi Acknowledgmentsxiii   1 Me, a Writing Researcher?

1

  2 What’s Your Question?

17

  3 How Do I Find Answers? Planning Your Qualitative Research Study

53

  4 How Do I Find Answers? Carrying Out Your Qualitative Research Study, Part I—Reading, Observing, and Analyzing Artifacts

97

  5 How Do I Find Answers? Carrying Out Your Qualitative Research Study, Part II—Using Surveys/Questionnaires and Conducting Interviews

131

  6 What Do I Do with the Information I Collect? Analyzing Data

174

  7 How Do I Present My Research? Writing and Disseminating Your Findings

204

References234 Author Index237 Subject Index239

Figures and Table

Figures 2.1 2.2 2.3 4.1 5.1 5.2 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 7.1 7.2

Visual Brainstorming: Starting Points Visual Brainstorming: Timeline Visual Brainstorming: Research Process Ja’La’s Keyword Chart Natasha’s Google Forms Survey Natasha’s Google Forms Survey Analysis Natasha’s Organization: Google Folders lisa’s Organization: File Folders and Milk Crates Coding from Early Literacy Prompt Natasha’s Coding of an Interview: Done in a Google Doc Natasha’s Coding Chart Ja’La’s Poster Presentation Natasha’s First Page of Article

30 31 32 124 144 145 182 182 190 191 193 215 215

Table 6.1 Coding Chart on Early Literacy Influences

192

Preface

The original idea for Becoming a Writing Researcher came from our experiences, over several years, teaching and mentoring graduate students and carrying out and reflecting on our own research. These experiences led us to write a text that would foreground the experiences of the researcher (particularly the novice researcher) and that would emphasize the process of doing research, with its recursive and highly contingent nature. We especially wanted to address the experiences of students and new researchers in writing studies as they begin to undertake research; we wanted to portray research in a realistic and accessible manner, with all of its human and messy dimensions. In this second edition, we continue with these original goals but expand our scope and understanding in two ways. First, as we have gained many more years of experience with our own teaching and mentoring of graduate students, we have come to understand new ways to support them on their journey to become writing researchers: from additional tools and approaches for conducting, analyzing, and disseminating research to expanding our understanding of the role of research as one of advocacy. Second, we recognize changes in both the field of writing studies and how research is now conducted in our field. These changes led us to include more approaches to using multimodal and digital formats for gathering and analyzing data, as well as approaches to writing and disseminating research findings. In addition, new ways of thinking in the discipline have led us to take a more nuanced look at positionality and its impact on the whole research journey. One practical change you will notice is our focus on case studies of three graduate students who have recently completed our program. These three students—lisa eddy, Natasha Wickenheiser, and Ja’La Wourman—graciously agreed to share the materials that were part of their research journey (from coming up with questions, through gathering and analyzing data, to writing and disseminating final projects) and to be interviewed about their experiences as graduate writing students and researchers. Although we continue to have samples from many other graduate students and professors interspersed throughout the book, the work of these three is highlighted throughout. As you read, you can follow their journeys. As in the first edition, our aim with the text is to describe and explain various research methods generally used in qualitative writing research and to teach students about and socialize them into the experience and practice of carrying out research, be it for scholarly purposes or for more practical or professional reasons. In short, our text responds to two central questions for new writing researchers: What does it mean to be a researcher? And, how do I become a researcher? It is written primarily with

xii  Preface these novice researchers in mind. (We originally envisioned it as being adopted as a core text in introductory research methods classes in master’s programs in rhetoric and writing, the teaching of writing, English education, and/or technical and professional communication—all areas in which one or both of us teach1—and we are pleased to see that this has been the case.) In short, both the first and now this second edition of Becoming a Writing Researcher introduce students, in a gradual and contextualized manner, to approaches and strategies for carrying out qualitative research, and to the various concerns and issues they will face as writing researchers. It emphasizes the process and experience of doing qualitative research, and focuses on the identities, ethos, and experiences of researchers—especially new researchers—in planning, carrying out, and writing up their research. Because of its focus, this text is organized somewhat differently from other research texts. Instead of moving students through descriptive accounts of methods and approaches to research, we instead move them through each stage of doing research—from considering their identities as new researchers, locating and articulating a research question, planning their research, selecting and using tools to investigate their question, interpreting and making sense of their findings, to writing up and disseminating their findings. We also challenge the seeming linearity of our own organizational structure by continually emphasizing the recursive and dynamic nature of all research. Further, we attempt to make all of these stages in the research process accessible to novice researchers by providing numerous examples and prompts aimed at helping them as they progress through each stage. Finally, we include in each chapter a section on stance and positionality, connecting those ideas to each stage of the research process.

Note 1 Blakeslee specializes in rhetoric and technical and professional communication, and she has also taught classes in the teaching of writing. Fleischer specializes in English education, writing, and the teaching of writing.

Acknowledgments

In this second edition, we are grateful to be able to expand our list of acknowledgments, as new voices and colleagues have supported this work. Our students in the master’s programs in Written Communication and English Studies for Teachers at Eastern Michigan University (EMU) continually inspire us and have provided us with valuable feedback about our approaches to research. We are especially grateful to the following students who have allowed us to use their work in this second edition: M. Diane Benton, Jennifer Buehler, Julie Caldwell (in memory), Amber Clark, Elizabeth Donoghue-Colvin, Erin Snoddy Moulton, Diane Nash (formerly Diane Pons), Karen Reed-Nordwall, Rebecca Sipe, Kristin Smith, Lisa Tallman, and Mary Lou Wolfe. We are also deeply indebted to the three graduate students, lisa, Natasha, and Ja’La, who allowed us to use their research journeys as the case studies for this book, devoting so much time to this venture—not only gathering their materials to share with us and participating in individual interviews, but also being available for “just one more question”—over and over. We are also grateful to colleagues at EMU and around the country for contributing ideas and examples of their own research journeys: Cheryl Cassidy (EMU), Erin Frost (East Carolina University), Rachel Gramer (EMU), Zach De Piero (UC Santa Barbara), Derek Mueller (Virginia Tech), and Keon Pettiway (formerly at EMU). And finally, we wish to thank family and friends who supported us through this work with love and understanding.

1 Me, a Writing Researcher?

Once, during a student presentation in one of our graduate classes, the presenter asked everyone in the class to write down as many nouns and adjectives as we could think of that best described our roles and lives. The words people wrote ranged from “writer” to “student” to “mother” to “teacher” to “runner” to “Native American.” Interestingly, not one person listed “researcher,” despite the fact that all of these students were working on their master’s degrees, and many were also starting work on their culminating master’s research projects. For the graduate students in our program, many of whom at the time were already working professionals (both teachers and professional writers), this failure to identify themselves as researchers, we realized, may not be that uncommon. And so, as we begin this book, we invite you to think about this same question: What nouns and adjectives might you use to describe your role and life? Is researcher one of those terms? When we look back on our own graduate experience, we realize that coming to think of ourselves as “researchers” also took time. It was not something that happened automatically when we became graduate students. For us, and for many others we know in the field of writing studies, the identity of researcher was initially a foreign one that for some of us may even have seemed very different from our other professional identities (as teachers, writers, students, and other kinds of professionals). Research was something that others did—serious scholars who devoted years to their work and who sometimes even had big grant money to support their research. For us, on the other hand, research, at this stage of our lives, was what we needed to do to write papers for our courses and to write our theses and dissertations. It was necessary for earning our degrees and, although we enjoyed it, we initially did not think of ourselves as researchers, at least, in our minds, in the same sense as the scholars whose work we read. However, as we continued to advance in our academic work, our ideas about what it means to be a researcher changed: We started to think of ourselves as producers of research rather than just consumers of it. Along the way, we became excited about the idea of doing research, and we began to realize that we actually had something to say that might be meaningful to our disciplines. We also realized that our identities as teachers and writers could be blended with our new identity of researcher, and that we could even use our emergent identities as writing researchers to enhance our professional work. Additionally, and perhaps most importantly, we realized that “doing research” was really not all that foreign to us—we actually had been carrying out research all our lives.

2  Me, a Writing Researcher?

We Are All Researchers Already As the title to this section suggests, we believe all of you reading this book are researchers already. Think, for example, about your own experiences with research, beginning with a focus on your personal life. In all likelihood, you have carried out research for personal reasons many times. For example, you might have done research to purchase a car, plan an event (e.g., a wedding or graduation), move to a new city, find a good graduate program, or determine the best way to finance your education. Pause for a moment to think about the personal research you have done as you read and respond to Prompt 1.1. (Throughout the text, we present prompts like these to help you explore your own experiences and ideas about research. We also provide case studies and other examples of how others have thought about and approached research.)

Prompt 1.1:  Researching for Life Purposes Reflect on a recent experience you’ve had with research in your own life. What was the experience? What were you trying to determine and what did you do to determine it? In other words, what kind of research did you do? Was your research productive and successful? Was it frustrating? Why? We recommend writing your response to this prompt as a scenario, like the one we present below.

Compare your scenario with the one that follows, written by Cathy, and note commonalities. In this scenario, the motivation for research arose from a specific personal need: the need to learn about a disease and its impact on a child’s life. To obtain information, Cathy took the following simple steps, which you also may have taken in your research: • Searching memories and personal experiences for existing knowledge of the subject. • Talking to others to learn from what they knew about the subject. • Consulting outside sources (books, news articles, online sources). • Analyzing and comparing sources and sorting through the information found. • Arriving at new understandings that guided actions.

Sidebar 1.1:  Researching for Life Cathy: When I wrote this chapter, my husband and I were in the midst of a personally important research project involving our then 8-year-old son. After watching him experience what we called “space-outs” for a few months, we began—with our doctor’s urging—to carefully watch how often he had them and if there were any triggering circumstances. After we noted a marked increase in the number of incidents, we brought our information in to the doctor, who

Me, a Writing Researcher? 3 suggested a possible diagnosis of absence epilepsy. Our initial shock at this diagnosis was based on our limited understanding of the term and the associations that epilepsy brought to mind. We then began to read books, analyze Web sites, and talk to friends who knew children with similar diagnoses. Armed with a lot of information, we were able to talk to the doctors with some well-formed questions in mind and with an awareness of the various treatments, side effects, and long-term prognosis. As our son started a regimen of medication—a regimen we learned was very difficult to regulate—we kept a chart in which we noted each day how many seizures he had, how he slept that night, what kinds of food he ate, and any other factors that might be involved. Each time we saw the doctor, we referred to this chart and pooled our information with the doctor’s expertise in order to make sound treatment decisions.

Let’s think now about the parallels between the personal research in which we all engage and our academic research. For example, Cathy both consulted secondary sources and talked to experts on the health issue she was researching. She also carried out firsthand research: in this case, observing her son carefully to ascertain when the seizures occurred and how the drugs were affecting him. Additionally, Cathy developed a chart to organize the information she collected, using it to record her son’s responses to the medication. Cathy’s research also was ongoing (it took place over a number of months), and it had an impact on others (in Cathy’s case, her son and his doctor). It broadened both her and others’ understanding of the problem. We suspect that you can identify similar strategies and outcomes from your own research stories. You can use Prompt 1.2 to draw comparisons.

Prompt 1.2:  Identifying Research Strategies Review your own research stories and draw comparisons. What strategies did you use that were similar? What strategies did you use that were different? What did you do with the information you collected—how did you sort through and organize it? What outcomes did you achieve, and what actions did you take as a result of your research? Did anyone else benefit from your research? If so, who, and in what ways?

In addition to personal research of this sort, you have no doubt also researched and written papers in your life as a student, about numerous subjects and topics. If you have also worked as a professional, you likely have also done certain kinds of research for your job. For example, if you are a teacher, you probably have researched lesson plans and maybe even used research to explore questions (e.g., why your students have trouble revising). If you are a professional writer, you have likely carried out research on the topics about which you have written.

4  Me, a Writing Researcher?

Prompt 1.3:  Carrying Out Academic and/or Professional Research. Think of at least two occasions on which you carried out research for academic or professional purposes. What led you to carry out the research (e.g., class assignment, need or problem in your workplace, etc.)? Also, what strategies did you use, and which ones seemed most and least productive for you? Why? Finally, what did your research contribute to your work or studies, and/or how did it help you?

These scenarios and prompts are meant to make a point: You know a great deal about research already from the personal, professional, and academic research you have done throughout your life. You also already have certain steps you follow when you undertake research: steps for gathering information, analyzing it, and taking action as a result of it. And, most importantly, you know that doing research matters: It helps you make decisions and achieve results. From our vantage point, this understanding that research matters, personally and professionally, is essential in the process of coming to think like and developing an identity as a writing researcher. So why is developing an identity as a researcher important? What does it accomplish? On the one hand, it enhances our lives as professionals. Jennifer Buehler, who taught high school English in Plymouth, Michigan, explains it this way: Thinking like a researcher has helped me to feel more engaged as a teacher. I’m now interested in much more than the effectiveness of a simple lesson plan or assignment. Conducting research has caused me to see the students as complex people and the classroom as a complex culture. I look now with the eyes of an ethnographer, and, as a result, what I see is richer and far more challenging to process. I believe that, because of my research, I bring more thoughtfulness and insight to the classroom—reflection is now at the forefront of all I do. I am more committed to remaining a teacher than I was before becoming a researcher . . . [It’s] added depth and meaning to my work that I would not have found otherwise. (personal communication, 1 March 2003) Karen Reed-Nordwall, who taught middle school English in Livonia, Michigan, explains: Research is definitely not separate from teaching. Research is teaching, just like revising is writing. I can’t believe how much my teaching has improved since I’ve realized this. Researching has brought everything I do to a hyperconscious level. It’s also made me realize that I have a voice. Doing research, studying what my students need to learn and practice, made me realize that I don’t have to always look outside my own classroom for answers. I have learned to trust what I see on my paper, in student conversations, and in my classroom to help me teach my students. (personal communication, 23 March 2003)

Me, a Writing Researcher? 5 Writers in the workplace also engage in research that expands their professional capacities. Amber Clark, a technical communicator who worked at a writing consulting firm in Ann Arbor, MI, when we were writing the first edition of this book, shared: My company has a commitment to ongoing professional development through reading and research. Our reading keeps us current with new developments and ideas in the field of technical communication and usability, while our research enables us to contribute to that general body of knowledge. Most of our research stems from experiences with specific clients, and usually involves new methods or design ideas. We find that it’s important to have “back burner” research projects going along with our client projects so that we can stay on the cutting edge of the technical communication field. (personal communication, 15 April 2003) Finally, Elizabeth Donoghue-Colvin, a technical communicator who was working at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Southeast Michigan, reflects on how research influences her professional life: I notice things about the process of writing that I might not have paid much attention to before. I’ve also begun to organize my thinking about everyday observations in ways I would not have before I became involved in research . . . . The point is that, because I’m involved in research, I’m taking notice of the things that are going on around me at work more than I otherwise would have. I’m thinking about the process of writing. (personal communication, 24 February 2003) These individuals, who had been graduate students in a master’s program a few years before making these statements, clearly have taken on the identity of researcher in their professional lives. All of them agree that research is an important part of the work they do. The information they gain from their research—whether it comes from the students they teach or from what they read—is invaluable to them. Further, the research they do in their roles shares many qualities with research we do for academic purposes, as well as for personal reasons. In all of these cases, research helps us become better informed and more knowledgeable, and it helps us make decisions and take action. We can also conclude, from these statements and from our considerations thus far, that research: is guided by a thoughtful, well-articulated question that originates in a need, concern, or problem; • matters to oneself and others; • is carried out in a planned, intentional, and systematic manner; • engages and draws on multiple sources and kinds of information (e.g., primary, secondary, firsthand); • entails a careful recording of findings and information. •

Our next prompt invites you to begin considering these qualities as they exist in the professional/academic research of our field of writing.

6  Me, a Writing Researcher?

Prompt 1.4:  Exploring Research in the Field of Writing Studies Locate and look through several academic journals in the field of writing (e.g., CCCC, RTE, Written Communication, The Journal of Business and Technical Communication, The Journal of Basic Writing, The Journal of Writing Program Administration, The Writing Center Journal, IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication). Pay attention to both the topics you see and the kinds of research being carried out. Additionally, locate a few articles that interest you and, as you read them, consider how the qualities we identified apply to them. What question(s) prompted the research? Why does or might it matter to others? What and how does it contribute to knowledge in the field? How was it carried out? What kinds of sources were used?

Becoming a Researcher: What Else Is Involved? As you begin considering and cultivating your own identity as a writing researcher— and learning the methods, tools, and strategies needed to carry out writing research effectively—you may find it helpful to hear and see how others, like you, have navigated this journey. Most of us start out with uncertainties about our abilities as researchers. For example, have you ever questioned if you have anything meaningful or new to contribute to a scholarly conversation? Or perhaps you’ve questioned whether you’ve located all the important sources addressing your topic. You may even wonder if anyone besides you will find your question(s) and/or findings interesting. To help you see that you are not alone with these concerns, and to demonstrate the many approaches to and strategies for research we address throughout this book, we are including—and integrating throughout—three case studies of new researchers who recently completed their master’s degrees and culminating master’s projects. We have asked them how they gained the knowledge and confidence to now think of themselves as researchers. What did they do to gain the confidence needed to be able to carry out writing research and integrate it into their academic and professional lives? What challenges and successes did they encounter as they did so? As we have thought about our own growth as researchers, and watched these and many other students develop into thoughtful and reflective researchers, we have been able to identify at least four factors that contributed to their success. First, as we’ve addressed throughout this chapter, there is the recognition of the important role research plays in both our personal and our professional lives. Second, there is the realization that research is something we all actually know a good deal about already. Third, there is an interest in learning what is involved in doing research and how research is done. Finally, there is a willingness to try, with the understanding that there may well be challenges and setbacks along the way, but these will contribute to our growth and confidence as researchers. This last point is perhaps the most important one to remember as you embark on your journey of becoming a writing researcher. Challenges and setbacks can cause a lot of discomfort and uncertainty, but they often are what contribute most to our growth.

Me, a Writing Researcher? 7 Introducing Our Case Study Researchers lisa eddy, Natasha Wickenheiser, and Ja’La Wourman are all graduates of our university’s master’s program in Written Communications. The three came to us from different majors, brought different experiences to bear upon their work, and have since gone on to pursue different professional paths. We offer their experiences here and throughout the book as examples of the many students who have come through our program—and to show you the variety of ways of putting into practice some of what they learned as researchers. In the next few pages, we introduce you to them; throughout the rest of the book, we share specific examples of their work as and where it pertains to the issues we address. lisa eddy lisa eddy, recently retired, taught high school English in Adrian, Michigan, a small rural community, for 24 years. A self-identified “teacher researcher,” lisa set a goal every year to research a question of interest surrounding her teaching and her students’ learning—questions that have ranged from how to develop choice and voice in student writing to how mindfulness practice impacts students’ overall and academic well-being. These years of research resulted in what she affectionately calls The Archive—the collection of notes, student work, and interviews she has amassed for more than 20 years. As she explains, The first year I went to the National Council of Teachers of English conference, I noticed that everybody had student examples to show, so that told me I needed to keep an example of whatever I’m doing because (a) that will help me revise the course for next year and (b) if I ever get to the point where I start presenting things, I need student artifacts to show people. In 2006 lisa began work on her MA project, focusing on research that spoke to her passion for environmental causes and her belief that immersion in nature helps everyone—but in particular students—“be more mindful and find beauty and joy as inspiration for writing.” Being in nature and writing about experiences with nature, she believes, can help teens through anxiety and depression. Specifically, she began her research project with this question: What happens when we incorporate outdoor experiences in language arts classes, specifically 11th grade American Literature? She then gathered data in multiple ways: taking field notes about the ongoing activities in her classroom, interviewing students formally and informally, and collecting multiple artifacts of student writing. As a teacher researcher, she analyzed these data points through curricular and pedagogical lenses: “As a teacher generally . . . any time I’m looking at student anything . . . I’m looking for patterns and themes for how they’re learning.” In keeping with these lenses, lisa used her research findings to produce a place-based literature and composition curriculum document in the format of a short book, to be shared with her colleagues, new teachers, and teachers around the country. After she finished her master’s degree, she expanded the reach of this document, using it as the basis for numerous local, state, and national conference presentations. And because lisa also brings an advocacy lens to her work, she views her research as something

8  Me, a Writing Researcher? that can help others understand a different way of teaching and learning. As she explains, I wanted to create the book to have proof that my place-based approach to the course was evidence-based and aligned with district and state standards . . . I wanted to show that a place-based inquiry project could even include test prep. I wanted to anticipate objections to my course and provide evidence that would allay any concerns. lisa continues to conduct research and to inform others about her research findings: presenting at conferences, writing for journals, and keeping a blog about her teaching, heavily informed by her research, called Citizen Teacher (citizenteacher.wordpress. com/). Natasha Wickenheiser Natasha Wickenheiser is a fairly new researcher and teacher, moving directly from her undergraduate degree with a double major in speech communication and professional writing at Eastern Michigan University to a master’s degree in Written Communication, which she completed in 2017. She currently teaches writing as an adjunct instructor and academic advisor at Ivy Tech Community College in Bloomington, Indiana, and hopes to go on to a PhD in Rhetoric and Writing in the near future. Over her two years as an MA student, Natasha thought about her final research project in implicit and explicit ways. Because she wanted to keep notes about her thinking over time, she began (first as a class project and then as her own project) a reading blog called Scrapbooked Inquiries (https://scrapbookedinquiries.wordpress. com/author/scrapbookedinquiries/), a space that combined her professional reading and experiences in a searchable format. She also began naming and refining her question as part of the projects she took on in various classes. Interested in student self-advocacy, she read from different fields and disciplines over that time, making connections between those fields and writing studies. So, when she got to the point of diving deeply into her final MA project, she had spent more than a year thinking about it. Natasha’s project took shape when she was invited to teach in a summer bridge program at the university, a program designed to help high school students make the transition to college coursework. Natasha was hired to teach their writing course, a three-week immersion into writing, that had previously been taught as a structured, “how to write the 5-paragraph essay” kind of approach. Natasha, who had been thinking critically and carefully about student self-advocacy and self-efficacy, as well as the habits of mind outlined in the Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing (Council of Writing Program Administrators, National Council of Teachers of English, & National Writing Project, 2011), revised the class syllabus she had inherited to be one that reflected these ideas: Students studied the habits of mind, considered how those habits might help them as writers, and created strategic learning plans (SLPs) in which students “set a writing goal and how they planned to achieve this goal.” Natasha gathered data from this class and followed the students into their first semester of college writing, looking to see if that emphasis on self-advocacy carried over into their next collegiate writing experience.

Me, a Writing Researcher? 9 Natasha decided early on in her research journey that she wanted to produce an academic journal article—but a fairly specific kind of article: I knew going in that I wanted my master’s project to be something useful and very tangible in the real world. As someone who was doing a lot of reading and who was thinking about PhD programs, publishing is a thing. It’s part of being in academia. I knew going in that I wanted my project to be an academic journal article. As she began gathering research, she also looked carefully at existing journals in the field to create a genre model for what kind of article she might want to write: I created a spreadsheet of all the rhet comp/English studies/writing studies journals and I went to each of their web pages and looked at the way they were talking about the work they accepted and the work that they privilege, and do they privilege more capital R research or theory? Did they privilege teacher research in the classroom studies? While she continues to revise the draft article she wrote for her project, Natasha reflects on the impact of her research on her work as a teacher and future researcher: I’m sharing with my colleagues and some of them are incorporating it into their classroom and their curriculum. In terms of professional development, I’m taking steps to share this information on a larger scale (through local and national presentations), and I’m also starting to look at PhD programs. Ja’La Wourman Since completing her MA degree in Written Communications, Ja’La Wourman has begun a PhD program in Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures at Michigan State University. Reflecting on the impact of her master’s work on her new studies, she explained that, although research at the doctoral level is different in many ways, her MA work “really did influence how I approach research. I didn’t realize it would impact me the way it did.” Ja’La’s path to her MA project began the summer before the final year of her master’s work, when she had the opportunity to travel to South Africa to do some volunteer work. As someone committed to social justice and who sought connections between that work and her previous work in technical communication, she found herself particularly struck by the vast amount of public art she saw on that trip, art that “spoke to post-apartheid, that spoke to past racial inequalities.” Seeing multiple murals in that historic setting triggered what she later came to see as an embodied experience, an unexpected and visceral reaction to the art that personally impacted her greatly—but that she didn’t immediately see as the basis of a master’s project. Upon returning home, her project advisor listened to her description of this extraordinary experience and suggested that her reaction to this art might be the basis for a master’s project. He wondered if she might be interested in using visual rhetoric (a term she did not know at the time) to further explore these images. As she learned more about visual rhetorical analysis (basically, analyzing images and

10  Me, a Writing Researcher? visuals for their form and meaning), she began to see how she could dig deeper into this experience, looking to see how the images in the murals could be explored just as she might explore other, more traditional texts. She began with a question about “how images communicate the past, present, and future and how they can enact change for the better,” but along the way started thinking about “how culture plays a role in how we understand images . . . . I didn’t come in thinking culture would be a huge aspect of visual rhetorics, but then I recognized that those two have to be in conversation with each other.” Eventually, then, her final questions became these: 1. How can murals inform viewers of past, present, and future legacies of struggles that lead to activism and change in our communities? 2. What can scholars learn from digital, visual, and cultural rhetorics when analyzing murals? Excited by these questions, but overwhelmed by the challenges of (1) trying to learn this new theoretical lens of visual rhetorical analysis, (2) uncovering and reading a vast array of research about public art and visual rhetorics that was new to her, and (3) thinking about where else her questions would lead her, Ja’La opted to limit her study to exploring just three murals in three different settings. She eventually chose one image from her trip to South Africa about apartheid and the tensions between Afrikaans and black South Africans, one from Detroit about the struggles of being a black woman and inhabiting a black body in the US, and one from Ypsilanti, Michigan, about a historical black figure and his legacy. As she immersed herself in the methodology surrounding visual rhetorical analysis, Ja’La found one particular lens that fit her criteria for studying these images and that—importantly—would fit into the time frame she had to complete her MA project. Selecting just one lens for her analysis, she explained, helped give her a framework through which she could study similarities and differences among the murals, think critically about those images, and, ultimately, discover the role of culture in visual rhetorics. Along the way, Ja’La made use of a number of visual techniques to help her brainstorm ideas, organize her thoughts, and summarize her findings in ways that would be understandable to others. Perhaps because of her background in technical and professional writing and because of all she was learning about visual rhetorics, Ja’La found these strategies particularly helpful: from a “Matrix Project” assignment that represented in graphic form the key words, figures, concepts, and emerging research interests that eventually helped her explore her project to several poster projects that used digital measures to succinctly capture her research methods. Where has all this led Ja’La? For her final MA project, she created a fairly traditional genre that included such sections as introduction, literature review, methods, analysis, limitations and recommendations, conclusion, and references. But she views this project as “the starting point for me as a master’s student, getting my feet wet”— something that has impacted both how she approaches research and what she wants to research as she moves forward in her doctoral program. In particular, she seeks to do further work in considering the connections among culture, social justice, visual images, and design.

Me, a Writing Researcher? 11

Recognizing the Important Role Research Plays in Our Lives Ann Berthoff, who was an important figure in both composition studies and the teacher research movement, once suggested that we pronounce “‘research’ the way the southerners do: REsearch.” She made this suggestion, she said, because, “REsearch, like REcognition, is a REflexive act. It means looking—and looking again. This kind of REsearch would not mean going out after new ‘data’ but rather REconsidering what is at hand” (Berthoff, 1987, p. 30). Berthoff’s suggestion carries with it an important consideration. If we think about research as searching again, as looking carefully and reflectively at what is in front of us, then we can demystify the research process. Research, in other words, does not always involve complex, multitiered studies in which the researcher enters into unfamiliar settings to discover new “truths.” Equally valuable are research studies that are focused instead on settings right in front of us, places where we can reflect carefully and methodically on issues of concern in our own work or for our own personal or professional curiosity and growth. The research we carry out need not be Research with a capital “R”; it can be research with a lowercase “r”—small, manageable, and reliant on the work of others. In short, this focus on research as a reflective activity is key, especially for those of us who see research as a part of our everyday lives and professional commitments and as embodying our own particular biases, positionality, and stance. All research, ultimately, is personal and a reflection of who we are and what we believe. For research, in all its complexity, to be successful, it is vital to begin with a true wondering, just as our case study researchers did—that is, with a question about which you are genuinely curious, whose answer might create new understandings for you in either your immediate setting or in your professional knowledge and growth more generally. This approach to research is a natural extension of the personal research we asked you to consider earlier. Just as personal research becomes meaningful as we explore questions that have an immediate impact on our lives, so too does professional research when we discover questions that might truly impact our professional growth and development, and even the growth and development of our fields.

Realizing that Research Is Something We Already Know a Good Deal About As you begin the process of becoming a researcher, we believe it is vital to consider first what you already know, both about the subject you are researching and about the kinds of research you are considering. Inevitably, new researchers usually discover that they, indeed, do know quite a bit already. Again, like our case study researchers, you know about the context for your own work, which is knowledge that will help you develop a good research question. And, having taken numerous classes, you also know quite a bit about your field and about its collective knowledge. Through your reading, you are already aware of the issues that interest researchers and practitioners in your field. You probably also know which methodologies researchers in your field use, and you may have a feel for the methodologies you would like to use to investigate your own questions. Knowing you hold this knowledge will hopefully help you realize you are not a beginner. You already have a strong foundation. Prompt 1.5 is

12  Me, a Writing Researcher? designed to help you identify what you know already, both about a subject that interests you and about research more generally. You can also use it to begin identifying what you still need and want to learn.

Prompt 1.5:  Identifying what You Already Know Take a few minutes to respond to the following questions and then share your responses with your classmates: Questions about the Subject of Your Research • What are some of the things you already know about the subject you’re interested in researching? Make a list. • What are some of the questions you have about the subject you’re interested in researching? Again, write down all of them. • What have you read that addresses your subject? What have the sources you’ve read said about the subject? Questions about Doing Research • • •

What do you know already about doing research? What experience do you have with carrying out research? What do you believe makes you qualified to do research on writing?

Learning What Is Involved in Doing Research One fear many students voice (and that we, too, felt at one time) is that they lack sufficient knowledge about and experience in research; that is, they claim they do not know how to design a study, gather information, sift through the information to make meaning of it, and write up the findings so that others find them interesting and meaningful. Some of these fears may rest in the images students have of researchers and what they do. When we have asked our own students what they thought of when they thought of researchers, many conjured up images of men in white lab coats (and it usually was men) gleaned from portrayals of research in movies and textbooks. Many also thought initially of more experimental and quantitative types of research. Such conceptions, we would contend, can make research seem even more removed from our lives and everyday work. A conception that is more consistent with how we portray research in this text relies on the relationships formed between researchers and their informants—­students, other writers, and so forth. Writing research makes use of many methods, and decisions about methods should be deliberate and thoughtful. Such decisions depend on one’s research questions, beliefs, positionality, biases, and stance. Such decisions also depend on reflection as well as on personal beliefs, such as those about what research means and how knowledge is created.1 For example, the preference both of us have for qualitative research has a great deal to do both with our views of the world and with how

Me, a Writing Researcher? 13 knowledge exists in the world. Both of us believe that meaning is a concept that is created among participants within the constraints of particular social contexts. In other words, we do not believe that there is an absolute “truth” out there that we can discover as researchers; rather, we believe that meaning is contextual, ever-changing, and exceedingly complex. This belief leads us to see research as an attempt to get close to some kind of meaning within a particular context; it leads us to work closely with a small number of people to explore their stances toward a subject and to try to make sense of these understandings in a deep, contextual way. Our goal is not to generalize from these situations to the rest of the world; rather, it is to take a particular research case and place it up against other research cases in order to see similarities and contradictions at work. Other stances and biases may lend themselves to different approaches and emphases in research. Our focus in this text is on qualitative approaches to writing research, but we adopt a wide lens in considering such approaches, which may include case studies, textual analyses, archival research, and ethnographies. In every case, a researcher’s positionality, stance, and biases will influence the questions being posed, the methods chosen, the analysis, and ultimately the presentation of results and findings. Purpose and audience also ultimately matter in the research we carry out. All kinds of qualitative research are valuable; all kinds of research play important roles in the creation of knowledge and in the advancement of understanding in our field. Certain methodological tools are natural extensions of the belief systems that underlie particular kinds of research. Because qualitative researchers believe in the importance of context, for example, a key tool in this kind of research is observation. Qualitative researchers also believe in the importance of listening to and preserving the voices of others, so another key tool is interviewing. Finally, because we value materials our research participants may create and use, another key tool is artifact analysis. These tools, along with numerous others, are learnable. In fact, we have discovered, both through our own experiences and through the experiences of our students, that learning about these tools—developing a deeper understanding of what researchers do—helps with developing the confidence you need to begin calling yourself a researcher. Another key to gaining confidence as a researcher is realizing that learning to do research takes a lot of practice. It’s something you get better at over time. Research requires deep understanding of approaches and tools, along with an awareness of positionality and personal stance. You gain this understanding by engaging in research. For newcomers, exposure to and experience with different kinds of studies will provide a repertoire of strategies and will likely shape beliefs about what constitutes good/effective research. We all grow and change continually as researchers, and experienced researchers know that there is no single, correct way to do research. Rather, researchers learn to reflect on and think critically about what they do, and they realize that each successive study gives them an opportunity to become even better.

How You Will Encounter Research in this Text We have two primary goals for this text: (1) helping you learn about the experience and practice of qualitative research and (2) helping you develop an identity as a writing researcher. We hope this book will help you become more comfortable and confident with research so that you can be successful in carrying out research and integrating it

14  Me, a Writing Researcher? seamlessly into your academic and professional lives. As we emphasize the process and experience of doing research throughout this book, we ask you to reflect continually on your identity, your ethos, your experiences, and your own stance and positionality for your qualitative research project. You’ll see that we invite reflection at many points in the book—because our experiences have shown us that none of this is ever static. Your identity will emerge and develop as you gain experience as a researcher, and your stance and positionality will likely shift just as a result of discovering and/or taking into account new information. The text will move you through each of the major stages of research; in the chapters that follow, we explain and demonstrate the various stages while addressing their complexity. However, bear in mind that real research is not linear and sequential, even though our ordering of chapters seems to suggest that. Rather, real research is recursive and is a process, much like writing itself. Still, for the purposes of this text, we devote at least one chapter to each of the four main stages of the research process: 1. Finding and articulating a research question (Chapter 2). 2. Planning your research (Chapter 3). 3. Selecting the methods and tools you will use to investigate your question (Chapters 4 and 5). 4. Sifting through and making sense of your research findings (analyzing data) (Chapter 6). 5. Writing up and disseminating your findings (Chapter 7). We use a consistent structure for each chapter, addressing what that stage of the research process involves, ways to get started with that stage, and, from our case studies, how other researchers have successfully navigated it. We hope these discussions will help you begin considering how your own project might take shape. We also identify tools and strategies for approaching that stage of the research process. Written to encourage a hands-on approach, these sections integrate a discussion of strategies with specific activities that you can use in your own research project. We suggest that you use our prompts in a way that makes sense to you as a beginning researcher. For example, you may want to start a research journal in which you record your responses and create a record of your developing thoughts about research. You may also want to select among the prompts we provide, doing only those that seem meaningful. Your instructor may also ask you to respond to certain prompts.

Sidebar 1.2:  Keeping a Research Journal Many researchers keep a research journal in which they record their thoughts and ideas throughout the research process. They may record in it multiple versions of their questions, their responses to readings, their frustrations, their initial thoughts on methodologies, their preliminary and developing interpretations of their findings, connections they begin seeing, and so forth. We encourage you,

Me, a Writing Researcher? 15 as you work your way through this text, to try out a research journal and to use it to record your developing thoughts and ideas. (As you read through the book, you’ll be introduced to some variations of this kind of journal, from blogs to visual charts and drawings. What’s important is to find the kind of journal that works for you.) You can also record your responses to prompts in your journal. The prompts will guide you through the various stages of the research process and help you anticipate and address the concerns and questions you may have as you prepare for and then carry out your research.

Each chapter also explores ways in which the stance and positionality of the researcher may impact that stage of the process. We ask you continually to consider how what you’re reading, what you believe, who you are (e.g., in relation to ability, ethnicity, race, gender identity, culture), and where and how you’re situated (e.g., as a minority, from a position of power and privilege) can affect your research. Our belief is that reflecting continually on these factors is essential for all researchers, but especially for qualitative researchers. Each of us brings perspectives to our research based on culture, ethnicity, gender, class, race, theoretical perspectives, and personal beliefs, and these contribute to the particular ways we approach and see our research. We contend that researchers must keep these perspectives and stances front and center, being always aware of their implications for our research. We also need to be deliberate about the roles they may play as we write up and disseminate our research. In this section of each chapter, we address the richness of these issues, illustrating ways in which other researchers have found that they touched upon and even shaped their research and suggesting how considerations of them may touch and shape your own research. Finally, we conclude each chapter by addressing ethical issues attending that stage of the research process. As committed qualitative researchers, we should always be concerned with how we treat and represent participants and research sites, along with how we tell the story of our research. Ethics are at the heart of any research: for example, questions about whose research it is, who benefits from it, and so on. These questions should remind us of the complexity of carrying out research, especially when we are researching real people in real situations. We believe that learning to become a writing researcher is a journey that should be filled with excitement, but it also is one that will have challenges. This book will guide you in that journey. We hope it will help you carry out the task at hand—for example, completing a required research methods course or writing a thesis—and that it also will help you begin thinking of yourself as a researcher. We want you to think about how you might incorporate a research stance into your life, whether as an academic for whom research is an integral part of your everyday work, as a professional for whom research functions to inform and improve your everyday work, or as a concerned and informed individual and citizen for whom research functions to enrich your everyday life and/or the lives of others. Thinking like a researcher

16  Me, a Writing Researcher? hopefully will become a way of life for you—as it has for us—that helps you reflect on and continually improve what you are thinking and doing, both personally and professionally.

Note 1 Historically, there have been many debates in composition studies regarding the merits of qualitative and quantitative approaches. Qualitative researchers have claimed that quantitative research is too focused on numbers and tightly controlled experiments, and much less concerned with context. Quantitative researchers, on the other hand, claim that qualitative research is too relativistic, too inclined to generalize from single cases, and insufficiently cognitive of the larger picture. These researchers question the ability of qualitative researchers to prove anything, especially with an “n of 1.”

2 What’s Your Question?

In the first chapter, we suggested that you begin your journey as a researcher by considering what you already know. This chapter builds on the first, presenting strategies to help you expand on that knowledge as you develop a research question. When we talk about a research question, we mean the question that expresses what you would like to investigate and learn through your research. An authentic research question expresses a true wondering or curiosity you have about your topic. In writing studies, this may be about an issue connected to your teaching, something you want to know about students and how they write (or learn to write), a gap in knowledge or understanding in the field, or an issue or problem in the workplace, just to name a few of the possibilities. Your research question is what will guide your research, so you will want to make sure it expresses what you wish to explore clearly and unambiguously. Although it sounds like a simple thing to do, articulating a good research question can be challenging. Some scholars contend that research studies are only as good as the research questions behind them, which can place a lot of pressure on you as a new researcher: Concerned that this initial stage of identifying a question can affect your entire research process, you may, for example, become overwhelmed by the thought of wanting to develop the perfect question from the outset. You might also be plagued with doubts about the value of your question: You may worry about whether anyone else will even care about it, whether others in the field have explored it already, whether it’s too broad or narrow, and even whether it’s interesting enough to sustain your attention. An additional concern our own students have expressed is that they will have nothing meaningful to contribute because they do not know enough about the field yet. All of these concerns can make the task of formulating a research question feel daunting. Despite these challenges, the master’s level students we have taught have produced meaningful and interesting projects that speak to their own curiosities about writing and teaching writing—and you can as well. We suggest to you what we have suggested to them—that you adopt a particular mindset as you begin thinking about your research question. First, recall the characteristics of research we identified in Chapter 1. Research, we said, has these qualities: • It is guided by a thoughtful, well-articulated question that originates in a need, concern, or problem. • It matters to oneself and others. • It is carried out in a planned, intentional, and systematic manner.

18  What’s Your Question? • •

It engages and draws on multiple sources and kinds of information (e.g., primary, secondary, firsthand). It entails a careful recording of findings and information.

As you reflect on these qualities, we encourage you to think of research as an exploration that is guided by some purpose—by that desire to accomplish the kinds of personal or professional goals that we also discussed in Chapter 1. Your research question should express that goal. Further, remember that research is about inquiring: You carry out research to learn something new, to answer a question, to solve a problem, or to fill a gap. Research is also recursive. In other words, researchers go back and forth between the various activities entailed in research, which suggests that the things you do, including the questions you pose, are not set in stone. In fact, in some cases you may not even develop your final research question until you have already carried out some of your research. Listen, for example, to how Natasha, one of our case study researchers, explains how she developed—and continued redeveloping— her question. The process for Natasha was one that occurred over time as she acquired new ­information—and new understandings—of her topic. She explains, In winter 2016, I was conceptualizing this question: “How can self-advocacy and incorporating habits of mind help students develop feelings of self-efficacy so they feel successful?” But going into the summer when I was beginning to develop my proposal, [I decided] my research question really had to do more with self-efficacy. . . . So the question I wrote down next was “How are student writers, writing practices, and feelings of self-efficacy toward writing and collegiate success influenced by an extended writing process that includes a learning profile, but that learning profile involved self-advocacy as a process?” I was also looking at how . . . engaging in this type of process could help students transfer the knowledge learned to other writing and learning spaces. Fast forward to November, December 2016, when I started to look at my data . . . . What I thought I was seeing had to do with agency so I started thinking, “Oh, my question is about agency and how this self-advocacy process helps students become agents of their own learning.” But then I added a new question [based on what I was seeing]: “How can writing instructors help students take responsibility for their own learning and their development as writers?” That new question really shifted more toward writing process. So that’s the arc that my project took, and there’s like 6 questions in there! And the final question that I ended up exploring in my master’s project was a hybrid of these questions: “How does this self-advocacy process impact students’ writing processes, how does that impact the way students conceptualize process writing, and then within that how can teachers use this strategy to help student perpetuate this process of learning?” I think the heart of the question stayed intact, but as I was finding information, I started thinking maybe I was asking the wrong question. So the language shifted and the focus shifted, but [at] the core, I stayed interested in self-advocacy and habits of mind. We love how Natasha describes this unfolding of her question(s) as an arc. Also important to note is how she started to think she might be asking the wrong question as

What’s Your Question? 19 she found more information. In the end, however, she came to see that her core ideas remained intact, even though her language and focus changed. This chapter presents strategies that we hope will help you engage in the same kind of productive—and generative—process of developing a good research question that Natasha did. Here are a few things to bear in mind both as you read this chapter and as you develop your own research question: •

Developing a research question is an important and complex stage of the research process that you will not want to rush. • This stage of the research process is recursive and ongoing; you will likely continue to revisit and possibly even revise your research question, just as Natasha did. • Your research question should be focused on something you like and in which you have a strong personal and/or professional investment. • Developing a research question is a stage of the research process that requires patience. Do not give up on or abandon potential questions too quickly. Give them a chance.

Where and How to Begin Whereas some researchers are drawn to specific areas of interest and have questions in mind before even embarking on a project, others need to engage in an exploratory process to identify interests. There are many ways to do this, including reading, having conversations with peers and colleagues, doing an inventory of one’s interests (see Prompt 2.1), and/or even carrying out preliminary research. A good place to start if you are not sure what truly interests you is with an inventory, responding to specific questions about your interests and your knowledge of the field. Such personal and professional inventories can help you brainstorm and identify interests, as well as identify and eliminate those things that do not interest you as much as you might have thought originally. Putting our thoughts on paper in this way allows us to externalize them and begin looking at them differently. This also helps us consider different perspectives and options.

Prompt 2.1:  Inventorying Your Personal and Professional Interests For this prompt, we suggest writing down responses to the following questions. You may write as many responses as you’d like as your goal is simply to begin identifying what interests you: • What are some topics you have encountered in the field about which you would like to learn more? • Of these, which concern you the most—and why? • What has been of greatest interest to you in your reading for your courses? What are some topics you find compelling and/or would like to know more about?

20  What’s Your Question? If you are teaching or tutoring writing, what questions do you have relating to those activities? What do you wonder or want to know more about? • If you hold a job as a writer, what have you found most interesting about your work? What has puzzled or been most challenging for you? What aspects of your job do you like the most and/or might you like to learn more about? Additionally, what contradictions have you observed between what you have read and learned in your coursework and what you have experienced as a writer? • If you are not a practitioner yet, what insights have you gained in discussions with your classmates and instructors? Have any of your classmates or instructors discussed issues in your field that interest you and seem to warrant further research? •

After responding to these questions, extract from your responses a list of topics about which you might like to know more. Next, respond to the questions below; consider creating a table or using a spreadsheet to record your responses. • • • •

For each topic you listed, what interests you? For what reasons? Why do you want to learn more about each of the topics you listed? What are some things you might like to learn about each topic? Why are the topics you identified meaningful to you? How or why might they be meaningful to others in your field?

It might be beneficial to give yourself extra time to reflect on this final set of questions. Sometimes, it is useful to let ideas sit before you respond to questions about them. Or, you can write down initial responses and revisit them after you have had time to think about them. Because research (like writing) is recursive, you can, and really should, revisit these questions at different points in your work. You will want to pay attention, in particular, to how your responses change as your knowledge and understanding change. Keep in mind Natasha’s experience.

Hopefully, the lists you generate in response to the prompt will help you identify or better define what you would like to research. What you choose will likely connect with your personal and/or professional interests. It may go without saying, but you also should be sure that your research topic and question are something you like, something you can imagine spending a good chunk of time with. If you have lingering doubts, then you might want to consider additional topics before you formulate your question. In addition, it always helps in research to keep an open mind to new or unexpected ideas. Research is an exploratory process; its root, “search,” captures its essence. And, of course, don’t discount the role of serendipity in this search. Sometimes a research question arises from an “aha” moment, as you notice something for the first time or begin to see the significance of something previously overlooked.

What’s Your Question? 21 (See Sidebar 2.1 for an example of how serendipity impacted one of our case study researchers, Ja’La.)

Sidebar 2.1:  Research as Personal and Serendipitous Ja’La was concerned that, going into her final year in her MA program, she still did not have a question for her final project. Although she had a general area of interest—social justice and equity—she had not yet found that perfect question. As she explains, a moment of serendipity helped her discover her question: I was very focused on social justice issues, equality issues. I was trying to find ways people in tech comm were thinking about these kinds of ideas . . . These were the themes I went into the summer with. [But], I didn’t have a question. I did have a trip planned to South Africa to do volunteer work. I ended up having, although I didn’t have the words at that time, an embodied experience. As I was learning about these issues of post-apartheid, I was wondering if there were connections between what had happened in South Africa, what has happened in the US, and what is currently happening. In South Africa, I saw a lot of visuals and images that spoke to post-apartheid, that spoke to past racial inequalities. [Looking at those] allowed me to have that embodied experience. This unexpected experience of looking at the visuals and images of public art in South Africa led Ja’La to think more about the connection of images to culture and inequality. This, in turn, led her to develop her question about “how images communicate past, present and future and how they can enact us to change for the better.” In part, her question arose from a serendipitous moment, but that moment became meaningful because of the mindset and the themes she carried with her.

Finally, in developing your question, it is also important to consider practicality. In addition to, “What do I really care about?” other questions you should ask include, “Will the question I’m proposing lead to a project that is doable in the time I have available?” We always face time constraints and deadlines in academic settings. Whether it be a semester, a summer, or even an entire academic year, projects have to work within the timeframe we have available to us. Other important questions include, “Can I sustain my interest in my question even if circumstances change [e.g., a change of jobs]?” and “Will that interest still be there in a few months?” Additionally, “What if priorities shift at my research site?” Or, “What if coworkers and/or students who are at the center of my research question move on?” Sustainability, both in regard to your interest in your topic and in regard to the practical side of carrying out your research, is an important consideration.

22  What’s Your Question?

Next Steps: Tools and Strategies for Generating and Narrowing Research Questions Once you have identified a topic that interests you, you can begin the process of ­developing—and redeveloping—your research question, a process that is recursive and ongoing and which, thus, should not be rushed. Fortunately, there are many strategies that can assist you with developing and even narrowing your question. In this section, we talk about ways to gather information about and build your understanding of your topic. This includes reading, observing and noticing, talking with others, and gathering preliminary data. Subsequently, we address strategies for making meaning of what you read, observe, notice, and hear. These include keeping a research log, journal, or blog; identifying recurrent themes; engaging in processes in which you broaden and narrow your question and rephrase it in order to formulate your question in a way that expresses precisely what you would like to learn; and, finally, writing a problem statement. Gathering Information and Building Understanding through Reading Reading serves several purposes at this stage of the research process. First, it informs you of what’s out there already—of what has been done and said about your topic. Reading provides a map of the field and of your areas of interest (see also Chapters 3 and 4). You can use this map to see where and how your own interests fit. Reading also contributes to your thinking and informs your understanding of your topic. When we read, we respond to the ideas of others—we essentially begin engaging in a conversation with them—and we develop and refine our own thinking and ideas. You may find in what you read something that you agree or disagree with, something the author fails to address, or even a contradiction between what the author claims and what you yourself have observed or experienced. Such perceptions often are referred to as felt difficulties. As a reader—and scholar—you sense that something is not quite right, either in a single reading or across multiple readings. Felt difficulties can be productive experiences for us as researchers as we generate our research questions. If you sense a felt difficulty, reflect on what it evokes for you—what’s troublesome for you and why? Additionally, what information or knowledge might address it, and is that information or knowledge something you wish to explore? If you are just starting out, you might wonder whether you know enough about the subject to raise concerns. These feelings certainly are legitimate; however, your gut reactions to what you read are also legitimate. At the very least, make a note of these feelings; write them down. Also write down when something in your reading resonates strongly or inspires you. It may be that your reading raises new questions for you or evokes other situations where the ideas being presented also apply. We will say more about this in the next section, but we again suggest (as we did in Chapter 1) keeping a log or journal as you read (see also the section on journals and logs later in the chapter). This is a place where you can record your reactions to and feelings about what you read. It also is a place where you can explore and further develop your own ideas in response to what you read. Some questions you might address in a reading log include:

What’s Your Question? 23 • • • •

What was most interesting about the reading? What, if anything, was troubling or puzzling about it? What questions did the reading leave you with? How does the reading connect to your own experiences?

We encourage you to add other questions as they occur to you. How We Read for Research Reading for research is similar to reading for your classes, but also different in some important ways. First, rather than being assigned particular readings, you now have the opportunity to identify and locate what you will read. And so, you will have to decide what to read, how much to read, and even when to stop reading. Although reading can generate questions and new ideas, it can also overwhelm you. There’s a lot out there, and, in today’s digital world, more of it than ever is easily accessible to us. Sometimes it’s helpful to set limits and to remember that you have plenty of time ahead of you to read; you will be reading during every stage of your research. During these early stages, you will want to read broadly, but also selectively. Because reading at this stage is exploratory, don’t feel that you have to read everything. You should be concerned primarily with learning enough about your topic to formulate a focused and effective question. You can always go back to some of your sources later to reread and reconsider them. As identifying and reviewing the literature pertaining to your topic is an ongoing activity in research, we even had difficulty determining where in this book to discuss it. We chose to introduce it here (although we will return to it in subsequent chapters) because this is the stage at which you will begin undertaking this task in a systematic manner. Once you have a fairly good idea of the topic you want to research, you will need to explore that topic and determine what has already been written and said about it. This becomes an important first step in situating yourself in the field’s conversation about that topic. At this point, you may be asking yourself some important questions about this part of the research process: for example, “How will I know where to look?” “What if I don’t find anything?” “What if I find too much?” “How will I assess the value of what I find?” What follows are suggestions for what you can do to ensure that your search for and review of the literature on your topic is both productive and sufficiently comprehensive. Where to Begin If you are not sure where or how to start your search for sources, you might begin with articles or books you’ve read already, either in your classes or on your own. As you reconsider these sources, also look at their works cited. This can be a fruitful way to begin identifying those authors and keywords that will be helpful to you as you begin your own search. For example, as you read, you may see that certain authors’ names or particular articles are cited repeatedly. That discovery might help you identify the most noted scholars in the area you’re studying or the key research articles that are at the center of knowledge in this area. You can also ask instructors or peers to suggest names and sources.

24  What’s Your Question? Although general search engines and sites such as Google and Wikipedia can provide leads and information that may be useful for getting started or situated with your topic, they will not yield a comprehensive and reliable list of the academic literature on a subject. For that, you will need to use the more targeted databases, which are constructed to provide just that sort of information. If you are not familiar with library databases, or if it has been a while since you have done library research, a good place to begin is with a refresher course or session with a librarian. It is also a good idea to familiarize yourself with your library’s website so that you know what’s there. Many libraries have research guides specific to particular disciplines along with other resources to assist students with research. Databases, as you may know, are searchable collections of resources, and there are literally hundreds of them. However, your library will likely only subscribe to a selection. Your school’s library pays a fee to the company (e.g., ProQuest) that maintains the database in order to obtain access to that database for its patrons. All databases are limited in some way. Some focus on particular subject areas (e.g., Education Abstracts, ERIC, GenderWatch, Health and Wellness Resource Center, JSTOR, LexisNexis, PubMed, CINAHL); others focus on types of publications or genres (e.g., Dissertation Abstracts, Essay and General Literature Index, HarpWeek, New York Times, PoemHunter, Short Story Index). Some focus on coverage (e.g., Electronic Collections Online, NetLibrary, NewsBank, Newspaper Abstracts, Project Muse, Readers’ Guide Abstracts), and others focus on reference and other specific types of information (e.g., Facts.com, FactSearch, Oxford English Dictionary). Databases, at a minimum, provide citations, but many also now provide abstracts and/or full-text downloads so you can save and/or print the articles you locate. Many libraries also now contain e-books in their collections or have ways for you to access them.

Prompt 2.2:  Using Databases Identify three databases that might be useful to your literature search and review them. Make note of the following: • • • • •

Their purposes The interface they have (including fields and prompts) The search strategies they recommend or lend themselves to What you are able to find with them Recommendations or tips for using them that you might offer to others based on your own experiences.

How to Carry out an Effective Search When you begin searching online, the first thing you need are keywords. We recommend starting with the keywords connected most directly to your research topic. For example, if you are interested in how revision is taught in middle school classrooms, you would probably begin with the words revision and middle school and go from there. Once you generate a list, you can go through and select terms that seem

What’s Your Question? 25 especially relevant (e.g., with the revision study, you might decide on the following: revision, writing, middle school English). You may need to focus or narrow your list if your search generates too many hits. For example, if you type “computers” into the search field in ERIC, you will end up with thousands of entries, most of which will not be relevant. If you are researching a topic in the field of writing, you will find that certain databases are more helpful than others. Some of the more common databases used by scholars who do writing research include CompPile, RhetMap.org, WCORD, REx, Education Abstracts, ERIC, MLA Bibliography, and Firstsearch. Many scholars now also rely on Google Scholar, which is openly available. Other databases you might find useful include ArticleFirst, Arts and Humanities Search, Dissertation Abstracts, GenderWatch, Humanities Abstracts, Internet and Personal Computing Abstracts, Kraus Curriculum Development Library Online, Project Muse, and Social Sciences Abstracts. Your library’s online catalog will help you search your library’s holdings, including books and journals. Academic libraries usually have agreements with other university libraries through a consortium that provide patrons with broader access to resources through interlibrary loan. What to Do with the Sources You Find Once you locate sources related to your topic, you need to evaluate them and decide which to consider. Therefore, you will need effective strategies for evaluating what you find and also for organizing and managing your sources. One common approach for evaluating sources that we share with students is called the CRAAP test (Blakeslee, 2004). CRAAP is an acronym that prompts assessments of currency, relevance, authority and/or accuracy, and purpose or point of view. The best way to use the CRAP test is to ask the following questions: • Is the source current? (Bear in mind that older sources may still be pertinent to your study, depending on your question, especially if the earlier work is still viewed as significant and authoritative in relation to your topic.) • Is the source relevant? Does the source relate to your topic? Is it appropriate for your research? • Is the source authoritative? Who is the author or publisher? Is the latter a professional organization or academic publisher? Are they reputable, respected in the field? What are their qualifications? • Is it accurate? What is the source of the information? Is it sufficiently supported with evidence? Is it a refereed source? • What is the purpose of the source? From what point of view was it written? (Here is where you would consider positionality and stance, important concepts for research that we discuss throughout this text.) As you begin selecting sources, you also will want to consider ways to organize and manage them. There are numerous applications and tools available for doing this (e.g., Zotero). Different tools have different affordances and limitations, so you will want to select one that provides what you want and will work well for your own needs and preferences. Most now generate citations in different styles, although we recommend

26  What’s Your Question? always reviewing them for accuracy. These tools are convenient and efficient; however, they are not replacements for your own good judgment and diligence. As with any tool, you should familiarize yourself with it and make your own determinations. After you have begun selecting sources and started organizing and managing them, you will be ready to begin reviewing them. Experienced researchers learn to read selectively, sometimes using strategies such as skimming and diving where they skim a source and then zero in on those parts that seem most relevant and meaningful for their work. Keep in mind too that you may not need, or even want, to read every source, especially books, from start to finish. You will often find that just certain parts of a work are relevant to your project. How to Read Your Sources By this point in your academic career, you have completed many academic reading assignments. You have developed at least some level of comfort with reading academic texts. However, if you are like many of the graduate students with whom we have worked, you may still have questions, or even doubts, about how effective or productive your reading—and note-taking—strategies are. Our own students have also expressed these concerns. As a starting point, we recommend reflecting on your strategies for and challenges in reading, which we provide a guide for in Prompt 2.3.

Prompt 2.3:  Reading Reflection. Part 1 Consider the following questions: • What do you do when you read academic texts? (Think about the reading you do both for class and on your own.) • How do you usually approach academic reading? • Do your approaches ever differ? When and why? • What do you find most challenging when you read such texts? What difficulties do you sometimes experience, and what is your sense of why you experience those difficulties? • What kinds of academic and/or professional texts do you read? • What are your purposes for reading those different texts? • In what ways do your approaches to reading vary with different kinds of text? • What approaches do you find most helpful and productive, and why?

Reflecting on questions like these makes us more aware of how we approach different reading tasks, as well as different texts. It can also make us more mindful of our own strengths and challenges in reading. Our experience has taught us that how you approach your reading and how you engage with texts and ideas can make a

What’s Your Question? 27 difference. Even just knowing your purposes for reading makes a difference. As a researcher trying to develop a research question, your main purpose at this point may be to simply see what others have written on your topic—to figure out the field’s conversation about the topic. It’s likely that your purposes will become more fine-tuned as your knowledge and understanding of your topic deepen. Then, your purposes may become to explore your curiosities, to make connections (e.g., of new ideas to previous ones, of what you read to what you know already or to your own experience), to gain new insights, to discover patterns, and even to solve a problem. So, what are the best strategies for approaching the reading of complex academic texts? How can you approach reading in a deliberate, strategic manner? We suggest beginning with the idea of reading with a purpose. In other words, what is it you want to find in your reading? What is your purpose for this particular act of reading, or this particular text? What are you planning to do with what you read or with this text? Second, you should also consider the author’s purpose(s) for writing. Knowing something about the text and the author’s intentions can help you situate yourself in your reading, and even in the larger scholarly conversation. Third, knowing something about yourself can also help, so you will want to assess your own prior ­knowledge— what you know already about the topic. And fourth, you will want to begin the process of considering the larger scholarly conversation, assessing how what you know already and how the texts you read fit into that. In addition to identifying your own and the author’s purpose(s), and assessing any prior knowledge you bring, it can be very helpful to preview the text you are about to read. Look at the title; the preface or abstract; chapter titles or headings; any sidebars, tables, charts, or other graphics; and the conclusion, appendixes, and works cited. Most scientific and technical articles follow the now commonly acknowledged IMRAD format with an introduction, methods, results, and discussion sections (Swales, 1990). Some educational research does the same. But other articles may follow a more narrative structure, beginning with an anecdote or case study or exploring the classroom practices of a teacher or teacher researcher. What’s important to note about any of these formats is that most scholarly readers do not generally read in a linear manner. Experts in disciplinary and professional fields develop strategies and approaches for reviewing and reading the literature that are both time-saving and productive for them. As you become more familiar with your field’s scholarship, you will likely do the same. Previewing a text also entails checking the length of the source, considering how long it will take to read it, and developing a sense of what you will encounter as you read it. Again, looking at the headings will help with this, but you may also want to skim the source to assess its usefulness to you and its relevance to your work. Once you start reading, you can use context and clues in the text to interpret and make meaning of it. You will also likely want to highlight, mark, or take notes on the text. This may entail writing in the margins or in a separate notebook as a way of recording your key thoughts and ideas and also as a way of engaging with the text. Be sure to note and write down any questions you have, any insights that occur to you, the connections you see to your own thinking and experiences, and so on. (See Sidebar 2.2 for a list of things readers commonly annotate in texts.) You also will want to explore difficult ideas, terminology, and concepts and even break down the text into key ideas. Your research journal, log, or blog may be a good place to do all of this—or you might keep a separate reading log (we discuss this in greater detail and provide examples below).

28  What’s Your Question? Academic texts are complex, and acquiring an understanding of them often requires multiple readings. As a result, it is important that, regardless of what stage you are at in your research, you allow sufficient time to read, and even reread, your sources. As you do, you will want to continue drawing connections—to other texts, to the larger scholarly conversation on your topic, and to your own knowledge and experiences. You will want to attend closely to what the text or source is saying. You may even, at times, find it helpful to read a text out loud as an additional way of processing and understanding it.

Sidebar 2.2:  What Readers Annotate Some of the things you may wish to annotate as you read include: • • • • • • • • • •

The author’s purpose Main issues or questions addressed The author’s stance on those issues or questions Main arguments Support for the arguments Points with which you agree/disagree Ideas that connect to your own ideas, thinking, and purposes Ideas that connect to other authors’ ideas, thinking, and purposes Ideas or terminology you find confusing or intriguing Your own developing impressions, stances, and ideas.

Keeping a Reading/Research Log, Journal, or Blog Keeping a log, journal, or blog is a good way to both record and make meaning of what you read as well as what you observe, find, and learn throughout your research. And starting this as you are just beginning your research—as you explore your topic, begin reading sources, and develop your question—can be a very productive strategy. You can record any number of things in your log or journal, including ideas from your reading that grabbed your attention or ones you found troubling or puzzling, questions you’re raising, and connections you’re seeing to other aspects of your knowledge and experience. Journals or logs can be a productive place for recording your developing ideas, impressions, observations, questions, and reactions; because the early stages of research are focused on your thinking, reflections, and musings, journals are perfect places for recording those. Some questions you can address in a reading log include • • • •

What was most interesting about the reading? What, if anything, was troubling or puzzling about it? What questions did the reading leave you with? How does the reading connect to your own experiences?

We were intrigued when we first saw the journal of one of our former colleagues in Communication, Keon Pettiway. As you can see from the perspectives he shares in Sidebar 2.3, Keon integrates words and graphics to chronicle his developing ideas

What’s Your Question? 29 and thinking as he begins his research process. Such displays can help you visualize the larger conversation pertaining to your topic, along with your potential place in that conversation; they can help you array your own thinking and ideas alongside the thinking and ideas of others. They can also show you where there might be gaps or inconsistencies. If you are visually oriented, like Keon, you might develop your own way of visually representing ideas from your reading.

Sidebar 2.3:  Visual Brainstorming: A Recursive Writing Strategy for Identifying Starting Points and Raising Questions— Keon Pettiway, formerly of Eastern Michigan University Brainstorming is an essential practice throughout all stages of the recursive writing process, including prewriting, drafting, revising, and editing. Thus, it is a useful strategy for choosing a topic, formulating a research question, identifying multiple methods, developing a research plan, and finding ways to present your research. The Writing Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has identified a number of brainstorming techniques, such as freewriting; breaking down topics into subtopics, terms, phrases, or lists; looking at your topic from multiple perspectives and directions; and using rhetorical figures such as similes to generate ideas (see https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/brainstorming). In my own writing process, visual brainstorming is central for identifying starting points and raising questions about these entryways. For instance, my Master of Fine Arts in Graphic Design thesis project investigated the role of graphic design in the government public sector by addressing the following question: What graphic design methods are useful to improve public health services for the homeless in Pitt County, North Carolina? Thus, the project explored multiple design methodologies to intervene in complex social problems such as public healthcare. Over a six-month period, the project utilized three conceptual approaches: service design, journey mapping, and responsive practice. The final research products included a traditional written thesis and information graphics. Visual brainstorming was central throughout the writing process in order to locate multiple starting points and generate different questions. For instance, after freewriting and conducting a literature review on the topic during the early stages of research, I held virtual and face-to-face meetings with stakeholders, researchers, and designers in order to gain an understanding about the specific context of public health in Greenville, North Carolina. This information gathering process was useful for visually brainstorming new starting points, identifying multiple stakeholders, and illustrating possible interventions (see Figure 2.1), as well as charting a timeline to complete the project (see Figure 2.2) and finding ways to visually present the research process (see Figure 2.3). For more information about the thesis project, entitled Utilizing multiple design methods to resolve social problems, visit http://thesis.keonpettiway.com.

Figure 2.1  Visual Brainstorming: Starting Points

Figure 2.2  Visual Brainstorming: Timeline

32  What’s Your Question?

Figure 2.3  Visual Brainstorming: Research Process

We were also impressed with Natasha, who created and kept a blog throughout her time in our master’s program. She began her blog as part of an assignment in a graduate class taught by Derek Mueller, who had adapted the idea of Brooke Notes, which was created by Collin Brooke (see Appendix A for a copy of the original assignment). When Natasha started, her blog was intended to be a way to organize her ideas about her reading. Over the course of her research, however, that role expanded. She named her blog, Scrapbooked Inquiries (https://scrapbookedinquiries.wordpress.com/author/

What’s Your Question? 33 scrapbookedinquiries/), and her beginning entries illustrate her thoughtful approach. These entries contained the bibliographic information about the article or book, keywords (which she could later use for searching), quotations, questions, and further reading.

Sidebar 2.4:  Excerpts from a Sample Entry in Natasha’s Research Blog READING NOTES Bronwyn T. Williams, “ ‘A Puzzle to the Rest of Us’: Who is a ‘reader’ anyway?” June 21, 2018 Williams, Bronwyn T. “ ‘A Puzzle to the Rest of Us’: Who is a ‘reader’ anyway?”   Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, vol. 47, no. 8, 2004, pp. 686–689. Summary: Williams explores what teachers mean when they identify students as readers; this definition is contrasted with the ways our culture as a whole conceptualizes readers. Williams argues that teachers should be transparent with students about the reading practices that are appropriate/we expect in our classrooms, as these conversations can make academic, critical reading and its expectations more transparent for students. Keywords: reading, readers, good, puzzle, adolescent, students, behaviors Quotations: • “Yet when I talk with fellow teachers about whether students are or are not readers, I think we are talking about a specific type of reading. Beyond decoding words and sentences, we think of a reader as a person who makes particular kinds of intertextual connections, who asks particular kinds of questions of a text, who reads at a particular intellectual distance from the text, who talks more about the text’s meaning and analyzes its nature” (687). • “[Teachers and students] might still be reading all day (our lives are filled with print), but [they are] not thinking of [themselves] as a reader when [they] use [their] vernacular literacies” (687). • People identified as readers “are seen as isolated, alone, engaged in pleasures they aren’t sharing, and dangerously out of touch with the ‘real world’ ” (687). Questions: • “I wonder, however, if our conception of a reader (and the attributes that accompany such an identity) are shared by those, including our students, who are not teachers” (688). • How can I incorporate Williams’s reading activity into my own class—perhaps ENGL 111 or 075?

34  What’s Your Question? Further Reading: Alverman, D.E. (2001). Reading adolescents’ reading identities: Looking back to see ahead. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Litxxeracy, 44, 676–690. Helmers, M. (2003). Introduction: Representing reading. In M. Helmers (Ed.), Intertexts: Reading pedagogy in college writing classrooms (pp. 3–26). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

With a blog, you can create opportunities for feedback and facilitate interactions with others. Instead of just writing and recording ideas for yourself, you create a dynamic space that other researchers—those interested in the same topic—can visit in order to explore, respond, and contribute. It can become a generative space for cultivating your topic and developing your question and approach to investigating it—and later for sharing and seeing reactions to your findings. As a practical concern, keep in mind that what you use and how you keep your reading/research journal depends on your own style and preferences. There are many choices, and whatever you choose should work best for you. Consider, do you want something others can see and respond to? Would you prefer something that only you can access? You also will want to give thought to how you organize your journal or blog. Do you want different sections for different purposes (e.g., for recording ideas and questions, for brainstorming, for responding to what you’re reading, for noting gaps and felt difficulties—and even frustrations, for wonderings, and so on)? Whatever organizational scheme you choose, you will want it to be accessible so you can easily find information. You also will want something that is easy to add to and use. Once you have used this step of initial reading to gain a good understanding of your topic, you are ready to move on to more tools and strategies for generating and narrowing your research question, beginning with observing and noticing. Gathering Information and Building Understanding through Observing and Noticing Similar to reading, observing and noticing are ways to identify felt difficulties about practices, experiences, or situations, which in turn can help you develop your research question. If you are teaching, tutoring in a writing center, or working in a professional setting, you will have ample opportunity to observe what is going on around you and/or to reflect on your own practice. What do you notice about students who come into the writing center for consultations or about the sessions they’re having with the consultants? Is there a student in your classroom whose approaches to writing assignments you find interesting or wonder about? What observations have you made of the writers—or of writing more generally—in your workplace setting? Paying attention to your surroundings and the dynamics occurring within them can be a very productive strategy for generating ideas and formulating questions for your research. An important step here is to ask yourself what questions your observations raise for you.

What’s Your Question? 35 Whenever we teach qualitative research methods, we ask our students, usually within the first few weeks of class, to select a location and then just observe what’s going on in that location. We instruct them to record their observations, along with any reactions they have. One of our favorite responses to this assignment came from a student who entitled her observation “Auto-Ethnography.” This student sat in her automobile (a pickup truck in this case) and simply watched what was going on in and around the truck. Most of our students, however, choose settings connected to their research interests. For example, a middle school teacher decided to observe her students during their reading time and was amazed by the things she noticed them doing as they read. This provided her with numerous insights and, ultimately, questions about this daily activity in her classroom. Observations can be very generative during this stage of the research process, but observing and noticing can also be challenging, especially if you are the kind of person who likes to talk and get involved in situations. In fact, you may need to train yourself to just sit quietly and watch. You will be amazed by how much you are able to observe, especially if you observe a setting that is familiar to you. The practice of making the familiar unfamiliar is one that most qualitative researchers find to be very productive. Observing and noticing may well be one-time, deliberate activities you do in this beginning stage of research as you develop a question, or you may cultivate them as habits that become a part of your general approach to research. In other words, once you get the hang of them, observing and noticing can become things you just do naturally and will become valuable tools, something we address in Chapter 4. Our experience has been this: When you get really engrossed in your research, you will most likely always be “on the lookout” for things that are meaningful and shed light on what you’re investigating, and even those things that raise new questions. As an example, one former student, who continues to conduct research in her classroom, has spent several years noticing the difficulties her high school students have with grammar, particularly with grammatical constructions. Over the years, she has kept a research log in which she gathered examples of her students’ writing and classroom conversations about grammar, and has formulated and reformulated questions to help her research this concern. She could have continued teaching grammar in the same ways she had, but her observations of students and their needs led her to question, rethink, and ultimately research ways of teaching grammar that work best for her students.

Prompt 2.4:  Observing Your Surroundings This prompt has two options. Option 1: Select a situation and observe it for 30 minutes to an hour. Just sit quietly and pay attention. Do not take notes until after you have completed your observation. At that time, write down what you observed. Record the ordinary as well as the unusual. Be as thorough as you can. Then, either write a description or give an oral report of your observations to your classmates. If you write

36  What’s Your Question? up your observations, try to do so in sufficient detail so that someone unfamiliar with the situation can imagine it. (As a variation of this prompt, two or three students in a class could observe the same situation, but separately. The class can then hear and compare the observations, which will likely be very different. This variation, carried out in one of our classes, yielded some surprising and interesting distinctions.) Option 2: Carry out a more extensive observation connected to your research interests. Take a week and observe situations that are connected to your interests. Observe these situations systematically on a number of occasions. After you have completed each observation, record it in the manner described earlier. As the week progresses, revisit your notes and look for patterns and themes. Then develop questions from your observations. Report your observations and questions to your classmates, noting their responses and obtaining their feedback.

Gathering Information and Building Understanding through Talking with Others Another strategy we encourage our students to use is to talk with another person about their interests. This can be a faculty member, classmate, peer, professional colleague, or even a family member. The act of articulating our thoughts, ideas, and reactions can serve many purposes, including clarifying those thoughts for ourselves and helping us identify the ideas that really interest, strike, or trouble us, thus helping us discover the question(s) we most want to investigate. Though it is sometimes portrayed that way, research, in general, is not something that is done in isolation. Even if you are not technically collaborating with others, you will likely find that your research is more productive—and gratifying—when you share your thinking and seek feedback. Talking with others—advisors, classmates, a partner or spouse, or even a friend—can be especially helpful when you are trying to develop your research question, as it was for both Ja’La and lisa, another of our case study respondents. Ja’La, as you may recall from Chapter 1, had a vague idea about the project she wanted to pursue (something about social justice) and was inspired by her experience of seeing political public art while in South Africa. But it was not until she sat down with her advisor that these partly formed ideas took shape as a series of questions. As another example, lisa, the high school teacher who has looked at the role of outdoor experiences and placebased education for most of her career, credits her teacher research group, a collective of teachers who meet monthly to share research ideas and ongoing projects, with helping her hone her research question. The act of externalizing your ideas by sharing them with others can help you view them differently or in new ways. Additionally, simply posing the question, “What do you think?” can prompt others to share a variety of new perspectives. Prompt 2.5 gives you firsthand experience with such feedback.

What’s Your Question? 37

Prompt 2.5:  Talking With Others For this prompt, • Free write a list of possible research questions. • Select one question that interests you and write it on a blank piece of paper. Fill in the following: “I am interested in this question because . . .” Also, “I already know these things about this topic . . ., but I don’t know . . .” (make lists for each of these). • In a group of four or five, pass your response to the person to your left. Everyone in your group should respond to what you have written by using the following prompts: “What I find most interesting about your topic is . . .” (list); “Some questions I have about your topic are . . .” (list); or “Some resources I know about that would be useful for this topic are . . .” (list). • Keep passing the papers until they are returned to their authors. Each person should have a sheet with responses from each of the group members. • Read your responses and free write about what you have learned.

Both of us use the strategy of talking with others, and we cannot recommend it enough. If you are a student, you have the ideal situation. You have your professors, probably an advisor, and your classmates. You might even talk to professors outside of your program and/or discipline to get their perspectives. We also recommend developing a research or writing group, like the teacher research group mentioned above, or a similar group that arose one semester when Ann taught the research methods class. That semester, six of her students formed a group that called themselves the “Six Scholars,” which continued meeting long past the end of the course. They supported each other as they planned and then carried out their research for their master’s theses and culminating writing projects. They even started addressing each other as scholars (i.e., Scholar Tallman and Scholar Benton), which suggests that they had begun assuming identities as researchers. Sharing ideas with others and hearing their responses to your ideas can be very helpful, both during the stage when you’re formulating questions as well as during all of the other stages of the research process, as Cathy illustrates in Sidebar 2.5.

Sidebar 2.5:  Talking through Questions One of the most stimulating, and still ongoing, research projects I have done began in discussions with my husband, an environmental activist and organizer. For years, he had suggested that teachers and teacher educators should be doing what environmentalists do when they want to get public attention for

38  What’s Your Question? their cause: Organize a campaign to educate and inform others to inspire them to activism. As we talked about this notion over a long period of time, it slowly took shape in my mind as a potential research project. I started to wonder what teachers could learn from community organizers, and so, several years ago, I seriously started to pick my husband’s brain about what the connections might be, thinking aloud with him (usually on long car trips) about how this might turn into some intriguing research. This long incubation eventually began to take shape as a question, and as it did, I started talking to teachers I knew. What were the connections they saw, I asked, and as they started to share their experiences with me, I came to formulate a clearer question. I then turned, as I often do, to a good friend and colleague in my field to see what she thought about this direction for research. Because she is extremely well read in our discipline, she was able to help me reshape my thinking and articulate my question even more clearly. What I found so vital about this process of working with others at the early stage of my research was both the confirmation from others that my idea was feasible and interesting, and the further ideas that various people, who had very different backgrounds, could provide me.

Our advice to you as new researchers is to engage others, from the earliest stages possible, in conversations about the ideas that interest you. Both of us believe that relationships and interactions play a central role in research and in the creation of knowledge. Because we are social beings, why not capitalize on that as you formulate and fine-tune your ideas for your research, as you develop your research question, and even as you carry out your research? Gathering Information and Building Understanding through Preliminary Data Although it might seem premature at this stage in your research, you might also start collecting some data. Such preliminary data gathering can function a lot like reading: It can deepen your understanding of your topic, help you think about it differently, and generate new questions about it. As an example, you might decide to conduct informational interviews with individuals who are knowledgeable about your topic. You might also interview potential participants in your research, or you might administer an informal survey. The latter can be a useful tool for obtaining quick insights and information. In addition, you also could analyze genres, documents, or discourse. As an example, Ann, when she was just beginning to explore her interests in scientific writing, compared the journal Physical Review, which publishes full-length research articles, with Physical Review Letters, which publishes much shorter articles designed to disseminate new ideas quickly. Ann looked at both journals as a way of generating ideas for her research question(s). She obtained pairs of articles written by the same authors and published in both places, and she did a quick comparison of these articles to see how they differed. She then used what she noticed and learned to develop her research

What’s Your Question? 39 question, which focused on how physicists wrote for the two forums and what rhetorical strategies they used.

Making Meaning As you’re searching and reading the literature, conducting preliminary observations and interviews, and collecting other kinds of information to inform your research and develop a question, there also are many things you can do to make meaning of what you read and learn. We have talked already about research journals and reading logs, so in this section, we introduce some additional strategies. These include looking for recurrent themes, broadening and narrowing your question as a way of focusing it more sharply, and writing problem statements. Looking for Recurrent Themes As you annotate and record ideas from preliminary sources, you will want to pay close attention to the ideas and themes that keep coming up, even if they seem fairly ordinary. In fact, often it’s the ordinary themes that end up being the most interesting. You also should record the themes you’re noticing, and, as Keon did, you might even develop a visual depiction of them. In doing so, you may wish to array your own ideas about the theme(s) in relation to those of others. It can help, as well, to include ­context—for example, articles the themes are addressed in, authors who address them, how they’re addressed, and so on. Also, what might be significant or unusual about the themes, and why are they even themes? Finally, is your own thinking in agreement with or contrary to them? Looking for themes is an important activity during all stages of the research process, but it can be especially helpful when you are trying to determine what you want to focus on in your research. Broadening and Narrowing Your Question New researchers sometimes worry that they won’t find sufficient information about their topic, so they either articulate questions that are too broad, or they develop multiple questions instead of focusing on just one. In some cases, any one of these questions could be its own study. If you are someone who does this, you will probably want—and need—to narrow your focus. We recommend writing down all of your questions and ideas as you may eventually return to them. You may also want to generate multiple questions as a deliberate strategy for determining the best question for your project. In other words, it can be productive both to be prolific with your questions and/or to undertake an exercise of both broadening and narrowing them during these earlier stages of research. Doing so can help you focus on what it is you really want to get at and learn in your research and to develop your final question. As an example of broadening and narrowing questions, we provide the following to our nursing students in a writing class they take. The first example addresses the broader topic of nursing shortage. A more narrowed focus might address any of the following: the lack of nursing faculty, professional recruitment, and student retention. A second example is mandatory overtime. A more narrowed focus here might be on adverse effects of overtime for patients, medical errors, or ethics. A third example concerns electronic medical records. Again, medical errors would be a narrower focus

40  What’s Your Question? here, as would patient and/or physician satisfaction, and benefits. Finally, the broader topic of Magnet designation within nursing could be narrowed to a focus on sustainability, workplace culture, quality of care, or return on investment. Identifying such broader and narrower concepts can be a productive strategy as you work on focusing your own interests. Examples of questions related to the above that might result from this process include, “Are strategically planned and placed educational programs the key to fixing the nursing shortage?” “How do electronic health records maximize efficiency in skin and wound care?” “What adverse effects occur when nurses work mandatory overtime?” “How are patient and nursing outcomes better in Magnet hospitals?”

Prompt 2.6:  Broadening and Narrowing Brainstorm a list of questions relating to your topic. Go as broad as you care to with your questions. Don’t worry about narrowing them or even coming up with a single question. Put the questions aside for a few days. When you return to the questions, work on narrowing their scope and/or coming up with a single question. You might find it helpful to respond to the following: “By the end of my research, the question I most want to answer is this . . .” Try to formulate a single, clear, concise, and coherent question that captures the essence of what you most want to learn in your research.

Much has been written about the best ways to phrase research questions. Again, because a well-formulated question can influence your research significantly, we believe it is important to think carefully about the actual wording of your question. Taking the time to compose a well-focused and well-thought-out question can help you establish a strong foundation for your inquiry. Marion MacLean and Marian Mohr, in Teacher Researchers at Work (1999), have one of the best discussions we know of about productive ways to formulate and phrase research questions. They start by suggesting you take your general topic or problem and write it as three questions, beginning with each of the following phrases: • • •

What happens when . . .? How . . .? What is . . .?

Each beginning, they say, implies a slightly different approach to the problem. “What happens when . . .” and “How . . .” questions imply observational and descriptive approaches to your inquiry (e.g., “What happens when students are given time inclass to work together in peer critique groups?” or “How do technical writers take their audiences into account when creating documents?”) “What is . . .” questions, on the other hand, imply more of a re-examination of concepts in the field, often in more theoretical ways (e.g., “What are peer critique groups?” or “What is usability?”).

What’s Your Question? 41 We have found that asking researchers to start with these phrases can reduce some of the common problems that occur with the language of questions (e.g., wording questions so the answer is “yes” or “no” or using wording that already implies the answer to the question). MacLean and Mohr (1999) suggest other precautions for formulating questions. First, if your question implies a value judgment, try restating it. They give the following as an example: “ ‘How can I get my students to listen to each other better?’ might become ‘What is “listening” according to the students in my classroom?’ ” (p. 6). Second (and this is a problem our students often have), if your question implies the need for a control group, you might consider rephrasing it. For example: “ ‘Does giving students choice about their reading increase their motivation to read?’ might become ‘What happens when I give my students choices about their reading?’ ” (p. 6).

Prompt 2.7:  Phrasing Your Research Question Working from the drafts of questions you have written in response to earlier prompts, try rewriting your question using the three beginning phrases mentioned in this section: “What happens when . . .,” “How . . .,” and “What is . . .” Do any of these introductory phrases help clarify your question?

Sidebar 2.6:  Questions Our Case Study Researchers Posed Lisa: What happens when we incorporate outdoor experiences in language arts classes? Ja’La: 1. How can murals inform viewers of past, present, and future legacies of struggles that lead to activism and change in our communities? 2. What can scholars learn from digital, visual, and cultural rhetorics when analyzing murals? Natasha: How can writing instructors shift instruction so that students take responsibility for their own learning and their development as writers?

Writing a Problem Statement In this chapter, we have presented a process for developing research questions in which researchers immerse themselves in their field’s literature while also taking into account their own interests, experiences, and motivations. As many students will be asked to write a research proposal at some point along the way, we address here another, preliminary genre that can help with clarifying your question and situating it in the conversation of the field. In problem statements, researchers usually describe the gap or felt difficulty that their question addresses. This description includes references to

42  What’s Your Question? prior research as well as the researcher’s own experience, if applicable, as our felt difficulties sometimes emerge from our own observations or our professional practice. The research question is then presented as the researcher’s response to the felt difficulty. A problem statement, therefore, connects your research question to the larger context and shows the gap your question addresses. It prompts you to think of your topic in terms of problems in your field. It also begins to address the “So what?” question for your research by both addressing the uniqueness of what you plan to investigate and by establishing the need for and importance of the research—through your situating it in the larger context. In other words, what are the implications of knowing or not knowing more about your topic? Why is it significant in the field, and why might others care about it? In Sidebar 2.7, we present a version of a problem statement that Natasha developed. Keep in mind that these types of documents will likely vary and will depend on your program’s requirements and expectations. By way of summary, problem statements do the following: • • • •

They establish how and why the issue you are investigating is a problem, both for you and for others in your field. “I am interested in studying x because . . .” They address the importance and significance of the issue, both for you and for the field. This may be expressed as “in order to . . .” They provide background, and this background shows the field’s investment in the issue as well as your own investment and interest in it. They address both what has been done and said already about the issue as well as what has not been done or said about it yet.

Sidebar 2.7:  Natasha’s Initial Problem Statement Issue/Question: How do we use writing to encourage self-sponsorship and selfadvocacy among our students in an effort to help them grow as writers, students, and individuals? Contested Space The two key players in this contested space are students and teachers. Because of their classroom relationships and continual interactions with each other, they are constantly influencing each other’s experiences of using writing for self-sponsorship and self-advocacy as a means of personal and academic growth. Although students come from a variety of backgrounds, they enroll in firstyear writing (FYW) courses primarily because they are required—or at the very least, “strongly encouraged”—for graduation. Some students genuinely enjoy writing, but many of them do not. Regardless of their personal feelings about writing, most FYW students genuinely want to grow as writers, if only to do well in their other college courses. Different students approach this task differently, however. For example, some students welcome the messy nature of

What’s Your Question? 43 thinking about writing as a process, while others would prefer to be told exactly what to write. In response to these different approaches that students take toward learning how to write more effectively, teachers have a choice. On one end of the extreme, we can pose questions and force students to think through the challenges of writing on their own. Students can benefit from struggling with course material because thinking through the mess of writing is how students learn how to do it more effectively; however, if teachers provide no instructive guidance, students may become overly frustrated and grow to dislike writing. The other extreme choice teachers can make is to provide students a model that depicts exactly what they’re supposed to do. This approach is also limiting, as it does not prompt students to engage meaningfully with both course material and the writing process. Between these hands-off and hands-on extremes exists a middle ground where teachers can provide enough foundational instruction to get students started and develop their own ideas via the use of heuristics and other teaching strategies. It is in this middle space where teachers can use writing to encourage both selfsponsorship, or the practice of students noticing and self-motivating themselves to work on specific skills, and self-advocacy, or the process of students articulating the specific items that they need additional help with.

Research questions guide our inquiry; a problem statement usually is a page or two in length and situates your question in the field, connecting it to other research and establishing its significance. It also often serves as a starting point for a research prospectus or proposal, providing a foundation for the research plan.

Prompt 2.8:  Writing a Problem Statement Use the bulleted list to guide you as you expand your own research question into a problem statement. Share your problem statement with your classmates and use the feedback they give you to focus it.

Positionality and Stance with Research Questions In Chapter 1, we talked about how all research, ultimately, is personal; it is a reflection of who we are, what we have experienced, and what we believe. These factors impact the questions we formulate, how we formulate them, and, ultimately, how we investigate them—from the keywords we select to guide our literature search, to the literature we locate and then choose to review, to what we find meaningful in that literature, to what we record in our reading logs, to what we do to carry out our research, and how we analyze and then interpret and disseminate our findings.

44  What’s Your Question? Many of the decisions we make are grounded in our own positionality, a concept that has—in recent years—taken on great importance in writing studies. Erin Frost, a noted scholar and researcher from East Carolina University and a thoughtful writer about these issues, shared with us how she views the concept of positionality (see Sidebar 2.8).

Sidebar 2.8:  A Perspective on Positionality—Erin Frost, East Carolina University I define positionality as the perspective a researcher maintains relative to other entities in the world—whether those entities are theories, ideas, things, situations, people, etc. In other words, my positionality is the perspective from which I view the world. Positionality does not define what a person’s beliefs and opinions will be, but it does limit the possible scope of those beliefs and opinions. My positionality limits—but does not wholly determine—my beliefs about everything. From the particular position I occupy, I can only see or experience so much; therefore, my ability to understand the world is limited by what I can see from where I sit, metaphorically speaking. You might think of this take on positionality as drawing on social construction theory or on subjectivism. The latter, for example, argues that objectivity is not possible. Since no one can “see” everything from their position, no one person can ever know what is True. Everyone has a position, whether they want to admit it or not. And everyone’s experiences are limited; no one has experienced everything. We all have bias. Positionality, in other words, is a way of talking about a set of biases. Most often, when we talk about positionality, we’re talking about issues related to politics and the social—often having to do with gender, ethnicity, culture, justice, or particular theories we’re committed to. Also, when we talk about positionality, we are usually embarking on a project of making it explicit or apparent. Making your positionality apparent is a good research practice for two main reasons. First, it allows you to reflect on your own biases, therefore affording you an opportunity to make your research stronger. Second, it allows your audiences to know your biases and thus read your work with an understanding of where you’re coming from. If your audience understands the position you’re operating from, they can better understand not only what you’re saying but also why you’re saying it—and they can better understand what you might have missed. You leave them better equipped to develop their own informed opinions and beliefs. These different terms for talking about positionality are not always formalized. You might hear researchers talking about positionality in other terms, perhaps the different “lenses” through which they view their work and the work of others. Talking about lenses is another way of talking about positionality. Often, discussion of lenses leads to focus on specific elements of a person’s positionality; for example, I might tell you that I’m viewing this discussion through a feminist

What’s Your Question? 45 lens. I am undoubtedly also viewing it through other types of lenses simultaneously—we all have many lenses through which we see the world, and together they make up our positionality. Another common way of talking about lenses is through terministic screens, an idea developed by rhetorician Kenneth Burke. Burke said that everyone perceives the world through a series of screens determined by our language and biases. Positionality is not an idea limited only to the academy or to writing research. For example, before entering academia, I worked as a journalist. Journalists commonly remind each other that we do not tell the public what to think, but we do tell them what to think about. I knew the news stories I wrote adhered to what we thought of as an “objective” style, but I also knew that the stories I chose to cover, the facts I chose to include, and the order in which I placed elements of a story limited the ways that my readers would or could perceive the news. In other words, I reported “just the facts” while still being actively persuasive. Objectivity was never part of my job. Fairness and justice were—and my positionality determined how I understood what fairness and justice would mean in any given context. Therefore, I had an obligation to let my readers know my positionality. Transparency of positionality was so important to me as a journalist that I turned down job offers in larger markets for ethical reasons. I wanted to stay in my hometown, where people knew me and my positionality and could therefore read my reporting with a greater degree of accuracy. Positionality is a vitally important part of my research as an academic for the same reasons. I’ve theorized an apparent feminist perspective through which I develop most of my scholarship; this perspective values the project of making one’s biases explicit. In both my research and my teaching, I think it’s important for audiences to know what my political and theoretical commitments are so that they can understand why I do the work that I do. I want audiences to know my commitments—my positionality, my biases—so they can better see where I’m coming from and what I hope to accomplish. In every article I publish, I spend space talking about my theoretical commitments and I do my best to help readers understand what those commitments mean for the way the article is shaped. For example, I published an article several years ago based on experiences I had in Dauphin Island, AL. The article came about because I was vacationing with my family there shortly after the Deepwater Horizon Disaster, and I wrote that right in the article to let readers know that the positionality I initially viewed the disaster from was one of a tourist and not a researcher. This positionality meant that the data the article was based on was really authentic in terms of showing how an outsider might view communication surrounding the disaster, but it also meant that my data collection was not systematic. My positionality as a tourist meant that I was quickly able to see the importance of economic impacts of the disaster, since many local businesses explicitly said how happy they were to see us; this led me to ask different questions than if I had approached the project as a researcher interested only in environmental effects. My multilayered

46  What’s Your Question? positionality allowed me to see the interaction of economic and environmental effects in a way I might not otherwise have noticed. My insistence on talking about my positionality in my research and teaching has largely been a successful project. I feel that talking openly about my positionality helps me to do more ethical research, and it helps other scholars to see my faults and limitations so that we can avoid those faults and limitations, as a field, in the future. At times, though, my commitment to making my biases explicit has resulted in challenges. For example, I’ve had several students over the years who’ve been put off by my feminist worldview. One student left me a one-sentence course review: “Feminism is a flawed view of the world.” I think that student was absolutely correct, but they were missing the point that all views of the world are flawed. We can only do our best to pick the views that seem most ethical to us, and then make our positionality apparent so other people can make informed decisions for themselves.

Erin’s thoughts clarify the complexity of positionality for writing researchers and suggest how important it is not only to be aware of our own positionality when we approach a research question, but also to be upfront with others about the lenses we bring. Our own case study researchers have thought about these issues as well. lisa explains that, as a high school teacher, she brings certain lenses to her approach: both curricular lenses and research lenses. As a strong proponent of ELA teaching that, as she says, is situated in “voice, choice, and ownership of students’ work,” she creates curriculum, units, and lenses that reflect that particular way of teaching. When she conducts research, she has certain assumptions about the best ways of teaching reading and writing—assumptions that inform her questions, her ways of collecting data, and her ultimate analysis. She also brings a certain positionality as a teacher researcher: identifying herself as someone who believes that she is both a co-learner and a co-researcher with her students. This lens leads her to value the words and actions of her students, to see their responses as of equal importance to her own ideas. Again, these assumptions impact the kinds of question she asks, her ways of collecting data, and her approaches to analyzing those data. Ja’La speaks of her positionality as an African American woman and social justice proponent and how those lenses impacted her research. For her MA project research, she selected murals to study which reflected that consciousness; as she explained, “I wanted to choose three images that all spoke to racial struggles between a black person or someone of African descent and the European race . . . . I didn’t want to pick murals that I just felt were pretty, that were aesthetically nice.” As she went on to interpret these images, using the approach to visual rhetoric that she was learning, she realized that, because she is part of the community of African American women, she understood some of the murals in ways that someone who was an outsider to that community might miss. Specifically, she explained how one of the images, in which a black woman had a bird in her hair, spoke to her: “There are a lot of conversations about black women and hair. When I told other women about the bird, they

What’s Your Question? 47 said, ‘I didn’t notice that,’ but I instantly understood. There was a pigeon in her hair. A pigeon’s a dirty bird and her hair’s an Afro-texture.” Like Erin, lisa, and Ja’La, we must, as researchers, always be aware of our unique positionality and our biases. We previously already asked you to consider what is at stake for you in investigating a particular topic and why you are personally invested in it. For example, maybe you are interested in learning disabilities in relation to writing center work because you yourself, or someone close to you, has a learning disability. Bear in mind that there is nothing bad about having a personal investment in a topic: It’s normal and even good. Consciously considering these stakes, however, can make you aware of how they might influence the work you do, at every stage of the process. Although we revisit this notion of positionality and how it impacts all stages of the research process throughout the book, our interest in this chapter is with how your positionality may influence the research question(s) you develop. As a way of reflecting on and naming your own positionality, we recommend considering the following questions: • What, in or about your own personal and/or professional experiences, has influenced your selection of your topic for your research? • In what ways have your experiences influenced your approach, so far, to learning more about your topic? • How might you characterize your investment in your topic? Also, what are some beliefs and perspectives you hold that may be influential in your views on and approach(es) to your topic? • More specifically, in what ways has your personal investment in your topic influenced the literature you have located, selected, and read—or even the databases you chose to search? • How might your experiences, beliefs, and preferences be influencing how you’re thinking you will undertake your investigation? • What do you think could be some biases you might have as you approach and carry out your research? How might you address and/or acknowledge those biases? Composition researchers, such as Erin Frost, have for a long time addressed the roles of positionality and bias in all kinds of research in writing studies, although, in recent years, these ideas have taken on new meaning and urgency (e.g., Borland, 1991; Grabill, 2012; Kirsch, 1997; Kirsch & Ritchie, 1995; Moss, 1992; Ritter, 2012; Yagelski, 2001). Many of these scholars talk about bias in terms of personal subjectivities that arise from our own perspectives and that influence how we view and interpret situations, arguing—as Erin does—that subjectivities are always present in our research. What we need to do, they say, is reflect on and acknowledge them, as we encouraged you to do with our questions above. Such reflection and self-awareness, both in your research and in your writing, can help you recognize how these subjectivities, and your own positionality, are impacting your research. It also can help you identify when they might be interfering with or causing bias in your research. No research is completely objective. Your personal experiences and perspectives will always influence what you see, how you see it, and how you interpret and make meaning of what you see. That’s the reason no two individuals will ever carry out a research project in

48  What’s Your Question? exactly the same way as each other, or come up with the same findings, even if they start with the same question(s). We need to offer one additional caution. Although it is important to love your topic, it also is possible to love it too much. As researchers, we sometimes need to guard against blind spots caused by our personal and/or professional investment in a topic. It is important to assess and articulate why you are interested in a topic, what your investment is in the topic, and what is at stake for you in researching the topic. This is not to say that you shouldn’t study from what you really love. That’s what will motivate you the most. However, you should consider carefully the biases you might hold and the judgments you may have formed already because of your interest in your topic. If a topic evokes a strong response from you, whether it is anger, compassion, or any other emotion, then you should think about how (or whether) you can carry out your research without those emotions clouding your judgment. Having too strong an investment in your topic can limit or even shut down the discovery process.

Ethical Issues in Developing Research Questions Positionality, subjectivity, and bias also impact another important aspect of research— ethics. For us, ethics in research relate most directly to how our research may affect our participants and the settings we study. So, for example, our research questions, without our even realizing it, might contain embedded beliefs or assumptions about our participants or even make unintended judgments about them. In a study that Cathy conducted when she was in graduate school, for example, she began with a question about how “process writing” was taught across the school day for one 10thgrade student. Even asking that question implied a certain bias (that process writing should or would be taught) and implied certain judgments about the teachers in the school (who was and who was not approaching writing in that way). As a researcher who would “live” many months in that school setting, Cathy had to consider carefully the ethics of that research question: how it might affect the work of the teachers, and how they might respond if they perceived that the question carried certain judgments about their work. Ethics also come into play with individuals and settings that may be influenced by our work, even if they are not directly implicated in it. In other words, does the setting you’re researching change simply by your presence? In Cathy’s case, would the teachers change what they were doing? Would this also influence the students, the principal of the school, and even upper-level administrators? At times, because of your relationship with others in your setting, your question might also put you in a position of authority or power over your research participants. Natasha, one of our case study researchers, thought a lot about these power relationships, explaining what a “weird line” it was to be both a teacher and a researcher as she pursued her MA project. “That was something I thought a lot about,” she told us. “How do I distance myself and still maintain solid working relationships with students where they feel comfortable sharing information either for the study or for a writing class I was teaching them at the same time?” How then, do we work ethically in situations like this? Although there are no clear answers, we suggest that we begin with a recognition that ethics matter. There is a disposition associated with being ethical, and both of us believe that it is easier to acquire and maintain that disposition if you bring to your research, from the start, an

What’s Your Question? 49 awareness of these issues. Too often, in texts and other conversations about research, ethical issues are considered after the fact rather than as an integral aspect of research. We contend that you should begin considering the ethics of your research from the moment you select your topic and begin developing your research question. Consider what impact your research will have on others (as we suggest in Prompt 2.9) and continue to record in your research journal any ethical questions and concerns you may have. The more you reflect on the ethics of your work, the greater awareness you develop about potential conflicts, and the more care you take with these aspects of your research, the more honest and ethical your research project will become.

Prompt 2.9:  Identifying Ethical Concerns Reflect on the ethical issues your research question suggests. For example, does your question have potential to: •

Put research participants in an awkward position with their administrators or colleagues? • Carry judgment about the research participants and their work? • Create problematic power relationships or dynamics between and among research participants or others in their setting? If you answered yes to any of these (or to other ethical concerns you identified), how might you better speak to these issues with your research question?

Some aspects of research, such as human subjects review (see Chapter 3), will prompt you to think explicitly about these issues. However, a lot will be left to you; therefore, the earlier you can get into an ethical mindset, the more prepared you will be for any ethical issues you encounter—and the more likely you will be to even recognize them as such. The strategies we discussed for formulating your research question may also raise ethical issues. For example, if you carry out preliminary observations, you need to think about how you will use your observations and whether you need to inform the people you observe. If you are just trying to get a feel for a situation or certain surroundings, it might be fine to simply observe without informing anyone. However, if you intend to report your observations, and if particular individuals are implicated or identified in your report, then you definitely should seek permissions. Online observations also raise ethical issues. Although it may be appropriate to lurk in an online discussion if you just plan to generalize from it, you should seek permissions if you intend to use what you observe or read (Gurak & Silker, 1997). In any of these situations, online or in person, you need to think about how you will use the information you obtain and how your participants may be affected by your research. Unfortunately, these things seldom are straightforward; therefore, in some situations, you may need to make your own judgments about what is fair, responsible, and honest. At this point in the research process, we offer these suggestions: Always be aware of your positionality, stance, and biases. Use your research journal to write about and

50  What’s Your Question? externalize these and to also articulate any concerns you have. You also can consult with peers and more experienced researchers if you have questions. Ethical concerns are ongoing in research; they are not limited to just this stage and will continue to be factors as you progress through every other stage. For this reason, we will address ethics in every chapter.

Conclusion You may not have realized that there was so much to consider at such an early stage of your research. However, if you articulate a good research question, you will be well on your way to a successful project. And, because research is a process, you will likely adapt and continue fine-tuning your question as you progress through all the subsequent stages of the research process. We encourage you, as you begin formulating your own question, to keep every draft of it. Record each version in your research journal or keep a file on your computer with your drafts. Periodically reread the different versions and reflect on the development you see. We have one final suggestion to offer before moving onto the next chapter. Now is as good a time as any to begin thinking about who might be interested in your research and for what reasons, and who your research might influence and affect. If you are carrying out your research primarily for personal reasons, this may not be as important. However, you are likely carrying out research that you intend to share with others. If you are a teacher, for example, a primary concern you might have is with sharing your findings with your colleagues and learning from their experiences as well. So, here are some additional questions to consider as you begin your journey through all the other stages of the research process: • • • • •

Who might care about the research I do? Who might my research affect? How might my research affect or change my own situation? What other situations or contexts might my research affect? To whom do I want my research to matter and why?

Every researcher will respond to these questions differently. You may even respond differently at different stages of your own research; it will depend on where your journey takes you.

Appendix A Brooke Notes Assignment (~45 minutes): Derek Mueller

Brooke Notes are a note-keeping system designed to be routine, generative, usable, and accumulative throughout and beyond your undergraduate studies. This approach to note-keeping, which I credit to Collin Brooke, takes as its first principle that if it is worth reading, it is worth annotating. Even more, reading as a part of research writing means that the notes should be right-sized (i.e., neither excessively thorough nor too thin to be useful later on) and built-up in a database that you can search later on (your Google folder, in this case). Here are a few general provisions for Brooke Notes: •

Develop your notes entry while the reading is reasonably fresh, preferably within a few hours of reading and never more than a day later. • Set a timer. Try to keep the development of your notes entry to under an hour. • One Brooke Notes entry should be between 400 and 1,000 words. Longer entries make sense for complex or inspirational articles and book-length works. Briefer entries are appropriate for most academic articles. • Such note-keeping practices are habitual and accumulative; they will over time amount to a personal archive invaluable to the development of lit reviews and a reliable, lasting resource of personal knowledge. Learn more about the rationale for this approach and the basic guidelines for developing a Brooke Notes entry over here: www.cgbrooke.net/2014/01/16/reading-notes/. Each entry should—at a minimum—include the following: • A title. Last name, first name. Title of article, abbreviated, if necessary. • A full citation adhering to MLA or APA style. This should be complete and correct, ready to copy into a bibliography, references list, or works cited. • A 3–5 sentence summary, or an abstract. This should capture concisely what is the focus of the reading. If an abstract is already available, it is fine to copy/paste it into your notes. But writing your own abstract is excellent practice, too, as such summaries are challenging and require a thorough sense of the reading. • Keywords/tags. A list of 5–10 keywords or phrases that index the entry in terms of important words and phrases, approaches it takes to research, sites/materials/ objects of analysis (i.e., what it is about), and prominent names or topics. • 2–3 citations. These are sources cited in the reading that you consider especially important, insightful, and possibly worthy of your tracking them down as reading cascades into further reading. Include the full citation information.

52  What’s Your Question? •

•

2–3 quotations. These are gem passages, either for the ways they capture striking ideas, pose questions, or connect with things you are thinking about, working on, or considering important. Include a parenthetical page or paragraph number to make the quotation easy to locate later on. 1–2 questions. These are questions you formulate that articulate the edges of wonder and prime further exploration.

A complete Brooke Notes entry will include all seven of these elements. Project One will require you to develop Brooke Notes entries for at least two articles.

3 How Do I Find Answers? Planning Your Qualitative Research Study

Once you have developed a research question, you are ready to begin the process of planning your study so that you can start finding answers. In this chapter, we address the tasks researchers often undertake as they plan. These include writing a literature review, selecting and obtaining access to a research site (or sites), obtaining human subjects approval by going through the institutional review board (IRB) process, and writing a research proposal. Your planning will serve a number of purposes, including allowing others to assess and provide you with feedback on the different aspects of your research—everything from the question you’re posing, to the literature you’re consulting, to your positionality, and, ultimately, to the ethics of your approach. It will also provide you with a clear road map for undertaking your research.

Planning a Study that Will Answer Your Question Planning is a vital part of the research process as it allows you to prepare and get yourself ready to carry out your research. If you have a good sense of your research question and are enthusiastic about it, you may be tempted to dive right in; however, planning gives you a sense of what you intend to do, where and with whom you’ll do it, and how you’ll do it. Probably the best analogy for this stage of the research process is a road map—you want to begin your research with a clear sense of where you are now, where you are heading, and how you will get there (see Prompt 3.1). You begin the planning process with your research question: Most decisions you’ll make about how to proceed will be based on it, and it will define the scope of your research—what, precisely, you will and will not investigate. However, you also want to remain flexible so, if you need to, you may select an alternative path. Starting with the question is important, but be open to refining your research question as much as you feel you need to as you develop and solidify your plans.

Prompt 3.1:  Drawing a Road Map For this prompt, we encourage you to find some oversized paper and some markers or colored pencils. Place your question in a prominent spot; then let your creativity take over and draw what you plan to do for your study. At this point, you most likely are not sure of your complete plan, but begin drawing your map and fill it in as your plans develop. Include in your drawing every aspect of your research you can think of—include personal aspects such as rituals, breaks, and obstacles, and even include the rewards you might give yourself when you achieve certain milestones.

54  Planning Your Qualitative Research Study

Planning a Study that Is Manageable Your research question, as we mentioned, has a lot to do with determining the scope of your inquiry; however, scope can be difficult to define, even for those of us who are experienced researchers. You should be concerned, primarily, with investigating your question thoroughly, but within a realistic time frame, which is something that your project director can help with. For example, if you are doing the project for a class, you might remind yourself that, “It’s just three credits.” Questions that can help with defining scope include the following: How doable is what I’m proposing given my time frame? Is what I’m planning to do sufficient? Will it answer my question? Is it realistic? Are there other ways in which I could go about it? Prompt 3.2 might also be helpful.

Prompt 3.2:  Planning a Manageable Research Project Choose any of the following alternatives: Alternative 1 If you had just one semester to complete your research, what would you do? How might you set up your project and carry it out? Alternative 2 Swap research questions with a partner. What seems, from your perspective, to be the best way to find answers to the question(s) your partner has posed? Share and discuss your responses. Alternative 3 Using the research plan/road map you created for Prompt 3.1, begin developing a timeline for your research. Identify a target completion date and key milestones. Attach due dates to each milestone.

Tools and Strategies for Planning Your Research In Chapter 2, we presented strategies for searching and evaluating the literature related to your topic—especially as you determine your area of interest and narrow it to a particular question. By now, you likely have located several promising sources that will inform your work. You may also have incorporated those sources into a problem statement in which you defined the gap your research addresses and stated your question. The next major step is to compose a project proposal, the document that will identify your final question; situate your research within the existing research on your topic (through a literature review, which we discuss in this chapter); name an audience for your research (which we also talk about in this chapter, and in Chapter 7); identify

Planning Your Qualitative Research Study 55 your research methods (found in Chapters 4–5); identify approaches for analyzing the data you generate (found in Chapter 6); suggest genres for dissemination (found in Chapter 7); and set a timeline for the work. Along the way, you may, as well, create an annotated bibliography. You will also select and gain approval for and access to your research site—and, if your research includes human subjects, obtain IRB approval, which we also talk about in this chapter. The first tool we address is the annotated bibliography. Annotated Bibliographies Before developing a full literature review, we suggest beginning with an annotated bibliography. In these, you list sources, write annotations of those sources, and include brief explanations about why—or how—the sources are relevant to the topic. Annotated bibliographies serve purposes for both readers and writers. For readers, they provide an overview of a topic, convey the main points of the sources being annotated, and evaluate those sources. Writing an annotated bibliography—and this is why they often are required—will help you organize your sources and begin identifying connections between them. They can also help you develop your ideas for your research, and they assist with keeping track of ideas and sources. The annotations summarize the main points of the source—its purpose and/or argument(s), findings, and conclusions. You may also evaluate the source, addressing its credibility and validity, connections to other sources, themes, biases, and/or limitations. Finally, you might address in your annotation the usefulness of your source for your research. Annotations usually are concise (125–250 words on average) and need to be clear and well written. In Sidebar 3.1, we include sample annotations from Natasha’s annotated bibliography. These annotations are slightly longer than what you might typically see or be asked to produce, but they will give you an idea of the typical focus and value of annotations.

Sidebar 3.1:  Sample Annotations from Natasha’s Annotated Bibliography Douglas, Deborah. “Self-Advocacy: Encouraging Students to Become Partners   in Differentiation.” Roeper Review 26.4 (2004): 223–228. ProQuest. Web.   26 Feb. 2016. Douglas focuses her article on a different side of self-advocacy. Instead of showcasing the need to teach students with disabilities how to self-advocate, she emphasizes the need to provide “gifted students,” who may be advanced through any number of ways, choices and options to self-advocate for their education. Douglas addresses and negates three core myths about self-advocacy among gifted students: 1) Gifted students don’t need special attention, and 2) Advanced programs assume elitism for students. Douglas goes on to define selfadvocacy in several ways—first, as a means to “communicate what [students]

56  Planning Your Qualitative Research Study are thinking and feeling,” and drawing from Brinckerhoff, second, as the “process of recognizing and meeting the needs specific to one’s learning ability without compromising the dignity of oneself or others” (224). This article will be useful to my research for several reasons. First and foremost, this article finally talks about self-advocacy from a perspective that is not solely focused on students who are perceived as “other” due either to disability or minority status. By showcasing advanced students, who we often assume know what they’re doing in our classrooms, Douglas’s article will help me connect self-advocacy to the general FYW classroom. Douglas’s article will also prove useful because it addresses the reasons why advanced students do not self-advocate. Although framed differently, there is still a stigma associated with needing help in class—either due to ability or advancement. My FYW students definitely experience this fear of “asking dumb questions” out loud; yet, they’re almost all willing to articulate needs privately through individual writing prompts. This connection can help me propose teaching strategies that can help foster self-advocacy through writing prompts. Kozacek, Linda, and Chris Specht. “Self Advocacy: Teaching Students to Take Ownership of their Education.” Catalyst 42.2 (2014): 6–8. EBSCO Host. Web. 26 Feb. 2016. Kozacek and Specht use this article to discuss their process for helping students with disabilities transition into a local community college in Kansas. Their goal is to help students, many of whom are first-generation college students, become self-advocates for their education; however, Kozacek and Specht acknowledge that they must help students build self-efficacy before they can begin to focus on self-advocacy. These authors define self-efficacy as “a person’s belief in his or her ability to succeed at a task” (6). In an effort to help students along the selfefficacy—self-advocacy continuum, Kozacek and Specht recommend the following practices: help students develop key relationships, which can be sponsored by listening and building trust; break large tasks into smaller, more manageable pieces; find ways for students to “buy in” to their learning experience; and invite students to share success stories. This article can be useful to my seminar paper in several ways. First, the student body that Kozacek and Specht discuss is very similar to the student body I work with in FYW. Not only is the student population similar, I can use the continuum idea to support my argument that self-efficacy leads to self-advocacy, which then leads to self-sponsorship.

Literature Reviews Annotated bibliographies can help tremendously as you prepare to write a literature review, a genre that can be a stand-alone document or part of your research proposal. In a literature review, you situate your own work in relation to other scholarship in the

Planning Your Qualitative Research Study 57 field relating to your topic; you construct a context and foundation for your work and show the gap it addresses. Although they are similar to both problem statements and annotated bibliographies, literature reviews provide a more thorough consideration of the external research relating to your topic. (See Sidebar 3.2 for a more in-depth comparison of annotated bibliographies and literature reviews.) Literature reviews organize that research in a particular way—both in relation to the topic and in the field—and also evaluate that material, essentially summarizing and synthesizing the ideas and arguments that others have made, to date, in relation to your topic. They show points of agreement and disagreement, connections, relationships, and so on. In short, a literature review provides an overview of your topic—it tells readers what is known about it—by summarizing and synthesizing significant sources in the field that relate to it.

Sidebar 3.2:  Annotated Bibliographies versus Literature Reviews In an assignment sheet we offer to our graduate students, we share the differences between the two: An annotated bibliography is your first step toward creating a literature review. You should read a number of articles, book chapters, or books connected to your topic. Annotated bibliographies begin with the bibliographic citation, then have a short paragraph that summarizes the content of the article, and then have a short paragraph that connects the article to your issue. A literature review situates the reader in the research you’ve done on your topic, presenting a stance about the research and what it means for your issue. Generally, it begins with a statement about your issue and how a body of research speaks to that issue. You should then formulate your own argument about what the research demonstrates and refer to the articles and chapters for proof. Thus, the articles you’ve read are folded into an argument about the topic and generally separated into sections. You can briefly quote or just refer to a part of the article, citing along the way. Annotated Bibliography

Literature Review

• • •

•

Alphabetical listing of sources Quick summary of each source Connection to your topic

•

Essay-like format that poses a stance about your issue and how the research supports it Written in paragraphs in which your voice drives the writing, with the resources mentioned and cited along the way

In addition to giving an overview of your topic and situating it in the larger field, literature reviews may provide a foundation for further research—for example, by pointing to gaps in the literature and research. They also identify the experts on a

58  Planning Your Qualitative Research Study topic in the field along with key questions and research. Literature reviews address what has been done already and, in doing so, offer a direction for moving forward. In them, researchers analyze and interpret sources, synthesize themes and ideas, and even draw conclusions. Use Prompt 3.3 to begin familiarizing yourself with some different kinds of and approaches to writing literature reviews. In the full proposals we include at the end of this chapter, you can begin go see how the literature review fits into a larger proposal.

Prompt 3.3:  Literature Review Genre Analysis To begin orienting yourself to the genre of a literature review, locate a few examples. These might be from classmates, former students (again, you should obtain consent for any peer/student work you review), journal articles, sample research proposals you obtain, or from the proposals we share at the end of this chapter. As you look at the examples, write down what you notice about them. You may then wish to share and compare what you notice with what a classmate notices, or engage in a full-class conversation. Consider these questions: • • • • • • • • •

How are they organized? What information/sources do they contain? How do they introduce/lead into and then address those sources? How long are they? How many sources do they review? How do they identify themes from the literature? How do they relate those themes to their own topic? What are some ways in which they do this? What are the tone and voice of the reviews? What citation style do they use, and why do you believe they use that style?

As you can see from samples, literature reviews do more than simply list and summarize sources. Effective literature reviews reflect a careful and critical reading of sources that leads to synthesis; they are not laundry lists (e.g., Smith said this, Baker said that, Rouch said that . . .). Synthesis, in its most basic form, entails drawing connections between sources (academic texts in this case), resulting in new understandings, ideas, and perspectives. These new understandings and ideas are foregrounded in literature reviews. Another way to think of synthesis is as an identification of themes or topics. As you survey the literature related to your topic, these themes should begin to emerge. For every piece you read, you will want to think about how it connects both to your research question and to other sources you’re reading. Also, consider how each piece is meaningful and relevant, and how it fits into the larger scholarly conversation about your topic. There are also tools you can use to support this process of identifying themes, both within and across different sources. For example, we encourage our students to develop charts or tables in which they list each source they read and identify the

Planning Your Qualitative Research Study 59 themes from those sources. Doing so can help you identify points of similarity, as well as points of departure or difference (e.g., Smith found this about reflection in the workplace whereas Rouch found something different). Use Prompt 3.4 to try one of these tools. An additional strategy is to array sources visually so you can begin to see how they relate. Using strategies such as these makes it easier to relate and connect your sources and the themes they address. Then, when you write your literature review, you can organize it using the themes, resulting in an issue-based rather than source-based presentation. You might also follow the IMRAD format, providing an introduction, methods section (in which you identify how you searched and surveyed the literature), results (where you present your themes and support from the literature you reviewed), and discussion, where you draw conclusions and address implications and impressions from your review of the literature.

Prompt 3.4:  Constructing Tables/Grids with Themes and Common Points Read the sources you have located and identify two/three themes. Construct a chart in which you record notes on what each author says about each of the themes (Kaufer, Geisler, & Neuwirth, 1989). A variation of this is to list authors down the side of your chart and common points they address at the top. You then can fill in the squares with the authors’ positions on each of the common points, which simplifies comparison of the common points.

When you write your literature review, you will likely introduce and frame it with your research question. Then you will use your themes, topics, and/or common points to organize your review of your sources. Essentially, you will relate key ideas and findings from each of the sources you reviewed to your own question or topic. Your synthesis grid, or whatever tool you used to identify and elaborate on themes in relation to your sources, will assist you. Ultimately, your organization for your literature review should be both systematic and purposeful. And your discussion of your sources should be purposeful as well. Generally, for each of the sources you use, you will have a lead-in of some kind, a paraphrase or quotation (depending on the significance of the author’s original wording, although generally you will use quotes sparingly), and an explanation of how the source relates to the theme you’re discussing and/or your question or topic. You will conclude your literature review with a summary of what you presented on the literature relating to your topic. The key steps in developing a literature review then include the following: identifying your topic and developing your research question; identifying and articulating the significance of your topic and question by examining the pertinent background, history, and context for it; knowing and identifying your own purpose; and then using all of this to identify databases and keywords and to search the literature. You then will evaluate what you find and begin selecting meaningful sources.

60  Planning Your Qualitative Research Study We urge our own students, and we encourage you at this stage, to see the literature review as an integral part of your research—and not as a hurdle. Yes, you are demonstrating—especially if it is required by a course or by your program—that you have thoroughly reviewed the literature on your topic and “done your homework.” But more importantly, in doing it, you will both become familiar with and begin to locate yourself within the conversation in the field that pertains to your topic. It will allow you to see what your own work might contribute to that conversation and how it might extend it—and even the ways in which it needs to be extended, which, in turn, can inform what you do in your research. We believe a literature review is about understanding and providing a glimpse of the prior conversation about your topic so you—and others—can see how you might extend that conversation. (Again, for examples of literature reviews that our case study students have composed, see the Literature Review sections of the full proposals in the appendix to this chapter.)

Selecting Your Research Site Concurrent with or subsequent to writing an annotated bibliography and literature review, you will start considering where and with whom you will carry out your research—especially if you are doing the kind of research that includes human subjects. This important step entails considering how you will gain access to the setting you select, who your participants will be, and how you will obtain approvals and permissions, both from within the site and from your university’s IRB. We use the term “participants” deliberately here, in contrast to the term “subjects,” to suggest a more collaborative relationship between you as the researcher and the individuals with whom you interact during your research. “Subjects” can suggest a more controlling relationship in which the authority and power lie with the researcher. An important move in qualitative research has been away from such conceptions of researchers and the researched toward more collaborative notions (e.g., even co-researchers). In some situations, the type of research you plan to do (e.g., teacher research within your own classroom), your purpose in carrying out the research, and/or your research question may determine the setting you select and your participants. In other situations, you may have greater choice. You may even have to obtain approvals to use a particular setting. In writing research, there are many potential settings, all of which have their own requirements. We address some of the more common settings to give you an understanding of what may be required within each: K–12 classrooms and educational settings; postsecondary classrooms and settings; workplace, organizational, or community settings, including nonprofits; online or digital settings; and even settings that may not entail the use of human subjects. Before discussing what you may need to consider and do in each of these settings, we want to encourage you to be practical, as well as strategic, in selecting a research site. Practical considerations include how easy it will be for you to get to the site, how comfortable it will be for you to carry out your research in the site, and how interested and/or invested the people at the site will be in working with you. It may turn out that a setting that seems ideal given your research question is not accessible, has too many restrictions, or simply is not a comfortable place in which to do your research. Many factors may influence your considerations of where to carry out your research—and with whom. Every setting is unique, and every setting has different requirements, needs, and expectations. In any setting, however, you will need, first, to

Planning Your Qualitative Research Study 61 identify the individuals who have the authority to provide access and determine what they will need to know in order to allow you access. In some cases, you may be able to simply meet and talk with them about your research. In other cases, you will be asked to provide documents such as a résumé, research proposal, list of references, and even samples of your work. You also may need to undergo a background check, especially if you are carrying out research with children. And you may be asked to sign a nondisclosure agreement as an assurance that you will not make public any proprietary or confidential information. All of this documentation reassures those granting you access about your competence and professionalism. Always remember, we ask a lot of our participants in qualitative research, especially in terms of their time; we should not hesitate to do everything we can to assure them it will be well spent. There clearly are many practical issues in choosing and negotiating entry into a research setting. The more carefully you plan and carry out this portion of your research, the more smoothly your research will proceed. The setting you study, and the people whom you ask to participate in your study, will play a very significant role, overall, in your research. Prompt 3.5 will assist you as you begin considering this portion of your research.

Prompt 3.5:  Identifying a Setting Think about the setting you would like to research. Why is it an appropriate setting for your research/for your question? What are some things you think you will need to do to negotiate entry into the setting? Consider the following: • With and from whom will you need to talk and seek approvals? If you are not sure, whom might you ask? • What concerns are those individuals likely to have, and how will you address those concerns? • How will you establish rapport with these individuals? What can you do to facilitate establishing trust and a good rapport with them? • What challenges might your encounter as you negotiate entry into the site and seek approvals? • How might you address those challenges? What steps might you take in advance that would help you minimize them?

K–12 Classrooms and Educational Settings K–12 classrooms and educational settings pose a particular set of considerations for researchers because the student participants generally are under 18 years of age and, therefore, minors. Obtaining permission to work in these settings often entails several steps and many approvals, including approval from the education or school board, the school’s administration, the teachers, and, perhaps most importantly, the parents of the students. Sometimes, if you are already the teacher in this setting, you may have blanket approval to carry out research; students (and their parents), as a matter of course, may sign a waiver at the beginning of the school year. Even so, we recommend

62  Planning Your Qualitative Research Study that you share your research plan with an appropriate administrator, your students, and their parents so that they know what you are doing. As an MA student, you should also investigate if you need to seek approval from your university’s IRB or some other authorizing body. An IRB review will ask you to identify and explain how you will inform stakeholders and participants in the setting about your study, how you will go about obtaining their permission and consent to carry out your study, and how you will protect participants’ anonymity and store your data. You will also develop a consent form and usually an information letter to accompany it (see Sidebar 3.3 for an example; however, it is vital to check with your university’s IRB to see the kind of consent they require). The letter and consent form will provide details about your study so that students and parents, as well as teachers, understand what, precisely, you will be doing in your research; what the students will be asked to do; how long it will take; when and how it will occur; any implications it will have for the students and/or their social, emotional, or academic well-being; and how the research will be used and disseminated. Thoroughness, honesty, and clarity are essential in these situations. Minors are considered a vulnerable class, so great care must be taken in carrying out research with them. If your research is concerned with any type of disability—cognitive, physical, emotional—added measures and care must be taken to respect the rights of these students and to protect them from any harm or negative impact. In any of these situations, relationship-building plays an important role, especially in recruiting participants and obtaining their consent. One approach we’ve seen work well is to use open houses at the start of the school year to inform students’ parents about the research. At these events, teachers can convey their reasons for doing research, and, in particular, their commitment to conduct research that will improve their teaching and the overall learning environment, a stance that teacher-researchers tell us is meaningful to their students’ families. Another approach is to write letters to families that outline this same information. What is most important is for parents to be well informed of the process, to understand the teacher’s expertise and enthusiasm for doing the research, to be assured that high-quality teaching and learning will not be compromised, and to be reassured that the teacher will be available at any time to answer questions and hear concerns. Helping parents feel comfortable with this process is vital, especially when participants are in younger grades. When this step doesn’t happen, parents may be less inclined to allow their children to be a part of a research study. As an example, Ann has not agreed to let her own children participate in a few of the research studies carried out at their schools. This was owing to the bureaucratic and institutional feel—and the complexity—of the materials that were sent home. The complexity, in one case, made the study procedures very confusing and ambiguous. Lacking this clarity, Ann opted for nonparticipation. Because of the importance of building relationships and clear communication, rapport also is a critical factor at this stage of the research process. Being respectful, honest, responsible, and professional will help you with establishing a strong rapport. Whether you are researching a setting of which you are part already (e.g., teachers in their own classrooms or researchers whose children attend the school or are in the district) or researching one in which you are an outsider and have no prior connections, establishing a strong rapport, both with gatekeepers and participants (and their parents/guardians in this case), is essential. Whether they like you, feel comfortable with you, trust you, and feel respected by you can all have an impact on their ­decisions— and on the outcomes of your research.

Planning Your Qualitative Research Study 63

Sidebar 3.3:  Sample Letter to Parents Informed Student Consent Agreement From: [Teacher’s Name and contact information] [Date] Dear Students and Parents of Students in [insert name of class], As a teacher at [insert name of school], I am striving to become the best teacher I can be. As part of this work, I am exploring a particular aspect of my teaching to see how it impacts student learning. During this school year, I will be looking specifically at [insert project question here plus short rationale of why this is important]. In order for me to learn more about this topic, I am inviting the students in this class to become participants in the research study. Their participation will provide them with opportunities to examine their learning and to gain insights into the research process, which are key in their academic learning. Furthermore, their responses will help me become a teacher who can more effectively guide and support them as students. Specifics of the Project The project will last from [insert dates] and will be part of the daily educational activities—in other words, the project will enhance students’ learning, not disrupt it. During those months I will periodically collect samples of the students’ written work; I will ask them to complete some surveys; and I will conduct some interviews as a way of helping me learn more about the topic and how to support their learning. In order to ensure ethical methods of research, confidentiality, and protection of students’ identities, I will remove students’ names (and other pertinent identifiers) from any documents or data used in the research (pseudonyms will be used). All surveys, student work, interview transcripts, and notes (among other documents) that I collect will be stored in a locked filing cabinet or on a password-protected computer. [Note: this is a key part of a university requirement—you may not need it for your school.] Student participation is completely voluntary and will not affect the students’ course grades or interactions with me, regardless of whether or not the student elects to contribute to the research. If, at any time, a student wishes to discontinue participation in the study, he or she may do so without repercussion. Benefits of the Project As I mentioned above, this research project can provide students with opportunities to reflect on their learning and to observe and learn more about how the

64  Planning Your Qualitative Research Study research process works. Furthermore, the project will help me become a better teacher as I learn from the students in my class. I also believe it will help students learn how research can become practical (i.e., how what is learned through research can inform the classroom opportunities for learning). As I learn more about [insert topic], I will be able to teach more effectively. Dissemination of Results How will I use the results of this research? While it is mostly for students and me, so that I can improve my own teaching and student learning, I will also share findings with [insert information about specific project]. I also hope to contribute to the education of other teachers, perhaps in workshops for other teachers in the school or district, at local or national conferences, or perhaps as an article in a teaching journal. Again, I will ensure that all student names will be removed from anything that is published, and, if you are interested, I will be happy to share with you what I have written about the project. Student Release I understand the description of the research project and my rights as a participant described above and give permission for [insert teacher’s name] to use my work in this research. Print student name: _________________________________________________ Student signature: ________________________________ Date: _____________ Print parent/guardian’s name: ________________________________________ Parent Signature: __________________________________ Date: ___________ If you have questions or concerns, please contact: [insert teacher’s name and contact information] [insert professor’s name and contact information]

Postsecondary Classrooms and Settings These settings may seem simpler when compared with K–12 settings; however, they still require different kinds of approval and consent. Also, some circumstances—for example, if you are carrying out teacher research in your own classroom—require special considerations. In postsecondary settings, you will need the permission of any instructor whose class you will be studying, along with consent from the students in those classes if you are carrying out observations, collecting and looking at samples of their work, administering a survey or questionnaire, and/or interviewing them or carrying out focus groups. Their grades cannot be tied to or impacted in any way by their agreement or refusal to participate in your research. The IRB process, described below, will guide you through considerations and the steps you will need to take in order to obtain approvals and consent. In short, you will need to assure participants—and

Planning Your Qualitative Research Study 65 any other stakeholders (e.g., students’ instructors)—that you are engaging in ethical research that will not coerce or in any way compromise their safety, confidentiality, or rights. If you are carrying out research in your own classroom (teacher research), you may be required by your IRB to have a third party (e.g., another teacher) introduce the research to your students and obtain and hold onto the consent forms, as happened recently to one of our students. The researcher was permitted to interview (her chosen methodology) all the students identified as being of interest to her research, but she could not know who had or had not consented to participate until after the conclusion of the course. As with student research in K–12 settings, researchers must be concerned with students’ willing and voluntary participation in the research. Students should never feel pressured to participate or concerned that their grades might in any way be impacted by their willingness or unwillingness to participate. Workplace, Organizational, and Community Settings Workplace, organizational, and community settings also require approvals, usually from officials of the organization. Depending on the size and nature of the organization, these may include CEOs or executive directors, supervisors, managers, or organizers. It will be up to you to identify the individuals who have the authority to make these decisions and to find out what they need from you. A common concern in workplace, organizational (e.g., not-for-profit), and community settings has to do with confidentiality and the proprietary nature of some (often much) organizational information. Information leaks can have a significant impact on an organization. For example, Ann carried out research in a company that created software used for security purposes. She was asked to sign nondisclosure agreements to ensure the confidentiality of all proprietary information and knowledge she obtained from her presence in the setting. One of our students, because of the highly confidential nature of the projects at her workplace, was told that even the readers of her project needed to sign confidentiality agreements. She herself had to sign an agreement indicating that the project would not be read by anyone other than her committee. She still opted to do the project because of the benefits it would have for her in her job functions. Another student, who was using her company’s software in her project, was asked to have all of her participants sign release forms promising not to reveal anything about the software to anyone outside the company. If you are conducting research in your own workplace, these officials may also want reassurance that the research will not interfere with your own work or with the work of others. Your relationship(s) with your participants also will become significant in such situations. If you have authority over any of your participants in your normal workplace role, your role as researcher may be perceived in a threatening way. If you are a peer to your participants, your research, and your expertise as a researcher, may alter your interactions with these peers. In any of these situations, you usually will be asked to specify everything you will do in carrying out your research, along with how much time (your own and your participants’) it will require and the ways in which it will connect, if at all, to your own and your participants’ daily responsibilities. You will need to obtain everyone’s approvals and consent along with providing any requested information

66  Planning Your Qualitative Research Study (e.g., questionnaires, interview questions) and documentation. All of this is meant, essentially, to help the setting’s gatekeeper and decision makers determine how competent and professional you are as a researcher—even if they already know you as an employee. In some cases, the research being carried out will span academic and workplace settings. In these cases, approvals are needed from both. Additionally, the IRB process must delineate what you will do in each setting, who will be involved, how anonymity will be ensured, and how data will be protected and stored. This is especially important if you are working in a nonprofit setting and, if so, if you are working with vulnerable populations, such as minors or individuals with disabilities. Workplace and organizational settings both require assurances that the research you are carrying out will be ethical and responsible. Online and Digital Settings These are newer, but increasingly common, settings for qualitative research in writing. With some digital settings—for example, archival research—there are persons and/ or organizations who can grant you access and permission to carry out your work. In other cases—such as online chat forums or social media platforms—you may be examining posts or interactions and wanting to quote or in some way use what you observe in these. If your focus is on making general, aggregate observations, you may not need permissions; however, if you plan to carry out a more in-depth analysis that foregrounds or makes use of particular posts, especially if those could lead to the identification of the author, you will need the same kinds of permission and consent to carry out this work. Because this is a quickly evolving site for research, with IRBs sometimes struggling to keep up, we suggest that you consult with your university’s IRB on the most current regulations surrounding access and permissions for online and digital research. (For a fuller discussion of how and when IRBs intersect digital settings of research, see McKee & Porter, 2009.) Settings that Do Not Entail Human Subjects Finally, some settings will not entail research with human subjects; however, those settings may still require permissions and certain considerations. Some writing researchers focus more on documents and artifacts, using tools such as discourse and/or rhetorical analysis for their work. In some cases, they may examine documents that are housed only in particular locations. These might be physical locations or even digital ones—such as digital archives with restricted access. In these cases, permission is needed to access those sites, and researchers, to obtain those permissions, will likely need to provide information about the work they will undertake, how they will undertake it and for what length of time, what documents they will examine and for what purposes, and so on. Providing a copy of one’s research proposal may be sufficient in these situations. Some locations have standard request forms that need to be completed. Projects such as these do not require IRB approval. Our colleague, Cheryl Cassidy, conducts this kind of archival research (as she explains more fully in Chapter 4). Even though she does not work with human subjects, she needs to plan ahead to gain access to the documents she plans to study. As she explains,

Planning Your Qualitative Research Study 67 Many archival documents are lodged in temperature-controlled institutions with only limited access to the public. For instance, when I was researching the Children’s Historical Society Museum (Honolulu), not only was I required to contact the museum weeks ahead of my intended trip, but I also needed to provide professional credentials for access. Ja’La, one of our case study researchers, chose not to include human students in her visual analysis project and focused instead on her reading of three murals. Although she realized that such a project could include speaking to the artists who created the murals about their intentions or to observers of the images about their responses, she chose to focus on her own responses, as “the onlooker who interprets the image: how they engage with it and pull things out of it, based on colors and symbols and text.” At the same time, she realized there was a downside to this approach, especially with the particular images she chose to study, all of which had a social justice component. Excluding the artist’s intentionality, for example, might ignore the cultural and social implications of the piece. As she explained, “at first I didn’t think culture would be a huge aspect of visual rhetorics, but then I recognized that those two have to be in conversation with each other.”

Obtaining Human Subjects Approval: The IRB Process As we mentioned above, any research carried out with human participants must receive human subjects approval from the IRB at the university where the research is originating. As an MA student at a university, even if you are conducting research in a setting other than the university, you fall under this directive. The primary purpose of human subjects approval is to safeguard participants. Historically, human subjects review dates back to the aftermath of World War II and the Nuremberg Trials, when numerous physicians and scientists were tried for their atrocious crimes against fellow human beings during the war. (For a thorough account of the history of human subjects review, particularly in relation to writing research, see Paul Anderson’s work in College Composition & Communication in 1998 and in Ethics and Representation in Qualitative Studies of Literacy in 1996.) All colleges and universities that receive government funding of any kind, which are the majority of these institutions, are required to have IRBs. These boards, comprised of faculty from across the campus, follow detailed federal guidelines to make determinations about the suitability of proposed research in relation to its ethical treatment of human participants. Researchers must participate in training and become certified in carrying out research with human participants before being able to submit a proposal. The federal government takes research with human participants very seriously, diligently enforcing the guidelines associated with it. Because much of the educational research writing researchers carry out does not pose any risk of physical or psychological harm, it often is found to be exempt. There are definitions of exempt research in the human subjects proposal guidelines, and researchers may check a box indicating that they believe their research is exempt. Ultimately, the IRB committee will determine if this is the case. In some instances, the actions or approaches being proposed for the research—and/or the populations being studied—require careful compliance with human subjects guidelines. This may be the case if the proposed research fails to protect the anonymity of participants

68  Planning Your Qualitative Research Study or in any way threatens to expose or humiliate them. Additionally, IRB guidelines require precautions in situations in which researchers may be in positions of authority in relation to their participants—for example, teachers with students, supervisors with employees. In such situations, participation may end up being connected, in a perceived or real sense, with praise, better grades, or promotion. Participants may also feel compelled, or worse, coerced to participate. IRB guidelines are designed to protect participants from these situations. As you’re reading through this, you may be thinking, “Well, I’m just a student, and I’m just doing research for a class or to graduate.” It has been our experience that, if a researcher plans or hopes to disseminate work beyond the university—for example, at a conference or in a publication—the project must be reviewed. If your work is only intended to add to your personal knowledge, and you do not plan to disseminate it, it may not need approval, or it may be designated as exempt. As mentioned above, certain research is designated as exempt if it meets predetermined criteria—such as a study of accepted educational practices. However, your IRB must still make this determination. And, as the IRB process may take several weeks from start to finish, we recommend starting this process as soon as you possibly can. The IRB process may feel bureaucratic, so it is important to remember its overarching purpose is to protect participants. It is essential in any kind of research to always place participants first—to consider what their experiences might be as participants and what concerns they might have at any point in the research. It is essential, therefore, to be familiar with these aspects of research: • Informed consent—your participants need to be informed about and freely consent to be involved in your research. • Right to privacy—your participants need to be guaranteed privacy and anonymity if they desire it. • Protection from harm—your participants should never be put in any situation that could harm them physically or psychologically. • Permission—your participants must grant you permission to use their work or statements (we contend that this extends to all situations in which you use the work of others in any manner—e.g., students’ responses to assignments for models in your classes). • Method of use—your participants need to be reassured that you will use their statements and writing only in ways that are ethical and fair. Although these requirements seem basic, any research that involves humans can entail complexities, some of which occur unexpectedly.

The Research Proposal As the culminating document of your planning process, the research proposal elaborates your plans for investigating your question. It is here that you forge connections between your question, its larger context, and your plans and approaches for carrying out your research: from the question you propose, to the literature review that places the question in the larger scholarly conversation about your topic, to the approaches you will take to your study, to the tools and strategies you will employ.

Planning Your Qualitative Research Study 69 Researchers usually write some kind of research proposal, which is a genre that can take many forms and function in several different ways. For example, research proposals may fulfill an academic requirement or be written for the purpose of obtaining funding or some other kind of support (e.g., a sabbatical or research award). The content and organization of research proposals typically are stipulated by the individual or entity requesting or requiring it; therefore, audience and purpose become critical considerations in writing research proposals. Requirements for them may be spelled out in guidelines (e.g., for sabbaticals or for dissertation prospectuses) or in an official request for proposals (RFP). If there are guidelines, they usually need to be followed precisely, or the proposal could be disqualified. Your program may also have its own guidelines for a master’s project or thesis, so you should familiarize yourself with those well before you start writing your proposal. Research proposals usually contain some combination, if not all, of the following: • Your research question, along with the larger context for it (your problem statement) • Your literature review, which addresses what others have said already about your question • A statement about your interest and investment in the question and project; an acknowledgment of your own positionality and stance in relation to your question. • Your goals and objectives for the research • Your plans and methods for carrying out the research, including why and how you will use these methods • The audience for your research (to whom it will be targeted and on whom it will likely have an impact) • Your anticipated or hoped-for outcomes (e.g., what you will learn and produce— research article, thesis, dissertation) • An acknowledgment of your IRB approval • A timeline for moving forward. Research proposals tend to be persuasive. In them, you convince your readers— your thesis or dissertation director and committee members, a funding source, an IRB committee, and even yourself—that you have a meaningful question and a manageable plan for investigating your question. Prompt 3.6 will assist you with creating a checklist to aid you in developing and evaluating your proposal, and Sidebar 3.4 presents things to consider when selecting an advisor and committee for your research.

Prompt 3.6:  Developing a Criteria Sheet for Your Proposal Step 1: Investigate the requirements for your own program’s research proposals. Use the bulleted list above as a beginning checklist for assessing the proposal you will be developing. Add or subtract items based on your own needs and the requirements of your program and/or based on what you observe as you review other proposals.

70  Planning Your Qualitative Research Study Step 2: Use your checklist to examine other proposals. These might be proposals from other students in your program (you should only review these with the appropriate permissions), proposals from other sources—for example, sample funding proposals or proposals you locate online that serve the same purposes yours will serve, or the proposals included in the appendix to this chapter. This will give you the ability to carry out a genre study so that you can see how others have approached and written this type of document.

Sidebar 3.4:  Selecting a Thesis Committee/Director If you are a graduate student, you need to decide—if you haven’t already—whom you will ask to direct your research, and/or whom you will ask to be on your committee. In making these decisions, it may help to consider the following: • • • •

Which faculty members work in the area you plan to research, and/or what might different faculty members contribute to your work? Who has a work style and personality compatible with yours? Who can challenge you in the ways you want or need to be challenged? Who can give you the guidance and support you need?

It might help to make appointments and talk to different faculty members about your research. Tell them what you plan to do, how you’ll do it, and what your time frame is. Find out if they are interested in your project and in working with you. Also find out their availability (e.g., are they available when school isn’t in session—thesis and dissertation projects often do not conform to the academic calendar). If you need to select a faculty member outside of your department, which some programs require, seek out individuals who will make meaningful contributions to your work. Tell them about your research and inform them of the procedures your department follows. You might even invite your director to join the conversation, especially if the person has not previously served on a committee in your program.

Although we introduce you to the research proposal in this chapter, we stress that writing the proposal is a recursive process, one that you will continue to work on as you learn about research methodologies, approaches to analysis, and possible forms of dissemination—all topics we cover in upcoming chapters. What is vital at this point is to begin the process, especially working toward your literature review and determining how to gain access to potential research sites. What is also important is to consider the purpose of and multiple audiences for your research proposal and to use your knowledge of rhetoric as you take on this writing

Planning Your Qualitative Research Study 71 task. Research proposals should demonstrate to an advisor or expert in the field that you understand the issue and have the ability to enter the academic conversation surrounding that issue. But they also may be explaining your project to an IRB member who may be outside the field of writing studies and who may not have the insider knowledge of your advisor. Similarly, if you are using the proposal to apply for funding, you need to be aware of who the readers are for this grant and write it in a way that provides them with understandable information in a clear and organized fashion. Our best advice is to call upon all your rhetorical skills and write your research proposal in a way that is organized and easy to follow, with clearly marked sections and coherent sentence structure and syntax.

Positionality and Planning The decisions you make as you plan your research—decisions about what you will do, where you will do it, and with whom—will all be influenced by your positionality, stance, and the theoretical perspectives you bring. It is important, therefore, to be mindful of this and make this explicit as you plan your research. You should also be aware of the dynamic nature of your own positionality and perspectives. As you review the literature, for example, you may encounter new theories that end up informing your work. Additionally, when you consider different sites for your research and start developing relationships with gatekeepers and potential participants, you may acquire new ways of thinking about and approaching what you are doing. Your relationships with these individuals may change how you view and approach your research—and even how you position and think of yourself as a researcher.

Prompt 3.7:  Reflecting on Your Positionality Reflect on and respond to the following questions, which are adapted from questions posed in one of the prompts in Chapter 2: •

Reflect on the personal experiences you believe have influenced your thinking about your research. What are some ways in which those experiences may be influencing you? • How might your own beliefs and preferences affect your research plans, including where and with whom you might do your research? • What theoretical beliefs do you hold that underlie your research? How might those affect how you plan and carry out your research? • What biases might you be bringing to your research?

We can perhaps best illustrate the impact of positionality and theory on research planning through personal testimonies. As one example, our former student Mary Lou Wolfe became interested in childhood development and early literacy experiences because of her background in science, her experiences with certain human services organizations, and her geographical location (she lived in a suburb of Detroit with

72  Planning Your Qualitative Research Study underserved and underrepresented populations). These factors influenced what she chose to study as well as how: I was filled with a sense of nostalgia yesterday when I heard that Mildred Benson, the author of the Nancy Drew stories, died. I remembered how much I enjoyed reading those books as a young girl. Suddenly as I reflected, two of the most moving perspectives that prompted my research—the joy of reading and the sense of mystery—surfaced. The early exposure to reading was my godsend. As a slow learner, I may never have achieved the level of success in my education if it were not for the ability to read and reread. I do not process input very quickly, especially auditory instruction, and therefore need to read and write things down in various ways to grasp them. This, of course, stimulates my imagination and hence the beautiful joy of reading, the wonderful excursions to imagined and real places. I have always strived to share the gift of reading freely with others, especially young children. The observation that people learn differently and personal exposure to the effects of illnesses (thalassemia, rheumatic fever, and cancer), my own and those of other family members, led me to search for explanations in science and medicine. Although these disciplines were interesting, I found them mechanical and would rather explore the stories of people rather than physical processes. The theoretical perspectives of how we know and what we know, the fact that we can create our own reality, and that as communicators we can shape human knowledge were driving influences prompting my research. As a mother, it was a natural attraction then when I learned that Kiwanis, an international service organization, endorses the lives of young children as its first priority and that they strongly promote literacy at the earliest stages of development. With this knowledge, I joined the organization and plotted the plan for my research . . . . Reading to young children miraculously and mysteriously shapes their brain architecture, stimulates their knowing and use of language, and influences the course of lives. It became my pursuit to work within Kiwanis and with other service sectors in my Downriver community to increase awareness of the dramatic role that reading plays in the mystery of our knowing. (personal communication, 25 October 2004) Another former student, Diane Benton, became interested in developing a multicultural curriculum for composition classrooms. Diane is a black woman who has taught composition and basic writing at community colleges, at a large state university, and even at an exclusive private middle and secondary school. Her positioning as a woman of color, and her experiences teaching composition and literature classes to diverse student populations, had a profound impact on how she planned her project: I am interested in language and African American culture. A very complex topic, I found that most of the texts and discussions in my graduate classes focused on the issue of literacy or the deficits of literacy in African American culture. Few focused of the strength of African American literacy or rhetoric. As I took classes and, at the same time, tried to determine my research topic, I kept hearing an inner voice that drew from my own experience as an African American woman

Planning Your Qualitative Research Study 73 and teacher who taught composition and African American literature. The voice kept raising the question of the unrecognized strength of African American rhetoric as was evidenced in the literature that I was teaching. I also knew that there was not a lot of research that examined African American rhetoric as the center of the discussion. Few of my professors and peers, although encouraging, specialized in this area. I knew it would be easier to focus on literacy. In the end, I followed my inner voice. Though it required more time on an extensive literature review, it was the opportunity to answer questions raised in my own work and experience as both a composition and an African American literature teacher. (personal communication, 14 January 2005) Finally, Diane Pons was strongly influenced by her experiences raising two children with serious, chronic medical conditions: As I raised two children with chronic illnesses, I became sensitive to the ways writing and medicine were intertwined. I depended on written texts for my medical education. The material provided the needed medical information, but it was so difficult that it left me wondering why there wasn’t more medical literature created for patients. Most of what I read failed to present the patient’s voice or address the emotional dimension of the medical condition. After my son’s third major surgery, the relationship between writing and medicine expanded into an entirely new area as I began journaling. The simple act of writing in spiral notebooks made my stress more manageable, and I began to wonder about the therapeutic use of writing. My personal writing practice eventually led me back to school to work on a graduate degree in written communication. The relationship between writing and medicine is at the core of all my research wonderings. Looking at medicine through my lenses suggested that the patient was someone who needed a stronger voice, the information to make informed decisions, and someone who needed to be involved in his/her treatment. My research question needed to address this proactive patient. My next consideration was the different ways writing would impact such a patient. Again, my personal bias popped up as I returned to my strong belief that writing had a therapeutic value. These lenses left no room for objectivity, so I knew I could not prove or disprove the therapeutic value of writing. Instead, I needed a research question that built on my experience. After keeping a personal journal for years, I searched for ways to give my writing a social context. I began participating in workshops. I also began to consider questions that moved beyond “Is writing therapeutic?” to “What are the advantages or disadvantages of different genres?” and “How would one facilitate a writing workshop that encouraged healing?” These questions allowed for my biases and presented an opportunity to research more specific considerations of therapeutic writing. (personal communication, 17 July 2004) In each of these situations, the positionality and stance of the researcher played a defining role in the researcher’s questions and plans. As you think about your own research, we encourage you to engage in a similar kind of reflection—and also to be mindful, at all times, of how your race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, education, gender, sexuality,

74  Planning Your Qualitative Research Study experiences, background, biases, and so on, may be influencing how you are defining and approaching your research. As Erin Frost, a professor at East Carolina University, explains in Chapter 2, positionality and stance may influence your research in a productive manner, shedding light on something new or helping you consider something in your research from a different angle or perspective. They also can be limiting: You may end up holding certain perspectives at the expense of others, or you may become biased if you hold certain viewpoints and perspectives too strongly. For example, if something you read really moves you, you might begin looking at what you are doing exclusively through the theoretical lens offered by that reading. What’s important in qualitative research—and especially at the planning stage of our research—is our need to acknowledge our positionality and the biases and perspectives we bring to the planning process, remaining vigilant so these perspectives do not blind us to other possibilities. Finally, you also should be aware of your positionality in relation to that of your participants and/or others at your research site. Differences in perspectives may lead researchers to make certain judgments about their research sites or participants. Similarities in perspectives—or like-mindedness—also may impact our judgments or ability to approach our research with an open mind (we are avoiding the term “objective” here because no research can ever be entirely objective for all of the reasons we are discussing). It is essential, again, to identify and be mindful of our positionality and biases and to remember that we can learn as much, and perhaps even more, when our participants do not share our viewpoints and perspectives. Again, as researchers we need to reflect continually on our positionality and how it may be shaping and influencing our research. Some questions you might consider to assist with this include the following: • How do you conceive of the individuals you are researching? What is your relationship with and your position in relation to them? Are you researching individuals who possess greater or less authority and power than you do? (Both situations pose challenges; however, when you research those with less power and authority, you need to take special care, as we have discussed, so you do not harm or coerce them in any way.) • How will you interact with and treat your participants? (How will you interact with and treat them respectfully and fairly, especially if you are in a position of authority over them—e.g., you are responsible for their employee performance evaluation? What precautions might you take against deceiving or misleading your participants? Will you offer them something in return for their help—e.g., if you are a teacher giving grades, will you offer extra credit to students who agree to be interviewed? Again, there are numerous questions you may wish to ask relating to your interactions with your participants.) • Whom will your research question influence most directly? How might your participants view your question? What investment might they have in it? (Obviously, you may have a greater interest in your research question than your participants, so you need to be concerned with how you approach them and engage them in your work.)

Ethics and Planning As we have addressed with our discussion of the IRB process, ethical considerations need to be front and center during the planning stages of all research. Underlying the official IRB process should be a personal concern, on your part as the researcher, for

Planning Your Qualitative Research Study 75 the well-being of your participants. From our point of view, being an ethical researcher involves being a responsible and caring researcher. This entails prioritizing the safety and well-being of those who take the time to participate in our research. On the surface, this goal may seem obvious, and generally it is. Most writing researchers know how to be honest and fair in their research and how to treat participants with respect. Just about any source you read that addresses ethics in qualitative writing research stresses that, as researchers, we should always be responsible, first and foremost, to our participants. Concern for the settings we research should also be primary. Only then should we be concerned with ourselves as researchers and with our studies. Both of us believe that it is easier to acquire and maintain such an ethical disposition if we begin to think about these issues as early as possible in the research process, even though time and other pressures may sometimes make it difficult. You may worry, for example, that IRB approval may delay you. These worries are common and legitimate, but they should never supersede concerns with carrying out your research in the most ethical manner possible. Several of the questions that are important during the planning stage of your research have ethical implications, including the following: •

•

What setting will you research? (Different settings, as we have addressed, pose different ethical considerations. For example, schools tend to require various kinds of permission, businesses may have concerns with proprietary information and confidentiality, social service agencies have concerns with confidentiality, etc.) Whom will you research? (Different participants may also suggest various ethical considerations. Are you carrying out research with children? If so, their parents need to sign consent forms. Are you researching individuals who might be considered part of a vulnerable population—for example, children, disabled individuals, individuals with special needs? If so, you need to take various measures to protect them. These are just a few examples of the considerations posed by your choice of research participants.)

Considering questions such as these will help you to establish an ethical and responsible stance in your research.

Conclusion Often, we hear our students, and even our colleagues, say they just want to get started on their research. They perceive planning as being too laborious and/or as something that simply holds them up. We contend that planning is the most important part of research. It is that part in which you make key decisions that will influence how you will approach and what you will learn from your research. You construct the road map that will guide your research, and, through the activities entailed in planning, you even begin exploring your question. Of course, planning, like every other part of the research process, is not a discrete stage. You do not simply stop planning one day and then start researching. The choices you make as you plan are choices you will continue making throughout your research. And, if things do not go just as you hoped in your research, then you will likely need to go back and plan certain aspects of it all over again. Planning is productive work, but it is also challenging and ongoing work. Once you are in your research site, for example, you might discover that there are others who can shed light on what you are investigating. As a result, you may seek permission to talk to those individuals. Or,

76  Planning Your Qualitative Research Study if you discover documents later in your research that suddenly seem useful, you will likely ask permission to review them. Research is a dynamic and recursive process. The best way to get a good start on that process is to plan it carefully. Using the tools and strategies discussed in this chapter will help you to do that. And you will want to keep using these tools the entire time you’re carrying out your research. For example, you will continue reading the literature, and you should keep an open mind so you can anticipate and then change those aspects of your research you may need to change. Seldom will everything go exactly as planned, so you will want to be ready should the need for changes arise. Effective planning will facilitate that readiness. It will also go a long way toward making your research productive and successful.

Appendix A Sample Project Proposals

Proposal Sample 1: Natasha Wickenheiser Shifting the Responsibility of Writing Development Using Writing and Self-Advocacy Practices to Help Basic Writers Rationale First-Year Writing Students: A Student Demographic with Low Self-Efficacy As first-year writing instructors, we have the opportunity to work with diverse students, all of whom come from a variety of different academic, social, political, economic, and cultural backgrounds. Pascarella et al. note that post-secondary undergraduate enrollment has become much more diverse, which has led to an increase in first-generation college students, or students whose parents only completed a high-school education (249). The authors go on to review a substantial collection of research, suggesting that first-generation college students are at a “distinct disadvantage” because they have fewer resources to prepare them for college, experience more difficult high school-­to-college transitions, and are less likely to complete their undergraduate degrees (Pascarella et al. 250). Granted, not all of the students we work with in first-year writing are first-­ generation college students. But, because our first-year student populations are becoming more diverse, not only must we recognize who our students are and where they come from, we also have to acknowledge the challenges they are likely to face. One of the primary characteristics students bring with them into first-year composition is a low self-efficacy with writing. Psychologist Albert Bandura claims that self-efficacy is the “foundation of human agency” because self-efficacy embodies the belief that a person is capable of succeeding or accomplishing a particular task by his or her own actions (28). In relation to writing, students with a high self-efficacy believe that they are capable of succeeding as college writers. In contrast, students with low self-efficacy do not believe in their personal ability to succeed with college writing. Unfortunately, many of the students we work with in first-year composition have low self-efficacy beliefs about their writing abilities. While part of this low selfefficacy may be attributed to the general challenges faced by first-generation and/or first-year college students, Patricia Wachholz and Carol Etheridge attribute students’ low self-confidence with writing to their lack of positive experiences with writing in the past (16). This becomes problematic because, as Lucila Ramos-Sanchez and Laura Nichols acknowledge, a student’s initial self-efficacy can be a predictor for his or her success

78  Planning Your Qualitative Research Study and adjustment into college (13). Not only are writing teachers charged with helping students navigate the transition into college writing, they are also working against an entire cyclical system that perpetuates low self-efficacies with writing. Clearly, we want our students to have high self-efficacies so they will go on to be successful in both their college courses and professional careers—especially since writing is integral to both the learning process and the college experience. The challenge, then, that many writing instructors face is how to counter negative writing experiences and promote both positive experiences and high self-efficacy beliefs toward writing in order to help students become more effective writers and strategic learners. Current Practices: Embracing Values that Increase Student Self-Efficacy It is important that first-year composition teachers value the work of helping students increase their self-efficacies with writing. Frank Pajares and Gio Valiante charge writing instructors with “the responsibility to increase students’ competence and confidence as students progress through school” (359). Due to time restrictions and other limited resources, it is often too easy to sacrifice one or the other—to focus solely on competence for the sake of future expectations, or confidence for the sake of making students feel comfortable in their academic discourse community. To ensure that students gain competence and confidence with college writing, first-year composition instructors must actively prioritize efforts to increase self-efficacy beliefs, as well as self-advocacy and self-sponsorship practices as a means to help students take responsibility for their own learning. To help students become more effective writers and strategic learners, first-year writing instructors can draw from the “Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing,” which was collectively compiled by the Council of Writing Program Administrators (CWPA), National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), and the National Writing project (NWP). This framework highlights eight habits of mind that are paramount for successful college writing: curiosity, openness, engagement, creativity, persistence, responsibility, flexibility, and metacognition. Not only do these habits of mind create important guidelines for everyday classroom practice, some of them can also be used as a framework for understanding and responding to the challenge of increasing student self-efficacy with writing in an effort to help them become more effective writers and strategic learners. CURIOSITY: A MEANS OF STUDENT SELF-DISCOVERY

Curiosity is defined as “the desire to know more about the world” (Council). Not only do we want students to be genuinely interested in the world around them, we also want them to be curious about writing—how it works, why it works, and for whom does it work? One of the best ways to foster curiosity among our students is to encourage them to ask questions and genuinely inquire into ideas or practices that they do not understand, seeking knowledge and attributing value to it (Council). Unfortunately, when students have low self-efficacies, they may not feel comfortable or confident asking questions, for fear of feeling inferior or out of place. Mike Rose reports that his students “needed to gain confidence in themselves as systematic inquirers” (141). Many of the first-year writing students with whom we work have this need, too. If we are able to empower students to be curious and active inquirers, we might be able

Planning Your Qualitative Research Study 79 to help them increase their self-efficacy beliefs toward writing by illustrating that it is okay not to know everything all the time. Sometimes we have to ask questions. ENGAGEMENT: ENCOURAGING STUDENTS TO INVEST IN THEIR LEARNING

Engagement is defined as “a sense of investment and involvement in learning” (Council). Essentially, this habit of mind is concerned with helping students care about both their learning and writing. Engagement becomes extremely important when we consider that many first-year writing students come into composition with low self-­efficacy beliefs about writing. Often, students do not like writing—either from negative experiences in the past, or the belief that writing is not relevant to what they want to study or pursue. Thankfully, NCTE has found that first-year composition courses are monumental for fostering engagement and retention of information due to the individual attention and dynamic student-teacher ratios that composition classes provide (National 1). It is important for first-year composition instructors to recognize that we can help students become more engaged in their writing education if we illustrate that we are invested in them, and that their experiences matter. If we are able to help them engage in their own learning processes, then students may be able to increase their self-efficacy, which can help students become more effective writers and strategic learners. PERSISTENCE: SPONSORING SUSTAINABLE INVESTMENT IN KNOWLEDGE-MAKING

Persistence takes engagement a step further, asking students to sustain their interest and investment over a longer period of time. The “Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing” defines persistence as “the ability to sustain interest in and attention to short- and long-term projects” (Council). This might take the form of following through on an individual project, but it also includes students being persistent with their efforts to increase their self-efficacy with writing outside the classroom. James Williams and Seiji Takaku found that students—both native and non-native English speakers—who actively seek help from the writing center have higher writing grades than those who do not seek help outside of class (13). This finding is not surprising, considering that Pascarella et al. similarly discovered that first-generation college students can resiliently overcome academic disadvantages if they persist with their studies (277). It is evident that students who persist and actively seek additional writing experiences and support are able to increase their grades in composition, which in theory, should also increase students’ self-efficacy beliefs about writing. RESPONSIBILITY: HELPING STUDENTS TAKE OWNERSHIP OF THEIR LEARNING

If we can help students practice these habits of mind—curiosity, engagement, and persistence—then we are better situated to shift the responsibility of learning away from writing instructors and toward students. Responsibility is defined as “the ability to take ownership of one’s actions and understand the consequences of those actions for oneself and others” (Council). This habit of mind becomes important especially when considering that students will have limited access to feedback from their writing instructor after successfully passing their first-year writing courses. We cannot feasibly follow students to other classes, reading over their shoulders to comment on

80  Planning Your Qualitative Research Study organization or conventional and grammatical patterns of error. It is for this reason that Kirk Kidwell argues that taking responsibility for one’s education is one of the most important lessons that students learn during their first year of college (254). Many of our students enter first year writing with the assumption that teachers are subject experts, and if students want to succeed, they must passively consume the knowledge that teachers distribute. If students take a more active role in the learning process—actively navigating spaces for making and sharing self-constructed ­knowledge—then they are well positioned to increase writing self-efficacy because they are able to recognize the choices available to them. Not only does Jeff Sommers note that having choice leads to responsibility (405), Alison Hood found that students appreciate when teachers trust students with more responsibility (475). It is not surprising that students who feel empowered and in possession of agency are more likely to take responsibility for their learning and, as a result, increase feelings of self-efficacy toward writing. METACOGNITION: PROMPTING STUDENTS TO IDENTIFY THEIR SUSTAINABLE LEARNING PROCESS

Metacognition is the habit of mind that seems to fuse the others together. The “Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing” defines metacognition as “the ability to reflect on one’s own thinking as well as on the individual and cultural processes and systems used to structure knowledge” (Council). In order for students to take ownership over their knowledge of writing, they need to reflect on the processes they went through to acquire that knowledge. However, it is not enough for students to simply reflect and acknowledge their metacognitive understanding of writing. Students must also apply the metacognitive lessons gained through reflective practice. For example, when examining workplace task performance, Anseel et al. found that task performance increased when employees reflected on feedback from supervisors (33). We can imagine this pattern mapped onto the feedback process in a first-year writing course. Students who reflect on the feedback received from peers or their instructor would likely make more effective revisions that would result in a higher grade and, from the successful experience with writing, students could increase their writing self-efficacy beliefs. Furthermore, reflective writing helps students achieve self-articulated writing goals, which as a means for taking responsibility of their own learning, can increase student self-efficacy with writing (Travers et al. 238). It is clear that reflecting and applying a student’s metacognitive awareness of writing knowledge can help them be successful with future writing assignments and, as a result, increase their writing selfefficacy beliefs. MOTIVATION: HELPING STUDENTS MAKE IT HAPPEN

While these selected habits of mind help us understand why it is important to help students increase their writing self-efficacy beliefs, we are still left with a challenging question: How? Despite our understanding or best intentions, we cannot force students to be curious, engaged, persistent, responsible for their own learning, or genuinely reflective. Instead, we need to help students see the value in these practices and find the motivation to pursue them. Bandura argues, “Both the anticipated satisfactions of desired accomplishments and the negative appraisals of insufficient performance

Planning Your Qualitative Research Study 81 [provide] incentives for action” (193). Regardless if students are motivated by excitement or fear, these are still representative of intrinsic motivation, which is defined as “being engaged in an activity for its own sake and for the satisfaction derived from participation” (Prospero and Vohra-Gupta 966). Travers et al. also acknowledge that “energizing” goals—or, in other words, goals that are personally motivating—are more likely to increase a student’s effort and persistence (226). This personal investment also supports Prospero and Vohra-Gupta’s claim that intrinsic motivation is positively correlated with both academic achievement and future academic success for first-generation college students (972). Students who are curious and engaged for the sake of learning will be more likely to carry on those habits after finishing firstyear composition. And, because intrinsic motivation can increase students’ academic performance, it also holds the potential to increase students’ feelings of self-efficacy toward writing. For these reasons, it is imperative that writing instructors seek ways to help students feel empowered and intrinsically motivated by their learning, as it can help increase students’ self-efficacy and their ability to self-advocate for their writingrelated needs. Multidisciplinary Possibilities: Exploring Self-Advocacy as a Tool for Student Growth Even if we can help students feel intrinsically motivated to engage meaningfully with writing and the learning process, we must still consider how to help students enact the habits of mind that can help increase self-efficacy beliefs. One possibility that we can examine and draw from is housed in disabilities studies. Within the field of disabilities studies, there is a lot of research about the practice of self-advocacy. Mary Schreiner defines self-advocacy as “the ability to speak up for what we want and need,” and acknowledges that this practice is expected for future success (300). In an extensive review of self-advocacy and self-determination definitions, Test et al. showcase four components for self-advocacy: knowledge of rights, knowledge of self, communication of one’s knowledge of rights and self, and leadership (45). Traditionally these components and practices have been taught to students with disabilities to help them identify and articulate their needs. However, Test et al. argue that the concept of self-advocacy “does not need to be limited to students with disabilities” because it includes components that all students can use as goals to guide their learning (52). While I acknowledge that it is inaccurate and unfair to assume that all first-year writing or first-generation college students represent students with disabilities, these components of self-advocacy can be mapped onto a vocabulary used to discuss writing and the habits of mind that help students build self-efficacy with their writing and become more strategic learners. KNOWLEDGE OF RIGHTS: EVERYONE DESERVES AN EDUCATION AND OPPORTUNITY TO LEARN

Knowledge of one’s rights may vary between students with and without disabilities. Test et al. emphasize the importance of “knowing one’s rights as a citizen, as an individual with a disability, and as a student receiving services under federal law” (50). Although first-year writing students may not have to deal with the violation of rights related to a disability, they still have rights as citizens and as students. For example,

82  Planning Your Qualitative Research Study Eastern Michigan University’s Student Bill of Rights showcases twelve academic rights including the right to safe learning environments, the right to receive current syllabi and written instructions for assignments, and the right to be treated with respect by university personnel and other students (Eastern). It is important that all students— especially first-year college students who are trying to navigate the complex college system on their own for the first time—recognize their legal rights. However, when we consider that many students enter first-year composition with low self-efficacy beliefs about writing, it is also important to help them understand their right to belong and participate in their academic discourse community as well as their right to continue learning. These may not be legal rights, but helping students acknowledge and accept them can help increase self-efficacy beliefs toward college success and their individual writing abilities. KNOWLEDGE OF SELF: REFLECTING ON CURRENT WORK AND SETTING LEARNING GOALS FOR THE FUTURE

In addition to the knowledge of one’s rights, the knowledge of self or self-awareness helps create the foundation for self-advocacy. Test et al. argue that self-awareness is the first step toward self-advocacy (50). These authors reference a person’s interests, preferences, strengths, needs, learning styles, and attributes of one’s disability—a list of self-awareness categories that is also supported by Schreiner (300). With the exception of ability, these characteristics are universally relevant to all first-year writing students and their development as writers. However, in order for students to identify their individual strengths, needs, learning preferences, personal interests, or selfefficacy beliefs connected to writing, they must engage in metacognitive reflection. Whether students embrace the metacognition habit of mind through internal or written reflection, they are able to increase their self-awareness toward writing, which sets them up for effective self-advocacy. In addition to personal strengths and needs, reflective practice can also lead to questions. When students are able to identify questions that they do not yet understand or want to know more about, they are well positioned to not only think about their current knowledge of self, but also what they hope to someday include in their knowledge of self. Their metacognitive practices open spaces for students to be curious—to pose questions and set goals for what they want to learn. Many disability studies scholars emphasize the importance of having students with disabilities use writing to define goals and create plans to meet those goals (Fiedler and Danneker; Gilmartin and Slevin; Krebs; Schreiner; Test and Neale). Again, although these researchers are using disabilities studies as a framework, it is not hard to imagine that first-year writing students can increase self-awareness (as well as self-efficacy) by documenting areas of need, identifying goals to meet those needs, and creating plans to accomplish those goals. COMMUNICATION OF ONE’S KNOWLEDGE OF SELF AND RIGHTS: ASSURING THEM THAT THEIR VOICES MATTER

The next step in self-advocacy involves students actively communicating about their self-awareness inventory. This communication might look different for each student. For example, some students may ask questions in class, meet with instructors during

Planning Your Qualitative Research Study 83 office hours, seek help from writing center consultants, articulate concerns in an inclass free write, or informally vent to peers. It is imperative, however, that writing instructors make space for this type of self-advocacy communication. Fiedler and Danneker warn that students who are not given opportunities to exercise their own agency through self-advocacy are more likely to become passive learners and, as a result, grow incapable of making personal decisions about their education (7). If we have any hope for students to be persistent in their own education and mastery of writing, we need to allow time and create space for students to articulate their strengths, needs, goals, and plans for the future. LEADERSHIP: TAKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR ONE’S LEARNING AND THE LEARNING OF OTHERS

When students are in the practice of articulating their learning needs and goals, they are well positioned to take responsibility for their learning. Linda Kozacek and Chris Specht argue that students not only become more confident (increased self-efficacy), they also experience more retention and success when students “buy-in” and are responsible their own learning (7). This active leadership prevents students from remaining passive consumers of knowledge and, instead, positions them as active contributors to both their own knowledge and the collective knowledge among their community of peers. Of course, students have to be intrinsically motivated for this to happen, but taking ownership of one’s learning (and helping those around them) is likely to increase feelings of self-efficacy with writing, which should ultimately help students be more successful in future college classes. Connecting Disciplines: The Intersection between Composition and Disabilities Studies The concept of self-advocacy could be used to help first-year writing students take responsibility for their learning. In theory. But like many compositionists, I am also interested in understanding how self-advocacy might map onto writing studies in practice. I argue that its rightful place is in the writing process. Writing in Action outlines the following steps as part of the process for completing a writing project: 1) Explore and narrow a topic (invention), 2) Develop a working thesis, 3) Gather evidence and do research, 4) Plan and create a draft, 5) Develop paragraphs, 6) Review, 7) Revise, 8) Edit, and 9) Reflect (Lunsford 39–51). These steps are familiar as important pieces of process writing. Process writing is intended to help students become more effective writers and strategic thinkers. In NCTE’s “Professional Knowledge for the Teaching of Writing” statement, NCTE argues that the process of writing itself is “an act of discovery” because it helps writers generate and explore new ideas. Process writing has the potential to help writers develop writing strategies, as well as their understanding of the world and their place within it. However, we often emphasize process writing by focusing on the writing instead of a writer’s personal identity, needs, or goals in relation to writing. And this is reasonable: We do, after all, teach composition. But I wonder if we can make writing instruction more comprehensive and student learning more accountable by helping students identify what they want to learn, how their goals are relevant to their lives in and outside of academia, and how they plan to take responsibility for their learning?

84  Planning Your Qualitative Research Study CONTEXTUAL PERSONAL PROFILE: EMBRACING A NEW FIRST STEP IN PROCESS WRITING

I argue that process writing can become even more comprehensive and effective as a learning strategy if we integrate the components of self-advocacy as a new part of the process. As aforementioned, self-advocacy is typically thought of as a process that individuals with disabilities use to better position themselves to be successful in both the classroom and society. It is intended to help people embrace and respond to their personal identities, needs, and goals, and to work toward higher self-efficacy beliefs. I propose an intersection between the four self-advocacy components (knowledge of rights, knowledge of self, communication about knowledge of rights and self, and leadership) and process writing. This intersection creates a Contextual Personal Profile, a new step of the writing process that, ideally, occurs before invention. When students craft a Contextualized Personal Profile, they embrace a natural space for writers to take inventory of their knowledge, craft learning goals, and develop plans to meet those goals and hold themselves accountable for their learning before jumping into a writing prompt and its necessary invention work. I have named this step of the writing process a Contextual Personal Profile for several reasons. As a personal profile, students are documenting information about themselves as writers, learners, and other identities with which they relate—especially in relation to the given writing situation. Because all writing is rhetorical and dependent upon a given context, it is imperative that students first reflect on their initial relationship to the context. For example, if a student has never written a research-based paper before, she might use her Contextual Personal Profile to note that writing is a strength, but integrating source material is a writing need that she wants to improve throughout the project. Essentially, by completing a Contextual Personal Profile, students take the appropriate time and space to appraise their current relationship with an assignment, set a goal for improvement, and design a plan to hold themselves accountable throughout the writing process. CONTEXTUAL PERSONAL PROFILE: AN EASY FOUR-STEP PROCESS

Although a Contextual Personal Profile can take place at the beginning of the writing process, it is in itself a process that is inspired by the four components of self-­advocacy. The Contextual Personal Profile asks students to reflect in writing on four things: 1) expectations, 2) a personal inventory, 3) goals, and 4) an accountable agenda. Table 3.1 below explains the four steps of a Contextual Personal Profile, their connections to self-advocacy, and practical questions that can be used in pedagogical application. Table 3.1 Reflective Step

Description

Self-Advocacy Connection

Sample Questions for Classroom Application

This step invites • What am I allowed to Expectations As soon as a writing students to explore write about? prompt is distributed, • What resources are students should reflect and question their knowledge of rights in available to me? on the assignment’s relation to the prompt • When are the expected requirements, deadlines? restrictions, and overall expectations

Planning Your Qualitative Research Study 85 Reflective Step

Description

Personal Inventory

Students should reflect Documenting one’s personal inventory and take personal allows students to inventory of their become explicitly current capabilities, aware of their experiences, and knowledge of self assumptions in relation to the project

Goals

Students should craft at least one learning goal for the project

Accountable Students should Agenda design an agenda for accomplishing their goal, detailing a plan to hold themselves accountable for success

Self-Advocacy Connection

Sample Questions for Classroom Application

• What experiences do I have with this type of project? • What are my assumptions about this type of project? • What do I know how to do (strengths) and what am I unsure of about this project (needs/ uncertainties)? • What do I want to do or Although goal-setting learn by the end of this is a reflection of one’s project? knowledge of self, • Why is this goal it matters that the important to me? goals are explicitly • Is this goal feasible? Why written down. This or why not? allows students to communicate about their knowledge of rights and self • What steps can I take to Developing a stepachieve my goal? by-step agenda • What timeline do I have for success allows to accomplish my goal? students to take leadership over their • How will I hold myself accountable for my own learning learning?

By explicitly documenting their thoughts on these four things, student writers may find it easier to take responsibility for their learning and hold themselves accountable because they know what it is that they want to learn and how they plan to be successful. After crafting a Contextual Personal Profile, students are well-positioned to begin invention work and start composing. Contextual Personal Profiles also make the final reflection step of process writing more meaningful because students can critically reflect on their progress toward a conscious, explicit learning goal, as opposed to general statements about the project’s process. The Last Step in the Process: Encouraging Self-Sponsorship among Students Once we are able to help students improve their writing self-efficacy beliefs and ability to self-advocate for their learning through a writing process that includes the development of a Contextual Personal Profile, there is still one piece of the learning process missing. Deborah Douglas notes, “actual self-advocacy is hard to document over a relatively short time period because it is an ongoing process that students consciously or subconsciously must use if and when they need it throughout their lives” (228). As teachers, we recognize that both learning and writing are processes that require time and commitment. Self-advocating can help students identify and articulate their writing needs, but if they do not act on them—if they do not initiate the process of seeking resources for help, practicing the material, or following their accountable agenda,

86  Planning Your Qualitative Research Study then students will still struggle to become more effective writers with high self-efficacy beliefs. We need to help students establish strategic plans that will make more sustainable their efforts toward high self-efficacy beliefs about writing. One solution to this challenge is encouraging students to self-sponsor their literacy development. Deborah Brandt defines literacy sponsors 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). While her definition encompasses a variety of both human and nonhuman agents, there are two core literacy sponsors that interact in a first-year composition course. First, writing teachers serve as sponsors or mentors who, as Rose notes, guide students into conversations that may seem “foreign and threatening” (48). Many students fear that college writing will be a threatening experience, but first-year composition instructors can help students feel competent and confident with their writing. In addition to writing teachers as literacy sponsors, students can—and should—self-sponsor their literacy acquisition. They can take responsibility for their own learning and make choices that will help them work toward understanding questions, mastering concepts or practices, and reaching self-articulated goals that are documented when they include a Contextual Personal Profile in their writing processes. Lingering Questions: A Need for Research Through this review, it is apparent that—in theory—the intersection of process writing from composition studies and self-advocacy from disabilities studies can be integrated to create a more comprehensive writing process that can help students take responsibility for their learning and, ultimately, increase self-efficacy beliefs toward writing and collegiate success. However, there is a lingering question: Does this theoretical framework hold up in practice? Through this research study, I hope to explore the following questions: 1) How are student writers, writing practices, and feelings of self-efficacy toward writing and collegiate success influenced by an extended writing process that includes a Contextual Personal Profile, and 2) In what ways can the habit of crafting a Contextual Personal Profile during process writing transfer to other writing and learning experiences? Method One way to explore these pedagogical questions is to conduct a classroom-based study in which students actively engage in a writing process that includes a Contextual Personal Profile. This August, I will be teaching a collegiate literacy class to approximately forty-five first-year college students. These students are enrolled in the EMU Opportunity Program, which is designed to support students who do not meet EMU’s academic admission requirements. Because this program traditionally serves first-­ generation college students, the students in my collegiate literacy class are an ideal sample of the basic writers enrolled in first-year writing courses. Drawing from scholarship on self-efficacy, self-advocacy, and composition studies, I have designed a comprehensive project prompt that students will compose throughout the three-week course. The assignment asks students to identify and explain a writingrelated need, set a goal for shifting the need to a strength, and articulate a plan of action to achieve their goal and hold themselves accountable. The prompt, as well as complimentary lesson plans, will guide students through the process of completing a Contextual Personal Profile. For example, students will have the opportunity to 1) understand their

Planning Your Qualitative Research Study 87 rights and expectations when the assignment is distributed; 2) take inventory of their knowledge of self through expressive, narrative writing; 3) communicate their knowledge sets by generating and writing down obtainable goals; and 4) take leadership by drafting plans to achieve their goals and hold themselves accountable for their learning. At the end of the three-week course, students will submit a final portfolio, which will include their final paper, documents reflecting their writing process, and a reflective letter discussing thoughtful insights and moments of learning from the project. When students submit their final portfolios, I will analyze them using open-coding to hopefully identify patterns regarding students’ writing processes, beliefs about writing and/or learning, and self-efficacy beliefs toward both writing and college. Open-­ coding is an appropriate analysis approach for this data because I do not want to assume what students will write or experience. It is important to note that I will only analyze writing samples of the students who submit a complete portfolio, and who were absent no more than two days. In order for students to thoroughly compose and follow through with their Contextual Personal Profile, they need to be present in class for generative writing prompts and discussions, and they need to have actively worked through the entire Contextual Personal Profile process. The more often students are absent, the more likely they are to miss assignments, and thus, skip steps of the process that is being studied. In addition to the initial artifact analysis, I will conduct follow-up interviews at the end of the fall 2016 semester. I want to conduct these interviews to better understand how the inclusion of a Contextual Personal Profile in process writing transfers to future writing and learning experiences. Because self-advocacy is difficult to measure over a short period of time (Douglas 228), it will be imperative to extend the study past the initial three-week duration. Interviewing students one semester into their college careers is an ideal time for them because they can reflect on their learning experiences without being overwhelmed by too large a time range. I will select ten students to interview for this phase of data collection. While this is a smaller sample size, it is both appropriate and feasible for the scope of this study. Additionally, I will only interview students who remained enrolled at EMU for the entire fall 2016 semester. A small sample size takes into account students who may drop enrollment for any number of reasons. The follow-up interviews, which will be conducted in my office, will be semi-­ structured to allow for spontaneous questions that may emerge from our conversations. I have found that genuine dialog, as opposed to forced structured questions, creates more genuine opportunities for honest and interesting responses from students. This is the type of interview atmosphere that I would like to create for interviewees. There are, however, several core questions that I hope to have answered during the interviews: •

How have you taken responsibility for your learning and development as a writer this semester? • In what ways have your writing beliefs and practices developed this past semester? • What practices do you find especially helpful and/or unhelpful for your success as a writer and learner? • Did anything from the August Collegiate Literacy class stand out as especially helpful for your transition into first-year writing and college in general? • Have you applied the written self-advocacy process, or some variation of it, in your classes this semester? How do you perceive its affects on your performance in the classes?

88  Planning Your Qualitative Research Study With the students’ consent, I will audio-record and transcribe the interviews in order to ensure accuracy. Finally, I will use open-coding analysis to hopefully discover patterns regarding the ways the Contextual Personal Profile process transfers to other written and academic contexts, as well as the ways it influences writing practices, development, and self-efficacy beliefs. Possible Outcomes Ideally, this research project will confirm that at the intersection of self-advocacy and writing studies is an expressive invention strategy that can help students take responsibility for their learning. The data collected by analyzing student writing samples should provide insight into students’ writing processes, and their self-efficacy beliefs toward writing and collegiate success after engaging in process writing with a Contextual Personal Profile. Additionally, the findings from the follow-up interviews should provide interesting commentary on the ways students apply and transfer the practice of using a Contextual Personal Profile in their writing processes, as well as their perceptions of how the process impacted their writing and learning during their first semester of college. If students find the process helpful for building both competence and confidence with college writing, then there will be at least one educational implication that emerges from this study: Integrating a Contextual Personal Profile into process writing early in a student’s writing education can increase the student’s likelihood for success later on. Not only could this implication be significant for firstyear composition teachers, secondary teachers could use this approach when teaching process writing under the Common Core State Standards. Even if this study does not elicit the results I hypothesize, it would, at the very least, provide for both students and writing instructors another variation of process writing that could be used when composing texts or teaching students about writing. If students do not find the Contextual Personal Profile useful for writing development or helping them take responsibility for their learning, then I can use the opportunity to examine the writing and learning experiences and challenges first-year writing students have in their first semester of college. Their reflective responses may provide interesting commentary or suggestions for program or curriculum improvement.

Works Cited Anseel, Frederik, Filip Lievens, and Eveline Schollaert. “Reflection as a Strategy to Enhance Task Performance after Feedback.” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 110 (2009): 23–35. Science Direct. Web. 14 Mar. 2016. Bandura, Albert. “Social Cognitive Theory: An Agentic Perspective.” Asian Journal of Social Psychology 2 (1999): 21–41. Web. 19 Mar. 2016. Brandt, Deborah. “A Commentary on Literacy Narratives as Sponsors of Literacy.” Curriculum Inquiry 45.3 (2015): 330–333. Taylor and Francis Online. Web. 14 Mar. 2016. Council of Writing Program Administrators, National Council of Teachers of English, and National Writing Project. Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing. Available: http:// wpacouncil.org/files/framework-for-success-postsecondary-writing.pdf Douglas, Deborah. “Self-Advocacy: Encouraging Students to Become Partners in Differentiation.” Roeper Review 26.4 (2004): 223–228. ProQuest. Web. 26 Feb. 2016. Eastern Michigan University. Student Government. EMU Student Bill of Rights. Ypsilanti, MI: EMU, 2009. Web. 19 Mar. 2016.

Planning Your Qualitative Research Study 89 Fiedler, Craig R., and Jeanne E. Danneker. “Self-Advocacy Instruction: Bridging the ­Research-to-Practice Gap.”  Focus on Exceptional Children, vol. 39, no. 8, 2007, pp. 1–20. ERIC, https://eds-a-ebscohost-com.bloomington.libproxy.ivytech.edu/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer? vid=2&sid=4a15236d-3994-44bc-baa1-8c8fa29512bb%40sessionmgr4009 Gilmartin, Ann, and Eamonn Slevin. “Being a Member of a Self-Advocacy Group: Experiences of Intellectually Disabled People.” British Journal of Learning Disabilities 38.3 (2010): 152–159. Wiley Online Library. Web. 26 Feb. 2016. Hood, Alison. “Whose Responsibility Is It? Encouraging Student Engagement in the Learning Process.” Music Education Research 14.4 (2012): 457–78. Taylor and Francis Online. Web. 15 Mar. 2016. Krebs, Cathryn S. “Self-Advocacy Skills: A Portfolio Approach.” Re:view 33.4 (2002): 160. Gale. 26 Feb. 2016. Kozacek, Linda, and Chris Specht. “Self Advocacy: Teaching Students to Take Ownership of Their Education.” Catalyst, vol. 42, no. 2, 2014, pp. 6–8. EBSCO Host, http://connection.ebscohost. com/c/articles/99584209/self-advocacy-teaching-students-take-ownership-their-education Lunsford, Andrea A. Writing in Action. Boston: Bedford St. Martin’s, 2014. National Council of Teachers of English. First-Year Writing: What Good Does it Do? Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 2013. Web. 15 Mar. 2016. NCTE Executive Committee. “Professional Knowledge for the Teaching of Writing.” NCTE, National Council of Teachers of English, Feb. 2016. Web. 7 July 2016. Pajares, Frank, and Gio Valiante. “Influence of Self-Efficacy on Elementary Students’ Writing.” The Journal of Educational Research 90.6 (1997): 353–60. JSTOR. Web. 15 Mar. 2016. Pascarella, Ernest T., Christopher T. Pierson, Gregory C. Wolniak, and Patrick T. Terenzini. “First Generation College Students: Additional Evidence on College Experiences and Outcomes.” The Journal of Higher Education 75.3 (2004): 249–84. JSTOR. Web. 15 Mar. 2016. Prospero, Moises, and Shetal Vohra-Gupta. “First Generation College Students: Motivation, Integration, and Academic Achievement.” Community College Journal of Research and Practice 31 (2007): 963–75. Taylor and Francis Online. Web. 15 Mar. 2016. Ramos-Sanchez, Lucila, and Laura Nichols. “Self-Efficacy of First-Generation and Non-FirstGeneration College Students: The Relationship with Academic Performance and College Adjustment.” Journal of College Counseling 10 (2007): 6–18. ProQuest. Web. 15 Mar. 2016. Rose, Mike. Lives on the Boundary: A Moving Account of the Struggles and Achievements of America’s Educational Underclass. New York, NY: Penguin, 1989. Print. Schreiner, Mary B. “Effective Self-Advocacy: What Students and Special Educators Need to Know.” Intervention in School and Clinic 42.5 (2007): 300–304. EBSCO Host. Web. 26 Feb. 2016. Sommers, Jeff. “Self-Designed Points: Turning Responsibility for Learning Over to Students.” Teaching English in a Two-Year College 38.4 (2011): 403–13. ERIC. Web. 15 Mar. 2016. Test, David W., Catherine H. Fowler, Wendy M. Wood, Denise M. Brewer, and Steven Eddy. “A Conceptual Framework of Self-Advocacy for Students with Disabilities.” Remedial and Special Education 26.1 (2005): 43–54. ProQuest. Web. 26 Feb. 2016. Test, David W., and Melia Neale. “Using The Self-Advocacy Strategy to Increase Middle Graders’ IEP Participation.” Journal of Behavioral Education 13.2 (2004): 135–145. Springer Link. Web. 26 Feb. 2016. Travers, Cheryl J., Dominique Morisano, and Edwin A. Locke. “Self-reflection, Growth Goals, and Academic Outcomes: A Qualitative Study.” British Journal of Educational Psychology, vol. 85, no. 2, 2015, pp. 224–241. ERIC, doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/bjep.12059 Wachholz, Patricia B., and Carol Plata Etheridge. Speaking for Themselves: Writing Self-­ Efficacy Beliefs of High- and Low- Apprehensive Writers. U.S. Department of Education, 1996. ProQuest. Web. 15 Mar. 2016. Williams, James D., and Seiji Takaku. “Help Seeking, Self-Efficacy, and Writing Performance Among College Students.” Journal of Writing Research 3.1 (2011): 1–18. Directory of Open Access Journal. Web. 15 Mar. 2016.

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Proposal Sample 2: Ja’La Wourman What Visual Rhetorics Need from Cultural Rhetorics A Study of Social Justice Murals Introduction Street art raises awareness to many of the social issues of our time. The significance of this art form comes from its ability to break down cultural and language barriers all while speaking rhetorically through the text and images displayed. The sample of murals I will examine throughout this study are a form of street art that responds and informs audiences to historical events and social injustices. Not to be confused with graffiti writing or tagging, murals represent a person, place, or situation and use recognizable symbols for the general public. Murals and other forms of street art appear in both expected and sometimes unexpected public spaces. Many times this visual form of communication is political and historical, making it powerful in the rhetorical message displayed to onlookers. Vanessa Cozza argues that “Street artists can help foster public identity by revealing varying opinions on political matters that may spark concern in viewers and possibly unite groups of people” (para. 3). This example is further proven in several murals that have been created throughout history, dating back to the Egyptian revolution where street art was used for activists to protest poverty, unemployment, and government corruption (Cozza; para. 3). Through art, statements on past and present events are displayed, and murals play a key role in communicating this message; ultimately, with the purpose of evoking societal change to occur. Street art plays a major role in communicating, rhetorically, messages of social justice. Art is so often viewed from an aesthetic perspective, that the rhetoric at work is either missed or overlooked. Through careful analysis informed by cultural and visual rhetorics, much can be learned about past and present legacies of struggle from studying not only murals in the United States, but also internationally. Visual rhetorics is a multifaceted field with surprisingly a small amount of research that looks at street art as an artifact and object of study. This creates a gap in the research which I intend to address. In rhetorical studies, the growing subdiscipline of visual rhetorics has in the past paid close attention to studying objects such as photographs, news media, paintings, and advertisements. Drawing upon this tradition, I will show how murals inform us of past and present occurrences of racial injustices, and how they can inform us to enact change in communities that still experience racial discrimination such as the United States and South Africa. Additionally, I will consider the impact geographic location has on each mural and how that may influence the audience and exposure murals receive. In doing so, I will also draw upon circulation studies research. Researchable Questions 1. How can murals inform onlookers of past and present legacies of struggles that lead to activism and change in our communities? 2. What can scholars learn from applying iconographic tracking (digital), visual, and cultural rhetoric methods when analyzing murals? Literature Review Visual rhetorics is a term used within the discipline of rhetoric that looks at visual imagery as a form of communication. Situated within the discipline of rhetoric, it

Planning Your Qualitative Research Study 91 wasn’t until 1970 that the first formal call was made to include images as objects of study within rhetoric (Foss 141). This is significant because, historically, images have always played a major role in developing consciousness and the relationship of the self to its surroundings (Helmers and Hill, 1). Today, with may rhetoricians and scholars advancing the field, questions still remain such as what counts as visual rhetorics and what images should be included as artifacts of study? One of the earliest rhetoricians who embraced images as an artifact of study was Kenneth Burke. Making substantial contributions to the field, his scholarship encouraged analysis on a variety of symbols from mathematics, architecture, dance, music, and paintings. With Burke on the scene, other scholars emerged who began to incorporate images as objects of study in their scholarship. One such scholar was Douglas Ehninger, who defined rhetoric as ways in which humans influence each other’s thinking and behavior through the use of symbols (Foss 141). Ehninger did not privilege verbal communication as supreme, but recognized the value found in images. Even as scholars began to see the natural connection between visual images and rhetoric, there was still much push back along the way from others. For instance, Waldo Braden argued that rhetorical critics are not “trained” to deal with images or any other non-discursive form of rhetoric (as cited in Foss, 142). Other objections came from scholars such as John H. Patton who believed to include nonlinguistic forms of study would break away from the centrality of language that was already established in rhetorical theory. It appears that many of the objections from scholars in the 70’s and 80’s came with fear of the unknown and having to re-create new terms and understanding in rhetorical analysis that broke away from tradition (an objection that was heavily prevalent during the aforementioned time period). This fear did not stop the growth of visual rhetorics, and within the interdisciplinary field of writing and rhetoric, scholars have taken on the task of defining and redefining terms to situate the growing discipline within the field. Today, scholars of rhetoric and writing work from a variety of disciplinary perspectives to understand the issues of visual rhetoric. Analysis of photographs, drawings, graphs, and film have led to many new discoveries in understanding the ways objects and artifacts communicate lived human experiences. Among the challenges that come with the interdisciplinary nature of the field are: what counts as the visual and who gets to decide? What bodies of scholarship do rhetoricians and scholars from other disciplines draw upon for a clear understanding of visual rhetorics theory and the terms used in describing this body of work? What the majority deems valuable or labels as “popular culture” becomes foreign to underrepresented populations who lack access to certain cultural privileges (Cozza; para. 7). With this in mind, the question of access should be included in visual rhetoric scholarship to address the limitations when studying an artifact that may not be accessible to everyone. Murals, having captured significant political and historical moments in time, appear to be overlooked by visual rhetoric scholars. This informs the basis of my proposed research, which recognizes the value in understanding the rhetorical situation contextualizing each mural. Even with the gap in research, murals as a visual rhetoric artifact are packed with meaningful ideas worth exploring. Matthew Rampley argues that certain artistic and creative images tell stories, which can captivate and lead audiences to interpret and question their meaning (as cited in Cozza; para. 1). Street art serves as the best example of what Rampley suggests visual representations of reality aim to accomplish which point to a specific moment in time worthy of unwrapping.

92  Planning Your Qualitative Research Study The Rhetorical Situation Historically, moments of crisis have been captured by images. These moments captured by photographs and the mass media all have a point in time that links back to what Lloyd Bitzer calls the rhetorical situation (1968). Bitzer argues that “the presence of rhetorical discourse obviously indicates the presence of a rhetorical situation” (1). The situation he speaks of refers to a point in time and space that generates discussion. Does that moment in time have to be historical? According to Bitzer, it is not the historical context that makes rhetoric work, in the same way a tree does not obtain its tree-like-character from soil. What makes rhetoric work, is the situation it is generated from (3) that produces action or change in the world. When looking at murals as an object of study, understanding the conceptual piece or rhetorical situation becomes vital in interpreting and analyzing. The rhetorical situation defined by Bitzer (1968) would be difficult to discuss without considering the image event (Deluca and Delicath, 2003). Image events are defined as “staged acts of protest designed for media dissemination . . . a postmodern form of argument that employs acts of protest to deliver images as argumentative fragments that serve as inventional resources for public deliberation and which shift the responsibility for argument construction to audiences” (315). These events displayed through visual images are political in nature and call forth a response for social change against injustices. Image Events One of the ways image events work is by creating visibility to social issues such as the Civil Rights Movement that took place in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Through mass media, the world was able to see the injustice of segregation for a group of individuals (white moderates) who did not regularly experience or even witness the evils of racism firsthand (Johnson 3). This visibility was key to the success of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s campaign in ending racial segregation. Through image events captured through film and photographs, the world was able to experience what was happening to minority groups across the United States. Though an image event is a staged protest that creates a new rhetorical situation, I will take into account throughout my analysis that some murals are created in response to ongoing injustices that have yet to be resolved, and are deliberate in gaining attention, whereas other murals receive mass attention through circulation. Circulation Studies Circulation studies is a growing body of work focused on studying discourse in motion (Gries 331). Many images throughout history have transformed and been (re)presented in pop culture and the media due to circulation and exposure. Tracking images and accounting for the ways in which they transform can be useful in understanding the journey an image takes through time and space. Murals, for example, are not located everywhere which causes them to have less exposure than other public images. Thinking about circulation and exposure, tracking a mural’s journey through space and time will help understand who gets to see them, and who does not. Iconographic tracking is a method coined by Laurie Gries, a method that “makes use of inventive

Planning Your Qualitative Research Study 93 digital research and traditional qualitative strategies to account for an image’s circulation, transformation, and consequentiality” (333). Artifacts & Methods For the purposes of this study, I have selected three murals to perform a rhetorical analysis on by applying visual rhetoric methods. By analyzing each mural, I will show how murals inform us of past and present legacies of struggles that can ultimately lead to activism and change in our communities, as well as add to the growing visual and cultural rhetoric scholarship to incorporate street art (specifically murals) as objects of study. After performing a rhetorical analysis on each mural, I will then account for their exposure through space and time through iconographic tracking methods. Before deciding upon the murals, I had to first see if each mural actually counted as an object of study. According to Sonja Foss, not every visual object constitutes as visual rhetoric. She argues that there must be three markers (characteristics) present in an image to count as a visual rhetoric object. The image must be: 1) symbolic, 2) involve human intervention, and 3) be presented to an audience for the purpose of communicating with that audience (144). Each mural I have selected incorporates all three characteristics and therefore counts as a visual artifact. This criterion is useful but also suggests limitations. When it comes to street art, artists create for a variety of reasons and their intentions may not always be to communicate with an audience, but to think through an idea or project. As images gain attention through circulation, that is when the communicative part comes into play. The symbolic action occurs in the same way a stop sign is more than just a red shape, it communicates a message to stop. Thus, visual rhetoric symbolism communicates a deeper message than what simply meets the eye. Human intervention occurs in three ways: during the actual creation of the image, the interaction between the audience and object, and the transformation of an ordinary image or object into visual rhetoric (a visual object as a communicative artifact). Murals fall under this category because as my analysis will show, they are symbolic, involve human intervention, and are created to communicate a message to an audience. Using a deductive approach, I will consider the rhetorical situation in analyzing each mural, considering visual rhetoric methods of analysis but moving past the aesthetics. Coined by Lloyd Bitzer (1968), a rhetorical situation encompasses three things: the exigence, audience, and constraints (6). When Bitzer coined this term, he applied it to speeches and documents such as the Gettysburg Address and the Declaration of Independence. Although the objects I am analyzing are not written documents or speeches, each mural incorporates some form of written discourse that will be taken into account during the analysis. In addition to identifying the rhetorical situation, I will then take into account the three characteristics that qualify each mural as an artifact of study in visual rhetorics. To account for the murals’ circulation through space and time, I will employ iconographic tracking methods using digital research methods. Laurie Gries argues to account for an image’s circulation in the digital age, applying CHAT (Cultural-­ Historical Activity Theory can help discover what causes an image to become rhetorical

94  Planning Your Qualitative Research Study through its interactions with people and technologies; 337). This is of special interest to me because murals are made public through street art, but I am uncertain of their viral visibility through digital spaces. Figure 3.1 is located at the intersection of Harriet and South Hamilton Street in Ypsilanti, MI. It was painted by students in Lynne Settle’s art class at Ypsilanti High School. The mural is a painting of H.P. Jacobs and includes the words “For the Good of my People” painted in the upper right hand corner. This mural is part of the African American Mural project that fuses together art and history. Figure 3.2 is a painting located in Port Elizabeth, South Africa on Route 67. Route 67 is a historical tourist attraction with 67 art pieces dedicated to Nelson Mandela’s 67 years of work towards freedom in South Africa. This particular mural is part of collection of murals called “Identities” painted by Lubhi Mtathi. Figure 3.3 is located in Detroit, Michigan in the Eastern Market district. This mural was painted by Sydney James during an event called Murals in the Market. The weeklong event is open to over 50 local and international muralists where they have the opportunity to paint large-scale murals throughout the district. This event is open to the public while the live paintings are taking place.

Figure 3.1  Mural of H.P. Jacobs by Ypsilanti High School Students

Figure 3.2  South Africa Mural by Lubhi Mtah

Planning Your Qualitative Research Study 95

Figure 3.3  Detroit Mural by Sydney James

Conclusion In conducting a visual and cultural rhetorics study on murals, I hope to show the importance of analyzing murals as an object of study in visual rhetoric scholarship. Looking past aesthetics, murals rhetorically educate, inform, and make us conscious of social issues happening in our very own communities. One of the limitations to this is, murals are located in places that do not receive mass exposure. I am invested in seeing how murals and ultimately other images and objects gain exposure and circulate through digital technologies so their message can be received from a mass audience. When images such as murals receive mass circulation, more people become conscious to social injustices that can hopefully provoke them to think, act, or change. Project Timeline Date

Action

September 2016 December 2016 Week of January 1, 2017 Week of January 1, 2017 January—April 2017 (will not meet week of 2/20 due to winter break) First week of February First week of March Third week of March April 1, 2017

Begin working on proposal Complete proposal draft Proposal draft approved Register for WRTG 693 Bi-weekly meetings with advisor with updates on each section of project. Analysis of Figure 3.1 Complete Analysis of Figure 3.2 Complete Analysis of Figure 3.3 Complete Full draft of project complete

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Works Cited Barthes, Roland. “Rhetoric of the Image.” Visual Rhetoric in a Digital World: A Critical Sourcebook. Carol Handa. Boston/New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2004. Print. Bitzer, Lloyd. “The Rhetorical Situation.” Philosophy & Rhetoric 1.1 (1968): 1–14. Cozza, Vanessa. “ ‘Getting the Word Out!’: Public Street Art for Rhetorical Study.” Enculturation.Vol. 20. 2015. http://enculturation.net/getting-the-word-out. Darts, David. “Visual Culture Jam: Art, Pedagogy, and Creative Resistance.” Studies in Art Education: A Journal of Issues and Research. 45.4 (2004): 313–327. Print. Delicath, John W. and Kevin Michael Deluca. “Image Events, The Public Sphere, and Argumentative Practice: The Case of Radical Environmental Groups.” Argumentation 17 (2003): 315–333. Della Barba, Elisa. “Blu: why street art matters.” Swide. Nov 2012. Web. 4 Oct 2016. Foss, Sonja K. “Theory of Visual Rhetoric.” Handbook of Visual Communication: Theory, Methods, and Media. Eds. Ken Smith, Sandra Moriarty, Gretchen Barbatsis, and Keith Kenney. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2005. 141–152. Print. Gries, Laurie. “Iconographic Tracking: A Digital Research Method for Visual Rhetoric and Circulation Studies.” Computers and Composition. 30.4 (2013): 332–348. Web. 1 Nov 2016. Hill, Charles A. “The Psychology of Rhetorical Images.” Defining Visual Rhetorics. Eds. Charles A. Hill and Marguerite Helmers. Mahway, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2004. 25–40 Print. Johnson, Davi. “Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 Birmingham Campaign as Image Event.” Rhetoric & Public Affairs 10.1 (2007): 1–25. “JR’s TED Prize Wish: Use Art to Turn the World Inside Out.” TED: Ideas Worth Spreading. Mar. 2011. Web. 4 Oct 2016. Judkis, Maura. “French Artist JR covers D.C. building With Iconic Image of Civil Rights Era.” The Washington Post. Oct. 2012. Web. 4 Oct 2016. Moss, Kristin Lee. “Cultural Representation in Philadelphia Murals: Images of Resistance and Sights of Identity Negotiation.” Western Journal of Communication. 74.4 (2010): 372–395. Web. 4 July 2013. Newbury, Darren. “Making Arguments with Images: Visual Scholarship and Academic Publishing.” The SAGE Handbook of Visual Research Methods. London: SAGE, 2011. 651–664. Print. Olesen, Lester C. “Intellectual and Conceptual Resources for Visual Rhetoric: A Re-­examination of Scholarship Since 1950. “Review of Communication 7.1 (2007): 1–20. Print. Rampley, Matthew. “Visual Rhetoric.” Exploring Visual Culture: Definitions, Concepts, and Contexts. Ed. Matthew Rampley. Edinburgh, SCT: Edinburgh UP, 2005. 133–148. Print. Ravi, Meenakshi. “The Power of Street Art.” Aljazeera, 2012. Web. 8 June 2015. www.artsjourney-nelsonmandelabay.co.za/route-67 (Port Elizabeth, South Africa). www.muralsinthemarket.com/ (Eastern Market, Detroit).

4 How Do I Find Answers? Carrying Out Your Qualitative Research Study Part I—Reading, Observing, and Analyzing Artifacts

By now, you likely will have done a great deal of planning for and thinking about your research. All of this planning ultimately will lead you to the heart of your inquiry: finding answers to your research question(s). Like planning, starting the search for answers involves making strategic decisions, this time about which methodological tools you will use. In this and the next chapter, we identify several of these tools— those that are commonly used in qualitative research, including reading, observation, interviews, surveys, and artifact analysis. We explain each of these in detail, addressing when and how you might use them, along with their strengths and limitations. As you will discover, there are many reasons for selecting certain tools over others, from the nature of your research question to the applicability of a particular tool within a particular setting. Part of your journey in this chapter is to determine which methodological tools will help you best answer your question. As you begin thinking about how to investigate your research question, we encourage you to give careful consideration to methodology and to selecting the “right” tools, to be mindful of the attitude and mindset you bring to your research, and to cultivate an awareness of the value of using multiple methods.

Selecting the Right Tool(s) We use the phrase “methodological tool” in this chapter deliberately. Such tools are intended to be just what their name implies: instruments that will help you obtain the information you need to answer your research question. The tools you select will depend primarily on your research question. If, for example, your question is focused on how people are reacting to a particular situation, you will select tools, such as interviews or surveys, that help you learn about their individual responses. If your question is concerned less with people and more with the ways in which a piece of writing is structured, you may use artifact analysis to critically examine that piece of writing. If your question is centered on the everyday activities of writers at work, then you may want to use observation, along with interviews, as your primary research tools. The setting and context for your research also influence the tools you select. Certain settings, for example, may afford certain kinds of access. If you are a teacher carrying out research in your own classroom or school, you likely will have access to students, their written work, and their ideas. You will be able to carry out observations, conduct

98  Reading, Observing, and Analyzing Artifacts surveys, interview students, and analyze their written documents. However, other settings might afford less access. For example, in a workplace environment, you may only have permission to attend certain meetings, or permission to talk with only some of the employees. Setting and context, therefore, become important considerations when selecting your research methods. A third consideration is your own level of comfort with and knowledge of the methodological tool. Past experience and personality may both play a role here. For example, some of our graduate students have found they are comfortable with carrying out interviews because of prior experience they have in journalism or public relations. Our students with backgrounds in literature find analyzing artifacts a comfortable and familiar way to gather information. Although knowledge and comfort level are certainly factors in selecting methodological tools, you may also need to set those aside as priorities if there are other tools that will work better to answer your research question(s). What might be most helpful at this stage is simply to learn about the different tools available to you and to practice using those tools, ideally in lower-risk settings. The kinds of exercises we present in this and the next chapter will help you both learn about and gain confidence with various methodological tools. We know from our own experiences, both as researchers and as teachers, that practice can help us grow in knowledge and also help us feel better prepared to use particular tools in our research. For example, carrying out a practice interview, transcribing that interview, and reflecting on how it went can help you to identify both your strengths and any challenges you might face using that tool. So, while we encourage you to consider past experience and prior knowledge in selecting methodological tools, we also encourage you to try out and practice using tools that are less or not familiar but potentially more suitable for your research. Another set of factors to consider in selecting tools includes your positionality and stance toward knowledge. As we stressed in previous chapters, researchers must think about what they believe in regard to how knowledge is created, uncovered, and transmitted. Because research leads to an understanding of information outside of our everyday experiences, our beliefs about the nature of knowing will impact how we understand the information we gather. For example, as feminists and social constructionists, both of us view meaning as something that is constructed by participants in relation to a particular event or setting. Thus, for us, research is generative and dialogic, and we view our participants as key contributors to it. Selecting tools that honor this stance is vital. For example, interviews are an integral part of research for both of us. And the way we think about and approach interviews is likely different from how other researchers think about and approach them who do not hold our same stances. In particular, we see interviews as less a formal questionanswer exchange in which our questions set the tone and, in fact, the knowledge base for what will come and more as a dialogue or interaction in which the direction of the interview is mutually constructed with our participants. Similarly, your own positionality and stances toward knowledge will impact the tools you select and how you think about and use them. Your positionality and theoretical stances will also likely influence your larger methodological choices—for example, whether you carry out an ethnography, case study, teacher or action research, or autoethnography (see Sidebar 4.1).

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Sidebar 4.1:  Kinds of Qualitative Research Some common kinds of work carried out by qualitative researchers include ethnographies, case studies, teacher research, action research, and autoethnographies. You can certainly find articles and even books addressing each of these approaches; however, for our purposes, we provide a high-level definition of each as context for our discussions in this and the following chapters. Ethnography: Ethnographies usually are concerned with studying and understanding culture and individuals’ lived experiences within a culture. Ethnographers immerse themselves in a setting, often spending considerable time in those settings as participant-observers. Case study: Case studies are usually focused on a specific event, activity, or individual within a setting. Case study researchers try to understand that event, activity, or individual in depth, much like ethnographers, but are more interested in the particularities of their single case, rather than the whole culture, although the impact of the culture on the individual might well be considered and/or play a significant role. Teacher research: Teacher research is the systematic study of a teacher’s own classroom, based in a question of concern that arises from that setting. Teacherresearchers, who are already immersed in a setting, try to step back to understand their question and their context in a deeper way. Action research: Action research suggests a research study that not only seeks answers to the questions that arise in a setting, but also leads to action steps aimed at creating change in that setting. Autoethnography: Researchers who do autoethnography study their own backgrounds, personal histories, and present experiences as members of a particular culture in order to make better sense of that culture and of their lived experiences within it.

In sum, all of these factors—your research question; the setting and context for your research; your background, experience, and comfort level; and your positionality and theoretical stances—will influence your decisions about what tools you will use. Even experienced researchers grapple with what tools to use and how best to use them. There generally are no absolutes when it comes to qualitative research tools. Additionally, we change continually when we carry out research: We grow in our comfort, we occasionally experience discomfort (even with what’s generally comfortable), and we learn the limitations and strengths of different tools and our ways of using them, which may even change during the course of our research. What is most important is being open-minded and flexible so that you can choose a tool—or change to a different one—that will work well given your question and the goals you have for your research. Prompt 4.1 focuses on the selection of methodological tools.

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Prompt 4.1:  Deciding on Tools and Planning What You’ll Do Consider the following scenario and write about how you might research it. What tools would you use? What resources would you consult? Next, share your responses with two or three of your classmates. Did you come up with the same or different approaches? What are the advantages and disadvantages of the approaches each of you came up with? What rationale does each of you have for your approach? Scenario: You and three of your friends have decided to use an upcoming 3-day weekend to go camping. You do not know yet where you should go, but you are all very conscious of your time constraints (you don’t want to spend most of the weekend on the road), and you all have similar interests: You like hiking and kayaking.

Being Mindful of Attitude and Mindset in Carrying out Research The disposition and mindset we bring to our research can significantly impact the outcomes we achieve. Both we and our students have found that research is easier and more satisfying when we keep our sights on our purposes for the research—that is, on what we hope to learn—and when we remain flexible and keep an open mind as we carry out our research. Research, as we have said before, is about inquiring and searching; it is an exploration that begins with a wondering or felt difficulty. It works best when we give ourselves the freedom to search and explore, and when we are open to unexpected outcomes and possibilities. If we approach it with the expectation of finding certain things or with the attitude that there is “a right answer,” we are likely to limit our search and even obscure and overlook important findings. It may seem trivial, but the dispositions and mindset you bring to your research— and how you think about and approach your research setting and participants—really can make a difference. Are you inquisitive and curious, playful and flexible, patient and open-minded? Do you think of yourself as a learner or as an expert? When you are engaged in a research project, hopefully you will find yourself thinking like a researcher—for example, always seeing connections between your research and the events occurring around you in everyday life, becoming so immersed in your study that you continually ask questions that relate to it, making a habit of jotting down your questions and the connections you see. Also, do not underestimate the role of serendipity in research, which we mentioned in Chapter 2. For example, when Cathy carried out her research on community organizing strategies, she began noticing numerous newspaper articles about teachers and schools that had achieved some kind of public change. At the time, she also became involved in a neighborhood effort that was started to prevent a large development project. As she participated in this effort, she kept a journal about her experiences, drawing connections to the literature she was reading for her research and the interviews she was conducting. As Ja’La also shared (in Chapter 2), once she noticed the connection between images and social justice issues, she began seeing other visual

Reading, Observing, and Analyzing Artifacts 101 images differently. Taking advantage of the opportunities that naturally present themselves to you will make you a better researcher. You will learn to be open to new ideas, to reassess continually what you are noticing, and to always ask new questions. All of these actions will lend momentum to your research and also contribute to its success.

Researching with Multiple Methods Something else to consider as you are thinking about the methodological tools you will use for your research is how you might vary and combine those tools. In other words, you will probably end up using more than one tool, and, in fact, you will need to use more than one to lend credibility to your findings through triangulation. When you triangulate your findings, you examine the same event, situation, or data in multiple (not necessarily three!) ways, and you do so to determine if each way reveals the same or similar information—to see, in other words, if the multiple ways of looking at an event or situation confirm what you are seeing. If they do not, which sometimes happens, you need to consider what might be causing the discrepancy (e.g., whether your own subjectivities and biases are coming into play somehow, or whether one of the approaches you are taking in your research may be causing distortion). This is discussed further in Chapter 6, so here we simply emphasize that you should and will want to use multiple methodological tools in your research, both as a way of checking yourself and as a way of insuring the credibility of your findings.

Prompt 4.2:  Researching in Multiple Ways Find and read an article in your field that reports a qualitative study. Pay particular attention to the methodology section of the article and look specifically at the ways in which the researcher(s) achieved triangulation. Did the author(s) use it and, if so, how? Was it addressed explicitly in the article? Also, in your opinion, what did the use of triangulation contribute to the research? What would have been problematic in the research if the researcher(s) had not triangulated the data? What else might the researcher(s) have done in this respect and why?

Methodological Tools for Researching Your Question(s) In this chapter, we address the tools of reading, observation, and artifact analysis. In the next chapter, we address interviewing and surveys/questionnaires. We explain what each tool entails and the purposes it can serve. We also offer practical advice for using each tool. Our coverage is not comprehensive; rather, we provide an introduction and overview to help you make sound choices about which tools you might like to use in your research and how you might use them. There are numerous sources— even entire books—that cover each of these tools in much greater depth. Finally, rather than save these discussions for the ends of the chapters, as we do in other places in this book, for each tool we discuss how positionality and stance may affect how you use it. We also explain what may be involved ethically in using each tool. Because you will likely combine tools, we encourage you, as you read these

102  Reading, Observing, and Analyzing Artifacts sections, to think about how you might use these tools in relation to each other. We also encourage you to review the methods sections from the proposals we included in Chapter 3 again, especially as you read through this and the next chapter. Reading We begin our discussion of qualitative research tools by returning to reading. Reading functions in many ways throughout the research process, but here we focus on its role as a methodological tool. As such, reading serves as a means of deepening our understanding of and exploring our topic in order to answer the questions we’ve formulated about it. In other words, you read at this stage not only to build understanding, as you did in previous stages of research, but also to find answers. Reading becomes central to your inquiry, and for some questions it becomes one of the most important tools you will use. An example may be helpful here. When Cathy was researching how teachers could better help the public understand literacy practices, she read in a number of fields to find answers. By reading not only articles, but also oral histories, conference presentations, and books by environmentalists, public health advocates, and grassroots organizers, she was able to learn how professionals in diverse fields use community organizing strategies to change the public’s understanding of certain issues—­ information that became an important part of her study. Her reading, then, gave her a set of answers that had greater geographic and historical scope than she could have gotten from only doing interviews and observations. As it did for Cathy, the reading you do may provide answers to your questions. It may also help with expanding or narrowing your focus, contribute to your theoretical understanding of your topic, provide support for your claims, and/or contribute to your understanding of alternative perspectives. Strategies for Reading for Research The strategies we suggest for reading as a tool for research can apply to reading for any academic purpose. As we asked you to do in Chapter 2, think about how you read, already, for such purposes. What strategies do you use, and what have you found to be most useful? Do your strategies vary when you read different kinds of text, or when you read for different purposes? What are those purposes and variations? A selfassessment of your reading strategies—and challenges—is a very good starting place for thinking about your research reading. When you focus on using reading as a research tool, think too about purpose. You may be doing this reading to learn more about your issue, to draw and build connections between ideas, to answer questions, to solve problems, to gain insights, to build theoretical knowledge, and/or to acquire understanding. You probably can add your own additional purposes to this list as there are many. An awareness of purpose will also help you determine how to engage a text. We encourage you to view reading as an interaction in which you may respond, react, pose questions, agree, disagree, argue, draw connections, extrapolate, infer, deduce. And at this point in the research process, you will want to dig deeply into the texts you read, looking to see how they specifically speak to the question(s) you are researching. Do they confirm or contradict the other data you are collecting? Do they offer you a lens for understanding your other data?

Reading, Observing, and Analyzing Artifacts 103 Are they providing you with background information to help you learn more about your question? Your purposes for reading will also guide how you annotate and use your research texts. Focusing on your research question and seeking the kinds of information suggested above will help you dig deeply into the reading you do. You will, therefore, not only annotate the text for what it says—main points, arguments, support—but also raise questions, react, relate, respond, evaluate, and challenge the text. You will want to note those places where ideas connect to your own or others’ ideas, as well as to the data you are collecting through other methodological tools. As you read for your research, you will need an approach to note-taking that is productive and that works for you. Some researchers record notes in reading journals or logs or in computer or cloud files, which allow for easy searching. We also know people who highlight text, some who write notes in the margins of texts and/or on post-its, and others who refuse to mark the text but do take notes on the computer or on paper. Some researchers devise elaborate systems for flagging or bookmarking pages in texts. Others rely on their memories, although we do not encourage this as memories easily fade as time passes.

Prompt 4.3:  Sharing Note-Taking Strategies Share with your classmates the strategies you use already for taking notes when you read. What has worked well for you? What is not working so well? Note variations between your own and your classmates’ note-taking strategies. What is one change you might make in your own strategies?

You should develop a method for keeping track of what you read that is convenient and flexible and that works well for you. Whatever method you develop, we encourage you to keep complete bibliographic information (e.g., use an application such as Zotero, RefWorks, or EndNote, but also be aware of the limitations of these tools). You will need bibliographic information at different points in your research, and you will want it to be easily accessible. What is immediate and memorable now will be much less so when you begin another task or start reading other sources. Stance and Positionality in Reading Our stance and positionality have an impact on every aspect of our reading at every stage of our research. As discussed previously, our beliefs and our own situatedness influence how we search, what we find, what we select to consider, and then how we read, interact with, and interpret and make meaning of the texts we read. These certainly are factors of which we should be mindful as we carry out our research. We might want to question, for example, how our different beliefs might lead us to interpret what we read in very different ways. We also always have a responsibility to the authors of the texts we read, just as we have a responsibility to our research participants. It is imperative that we give them credit for their ideas, that we be mindful of how we represent them, that we consider their own stances and positionality. If those

104  Reading, Observing, and Analyzing Artifacts differ significantly from our own, we might want to be deliberate in considering why and in acknowledging our differences. We also may want to be open to entertaining new or alternative perspectives. It helps, therefore, to be aware of our positionality and what it might prevent us from seeing or hearing. These are considerations we should keep in mind at every stage of our research. Ethics in Reading Most obviously, we need to credit our sources by citing them properly. We need to be careful about how we represent sources, and mindful about taking what an author says out of context, especially to support our own viewpoints. Our sources are each contributors to a larger conversation and, as we would in any conversation, we need to listen to and treat these contributors with respect. This does not mean we cannot disagree or take issue with an author or their ideas, but it does mean that we should strive always to be fair and accurate in how we present and discuss an author’s work. Reading is an interaction and exchange. When we read, we actively construct meaning and create knowledge by drawing new connections. Those connections, naturally, are influenced by how we are situated in and view the world. We owe it to ourselves and to those with whom we engage—these authors—to be ever mindful of that situatedness. Observation and Participant Observation Observation is a very common tool used by qualitative researchers, and so the ability to observe situations carefully and to derive meaning from your observations is an important one. Arguably, all qualitative research involves some observation, whether it be informal or deliberate. For example, as we suggested in Chapter 2, you may observe a setting informally to determine what to focus on in your research. In this section, though, we focus on observation as a tool for collecting data. Thus, it is helpful to know something about its potential value—and possible limitations—for you as a researcher. It also is important, as it is with every tool we are discussing, to be aware of your own positionality as an observer. Are you in a setting that you have no formal or official connection to—one in which you truly are an outsider—or are you an insider or participant in the setting (e.g., an employee in the workplace you’re observing, a teacher in the school or classroom you’re observing)? If the latter, you are a participant observer, and it is likely you will have a much different perspective on the setting than if you are truly an outside observer. Your role and identity as an observer, therefore, are important considerations when you carry out observations. Also important when carrying out observations—whether as a participant in the setting or an outsider to it—is the relationship you establish between the familiar and the unfamiliar. Sometimes, especially if you are a participant observer, your job as an observer will be to make the familiar unfamiliar—to take the everyday events that are so comfortable and recognizable to you and to learn to see them with new eyes and a new perspective. At other times, more often when you are an outside observer, your job is the opposite—to be able to take in a new setting and all that is unfamiliar about it and to get to know it well enough so that it starts to become familiar to you. Both vantage points have advantages and challenges. For example, as a participant, you may have access to settings you otherwise would not be able to access, and the ability to view and experience those settings as an insider would, thus, give you a unique,

Reading, Observing, and Analyzing Artifacts 105 insider perspective. However, your insider status also may create blind spots, preventing you from noticing important aspects of the setting. It is necessary, therefore, to be mindful of your positioning and to be aware of what it may or may not afford you as a researcher. When and Why We Use Observation as a Research Tool Observation is a useful tool for obtaining a wide variety of information, both initially and throughout a study. It can shed light on: • How individuals interact; the social dynamics of a setting • What people do; the activity or work carried out in a setting (e.g., how they approach and perform various tasks) • How individuals respond or react to their experiences in a setting • What occurs in a setting, regularly or sporadically—and, if the latter, whether there are patterns • How a setting is structured or organized, along with the impact this may have on the interactions and activities that occur within it • What may impact or cause change in a setting Usually, if used as a tool for data collection, observations are carried out on multiple occasions and over time. However, they may also be one-time events. When the former is the case, observations can provide an up-close and firsthand view of what typically occurs in a setting. When the latter is the case, careful qualification may be needed, as what was observed may be idiosyncratic. Your approach to observing is important in either situation. Strategies and Tools for Observing Ann recalls thinking, when she embarked on her first qualitative research project, that observing would be the easiest component. She soon discovered this would not be the case. Observation, for many reasons, is often more complex than it seems. One common challenge has to do with focus. For example, faced with a complex, busy setting (e.g., a high school classroom filled with 30 students, some of whom are focused on the teacher, some of whom are sending text messages, some of whom have heads down on their desks; or a meeting of 50 employees, some of whom are listening intently to the speaker, and others of whom are surreptitiously reading or doing other work), how can you know precisely where to focus your attention and what to write in your observation log? Additionally, as you obviously cannot see everything at the same time, how do you decide what specific aspects of a setting to observe? And then what happens if you focus on just one aspect of the setting and miss other events that may be important to your research? Observations, by their very nature, are always partial, and also always filtered. Our roles as insiders or outsiders, our overall stance, and our positionality all influence what we see, or, perhaps even more aptly, what we are able to see. If you are a participant in the setting, for example, you may fail to recognize as important those things you take for granted because of your familiarity. You may, in such cases, have to work extra hard at maintaining enough “distance” from the setting in order to make sense

106  Reading, Observing, and Analyzing Artifacts of it—to “notice” those things that may seem obvious and therefore unimportant. As we noted previously, your proximity to the setting can be an asset as well as a liability: It may allow you to understand the setting in a way that an outsider never could, but it also can prevent you from seeing the most interesting aspects of the setting. Lucy Calkins (1983), a teacher researcher, offers a particularly telling anecdote that illustrates this challenge. In talking about her first-ever experience as an observer in a classroom, she says: On my second day as a researcher, Don Graves joined me in Pat Howard’s thirdgrade classroom. The children weren’t writing, but Graves suggested we stay. I paced up and down the rows. The kids were all copying things out of their math books. I anxiously waited for someone to do something so I could gather some data. But no, they just kept on copying out of those math books. I went to the back of the room and leaned against the radiator to wait for some data to appear. Nothing. Finally I signaled to Graves, who’d been scurrying about, and we left. Before I could let out a quiet groan, Graves burst out with, “What a gold mine! Wasn’t it amazing? How’d you suppose that one kid up front could write with a two-inch pencil? And that guy with the golf ball eraser on the end of his pen. Zowie.” In his enthusiasm, Graves didn’t notice my silence . . . . I had learned a big lesson. The task of case-study research is to make the familiar unfamiliar. (pp. 9–10) If you have ever been a participant observer, or even an outside observer, you may be familiar with Calkins’s experience. It can be difficult to observe a group of people in a setting, especially one with which you’re already familiar, and recognize anything unique in it, anything that seems worthy enough to call data. As an observer, however, your main task is to see what’s in front of you with new eyes and to try to understand what you see from the perspectives of the participants in the setting. Clifford Geertz (1983), an anthropologist who has written extensively about observation, suggests that the best way to understand what’s really going on in a situation is through “thick description.” By this he means detailed description that gets beneath the surface and that allows you to get at the meanings behind everyday events. Geertz discusses the importance of situating your observations in the “native’s point of view,” of trying to grasp the meaning of the situation by “putting oneself into someone else’s skin” (pp. 57–58). He says, “The trick is not to get yourself into some inner correspondence of spirit with your informants . . . . The trick is to figure out what the devil they think they are up to” (p. 58). As Geertz and many other researchers contend, such understanding comes over time with multiple exposures to a setting. In other words, observation is far from the easiest component, as Ann had imagined—and hoped.

Prompt 4.4:  Carrying Out an Observation A good way to begin familiarizing yourself with the complexity of observation, and to begin honing your noticing skills, is to try it out. To do this in a low-stakes way, we recommend selecting a public site (e.g., a mall, hotel lobby,

Reading, Observing, and Analyzing Artifacts 107 physician waiting room, restaurant). Go to that site, taking with you a notebook and pen to record your observations. Observe the site for 30 minutes. Ideally, go with a friend and annotate your observations separately. Try to do what Geertz suggests and develop a “thick description” of the setting. If you do this with a partner, share your descriptions and talk about what each of you noticed and what varied in your noticings. Also talk about why you chose the things you did to record and what meaning you attached to what you observed.

Note-Taking for Observations Because of the nature of the activity, note-taking is a very important aspect of observing. Field notes are the notes you take either during or immediately following an observation. Many researchers take at least some notes as they are observing and then fill in those notes as soon as possible after the observation. Some, however, wait until later to record their observations, feeling that doing so during an observation may make participants self-conscious or may interfere with the observation. We recommend doing what is most comfortable and effective for you. Starting out, you may want to try different approaches, being mindful that there are challenges in relying solely on taking notes after the fact. You may, for example, discover that your memory of what you observe is not reliable. The time gap can easily erase important moments, leading you, for example, to record a verbal interaction incorrectly, or even to create details that did not occur in the way in which you recorded them. Recalling and recreating are different acts than recording. With that in mind, the next step is to decide on the manner in which you will record your observations. Many researchers now take notes on their computers or tablets; however, some still prefer paper observation notebooks. With either approach, you will want to establish a routine, which you follow faithfully, for recording your notes. Learning about the many kinds of research notebooks—and approaches—you can use to record your observations (see Sidebar 4.2) can help you make an informed decision about both what you record and how you record it.

Sidebar 4.2:  Different Ways to Record Observations There are many different ways to record observations, and the one you pick will depend on a number of factors: your research question, your role as a researcher, and your comfort level, to name a few. We encourage you to try some of the options we present here and adapt them as necessary. All of these can be done electronically or in a traditional notebook. We recommend experimenting to determine what kind of tool, medium, and notebook will work best for you.

108  Reading, Observing, and Analyzing Artifacts Here are some options: •

•

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Traditional observation notebook: This is a notebook (either paper or digital) in which you write down your observations as they are occurring. You date the entry at the top and keep running notes (often with times noted in the margins) throughout the observation session. These logs tend to be reportorial in nature. If you use this type of log, you may add a chart showing the physical layout of the space you observed or a tally sheet that records recurring events (e.g., how many times each participant spoke). Two-notebook approach: This approach entails keeping two notebooks, one for recording observations and one for recording your responses to what you have observed. As an example, Cathy adopted this approach some years ago. After keeping a running log in a classroom observation setting for months, she discovered that the log did not allow her to summarize, react to, or even vent about some of the practices she was observing. Even though she knew that all observations reflect our own biases, she tried to confine the running log to what she noticed, not how she felt about what she noticed, also an important aspect of qualitative data. She began to keep a second notebook, therefore, that she never brought to the research site where someone might ask to read it. In her at-home notebook, which she wrote in once a week, she summarized what she was noticing so far and laid out how she was feeling about her observations, the human reactions she was having. This second notebook became a place where she summarized what she observed, raised new questions, and reflected on how what she was observing related to those new questions. Dialogic notebook: In this notebook, you write running notes of your observations on one side of the page and comments, summaries, and responses on the other side. This system lets you generate both the detached notes characteristic of the running log and the more personal responses you might record in a second notebook. The major advantage, of course, is the ease of having just one notebook. Moving back and forth across pages is much easier than keeping track of two notebooks. The downside is the public nature of such notebooks. If you are observing in a site in which the participants are a bit wary of what you are recording (“What are you saying about me?”), then you might want to have a log that you are able to share openly with them. If you use a dialogic notebook, then you need to be careful about what you write in your comments. Visual notes: Sometimes researchers use drawing, charting, or photography to capture the moment and later add notes to those visual artifacts. For example, you might sketch the room you are observing, noting where people are sitting or standing, where conversations are taking place, or where the leader or teacher stands. Or you could create a chart with the list of participants down the left side and space for notes on what they say on

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the right side. Or you could take photographs of moments when important interactions are taking place and then write descriptive captions underneath. If you do take photographs—or video footage—of the setting and/or your participants, you will need permission to do so. “In the middle” notes: These are designed for situations in which researchers do not have time to keep a running log. With this approach, you might take 3–5 minutes in the middle of your activity to jot down what you noticed so far that day. (If you are including your participants’ voices as part of your study, then you might also ask them to write their response in their own notebooks.) You can also put your notes, or theirs, on post-its and place them in your notebook at the end of each day. (This option is adapted from the work of Ruth Hubbard and Brenda Power, 1993.) “After the fact” notes: These are comparable to “in the middle” notes, except that you do them at the end of the observation. In these notes, you summarize what you remember. Although these have the disadvantage of being done after the fact (and thus have the potential to lose some of the immediacy of your observations), they still can be useful. (These, too, are adapted from Hubbard and Power, 1993.) Audio recorded log: Finally, some researchers record their notes at the end of a long day. They may do this during their evening commute or even on the sofa at home. Although you lose some of the immediacy of the running log, you still can capture the highlights of the day before you forget them. (Keep in mind that, if you record your notes, you need to transcribe the recordings, which can be a time-consuming process. On the other hand, transcription can give you time to really process the observations mentally and to begin thinking about the salient aspects of them.)

Whatever approach you decide on for note-taking, you should become familiar with its strengths and its limitations. You also should assess the circumstances of the situation. Sometimes, for example, the situation will not allow you to take notes while you’re engaged with it, and the after-the-fact notes will be the best you can do. For example, if you are a teacher observing your own classroom, how can you teach, observe your students, and take notes all at the same time? Or, if you are a writer in an organization, how can you carry out your responsibilities as a writer, observe the setting, and also record your observations? Another challenge you may face is determining what to record. Should you record every conversation, every movement your participants make, every event that occurs while you’re observing? Recording all of these things can be overwhelming. On the other hand, is it sufficient to record only those moments that connect directly to your research question? What if your research question changes, and you discover that you have not recorded information that is now vital to your research. Answers to these depend in part

110  Reading, Observing, and Analyzing Artifacts on what you want to learn from the observation. What follows are common types (categories) of information you may record during your observations. These include • A physical description of the setting: What does it look like? How is the furniture arranged? What technology is in the setting, and how is it arranged? What kind of lighting exists in the setting (natural, fluorescent)? What’s on the walls? How hot or cold is the setting? How many people are there? Is it crowded? Spacious? Loud? Quiet? Some of these details may seem superfluous; however, such details also can give others a sense of “being there” when you communicate your findings. • Interactions: What is going on with and between individuals in the setting? Are they talking? Arguing? Whispering? Are they focused on a task or speaker? Do they show signs of fatigue, distraction, distress? Is someone in charge in the setting? Who’s talking? Who’s listening? What kinds of body language do you notice? Observing how individuals in a setting interact can provide rich data for your research. • Actions: What is going on, in general, in the setting? What are the individuals in the setting doing? Why or for what purposes are they doing those things? Are they making things? Typing on keyboards or phones? Reading? Writing? Sitting passively and listening? Taking notes? As with interactions, observing the actions of individuals in a setting can be a rich source of data. If you are studying the revision habits of student writers, for example, watching what the students actually do during an in-class revision session can provide you with vital information. • Conversations: Similar to interactions, observing conversations can provide a perspective on the dynamics of a setting or situation. Here the focus is more on what the individuals in the room are saying to one another. Are they responding to questions? Talking quietly among themselves? Taking turns in a conversation? Discussing? Talking formally? It is unlikely that you will be able to record, verbatim, everything that is said in a setting; however, you may be able to capture portions of conversations that seem interesting—for example, a student’s response to another student, a teacher’s comment to a student, an employee’s concern. Although not the same as an actual transcription, these kinds of data can illustrate feelings or responses in the moment and provide researchers with a jumping off point for a later interview.

Prompt 4.5:  Observing a Setting and Recording Your Observations Select a potential observation site for your research and carry out a preliminary observation. Decide on the types of information you will focus on and record during your observation. Also, try one of the note-taking strategies addressed in Sidebar 4.2 to record your observations. Report back on your observations and on your experiences with the types of notes and note-taking you tried.

Reading, Observing, and Analyzing Artifacts 111 Done well, observations can be a rich resource and source of data. The information you obtain from them may speak directly or indirectly to the questions guiding your research, but they provide important narrative detail and background information. A final challenge relating to what you record when you observe speaks to a concern frequently expressed in relation to qualitative research: How trustworthy are your observations? Can you trust the accuracy of impressions you record as a single observer? Can you trust that the impressions you record reflect and represent the actual events? Even if you endeavored to understand the events from “the native’s point of view,” as Geertz suggested, what you record is ultimately your personal take on them. How can you be certain that you are faithfully capturing what is happening in the setting? Although we encourage you to keep these considerations in mind, we also advise you to simply jump in and observe. As we have discussed already and will continue to discuss, your stance and positionality as a researcher will impact both what you see and the meaning you ultimately make of what you see. As an example, see, in Sidebars 4.3 and 4.4, how lisa and Natasha, two of our case study researchers, used observation as one of the primary tools for their research.

Sidebar 4.3:  lisa’s Observations lisa used observational notes on a regular basis as she explored her classroombased research question about incorporating outdoor experience in language arts classes. Generally, she used the “after the fact” approach, taking notes soon after a class or interaction with students (see Example 1, below). However, when lisa had a student teacher in the room, she was able to take notes as the class was unfolding (Example 2). You might notice how, in these observational notes, she sometimes captures bits of conversation, sometimes student responses, and sometimes the atmosphere and feel of the environment surrounding the student work. Given her question on place-based literature instruction, these foci resulted in all kinds of data that contributed to her research. Example 1: ms. eddy: Why are you talking, Natty? You’re supposed to be writing now. Natty: I’m singing my editing “this is out of context” [Later]: Does crossing out count as writing? Me: yes, it counts NB: Because it’s writing Alexis: Can I read you my poem now? Me: Certainly. Let me get my PQS paper ready. AR: It’s called “Greenman in Your Own Backyard.” She reads the poem. I note the repetition of (adj) face, the ray shining through the foliage . . . I like the pattern.

112  Reading, Observing, and Analyzing Artifacts Me: AR:

What about “Greenman in My Own Backyard? That way it’s YOUR experience and you can put more of your own voice in it. I like it.

I give Caiti the Grasses book. She looks delighted. “Oh, cool. Do you want me to take it home?” “Use it here so it’s available for others too. If you want to identify grass, cut off the part with the head and bring it in.” Richard writes in his note/plan that he’s going to write some creation stories. I give him the handout from mythology that identifies the aspects of them . . . how it happens. Example 2: When we come back in from the drill, JG asks students to get into a smaller circle without spaces between students so that papers can be easily passed around the circle. She goes over the symbols we use to edit and some of the common mistakes. She mentions that spellcheck does not correct a word that is spelled correctly but used incorrectly, like in the letter that the school sent home yesterday where the principal had used “interrupted” instead of “interpreted.” That gets a chuckle from the students. After the directions, the editing begins. Everyone in the circle is poised with red pen over a paper, and the editing is getting done. Occasionally someone chuckles or someone has to lean over to the person next to him/ her and share something funny or get help. As time goes on, students call out when they’re done. “I need a paper to edit,” and one is either passed or carried around the circle. “The reason we get more than one person to edit is that everyone knows and sees different things. Some will pick up some errors, while others will pick up others . . .” we say. The papers move around the circle. It’s a brilliantly sunny day, and about half the leaves on the maple tree outside the windows have turned yellow, gold, and yellow with red or green. Two sparrows perch on the yew outside the other window. They seem to be surveying the landscape. They don’t move, except for their heads, which turn this way and that to see what’s happening in the yard.

Sidebar 4.4:  Natasha’s Observations Natasha also kept an observation notebook in which she kept track of students’ conversations in class, mostly taken “after the fact.” Note how she combines a

Reading, Observing, and Analyzing Artifacts 113 summary of what went on in class, the students’ responses, and her responses to the experience: Today went really well. While it was not overly exciting (we distributed the assignment prompt and spent nearly the entire hour and a half talking about it), students seemed to respond well to the prompt. I started off by making an announcement about cell phone use in class, and students respected that today. We read through the assignment prompt pretty much line by line. Though, I also added commentary to further explain what specifically I meant by certain instructions. Some students were taking notes on their handout, annotating their assignment sheet. Most students were engaging in eye-contact as I talked about the prompt. There were a few students who seemed disinterested, but . . . Talking about the assignment prompt is almost as boring as syllabus day. While we went through the prompt, several students asked questions about particular instructions, and I asked at the end of the discussion, though no further questions were offered. I broke the students into groups of 4 and had them collectively come up with at least 3 questions about the prompt. I gave them 5 minutes, then we went around the room and each group was responsible for sharing a question. Some great questions!! Here are some of the ones that we asked: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

How do I cite sources if the paper is supposed to be about myself and my story? Do you have any strategies for expanding ideas? 4–5 pages is a lot . . . Does the paper need to focus on only one goal, or can we talk about multiple ones? What if we discover a goal while we are writing this paper, can we add that in, too? What is the difference between the various drafts that we are required to turn in? How do you grade the homework? In relation to our portfolios? Does the works cited page also have to be in MLA? How do I craft an argument in a narrative? What are some of the different things we can write about? Can we write more than 4–5 pages? Can we cite more than 2 sources? Are we required to use at least one hard source? When is the latest we can email you for feedback and help? When can I make an appointment to meet with you to discuss my work? If I come to your office hours, will you help me identify some of my writing mistakes? Do we have to organize it your way, or can we use our own organization structure?

114  Reading, Observing, and Analyzing Artifacts • • •

Is it okay to start working on this tonight? Can we write about a writing goal that we accomplished? What if we’ve already accomplished our writing goal?

As this list illustrates, the students were asking some very insightful questions! I was especially impressed with the questions regarding doing more work than the required minimum. As we discussed the prompt, many students seemed to express concern for writing a 4–5 page paper, as that seems like a huge leap from the length of papers they had to write in high school. I emphasized that asking “how” and “why” questions are really helpful for this, as they create wonderful opportunities for elaboration and the integration of details. Some students expressed concern about what they could write about. I recommended that they start by looking at their first-day fast write, as many of them said something along the lines of “I want to learn . . .” I also recommended that they take another look at those habits of mind and its accompanying handout. Because they ranked the habits’ importance, and assessed how often they practiced them, it can be a great starting point for identifying goals. I also spoke with the students about not choosing something as simple and mechanical as “grammar,” or comma usage, etc. I strongly encouraged them to think more philosophically, though grammatical/punctuation goals may be part of their overarching writing goal. I ended up giving students 2–3 minutes in the middle of class to stand up, stretch, and mingle in the halls. They were looking pretty bored after we talked through the assignment’s core tasks, so I wanted them to move around and get the energy back up. Next, I distributed my consent form for my MA research. I talked through the reasons why I was doing research, how they could be participants, etc. Many students signed the document before we even finished talking about it, and the majority of students did end up submitting their consent form. I still have to do a final count, but definitely over half. We ran out of time to look at the model text. But, I’m okay with this because the questions students were asking about the assignment prompt were very insightful, and I’m glad we had the time to talk about their concerns in class. I distributed the model text and asked them to read it as homework. I specifically asked them to read through it alongside the assignment prompt, to look for things that were done well, poorly, or were straight out missing. We will discuss the model texts first thing at tomorrow’s class. Overall, today went great. I had several students stay at the end of class to chat with me, and several more promised to come see me during office hours to pose their questions. I’m getting really excited about the work I’ll get to see in the next few weeks!

Reading, Observing, and Analyzing Artifacts 115 Stance and Positionality in Observations As we mentioned already, what you end up noticing with your observations will depend a great deal on your personal stance and positionality. The metaphor of a lens is especially apt with observation: What you see and how you interpret what you see when you observe will depend a great deal on the lenses through which you view it. Burke’s terministic screens come to mind here as well (1966). This is why no two individuals ever observe the same thing in the same manner, or report it in the same way. This is also why it is important to be mindful of our own positionality as we carry out and then interpret our observations, whether we are insiders or outsiders in a setting. Our positionality, or what we bring with us to our observations, will determine what we see and don’t see, along with the meaning and significance we attach to it. Thus, it may be helpful, when possible, to check your observations against those of another researcher or observer in the setting. This is known as member-checking. Some classroom teachers, for example, ask a student volunteer to take observation notes on a particular day. Similarly, in a workplace setting, a researcher may ask an employee to take such notes. Checking your observations against those of the student or employee can reveal how your positionality might lead you to see the same event differently from how others in the setting might see it. The Ethics of Observation There are numerous ethical issues to consider when we observe. These have to do with whom we observe and the extent of their consent, the location of our observations, and the impact of them. For example, are the individuals you’re observing consenting adults, or are they minors (e.g., elementary or even most secondary students)? Setting also matters. If you are observing in an online space, for example, are all of the participants aware they are being observed? A third consideration is how you will use your observations and what, if anything, you will tell participants about what you observed and concluded. How might they be affected by your observations? It is our belief that, as a researcher, you should always be forthcoming with the individuals you observe, informing them about the observations, obtaining their consent, sharing what you plan to do with your observations, and, perhaps most importantly, offering them the option of not being observed. Some people are very self-conscious about being observed, even to the point of it influencing their behavior—what is sometimes called researcher effect. Additionally, if someone asks you not to use something you observed, you should respect their request. As one possible exception to our advice, if you are observing general behavior in a public setting—for example, how people respond to vendors in the concourse of a mall—you probably do not need consent. However, if you plan to do more with your observations—such as recording and disseminating information about particular interactions—then you do need consent. Being ethical in the observations you carry out depends, at least to some extent, on your own reading of the situation. You should always be mindful of what would be fair, reasonable, and responsible in the situation. A final consideration has to do with the claims you make from your observations. You may end up wondering, as we noted previously, how reliable your observations really are, or to what extent you can trust their accuracy. Your stance and positionality

116  Reading, Observing, and Analyzing Artifacts ultimately will influence what you observe and how you interpret and make meaning of it. That’s inevitable. What becomes problematic is when your positionality blinds you to other interpretations that may also be valid. In the final analysis, you probably can never be entirely sure that you are capturing everything that is happening in a situation; however, you can at least acknowledge your doubts—and possibly qualify your claims—and you can acknowledge the role your own positionality may have played in your observations. Artifact Analysis Because our research is focused on writing, many qualitative researchers in our field also carry out some form of artifact analysis in their research. The term artifact, despite sounding scientific, is an apt one for qualitative research. Anthropologists, for example, often collect tools and other material artifacts that shed light on the work and social behaviors of particular cultures. An artifact, most simply, is physical evidence researchers examine to better understand the issues and people they are studying. Writing researchers engaged in historical research may collect artifacts such as writing implements, but more commonly we collect and analyze the written documents produced by the people we study. For example, when Ann carried out her research with physicists, she collected every draft they produced of two articles they were writing. This amounted to 23 drafts of one article and about 14 of the other. She also collected all of the drafts of a related conference paper they had written, and she obtained copies of some of their other publications and grant proposals. Her analysis of these documents became a significant part of her research. The artifacts qualitative researchers select to analyze generally are determined by their research questions. For example, if you are studying how individuals compose, like Ann was, you probably will collect drafts and final versions of the papers they are writing. If you are interested in different parts of the composing process, such as planning or revising, you may focus on just those documents produced during those stages. Or you may be interested in how writers compose particular kinds of documents, such as the scientific journal articles Ann studied. One type of research, archival research, is focused almost, if not entirely, on the analysis of artifacts. This type of research is especially useful if you are interested in exploring an issue historically. One of our colleagues who engages in this type of research, Cheryl Cassidy, explains her approach and process in Sidebar 4.5.

Sidebar 4.5:  Archival Research—Cheryl Cassidy, Eastern Michigan University Archival research involves locating and analyzing primary historical documents. Historical materials might include books, newspaper or magazine articles, diaries, medical or scientific reports, letters and personal papers as well as photographs and engravings. Many of these historical materials can be found in libraries, repositories, or specialized facilities, though more recently, many libraries and collections have digitized their holdings, making them available

Reading, Observing, and Analyzing Artifacts 117 to a wider public. Conducting archival research allows researchers to retrieve voices that have been lost or submerged in the dominant culture. Applying rhetorical or discursive strategies to historical materials provides researchers access to a wealth of authorial styles, historical contexts, and alternative perspectives of cultural ideologies, and often uncovers information not available in secondary sources. For instance, hand-written letters from nineteenth-century American missionary women offer a wealth of information not available in secondary sources (e.g. births, deaths, illnesses not mentioned in secondary sources). Yet, despite the thrill of uncovering hitherto unknown or unexamined primary historical sources, there remain challenges in access and retrieval for the archival researcher. Many archival documents are lodged in temperature-controlled institutions with only limited access to the public. For instance, when I was researching the Children’s Historical Society Museum (Honolulu), not only was I required to contact the museum weeks ahead of my intended trip, but I also needed to provide professional credentials for access. The same was true for Harvard’s Schlesinger Library (Cambridge, Mass.). Both facilities had rather intense security systems in place with metal detectors, barriers, and guards. I might add that both repositories required researchers to wear gloves when handling primary documents, and the temperatures hovered around 55 degrees. However, public universities, such as The University of Michigan (Hatcher Graduate Library and Clements Historical Library) have fairly good access, though, as with most facilities, documents may not be removed from the site. Perhaps one of the most puzzling challenges I experienced when researching primary historical sources lay in retrieving documents from Google Books, a digitized database of historical documents, many of which are out of copyright. Although I uncovered a variety of nineteenth-century newspaper articles, medical reports, autobiographies, and even obituaries through Google Books, when I tried to revisit those documents, I was unable to do so. The materials had disappeared, and try as I might, I could not access the sources again. Belatedly, I realized that this problem was related to what Eli Pariser discussed in his 2011 book, The Filter Bubble: How the New Personalized Web is Changing What We Read and How We Think. Essentially, Google Books, as a player in the personalized web, no longer allowed me to view what I had originally seen. Once cognizant of this problem, I began to download every document I uncovered in .pdf form to refer to later. Other challenges related to archival research surround the condition of the historical materials. Many repositories have boxes of uncatalogued letters, scraps of paper, journal entries, letters written 200 years ago which, to save the cost of paper and mailing, are written crosswise across the original text. All these present interesting challenges for the researcher. Perhaps the most daunting archival research I experienced was at the National Library of Jamaica (Kingston, Jamaica). With permission from the then Jamaican Prime Minister, Edward

118  Reading, Observing, and Analyzing Artifacts Seaga, I visited the library to examine Jamaican newspapers from 1865–1867. To my dismay, I realized that not only were the newspapers located on shelves open to tropical weather, but most volumes were worm eaten and falling to pieces. Also, no copy machines were available, so I had to take notes on whatever articles I came across. Moreover, a request for a volume of newspapers generally took an hour or more to be fulfilled. For graduate students and researchers, conducting historical research is the start of a lengthy process that necessarily includes developing research questions and presenting findings in an original manner. Proposing interesting questions that provoke the researcher’s interest as well as engage a reader’s interest is primary. My experience has been that as I conduct primary research I’m continually looking for oddities: stories, events, or situations that are strange or don’t conform to traditional histories or events. For instance, in looking over nineteenth-century missionary magazines, I was struck by the obituaries of young missionary women working overseas. These black-bordered articles were laudatory in nature, rarely mentioned how the young woman died (most died in ghastly ways), and eulogized lives spent fruitfully however short (and some were clearly quite brief). Yet, when I looked at how heathen convert deaths were reported in those same magazines, I found that their deaths not only were written as long, drawn-out melodramatic death scenes, but those deaths validated the missionary imperative, ignoring the person and valorizing evangelical ideology. In another instance, when I researched the letters of young missionary women (1820) at the Children’s Historical Society in Honolulu, I found it peculiar that no mention was ever made of births or deaths of children, particularly very young children, and little mention was made of illness or injury. The process of delving into the past and discovering new information, and possibly alternative historical perspectives, can be an intensely rewarding task. However, archival researchers also rely on secondary sources which can provide background information and offer analysis of the event or work by those removed one or more steps from the event or work itself. These sources can also provide historical perspective based on other events that have taken place since the original event or work.

Cheryl’s description points to the value of archival research in certain situations. The artifacts she examines—and those any of us might examine in our research—may well contain information that is not present anywhere else. Such information can provide valuable viewpoints and perspectives that inform our research in meaningful ways. As Cheryl mentions, this information also is often supplemented by other information—for example, from secondary sources, interviews, surveys, and questionnaires. Data from artifact analyses often serve as evidence and support for claims we might be making in response to our research questions.

Reading, Observing, and Analyzing Artifacts 119

Prompt 4.6:  Looking at How Others Analyze Artifacts Find a research article in your area of concentration that either reports on archival research or relies on an analysis of documents (e.g., student papers, workplace documents, etc.). Read the article and prepare a report for your classmates in which you identify and discuss what documents the researchers analyzed, why they analyzed them, how they analyzed them, and what they discovered or learned from the analysis (what arguments or claims they were able to make based on the analysis).

Ways of Approaching Artifact Analysis There are many different ways to approach artifact analysis, and those usually depend on a researcher’s questions and focus. Before we discuss these different approaches, we want to provide a list of the kinds of documents writing researchers often analyze. These include, but certainly are not limited to: • • • • • • • •

Classroom artifacts such as student papers, journals, and in-class writings Teaching artifacts such as syllabi and assignments Digital or online documents such as websites, blogs, and social media posts Technical documents such as instructions and online help Professional documents and correspondence such as reports, proposals, letters, emails, and meeting minutes Published documents such as newspaper and magazine articles, articles from academic journals, and books Records such as notes and call logs Visual documents and texts

Qualitative researchers may obtain these documents on their own or request them from their participants. The processes for obtaining documents, as Cheryl’s experiences demonstrate, can vary—and can sometimes even pose challenges. Whenever possible, it may be a good idea to make copies or photographs of the original documents you obtain. You may, for example, end up marking up or coding documents and at some point want to refer to the original, clean version. Sidebar 4.6 provides additional examples of the different documents our case study writing researchers have analyzed.

Sidebar 4.6:  Documents Analyzed by Case Study Researchers Our three case study researchers all relied on artifact analysis as a primary data source. •

lisa gathered examples of student writing, which included both final drafts and drafts-in-progress.

120  Reading, Observing, and Analyzing Artifacts •

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Natasha gathered portfolios from the 50 students she was teaching in her college literacy class. These portfolios included: (1) the strategic learning plan, a focus of her research in which students set a writing goal and showed how they planned to achieve their goal; (2) a reflective cover letter where students connected their semester’s work to a habit of mind (another focus of her research) and reflected on their writing process throughout the term; and (3) the papers they wrote over the course of the term. Ja’La gathered three pieces of public art, all murals, from three different settings: one from her trip to South Africa, one from Detroit, and one from Ypsilanti, Michigan, all depicting images of struggle, tension, and successes surrounding issues of race.

Prompt 4.7:  Selecting Documents to Analyze. Review the list of documents writing researchers frequently analyze. Given your research question and the setting in which you are planning to do your research, what are some types of documents you might analyze? Share your list with a classmate or in a small group and brainstorm other possibilities.

Sometimes writing researchers are reluctant to carry out artifact analysis because they are afraid they lack the skills they need to do it properly. Few of us, for example, have an extensive background in linguistics, yet some sort of discourse analysis is often called for in analyzing artifacts. Those of us trained more recently in composition studies may also not have an extensive background in literary analysis. Most writing researchers, however, do have experience analyzing both the surface and deeper meanings and features of texts. In other words, the knowledge you bring as a student of composition and rhetoric should be sufficient for doing this sort of work. Further, you can read and analyze written artifacts in many different ways in qualitative research. You should select those ways that work best for your research and that you are best qualified to use. We present several common ways to analyze documents. All of these approaches have books and even entire courses devoted to them, so what we present is simply an introduction and overview. Hopefully, this will give you enough information to select and begin using the approach (or combination of approaches) that will work best for your research. We encourage you to consult other sources that address the approach, and we recommend some of those sources in the sidebar. Also, remember that each approach suggests and makes use of various theoretical perspectives, and each also will be influenced by your own personal stance and positionality.

Reading, Observing, and Analyzing Artifacts 121 The following is a sample text that we refer to throughout our discussion of these approaches. This text is a response to a prompt where students were asked to write an in-class essay about the topic of stress. The writer was a high school sophomore: It appears to me that stress is rather good for a person. However unreasonable amounts of stress can cause some mental anguish. I write this because at this moment I cannot think of nothing stressful that has happened to me. I am only fifteen (15) years old and I have not yet experienced stress in its full force. As I think about all the problems that children my age are facing, such as: rape, divorce, child abuse, unwed mothers or fathers, poor, welfare, I see how much I am blessed by not having this stress upon me. But I do recall one stressful time in my life. I was in the fifth grade. It was winter time and my cat came home sick. He (his name was Cinderella) had a small bruise on the top of his head. I didn’t thing much of it at the time and I went ahead and fixed his milk for him to eat. Cinderella stayed to the house that night and died, right out on our back porch. When I came down stairs the next morning my cat was just as hard as a brick and cold as ice. It took almost a week for mom to get me another cat. Not exactly stressful but it is a story. Rhetorical Analysis One of the most common types of artifact analysis in which writing researchers engage is rhetorical analysis. Analyzing documents rhetorically involves considering them within the larger contexts in which they were written and/or in which they function. Context may include setting and situation, authors, authors’ purposes, exigence and rhetorical situation, the manner in which documents were written (e.g., collaboratively, with input or directives from higher-ups), audiences, media, and so on. In analyzing documents rhetorically, you will likely make use of particular rhetorical concepts. Further, your own positionality may influence your choice of those concepts. For example, you might use stasis theory from classical rhetoric or the concept of kairos, which has to do with appropriateness and timing. You might also analyze documents for their rhetorical appeals, drawing on Aristotle’s notions of ethos, pathos, and logos. Or, you might use more contemporary rhetorical concepts (e.g., Burke’s pentad [1945], Bitzer’s notion of rhetorical situation [1968], Perlman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s new rhetoric [1969]). One of our students, for his master’s writing project, was interested in how metaphors are used in first-term presidential inauguration speeches. His proposed corpus included all of these speeches dating back to Abraham Lincoln. He drew in his analyses on Lackoff and Johnson’s (1980) and other scholars’ work on metaphors, and he counted “novel or innovative metaphorical expressions.” His purpose was to compare presidents over time and to determine how the metaphors each president used related to their visions and goals for their presidencies.

122  Reading, Observing, and Analyzing Artifacts Rhetorical analysis can also be applied to visual texts. Visual rhetoric, as it is called, has become a rich area of study in the field of analysis, and many scholars have carried out rhetorical analyses of all kinds of images (Foss, 1994; Gries, 2013; Helmers, 2006; Peterson, 2001). In Sidebar 4.7, we show how one of our case researchers, Ja’La, carried out visual rhetorical analysis on the murals she studied.

Sidebar 4.7:  Visual Rhetorical Analysis Ja’La, one of our case study researchers who studied murals, adopted a visual rhetorical approach to her study. In her final project paper, she demonstrates a rhetorical reading of a visual artifact, placing it in its context and using a specific rhetorical lens: The first mural I’ve chosen to analyze was curated by Lubhi Mtathi in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. It is part of a collection of murals titled “Identities” that depicts young South Africans from a variety of cultural backgrounds installed on pillars beneath a passageway for the public to see as they walk on Route 67 in Nelson Mandela Bay. South Africa’s history is one of great struggle and victory, which is reflected throughout each piece of art on the historic tour. This particular mural speaks to the legacies of struggle experienced by Black South Africans due to the system of apartheid which legalized racial segregation in the mid 1940’s and ended in 1994. Although racial discrimination was taking place in South Africa for quite some time, the system of apartheid was the legalization of a variety of exclusion and segregation such as political exclusion, territorial segregation, urban segregation, labor segregation, and educational segregation (Maylam 183). The rise and fall of apartheid and the fight for cultural and racial inclusion is a theme that runs throughout Mtathi’s mural project. There are several elements to consider when analyzing this mural in order to determine its function from the rhetorical frameworks introduced by Foss and Bitzer. The mural at first glance reveals what appears to be a white South African man, arms crossed with pursed lips and eyes staring straight ahead as if he is looking directly at you. Behind the man are the words “I AM NOT OUR PAST” with the word PAST covered behind the man’s back. In the bottom left corner of the mural is the word “Koltured” written almost like a signature or tagline. With this particular mural, the function

Reading, Observing, and Analyzing Artifacts 123 and exigence that is communicated is clear from a cultural and historical perspective of South Africa. Being in South Africa it is difficult to separate the country’s history from the message being portrayed in Mtathi’s identities piece. This mural functions as a reminder of South Africa’s turbulent past, clearly articulated through the textual meaning and cross reference to the white South African male who is pictured. It serves as a reminder that racial tensions have and may still exist in South Africa between whites and blacks post-apartheid.

If you used rhetorical analysis to study the piece of student writing presented previously, you might choose to focus on the rhetorical situation of the document—that is, the reasons the student had for writing the document. If you did, you probably would note the following. First, the student knows this is a piece of “school writing” and seems to have a good sense of what has to go into such a piece. She knows, for example, that a school piece is supposed to move back and forth between generalizations (“stress is rather good for a person. However, unreasonable amounts of stress can cause some mental anguish”) and specifics (the incident recounted in the third paragraph about her cat dying). You might also note, however, that her knowledge of what makes school writing successful is complicated by the fact that she is struggling to find something to say. Directed to tell a story about adolescent stress, she seems to have had difficulty finding a way in. She knows what stressful stories are supposed to be about (e.g., rape, divorce, child abuse), but she also knows that none of these things has happened in her life (“I am blessed by not having this stress upon me”). Thus, she seems somewhat baffled about what to do with the assignment. Ultimately, what the student tried to do here is what she knows is required of her. She recounts a story about the most stressful event she can remember in her life, even though she’s aware that it really is not that stressful in the larger scheme of things. She proves in her recounting that she is also aware of some of the strategies for effective storytelling: narrative ordering, specific details (“my cat was just as hard as a brick and cold as ice”), and the importance of conclusions (“It took almost a week for mom to get me another cat”). She also makes it clear, however, that she is aware that this is not what her teacher has in mind for the assignment: “Not exactly stressful but it is a story.” In order to select the rhetorical lens through which to read her murals, Ja’La read widely into the field of visual rhetorics and how other visual rhetoricians conduct their research. As she did so, she began charting out her findings, using a keywords approach: naming the concepts she learned from her reading, citing the source, identifying significant quotes, adding her notes, and then considering the application. Figure 4.1 illustrates part of her attempt to chart this.

Keywords

Concepts Citations

visual culture: Helmers, 2

Text + Images: Helmers, 5

Robert Scholes "Protocols of Reading" (1983)

Quotes

Notes

Application of Rhetorical Perspective Nature of image: Kenneth Burkes A “Further, som Rhetoric of Motives (1) presented researchers elements (1950) defiied recognized that rhetoric as symbolic (2)suggested attention to elements (Foss action which was symbolic aspects groundbreaking for 146) of visual artifacts, sometimes referred visual rhetorics Function: How to as vernacular or (Olsen, 2) image operated material culture, for its viewers (it provided a way to stands document istories independent of its of the poor and creator's workeing classes, intemtion) The African Americans function of an and other racial image from a minorities.” (Olsen rhetorical 3) perspective is the action that the image communicates (147) Evaluation: Assessing an image

Visual Rhetoric: Helmers, 2

Scholes 5 steps of reading an image: Helmers, 9

Lester Olsen, “Review of Visual Rhetorc Since 1950” (2007)

“Further, som researchers recognized that attention to symbolic aspects of visual artifacts, sometimes referred to as vernacular or material culture, provided a way to document istories of the poor and workeing classes, African Americans and other racial minorities.” (Olsen 3)

“Report of the Coittee on the Advanceent and Refineent of Rhetorical Criticism” advanced scholarship in visual rhetorics (Olsen, 2-3) 1970 @ National Conference on Rhetoric a recommendation was made to include subject that did not traditionally fall within the critics purview – applying this perspective to any human at, process, product, or artifact (Foss 141)

Critical

Michelle Smith

“Visual rhetoric

Variations of naming

Helmers, 28

the Color Line: W.E.B DuBois, Race, and Visual Culture (2004) Essay y byy Richard Gregg (1985) Diane Hope (2006) Lawrence Prelli (2006)

have been used frequently as a central, organizing term before 1990” (Olsen 4) “Since 1950 most visual rhetoric scholarship has evinced an abiding and predominant interest in twentieth-century comunication technologies, events, and controversies, usually centering in the United States.”

contributed to growth of discipline (Olsen 12)

Photography on does not Viewing: to visual rhetoric Figure 4.1  Ja’La’s Keyword Chart (re-printed inappear its original form)

culture

Step by step analysis: Helmers, 29

List of schoalrs and keywords in visual rhetoric studies (Olsen 14)

minorities.” (Olsen 3)

Reading,

culture

Critical Viewing: Helmers, 28

Michelle Smith Photography on the Color Line: W.E.B DuBois, Race, and Visual Culture (2004)

Step by step analysis: Helmers, 29

y byy Essays Richard Gregg (1985) Diane Hope (2006) Lawrence Prelli (2006)

affordances

“Body Argument” (1999) “Rhetorical Bodies” (1999)

rhetorical perspective specific attention to one or more (nature, function, evaluation) Foss 146 rhetorical response

Diane Hope Visual Comunication (2006)

Lawrence Prelli Rhetorics of Display (2006) Cara Finnegan, Diane Hope Visual Rhetoric A Reader in Communication and American Culture Sonja Foss Resource unit for teaching on rhetoric and the visual image (1982)

within the critics purview – applying this perspective to any human at, process, product, or Observing, and Analyzing artifact (Foss 141)

“Visual rhetoric does not appear to have been used frequently as a central, organizing term before 1990” (Olsen 4) “Since 1950 most visual rhetoric scholarship has evinced an abiding and predominant interest in twentieth-century comunication technologies, events, and controversies, usually centering in the United States.” (Olsen 9)

Artifacts 125

Variations of naming visual rhetoric contributed to growth of discipline (Olsen 12) List of schoalrs and keywords in visual rhetoric studies (Olsen 14)

Sonja Foss discusses scholars who initially object to visual rhetorics (Foss, 142) Visual rhetorics is/involves: a communicative artifact (143), symbolic action (144), human intervention (143), prescence of an audience (144), as perspective** (145)

Figure 4.1 Continued

Linguistic or Discourse Analysis Another approach that writing researchers often take in analyzing documents is to use linguistic or discourse analysis, which entails focusing on language use usually at a more granular level. One way to carry out such analyses is to consider the text as a whole or to consider parts of it alone as independent objects of study. Another option is

126  Reading, Observing, and Analyzing Artifacts to carry out a context-sensitive text analysis, which entails also taking into account the setting and situation in which the text was created or is functioning (see Huckin, 1992). In either case, you consider the linguistic or grammatical features of a text, looking for patterns, errors, recurrences, or other interesting linguistic or textual information. There are now numerous software programs—concordances—that will parse and analyze texts linguistically. The graduate student we mentioned earlier who investigated inauguration speeches used one of these. In addition to examining metaphors, he also wanted to look at the pronouns used in the speeches and their frequency (firstperson I, second-person you, third-person we). He further wanted to examine each president’s use of modal auxiliary verbs such as must, will, and can, along with the frequencies of certain words. To do these analyses, he performed this computerized corpus-based analysis. His research questions capture the combined rhetorical and linguistic focuses of his research: How do individual presidential inaugural speeches differ over time in terms of their reliance on metaphor? How does the usage of personal pronouns, modal auxiliary verbs, or other linguistic elements vary? In addition to individual differences among the presidents, what will comparisons between political parties reveal? . . . In short, what are the rhetorical and linguistic components of this type of political speech and how do they vary over time? And, similar to what Cheryl Cassidy discussed in Sidebar 4.5, he supplemented his analyses by carrying out extensive background reading in the areas on which he was focusing. Linguistic analysis may be of interest to writing researchers for many reasons. For example, if you are interested in a writer’s development over a period of time—say, a semester—it might be useful to see if the number of complex sentences the writer uses increases as the semester progresses. In their study of spelling, Rebecca Sipe, Dawn Putnam, Jennifer Walsh, Tracey Rosewarne, and Karen Reed-Nordwall focused part of their analysis on the number of words the students spelled incorrectly, the kinds of spelling mistakes they made, and the changes in their spelling over time. All of this provided useful information for their overall study (Sipe, 2003). Additionally, linguistic or discourse analysis is often coupled with other research tools, such as interviewing. A number of years ago, Lee Odell and his colleagues described a method called discourse-based interviews, which has proven very useful to writing researchers, especially those who study writing in the workplace (Odell, Goswami, & Herrington, 1983). With this method, which can easily be adapted, the researcher analyzes a text for various elements and then interviews the author to determine why the person chose to use (or not use) those elements. These elements might be common linguistic or rhetorical devices, certain words or punctuation, common expressions, and so forth. The interviewer might also ask the participants if they had thought to use a particular element and then why they chose not to use it. This approach captures authors’ reasons for using or not using different language elements, and it sheds light on their decision-making process. If you chose to do a linguistic analysis of the student text shown previously, you could approach the text in many ways. For example, you might wonder if there is a correlation between the kinds of sentence structure the student uses and her struggle to find ideas. Here, you might investigate whether she relies more on simple sentences or on

Reading, Observing, and Analyzing Artifacts 127 complex sentences as she searches for a central thesis in the first two paragraphs. You might also consider if there is variation in sentence structures in different parts of the text. A simple quantitative analysis would reveal that, overall, she wrote seven simple sentences, four compound sentences, and three complex sentences. Her first paragraph begins with two simple sentences and then moves to one complex and one compound sentence. Her second paragraph contains a single complex sentence with 39 words. In the third paragraph, she has nine sentences—the most yet—but her sentence structure does not reveal anything startling: She uses five simple sentences, three compound sentences, and one complex sentence. Overall, such a simple quantitative analysis may be one piece in a larger examination of this student’s writing over time, comparing, for example, her writing in this more formal situation to less formal in-class writing. In another kind of linguistic analysis, you could look at the register of words and phrases in the student’s text: Are they formal or informal; are they Standard English or dialect? With this kind of analysis, you might make note of two particular points in the text. In the first paragraph, the student indicates that she’s “only fifteen (15) years old.” Her inclusion of the parenthetical may lead you to wonder whether she is trying to formalize the piece, making it “sound like” certain genres of writing with which she might be familiar. She might also have used this just because she is not sure which construction is correct and so wanted to cover all of her bases. A second interesting construction is found in the third paragraph where she states, “Cinderella stayed to the house that night.” “Stayed to the house” is an unusual expression in a piece that is mostly written in Standard English. Why might she have used this construction? Is there an implied additional word, as in, “Stayed close to the house,” that she left out? Or is this a construction that is a familiar one in her own literacy history? One way to find out would be to interview the student to learn more about her reasons for making the choices she did. Thematic Analysis A third approach for analyzing documents is to look for themes that connect to the question(s) you are researching. For this kind of analysis, you would focus less on the language and grammatical constructions in the text and more on its content. Thematic analysis can help researchers determine if an idea or subject recurs in a document—or documents—or if there are places where contradictions or discrepancies arise. In the research mentioned earlier that was conducted by Rebecca Sipe and her colleagues (2003), thematic analysis was a major research tool. Early in their study of middle and high school students’ spelling, they invited students to write “spelling histories”: short pieces in which the students wrote about early memories of spelling, how they learned to spell, and what attitudes they had noticed others holding about spelling. They analyzed these histories for types of spelling error (a type of linguistic analysis); however, their primary focus was on the themes and issues that the students raised in their writing and the commonalities that existed in the students’ spelling experiences. Looking across the entire set of spelling histories, the researchers drew conclusions about common traits they found for what they termed “challenged spellers.” One of our case study researchers, Natasha, used thematic rhetorical analysis as she reviewed her students’ reflective cover letters to their portfolios. Focused on the habits of mind named in The Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing (Council of Writing Program Administrators, National Council of Teachers of English, and

128  Reading, Observing, and Analyzing Artifacts National Writing Project, 2011), Natasha analyzed the cover letters to see if and how her students talked about these habits, drawing some initial ideas about how students understood the habits—ideas that she studied in more depth as she placed these artifacts in conversation with surveys, interviews, and observational tools. Applying thematic analysis to the student paper included in this section could provide some insights into her thoughts about adolescence and stress. The text seems to indicate, for example, that she believes real stress does not occur for most 15-year-olds. The text also shows that she equates stress with extremely traumatic life experiences such as “rape, divorce, child abuse, unwed mothers or fathers, poor, welfare.” These are experiences she sees as causing real mental anguish, and they are those that she says are far removed from her own life and from her own experience with trauma (“my cat was just as hard as a brick and cold as ice”). Expanding this examination of a single student’s paper to the responses of an entire class to the same writing prompt could lead to further understanding of what adolescents consider stressful in their lives. Whatever approach you choose to analyze documents, remember that you should not rely too much on just a single text to give you answers. Most researchers collect a number of related artifacts (a set of student papers, a portfolio of one student’s work over the course of a semester, several drafts of an article or paper, several related websites, call logs from at least a few months, multiple articles addressing a single topic) and then analyze them as a group, searching for similarities and differences across the texts. Analysis, especially rhetorical and thematic analysis, then becomes a process of reading and rereading the texts, looking for features and statements that help you better understand your research question.

Prompt 4.8:  Analyzing a Document Select a document connected to your research question. Try out each of the three approaches to artifact analysis talked about in this chapter: rhetorical, linguistic, and thematic. What insights does each approach give you? What questions does it raise? What further information might you need or want?

Stance and Positionality in Artifact Analysis Personal stance and issues of positionality likely will determine both the artifacts you select to examine and how you choose to analyze them. They ultimately will also influence what you find in your analyses and the meaning you make of what you find. Artifacts can suggest many different things, so you need ways to focus your analysis, which the various approaches discussed in this section provide. Those approaches foreground some aspects of the artifacts and subordinate others. And, presumably, the aspects you foreground will connect to and shed light, in some significant way, on what you are investigating.

Reading, Observing, and Analyzing Artifacts 129 Ja’La, for example, was aware of the connections between the murals she chose to analyze and her own cultural perspectives. As she explained: It has to do with positionality. I’m an African American woman so I wanted to choose something that felt like I could speak to. I didn’t want to pick murals that I just felt were pretty, that were aesthetically nice . . . Culture plays a role in how we will understand images and how we do a visual rhetorical analysis. Of course, as with all of the tools we have discussed, you need to be aware of your positionality and how it may influence your selection and use of those tools. Your positionality will lead you to view the artifacts you examine in certain ways; it also may prevent you from noticing other things that may be pertinent. Again, as Ja’La explains, The hardest [mural to analyze] for me was the one in South Africa, because I’m not South African, I didn’t grow up there. [In contrast], the one that was easiest was the one in Detroit; I’m part of an African American community where conversations about social justice and art are discussed. So it was easy for me to understand the symbolism in her mural: there was a bird in her hair and there are conversations about black women and their hair. In some cases, you can guard against these limitations by having another person use your analytic approach with one or a few of the artifacts you have collected. This approach is especially useful when you are using some of the more subjective analytic approaches, such as rhetorical and thematic analysis and certain of the noncomputerized linguistic analyses. You can then see if they found the same things you found, and, if not, consider why this might be the case. It is also important to remember that, with artifact analysis, what you notice when you analyze a document at one point in your study might differ from what you notice at a later point. In other words, you might look at the same artifact again and notice different things about it. Presumably you are learning and gaining knowledge as you move forward in your research, so how you look at things, and what you end up seeing, will very likely change as you make progress. Everything about the research process is dynamic, including, and perhaps especially, your own lenses, stance, and positionality. Analyzing Artifacts Ethically As writing researchers, we have an obligation to the individuals who composed the documents we analyze, particularly when those individuals are students. A researcher should never analyze a student’s work and report the analysis publicly without the student’s permission (or their parent’s permission if the student is a minor). Students have a right to know, first, that you are using their work for research purposes and, second, how you are using it and what you plan to do with it. This is called disclosure. Even if you are analyzing documents found on the Internet, or email messages posted to a listserv, you should obtain permission from the authors of those documents. Most of the time, the authors of such documents will grant permission. You also should always assign pseudonyms to authors unless they give you permission to use their actual

130  Reading, Observing, and Analyzing Artifacts names. Additionally, remember that, with artifact analysis, our purpose is generally to describe and analyze a document and not to critique it or judge it as being “good” or “bad.” It can help to reassure authors of this. With published texts, ethical issues may be different. For example, scholars in the rhetoric of science commonly examine already published scientific texts, such as Watson and Crick’s work announcing the double helix structure of DNA. With this kind of work, scholars must properly cite the original texts. Additionally, if they reproduce significant portions of those texts, they must obtain appropriate copyright permissions. Finally, ethics in artifact analysis also concerns what you choose, or do not choose, to analyze, how you choose to analyze it, and the significance you attach to your findings. For example, you may select certain documents and not others and, in doing so, exhibit bias. You also may need to be concerned with the number of documents you analyze. In some cases (e.g., when you are doing computerized linguistic analysis), the size of your corpus will be important for the credibility of your findings. If your corpus is not large enough, your findings will not be reliable. In other situations, a smaller corpus may be sufficient. Again, it depends on your research question, the nature of your research, and your goals. For example, if you are interested in how a student develops as a writer, you likely will want to examine several of the student’s papers written across a period of time.

Conclusion This chapter has addressed three common tools in qualitative research. The first, reading, is one that every researcher relies on, and the others are ones many qualitative researchers in writing use to at least some extent. In composition studies, researchers observe classrooms, workplaces, or other settings in which writing or the teaching of writing occurs. They also collect documents—written, visual, digital—from participants that they examine, systematically or informally, for certain kinds of evidence. The next chapter addresses two additional qualitative tools that you may consider using: surveys/questionnaires and interviews. Taken together, all of these tools offer a range of possibilities for obtaining useful information from your qualitative research that addresses your question(s) and that, ultimately, adds to and advances knowledge in the field.

5 How Do I Find Answers? Carrying Out Your Qualitative Research Study Part II—Using Surveys/Questionnaires and Conducting Interviews

This chapter completes our discussion of the research tools available to qualitative researchers by addressing two additional tools: surveys/questionnaires and interviews. In the chapter, we define these two tools; address when, where, why, and how they may be used; and share examples of how student researchers, like yourselves, have used them. Additionally, as in the last chapter, we show how positionality and bias may influence the individuals you select to interview, your sampling for a survey, the questions you pose, how you pose them, and so on. We conclude with a discussion of ethical issues that may arise in using these tools. We begin however with this: Why do qualitative researchers choose to use these particular tools? First, we interview participants to understand and make meaning of their experiences. Interviews are opportunities to explore with participants, in an indepth manner, a situation, experience, or issue. Interviews provide information about the person being interviewed and—importantly—do so from that person’s perspective. They provide insight into the person’s thoughts, perceptions, feelings, motivations, responses, and actions in relation to the issues or situations being explored in the research. The other tools discussed in this chapter, surveys/questionnaires, are not always associated with qualitative research; however, we include them here because we believe they offer researchers the opportunity to expand the scope of what they are able to learn through their research. We also have seen them used in many qualitative studies in the field because of what they do provide, which is quick information, often of a high-level and sometimes verifying nature, from more than one person. Qualitative researchers can use surveys/questionnaires to gather data on how a larger number of people think about a particular aspect of their research question. Although some researchers assert there is a difference between surveys and questionnaires (i.e., surveys as formal, large-scale undertakings and questionnaires as less formal, ­in-the-moment, smaller-scale tools), we see these tools on a continuum: from less to more formal, from smaller to larger groups, from more casual to more meticulously prepared.

Surveys/Questionnaires We begin with surveys/questionnaires because these tools can give you a broad understanding of individuals’ perceptions or understandings, providing information that can lead to the more specific information that will emerge from individual or small

132  Surveys/Questionnaires and Interviews group interviews. As an example, one of our students surveyed her own students at the beginning of the year to see how much out-of-school reading they said they did and how they selected the books they read. She surveyed them again at the end of the year to see if they had changed at all (see Appendix A). The information she gained from the two surveys lead her to interview some of the students to learn more specific and nuanced details. Surveys also reveal people’s responses to particular situations. Another of our students surveyed employees at his company to see how they felt about the different change communication strategies the company was using. Surveys may also reveal something about people’s perceptions, behaviors, habits, and practices, along with their reasons for those. For example, still another student carried out an extensive survey to find out whether and how people look for and use safety information on the web. Many researchers use the terms survey and questionnaire interchangeably, whereas others see them as different kinds of tools. As mentioned above, we view them as being on a continuum. At one end of the continuum are questionnaires: less formal, requiring less elaborate preparation, usually situated in the researcher’s context, often given to smaller groups (e.g., people known by the researchers, such as students or coworkers), and in many cases shorter in length and with more open-ended questions designed, for example, to gauge opinions and perspectives. At the other end are formal surveys characterized by meticulous preparation; generally situated outside the researcher’s immediate context; often intended to reach and gather responses from a large number of respondents (who may be more disparate and even unfamiliar to the researcher); and generally less open in design (and thus more easily quantifiable). And in between these two ends are many approaches that draw from both. We have relied on many different kinds of surveys/questionnaires in our own research, as have our students. Some of these include: • Informal exit slips that students complete on the way out of class. They contain one or two questions about what happened in class that day and/or how students understood a particular concept or responded to the way information was presented. • Four or five open-ended questions that prompt reflection by students after they complete a piece of writing. These may prompt students to reflect on their writing process, the changes they made when they revised, the concerns they will prioritize in future writing, and so on. • Open-ended questions about reading habits given to students at the beginning of a project and then again at the end. • A combination of closed- and open-ended questions, including multiple choice and Likert-scale questions, distributed to faculty and students to learn about their experiences with and perceptions of the university’s writing center. Formal surveys can yield important and highly relevant information; however, so can less formal questionnaires. To decide which might be best suited for your research, think carefully about your research question, the context for what you are doing, the numbers and kinds of people you hope to reach, their and your own time constraints, and the kinds of information you wish to discover. Looking over some examples of various kinds of questionnaires/surveys (Sidebars 5.1–5.4) might help, as well.

Surveys/Questionnaires and Interviews 133

Sidebar 5.1:  Sample Informal Questionnaire (from Natasha’s work) Name: ___________________________________________ WRTG course taken in Fall 2016: ______________________ • How do you feel your first college writing class went? • What habits of mind (curiosity, openness, engagement, creativity, persistence, responsibility, flexibility, metacognition) did you find yourself practicing—or trying to practice—most often during your first college writing class? • In what ways have you utilized the STL you created during the summer collegiate literacy course? (What progress have you made toward your initial goal, did you follow your learning plan?) • Did parts of your SLP change or shift as the semester went on?

Sidebar 5.2:  Sample Self-Assessment Questionnaire (excerpted from Natasha’s work) Writing Self-Assessment Please rate how often you engage with each writing activity: Curiosity: I... use inquiry to develop questions for authentic audiences seek relevant authoritative information and recognize the meaning and value of that information conduct research using methods for investigating questions appropriate to my discipline communicate my findings in writing to multiple audiences inside and outside school using appropriate genre conventions

Always

Often

Sometimes

Rarely

Never

134  Surveys/Questionnaires and Interviews Openness: I...

Always

Often

Sometimes

Rarely

Never

examine my own perspectives to find connections with the perspectives of others practice different ways of gathering, investigating, developing, and presenting information listen and reflect on the ideas and responses of others—both peers and instructors—to my writing

Engagement: I...

Always

Often

Sometimes

Rarely

Never

Always

Often

Sometimes

Rarely

Never

make connections between my own ideas and those of others find meanings new to me or build upon existing meanings as a result of new connections act upon the new knowledge that I have discovered

Creativity: I... take risks by exploring questions, topics, and ideas that are new to me use methods that are new to me to investigate questions, topics, and ideas represent what I have learned in a variety of ways evaluate the effects or consequences of my creative choices

Surveys/Questionnaires and Interviews 135

Sidebar 5.3:  Sample Formal Survey Questions Excerpted from a University Writing Center Satisfaction Survey Please share with us your experiences with and perceptions of the University Writing Center (UWC). This survey will take approximately 10 minutes to complete. Your responses will help us improve the writing support we provide. Thank you! University Writing Center (UWC) Experience Survey 1. Are you familiar with the University Writing Center (UWC) and its services? • Yes • Somewhat • No UWC Awareness 2. How did you learn about the UWC? Please select all that apply. • UWC presenter visited my class • Professor • Peer, friend, or family member • Information on a class syllabus • UWC writing consultant • UWC posters/fliers or bookmarks • UWC website • UWC Facebook • Other campus student support service (e.g., Holman Success Center) • Other (please specify) 3. Have you ever had a writing consultation at the UWC in Halle Library or at one of its satellite locations (including UWC Online)? If so, please check all locations you have used. • • • • • • • •

UWC main location, 115 Halle UWC at the College of Arts and Sciences in Pray-Harrold Science Success Center in Mark Jefferson UWC for Psychology in Mark Jefferson UWC at the College of Business in Owen UWC at the College of Technology in Sill or Roosevelt UWC at the College of Health and Human Services in Marshall Academic Projects Center in Halle Library

136  Surveys/Questionnaires and Interviews • UWC for Graduate Studies • UWCOnline (for students enrolled in fully online programs) • I have never had a writing consultation at EMU’s University Writing Center Reasons for not Using the UWC 4. What are your reasons for not using the UWC? Please check all that apply. • • • • • • • •

I did not know about the UWC. I do not need help with my writing. I believe the UWC cannot address the needs I have with my writing. I am anxious about obtaining writing help. I view the UWC as a place for struggling writers, not all writers. I was told the UWC could not help me. I do not have writing assignments. I get writing help elsewhere.

5. If you answered in the previous question that you get writing help elsewhere, please tell us where.

Sidebar 5.4:  Sample Pre and Post Survey (MA Student Kristin Smith’s Research into Student Use of Argumentative Writing) • How important do you think it is to use sources (quotes, citations, references in general) in your writing? (1 being not important at all and 5 being the most important) • Rank how important you think source material/evidence is in each of the following types of writing (1 being not important at all and 5 being the most important) a) Narrative writing b) Informational writing c) Argument writing • • •

Why do you think teachers ask you to use sources in your writing? How do you use sources in your writing? Why do you think people write arguments?

Surveys/Questionnaires and Interviews 137

Prompt 5.1:  Exploring Surveys/Questionnaires Locate an example of a survey or questionnaire (you may use one of the samples above or in the appendix to this chapter or locate one on your own). Make note of the features you notice, the reasons you believe the researcher used those features, and how the tool is designed. Next, think of a reason for using a survey/ questionnaire in your own research. What might you hope to learn from using this tool? What would serve your research best: a formal survey, an informal questionnaire, a pre- and post-event survey, or something else?

As we mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, keep in mind that these tools can be effective precursors to interviews. Natasha, for example, used surveys to obtain broad understandings of her students’ uses of habits of mind as they moved from her summer support class to their first-year writing class. She then followed up with individual interviews with a number of students. But surveys can also be valuable as follow-ups to interviews. For example, looking over the responses of several interviewees might lead to important questions that you use in a survey or questionnaire in order to gather responses from a broader audience. Again, the main advantage of surveys/questionnaires is their breadth. You can collect a good deal of information from greater numbers of participants in a short amount of time. And, because they are usually anonymous, respondents may be more willing to answer them truthfully, especially if the subject is sensitive. Constructing Surveys and Questionnaires There are now many tools available that make developing and disseminating a survey/ questionnaire reasonably quick and easy. With Google Forms, for example, you can quickly write and send out the kind of survey Natasha did with her students or the preand post-survey that Kristin Smith did. You can also easily download the responses into a spreadsheet for analysis. SurveyMonkey is another tool that makes it very easy to develop a survey. Both tools offer choices for the types of questions you wish to ask, and SurveyMonkey provides significant additional functionality with more sophisticated design options, including question logic. If you have not used either of these tools previously, we recommend familiarizing yourself with them if surveys/questionnaires are something you plan to use in your research. The Complexity of Surveys/Questionnaires and Seeking Help Although design tools make survey construction seem simple, we wish to caution you about the complexity of surveys/questionnaires. Certainly, there are the simple ones you can use to quickly ascertain individuals’ perspectives and/or practices, but, in many cases, developing questions and designing a survey/questionnaire are complicated tasks. Developing a more formal survey that is effective and reliable requires a good deal of skill—and time. Some researchers even shy away from using the more formal end of the continuum because of this. However, as with all the tools we discuss,

138  Surveys/Questionnaires and Interviews we encourage you to assess whether a survey/questionnaire makes sense for your research given your question(s). If so, then consider what kind will yield the information you need to answer your question(s). You also need to consider whom you will target with your survey, how you might target them, what, if any, kind of sampling you might need, and how you will construct and disseminate your survey/questionnaire. We encourage you to do whatever you can to construct a survey/questionnaire that will both be reliable and provide you with the information and data you need, and want, for your research. One place to begin is to consult other resources (e.g., books on surveys and/or individuals who are experts in survey design). Many universities have research support available, and this support can be especially helpful for people interested in developing and administering surveys/questionnaires. You can consult your campus graduate school and/or research office to determine if such services are available and who offers them. Then, once you identify someone who can assist you, work closely with that individual as you develop, test, and administer your survey. We include in Sidebar 5.5 our university’s checklist for survey and interview development. There are some guidelines in the checklist worth emphasizing. The first is the importance, which we have stressed in relation to every research tool, of making sure the tool is one that will provide useful information and data for the research question you’ve formulated. Second is the emphasis placed on clearly worded questions and a design for your survey/questionnaire that will lead to reliable and valid responses and data that address your question. The importance of all of this cannot be emphasized enough. Poorly worded or ambiguous questions can have a significant impact on the reliability and usefulness of your findings. Question formation is probably the most complicated and challenging aspect of survey/questionnaire design. And this speaks to the third point, the need to have others (e.g., your advisor or an expert in survey design) review and provide feedback on your questions. Ann has developed numerous surveys/questionnaires for both research and assessment purposes and routinely produces multiple drafts (into the double digits) before ever sending them out. We also recommend that you test your survey/questionnaire with members of your target population. This is addressed in the final checklist point in Sidebar 5.5. Again, we cannot stress enough the importance and value of this feedback stage.

Sidebar 5.5:  Eastern Michigan University’s Survey and/ or Interview Development Checklist •

•

•

My advisor and I have developed a research question and/or corresponding hypothesis. The research question is clearly stated in my thesis/dissertation/ research proposal and is based on a review of existing literature. My advisor and I have determined the type of data we will need to collect to answer the research question and have developed a data analysis plan based on the type of data to be collected. I am using a previously validated survey and/or my advisor and I have developed survey questions that are clearly worded and designed to generate reliable and valid data that will answer my research question.

Surveys/Questionnaires and Interviews 139 • •

•

Each of my survey questions has potential responses that are designed to provide me with the type of data I need based on my analysis plan. I have had at least one other person (another committee member, a statistician, etc.) read my survey questions and responses for clarity and pertinence to my research question. I have pilot-tested my survey with at least five people to make sure that the questions are clear and can be answered. I have determined that my survey will generate the kind of data that I need for my analysis, including sufficient variability in responses for quantitative research and sufficient depth in responses for qualitative research.

Prompt 5.2:  Consulting Experts If you are reading this text as part of a course, choose someone from the class to look into your university’s research services. A couple of students might even be assigned this task, because your university might have a variety of services. You should try to find out what services are available and who provides them. Others might locate additional resources that address surveys (e.g., books or websites).

Another resource you may consult are other researchers who have successfully used surveys/questionnaires: your advisor, other professors in your program, and even peers or colleagues. Cathy has, for over 20 years, facilitated a teacher research group in which teachers (from elementary to college) conduct ongoing research into their own classrooms. Because of the experience of this group, members who are new to surveys/ questionnaires often bring drafts of their work to the group for feedback. Finding a group like this—either within or external to your graduate program—can assist you with all research tools, but particularly with this one. Asking your colleagues for feedback and even to try out a sample survey/questionnaire can help you make revisions to strengthen the tool. Planning a Survey/Questionnaire Whether you are administering a formal survey or a less formal questionnaire, you will want to consider a number of factors as you plan it. The first and most significant of these are audience and purpose. In other words, whom are you targeting with the survey or questionnaire and what do you hope to achieve with it? From our own experiences with these tools, we can honestly say that audience and purpose are the easiest things to lose track of, but they are also the most essential in making surveys effective. For example, if your purpose is to determine perspectives on different kinds of social media, you would potentially construct one kind of survey for an audience of professionals and another kind for an audience of students.

140  Surveys/Questionnaires and Interviews lisa, one of our case study researchers, used informal questionnaires all the time in her most recent research project on using mindfulness in the ELA classroom. In searching for immediate response to how mindfulness impacts students’ general wellbeing and readiness to learn, she generally would begin class by asking students to write for five minutes on the question, “How are you feeling?” Then, after introducing a mindfulness practice, she would ask them to write again for five minutes on the same question. Angela Knight, a long-time member of Cathy’s teacher research group recently set out to study how her middle school students’ attitudes toward writing shifted after participating in National Novel Writing Month. She asked a series of questions before they began their novel writing, during their writing, and at the end of the project. A student who was concerned with where people look for, and what they want from, safety information on the web decided, rightly, to do an online survey targeting a broad cross-section of individuals. Another student who studied his company’s change communication strategies used his corporate intranet, which employees consult regularly, to administer his survey. Audience and purpose are determining factors in how you design a survey: in the kinds of questions you ask, in the length you make the survey (see later), and in how you administer it.

Prompt 5.3:  Considering Audience and Purpose Write down the audience and purpose for a survey or questionnaire you might construct. What are some characteristics of your audience, and what do those characteristics, and your purpose, suggest for how you might design your survey (the kinds of question you might ask, the length you might make it, and how you might administer it)?

An additional consideration in planning surveys is sampling; in other words, who, or what groups, and how many in those groups will you target—and how will you locate and select them? If you are using a less formal questionnaire, you will have some flexibility here: If you are a teacher, for example, you might choose one class or three classes, depending on your purpose. This number is sufficient to determine trends and themes. However, if you want your results to be statistically significant, you likely will need a sampling strategy and a certain sample size. Some common sampling strategies for surveys include the following: • Typical case sampling, which gives you a sample that is normal or typical of a population. • Homogeneous sampling, which gives you similar cases. • Deviant case sampling, which gives you extreme or unusual cases. • Maximum variation sampling, which gives you a sampling of a wide variety of cases. • Convenience sampling, where cases are selected based on convenience (see Glesne, 2016). Once you have a strategy for selecting your sample, you also need to consider how many people you need or want to survey. This entails considering response rates,

Surveys/Questionnaires and Interviews 141 which, for formal surveys, even in the best of circumstances, usually are less than 50% and sometimes even less than 30%. If you are doing a more formal survey and the response rate is a concern, it is advisable to consult a statistician or your survey design expert to get their recommendations for sample size. If your intent is to use your findings in a more descriptive manner, sample size may be much less of a concern. Our student who surveyed consumers about their need for and concerns with online safety information consulted with a company that provides surveying services, and they told her she needed at least 500 responses for statistically significant results. She ended up sending her survey to as many friends, acquaintances, and business associates as she could. She also used professional listservs and, in all of these cases, she asked recipients to forward her survey to others. However, if you are doing a less formal survey, the response rate might be less of a concern. Once you have identified what you want to achieve with your survey/questionnaire and who and how many individuals you want or need to have respond to it, then you can begin the process of constructing it. As you do this, we advise that you give yourself sufficient time to generate the numerous drafts we mentioned previously and to obtain and incorporate feedback on the drafts, ideally from potential respondents. As mentioned in the sample survey/interview checklist from our institution, a pilot test of your survey is highly advisable and may even be a required part of your IRB process. A final concern in planning surveys/questionnaires is length, which is important because it can influence both your response rate and the nature of the responses you obtain. Individuals may decide not to respond if your survey or questionnaire seems too long or if it seems like it’s going to require too much of their time. People are busy, and they appreciate when their time is respected. It usually is a good idea to provide respondents with some indication of the amount of time the survey/questionnaire will take them. Being mindful of that time commitment as you are planning and constructing your survey/questionnaire is important. You certainly might have a valid reason and the right sample for a longer survey or questionnaire; however, keep in mind that surveys that are simpler and quicker to complete may generate better (more thoughtful) responses and a higher response rate. Developing Questions It is likely that you will spend most of your time in developing a survey/questionnaire on writing your questions. They need, first and foremost, to solicit the information you are seeking. In other words, they need to be written so that they end up giving you what you are hoping to get—and not extraneous material. They also need to be constructed so that they are unambiguous and do not end up deceiving respondents. You also want questions that are not biased and that do not lead respondents or evoke unfavorable or negative reactions from them. Additionally, you want questions that provide usable data (e.g., you may want questions that generate responses that are easy to analyze—e.g., statistically or quantitatively; more on this in the next chapter). In more formal surveys, you may also want to include some redundancy in your questions so you can verify or cross-check responses. Most researchers end up spending a good deal of time on developing their questions, realizing, among other things, that how the questions are worded will have a significant impact on the responses they generate. There are numerous ways to write survey questions depending, to a large extent, on the formality of what you are doing. You might have yes/no or true/false questions; multiple choice questions with the option for either a single response or multiple

142  Surveys/Questionnaires and Interviews responses (e.g., lists of items with the stipulation that respondents check all that apply); questions that require a ranking of responses (e.g., from most to least important or most to least frequent); open-ended and/or short-answer questions; and questions that use a Likert scale for the response (e.g., a scale measuring strength of agreement). Most surveys and questionnaires have a combination of question types, and, with the survey development tools we mentioned previously, these varied question types are easy to construct. As an example of a longer, more formal survey with varied question types, see, in Appendix B, the full survey Ann constructed to gauge student perceptions of her university’s writing center. Ann’s experience drafting this survey may be instructive. To start it, she brainstormed, with her writing center colleagues, the kinds of information they might want to know about students’ perceptions of and experiences with the writing center. Using the list of items they generated, Ann, along with one colleague, started to draft survey questions. She then shared these with two additional colleagues who commented on the questions, finding more issues with them than Ann imagined. This led to a meeting at which Ann projected the survey and facilitated a conversation about its purpose, the kinds of information being sought, and how to compose questions that would obtain that information. Careful consideration was given to the wording of questions, the choices offered and how those were worded (they did not want these to be leading or biased in any way), and ultimately the logic of the survey. After numerous drafts, Ann disseminated the survey to some students in order to test it before sending it to the entire campus. This led to further revisions, and, even after finalizing the survey and disseminating it—and analyzing the responses—Ann noted questions and areas that could be improved. Survey construction is a complicated process, and, sometimes, the more drafts you produce, the more difficult it can become to determine what might be most effective or what might confuse respondents. Testing is essential, but remember that it too may fail to reveal every problem with a survey. And, ultimately, the conclusions you are able to draw and the claims you are able to make based on your survey/questionnaire data will depend on the quality and effectiveness of your questions—and the overall reliability of the responses.

Prompt 5.4:  Constructing Questions Begin constructing some questions for a survey/questionnaire you might want to use in your research. • •

Identify your audience and purpose. Decide what kind of questionnaire would best fit your audience and purpose (where on the continuum it sits). • Decide what kinds of question you want to use (open-ended, closed, multiple choice, etc.). • Write your draft survey. • Ask a classmate or other peer to review and comment on it. • Finally, if you are able, ask someone who is similar to your prospective respondents to respond to the survey.

Surveys/Questionnaires and Interviews 143 Disseminating a Survey/Questionnaire While you are constructing your survey/questionnaire, you also need to develop plans for disseminating it. Most likely, you will use a tool such as Google Forms or SurveyMonkey and send out a link or email invitation to complete your survey. (Because many of our students who are also K-12 teachers have access to Google products, Google Forms are particularly appealing to them and are often used even for informal, in-class questionnaires.) These tools not only can be customized easily to generate the kinds of questions you wish to ask, they also are easy for respondents to complete. Additionally, they provide tools for initial data analysis by allowing responses to be downloaded into spreadsheets, by listing the responses to short-answer questions, and by creating graphs and pie charts—and generating statistics—for more numerical questions. Although much less common, a paper survey may still be useful in some ­situations— for example, in the case of informal, in-the-moment opportunities for questionnaires that arise more spontaneously. For example, if you are a teacher asking students to complete an exit slip about their learning in class that day, a paper and pencil model might make more sense. If you are working with a population for whom online responses add a layer of difficulty (because of age constraints, lack of access to technology, etc.), you might also consider using paper versions. One note: With either online or paper surveys, how you communicate with respondents can make a significant difference in how successful the survey/questionnaire is. Usually, it’s a good idea to let respondents know the reason for the survey and what to expect. For example, with online surveys, respondents may not be able to tell what the survey entails. Therefore, you should provide sufficient navigational cues so that respondents know where they are at any given point in the survey and even how much of it they have left to complete. You might also want to provide opportunities for respondents to backtrack in the survey. Essentially, you want to design a survey/ questionnaire that your respondents can complete with ease. Again, we cannot stress enough the importance of involving others as you engage in the process of constructing a survey or questionnaire, whether it’s paper, electronic, formal, or informal. Get their advice, feedback, ideas, and so on. Doing so could make a significant difference to your ultimate success. (See Figures 5.1 and 5.2 for Natasha’s formal survey prepared in Google Forms and for a few sample pages of the initial analysis that was generated by the Form.) Motivating Respondents A final consideration in constructing a survey or questionnaire is how to motivate your respondents to complete it. It may be that your respondents are motivated to complete it because of their own interest in it—or in your topic. Ann, for example, once responded to an employee wellness survey because of her interest in health and wellness, and Cathy responded to a survey addressing air quality in the building in which her office is located also because of her interest in the topic. What’s more challenging is motivating respondents who may not be naturally interested. One way to do this is to make sure the purpose of the survey is clear: Let your respondents know how their participation will help answer particular questions, how long it will take them to complete the survey, how they can learn about the results of your research, and even what might be the broader implications of your research and/or whom it might impact.

Figure 5.1  Natasha’s Google Forms Survey

Figure 5.2  Natasha’s Google Forms Survey Analysis

146  Surveys/Questionnaires and Interviews How Researcher Stance and Positionality May Influence Surveys/ Questionnaires Your personal stance and positionality will influence surveys and questionnaires in much the same manner that they influence the other tools you may use in your research. They may influence the individuals you select to survey, how you carry out sampling (if you do sampling), the questions you ask, and how you ask them, as well as what you do with and how you interpret the responses you receive. Your stance and positionality may also be factors in whether you even choose to use a survey or questionnaire, the kind of survey/questionnaire you select, and what role you assign this tool in your research. Depending on your stance, you might be more interested in open-ended responses from your participants than in quantifiable ones. You might favor the more descriptive quality of such responses—and the nuances they capture. Your positionality may become a factor in relation to writing questions that are unambiguous and that do not lead your respondents. Your questions will likely reflect your positionality in some manner; however, you may want to be mindful of potential bias, especially if such bias could skew your findings. We recommend being mindful when developing survey questions along with testing drafts of your survey/questionnaire and asking others for feedback before disseminating it. Again, stance and positionality will influence any methodological tool you use. They will influence both your selection and use of the tools, along with the results they end up yielding and what you do with those results. That is why it is important to always be mindful of your positionality and the potential biases that might result from it. As white, heterosexual women whose pronouns are she and who are tenured, full professors, for example, we might develop a much different survey about gender equality in higher education than our black, LBGTQ-identified, non-tenured colleague whose pronoun is they. What most of us need to do is develop ways to distance ourselves periodically from our research so we can examine how our positionality might be influencing us. That may not change what we’re doing, but it may (and ideally will) have an impact on how we eventually talk about it. By its very nature, research is a theorized practice. It is a practice, therefore, that requires continual self-awareness (and assessment) and constant reflection. Metacognition is an essential habit of mind for qualitative researchers. Using Surveys/Questionnaires Ethically If your stance and positionality go entirely unacknowledged, you might end up using a survey/questionnaire more for your own purposes than as an instrument designed to solicit honest responses from participants on issues related to your research. As with any of the research tools, surveys/questionnaires carry an obligation to be honest and forthcoming with participants. That may entail simply telling them the purpose of the instrument, why you are using it, and what you intend to do with the results. Participants have a right to this information, and a right, as well, to decide whether or not to complete the survey. Ethics also come into play in relation to what you do with the information you obtain from surveys/questionnaires. For example, in reporting results, it is important to be truthful about the sample, its size, and your response rate. If you administered an informal questionnaire with a small number of respondents, you would report

Surveys/Questionnaires and Interviews 147 the results very differently than if you administered a formal survey to a large group. Reporting any aspect of what you do in a less than accurate manner can seriously compromise the integrity of your findings—and your own integrity as a researcher. You should not claim significance, for example, if you have not achieved it. You should always, when called for, qualify your claims and report the limitations of your data. It also is important not to manipulate your data—for example, to achieve a purpose you have for your research. If some questions you pose end up being ambiguous, you should take care in how you interpret, tabulate, and report those. For example, in a survey Ann once did, she failed to explain all of the options for responding and, therefore, ended up with too many different responses. As a result, she ended up coding those responses based simply on whether or not respondents had marked any of the options (if they had, she coded it as 1 or yes; if they had not, she coded it as 0 or no). By doing this, she salvaged the question, but its value for her research was diminished. There may also be times when you need to eliminate a question because it does not yield useful or reliable information. These, ultimately, are judgments you, as the researcher, need to make when you see your results.

Interviews As a qualitative researcher, you will probably carry out at least some interviews during your research; for some of you, interviews will end up being a primary methodological tool in your qualitative research. Whom you interview, what you ask them, and how often you interview them will depend on your research question and on your goals for your research. These decisions may also depend on where you are in the research process and how much time you and your interviewees have for the interview. So, although there is no single, correct way to carry out an interview, there are a number of considerations when doing interviews that can make them more effective. Deciding When and Why to Do an Interview Like surveys/questionnaires, interviews take many forms (from spontaneous to semistructured to formal) and can be used for many purposes (to learn about an issue, event, or individual’s life story). Their purposes may also vary depending on when they are done during the research process. For example, as we discussed in Chapter 2, you might carry out interviews early in your research to obtain preliminary information to help you focus your interests. If you were interested in learning about the revision habits of students in an introductory college composition course, for example, early fact-finding interviews with students could provide important background information for your research. Interviews at this stage of your research can provide you with information about your topic and can give you a sense of the different perspectives that exist on it. In qualitative research, you may use interviews as either a primary or a secondary tool for collecting information. Interviews can provide key information about the issues you are researching or about the themes that end up emerging in your research. Natasha, for example, used interviews to learn more about how the students she taught in her summer program made the transition to college writing in the fall semester. Interviews can also shed light on situations and events, and on people’s experiences

148  Surveys/Questionnaires and Interviews and actions in relation to or in response to those events. As another example, when Ann worked with the three physicists, she interviewed each of them almost weekly to explore why they interacted in the ways they did during meetings in which they reviewed a paper they were writing. Like Ann, you might have participants whom you interview regularly (even on a set schedule) throughout the duration of your research, and/or you might have individuals whom you interview just once or a few times. In her research, Ann also had special experts whom she interviewed periodically (e.g., generally every several weeks) to help clarify the technical aspects of what she was observing in her research. Depending on the type of study you are doing, you might also interview participants to obtain their personal stories. Many researchers carry out interviews to construct oral or life histories (see, e.g., Gluck & Patai, 1991). These interviews explore an individual’s life experiences, usually within a specific culture or place, or under specific circumstances. Deborah Brandt (1994, 1995, 2001, 2014), for example, has spent years interviewing people from different socioeconomic and educational backgrounds to learn about their life experiences with reading and writing. As she explained in a 2018 interview: For this project I interviewed 60 people in the private and public sectors about their routine work writing. These individuals came from health care, law and law enforcement, farming, finance, social service, information technology, business, the military, the ministry, and other spheres. It was not uncommon for them to spend four or five or six or more hours of their working day in the posture of the writer—whether creating or synthesizing knowledge and information, or monitoring, revising, or responding to the writing of others. (Plante, 2018) You may also use interviews toward the end of your research to extend or round out your understanding of an issue. For example, as Natasha studied how the habits of mind from the Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing impacted students (in part through the surveys she conducted), she relied on interviews to gain “nuance.” As she explains, the interviews were really where students shared their stories, shared nuanced insight into how the process worked for them. I think the interviews were probably most helpful for me, as most of the data that I actually cite in my final project came from the interviews. Understanding and Deciding How to Conduct an Interview Once you’ve made the decision to use interviews, you need to consider how to carry them out. Because different kinds of interviews require slightly different approaches, and may result in different kinds of data, you should think about which approach you might want to take. For example, interviews can be spontaneous, informal, formal, or even a mix of formal and informal. Which you choose will depend on several factors: • • •

Your research question and the goals of your research The research stage you are in The other research tools you are using

Surveys/Questionnaires and Interviews 149 • What you hope to accomplish and learn with your interviews, or the role the interviews will play in your research • The nature of your research project (whether it’s a long-term study, a shortterm one, one that involves many participants, or one that only involves a few participants) • Your interviewees (who they are, what their positions or roles are, how they are positioned in relation to you) • Even yourself (your role, your positionality as a person and researcher, your relationship with your interviewees, your persona as an interviewer) Spontaneous Interviews If you are a participant observer, or if you are doing a study that entails spending a good deal of time in a setting, you may end up interviewing participants spontaneously. Spontaneous interviews occur at just about any point in time and are a lot like everyday conversation. They are essentially ad hoc interactions with your participants, usually in response to, or just after, certain events or observations. For example, you might observe a student in a classroom during writing workshop time using colored markers on her paper, something you note in your observation log. A quick conversation with her about how and why she uses markers as a revision strategy could give you great insight into your research question. Lisa has used spontaneous interviews quite often: leaning in to informally talk with students one-on-one during or after class to ask a question about their progress, understanding, or challenges and then writing down the students’ responses later in the day. These spontaneous moments can be great opportunities for discovering new information, especially because participants are likely to be relaxed during these kinds of interactions and because the context for the discussion is immediate. Although you can’t prepare for these interactions in the same manner you would for a more formal interview (e.g., with thoughtfully prepared questions—although you may pose the same kinds of questions with each interaction), you can look for opportunities for them and be prepared to take advantage of those opportunities when they arise. If your research setting is conducive to these sorts of interactions, we suggest that you keep a notebook or some kind of digital recorder with you at all times so you can be ready when they do occur. Semi-Structured Interviews Semi-structured interviews share some features with spontaneous interviews but usually have more structure. These are interviews you plan, but that are still flexible, especially in regard to the questions you ask and how you structure and direct the interview. Usually, you write out questions in advance for these interviews, but you do so knowing that you will work through the questions loosely or that you may even end up departing from them. You might also just write down topics as starting points for discussions. The main advantage of semi-structured interviews is their flexibility: You can easily go off in unplanned directions in order to pursue lines of thought that intrigue you. This flexibility, however, demands that you listen well to the person you are interviewing and follow up on what you hear. Kathryn Anderson and Dana Jack (1991) offer a good example of the potential of this kind of interview in “Learning to Listen: Interview Techniques and Analyses.” These authors’ own experiences with

150  Surveys/Questionnaires and Interviews interviewing show the risks researchers take when they do not listen well to or follow up on their participants’ comments. Their own failures to pursue potentially productive lines of discussion with their participants illustrate how a researcher’s preconceived notions (the researcher’s stance and positionality) or compulsion to stick to a script (e.g., a structured list of questions) can severely limit interviews. Because of their flexibility, semi-structured interviews are probably the most common types of interviews qualitative researchers use. Natasha used this type of interview with her research participants, at-risk students who had completed her summer class and were now finishing up their first semester of college and completing their First-Year Writing (FYW) course (see Sidebar 5.6).

Sidebar 5.6:  Natasha’s Semi-Structured Follow-Up Interview Questions To Learn More about Students’ Thoughts at the End of the Collegiate Literacy Seminar •

When you finished the end of the summer seminar, what were you anticipating “success” looking like in your first writing class? •

•

What did you anticipate needing to do in order to achieve success in your first writing class?

In your final portfolio, you wrote that you felt ______ about going into FYW. Can you tell me more about this?

To Learn More about Students’ Thoughts/Experiences Transitioning into/through FYW •

In what ways have your writing beliefs and practices developed this past semester? • •

•

Do you feel like you’ve taken responsibility for your learning and development as a writer this semester? •

•

Did you notice new writing habits/patterns as a result of developing the SLP during the summer? What practices do you find especially helpful and/or unhelpful for your success as a writer and learner?

How? Can you show me an example of this in a piece of your writing?

How has the SLP you created in the summer influenced your writing throughout the semester? Did the SLP change at all throughout the semester? ­(reference survey)

Surveys/Questionnaires and Interviews 151 •

In your final portfolio for the summer, you talked about the importance of _____ Habit of Mind. How has your relationship with that HoM developed throughout the semester? Can you share an example?

To Learn More about Students’ Thoughts Post-First Semester of College •

After finishing your first semester of college, and specifically, college writing, how would you define “success” in relation to writing? • •

Which competencies do you think are most important for success as a college writer? If you had to create a new SLP based on where you at now, what would it look like?

As you can see in the sidebar, Natasha began these interviews with a list of loosely structured questions that she used to guide and prompt her, and she connected these questions to what she wanted to learn. (Later in this chapter we share a transcript of one of her interviews in which you can see where she remains consistent with the question and where she veers off, based on her participants’ responses.) Formal Interviews As a qualitative researcher, you may also decide to carry out more formal interviews. With formal interviews, you develop a list of well-articulated questions usually arranged in some sequence, and you stick to those questions throughout the interview. Although choosing this approach depends on your purposes and goals for your research, conducting formal interviews offers one way of maintaining consistency across your interviews. In some cases, it may be important that you ask all your participants the same questions in exactly the same manner and order. Doing this can also make your findings more consistent, because you can be sure to ask each person the same question. And doing this with multiple participants can make it easier to quantify your findings, which you may also find desirable in some circumstances. And we certainly understand if you are thinking, “Wait, I am carrying out a qualitative study; why do I need to count or quantify my findings?” Although that’s a legitimate question, we also wish to note that it often is useful in qualitative research to count findings (e.g., the number of times a term is used, the number of times a particular reference is made, etc.). When you do things in a systematic and uniform manner, this is easier to do. You can then say, “In response to this question, X number of participants said Y this number of times.” You can also use formal interviews to interview several people at the same time. You might do this because you are interested in discovering how a group of people feel about a particular topic, or because you believe the group dynamic will provide useful information for your research. Of course, there are downsides to such interviews,

152  Surveys/Questionnaires and Interviews with one of these being the potential for certain individuals to dominate. Another is the potential for group speak, or people expressing opinions that they believe to be popular with the group. Generally, however, if facilitated well, group interviews can offer a useful way to obtain multiple perspectives simultaneously. One common type of group interview is a focus group. In these, you gather a group of individuals around a common issue or topic, and the group discusses that issue or topic. As with interviews, these can be conducted in a more or less formal manner depending on the purposes of the researcher, the nature of the discussion, the participants, and so forth. Many of our own students have relied on focus groups for their research. For example, our student who was interested in safety information on the web planned to follow up her survey with focus groups. She asked for volunteers at the end of the survey and then followed up and contacted those volunteers to develop the groups. In these groups, she asked additional questions about the safety information on the web and about participants’ preferences for both what and how that information is presented. Another student used focus groups with employees at his company to delve more deeply into the patterns he was seeing in their initial survey responses. He was interested in the employees’ responses to the various change communication strategies the company was using. In-Depth Phenomenological Interviews A final kind of interviewing we see as being useful for writing researchers comes from Irving Seidman’s Interviewing as Qualitative Research (1998). Seidman defines “indepth, phenomenological interviewing” as an approach to interviewing designed “to have the participant reconstruct his or her experience with the topic under study” (p. 9). His detailed and fairly specific approach is based on a three-interview series with a single person. The first interview is a focused life history in which the interviewer asks the interviewee questions designed to put the person’s experience in context (asking “how?” instead of “why?”). In the second interview, the interviewer asks the interviewee to reconstruct her experience on the topic under study in concrete and detailed fashion. In the third interview, the interviewer asks the interviewee to reflect on the meaning of the experience. Next, Seidman lays out a step-by-step approach for analyzing the interview series that entails creating two kinds of products: individual profiles of those interviewed and a thematic study of the interviews. He calls this approach shaping “the material into a form in which it can be shared or displayed” (p. 101). He asks the researcher, first, to read and mark the transcript with labels, focusing on those passages that seem interesting. Next, he suggests making two copies of the marked text. Then, he tells the researcher to literally cut up one of the marked copies, either with scissors or on the computer, and to file the pieces into folders (either in manila folders or in folders on the computer) according to the labels that the researcher has devised. These folders are to be used later for the thematic study of the interviews. The fourth step entails taking the other copy of the transcript, selecting all the marked passages, and putting them together into a single transcript. The goal of this step is to reduce the length of the original transcripts by a third to a half. Next, he suggests that the researcher read the transcripts again and underline the most compelling passages. At this point, the researcher can craft a narrative based on the passages, using the first-person voice of the interviewee. Another kind of product he encourages

Surveys/Questionnaires and Interviews 153 is a thematic analysis of the interviews, which can be used to enhance the profiles (see the section on thematic analysis in Chapter 6). According to Seidman, what is valuable about this approach is the dialectical relationship the researcher establishes with the material provided by the interviewee. One student with whom we worked liked this approach for two reasons: It forced her to really focus in depth on the words of the young woman she interviewed, and it allowed her to preserve the young woman’s voice, something we say more about in Chapter 7. Interviews as Protocol Analysis Many of our master’s students use yet another kind of interview—one that relies on interviewing participants about a piece of their writing after they have written it. Often referred to as protocol analysis, this kind of research values not only the piece of writing, but also the process of composition and the writer’s responses to the process as important sources of information. One of our students, Kristin Smith, described this kind of interview in her proposal for her MA project about students’ use of evidence in argumentative writing, using an approach from the National Writing Project known as C3WP (College, Career, and Community Writers Program): A protocol in writing studies is defined “as a description of the activities, ordered in time, that a subject engages in while performing a task” (Auten 49), and a protocol analysis is “an attempt to describe the cognitive processes that a subject uses to perform a task based on an interpretation of the subject’s self report” (49). A protocol can involve either introspection during a task or retrospection after the task, and it can be structured or unstructured (50). In a protocol analysis after a writing task, a student is asked to describe what they were thinking and doing while writing, and the researcher is able to gain insight into a student’s cognitive processes and perceptions as they relate to the writing task. I plan to structure my protocol analysis in the form of an interview about a piece that the students will write as part of one of the C3WP mini units, and I will ask questions about their writing processes in general as well as about their use of evidence from sources in particular. Preparing for and Carrying out an Interview We have both used interviews extensively in our qualitative research projects—­ sometimes successfully and sometimes less successfully. We have also experienced being interviewed by others, some of whom were well prepared, and some who were not. What we have learned from all of our experiences is this: Although interviews may seem to be a fairly easy and accessible research tool, they—like all research tools— require a thoughtful approach and good preparation. In the section that follows, we suggest some ideas that will help you prepare for and then carry out your interviews. Deciding Who to Interview The first decision you have to make in this process is who to interview. One of the obvious considerations is who might be poised to share information that will help

154  Surveys/Questionnaires and Interviews you learn more about your research question: It might be someone you work with, someone you teach, or someone who is external to the project but who has expertise surrounding it. Although your choice carries certain ethical considerations (which we delve into at the end of this chapter), we want to stress a few factors here: •

Don’t try to interview too many people. Although many of our students begin by thinking they’ll interview 10–15 people, the reality of how much preparation and how much time it takes to interview that many soon sets in. It’s better to have fewer interviews, but really strong ones—interviews that you take the time to prepare for and that you have time to transcribe. • Choose your interviewees wisely. Try to get some diversity in whom you choose, especially as it relates to your question. That might mean diversity in gender, socioeconomics, age, race, and so on—again, depending on your question. Most importantly, try to choose interviewees who will demonstrate different points of view. Natasha, for example, said, “My first instinct was to choose students who I thought would say the things I thought were the answer,” who would “prove” that her way of teaching led to success for all. However, once she realized that limiting her interviews to those students would skew her data, she decided to interview both those students who demonstrated success in their first-year writing class as well as those who struggled. Doing Your Homework An important task in preparing for an interview is doing your homework. This might entail reading something written by or about the person your plan to interview, and/ or doing research on the topic for the interview, something you should do whether you are carrying out formal or even less formal (e.g., semi-structured) interviews. You may also want to conduct some general background research (e.g., find out about the person’s education, work, personality, achievements, and interests). Some useful resources for this background work are company publications, books, blogs, social media sites such as LinkedIn, other online publications or sites, and newspapers. These days, almost everyone has at least a social media site, and you can often find additional information by simply doing a Google search of an individual. Even with spontaneous interviews, some preparation still is important. Continually reviewing the information and data you have already—and knowing as much as you can about your participants—can help you make the most of your interviews, whether they are formal, informal, or spontaneous. This sort of background work initially requires you to invest some time, but ultimately it saves time: You won’t need to ask about those things you’ve already learned through your research and preparation. Because time is usually limited during interviews, it is worth preparing. Advance preparation is also a way to show respect for and build rapport with the person you are interviewing. Demonstrating that you know something about the individual can make a strong first impression on them; it can also help with breaking the ice, putting both of you at ease. Additionally, this kind of preparation can fill in gaps during the interview and can lead to a more productive exchange. Your knowledge can also help you ask better questions. As examples of the importance of preparation, we each share one of our own experiences in Sidebar 5.7 at the end of this section.

Surveys/Questionnaires and Interviews 155

Prompt 5.5:  Evaluating Interviews Listen to and/or watch three different interviewers at work. We suggest that you select three different kinds of interviewer: for example, a shock-talk host, a more mainstream popular interviewer, and a more “serious” or specialized interviewer. You might also select any of the hosts of the network or cable news programs. When you watch these interviewers, look beyond the obvious differences in the content of the interviews and the characteristics of the interviewees and ask these questions: • What kinds of questions do they ask? • How did they prepare for the interview (e.g., what have they read or what do they seem to know already)? • What kind of presence or persona do they have as interviewers? How do they conduct and carry themselves? How do they act? How does their ethos come across? • How do the interviewers interact with and draw out their interviewees? • What qualities strike you about the interviewers? • Which interviewer do you like the best, and for what reasons?

Sidebar 5.7:  Preparing for Interviews Ann: When I did my research with the group of physicists, I initially looked at their publications in two related journals: Physical Review and Physical Review Letters. I wanted to see how each of these journals functioned in the field, and how authors wrote articles for them (one is a rapid dissemination letters journal and the other a more traditional scientific journal that publishes research articles). As I carried out this research, an opportunity arose for me to interview the just-retired editor-in-chief of these journals, which were both published by the American Physical Society. To prepare for this interview, I read biographical information about this individual, and I also reviewed his publications. I talked to other physicists who knew him, and I did some background research on the journals and on the American Physical Society. These were pre-Internet days, so I spent a good deal of time in the library, and I also joined and then had information mailed to me by the APS. By the time I carried out my interview, I knew a substantial amount about the person I was interviewing, and I was familiar with both the APS and the two journals. I asked questions that built on my knowledge and that elicited unique information from my interviewee, information that wasn’t readily available in other sources. My interview lasted 2 hours (I had planned for an hour, but he graciously offered me additional time because he enjoyed the exchange), and it yielded many valuable insights (e.g., on how these

156  Surveys/Questionnaires and Interviews publications were functioning in the field and on how they would likely change). Our time together was productive for both of us, which I attribute in large part to the preparation I did. Cathy: When I started my study of community organizing, looking at its connections to getting out the word on teachers’ work, I had to enter into fields of study about which I knew very little. My goal was to learn about community organizing from those who engaged in this activity in various disciplines. Thus, I realized that I needed to know something about public health, environmental activism, and progressive political science. And while I knew something about many of these fields—enough to have a dinner table conversation with someone about their work—I also knew I didn’t know enough to make my 1- to 2-hour interviews with the various community organizers valuable. I approached this lack of knowledge in two ways. First, I did a lot of reading on my own, selecting books whose titles seemed right and whose authors were somewhat familiar. I also asked some of my interviewees, prior to our interviews, to recommend a book or article that might be useful for me to read before we got together. I found this second strategy to be very helpful. The interviewees and I could then begin the interviews with some common language; additionally, the interviewees seemed to appreciate my seriousness of purpose.

Prompt 5.6:  Doing Your Homework As you think about whom you might interview, consider, what kinds of background work could you do to prepare for that interview? What might you read in preparation? Who else might you talk to? Develop a plan for preparing for your interviews.

The information you obtain about the person you are interviewing will become part of the larger context for your interview. That context also includes the topic of your research, your research question, the purpose of your research, your participants, and the subject of the interview. This context will also inevitably affect the questions you ask. Developing Your Interview Questions Developing questions is another important task in preparing for interviews. Because certain kinds of questions will elicit more and better information than others, you will want to devote sufficient time to this task as well. The best questions are those that get your participants talking, revealing information that has not been revealed by any other source, or that, as Natasha says, gets at the “nuances” underlying an issue. Problematic questions are those that lead either to perfunctory responses or to responses that simply state what you as the researcher are looking for. The kinds of questions you write are

Surveys/Questionnaires and Interviews 157 key: Your goal should be to write questions that will encourage honest, thoughtful, and full responses from the individuals you interview, responses that will address the question(s) you’ve posed and extend your understanding of your research topic.

Prompt 5.7:  Writing Interview Questions Keeping in mind your research question and the person you plan to interview, brainstorm an initial list of possible interview questions. Share with your class the questions you’ve developed and consider together—and make a list of— characteristics of good interview questions.

In generating and discussing characteristics of good interview questions, you might have identified some of the following: • They are open (requiring more than a yes/no response, and/or not suggesting a particular response). • They are clear and uncomplicated (meaning, among other things, that you do not have multiple questions or potential meanings embedded into a single question). (We have found the embedding of multiple questions into a single question to be a common challenge for new researchers.) • They are focused (e.g., on the purposes of your inquiry and the subject of the interview). When you write questions, you may also want to consider how you sequence them. For example, it is common to ask more foundational and general questions first, because these kinds of questions reassure interviewees and put them at ease. They also establish a common ground. Your later questions can then be more specific and more focused on what you hope to learn from the interview. Setting up the Interview In addition to doing your homework and developing your questions, you also need to figure how when and where to conduct the interview, especially if it is a semistructured or formal interview. Think about: • • • •

When you will conduct the interview (what day of the week and time of day) How long it might last (or how long you or your interviewee will have for it) Where you will conduct it Whether you will interview the person just once and/or whether you might have access to them after the interview

Although seemingly basic, all of these are things that can be easily overlooked or taken for granted. First, timing is significant in interviews because it can influence a person’s responses (e.g., Friday afternoons, or even the end of a work day, probably are not good times

158  Surveys/Questionnaires and Interviews for doing interviews). Location is also important. Will the interview be on your turf or theirs? Or, will it be at some neutral location? For example, people usually feel more comfortable in their own space, and there may also be good reasons for using that space (e.g., if you are doing a life history, or if what you are interviewing the person about is closely tied to what they do and where they do it). The interviewee’s own space, however, can also have drawbacks (e.g., there may be too many distractions). Your space can have similar problems. And, if you choose a neutral setting, which may be best, then you should choose a setting that will be quiet and private enough for an interview. It is difficult, for example, to carry out an interview in a crowded coffee shop or restaurant. These settings may seem appealing at first because of their neutrality, but they are usually too noisy or have too many distractions. You should also consider how long you will need for the interview and make sure the amount of time you allocate is acceptable to your interviewee. Generally, we suggest that interviews last no more than an hour, although some types of interviews (e.g., life histories) need to be longer. If you are respectful of your interviewee’s time, they may offer you more of it; however, you should never count on that. In other words, always plan for the time your interviewee agrees to. If you are new to interviewing, and lack experience with this, prioritize your questions so that you at least will have covered the important ones if you do run out of time. You can also sometimes ask interviewees for follow-up sessions and hope they will agree to them. Conducting and Transcribing the Interview What all of the planning you do for interviews really boils down to is making your interviews worthwhile and productive, both for you and for the people you interview. But there are some additional considerations. For example, we encourage you to think of interviewing as an interaction, with both parties needing to be attentive and responsive. As the interviewer, generally you will set the tone for the interaction. Therefore, you should listen carefully so that you hear and understand everything your interviewee is saying. It’s important to avoid thinking ahead to the next question or getting distracted by your own thoughts or concerns. It is easy, for example, to begin thinking about what you might say next or even what they might say next, thus missing what they are saying in the moment. As Anderson and Jack (1991) learned, you also need to guard against saying something too quickly and not giving participants the opportunity to complete their response. And, importantly, you need to be mindful of filtering what you hear through your own lenses. Sometimes it’s the interviewees, not the interviewer, who do not hold up their end of the interaction. They may be uninterested, reticent, or even overly eager. As an interviewer, you have to be aware of and responsive to your interviewees’ verbal responses as well as to their nonverbal cues, including body language. You need to respond, adapt, and make decisions throughout the interviewing process, which sometimes will require you to stray from your original questions in order to keep the conversation alive and focused. For example, if the person says something interesting but not directly related to your research, do you follow up on it or gloss over it? What you do in these situations will depend on a number of factors, including your role and stance as an interviewer and the information you hope to obtain. You should ask yourself these questions: What might I learn if I let the interviewee go in a different direction? Would that knowledge be useful? If I need to get the person back on track, what are the best ways to do that? Thinking about possible interview dilemmas in advance

Surveys/Questionnaires and Interviews 159 can be helpful, but you also need to reflect constantly on your own approach to your interviews. Remember, you have a great deal of control over your interviews; however, you also do not want to exert so much control that you limit them.

Prompt 5.8:  Reflecting on What Makes Interviews Effective Think again about the interviews you observed. What did you like best about them, and why? What did the interviewers do that seemed effective? What did they do that seemed ineffective? How would you characterize the personal styles of each of the interviewers? What were some of their positive and negative attributes?

Finally, you also need to make decisions prior to your interviews about how you will take notes—whether you will take notes during the interviews, record them, or both. Although recordings may provide the most accurate record of what was said, the technology involved is not always reliable. We have tended to do both: recording but also taking notes. We also recommend reviewing your notes and/or transcribing your recordings as soon as possible after the interview. Doing so allows you to draw on your memory of what was said, especially if there are any gaps in your notes or places in your recordings that are not audible. We realize that transcription can seem like an onerous and time-consuming task. We also realize that researchers, with all they have to do, may be tempted to skip this stage altogether, relying instead on just listening to the recorded interview. In our experience, and that of our students, foregoing the transcription stage is a mistake. The nuances and connections that become clear in reading the transcription of an interview are extremely valuable. These nuances and connections truly cannot be matched by listening to just portions of recorded responses. Note what Natasha says in Sidebar 5.8.

Sidebar 5.8:  Natasha on Transcribing versus Listening I think [the difference between transcribing and listening] has to do with level of detail. When I was conducting the interview, I wasn’t thinking that much about trends or themes I was noticing. I was just trying to focus and stay on time and all that stuff. When I went back and listened to it, I was starting to see a big picture thing. But when I looked at the transcription, that’s when I was picking up nuanced language choices. One student, for example, had described his writing process, using specific language, and I was like, “Oh, I don’t remember hearing that in the interview,” but seeing the individual words on the page really drew my attention to how students were talking about their experience. Their language choice tells you a lot about how students felt about an experience. So, the transcription really helped bring that out.

160  Surveys/Questionnaires and Interviews You also have several options when you transcribe. One is to transcribe everything that was said so you have a verbatim record of it, and another is to transcribe only selectively. If you do the latter, you can transcribe those parts that seem most relevant while simply marking other places, summarizing what those sections address. This approach is especially useful if you don’t need a complete record of your interviews, and/or if other constraints (such as time) prevent you from transcribing everything. Natasha, for example, transcribed parts of her interviews, noting the timestamp for each section so that she could go back and relisten if she wanted to transcribe more information. Notice in Sidebar 5.9 how she transcribed some parts word for word and others just in part. And, as you look through the transcript, you might also compare it with her original questions shown earlier in this chapter, noting how she followed up on ideas raised by her research participant as a way of learning even more.

Sidebar 5.9:  Excerpt from One of Natasha’s Transcribed Interviews (Natasha in bold) 18.12: How were you thinking of success at the end of the summer? Success is working hard and not quitting. When it gets tough—I got tired. I can’t do this, but I stuck through it. I worked also, weight onto my schedule. Had to persevere. I got through that. A lot of people were quitting. 18.13. Many students will say A, but for me, keep trying and not to give up. In your reflection letter—responsibility, in the past I would have stopped, but I took responsibility. Sounds like that followed you into this semester. Took 121, skipped the first one (120). When teacher said 10 pg paper, once you get to writing, it becomes 10 pages. ... 18.14. If you don’t think about the page number, that’s what makes it easier. 18.14.15. In final portfolio, I felt I was on the right track. Can you talk about that transition into FYW—HS writing is different from college writing. It depends on the teacher and the class you take. I got to choose my topic; I had to search and found a topic. I think that was better. I know when there is a topic/isn’t a topic—for the future. 18.15.36. In HS, didn’t know citations; learned in WRTG 121. Write, but not plagiarize. 18.16. In what ways have your writing beliefs/practices developed throughout semester, other than citations? Transitioning w/in paper. At first, I didn’t know how to switch b/w topics. Didn’t want to use “next I’ll be talking about.” Habit of not doing that. That made my writing better. My teacher said she could tell I wasn’t confident, but you did really good, just need to work on citations (keep practicing).

Surveys/Questionnaires and Interviews 161 18.17. I only had a month to write my 10 page paper. Wasn’t enough practice, but for a first try, that was pretty good. 18.17.30. made progress, but need to keep working on. My research—how do we help students take responsibility for their writing. Did you take responsibility? At the beginning, I didn’t at first b/c I was new to college writing. You have different expectations and papers, but then I got into the class, I learned more, expectations became different. 18.18.36. UR helped, explained different concepts that I could use in my paper. Good, so you learned things. Did you find that you were applying more things that maybe you wouldn’t have applied before? Yeah, I definitely applied more with that. That really helped me. Cause I didn’t expect the teacher to give us that type of book . . . . I didn’t expect the book to be comic. I thought it was just going to be a writing book, and you have to look and find things on your own, but it really wasn’t like that. Okay, good. Umm. yeah, I like that textbook too. I like assigning stuff from it. So, part of the responsibility came from reading and like, applying the things. Was there ever a point in the semester, ’cause you mentioned at the beginning you weren’t sure you were taking responsibility, but then at some point, there was a switch. Umm. can you talk a little bit about what What did that switch look like? Was it like a mental moment of oh like, I’m not doing as well as I should be, or I could be. Like, what made the switch? Well, the switch was . . . In the beginning, we had, like, simple assignments like talking about the basics: citations, transitions, wording things like, the basics of applying to the paper. But then we had one big project, and I felt like—at the beginning—this is simple. I can do that. But then when I got deeper in, I was like, this is it. Like, I have to do good, and it clicked: I have to apply all these things to my paper. Given a month. Given a week to do it; most of the month we were discussing what to do/not to do. 18.20.37. I have enough time to do it, but then you’re hit w/ paper is due in a week. Teacher didn’t want to hold our hands. Checked our topics. Write our papers ourselves, she wasn’t editing it. 18.21. Newer process. In HS, I would write, but not edit it. I never went over my writing. Now, I really taught myself—like, let me double check. Then I realized: This [is] spelled wrong, this is wrong. So, I’m glad I did that. Okay, so you said that you formed the habit or pattern. Is that something, like, you could ever revert back to—and, granted, sometimes time is like, we run out of it—we have to miss that last edit. Umm, but is that—the editing and revision something that you want to take forward with you and like, continue to practice? Yeah, I want to continue practicing that ’cause I don’t wanna make any mistakes in the future. Because I realized, okay, that was the easier class, and it’s like, the more I get into my major, the harder the classes will be. So I don’t

162  Surveys/Questionnaires and Interviews wanna, you know, at first take two steps forward and then end up takin’ five of ’em back. So, I’d rather continue on the path I’m goin’. Harder classes—need to do revisions. 18.24.40. You talked about transitions and organizations, and you say those are the two things that really improved. Yeah, I did.

As you review and transcribe your interviews, you should also make note of what you observed during them (e.g., the body language you observed, facial expressions, confidence, uncertainty). Specifically, if you wrote down notes to yourself during the interview, elaborate them before you forget what you meant. (At this time, you may wish to review the different note taking strategies and types of research notebooks that were described in the previous chapter and think about the tools you might use for these purposes.)

Prompt 5.9:  Carrying out and Transcribing an Interview Arrange and carry out an interview, ideally connected to your research interests. Transcribe either a portion or all of it and review the transcription. What do you notice in reading the transcribed text that you think you might have missed in the actual interview? Share with your classmates your experiences transcribing the interview and reviewing the transcription.

Stance and Positionality in Interviewing How you are situated, who you are, and how you view things certainly will influence the ways in which you approach and carry out interviews. If you are a male of color who participated in a pre-college program and then later was teaching in such a program, you would likely either ask different questions or focus on different aspects of the students’ responses to the questions Natasha asked. You might also decide to interview only other males of color who were participants in the program. A lot would depend on the purpose of your research and what you hoped to learn from it; what your research question was. Stance and positionality, therefore, can lead you to make certain decisions over others in planning and carrying out your interviews. They also, obviously, can influence what you see and hear during the interviews, how you ask your questions, and. ultimately, how you interpret and make meaning of your findings. Personal stance and positionality may influence the entire tone of an interview. Certain theoretical perspectives, such as feminism and social constructionism, as examples, encourage viewing participants as co-creators of meaning and even as collaborators in the research process. Good examples of this are offered in Gluck and Patai’s Women’s Words: The Feminist Practice of Oral History (1991), especially in Katherine

Surveys/Questionnaires and Interviews 163 Borland’s contribution on interpretive conflict in oral narrative research (1991). In this piece, Borland’s participant, her grandmother, took issue with Borland’s interpretation of her experience. Borland used this experience to reflect on the issue of interpretive authority in research. She concluded that “by extending the conversation we initiate while collecting oral narratives to the later stage of interpretation, we might more sensitively negotiate issues of interpretive authority in our research” (p. 73). Other perspectives encourage researchers to retain authority and control over the interview process. As with all aspects of research, we encourage you to identify, reflect on, and acknowledge your personal and theoretical perspectives, along with how your own identity and prior experiences may be shaping your stance in relation to both the subject of your research and your participants. Interviewing Ethically Interviews, like all of the tools we have addressed, entail numerous ethical considerations. You should approach the interviews you do with integrity and honesty, and with respect for the individuals you interview. You should also be aware of how the decisions you make prior to, during, and after your interviews have ethical implications. Even the issue of whom you decide to interview—or not to interview—may be an ethical one. You might, for example, consciously or even unconsciously choose not to interview certain individuals on the basis of how you feel about them personally and/or on the basis of what you think they might contribute (or not) to your research. We all have personal preferences, so we need to be aware of those preferences and of how they might influence our research. Although deciding whom to interview may be fairly easy and obvious, in some cases you may need to give serious thought to this issue. Depending on the type of study you are doing, you may also need to think about how many people you should interview, and even how many times you should interview them. These decisions become ethical ones when they have implications for your findings and/or their reliability. For example, if you are trying to discern patterns or similarities among the individuals you are interviewing, you will likely need to interview enough individuals to make those discernments. You may also need to consider the backgrounds and characteristics (e.g., demographics) of people you might interview (e.g., people from different socioeconomic backgrounds, different educational backgrounds, different generations). Your concern should be with obtaining reliable information given your research questions and what you intend to do with the information you obtain from your interviews—the claims you hope to make, what you hope to show, and so on.

Prompt 5.10:  Reflecting on How Your Own Lenses Influence Your Interview Reflect on the interview you carried out. Think about who you interviewed, what questions you asked, how you asked them, and how you interpreted what you heard. How might your theoretical perspectives and/or positionality have influenced those decisions? Try to think of at least one example of how a particular viewpoint you hold or a way in which you think of or define yourself influenced something you did either during or after the interview.

164  Surveys/Questionnaires and Interviews The manner in which you carry out your interviews—for example, what you ask or do not ask, or what you choose to pursue or not pursue—will also raise ethical issues. You may choose, for example, to not pursue a comment that runs counter to a deeply held belief you hold. How you ask your questions may also have ethical implications. We talked previously about leading questions. If you use these, you curtail your interviewee’s ability to respond honestly. You also should guard against finishing your interviewee’s statements or cutting them off, either inadvertently or deliberately. Such actions limit your findings: They may end up reflecting mostly what you think and believe, rather than what the person you interviewed thinks and believes. Because the point of interviewing is to capture the perspectives of our participants, inserting too much of ourselves and our own perspectives into an interview will fail to accomplish this. It is important in interviewing, and really in using any of the methods we have discussed, to guard against using the tool to prove your own point, whether that entails asking only certain kinds of questions, pursuing only certain issues, or leading your interviewee to make some comments while curtailing other kinds of comments.

Prompt 5.11:  Considering the Extent to which You Take Control of an Interview Review again your transcription of the interview you carried out, this time highlighting all of the places where you did the talking. Look at those and see what you are saying in relation to what your interviewee is saying, and how frequently you are saying it. Are you finishing statements for the interviewee? Are you suggesting meanings for the statements the individual makes? If you are seeing a lot of yourself in the interview, then you may want to consider how to make the voices of your interviewees more prominent.

Ethics enters into other aspects of interviewing, such as how you interact with the people you interview, how you handle your own voice and their voices, how you treat them, the kind of rapport you establish with them, and even the overall relationship you have with them. Sometimes researchers and participants become friends in qualitative research, especially if they work together over a long period of time. However, research friendships are not without risk: They can easily lead to bias, and they can prevent you from seeing things you might otherwise see. They can also lead to unanticipated tensions that can negatively influence the research. Finally, you should also be concerned with how you interpret and use the information you obtain from your interviews. For example, it is not uncommon in interviews for someone to tell you something that is pertinent to your research and then request that you not use that information. If your interviewees trust you, they may share personal information with you that they would not share otherwise. Or they may tell you about a highly sensitive professional situation that should remain confidential. Some of this information, not surprisingly, might be relevant to your research. The flipside of this may also occur: Interviewees might share something they want you to use but that you do not find relevant, or even appropriate. These kinds of issues sometimes do not arise until you write up your findings; therefore, we discuss them again in Chapter 7. It is then that you need to decide what to use and not use, and it is then that you may

Surveys/Questionnaires and Interviews 165 end up struggling with whether or not to use information that may implicate an interviewee or portray them in an unfavorable light. There are no easy answers to these issues. And you may not even become fully aware of them until you encounter them firsthand, which was our own experience. Being aware and mindful of them, however, can help you prepare for them and think proactively about what you might do when and if you do encounter them.

Conclusion As a qualitative researcher, you have many tools at your disposal for carrying out your research, and many options for using those tools. This and the previous chapter introduced you to those tools and provided information to help you make informed decisions about which ones to use. However, we really only scratched the surface, especially given that most of these tools have entire books devoted to them. We recommend that you familiarize yourself with these resources: The more you know and understand about the various tools, the better able you will be to select and use them productively and ethically. This may also be a good place to talk about the natural ebbs and flows of research. When you are carrying out your research, actually using some of the tools we have discussed, there will be times when everything is going well and you love what you are doing—times when you are learning many new things that intrigue you—and also times when you lose interest in or end up doubting the value of what you are doing. You might have difficulty finding interesting articles to read, experience tensions with your participants, or even find yourself struggling with the “So what?” question. When these occasions arise, our advice is to hang tight or to turn to others (such as your advisor) who can encourage and reassure you. You will get through it. If you are part of a cohort group, take advantage of it. Also, be sure to pace yourself (take breaks and recharge every once in awhile). Self-care is important. Also, read new authors; seek support by talking to peers, faculty members, professional colleagues, family; set milestones and have realistic expectations for achieving them; and do something like Julia Cameron (1992) suggests: Set writing dates with yourself by going someplace regularly to just write or think about your work. There are a lot of practical aspects to carrying out research. It is a human endeavor, and every one of us has different styles for and approaches to it. What matters is finding what works best for you, whether that’s setting aside a certain amount of time each day to complete a task or developing rituals that will help you start a task (e.g., cleaning your house or answering all of your emails before you begin). You will find, too, that it will be essential to be flexible (another important habit of mind) and make adjustments along the way. Finally, we urge you to reflect not only on how you are feeling and doing at different stages in your research, but also on how your participants might be feeling and doing. If you are not sure, ask them. Be sensitive to their experiences and to what they might be getting out of or taking from your research. Also, be appreciative. A very common notion in qualitative research is that of reciprocity, or giving something back to your participants. Sometimes this ends up being an actual gift, but reciprocity can also be something intangible; for example, your participants may learn something useful from your research or benefit in some way simply from being asked to reflect on and respond to the questions you pose. Qualitative research usually entails give and take and, ideally, it is something that is beneficial both to you, the researcher, and to your participants.

Appendix A Student Reading Survey

Reading Survey English 9 2002–03 Name _________________________________________________________________ Home Phone Number ___________________________________________________ Parents’ Names _________________________________________________________ Parents’ Work Phone Numbers ___________________________________________ Your Home School at PCEP ______________________________________________ Middle School You Attended _____________________________________________ Language Arts Teacher Last Year _________________________________________ How do you go about choosing things to read? Check all that apply. _______ Recognize author’s name _______ Title grabbed me _______ Cover is appealing _______ Blurb on back is appealing _______ Read a little part of it _______ Recommended by a friend _______ Recommended by a family member _______ Recommended by a teacher _______ Recommended by a librarian _______ Interest in subject matter _______ Interest in genre _______ On bestseller list _______ On a list of recommended books _______ Award winner _______ Read a book review _______ Heard about it on the radio _______ Heard about it on TV _______ Read about it in a magazine _______ Saw the movie _______ Saw it on the shelf (in classroom or library) _______ Bought it in a bookstore _______ Received it as a gift _______ It was in my house _______ Part of a series _______ Length

Surveys/Questionnaires and Interviews 167 _______ Difficulty level _______ Other ____________ * Put a star next to one item on the above list that influences your choice of books the most. What purposes can you think of for reading? (Reasons to read) List as many as you can think of. List the titles and/or authors of any books you would consider to be your favorites. List the types of books you like by category. List any other things you like to read besides books. Best thing about reading: Worst thing about reading:

Appendix B University Writing Center Survey

Please share with us your experiences with and perceptions of the University Writing Center (UWC). This survey will take approximately 10 minutes to complete. Your responses will help us improve the writing support we provide. Thank you! University Writing Center (UWC) Experience Survey 1. Are you familiar with the University Writing Center (UWC) and its services? • Yes • Somewhat • No UWC Awareness 2. How did you learn about the UWC? Please select all that apply. • UWC presenter visited my class • Professor • Peer, friend, or family member • Information on a class syllabus • UWC writing consultant • UWC posters/fliers or bookmarks • UWC website • UWC Facebook page • Other campus student support service (e.g., Holman Success • Center) • Other (please specify) 3. Have you ever had a writing consultation at the UWC in Halle Library or at one of its satellite locations (including UWC Online)? If so, please check all locations you have used. • • • • • •

UWC main location, 115 Halle UWC at the College of Arts and Sciences in Pray-Harrold Science Success Center in Mark Jefferson UWC for Psychology in Mark Jefferson UWC at the College of Business in Owen UWC at the College of Technology in Sill or Roosevelt

Surveys/Questionnaires and Interviews 169 • • • • •

UWC at the College of Health and Human Services in Marshall Academic Projects Center in Halle Library UWC for Graduate Studies UWCOnline (for students enrolled in fully online programs) I have never had a writing consultation at EMU’s University Writing Center

Reasons for Not Using the UWC 4. What are your reasons for not using the UWC? Please check all that apply. • • • • • • • •

I did not know about the UWC I do not need help with my writing I believe the UWC cannot address the needs I have with my writing I am anxious about obtaining writing help I view the UWC as a place for struggling writers, not all writers I was told the UWC could not help me I do not have writing assignments I get writing help elsewhere

5. If you answered in the previous question that you get writing help elsewhere, please tell us where. Experiences and Satisfaction with UWC Writing Consultations 6. What prompted you to go to the UWC? Please check all that apply. • • • • • • •

Required by instructor Encouraged by instructor Extra credit Encouraged by another student, family member, or friend Went on own/self-motivated Saw syllabus text and/or flier/promotional material Other (please specify)

7. About how many UWC writing consultations have you had overall in your time as a student at EMU? • None • 1 • 2–5 • 6–9 • 10 or more 8. What aspects of writing have you focused on in your UWC consultations? Please select all that apply. • Understanding an assignment • Brainstorming • Prewriting • Developing ideas or arguments • Organizing

170  Surveys/Questionnaires and Interviews • Incorporating evidence • Citation style (e.g., APA, MLA, Chicago) • Writing style • Mechanics or grammar • Revising • Going over an instructor’s feedback • Other (please specify) 9. Have you ever returned to the UWC for a follow-up consultation on the same assignment? • Yes/No 10. If you have visited the main UWC location in 115 Halle Library, please rate your overall satisfaction with your experience(s). • Highly satisfied • Satisfied • Somewhat satisfied • Not satisfied • Not applicable • Please explain your response. 11. If you have visited the UWC in a location other than the main location in 115 Halle Library, please rate your overall satisfaction with that (or those) location(s). • Highly satisfied • Satisfied • Somewhat satisfied • Not satisfied • Not applicable • Please explain your response. Overall Experiences with and Perceptions of the UWC 12. In what way(s) has the UWC helped you? Please check all that apply. • • • • • • •

With writing for specific assignments With particular aspects of writing (e.g., citation styles, formatting, genre conventions, organization, etc.) With understanding how to approach an assignment With my confidence as a writer As a writer overall Other (please specify) Please explain.

13. Do you believe the UWC has helped you improve your academic performance in any of your classes? • Yes/No

Surveys/Questionnaires and Interviews 171 14. What is your perception of the overall effectiveness and value of the UWC as a campus support service for students? • • • • •

Highly effective and valuable Effective and valuable Somewhat effective and valuable Not effective or valuable Please explain your response

15. Would you recommend the UWC to friends/other students? • Yes • No Experiences with the UWC Workshops and Class Visits 16. Has a University Writing Center presenter ever visited one of your classes? If so, what subject did the presenter discuss? Please check all that apply. • • • • • • • • • • •

Introduction to the UWC and its services Using APA Style Organizing Your Writing Revising Your Writing Reading in College Writing a Literature Review Using MLA Style Being a Good Peer Reviewer I cannot remember No presenter from the UWC has ever visited one of my classes Other (please specify)

Satisfaction with the UWC Workshops and Class Visits • Highly satisfied • Satisfied • Somewhat satisfied • Not satisfied • Not applicable • Please explain your response 17. How satisfied were you with the quality of the UWC workshop or presentation? • Highly satisfied • Satisfied • Somewhat satisfied • Not satisfied • Not applicable • Please explain your response

172  Surveys/Questionnaires and Interviews Additional Comments 18. What aspects of writing do you find challenging? Please select all that apply. • Understanding assignments • Brainstorming • Prewriting • Developing ideas or arguments • Organizing • Incorporating evidence • Citation style (e.g., APA, MLA, Chicago) • Writing style • Mechanics or grammar • Revising • Responding to an instructor’s feedback • Other (please specify) 19. Which writing resources would be helpful to you? Please select all that apply. • • • • • • • •

Online writing consultations Printable writing tips/handouts How-to writing videos Interactive online writing practice exercises Writing workshops in my classroom Fun writing events Facilitated writing circles/groups Other (please specify)

20. What else can the UWC do to support you better as a writer? EMU Student Information 21. What is your class standing or status at EMU? • First-year student • Sophomore • Junior • Senior • Graduate student—Master’s • Graduate student—Ph.D. • Student in the Early College Alliance • Non-degree student • Other (please specify) 22. What is your age? • • • • • •

14 to 17 18 to 22 23 to 29 30 to 39 40 to 49 Over 50

Surveys/Questionnaires and Interviews 173 23. What is your primary language? • English • Spanish • French • German • Greek • Italian • Cantonese • Mandarin • Arabic • Japanese • Vietnamese • Other (please specify) 24. Please select the option that best characterizes you as an EMU student. • • •

I live on or near campus I commute to campus I am an online student

25. In what major/program/department are you a student?

6 What Do I Do with the Information I Collect? Analyzing Data

By this point in your research, you have formulated a well-focused research question, completed your literature review, and started gathering data by using one or more of the research tools we discussed in the previous two chapters. In other words, you have begun addressing your question using a variety of sources. As a result, you are well on your way to accumulating the pile of transcriptions, observation notes, and/ or artifact and research notes that are at the center of the next step in this process: analyzing data. The task of sitting down to look at all of this material can seem daunting. You might ask yourself: How can I make sense of all the material I’ve gathered? Do I even know enough to do that? How will I ever have the time or energy to look at it all? Do I have enough material? Where will all the reading I did for my literature review fit in? Will others agree with or even find my findings and analysis useful? Although this next step in the research process—analyzing data—can seem overwhelming, we have found it to be one of the most satisfying parts of the research process. During this stage, you begin to look carefully and systematically at all the data you’ve gathered and to make sense of it, especially in the context of the questions that gave rise to your research. In this chapter, we provide you with some productive tools that will help you make sense of your research findings, both for yourself and for others.

Knowing When to Start Analyzing Eventually, it is time to stop gathering information and to start analyzing that information. But when is the right time to do that? How do you know when you have “enough” material? Sometimes this is determined by external factors: The deadline for your thesis is fast approaching, the deadline for an article or conference paper you are writing is coming up, or the time that you had available to work with your participants is coming to an end (e.g., if you are a teacher researcher and the school year is winding down). You might also have self-imposed deadlines that you are determined to keep, although we caution you, as we have previously, to remain flexible. Perhaps the best indicator for knowing when to move on from gathering information to analyzing it is when you have amassed sufficient information to begin understanding the questions you have raised. Most researchers do at least some data analysis, regardless of how preliminary it is, as they gather information. By preliminary analysis, we mean the casual and incidental summaries and interpretations you may do along the way. For example, you might look over a completed interview transcript and begin noting issues that

Analyzing Data 175 seem to be coming up in the interview. Or you might reread your observation log every few weeks and write summaries of what you are learning. (See Sidebar 6.1 for additional examples.) Many researchers believe that this kind of “analyzing as you go” is vital: Reflecting thoughtfully about what you are discovering as you are discovering it allows you to formulate new questions for research participants, create a new focus for your observations, and/or consider aspects of your research through a new lens. Other researchers, however, believe that this kind of ongoing reflection has the potential to create problems: They would argue, for example, that trying to make sense of your findings before you collect all of your data may make you more inclined to see some answers and not others, or may lead you to view your findings too narrowly. Our own stance falls somewhere in the middle. Doing some analysis as you go can not only help you begin focusing in a positive way on what you are seeing, it can also help you stay focused and be more productive as you continue doing your research. The trick is to make sure that any preliminary analysis you do is contingent and not cast in stone. Analysis is a way of looking and relooking that, done throughout the research process, will continue to lead you to new ideas rather than to premature conclusions. Early analysis can also provide insights that may help guide and shape your later analysis. In Sidebar 6.1, we offer several strategies you can use to carry out the preliminary and ongoing analysis we are suggesting. If, after trying some of these strategies, you still find yourself asking questions to which you cannot find answers, then you may need to do more data gathering. Keep in mind that the line between these two stages of research is a blurred one: Most researchers move back and forth between them. That habit of flexibility is once again an important one.

Sidebar 6.1:  Strategies for Carrying Out Preliminary and Ongoing Data Analysis Field Note Summaries Once every 2 weeks or so, it can be useful to reread the field notes you have taken in your research and write a summary of them, one that both makes sense of what you have noticed so far and also raises questions. Taking time periodically to reflect in this way can help you narrow or expand the focus of your research. As an example, in a study Cathy did in which she shadowed a 10th-grade student for a school year, looking to see how the student approached writing in her various classes, she one day wrote the following field note summary: Her rules for writing are not so much by subject area but by type and by teacher perception of type: most teachers tell the rules. Not by traditional modes of development but by final form: report, essay, summary, evaluation—defined generally in terms of parts and lengths rather than content.

176  Analyzing Data Research Memos Although they can take a variety of forms, research memos require the researcher to consider what she has learned so far from her sources and summarize that information briefly. Usually intended for an audience beyond the researcher (e.g., your advisor, an editor, a colleague), research memos allow the researcher, first, to try to make sense of what might be disparate findings and, second, to try to represent those findings to another person who might offer new insights on the research. The casual and questioning nature of these is just right for preliminary analysis. As an example, our student, Julie Caldwell, who was in the midst of her research on the vocabulary of her middle school students, wrote this memo to Cathy: Dear Cathy: This week was great in that I had interviews to work with and time to reflect. I am not sure what I’m driving at in the interviews, and I need to interview more students. I have had three interviews with Isabel, and the benefit is that she is really opening up and becoming more forthcoming. So that is good. . . . I’m really wondering where my data collection is leading, and I truly look forward to glimpsing trends. So far I haven’t come around to seeing any, but I think it’s because I’m not ready. I want to collect a few more interviews. Also, the students I’ve chosen to focus on are so different. As I peruse Isabel’s interviews, I see that she is almost afraid to admit that she doesn’t know words—she only wants to use words she thinks she knows—so I see this process, this sort of screen through which vocabulary passes into her radar. Then she will recognize it. She is very choosy about the style of words—diction really, I guess. Some words she “likes,” others she doesn’t. Hmm. That is so interesting to me. Shall I do a case study of Isabel? Graphic Depictions Sometimes researchers use sketching as a way to think about the information they have gathered. (Remember Keon Pettiway’s visual representations that we shared in Chapter 2.) Representing symbolically what you know so far, what you still want to know, and how you will get there can help you see the big picture of your research and where to go next. Charts Looking through the data you’ve collected thus far and organizing it in a chart or tally sheet can offer some preliminary understandings of what you are

Analyzing Data 177 discovering. Case study researcher Natasha created a chart after looking at the results of the Student Learning Plans (SLPs) her students created. This preliminary analysis led her to formulate additional questions that served as a basis for future surveys and interviews. Notice how she comes up with some preliminary categories, counts how many students talked about each category, and offers some thoughts about what she’s seeing so far: How SLP Process Impacted Student Writing Practices What were student self-efficacy beliefs (about college writing)? • • • • • • • •

Apprehension—7 Explicit doubt—6 Fear—5 College writing will be hard—3 Disliked writing—2 Never had a teacher explicitly say they believe in students—2 Overwhelmed—1 Cocky—1

*From the reflective letters, students seem to have really low self-efficacy beliefs surrounding writing at the college level. How Students Identify Themselves as Writers more Generally • • • • • • • • • • •

Good writer/values writing—10 Disengaged with writing that isn’t interesting/engaged with writing that is—8 Dislikes writing/low self-efficacy belief—6 Struggles with writing—5 Committed to improvement—3 Lacking a HoM (articulating this)—3 Procrastinates—2 Improved over time—2 Average—2 Not a favorite activity, but puts a lot of effort into writing—1 Have grown to like writing because it’s accepted as necessity—1

*Many students view themselves as good writers. *Many students can distinguish between writing that is engaging and not; they like writing that is engaging for them. *Some students in this sample do dislike writing/struggle with writing → lower self-efficacy beliefs.

178  Analyzing Data Reasons why Students Want to Work toward Goals • • • • • •

Connections to life outside the classroom (communication, future careers)—10 College expectations—7 Connected to HoM—5 Will make writing easier—3 Personal goal—2 Fear of being left behind—1

*Students’ primary motivation comes from connections they’re making outside the classroom—to writing that is relevant and engaging for them, not decontextualized. *Students differentiate between writing at the HS and college levels, and anticipate needing to put in more effort now that they’re college students. *Students recognize the value of practicing HoM. Questions I Want to Know more about • Students are articulating writing needs and goals. Did they recognize these needs explicitly before completing the SLP, or did the knowledge become explicit afterwards? • Students seemed to have lower self-efficacy beliefs about college writing (as seen in their reflective letters); however, many seem to articulate stronger self-efficacy beliefs about writing in general. After the summer seminar, did students see improvements in both of these beliefs? Or just one? After first semester of FYW, can students articulate the differences between these two types of writing, and their corresponding self-efficacy beliefs for them? • Do students still see these as 2 different types of writing, or a more unified notion of writing? • If students feel like they’re good writers, but they don’t feel like they’re good academic writers? • Are you seeing connections between the two? • In first year of FYW, did students reference their SLP? Did they re-evaluate their action plans, or monitor their progress toward achieving their goal? • You wrote that you are apprehensive about writing, but also identify . . . can you talk more about this?

Even if you have amassed a good deal of information from your research and have analyzed it all along, you may still think, as we often do, “But there’s more I could do: one more interview, one more observation, one more analysis of a document.” If you find yourself hesitant to move on, keep in mind that your ability to obtain more

Analyzing Data 179 information is rarely cut off. You can still contact a participant one more time or review one additional document if you need to. Also, even if you make them flexible, it can be very helpful to set some deadlines for yourself (e.g., saying that, by December 1, you will have completed your interviews and observations and started your analysis of them). We also believe that it is much easier to begin your data analysis if you have a handle on some of the tools and strategies that will help you. We address these tools and strategies in this chapter.

Prompt 6.1:  Doing Some Preliminary Analysis If you have already begun gathering data for your research, use one of the strategies described in Sidebar 6.1 to do some preliminary analysis of that data. Share your analysis with your classmates to get their feedback.

Learning to Look Deeply We liken the process of what you do with all of the information you collect to what protagonists do in mysteries. All good mysteries, of course, require the detectives both to make sense of the information presented to them and to move beyond the obvious suspect or motive. It is only by digging beneath the surface, trying to put the clues together in a different and unusual way, that the mystery gets solved. That is how we view the analysis stage of the research process. Part of your job as researcher is to sift through all of the material you’ve gathered, trying to find the themes that emerge from the multiple research strategies you used and then using those themes, along with other evidence you find, to answer your research questions. This is the moment to look both within each of the research strategies you used and across them (e.g., to analyze both what an individual interview tells you as well as what all of your interviews taken together tell you). This is when you begin connecting the outcomes of all the strategies you used, including your review of the literature. It is when you ask, “What have I discovered? What does the evidence I’ve gathered from all of these sources indicate?” A large part of your job at this point is to begin looking for commonalities—how your multiple ways of looking into your questions may point to a common answer or answers. However, another part of your job is to look beyond the commonalities and to notice the contradictions or discrepancies that may occur. This looking beyond commonalities is generally what will provide you with the kinds of complex understanding you need in order to answer your original questions even more fully. But how do you know if there’s a contradiction? Contradictions are almost inevitable when we research real situations with real people. For example, a student you interview may tell you one day that revision is the most helpful part of the writing process; however, a week later he may complain that revision is stupid and tell you that he never even does it. A business memo that you analyze may refer to a particular set of office policies that management claims are always followed, but the individuals who work in that office demonstrate no understanding of those

180  Analyzing Data policies. Part of our job as researchers is to dig deeper, to try to find out not only what the contradictions are but why they exist. Did the student reviser change his mind about revision after getting a paper back from the teacher that was covered in red ink? Was the business memo ever actually circulated to the office workers? Asking additional questions or observing the situation more closely can help you probe more deeply about what might really be going on and why a contradiction might exist. This kind of analysis is not always an easy task for researchers for at least two reasons. First, it’s much easier to look through the evidence you have collected with a particular answer in mind and to focus primarily on the data that support that answer. It is satisfying to find supporting information and to feel as if you have verified your thinking or discovered a “truth.” The other challenge relates to the fact that we all bring our own perspectives, backgrounds, and experiences to our work—our stance and positionality as individuals, students, researchers, professionals—that inevitably influence how we look at our data and what we see in them. In short, as qualitative researchers, we have both the advantage and the disadvantage of seeing the evidence we gather through particular lenses that are shaped by many factors. In fact, this is a criticism often leveled at qualitative researchers. However, we would argue that stance and positionality, along with prior beliefs and experiences, are factors in all research. All researchers bring these to their work, whether as part of the questions they ask, the participants they select, the methodologies they employ, or the approaches to analysis they take. Ultimately, what we see may not be what others see. Researchers should bring their awareness of this to the forefront of everything they do. As long-time researchers, we continue to grapple with these issues. If our findings can be viewed in different ways, how can we ever know that what we’re seeing in them has any real meaning? We have worried that we have not dug deeply enough or that our interpretations might seem idiosyncratic. We have also worried that our experiences and perspectives might have limited our ability to look at our data with fresh eyes and an open mind. In other words, it is very normal to feel unsure and insecure at this stage of the research process. The most successful researchers are those who learn to accept and even revel in this uncertainty, through what Hubbard and Power (1999) call the “murkiness of data analysis”: The murkiness of data analysis is what scares any researcher. If it doesn’t spook you at least a little, you’re not opening yourself up enough to the new learning that can come during analysis. If the analysis seems very easy, you’ve probably only found what you already knew before the project began. (p. 117) Keep in mind that analysis, like every other part of research, is a process. There is no single correct meaning to be found in your data. By looking and relooking—and looking yet again—at the information you have gathered, you will find that consistent patterns begin to emerge. It may also help to remember that this kind of qualitative research is not intended to serve as generalizable to the rest of the world; rather, it is an additional piece of information, situated in a particular context and offered to you and your readers as one part of a new or expanded understanding of an issue that concerns you.

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Getting Organized to Analyze Your Data During data analysis, all of the ways in which you have organized your research up to this point will serve you well. Analyzing data is like putting together a puzzle. Some of us put puzzles together by randomly searching for pieces, but experience usually teaches us to adopt a more strategic approach; for example, to put all of the pieces that form edges in one pile and all of the pieces of similar color in another pile. Whereas serendipity plays a role—we occasionally just reach in and find a piece that fits perfectly—most of the time we need to look carefully to discover an underlying pattern. We also need to be organized. Getting organized for data analysis not only means having the materials you need easily accessible (interview transcripts, observation notes, survey results, artifacts), it also means making time to immerse yourself in the data. Putting together the pieces of your research findings is like finding the pattern of the puzzle: It requires careful attention and thought on your part. In order to make data analysis less overwhelming, it helps to begin doing some organizing as you are gathering your data. Different researchers have different strategies for organizing and keeping track of data. As you read about some of these strategies, think about which of them might work best for you. The first involves using the computer to get organized. You can create files on your hard drive or place your documents in cloud storage. Many of our students use Google Drive and create separate files and folders for different kinds of data. If you have handwritten notes, you can scan or take photos of those and upload them. You can have separate folders for your observation notes, interview transcripts, survey results, and artifacts. A key advantage to having digital files of your materials is that many analysis tools also are digital, further simplifying the mechanics of analysis. You may also be someone who prefers organizing data using physical file folders. If you prefer to work with hard copies, one easy way to organize your data is to use different-colored folders depending on the source of the data. For example, you might use red folders for interview transcripts, with a separate red folder for each participant. You could use green folders for observations, and so on. You may also choose to arrange your materials chronologically, alphabetically, by participant or setting, and so forth. A third strategy entails using your notebooks or research logs, paper or digital, to organize your findings The ideal here is to use different notebooks (or binders maybe) for different kinds of research. However, if you put everything into a single notebook, you can use post-it notes or digital flags to indicate the various kinds of information they contain. You can place the post-its, for example, on the beginning pages of each new type of information (e.g., yellow for interviews, green for observation notes, etc.). If you have kept digital notebooks, you can easily divide them into separate files, label the parts for easy searching, and so on. Our case study researchers have organized their materials in different ways. For example, Natasha created folders in Google to organize her materials. Each part of her project had a folder (see Figure 6.1). lisa, on the other hand, used paper and stored all of it in file folders in different colored milk crates (see Figure 6.2). As we talked to these former students and a number of researchers about how they organize their data, what we discovered is that what works well for one researcher is not necessarily what works well for another. What is most important is to create a system that will work for you.

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Figure 6.1  Natasha’s Organization: Google Folders

Figure 6.2  lisa’s Organization: File Folders and Milk Crates

Finding Time and Space Another important issue in data analysis relates to the space where you will do your work and the amount of time you will have for doing it. Analyzing data in the manner we’re recommending requires immersing yourself and going as deeply as you can into the information you collected. It also requires taking the time needed to do this. This is not the kind of work that can be done sporadically or in limited chunks of time, such as an afternoon here or there (although it’s true that something valuable might occur to you in those moments when you’re in the shower or walking the dog). Immersing yourself in your data generally requires large blocks of regularly scheduled time (ideally on a daily basis) so that you can do the kind of going deeper

Analyzing Data 183 we address and even lose yourself in the data. However, very few of us can put our lives entirely on hold to do our research. Most of us need to be creative in finding ways to carve out the time we need, whether it’s during breaks in our schedules, early in the morning, in the evenings, or on weekends. If you can, try to set a regular time for your work so you can establish a routine for it. This will help you get it done! You should also think about the physical space in which you will do your work. Many researchers like to spread out their materials—on a desk, the floor, a ­computer—and have them readily accessible. Although this can be done digitally as well, many of us still like to have some physical materials spread out in front of us, working back and forth between materials stored on our computers (or on the cloud) and those that are physically on our desks. Like working on a jigsaw puzzle, we like to have all of the pieces handy so we can search through them, look for missing pieces, physically move them around to visualize patterns and relationships, and move back and forth among them. All of these activities can help us see how the various ideas, quotes, and sections fit together. Because most of us analyze data recursively—going back and forth between our different types of data—having the material physically arrayed so that it’s easy to manipulate and manage becomes essential. For example, as Cathy was working on this chapter, she had her laptop open with notes for the chapter on the screen. On a second screen, she had materials from the case study researchers, and on her desk she had a written copy of one of their transcripts. How you construct your physical space will depend on your own situation. You might use a card table set up in the corner of a room, use half or all of the dining room table, or use the floor in your family room or study. Find space that is both comfortable and workable for you and that you can take over for a period of time so that you don’t have to keep clearing away your materials. The ideal situation is to have a space you can work in whenever it’s convenient; someplace where you can easily come and go.

Prompt 6.2:  Getting Organized for Analyzing Your Data First, create a calendar for your analysis work. Put in due dates and deadlines, add any additional tasks you need to complete (e.g., more reading, interviews, surveys), note times when you might be very available or not available at all to do your work (e.g., vacations). Next, create a weekly work schedule that indicates days of the week and times you can devote to your work. Indicate what you will do during those times (e.g., Saturday morning—reread transcripts from initial interviews). Finally, develop a plan for organizing your research materials (e.g., will you create folders for each research method—interviews, artifacts—or for each participant? Will you set up folders in Google Drive, scanning handwritten documents? Will you create a combination of the two?). Also make a list of the supplies you will need (e.g., post-it notes, file folders, legal

184  Analyzing Data pads, different-colored pens, or perhaps a specific data analysis software program). Keep in mind that your calendar and schedule will likely change, so also be prepared to be flexible.

Tools for Analyzing Data Reading/Immersion Now that you’ve carved out time, created space, and organized all of your materials, it is time to determine what to actually do to make sense of your data. The first step is to read through everything you’ve gathered. This will give you a sense of the whole and a general understanding of what you learned from all the tools you used. The next step is to start reading the data more closely, paying attention to the particular meanings revealed by it. The reading of data usually is done on several levels. It also is usually recursive and not linear. You begin reading for specific information, seeking answers to the questions you have raised, looking for connections both within and across research documents, and looking for nuances (e.g., what was said versus what wasn’t said or mentioned). Researchers read both broadly, searching for general themes and meanings, and closely, looking for subtle points and connections and going beyond what is on the surface. Such close reading requires enough concentration so you can make connections and recall earlier ideas. Most researchers also take notes as they read, constantly adding to and modifying their notes because reading is a cumulative activity: With each new reading, you bring with you the context of what you have read already. We cannot stress enough the value of reading the same material multiple times. We both have experienced that moment in our research when, on our third (or fourth or fifth) time going over the same material, we suddenly saw the material in a new way. There is also value in spending time away from your data—time reflecting on and thinking about what all the various words and images might mean. It is important, therefore, both to immerse yourself in your data and to think deeply about it. Immersion and reflection are what enable researchers to make connections, even when those connections occur at other times (e.g., while you are walking the dog or cooking dinner). Thinking about your data when you are away from it can trigger a creative leap, moving you away from the obvious and allowing you to notice a previously unseen connection.

Prompt 6.3:  Rereading Return to a reading you did previously (e.g., for your literature review). Reread the piece, consciously slowing yourself down as you read. Take note of things you notice this time that you missed last time and look for connections between what you are reading and the data you have been collecting. Reflect on your activity: What was different in your reading this time and why? Also, how was it different and how did the meaning of the reading change for you?

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Prompt 6.4:  Reading Your Own Data Select some of the interview transcripts, surveys, research log entries, or artifacts that you have collected for your research. Read through them several times. After the initial reading, write a summary of what you read. After each subsequent reading, record what you notice that you hadn’t noticed previous times through. Discuss your experiences and findings with your classmates.

General Thematizing The kind of purposeful reading described in the previous section speaks to the essence of data analysis for qualitative researchers: creating a system to help make sense of the material you have collected. Reading is an important initial step in data analysis. As a next step, qualitative researchers often begin looking for themes, a step that entails combing your data for ideas that keep cropping up. With this strategy, you look for general connections among and between the pieces of information that have been collected. As we explain what is entailed in finding themes later in the chapter, we will draw on the prompt for this section, using the responses you give to illustrate how to uncover themes in your own research.

Prompt 6.5:  Finding Themes Take 5 minutes to write about your earliest memory of learning to read. Describe as clearly as you can where you were, who was with you, what you and others did, and how you felt. Share your reflection with your classmates. As individuals share their reading memories, have someone record on the board the key points from each reflection. Look at what is written on the board and think about what you heard. What points of commonality exist across the stories? What themes seem to emerge from your collective experiences of early reading?

What you will probably notice in doing the prompt is that there are certain common themes in your early literacy stories. These commonalities might relate to others who were involved in the literacy experiences, to whether these experiences were in or out of school, or to whether the experiences evoked positive or negative memories. Common themes might also emerge around certain kinds of books (such as Dr. Seuss) or certain television shows (such as Sesame Street) that were a part of your youth. The themes you identify, whatever they are, can help you begin forming a picture about this concept of early literacy, a picture you could explore further by looking at other kinds of information: in-depth interviews with people in the class, observations of small children learning to read, discussions with children and parents about their reading, and so on. In other words, the general themes you identify across your stories can help you begin seeing what might be in your research and can help you situate yourself more deeply in the information you have gathered.

186  Analyzing Data After identifying themes, many researchers move back into their research, looking to develop more specific categories from these themes. These categories are generally narrower than the themes. For example, working from the theme of others involved in early literacy experiences of children, you might identify several categories: parents, siblings, friends, and teachers. You can then use these categories to sift more deeply through your research, uncovering, for example, how these various others influenced the reading development of the participants in your research. One of Cathy’s projects that focused on teacher outreach offers an example of this kind of analysis. The project looked at the question, “How can teachers be more effective in their outreach to parents so that parents can receive a more realistic picture of what happens in literacy pedagogy than they are currently getting from media reports?” Concerned that too much of parents’ knowledge seemed to emerge from inaccurate or incomplete reporting of how reading and writing are taught, she began working with a group of teachers who were equally concerned about this issue. She interviewed these teachers about what they were doing and collected numerous artifacts from their classrooms, especially the handouts they sent home to parents. After poring through the interview transcripts and artifacts, she started her analysis by listing all of the different means of outreach the teachers used (e.g., notes sent home with positive feedback about children, anthologies of student work with letters from the teacher, picnics at the start of the school year, books written by teachers about curriculum, etc.). After studying the lists and going back to her interview transcripts and notes, she began to recognize that the teachers had a staged approach to outreach, using different strategies at different stages. She eventually identified the following categories: strategies for community building, strategies for informing parents, and strategies for involving parents. Going back and forth between her research notes and these categories, she discovered that nearly all the strategies mentioned in interviews and demonstrated in artifacts fit neatly into one of these categories, which thus provided a way of organizing the material that was not previously apparent to Cathy, or to the teachers. What Cathy recognized, and what all researchers should recognize when they attempt to categorize their findings, is that, first, the process is recursive. The initial categories you develop will give you a way to look at the material, but re-immersing yourself in your findings may reveal additional or different categories. At that moment, your job is to ascertain what a new look into the material will tell you and how you can restructure your categories to better fit the information. It is not uncommon to go back and forth, changing and adapting categories as you come to understand your data more fully. Also remember that not all of your material will fit neatly into your categories. Because qualitative research deals with the stories of real people and real situations, it is not an exact science. Nor is it neat and tidy. Seldom will there be exact fits. If there are, that may be your first clue that you may be forcing a fit. As mentioned previously, these moments of discontinuity or contradiction are at the heart of this kind of research. When there’s an exception, a piece of the puzzle that doesn’t quite fit, qualitative researchers usually home in on that piece, trying to figure it out. Exceptions often lead to the most important moments in research, the journey to figure out why the exception exists.

Analyzing Data 187 Grounded Theory For those of you seeking a theoretical basis for this kind of analysis, you might look into the work of Glaser and Strauss (1999) and their notion of grounded theory (an approach to qualitative research design that has been embraced—and debated—for the last few decades). At the center of their work is the idea that theory can emerge through our analysis of qualitative data, such as interviews, participant observations, and document collecting. Through a method known as constant comparison, researchers collect, code, and analyze data in order to create manageable units of information that both make sense of the information and generate theory surrounding the information. Glaser and Strauss and other proponents of grounded theory speak to the issue of trustworthiness, study limitations, and validity surrounding this kind of qualitative research, noting the importance of gathering research through different tools, relying on member checks, and realizing that our goal in this kind of research is not to generalize to a greater population, but to increase understanding, as we mentioned previously. For more on the idea of grounded theory, you might consult these important resources: • Creswell, J. W., & Poth, C. (2018). Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing among Five Approaches (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. • Glaser, B. G., & Strauss, A.L. (1999). Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research. New York: Routledge. Coding, Indexing, and Writing Research Memos Reading and looking for themes, and creating categories in a flexible and recursive manner are important first steps in the analysis stage of research. Your next step as a researcher is to look through your data with a careful and critical eye to discover the evidence that supports the themes and categories you have identified. This may sound at first like a circular process: You look closely at the data to come up with themes, and then, once they are identified, you go back to the data to discover evidence for them. The process is indeed circular, but we would distinguish the two steps in this way: You look initially at your interviews, observation notes, survey responses, and artifacts to develop a general sense of the patterns that may be present. To begin discovering these patterns, you certainly have to read deeply, but your goal at this point is simply to discover general tendencies and connections. Once you move to the next stage, your job is, first, to immerse yourself in the data even more fully (e.g., to consider how the details of the interviews, observations, surveys, and/or artifacts fit into the general themes and categories identified and, if necessary, to adjust and adapt those themes and categories). During this stage, it is vital to note specific moments, ideas, words, and phrases that support your themes and categories. Second, as you begin noting these moments, ideas, words, and phrases, you should begin theorizing about the information you are uncovering. This means considering the “whys”: why these categories, why your participants responded as they did, why your observations revealed the information they did, and so on. Thus, while you search your notes for specific evidence to support the themes and categories you have named, you also start adding your own perspectives on possible explanations. (See Sidebar 6.2 for an example of one of Natasha’s early attempts

188  Analyzing Data at finding themes and coding. Note especially how she focused on “the story being told” by her data.)

Sidebar 6.2:  Natasha’s Story of Finding Themes and Coding For analysis of the survey data, I wrote out each of the survey questions and copy and pasted the students’ answers into the Word document underneath each of the questions. So at first I started with small-scale coding [on one data set: the surveys]. I read through all of them and after I read through all of the answers for a particular question, I thought about what trends I was seeing. I went through each question and assigned each a set of tags, based on what I was seeing. At this point I was starting to think about an outline for my project, and when I started conceptualizing an outline, I realized that it was just too much. It would have been impossible to try to, and I didn’t even have the interviews yet, it was all just the survey data. Then I began to ask myself, “What’s the story being told? What’s the big picture?” I went back through, and I copy and pasted the questions, and I copy and pasted all the answers again, and at that point I only looked at 4 categories [which I then tagged]. I used Google docs for all of my coding. I used color. I highlighted. I assigned a color to each tag and I went through and at some points I would pose questions in the margins, and sometimes those comments were comments on a trend that I was noticing, kind of reiterating a main idea, and sometimes it was of question of, well, “Did you still do this?” These became the follow-up questions that I asked in the interview.

Ruth Hubbard and Brenda Power (1999) distinguish between the notes you take as you research and the notes you develop as you analyze. They refer to the former as raw notes and the latter as cooked notes. “Raw notes,” they explain, “are just what you’ve written, as quickly as possible, without any analysis. Cooked notes are the analysis of these raw materials” (p. 129). They continue: Cooking notes can . . . be as simple as adding questions to them, to extend and expand your thinking about what you are seeing . . . . Cooking with questions in mind extends your sight about what patterns are emerging. Questions to consider while cooking your notes might include, Why did I think this was important to write down? How does this connect with what I saw earlier in the day, week, year? Based upon what I’m seeing, what action should I take to change the curriculum or my research question? (p. 129) The researchers we know use a number of methods to cook notes in order to deepen their analysis of the data they have collected. Some methods that are particularly useful are coding, indexing, and constructing research memos.

Analyzing Data 189 Coding We define coding as a systematic way of indicating in your data the themes and categories you have identified. In other words, with coding, you mark all the occurrences of the themes and categories you have noted as important, either through your early readings of your data or through your secondary research (e.g., reading of the literature and theory in your field). For example, for the early literacy prompt, you may have identified themes such as influences of people on early literacy and influences of place on early literacy. Perhaps some of the categories you identified for influences of people were teachers, parents, and peers. Under influences of place, you may have identified classrooms, bedrooms, and libraries as categories. Moving from this initial step of identifying themes and categories to marking these themes and categories through coding merely means returning to the data, reviewing it closely, and, while reviewing it, marking in some manner those statements that relate to each of your themes and categories. Of course, it is also possible you will find evidence while you are coding that does not relate to your themes and categories; you will want to make note of that evidence and consider adding new categories. As all aspects of data analysis are recursive, you will likely end up revisiting your initial themes and categories multiple times. In other words, as you continue to immerse yourself in your data, you may replace some of your categories with others that better describe patterns you are seeing. Coding can be a messy process; you will continue to move back and forth between the themes and categories you have identified and the specifics of your data, sometimes generating new themes and categories and continually generating explanations. When you code, you will also raise questions and do some initial theorizing about what the data mean. In fact, your theorizing may be the driving force in the coding scheme you develop. Again, as you look back to the early literacy prompt, you may be influenced by theories of early brain development that suggest the act of reading to children at a very young age is significant for a child’s cognitive development. Holding this perspective might cause you to focus attention in your coding on the roles of parents and siblings in an individual’s early literacy. To reduce the messiness of coding and to keep yourself organized, we recommend making copies of your data—whether it’s on paper or on the computer. Because this step involves marking documents, either digitally or by hand, and because you may end up changing your categories and/or how you are coding as you go, it’s a good idea to always have a clean set of originals on hand. Ways to Code At its simplest level, coding involves looking through data and marking themes and categories in the margins. The marks indicate how particular words, phrases, and segments of the data support a theme. The example in this section is taken from a response to the early literacy prompt presented earlier in the chapter (see Figure 6.3). Our markings demonstrate how a researcher might code occurrences of words and phrases that tie to these themes: influence of place and influence of people. The first paragraph focuses on the library and conveys a clear sense of the influence of place. In her coding, the researcher begins to explore why this place is important to the respondent as an early reading memory: because it was comfortable, with “chairs, pillows, comfortable rugs”; because it was “cool and inviting.” In the next paragraph, however, a contrast appears. Although the researcher also marks this as an example of

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Figure 6.3  Coding from Early Literacy Prompt

the influence of place, she notes some differences as well. This part of the library was “all concrete and metal shelves . . . a little dusty.” The less comfortable environment of this part of the library didn’t seem to deter the respondent’s desire to read: “Sitting in a corner, a pile of books at my feet, and reading and reading.” But the respondent does note that “this was the place for serious research,” where the books were “hardback and nonfiction.” Noting these statements helps the researcher ask the following question: “Nonfiction = less comfortable? I wonder if this association happened at other times?”

Analyzing Data 191 Looking carefully at the words, fitting them to the themes and categories, and using all of this to ask additional questions are all a part of coding. A piece of data coded and organized in this way will help researchers look back on this response later and see how it connects to other responses they have coded. As you do this kind of coding, you might use one of a number of techniques to make your job easier. Many researchers, for example, develop and use abbreviations (e.g., PL might stand for place; P might stand for people, etc.). Just be sure to record somewhere what these are. Other techniques include coding by highlighting, where researchers use different-colored pencils or highlighters and have a coding chart that indicates which colors relate to which themes. This kind of coding provides clear visual cues for which themes occur and with what frequency. The colors make it easy to extract significant findings by simply looking at the data. For example, if you want to ascertain how frequently a place is mentioned as an influence on early literacy, and if you have marked this category with a certain color highlighter, then it becomes very easy to flip through your data to note all of the instances you see. Color can also make it easy to identify quotes you might wish to use when you write up your findings. We provide an example, reproduced in grey scale but showing the markings and highlighting, in Figure 6.4.

physical writing” HoM-informed Process SELF-ADVOCACY PROCESS HOM Influence in other aspects of life HoM influence writing Context: Interview took place in my office on Thursday, Jan. 19. 9.27 Intro of the documents that will be referenced, Glory sent file. I don’t know if its the revised version or not. We might reference that further on. 9:28.32 Could have tried harder. I was busy, didn’t focus on papers as much as I should have. I didn’t have enough time, didn’t focus, didn’t prioritize for actually sitting down and focusing on my papers than needed. That was mainly my biggest issue w/ writing. 9.29-30. Wasn't writing, it was the outside circumstances? I probably would have set out more time. Considering what my planner looked like then/now. It’s very cramped together. I had more leisure time so I know i could have fit it in, but I was just tired. I was just ‘eh.’ I wasn’t really feeling it because I didn’t really care about the pieces I was writing.

Comment [1]: Biggest issue came from a lack of HoM informed practice/process

Comment [2]: Struggled because not engaged--lacked HoM

9.30. HOM--metacognition? It’s interesting--learning plan, this is all about metacognition. Can you talk about what changed, or how you’re relationship with/metacognition has changed. 9.31. I didn’t focus on it that much. I was getting lazy and didn’t try hard enough to try to connect myself more. I knew as soon as I was writing that I wasn’t practicing as much as i should. 9.31/26 i remember thinking about that in my second essay. I was sitting there (ah-ha moment) I was just like I am dragging it on. I hated this one. It was so dull, 2 days before it was due. It was dumb. I was trying to make the page requirement. I’m not practicing any of the steps. Got a C on that paper.

Comment [3]: Recognized (from writing) that not practicing metacognition. Comment [4]: Hadn't gone through a writing process, either. Procrastinated until last minute. Comment [5]: Resulted in a lower grade.

9.32. I realized I wasn't doing any (openness, curiosity). 9.32.39 What shifted b/w 2nd and 3rd project? I was more involved; stuff I was interested in. When you’re more engaged, it’s easier to practice the skills. 9.33.06 Did professor have you writing to specific prompt? It was very point on. Don't Remember first paper-so boring. Snoozing away. This was the only paper I tried.

Comment [6]: When she started prioritizing HoM- engagement, curiosity--actually tried.

9.33.50 How you practiced HoM. Don’t just use in writing, but in daily life. Can you elaborate? 9.34. Mainly, I’ve noticed with writing, you have to practice these things to be a better writer. Also improve you as a person. Success with networking, making new friends, getting ahead, understanding . I’m very different from HS. I was very close minded. This year, I’ve opened myself up to reading the news, getting involved with what’s going on in the world. Understand it, go to talks, to make myself see it--even if I see it as crazy. I still want to hear it, to reassure myself or change my point of view. KInd of like research.

Figure 6.4  Natasha’s Coding of an Interview: Done in a Google Doc

Comment [7]: HoM practices helpful for developing as citizen

192  Analyzing Data Another option researchers have is to use a coding chart, as seen in see Table 6.1. These charts allow you to see how many times certain themes occur and how those themes move across the various kinds of data you have collected. Generally, creating a coding chart involves these steps: naming the themes you are interested in looking at, naming the pieces of data to be examined, and noting the incidences of the themes in those pieces of data. It is also a good idea to leave room for questions and additional information. Returning to the early literacy prompt, a researcher, after looking at the responses of five people, could create a coding chart that looks like Table 6.1. The plus signs indicate evidence of the theme. Coding charts such as this one can let you see what themes and subthemes are most common and also help you think about why that’s so. These charts can also prompt questions about your data and categories. For example, Table 6.1 suggests the following questions: What is the role of night-time reading by parents? Do kids whose Table 6.1  Coding Chart on Early Literacy Influences Name

Influences of People: Parents

Influences of People: Teachers

Michelle + (especially her mother, who brought her books every week)

+ (second grade teacher, who suddenly helped her make sense of plot)

Anthony

+

Michael + (mother took him to library every week) (I might need a new category here for librarian’s influence because he notes she helped him pick books)

Influences of People: Peers

+ (competition to read the most books got him inspired to read)

Influences of Place: Bedroom + (found it “safe”; nobody else in family read, so she could hide this “odd activity” from others)

+ (night reading; comfort of bed)

Influences of Place: Classroom

Influence of Place: Library

+ (couch in corner felt comforting)

+ (librarian took under wing) (I might need librarian category)

Analyzing Data 193 parents read to them like reading more as adults? Do they associate reading with comfort? What role do librarians play? Are they more prominent influences in situations in which parents are not influences on a child’s reading? Such questions can lead you to “relook” at your data to seek a deeper understanding of these issues. Natasha used a kind of coding chart for her research, in this case as she analyzed her students’ feeling of preparedness for college writing before and after the seminar she taught. Notice, in Figure 6.6, how she uses a combination of words taken from her students’ work and counts how many students used similar words. Whereas we are presenting these examples of coding as separate strategies, in reality many researchers use combinations of them. For example, it might be useful to code words or phrases first and then move on to creating a coding chart. Or you might find that highlighting works well for you, but that you want to add questions and ideas in the margins. The important point about coding is that it lets you mark the data in a strategic and systematic way so that you can keep returning to them as you dig more deeply into the information you have gathered.

Figure 6.5  Natasha’s Coding Chart

194  Analyzing Data Coding also works best if you approach it flexibly, realizing that its purpose is to lead you to the next steps in the research process: making meaning of your research and then conveying that meaning to others. If your coding seems overly complex or difficult, then it may be a sign your themes and categories do not truly represent what’s in the data. If this happens, then you may want to return to your data and try to ascertain if there are other, more appropriate themes that cut across the information you’ve collected. Alternatively, if your coding seems to proceed too easily, then it might be a sign that you have gotten locked into certain categories early on and you may not be seeing all of the things your data have to offer. Again, it is probably a good idea to review your data multiple times to see what other information or issues emerge. Analyzing data, as we have stressed multiple times, is always recursive.

Prompt 6.6:  Practicing Coding Choose one text from your research (interview transcript, log entry, writing sample). Read over the text searching for themes and categories. Make three copies and try out several of the strategies for coding. Did one strategy work better than another? Why? Did you find yourself using a combination of approaches? What are your thoughts and impressions?

Coding with Technology Coding, and qualitative data analysis more generally, are now well supported by technology. There are a number of software programs available that qualitative researchers in writing studies commonly use, such as Dedoose and NVivo. Although it is beyond the scope of this text to name and review all of these programs, we encourage you to consider what might be available and how different applications might best suit your needs. For example, some universities purchase site licenses for particular programs in order to make them available, free of charge, to their students and faculty. Other students make use of free or inexpensive software that they find themselves. Some of these programs have free trial periods, so it may be useful to try them out first and see what they are capable of doing. Zach De Piero, a former Ph.D. student at the University of California at Santa Barbara who is now at Penn State Abington, offered us some insights into his use of Dedoose and how it helped him in his research (see Sidebar 6.3).

Sidebar 6.3:  Using Data Analysis Software—Zack De Piero, Penn State Abington As a graduate student, I designed a mixed methods study that generated a considerable amount of qualitative data: 24 graduate teaching assistants completed surveys that included numerous open-ended survey questions, and based on their responses, I conducted follow-up interviews with 11 of them. I coded this data longhand, leaving me with a stack of manila folders, packets of printouts, highlighted this ’n’ that, somewhat legible marginal inscriptions, and a laundry list of codes.

Analyzing Data 195   When I revisited the codes that emerged from this first round of coding, though, I ran into challenges that illuminated the constraints of longhand coding, namely, those associated with organization, space, aggregation, and visualization. First, it was difficult to track which codes referred to which particular slices of data, and this problem was compounded by some of my intuitive coding processes: tacking sticky notes onto pages without any “white space” left and freewriting in a MS Word doc to catalog my thought process while I was coding. I often found myself asking questions, wait, what was I referring to here?, hold on—who said this?, and hmm, didn’t I have a similar thought somewhere else? Second, pinpointing the most salient codes that best addressed my research questions was too approximate for my liking. Although I wasn’t necessarily interested in transforming the qualitative data into precise statistical measurements, I realized that if I wanted to get a sense of a code’s frequency—that is, how prominently it manifested throughout the data—I’d have to devise some kind of longhand tally system. I realized that my current coding approach was too messy, and it was becoming a methodological bottleneck. I talked to former instructors and cohort members about what (if any) coding software they used, read up on reviews for available qualitative coding software, and checked out “how to” videos on YouTube to get a sense of each software’s usability. I decided to give Dedoose a shot, and after a week-long learning curve made easier by their stellar user support service, I never looked back. After importing the data (in my case, PDF and docx files), codes are created by highlighting a particular strand of text, clicking “+”, then typing in a name for that code. Each new code then becomes instantly visible on the main interface, and users can find (and revise) codes by scrolling through the entire list which can be organized in three ways, depending on the user’s preference: most recently added, a manually chosen order, or alphabetical order (my pick). Applying each code to the data requires highlighting a portion of data/text, then double-clicking a particular code. Visualizing the list of codes facilitated my ability to merge codes, a one-step process that merely required click ’n’ drag. While these simple features were timesavers, I found some of Dedoose’s other affordances to be game-changers. Individuals codes—“child codes,” in Dedoose-speak—can be shelved into broader categories, called “root codes.” This process of lumping and splitting is reversible; individual codes can be “re-parented” into new broader categories, or become “re-rooted” as standalone, parent-less codes. Once categories (roots) began to emerge from a collection of codes (children), I was able to examine any remaining standalone child codes with greater purpose to consider whether they needed to be merged (does another existing code capture this phenomenon?) or scrapped altogether (is this important enough that it answers my research questions?). Altogether, Dedoose offered me a user-friendly experience that, I believe, was conducive for my broad inquiry. It resolved logistical and conceptual issues from my initial longhand coding pass; whereas I felt adrift in a sea of data, Dedoose helped me see how the pieces of the puzzle added up. Codes turned into categories, and categories formed the theoretical framework that would reveal new insights into the roles of reading in the writing classroom.

196  Analyzing Data Our colleague, Rachel Gramer, has also used digital coding. She said she codes in order to “see what I can’t see yet,” and believes that CAQDAS (computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software) can help in the process because of the amount of memory the software provides, and the number of options it offers. Although Rachel recognizes the value of coding for her work, she also cites Arkansas State University Professor Elizabeth Chamberlain, in a 2017 conference talk addressing its challenges: The value of coding for the humanities is not only that it adds “data science” to our disciplinary toolbox. Rather, coding demands algorithmic thinking, which in turn demands a stance that is at once big picture and small strokes: Questions must be large enough to address a broad range of data but answerable through a more minute lens. Rachel stresses the importance of aligning methods for analysis with research questions. Specifically, she has used NVivo, and she explains its benefits and limitations in Sidebar 6.4.

Sidebar 6.4:  Benefits and Limitations of NVivo—Rachel Gramer, Eastern Michigan University Benefits: • •

• •

•

It has a free, 14-day trial; there is a student rate to purchase annually; works with Windows and Mac. It allows the researcher to import multiple types of documents and code by document type, case, demographic info, by keyword, or any coding method (e.g., all by case; then by Q; then multiple layers of sub-coding). It can code any size unit of analysis. It allows the researcher to shuffle and reshuffle codes into categories manually and get quick numbers; it also allows for group codes into categories by creating collections. It issues reports that show where your codes are overlapping (or not), as well as other visualizations like wordles and word trees; reports by single codes or by categories/collections (macro/micro).

Limitations: • It is time-intensive to create codes first-time through; shuffling codes could be easier. • It can still be challenging to make reports work, including wordles and word trees, depending on the complexity you’re looking for.

Analyzing Data 197 To learn more about coding, Rachel recommends the work of Johnny Saldaña, especially The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers (2015). That book, plus its companion website (https://study.sagepub.com/saldanacoding3e), offers introductions to online coding, links to CAQDAS, examples of coding, and sample transcripts on which to try coding. She also recommends Elizabeth Chamberlain’s work, cited above. We caution that these programs are just that, programs, or, essentially, tools. They can assist you with analyzing your data, but the expertise and skill you bring to the analysis stage, and the theoretical perspectives you apply in analyzing your data, are still the key elements. You need, ultimately, to determine categories and themes and to develop and evaluate coding schemes that make sense for your work. You also need to interpret what you analyze and find. In other words, the intellectual tasks involved in analyzing qualitative data cannot be performed entirely by a computer. You should be knowledgeable, therefore, about what different programs can and cannot do and know about their advantages and limitations. Your job as researcher is to evaluate the tools to determine which might work best for you. Knowing as much as you can about these tools can help you make informed decisions that will enhance, and hopefully simplify (and perhaps speed up), your data analysis. Indexing Another approach to systematically reviewing your data is what some researchers call indexing. Indexing is a way of keeping track of both the themes and the categories you have identified in your data and where these themes and categories can be found. When you index, you produce a table of contents of sorts that records the themes and categories. Indexing can be particularly useful as a way to organize a lengthy observation journal or transcripts of a series of interviews with a single individual. Indexing is a tool that researchers can use in conjunction with or independent of coding. It sometimes follows coding and at other times is done by itself. Hubbard and Power (1993) describe indexing in this way: The first step is to go back through your notes to date, reading through them and making notes in the margins. . . . Then, on a separate sheet of paper, list the categories and themes that you have noted and each page on which these categories appear. After completing this index, jot down a few paragraphs about what you have noticed from these categories. (p. 74) Dawn Putman, a student whose research centered around student reflection in writing, developed an index for her field notes. An excerpt of this index, called “Dawn’s Journal Entry Index,” appears in Sidebar 6.5. After reading her notes carefully and jotting down the themes she noticed in them, she eventually settled on seven categories that she believed warranted further study. She then went through her notes again and recorded the page numbers where examples of each theme could be found. For Dawn, this approach to categorizing her findings helped her see graphically the many examples she had found relating to her various themes and categories. She was able both to support her belief that these themes were weighty clues and to develop a system that would allow her to return to those pages easily for further study.

198  Analyzing Data Dawn used another kind of index to organize and make sense of the writing logs of individual students. After reading through one student’s reflective writing log, she noticed that the entries weren’t all of the same kind—that what she had initially called reflection actually played out in numerous ways for this student. She began by noting the number of entries the student had written and then separated them into what she called reflective and summative entries (see the “Writer’s Logs” entry in Sidebar 6.5). Next, she began to think about the purposes of these entries and then named and defined categories for each of the purposes she was beginning to recognize (see “Purposes” in the sidebar). She counted the number of entries for each purpose. Finally, she went back again and noted the keywords the student used; she inserted those into each category. This elaboration helped Dawn further understand the student’s purposes (see “Key Words Determining Purposes” in the sidebar). Dawn then engaged in this same process for all the students in the study. Eventually, she identified a pattern of word choice across her students’ reflective writing. The knowledge gained from this careful indexing helped her understand the topic of student reflection in new ways.

Sidebar 6.5:  Examples of Indexing Dawn’s Journal Entry Index Problems with student thought: 1, 2, 11, 14, 24, 35 Student motivation/investment: 1, 14–15, 52, 54, 51, 66–67 Question of whom reflection is for: 36, 35 Examples of reflective thinking: 2, 4, 14, 24–25, 27–28, 32–34, 49, 70, 72–74 Questions relating to reflection: 6, 9, 21, 25, 58 Questions relating to format of assignment: 29, 31, 47, 48 Problems with reflective assignments: 9, 10, 29, 44, 45, 50, 53–54, 55 Writer’s Logs Number of Entries: 80 Reflective: 48 Summative: 30 Purposes (Note that some entries served two or more purposes.) Evaluate—make judgments—22 Compare—similarities/differences between tasks—4 Plan/predict—determine what may happen—8 Analyze—determine why something is how it is, draw conclusions—6 Problem solve—determine alternatives—13

Analyzing Data 199 Key Words Determining Purposes Evaluate: easier, good, love, don’t like, I think, helped, hard, easy, helpful, harder, poor, interesting Compare: similar, than, compared to, easier [than] Plan/predict: I think, I will, going to, if I Analyze: realize, this is because, because, sometimes you have to, I realized, they seem Problem solve: I didn’t know, I started . . . so, I might, I am, think about, it seems, I am having to, I can see how, that, I found, I began, I realized, I thought maybe

Writing Research Memos As mentioned earlier, research memos can be useful analytic tools throughout the research process. They are designed to help you look through the data you have collected and write about what you are noticing. Research memos can also serve as useful tools as you are analyzing your data. A research memo is simply a note to yourself, generally written as a narrative, that summarizes the issues that have been identified so far and explores how the data you have collected support or raise questions about the themes you’ve identified. Whereas researchers often write memos to themselves as a way to come to terms with they are seeing, it may also be beneficial to write them to other audiences—a professor or a classmate, perhaps—as a way of communicating to learn what others may make of your analysis. In either case, the very act of summarizing your findings and attempting to explain why you have arrived at the tentative conclusions (or tentative questions) you have is an important and useful strategy for making sense of your data. We see the research memo functioning as a tool for digging more deeply into your data for at least two reasons. First, centering a research memo around a particular theme or category requires you to delve into the actual words in your observation logs, interview transcripts, and artifacts. As you reread these words, looking for the kinds of connections necessary to write the research memo, you will continue to uncover the patterns and explanations needed to answer your research question. A second reason to use research memos for analyzing data is that they are a tool you can use throughout your research, thus giving you an opportunity to keep track of your interpretations of and perspectives on your data. In short, if you started writing research memos as you were collecting your data, then you may find that revisiting them at this stage in the research process will remind you of and bring to light issues that might have gotten lost along the way. Some variations of the research memo include one-page research memos, in which you limit yourself to a single page, focusing on the very important issues in your research. Another is the dialogic research memo, which can help you think through the evidence and arguments of two potentially important but contradictory themes.

200  Analyzing Data With these you can set up the memo on two facing pages, writing the rationale for one perspective on one page and for the other on the opposite page. A third is the visual research memo, which provides a graphic depiction of your work, similar to the versions you saw from Keon Pettiway in Chapter 2. These are especially useful with projects that have numerous themes that may be connected in ways you have not yet ascertained. They also are useful for making sense of projects with complex interrelationships. Finally, as with the other strategies discussed in this section, research memos are probably most valuable when used in combination with other strategies. Whether you use research memos throughout your research or just as you analyze your data, it is important to be mindful of a tendency many of us have as researchers. Inevitably, most of us draw some preliminary conclusions as we collect our artifacts, observe others, and conduct interviews. We see our data in certain ways before we even have a chance to immerse ourselves fully in all of the information we’ve gathered; we approach our analysis with answers to our questions already in mind. In these instances, we may easily miss intriguing and significant patterns and/or contractions or discrepancies that may be right in front of us. Research memos can be a valuable tool for avoiding this as they offer an opportunity for both reflecting on our analysis and sharing our interpretations and conclusions with others. Another solution entails triangulating your data, something we talked about briefly in Chapter 4. We define triangulation as looking at an issue in our research from multiple perspectives. By multiple perspectives we mean, for example, that you consider a tentative conclusion about how middle school students spell by looking at the experiences of not just a few, but several students. If you are trying to determine how collaboration affects professional writers’ writing style, it might mean that you look carefully not only at the writers’ own descriptions of their writing, but also at your observations of their writing and their actual written products. In other words, triangulation implies looking at issues in multiple ways to see if what you think you recognize in one way is also present as you look at it in other ways (see Sidebar 6.6). Another approach to triangulation is to ask others to look at your tentative findings so that you consciously draw on multiple perspectives. For example, you may ask colleagues in your program, a professor, or a trusted friend to look through some of your materials to see if they see what you see. Some qualitative researchers even query their participants to see whether they perceive the researcher’s representations to be “accurate.” This issue of participant feedback is important on many levels. For example, who better to give you their perspective than the individuals you interviewed or observed? However, it also can be very complicated, which we address at the end of the chapter. Many of our students ask us if triangulation is achieved by simply looking at the data in three ways (three participants, three data sources, etc.). The answer is that it’s not quite that simple. Triangulation means making our best effort to look at issues in our research from multiple perspectives. Three is not a magic number. As a researcher, you should explore multiple perspectives—as many as you can bring—on the issues you investigate, and you should do this throughout your research. And once again, research memos can be a useful tool for helping you do this.

Analyzing Data 201

Sidebar 6.6:  Triangulation Most qualitative researchers rely on the concept of triangulation in their work— not only as a way to validate their findings, but as a way of making sure they are capturing the many dimensions of their research questions. Triangulation means having multiple methodological tools in play (i.e., not just relying on a single interview to tell the story, but including interviews, surveys, and artifacts, for example) and/or multiple research participants as part of the study (i.e., interviews with many participants, or surveys from a wide variety of respondents). Triangulation does not mean that you rely on just three respondents or three kinds of tools, but rather that you incorporate multiple perspectives in order to identify patterns, raise questions, and validate findings.

Prompt 6.7:  Creating Research Memos Look through several pieces of data that you have collected for your research. Try creating two kinds of memos from the information in those pieces of data: a narrative with an intended audience, a one-page memo, a dialogic memo, or a visual depiction. After you have written the memos, reflect on which seemed most useful to you. What could you capture in one and not in the other? What did writing the memos enable you to notice or learn?

Prompt 6.8:  Considering Others’ Perspectives Select an excerpt of your data that intrigues you (e.g., you can see multiple ways of interpreting it, you see contradictions in it, you find it confusing, you worry you are missing an important piece of the puzzle). Share an unmarked copy of this excerpt with several classmates. How do they interpret it? What meaning do they ascribe to it? In what ways are their interpretations different from yours? Does their interpretation add anything to your own?

Positionality and Viewing Data through Various Lenses In our minds, analyzing data is one of the most creative and exciting parts of the research process, an occasion for you to make sense of all the work you have done so far. Immersing yourself in the nuances of meaning and making creative leaps across findings can be a truly satisfying experience, an opportunity for you to begin to find answers to the questions you initially posed. After spending many hours developing a research question, reviewing the literature, and gathering data through multiple means, you finally

202  Analyzing Data have the opportunity to see the big picture and to learn new information that might help you, and others, to understand a particular phenomenon or event more clearly. When we analyze our data, we inevitably do so through our own eyes. It is important, therefore, that we be aware and cognizant of positionality and how it may impact how we view and interpret our data. For example, feminist scholars (such as Erin Frost, from Chapter 2) are very forthcoming generally about their practice of looking at data from a woman’s perspective and, in relation to classroom discourse, these researchers have discovered intriguing patterns that may not have emerged with a different perspective (e.g., Finders, 1997; Gilligan, 1982). Likewise, researchers who are deeply concerned with social justice might look at the same data in a very different light (e.g., Bomer & Bomer, 2001). Researchers who work from particular perspectives are most successful, we believe, when they identify those perspectives for their readers. We urge you to also approach this step with care, ever aware of your own positionality as an individual and researcher and of the perspectives that, of necessity, will inform and shape your analysis. As all of us begin the search for connections and patterns in our data, we do so through our own specific lenses. At times, these may occlude other perspectives that might also be useful. We all have biases, predispositions, and strongly held beliefs, and these may impact the analysis of our data as much, if not more than, any other stage of our research. In short, no analysis of data in qualitative research is ever completely objective. As researchers, therefore, it is vital that we be aware of the beliefs and predispositions we bring to this stage so that we can be always mindful of how those might be impacting our work and the conclusions we draw from it.

Analyzing Data Ethically The ethical decisions you may face during data analysis are serious and sometimes complicated. Some of these have to do with how we end up representing our participants. Over the past few decades, considerations of such issues have led researchers to think hard about what research means and who has the right to conduct it. Essentially, the argument is this: Researchers who gain access to the words and lives of others have an ethical obligation to include those others in the process. Referred to sometimes as emancipatory, or participatory, research, this paradigm suggests that researchers should practice research with rather than research on, making sure that the conclusions they reach truly tell a story that takes into account the perspectives of those whose beliefs and lives they are attempting to represent. Unless research is participatory in this way, the argument continues, researchers reduce research participants to lab rats or guinea pigs, whose only role in the process is that of distanced subjects. If we agree with this premise, then the implications for data analysis are significant. Who gets to tell the story of participants’ experience: the researcher or the research participant? Whose themes, selection of quotes, arrangement of details, and biases and subjectivities get to count in the retelling? Many researchers have begun to argue that data analysis should be done in collaboration with research participants so that both the researcher and the participants can share ideas and come to some agreement. However, the question during the analysis stage of research (and sometimes in the writing stage as well) becomes how—and even whether—to do this kind of collaboration and, if so, how to achieve a co-construction. What are the obligations involved in this? What are the mechanics of how to make it happen? Also, is it even feasible or desirable? A number of researchers have taken on these issues, and they offer multiple suggestions. For example, asking participants to read through our tentative

Analyzing Data 203 conclusions, engaging them in conversations about our findings, or even asking them to write their own analysis of the data can help us create more participatory moments and, ultimately, a fuller interpretation of our findings. As Ann wrote, with Cole and Conefrey (1996), in “Constructing Voices in Writing Research: Developing Participatory Approaches to Situated Inquiry,” certain strategies can help, such as asking research participants for clarification, asking participants to read the research searching for their own voice, modifying portions of the texts if the participants find them questionable or inaccurate, making certain to demonstrate the expertise of participants in their own lives and ideas, and stepping back from promoting oneself as “the” interpreter of knowledge (p. 147). Even with this kind of deliberateness, dilemmas can arise when researchers are confronted with the realities and complexities of negotiating meaning with participants and of understanding and taking into account multiple perspectives, some of which we might disagree with. What happens, for example, when there is a conflict in the interpretations: Is the researcher understanding a particular idea one way because of the expertise she holds or because of the many interviews, observations, and readings she has done, and are the participants understanding the same idea differently because of their personal view of or investment in it? Katherine Borland (1991) talks about this dilemma in her important article, “ ‘That’s Not What I Said’: Interpretive Conflict in Oral Narrative Research.” Borland demonstrates the best of what researchers suggest in regard to including the words of others: Offer research participants a chance to see what we have written, what conclusions we are coming to, and how we are interpreting the information that they have offered us. However, what Borland’s article also demonstrates is what can happen when a research participant— in this case, her grandmother—is offered that opportunity and disagrees strongly with the researcher’s interpretation. Borland’s grandmother sees the writing as a “definite and complete distortion,” claiming that Borland “read into the story what you [she] wished to” (p. 70). We wish we could offer easy answers to such dilemmas, but we cannot. Many qualitative researchers struggle with these same issues. Borland ended up modifying some of the words, but her own interpretation prevailed. For Robert Yagelski (2001), a literacy researcher whose conclusions in a published article were questioned publicly by former students in the class he was describing (the students claimed he did not do enough to include the voices of others), the answer lies in the concept of representation in the first place: “I know that neither their story nor mine is anything but a construction of the experience that inevitably misrepresents it. And to include more or different voices would only change that misrepresentation rather than make it ‘more true’ ” (p. 657). For us, the best a researcher can do is to keep in mind the specific suggestions offered earlier: to ask research participants about our interpretation and about how their own might intersect or differ. And, as we listen to their responses, we can strive for a balance: We can seek to balance our own expertise with the expertise of those we have asked to tell us about their lives. We also can listen attentively and with open minds to what our participants have told us, question our interpretations constantly, and realize that truth is an elusive concept. In short, we can acknowledge and appreciate that, at best, the answers to our research questions are partial, carefully constructed representations. The ways in which we might construct and present those representations, both to our participants and to other audiences, are the subject of Chapter 7.

7 How Do I Present My Research? Writing and Disseminating Your Findings

As you probably recognize at this point, writing is a frequent activity throughout research. We write to formulate a research question, to think our way through our ideas about what we’re reading and seeing, to obtain permissions to study the setting(s) we select, to question our beliefs and biases. We also write to record our findings as we read, look at artifacts, conduct interviews, and carry out observations. We write to sort through our findings and to make sense of our ideas as we analyze our data and begin uncovering patterns, discrepancies, themes, and subthemes. Writing, in fact, is one of the constants of the research process; we all do it to develop our thoughts and ideas. Writing is also a process that entails a lot of choice. This chapter addresses the choices you will make as you write up your research, and it presents concrete strategies to help you with those choices. As you read, keep in mind that the choices you do end up making are seldom binding. Our goal is to help you start thinking about, planning for, and writing up your research in ways that will be most useful and beneficial, both to you and to all of the audiences you seek to address.

Shifting from Writing to Explore to Writing to Present Ideas Much of the writing you have done thus far for your research has probably been more along the lines of writing to learn, that is, writing to explore and discover, ponder, raise questions, and even make sense of something—in this case your research question and findings. This type of writing is tentative, fluid, and exploratory, a stopping place where you can pause and think through what you are learning. But, even if it is tentative, this kind of writing is integral to interpretation. When you write in this way, you are exploring and trying out ideas and attempting to impose an order on those ideas and make sense of them. For example, as you wrote the various drafts of your question and your research proposal, and as you started writing research memos about preliminary findings, you were at the very early stages of generating ideas and meaning through your writing. Usually, this early, less formal writing is intended only for yourself and, perhaps, your advisor. At a certain point in the research process, however, your writing will begin to move from that less formal, exploratory writing to a more formal kind of writing that represents and communicates your findings—that is, from personal writing that has served as a way to think through your ideas to writing that will present those ideas publicly. As such, your writing will begin to take on certain rhetorical features. What, for example, might be the purpose of your writing? Will you be reporting on a situation?

Writing Up and Disseminating Your Findings 205 Making an argument for another approach? Offering advice to your coworkers? Next, what kind of text or document might you produce that will best support that purpose? For example, does your program have a set form, such as a thesis, or do you have flexibility in what you produce? Third, who will be the audience for your writing? Will it only be for your advisor or committee, or will you seek to publish it? And, finally, how might you represent yourself as the researcher/writer of this document? Will you present yourself as someone with a certain amount of expertise on the subject, or as someone who is still learning? All of these questions will significantly affect the way you present your research. Many decisions you will make about the presentation of your research go back to your purposes for conducting it in the first place. Although we talk about this later in the chapter, for now just think about your primary reasons for doing your research: Did you embark on it for personal or professional reasons? Did you hope to learn something that would help you in your professional role, or did you want to share your knowledge with others? The answers to these questions will help you determine the kind of document(s) you may want to produce (e.g., scholarly article, manual, report, multimodal presentation, website) and the ways in which you might go about producing it (e.g., the style and tone you might adopt, the approach you might take, the ideas you might emphasize).

Taking Stock of what You Know Already about Writing As you move toward this end stage of your research journey, we encourage you to consider what you already know about writing, particularly academic writing. We have noticed that our own MA students—knowledgeable as they are about the nature of writing, the diversity of processes inherent in writing, and the best ways of teaching writing—sometimes forget these understandings when it comes to their own writing. We encourage you to take stock of and draw on what you do know already about writing and apply that understanding to your own work. Doing so will help you move through this stage with greater confidence and success. You know, for example, that writing is indeed a process, and that it takes time to draft, redraft, revise, and edit a piece of writing. Thus, you need to give yourself sufficient time to think, write, reflect, rewrite, and even to set aside your writing to get some distance and a fresh perspective on it. You also know how important it is to be aware of your own processes as a writer. Even if this project is longer and more in depth than anything you’ve written in the past, the basic processes of writing you have developed over the years will still be useful. For example, some of us rely on feedback from others at different stages of the writing process. Others need to talk through our ideas with others. Cathy, for example, finds that just talking through her initial ideas helps her crystallize her thoughts. Other writers rely on freewriting to clarify their thinking and/or develop a plan for their writing. The simple act of writing—with no constraints and no pressure to write perfectly or make perfect sense the first time through—helps these writers create meaning out of what may initially seem like disparate and even random ideas. Still other writers use visual approaches to make sense of their ideas, finding the process of constructing maps, webs, or even outlines a useful means for finding their focus and clarifying their thinking. Keon Pettiway, whom you met in Chapter 2, for example, uses visual mapping as he plans his writing (see Sidebar 2.3 in Chapter 2). And, of

206  Writing Up and Disseminating Your Findings course, most writers have rituals, such as cleaning the house or responding to all of their emails before they start writing. Whatever your process or ritual is for getting started, accept and embrace its role in what and how you write. Another important consideration is how you approach the task of revising. Most of us find revising to be a key component in producing a thoughtful and successful piece of writing. For complex, lengthy pieces of writing, revision can serve as an essential means for writing your way into a growing and developing understanding of your findings, as well as a way to continually refine your thinking. Revision also speaks to the recursive nature of writing: Every revision takes you deeper into your findings— rereading, rethinking, and redrafting help you to reach this depth.

Prompt 7.1:  Who You Are as a Writer Think for a moment about the last time you wrote a major paper or created a substantial document. Picture where you were and try to recall your thought processes and the steps you took in writing it. Respond to these questions: • How did you get started with your writing? Did you take notes? Write an outline? Make a drawing? Talk with a friend? Freewrite? Just start writing? • How did you revise? Did you share your writing with a friend or colleague to get feedback? Did you revise as you wrote? Did you get a whole draft done before going back to revise? What did you revise for? Ideas? Sentence structure? Meaning? Organizational patterns? • What parts of the process were most successful for you? What parts didn’t work so well? • How and where did your best composing occur? At a computer? With paper and pen? In an office? At a coffee shop? In a kitchen? Sitting in bed? Share your responses with others in the class. Do you have similar or different approaches to writing? Did you learn any strategies from your classmates that might be useful for you to try? (In one of the classes Ann teaches, she has students share “what works for me” strategies with one another as a way of expanding their writing toolkits and repertoires.)

Writing to Interpret Each draft you produce of your project will most likely remind you that writing is also always an act of interpretation. As you write your way through your drafts, you will continually see and resee you data, and you will continually interpret and reinterpret the events you observed. Additionally, what you name as the themes and important findings in your data, and how you ultimately situate and present those, will differ from how any other researcher might interpret the same material—and that is how it should be. At first, this might seem a little disconcerting and even counterintuitive: After all, shouldn’t most research lead to an answer—and shouldn’t there ultimately be agreement on that answer? Isn’t that the point of research? Most qualitative

Writing Up and Disseminating Your Findings 207 researchers who understand the nature of the research process know that this is not the point—and seldom, if ever, is the case. We all may read and interpret research findings in multiple and disparate ways, just as we read novels, newspaper reports, and websites in different ways. Ethical researchers recognize this fact and contextualize and qualify their claims accordingly. Anthropologist Margery Wolf would argue that even a single researcher might interpret the same set of events differently, a stance she makes concrete in her classic text, A Thrice Told Tale (1992). She interprets a similar set of events gathered from her research in three different ways, using different genres of representation in narrating the events: a short story, a set of anthropological field notes, and a social science article. Her point, of course, is that interpretation is an inherent part of the research process, and the rhetorical act of writing supports and furthers this notion of multiple interpretations. The events you choose to stress, the themes you choose to follow and highlight, and the genres you select to set forth your understandings are integral choices in the research process—and, she would argue, always rhetorical. Clifford Geertz makes a similar point in another classic text, Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author (1988), focusing specifically on one part of the rhetorical construct—the nature of authorship in research. He suggests that we would do well to consider the researcher as an author—as a creator of texts who makes particular decisions about what to include and exclude, about what to emphasize and de-emphasize. He suggests that any anthropological reporting is indeed a kind of argument in which anthropologists have to, in part, “convince us . . . not merely that they themselves have truly ‘been there,’ but . . . that had we been there we should have seen what they saw, felt what they felt, concluded what they concluded” (p. 16). Thus, it is important to recall that as researchers we are also authors whose interpretations of events may indeed vary, but who are always engaged in the act of interpretation. And our interpretations, although varied, are no less significant because of that variation. So what does all this mean for you as a researcher? First, it implies a certain level of responsibility on your part as you work hard to make sure your interpretation is supported by the information you have collected (we talk more about this in a later section). If writing is an interpretive act, in other words, you need to be very sure that your interpretation emerges from and is supported by your data. Second, it suggests that, because multiple interpretations are indeed possible, you might use writing as a way to sift through those possible meanings until you find the one that seems to be most supported by the data, that best meets the purpose and audiences for your writing, and that just “feels right”—feels as if it works best to explain what you have learned. And, as we talked about in Chapter 6, always keep in mind your stance and positionality. As a feminist, social constructionist, and/or believer in particular approaches to teaching or particular organizational strategies, you will likely read your research through your ways of thinking and seeing the world. Writing in a way that demonstrates your awareness of your stance and ways of viewing the world, or even writing a section of your document from another stance altogether (like Margery Wolf did), can be a productive means of evaluating and thinking more carefully about your approach, and your research. Next, we offer suggestions for getting started with your writing and discuss tools that may help the writing process go more smoothly. What we urge you to remember

208  Writing Up and Disseminating Your Findings is this: As a professional in the field of writing, you are already an experienced writer. Whereas the scope of this project might be bigger than anything you have tackled before, all the strategies and tools you know—and have already used—are what will help you produce a final piece of writing that you will be proud of and that others will find useful.

Taking a Rhetorical Approach Writing is, as we have stressed, a rhetorical act. Therefore, before you immerse yourself in writing up your research, you should consider your project from a rhetorical stance—focusing on its audience, purpose, and genre. In this section, we offer you a few ideas about each of these, and then ask you to consider them in relation to your own project. Defining Your Audience We begin with the question of audience. For some of you, your target or primary audience might be your advisor or project committee. If you are doing your research to fulfill an academic program requirement, that’s certainly one audience—and for good reasons (beyond just receiving a grade). It is vital to have an audience of knowledgeable professionals and mentors in your field who can read and respond to your research. This response can deepen your understanding of your findings and of how and what those findings might add to the field’s knowledge. Your advisor and committee can help you see your research in ways that expand its possibilities. As we have emphasized throughout this book, we believe it is also important to see your research as doing more than just satisfying a program requirement. We hope that, as a professional in your field, you take on the mantle of research in your everyday work life. When that happens, your research becomes meaningful beyond just the academic requirements—in part because the audience for your research becomes even more genuine, as you try and begin to reach those who might truly benefit from it. But who are those who might benefit from your research? One significant person, of course, is you. Even beyond the exploratory and discovery writing already discussed, it is important to write up something that helps you understand better just what your research has demonstrated to you about your question—especially if the research is designed to help you change your own teaching or professional practice. But your audience, in many cases, will also expand beyond that. In our program, for example, we encourage students to write up their research for an audience that goes beyond themselves or their advisor: their peers who are also teaching or tutoring writing, professional colleagues in the workplace, a supervisor, other researchers in the field. Writing for broader audiences—sharing with others what you have learned—can help you see the value of your research in different ways. Lawrence Stenhouse, long considered the “father of teacher research,” saw this move to go public with research as a kind of moral consideration. He believed teachers, for example, have an obligation to publish their findings, thus contributing to the “community of critical discourse” (Ruddock & Hopkins, 1985, p. 17) that exists in a field of study. We think all professionals have the potential, and even obligation, to contribute in that way, and we hope you will begin to think of yourself as one of these professionals.

Writing Up and Disseminating Your Findings 209 A good first step as you begin thinking about audience is to consider who might benefit from or be interested in your research. Once you have identified such a group (or individual), think next about their interests and needs. What questions might they have about your research? Why might it be of interest to them? What might they want to know about it? Also, how might your research affect their professional and/ or personal lives? Additionally, what background knowledge will they already have in the area, and what background might you need to provide? How might their own stances and positionality affect how they make sense of and respond to your writing? Although we realize that you probably will not be able to formulate responses to all of these questions, considering them before you start writing can help you determine the kinds of information you might want to address; how you might address and present that information; what voice, style, and tone you might want to use; and so on. Considering these questions will also help you select an appropriate genre for your research, which we will say more about later in this section. One final note on audience: We have discovered over the years that we often write up our research differently for different audiences, using the same research findings but emphasizing different parts of those findings, or situating them differently in relation to the literature, in order to disseminate them to different groups. Ann, for example, has published her research on scientific discourse in both rhetoric journals and science studies journals. Cathy, who regularly writes for audiences of both practicing K-12 teachers and English education scholars, has adjusted both her findings and the way she writes about those findings to meet the needs of these two groups. As you think about the audience you want to reach, you too may find that you have in mind several, distinct audiences, whose needs and questions might be very different. In that case, you may select a “first” audience for your project with the intent of addressing other audiences in subsequent write-ups. Sometimes, it is simply easier to write for one of your audiences first and save other audiences, perhaps those that are less familiar to you and therefore more difficult to address, for later. lisa, one of our case study researchers, for example, chose her initial audience to be teachers in her school, hoping to share with them a multi-chaptered curriculum guide that would offer a model of place-based English language arts education that they could adapt for their own teaching. As she explains, “I wrote it as if I could just hand it to a teacher. ‘You need a year’s curriculum; here you go. Take what you need. Adapt it or use it as is.’ ” She subsequently adapted sections from that work to create presentations that were accepted for local and state conferences, and eventually she collaborated with a well-known scholar in the field to develop a national workshop (see Sidebar 7.1).

Prompt 7.2:  Identifying Potential Audiences Make a list of as many potential audiences for your research as you can think of. Next, consider what you know about the backgrounds, interests, and needs of each audience as you start to fill in the following chart:

210  Writing Up and Disseminating Your Findings

Audience

What might they already know about my research?

What might their questions be?

Sidebar 7.1:  Audience and Purpose Our case study researchers all had slightly different audiences and purposes for their MA projects. lisa, as mentioned above, wanted to reach an audience of peers in the high school where she taught, in hopes that the place-based curriculum she created as a result of her research might be adapted by some of them. Natasha wanted to reach an audience of first-year writing instructors across the country in hopes that her findings about student learning plans and habits of mind might impact their work. Ja’La named herself as the main audience for her work, using her research as a way of understanding more about visual literacy and culture, ideas that were new to her, and setting her on the road to do more extensive research as she entered her PhD program.

Determining Your Purpose To a large extent, we determine the purpose of our research when we formulate our research question(s). However, it is also important to consider purpose as you’re preparing to write up your findings. It is at this stage that you begin pondering what you both can and should do with all of the data you’ve gathered and the answers you’ve begun to formulate. In doing this, you might decide that your purpose is to educate a particular audience about your research or to point out a shortcoming in widely accepted practices. Your purpose might also be to argue for a change in practice, or to raise questions about an accepted belief. And so, although we are listing it as a second step, determining the purpose of your research is really something you do in conjunction with defining the audience for it. Your audience and their expectations can sometimes help you determine your purpose (“What would this audience want to know about my research?” “What do they know or believe already?”). Conversely, clarifying your purpose can also help you determine or better define your audience (“Who would want to know what I’ve discovered in my research?”). Thus, you might find it helpful to go back and forth between thinking about your audience and thinking about your purpose.

Writing Up and Disseminating Your Findings 211 It might also be helpful to hear the ways some of our students have conceptualized the purposes—and corresponding audiences—for their research: • A high school teacher wanted to help other teachers in his building understand what writing across the curriculum could look like in practice. • A student interested in rhetoric and digital media wanted to share with scholars in those fields his findings about the epideictic qualities of the Nobel lectures of scientists. • A professional communicator and teacher of writing at a community college wanted to help students in technical and professional writing programs better understand the job market in those fields. • A high school teacher wanted to help parents understand the choice of reading practices she was using in her classroom, which were different from what any other teacher was using. • A technical communicator wanted to help graduate students and colleagues learn more about international technical communication. • A college composition instructor wanted to help other writing teachers develop a better understanding of how students learn about and begin addressing audiences. For all of these researchers, the naming of their purpose added a narrower lens to the research they had done—and to their audiences. For example, Jennifer Buehler, the high school teacher who wanted to help parents understand the reading practices she was using, began her research by simply asking the question, “What happens in my classroom when students are able to choose their own books for reading?” As her year progressed, she realized that she was spending a lot of time explaining to parents why she believed this way of teaching was better for kids. At the same time, the data she was gathering strongly supported her approach. As she spent time the following summer sifting through her data, she realized that an important purpose of her research might be to help parents visualize her classroom: how many more books students read over the term, how they learn to select and respond to books, and how they feel about reading at the end of the year. Jennifer’s purpose for her research became more refined as she began to think about how to represent her findings for a particular audience. She certainly could have had other purposes for the same research (e.g., helping other professionals in the field learn about the strategies she uses to help students read more, or helping her own department create a new structure for their ninth-grade English classes). Her purpose—in this case determined in conjunction with a consideration of her audience—set a specific direction for her writing. As another example, our student Erin Snoddy Moulton started off her research wanting to learn more about international technical communication and translation practices. Her initial purpose was to expand her own professional knowledge so that she could be better qualified to work in this area. As she carried out her research, she realized that her peers (other graduate students and professionals) could also benefit from the information she was finding. She refined her purpose to include this broader audience. Instead of developing her own knowledge of these issues just for herself, she became interested in helping other students also become more knowledgeable

212  Writing Up and Disseminating Your Findings about them. Like Jennifer, she could have also had other purposes for her research, such as contributing new knowledge to the field about globalization and translation practices. The purpose she selected shaped her writing as well as her choice of a forum—she ended up presenting her work on a website that other students also could access.

Prompt 7.3:  Identifying Purpose Go back to your answers in Prompt 7.2 and think now about the purposes you might have for your research. What are those purposes and how might they connect to specific audiences? Complete the following table. Audience

Their needs/questions

Your purpose(s) in writing

Considering and Selecting a Genre A third consideration when getting started in your writing is the genre you wish to use. Although you may be bound by the requirements of your graduate program—for example, a thesis or academic paper—at some point you will have the flexibility to expand the notion of genre beyond that. In our program, as mentioned earlier, we ask students to choose a genre for presenting their final project that is appropriate for their audience and purpose. Students have selected a wide variety, including: • Articles for professional journals • Handbooks • Conference presentations (often multimodal) for local, state, or national conferences • Websites for parents, students, or other professionals • Digital and print-based manuals (both general manuals for parents or other teachers and technical manuals for end users of technical products) • Curriculum documents for teachers or administrators • Reports (again, for various kinds of audiences, such as funding agencies, administrators, peers) • Proposals for funding agencies. What you may notice when you look at this list is that certain genres fit particular research questions, audiences, and purposes better than others. To continue one of the earlier examples, when Jennifer decided to direct her research findings about her new curriculum ideas toward an audience of parents, she thought

Writing Up and Disseminating Your Findings 213 hard about the best way to get that information across to them. Ultimately, she selected the genre of a handbook and created a parent-friendly booklet that she gave to her students’ parents the following year. Within that handbook, she was able to incorporate her research in multiple ways: In one section, she described a typical day in her reading classroom; in another section, she reported how her students used writing to demonstrate their understanding of their reading; and, in another section, she offered statistical evidence of the increase in student reading over the course of the semester. See the genres our case study researchers selected in Sidebar 7.2.

Sidebar 7.2:  Case Study Researchers’ Genres lisa chose to write a multi-chaptered curriculum guide with rationales, lesson plans, student samples, and assessment suggestions, as you can see from her table of contents:

Table of Contents I. Preface II. How to Use this Book Chapter 1:  Starting with the Student I. Do Our Students have “Nature Deficit Disorder?” II. Waking Up the Whole Person: A Holistic Approach Teaching for Physical, Mental, Emotional, Spiritual, and Social Learning The Senses Multiple Intelligences College/Career Pathways III. The Learning Community IV. The Importance of Play Chapter 2:  Taking it Outdoors: Lenawee County Almanac I. Inquiry Learning: Starting with Students’ Curiosity II. Bridges from Nature to Literature: A Sand County Almanac and Picture Books III. Outdoor Education Resources: If We Can’t Take the Students to Camp, Let’s Bring Camp to the Students IV. Genre Models for Writing the Landscape Chapter 3:  Writing Workshop I. What is a Workshop?

214  Writing Up and Disseminating Your Findings II. Writing Instruction: Workshop, Mini-Lessons, Multi-Genre Compositions Chapter 4:  Inquiry Into Literature I. Reading Strategies/Tools for Thinking Seeing How Texts Work: Taking Notes Thinking on Paper: Writing a Reading Response Representing Concepts: Drawing an Open Mind Discussing Literature: Talking Circle Writing about Literature: Literary Essays II. A Chronological, Place-Based Approach to American Literature Segment A Ancient Times: Indigenous Literature Colonial Times: Puritanism The American Revolution: Enlightenment/Age of Reason The 19th Century Romanticism Transcendentalism Segment B The 19th Century Anti-Transcendentalism Realism The 20th Century Modernism Harlem Renaissance Late 20th Century/Early 21st Century: Contemporary Literature Chapter 5:  Assessment and Evaluation I. My Beliefs about Assessment II. Portfolio III. Assignment Rubrics IV. Self-Assessment, Reflective Writing, Progress Reports IV. ACT-style Common Exam Appendix: FAQ, Student/Parent Handbook

Writing Up and Disseminating Your Findings 215

Figure 7.1  Ja’La’s Poster Presentation

Ja’La chose to write both an essay to complete the requirements of the program and a poster that she presented at a conference. Natasha wrote a draft of an article for publication to be submitted to a journal, as you can see from this first page:

Figure 7.2 Natasha’s First Page of Article

216  Writing Up and Disseminating Your Findings Some of our students over the years have worried that the genre they select cannot possibly represent all the data they have gathered and the new knowledge they have gained. For example, if they select a “real-world genre,” they may be concerned that the constraints of these genres (a grant proposal with strict guidelines, an article for a journal that limits manuscripts to 8–10 pages, a poster with size restrictions) will limit what they can say. As researchers and writers ourselves, we certainly understand this dilemma— and would also add that it can be very difficult to get enough distance from one’s research at this point to be able to distill all of one’s findings for an abbreviated presentation. We suggest acknowledging both the opportunities (e.g., reaching your targeted audience) and constraints (not having sufficient space to discuss all of your findings) of a genre, remembering that you can present your research in other genres in the future. Our own MA program, recognizing this dilemma, added a reflective essay to our MA project requirements so students could use the reflection to expand on what they learned. Choosing a genre may also depend on the time you have available and on your ability to synthesize and make sense of your findings in that time. Even as we write this sentence, we recognize the contradiction that exists between producing a thoughtful piece of research writing and meeting a deadline for your graduate program. Again, we suggest setting goals—one genre you produce from your research might fulfill the requirements of your graduate program, but producing another, more thoughtful piece might become a longer-term goal. In fact, it’s not uncommon for researchers’ first attempt at writing up their findings to be a short conference paper for their colleagues. The experience of writing and receiving feedback on the paper might lead to their writing an article for a journal; eventually, that article might even become the beginning of a book. Each genre serves a particular purpose and reaches a particular audience (see the thoughts Natasha shares in Sidebar 7.3); each also can help us as we continue thinking about and making meaning of our findings.

Prompt 7.4:  Selecting a Genre Look back at your answers for Prompts 7.2 and 7.3. For each identified audience and purpose, consider a genre that might make sense. You can use the following table: Audience

Purpose

Possible appropriate genres

Look over the genres you’ve brainstormed. What do you know about them? Pick a specific genre and find four to six examples of it. What are the essential characteristics or features of the genre? What are its limitations? Share what you learn about this genre with others in the class.

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Sidebar 7.3:  Digging Further into Genre Once Natasha decided on a journal article for the genre of her MA project, she realized she would have to dig even more deeply into that genre. As she explains, I knew going in that I wanted my master’s project to be something useful and very tangible in the real world. As someone who was doing a lot of reading and who was thinking about PhD programs, publishing is a thing. It’s part of being in academia. I knew going in that I wanted my project to be an academic journal article. But then I had to think about which journal, so I created a spreadsheet of all the rhet comp/English studies/writing studies journals. I went to each of their web pages and looked at the way they were talking about the work they accepted and the work that they privilege. Do they privilege more capital R research or theory? Did they privilege teacher research, in the classroom studies? Did they privilege sharing materials that others could use? So I had all these notes about the work they accept, how often they publish, contact information for the editors. I then went through and color-coded [and asked] what ones might work, what ones no longer seemed a good fit. It mattered to me that I found a journal that created a space for some of the classroom dialogue and for a little bit more of a narrative, as opposed to “here is all this research and the theory behind it.” Determining Focus Once you have identified your audience and purpose and selected a genre, the next step is to dive into your writing, using all the strategies and tools that work best for you as you plan, draft, revise, and edit your write-up of your research. As you approach this stage, there are many additional decisions you will need to make. One of these is to choose a focus for the project. What we mean here is to think carefully about the specific focus of your work and especially to consider that focus in light of the many other possible ways in which you might focus it. Let’s start by looking at an example from Cathy’s research in Sidebar 7.4.

Sidebar 7.4:  An Example of Focus When I was preparing to write up my research on community organizing and teaching, I went through all the steps listed above: I knew that my audience would be practicing teachers, especially those who were concerned about how

218  Writing Up and Disseminating Your Findings to change the current negative rhetoric about teaching English/language arts. I knew my purpose was to help educate them about the world of community organizing, and how the strategies community organizers regularly use could help them organize the parents in their own schools. I knew I wanted to write a professional book, the kind that is sometimes used in a course and sometimes just read by practicing teachers (although I did do lots of conference papers, workshops, and two articles in journals on the way to the book). I also thought hard about how I wanted to position myself as a researcher and author, and I decided on a stance and tone that showed me as a questioner and learner, someone who had thought a lot about the best ways to reach out to parents and the community but at the same time someone who was a complete neophyte in the world of community organizing. When I began writing, though, I faced another important choice—how to focus or determine my “cut” on the issue. In other words, what would be the most effective way to get across my purpose to my specific audience? I could, for example, choose the angle that the work of community organizers is worth studying in detail because their work should serve as a model for ours. Or I could choose a different angle: that teachers and community organizers are a lot alike and that teachers are already using a lot of community organizing tactics but don’t always know it. I chose the second angle for a number of reasons: because it seemed a good way to help teachers feel that learning new information about community organizing was within their grasp and because it built upon the important work that teachers already do. In my mind, approaching my argument in this way would make it more convincing for this particular audience.

Your focus, in other words, goes beyond just your purpose; it serves as a kind of lens through which you filter and focus your data in order to achieve your purpose for the audience you have in mind. It might be helpful at this point to think for a moment about how your own work might be focused in slightly different ways to reach your audience and achieve your purpose. Here are some additional examples: •

A teacher we worked with had done his research on writing across the curriculum and writing to learn with the intention of creating a handbook to help the teachers in his school integrate these activities more into their curricula. He gathered research in three main ways: by surveying the teachers about how much writing they did, how it worked for them, and what impediments stood in the way; by observing teachers in his school as they integrated writing to learn activities; by reading about theories and practices of writing across the curriculum in journals, books, and conference presentations. In writing up this handbook, he identified three possible ways to focus it: (a) Standardized tests today require students to write in all subject areas. Becoming aware of writing to learn activities can help teachers help students do better on tests. (b) Many teachers identified the two

Writing Up and Disseminating Your Findings 219 main difficulties in integrating writing to learn activities: time and lack of expertise. Learning how to deal with both of those issues can make a teacher’s life easier. (c) Experts around the country demonstrate how much writing improves when students are asked to write across their school day and not just in English class. Understanding the theory behind writing to learn can help teachers figure out how to use more writing in their classes. • Our student who researched Nobel Prize lectures in chemistry was interested initially in examining the rhetorical features of these lectures in a very general sense. His data set included the lectures of three chemists who had, as a group, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1996. As his work progressed, and as the amount of data he had grew, he began thinking about how best to focus his analyses and his written reports of the work. That the chemists’ discourse was epideictic or ceremonial was very apparent, but it also was deliberative and persuasive, and both focuses revealed interesting information about the features of these lectures and about how they may function in the sciences. Whereas he focused his thesis quite broadly, covering both the epideictic and deliberative functions of the lectures (he was unable at this point to narrow his focus), he realized soon that he needed a much sharper focus in order to publish the work. However, focusing on one or the other exclusively (the epideictic vs. the deliberative) weakened his presentation. As a result, he decided to keep the focus on both but to cut out a good bit of the detail from his initial write-up. This enabled him to establish a stronger focus. Determining your focus is clearly connected to audience, purpose, and genre. In order to select your focus, you need, first, to think carefully about these rhetorical notions and, second, to consider what you might foreground and what you might relegate to background information in order to make your point convincingly. For example, depending on how you choose to focus your work, you will likely foreground certain ideas from the literature of your field while simply acknowledging or just briefly mentioning others. In other words, thinking about your focus also often involves thinking about the scholarly conversation of your field and where and how you wish to enter it. Our best advice for how to do this most effectively is to identify several alternative ways to focus your work before you decide on the final one. Being Convincing/Writing Persuasively As we mentioned earlier when we quoted Clifford Geertz, part of your job as a researcher—and author of your research—is to be convincing: to help readers feel as if they truly understand why you are making the claims you are, and that your claims make sense. That’s not to say that all readers will agree with your conclusions; however, your goal is to write so that your readers can at least understand why you see your conclusions in the way you do. A big part of this is to argue your case well: to be organized, to provide sufficiently detailed evidence for your claims, to be internally consistent, to stay focused, and to draw conclusions from your data that make sense. The guidelines provided to reviewers of academic journals usually reinforce these ideas and can provide a good sense of what is expected, by both the journals and the field, for an article to be judged convincing. Guidelines for grant proposals usually do the same thing. These guidelines

220  Writing Up and Disseminating Your Findings can also be useful for assessing your own writing in these areas. In other words, you should review your writing with these elements in mind, and you should also ask others to consider these elements when they review your writing.

Prompt 7.5:  Publishing Guidelines Select an academic journal or locate an RFP for a grant proposal. Find and review the guidelines for publication, making note of how those guidelines reinforce ways to argue or make your case effectively. What are the guidelines, and how might you use them to review and check your own writing? A number of the choices you need to make as you write up your research can help you with being persuasive. For example, one of the decisions you will make concerns what format and/or style you will use. In qualitative research, one common presentation format is that which focuses on a single person or situation (e.g., a student, worker, classroom, event). As an example, if you have studied the writing practices of adults in the workplace, you might focus in your write-up on just one of the adults. If you researched how teachers learn about new ideas in writing and transfer those ideas to their teaching, you might focus on a particular staff development meeting. Zeroing in on a particular person or event, the argument goes, allows the researcher and the reader to focus on the detail of a single experience—a kind of zoom lens approach that lets the minutiae and nuances of the experience take center stage. Addressing one person or situation in depth, these researchers say, helps with making sense of the larger issues of the research. If you do select this approach for presenting your findings, you should keep several things in mind. First, the person or situation you select to present should represent your research accurately. If you choose to present an anomalous situation (e.g., the only student in the room who did not respond to a new way of teaching revision), then you should present your reasons for doing so and provide sufficient context for the situation. You should also be careful to not overgeneralize from it. Although this mode of presentation can help audiences make sense of parts of the research, it seldom is generalizable to “all students,” “all workers,” or “all events.” As a researcher, it is important that you acknowledge your understanding of this point. Finally, the situations you present should always be real. As you review your findings, it may become tempting to combine a little bit of one situation with a little bit of another. Such a composite, it may seem, does a better job of making the points you wish to make. However, presenting a composite as a real situation is unethical. Instead, you should consider a different format to present your data so that you accurately and fairly represent what occurred. Another common format or style for presenting qualitative research is narrative. Many qualitative researchers find that telling the story of their research (e.g., telling the story of a person, a classroom, or a workplace situation) is the best way to convey the richness and complexity of their findings. This presentation style can be very compelling because it allows readers to feel as if they are actually there, in the situation, with the researcher—the feeling of “being there” that Geertz talks about. (See Natasha’s introduction above.) A narrative style lends itself well to detail; it allows you to recreate your experience in a way that helps the reader really understand your findings. For example, a researcher writing about struggling male readers may write a narrative about the classroom that allows us to picture these readers as they find

Writing Up and Disseminating Your Findings 221 various ways to refuse to read books (e.g., by arguing with the teacher, putting their heads down on the desk, using their phones to tune out the teacher, slamming their books on the table, or continually talking to their friends). Such a narrative can be very convincing to a reader who may respond, “Oh, yeah, I’ve got students like that too,” and who may read even more closely to see what solutions the researcher offers. Like examinations of particular situations, narratives also require consideration of certain issues. For example, narratives can tempt researchers to embellish details in order to make the writing “sound” good. We are accustomed to thinking about narrative in relation to fictional genres, so it’s important to keep in mind that a narrative style of research writing needs to be as accurate and precise as any other style for presenting research findings. Also, as a writer of a research narrative, you need to be aware of how you present your research participants and yourself. If you find that you are becoming the star of your own story, for example, you might want to step back and tweak your focus. You also want to be sure to represent your participants fairly and accurately, which is something we say more about in the ethics section later. Typically, a qualitative research narrative should be about an actual situation, event, place, or group of people. A third common format for research writing is the traditional academic research paper or report. This type of writing traditionally adheres to a fairly rigid organization: research question, literature review, methodology, findings, and then discussion and/or conclusions. However, different academic journals sometimes have different expectations or requirements, so it is important to look into this in advance, especially if you already know the journal you are targeting. This format generally calls for a style of writing that is more reportorial—authors usually present claims and then provide support for those claims from their data (the authorial persona for this format can sometimes even seem distant). However, this format certainly does not rule out the presentation of a particular situation or the use of narrative. It is simply a more structured and regularized format that is quite common in academic scholarship. The formats and styles presented here are just a few examples of those you might select. We have not tried to be exhaustive. Also, as some of our earlier comments suggest, none of these formats is mutually exclusive. In other words, you may well write a more traditional research report that focuses on a particular situation or case from your research, or you might incorporate a narrative style into your research report. We separated these formats simply to address the options you have for making your research report convincing to your readers. The best way for you to choose a format is to think carefully about your audience and purpose as well as about your comfort level with these approaches. In order to get more comfortable with these formats (or at least to expand your repertoire of possibilities), we suggest taking time to read and explore different genres and styles of research.

Prompt 7.6:  Selecting a Format and Style for Your Write-Up Find examples of research write-ups that focus first, on a particular case or situation; second, that use narrative; and third, that are written in a traditional research report format. Keep in mind that these categories are not discrete (e.g., the example of narrative you find might also present a particular case) but simply ways to focus one’s writing to achieve certain goals. Now think about your own research write-up and decide what format and style would be most effective given your own audience(s), purpose, and goals.

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The Importance and Role of Feedback in Writing Few of us write completely in isolation, even though the image of the lone author writing in solitude is still pervasive. Writing is a social act, even when we are writing by ourselves. So is research. From the start of your research, you have likely involved a number of individuals in your project. You have talked with your advisor about your plans, gotten feedback from others on your question, shared your research proposal, gotten ideas from trusted others about methodology, and so on. Now, as you are writing up your findings, you will also want input from others. You might start by discussing with your advisor who your audience should be, what your purpose is, what genre you should use, what your focus should be, and what style you should use. In other words, all of the decisions we have been discussing are those you will likely make with at least some input from others. As mentioned in Chapter 6, you might even seek input from your research participants, which we certainly encourage you to do. Both of us believe strongly that writers benefit greatly from interactions with others during every stage of the writing process—planning and prewriting, drafting, and revising. In other words, we encourage you to seek feedback not just after composing an initial or final draft, but at every step along the way. And, if you have the opportunity, work closely with your advisor or a trusted mentor on your writing. Your advisor or mentor can help you shape your writing in ways that are consistent with the conventions and expectations of the field. Your advisor or mentor can also help you with voice, tone, style, and the arguments you craft, and with moving your writing toward publication. You may also choose to seek feedback from your peers—classmates, colleagues in the field, and even family members. Some of our toughest critics and most careful readers over the years have been our peers, including our spouses. Whether we simply converse with them informally about our plans for writing or ask them to read a draft, we know we can count on their insights to improve our writing. Some writers even go a step further and join a writing group. The Six Scholars, the students whom we mentioned in an earlier chapter, stayed in touch for more than 8 years, continuing to support one another and read each other’s writing. Similarly, the teacher research group that is part of our local National Writing Project site that we also mentioned earlier—and that both lisa and Natasha have been a part of—has met for almost two decades—sharing research questions, offering help in analyzing each other’s data, and responding to each other’s writing. These are both instances of groups that formed with individuals who all knew one another. You can also join a writing group with individuals you don’t know. This can be beneficial because these readers can bring a fresh and unbiased perspective to your writing. Finally, you may be most comfortable with having a single individual read and respond to your writing—someone with whom you are comfortable and whom you trust as a reader. Sometimes, an individual’s or group’s effect on a text seems so substantial that the author wonders if it is really more of a collaboration. In most cases, however, it’s sufficient simply to acknowledge another individual’s help. This is done in acknowledgment sections in books or acknowledgment notes in journal articles. What’s most important is to value the feedback you receive, to express your gratitude to your reviewers publicly and privately, and, if appropriate, to return the favor. In short, we encourage you to seek feedback at every stage of your writing, from the moment you begin thinking about audience and purpose to the point at which you are ready to submit your manuscript for publication. Your needs at these different

Writing Up and Disseminating Your Findings 223 stages will vary, and you should remember to communicate those to the individuals from whom you are seeking advice. For example, if you have done as much work as you think you can at a certain point, and you feel confident that the manuscript is ready to be submitted, then you may ask a reader simply to suggest copyedits. On the other hand, if you are just beginning to draft, you will probably want to ask a reader to consider larger issues such as meaning, focus, organization, logic, flow, coherence, and voice. A reader’s feedback certainly can shape the meaning that you convey with your text and even your interpretations of your findings. These individuals can play an important role in and contribute in significant ways to your writing.

Prompt 7.7:  Obtaining and Using Feedback Think for a moment about the various ways in which individuals with whom you have interacted during your research have influenced it and contributed to what you have done. Next, begin thinking about how these individuals, and/or others, might contribute to your writing. Develop an informal plan for obtaining feedback on your writing. Identify the stages at which you might want feedback, the type of feedback you would like at those stages, and from whom you would ideally like to receive the feedback. Think also about how you will solicit the feedback (how you will approach and ask others to review your work; how you will locate a writing group, if that’s your preference), and about how you might acknowledge and express gratitude to the individuals who give you feedback.

Letting Your Writing Sit Another productive strategy we often suggest to our students, although we sometimes encounter resistance to it, is to put your writing aside for a while, especially when you are having difficulty with it. The saying that time cures all (or at least some) ills can be especially true with writing. Both of us certainly have had the experience of “getting stuck” with our writing and then putting it aside for a few days (even weeks), only to return to it with a fresh perspective. It’s easy to get into a situation where you just can’t seem to get anywhere with your writing, especially if you are feeling pressured or rushed with it. Or perhaps you have written a draft and received some harsh feedback. The feedback might be so hurtful (for most of us, writing is also very personal) that you end up needing time to regain your perspective. Regaining perspective is really what this strategy is about. Writing is intense. The kinds of pressure we sometimes feel when we write, whether real or perceived, can easily lead to writer’s block. It can also curtail our writing, causing us to think about certain issues or ideas and not others as we write. There are a number of strategies that can help in these situations. Sometimes it’s enough just to take a short break from our writing—to take a walk, run an errand, work out, or even take a nap. Sometimes it’s more productive to put aside our writing for an afternoon or evening and start fresh in the morning. Other times, we need to put it aside for a longer period—a couple of days, a week, or even longer. Some refer to these rest periods as incubation, a term we like because it suggests that we can still be thinking

224  Writing Up and Disseminating Your Findings about our writing. In other words, as Ann likes to tell her students, a writer’s mind is always writing. We probably all have had the experience of thinking of things as we lie in bed at night, or as we take walks or run errands. Again, always having something handy and being ready to record one’s thoughts as they occur can be useful in these situations. Ultimately, you have to be the one who determines when you need a break from your writing, although some of us need to be deliberate in recognizing and honoring these times. Some writers even find it helpful to schedule breaks. For example, one or our students told us she intentionally scheduled two week-long vacations during the time in which she would be writing her master’s project. She said she needed something to look forward to, and a deadline, to keep her motivated. She also was disciplined enough to make it work (a common hazard in these cases is that the writer procrastinates and doesn’t accomplish what they need to by the first break). Writers need to know themselves to make the best determinations about taking breaks from their writing. Your personal style, your circumstances, and your own level of comfort with writing will all figure in your approach. For example, if you have a short amount of time to write up your research (e.g., because of a semester deadline), you probably won’t have the luxury of taking many or very long breaks from it. If you are less pressured, then you may be able to take as many breaks as you need. Whether long or short, few or many, the key benefit from taking breaks is the critical distance they afford. There is nothing like having a fresh perspective on our writing to sustain and strengthen it. What’s most important is to know that occasional, and sometimes even frequent, breaks from your writing can be a productive and beneficial writing strategy, just as obtaining feedback is.

Research as Advocacy Before we move on to considering stance and positionality in our research writing, we want to raise one more way of thinking about the role of research in our lives. As mentioned above, Cathy has facilitated a teacher research group for the past 20 years, a group in which teachers (from elementary to college level) meet monthly to support each other through developing questions, collecting and analyzing data, and finding ways to disseminate their findings. (Natasha and lisa, two of the case study researchers for this book, have been active members of this group.) The ongoing motto for the group has become this slightly tongue-in-cheek statement: “Well, according to my research. . . .” In other words, emboldened by both their research findings and their growing confidence as researchers, these teachers feel able to respond back to those who might question their expertise. They now self-identify as researchers and use their research as a way both to make changes in their own teaching and to change the narrative about how literacy is taught. We encourage you, as budding writing researchers, to consider the connections between research and advocacy. As you increase your knowledge about the issue you’ve researched, you have the ability to enter into discussions about that topic in new ways because of what your research has taught you. What does it mean to connect research to advocacy? lisa explains how she relied on her research into the value of place-based education in the English classroom to respond to two separate audiences: administrators and members of the community outside of school. A big part of my work is defending against non-educators trying to tell teachers what we should be doing in our classrooms. I need research to fight against

Writing Up and Disseminating Your Findings 225 these non-educators trying to take over education. [In addition], I wanted to have proof that my approach was evidence-based and aligned with district and state standards, in case it was questioned by administrators. I wanted to show that a place-based, inquiry project could even include test prep. I wanted to anticipate objections to my course and provide evidence that would allay any concerns. Research, she went on to say, is “a big way for me to be rooted like a tree and not get blown over in the storms.” When we think about research as advocacy, we focus on two approaches: working in proactive ways and working in reactive or responsive ways. When we use our research in proactive ways, we are taking the knowledge gained from our research and sharing it with others before an issue arises, or, as lisa suggested, “to anticipate objections.” For example, if your research demonstrates that student choice in writing topics leads to students’ increased engagement in writing and willingness to write multiple drafts, you might share that information in a forum for parents or in a professional development workshop for colleagues, or even in a report to the Board of Education. Or you might simply share what you learned casually with your ­outside-of-school friends. By taking the time to help educate others about your findings before a problem arises, you are helping to change how others think about the issues, thus heading off potential challenges down the line. When we work in reactive or responsive ways, we use our research to respond to a question or a challenge. In other words, sometimes we need to disagree with a prevailing way of thinking, raise a counterargument, or offer another point of view. When we can do this, using our own research as evidence, we are able to be confident and convincing. Depending on the requirements of your MA program, creating an advocacy campaign surrounding your question might be an appropriate genre for dissemination. But even if this is not the case, we believe that you can and should share your newfound knowledge to make change in your local contexts or even in national conversations. According to your research, you do have some answers.

Stance and Positionality in Research Writing Another significant issue for the writing stage relates to how researchers position themselves in relation to their research—in other words, how they communicate their relation of self to project in their writing. Questions here include: Should I construct myself as an expert in the field? As an expert in just my research topic? Or, should I put myself forth as a learner, a questioner? Should I write in the first person, making visible my role as researcher? Or, should I present my findings using a more distant third-person approach? Again, the rhetorical nature of writing requires that you, as author, make conscious decisions about your positionality—decisions that, by the way, are not unique to new researchers. To illustrate what we mean, look at the passages from various research studies in Sidebar 7.5, passages that lay out for the reader the purpose of the study and the positionality of the author. (All of these were published in the journal English Education.) As you read them, think about the author(s) in the texts and how they represent themselves—both in terms of their research and in terms of the field at large.

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Sidebar 7.5:  Passages from Research Studies Janet Swenson In this essay, I argue that the teachers and teacher educators who participated in WFYL [Write for Your Life, an online teacher network] created an online “transformative teacher network”—that is, their online dialogue not only wove a web of connections among individual educators (the network), it also exhibited the characteristics of a “healthy network culture” that allowed idiosyncratic events to become occasions for authentic professional development, resulting in transformations in teachers’ beliefs and practices and in student learning. By analyzing the dialogic “web” these teachers spun across five years, saved both to disk and in printed log reports, I offer what I argue are the essential characteristics of such transformative teacher networks—that is, I name and illustrate characteristics of the culture of a network that helps it become a “hothouse” for teacher professional development. Additionally, I offer a few observations on what I feel are the opportunities and constraints inherent in housing transformative teacher networks in a virtual space. (Swenson, 2003, p. 265) Peter Smagorinsky et al. Lortie’s (1975) observation that schools tend toward conservative practices remains true over a quarter-century later, as indicated by many studies of school practice (e.g., Borko & Eisenhart, 1992; Ritchie & Wilson, 1993; Smagorinsky, 1999). Meanwhile, as many conservative critics (Gross, 1999; Stotsky, 1999) have argued, new teachers are trained in schools of education that tend to espouse more liberal pedagogies. This chasm between university and school has often created a tension for education students who are immersed in a liberal culture during their university course work and must practice in conservative school environments. Our goal in this article is to focus on one teacher who experienced this tension. (Smagorinsky, Lakly, & Johnson, 2002, p. 188)

Janet Kaufman After jogging up two long, wide steep flights of stairs to the fourth floor on a Thursday afternoon, I catch my breath and walk three doors down the hall to the Family Literacy Center. It’s a big classroom that the principal has given over to us for the last four years—to me, my university preservice teacher students, and the high school students and teachers who attend and

Writing Up and Disseminating Your Findings 227 work at the school which houses the Center. The mural that my students began painting with the high schoolers four years ago has spread to all four walls, and the fluorescent lights overhead have been turned off in deference to low reading lamps we’ve brought in. A clothesline stretches from one wall to the other, with kids’ poetry hanging from it. And on a small table stands a display of book art: houses and bodies with pages telling life stories of the students who made them. . . . After four years, the Center has become what the kids describe as a “safe place.” When we’ve asked them what the word “family” in Family Literacy Center means to them, they talk about how the people who direct the Center and those who come to it feel like family. But for me and my students, it has also become a place to investigate the role of teacher—student or mentor—student relationships in learning and literacy development. I have come to ask two primary questions: How does the service-learning project change the way my students learn, and how does it change the way I teach? (Kaufman, 2004, pp. 174–175)

Susan Wall My narrative examples in this essay draw on teacher research produced by participants in the Institute on Writing, Reading, and Teaching at Martha’s Vineyard, a graduate program sponsored by my English Department. . . . The three teachers whose work I discuss here generously allowed me to interview them about their research experiences and portfolios after their projects were completed. Their portfolios included, in addition to their final research reports, their authors’ field notes, drafts, and letters to and from [the professor of the course]. I am interested in the challenges they faced in writing their research accounts and in the ways they represented themselves in those narratives. My approach, in other words, is rhetorical rather than empirical or pedagogical. That is, I read particular teacher researchers’ texts as portraits of writers writing in much the same way that literary critics use methods of rhetorical criticism to study first person accounts: by analyzing those texts and by taking into account what their authors say about how they came to be written and what was at stake in their creation. (Wall, 2004, pp. 290–291)

As we read these four passages, the first thing that strikes us is how differently each of the authors position themselves, even as they all use the first person (I or we). We would claim that all of them construct themselves as knowledgeable researchers, but that they do so in quite different ways. Swenson, for example, establishes herself as knowledgeable by her use of explicit and perhaps insider terminology (“online

228  Writing Up and Disseminating Your Findings ‘transformative teacher networks’ ” and “virtual space”), by references to a schema she created of “essential characteristics” to explain her research, and by her long investment in this research (5 years). Smagorinsky, Lakly, and Johnson heavily cite the work of other researchers and thus situate themselves in terms of what others in the field have said, an indication that they are following a long line of other, respected thinkers. Kaufman, through her story-like beginning, immediately places the reader in the midst of her context and thus establishes her knowledge through her intimacy with the research site. Finally, Wall strikes an interesting balance, showing herself both as a serious researcher capable of doing this work (by her association with literary critics and her knowledge of rhetorical strategies) and as a gracious learner who is not posing a new theory but rather is “interested in the challenges” the teachers faced. We also notice how these authors position themselves in relation to their research question. Kaufman, for example, names her questions in an upfront manner (“I have come to ask two primary questions: How does the service-learning project change the way my students learn, and how does it change the way I teach?”), which seems to us a way of establishing these as true questions arising from the context of her work, questions that she honestly wondered about. In many ways, she establishes herself as a learner, raising the kinds of questions any of us might raise as readers. The other researchers align themselves with their research questions in different ways. Swenson, for example, does not directly name a question (although you can easily imagine one underlying her work), but rather establishes herself as someone who after 5 years of research really does have a thoughtful answer. For Smagorinsky and his colleagues, the research question is less one that arises from their immersion in their own practice (as it seems to be for Swenson and Kaufman), as it is one that applies what others have said through a look at one teacher. All of these approaches—different as they are—are legitimate ways of positioning yourself as author and researcher. By looking through these passages and the many others we have read in our careers, we have identified several considerations to keep in mind as you begin thinking about how to position yourself in relation to your research and in relation to the larger field, whether it be composition studies, rhetoric, English education, or technical communication. The important point here is this: Through the choices you make, you create an authorial self; thus, it is very important to be both thoughtful and deliberate in these choices. The considerations we have identified follow: •

The language you use: The language you use will go a long way toward positioning you as an experienced member or initiate in the field (and there might be good reasons why you might choose one over the other). Be thoughtful, for example, about how you use certain specialized terms and ideas: Do you want to present yourself as an expert who uses the terminology of the field with ease and grace? This might be an important stance to adopt if you are writing for an audience of established experts in the field; by using the language associated with the field in a sophisticated manner, you establish your credibility with those potential readers. If you do take this route, you should make sure that you understand these terms and the underlying history and rationales behind them. Having this understanding will allow you to integrate the terms fluently into your writing. Alternatively, you might choose to position yourself as more of a learner and questioner in the field by using commonplace words and providing full explanations when you use more

Writing Up and Disseminating Your Findings 229 specialized terms. This might be the way to go if you want to place yourself on an equal footing with a particular audience, casting yourself as a learner along with them. Similarly, think about the kinds of sentences you construct. Long sentences with complex clauses establish an authorial self quite different from that of an author who uses simple sentence structures. See Sidebar 7.6 for a discussion of how our case study researchers used language in their research write-ups.

Sidebar 7.6:  How the Case Study Researchers Used Language lisa begins her foreword to her curriculum document: “As high school teachers, we face a multitude of issues and challenges with our students that affect student achievement, but are not necessarily academic in nature.” As she identifies herself with her audience (“as high school teachers”), she creates a shared charge even as she names teachers as experts in pedagogy. Natasha begins her article with an anecdote, describing a day in her class: “Despite Spotify’s ‘Have a Great Day’ playlist running casually in the background, students still trickled silently into my writing classroom on the first day of their three-week summer bridge program at a mid-sized midwestern public university.” By narrating a scene that might be familiar to her readers, she tries to draw them in. Ja’La begins her project document with an academic reference: “Street art calls our attention to many social justice issues that have occurred throughout history, such as the Egyptian revolution where street art was used for activists to protest poverty, unemployment, and government corruption (Cozza, para. 3).” By citing the work of a scholarly expert, she places herself and her work in a particular academic conversation.

•

How you use others’ research: We all use the research of others as a way of establishing our own authority—to prove we have done our homework and are aware of an ongoing conversation in our field. But the ways in which we use others’ research can vary, and these variations can influence how we establish ourselves as authors. Sometimes, for example, beginning researchers use others’ research as bedrock for their own work, relying on it as a schema for which the newer researcher’s work serves as a further example. In other words, the senior researcher’s work establishes the boundaries for the discussion or even the format; the younger researcher’s work is useful in that it further clarifies the other researcher’s approach. For example, if you were researching the topic of revision, you might focus your writing on the approaches to revision demonstrated by Barry Lane in his book, After the End (2015). You could use your students’ revisions as further proof that Lane’s approaches work. In terms of positioning yourself as an author, this approach casts Lane as the expert and you as the learner. An alternative way of using others’ research is to place your work at the center but refer to other sources as evidence supporting your ideas. In other words, using the

230  Writing Up and Disseminating Your Findings previous example, you write up your findings about revision by establishing your own schema and your own ideas, but you quote Lane and others in support of your work. Sidebar 7.7 describes how our case study researchers used the work of others.

Sidebar 7.7:  How the Case Study Researchers Used Others’ Research Ja’La used a particular approach to visual rhetorical analysis offered by the scholar Sonja Foss. Because rhetorical analysis was new to Ja’La, she relied on a preexisting schema, reading the murals she was focusing on through the analytical tools offered by Foss, a comforting way for her to take on a whole new kind of scholarship. In other words, she cast Foss as the expert, with her analysis in line with her academic mentor. Interestingly, though, as Ja’La immersed herself in the work, she eventually critiqued and expanded upon Foss’s method, finding it inadequate in accounting for the issues of culture she encountered as she did her analysis. Natasha, as another example, had several scholars that informed her work, but central to her teacher research was the Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing (Council of Writing Program Administrators, National Council of Teachers of English, & National Writing Project, 2011). Once she discovered that document, she used it as the basis of the writing course she taught for students transitioning from high school to college, using the habits of mind outlined in the Framework as the center of her teaching as well as her analysis. Thus, she relies heavily on that work, considering how her students both understood the habits and used the habits as they transitioned to first-year writing classes—both demonstrating their use and challenging their impact on her students. lisa, who had been teaching for many years from both a place-based and a writing workshop stance had integrated certain ways of thinking from scholarly mentors in these fields—so much so that their ideas had become part of her way of thinking. Thus, she uses academic references as in line with her own stances— as a kind of collaborative understanding.

•

The stance you adopt: Sometimes as authors, we want to create a clear, reportorial tone, one in which we present our findings in a very factual way that establishes an answer that is not easily questioned. Oftentimes, researchers take this stance when they want to propose a specific solution or approach to a problem. Think, for example, about a situation in which your research might be used to select a new approach to carrying out a task in an organization or to select a new software tool. In this case, a reportorial approach might be the best choice. However, at other times, we may want to present our findings in all of their complexity: in a way that suggests that there is no single, clear-cut answer, but lots of questions

Writing Up and Disseminating Your Findings 231 still surrounding the findings. An example here might be when you have done pilot research and are writing up the results as a step toward moving the research forward. Again, as the author of this sort of text, you have the ability and right to choose the stance you take.

Prompt 7.8:  Thinking about how Authors Position Themselves Select a journal in your field and look at a minimum of four articles in issues that span no more than 2 years. Try to characterize how each of the authors positions themself in their articles. Find excerpts that support your judgments. Be prepared to share your findings with your classmates.

Prompt 7.9:  Determining Your Own Authorial Position Think about your own work and how you are planning to present it. Use the labels and explanations in this section to describe the authorial position you plan to take in your writing. Try to explain, as well, why you think the authorial position you plan to take is appropriate, especially given your audience(s), your purpose(s), and the genre you have selected.

Writing Ethically Because writing makes our research public, ethics also are a significant concern at this stage in the research process. Qualitative researchers need to think about how they present (and represent) their participants. They need to guard against taking the words and perspective of participants out of context, embellishing them, conveying information that participants have asked them not to, taking liberties to make particular points, excluding information that should be presented, or drawing conclusions that the data do not entirely support. As qualitative researchers, our responsibility is, first and foremost, to our participants. The writing stage brings this responsibility to the fore. We are responsible both for the integrity of our findings and for the integrity of the texts we generate with those findings. The issue of responsibility to our participants warrants further discussion. Different researchers interpret this responsibility in different ways, and the ways you choose to interpret and act on it will be up to you. At one end of the continuum, some researchers seek to co-construct meaning with their participants and to make them true collaborators in the research, at times even asking them to be coauthors (the latter, in practice, is still rare). On the other end of the continuum, some researchers uphold their own expertise and limit the roles their participants play (participants are exclusively sources of data to these researchers). Of course, most researchers fall somewhere in the middle—involving participants in various ways at different stages of the research. For example, some of us like to have participants, if they are willing, read and respond to drafts of our work. Some researchers like to discuss their interpretations with participants even before they begin writing. Like so much else with

232  Writing Up and Disseminating Your Findings qualitative research, what you prefer and choose to do will depend on the situation and on your stance and ethos as a researcher. What is most important is that you be accountable to your participants—that you keep any promises you make (e.g., to not use certain information), that you be cognizant of how your writing portrays your participants (e.g., what if your findings end up portraying them in a less than favorable light?), and that you take seriously any dilemmas that arise in your relationships with them (e.g., whether to include information simply because they want you to include it). All of this underscores why it is so important to be both self-conscious and reflective as researchers and to be explicit about your stance and positionality. We repeat here advice that we shared earlier: Balance your own expertise with the expertise of your participants, listen attentively and respectfully to what your participants tell you, question your interpretations constantly, and realize that truth is an elusive concept. Another important ethical issue in writing concerns how we use and acknowledge others’ ideas. We can all think of instances of writers being accused of plagiarism, but there are other ways to misuse or misrepresent the ideas of others. As writers, we need to be mindful of how we use the words of our participants and our sources. It is not difficult to cite sources properly, and we should be diligent about doing so. There are also many tools (e.g., Zotero, RefWorks, EndNote) that can provide assistance with this aspect of our work. Having others, including participants, read our work is also a useful way to check its integrity. We can ask them to pay attention to how we use sources, how we present our findings, and how we represent our participants. Ultimately, our interpretations must be supported by the data we present, and those data should be sufficient. One common criticism of qualitative research is that some researchers make claims beyond the scope of their research. Because most qualitative research in writing focuses on limited situations or cases, making broad generalizations based on those situations is generally not appropriate. This does not mean that qualitative research is any less useful or that it does not contribute anything of value. What it does mean is simply that we need to provide a proper context for our work and be honest about its scope—we need to use hedging and qualification appropriately. Data that represent specific instances can be very informative and can help us expand our understandings of issues in our field. It is valuable, for example, to take a particular research case and place it up against many research cases in order to begin seeing similarities and contradictions at work. So qualitative research, even when focused on particulars, still makes important contributions to our professional knowledge, but we need to be honest, both with ourselves and with our readers, about what those contributions are.

Prompt 7.10:  Thinking about Ethics Identify at least two ethical issues you have encountered while carrying out your research. Reflect on how you responded to them. Next, think about the ethical concerns you have as you approach the writing stage of your research (e.g., representing the voices of your participants accurately and fairly; qualifying appropriately, but not too much; making claims that are supported sufficiently by your findings and that are appropriate given the scope of your research). Talk through your concerns with a peer, preferably someone who will also be reading drafts of your work. Think about and discuss with this individual how you might attend to these issues as you write.

Writing Up and Disseminating Your Findings 233

Conclusion What is perhaps most important to remember about writing is that it is, as Margery Wolf stresses, a rhetorical act. And we have the inherent advantage as members of our field of grasping what this means. There are many choices involved in writing, and we should make those choices as consciously and as deliberately as we can. When warranted, we might even want to explain them to our readers along with why we made them. We also need to understand that not all of our readers, or even our participants, will agree with all of our choices. Borland’s work (1991), addressed earlier, offers a good example of this. Borland’s primary participant, her grandmother, took issue with Borland’s interpretation of the events she observed. Her grandmother especially took issue with the feminist lens Borland used in her interpretations, which the grandmother said held little meaning for her. If your participants will be reading your work, then it is important to remember that they too may not agree with or fully understand all of the choices you made. How you respond to your participants if they do disagree is something you certainly will want to consider. Writing will be one of the most challenging tasks you undertake as a researcher, but it will also likely be the most rewarding. There is nothing quite as satisfying professionally as sending off a finished, polished draft for publication; receiving an acceptance notice from a journal; or publishing your first book. And depending on how far you have progressed in your research, you may be well on your way to achieving those milestones. Throughout this book, we have tried to lay out a process for undertaking qualitative research that will help you become a thoughtful, thorough, and successful researcher. We hope that you take from this book a sense of qualitative research as a dynamic and recursive enterprise that can contribute to our understanding of a vast array of issues. Whether you research for personal or professional reasons and, if the latter, whether you use the results yourself or share them with others, you can hopefully feel confident now that you have carried out your research thoughtfully, systematically, and ethically. We hope you can also assert and feel confident about your identity as a writing researcher. If you have read through all of the chapters of this text and completed even some of the stages of your research, then you have made significant strides in acquiring this identity. You have, in fact, become a writing researcher.

References

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Author Index

Page numbers in italics indicate figures; page numbers in bold indicate tables Anderson, Kathryn 149, 158 Anderson, Paul 67 Auten, Anne 153 Bandura, Albert 77, 80 Benson, Mildred 72 Benton, Diane 72 Berthoff, Ann 11 Bitzer, Lloyd 92, 93 Blakeslee, Ann 204 Borland, Katherine 163, 204, 233 Brandt, Deborah 86, 148 Brewer, Denise 81, 82 Buehler, Jennifer 4, 211 Burke, Kenneth 45, 91, 115, 124 Caldwell, Julie 176 Calkins, Lucy 106 Cameron, Julia 165 Cassidy, Cheryl 66–67, 116–118 Chamberlain, Elizabeth 196–197 Clark, Amber 5 Cole, Caroline 204 Conefrey, Theresa 204 Council of Writing Program Administrators 8, 78–79, 127–128, 230 Cozza, Vanessa 90, 91, 229 Danneker, Jeanne 83 De Piero, Zach 194–195 Donoghue-Colvin, Elizabeth 5 Douglas, Deborah 55–56, 85 eddy, lisa 7–8, 111 Eddy, Steven 81, 82 Fiedler, Craig 83 Foss, Sonja 91, 93, 124–125, 230 Fowler, Catherine 81, 82 Frost, Erin 44–46, 74

Geertz, Clifford 106, 207 Glaser, Barney 187 Gramer, Rachel 196 Graves, Donald 106 Gries, Laurie 92, 93 Howard, Pat 106 Hubbard, Ruth 109, 180, 188, 197 Jack, Dana 149, 158 Johnson, Tara Star 226–228 Kaufman, Janet 227–228 Kozacek, Linda 56, 83 Lakly, Andrea 226–228 Lane, Barry 230 Locke, Edwin 80–81 Lunsford, Andrea 83 MacLean, Marion 40–41 Mohr, Marian 40–41 Morisano, Dominique 80–81 Mueller, Derek 32, 51–52 National Council of Teachers of English 8, 78–79, 127–128, 230 National Writing Project 8, 78–79, 127–128, 230 Nichols, Laura 77 Odell, Lee 126 Pajares, Frank 78 Pascarella, Ernest 77, 79 Pettiway, Keon 28 Pierson, Christopher 77, 79 Pons, Diane 73 Power, Brenda 109, 180, 188, 197

238  Author Index Prospero, Moises 81 Putnam, Dawn 126–127 Ramos-Sanchez, Lucila 77 Reed-Nordwall, Karen 4, 126 Rose, Mike 78, 86 Rosewarne, Tracey 126 Schreiner, Mary 81, 82 Seidman, Irving 152–153 Sipe, Rebecca (Becky) 126–127 Smagorinsky, Peter 226–228 Smith, Kristin 136, 153 Snoddy Moulton, Erin 211 Specht, Chris 56, 83 Stenhouse, Lawrence 208 Strauss, Anselm 187 Swenson, Janet 226, 228 Takaku, Seiji 79 Terenzini, Patrick 77, 79 Test, David 81, 82 Travers, Cheryl 80–81 Valiante, Gio 78 Vohra-Gupta, Shetal 81

Wall, Susan 227–228 Walsh, Jennifer 126–127 Wickenheiser, Natasha 8–9; analyzing data 177, 182, 188, 191, 193, 194; developing research questions 18–19, 32–33, 41–42, 48; disseminating research 210, 215, 217, 229, 230; interviews 147–148, 150–151, 154, 159–160; observing artifacts 112–114, 120, 127–128; planning research 55, 77–89; and surveys/questionnaires 133, 137, 144–145 Williams, Bronwyn 33 Williams, James 79 Wolf, Margery 207 Wolfe, Mary Lou 71–72 Wolniak, Gregory 77, 79 Wood, Wendy 81, 82 Wourman, Ja’La 9–10; analyzing artifacts 120, 122–123, 124–125; developing research questions 21, 36, 41; disseminating research 210, 215, 229, 230; planning research 67, 90–95; and positionality 46, 129 Yagelski, Robert 204

Subject Index

Page numbers in italics indicate figures; page numbers in bold indicate tables. action research 99; see also qualitative research agency 18, 77, 80, 83 analyzing artifacts see artifacts, analyzing analyzing data see data, analyzing annotated bibliography 55–57; see also literature review archival research 66–67, 116–118 artifacts: analyzing 97–98, 116, 119–121, 128–129; in archival research 118; choosing/collecting 7; ethical concerns 129–130; organizing 181, 183, 186–187; writing about 199–201 audience 13, 44–45, 69–70, 93, 139–140, 208–212, 217–223, 229 autoethnography 99; see also qualitative research Brooke notes 51–52 case study 99; see also qualitative research circulation studies 92–93 coding: charts 192, 193, finding themes for 187–189, 190; by highlighting 191, 192; with technology 194–197 Common Core State Standards 88 composition studies 11, 16n1, 86, 229 constant comparison 187 contested space 42 CRAAP test 25 creativity 78, 133–134 cultural-historical activity theory see theory curiosity 78–79, 133–134, 191, 192 data: analyzing 174–179, 182; authenticity in 45; coding 187–197; contradictions in 179–180; ethics in 202, 231–233; gathering 38, 46, 87–88, 105–106; general thematizing 185–186; indexing 197–199; organizing 181–183; reading/immersion 184; research memos 176, 199–200; storing 62–63, 66; writing with 210–211, 216, 218–222

databases 24–25, 47; see also Google discourse: academic/classroom 78, 82, 202; analysis 66, 120, 124, 126; rhetorical 92; scientific 209, 219 EndNote 103, 232 engagement 78–79, 133–134, 191, 192 ethics: in analyzing artifacts 129–130; in analyzing data 202, 207; in developing research questions 48–50; with human subjects 67–68; in interviewing 154, 163–165; in observation 115; online 49, 66, 115, 129; in planning 74–75; in reading 104; in surveys/questionnaires 146; in writing 220, 231–233; see also institutional review board ethnographer 99 ethnography 99; see also qualitative research ethos 14, 121, 155, 232 felt difficulty 22, 34, 41–42 field notes 107, 175, 197 flexibility 78, 133, 149–150, 175, 212 focus groups 152 Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing 8, 78–79, 127–128, 148, 230 Google 24, 154; Books 117; Docs 188, 191; Drive/folders 51, 181, 182, 183; Forms 137, 143, 144, 145; Scholar 25 grounded theory see theory habits of mind 8, 18, 78–82, 114, 120, 128, 133, 137, 146, 148, 151, 165, 175, 210, 230; see also creativity; curiosity; engagement; flexibility; Framework for Success in Postsecondary Writing; metacognition; openness; persistence; responsibility human subjects 60, 66–67; approval process 67; history of 67; Nuremberg Trials 67; see also institutional review board

240  Subject Index iconographic tracking 90, 92–93 identities: as researchers 1, 4–6, 104, 163; as teachers/professionals 1 indexing 197–199 informants 12, 106 informed consent 63–64 institutional review board 60, 62, 64–69, 71, 74–75 interviews 13, 38; conducting and transcribing 158–162; deciding to conduct 87–88, 97–98, 147–149; developing questions for 156–157; discourse-based 126–127; ethics in 163–164; formal 151–152; in-depth phenomenological 152–153; preparing for 138–139, 153–156; as protocol analysis 153; semi-structured 149–150; setting up 157–158; spontaneous 149; stance/positionality in 162–163; thematizing/coding 185–186, 188, 191, 192 journals: academic/professional 6, 9, 119, 212, 216–217, 219–221; research 14–15, 28, 34, 49 keywords 23–24, 59, 198; approach 123, 124–125 language arts 7, 41, 111, 209, 218 lenses: curricular/pedagogical 7; in data analysis 201–202; in interviews 163; in observations 115; selecting 10, 44–46, 73–74 linguistic analysis see discourse, analysis literacy: pedagogy 186; sponsors 86 literature review 56–60; reading for 23–28; in research proposal 68–70 master’s: culminating project/thesis 1, 6, 9, 18, 37, 69, 121, 217, 224; degrees 1, 6–8; programs 5, 7, 32; students 10, 17, 153 metacognition 78, 80, 82, 133, 146, 191, 192 methods 11–15, 97–99; ethics in 63, 68; in IMRAD 27, 59; for keeping track of sources 103; multiple design/triangulation 29, 101, 201; reading as 102–103; in research proposal 69; stance/positionality 146; see also coding; constant comparison; discourse, analysis; iconographic tracking; indexing; interviews; observation; participant observation; research, memos; rhetorical, analysis; thematic analysis; visual rhetorical analysis NVivo 194, 196

objectivity 44–45, 47, 73–74, 202 observation 104–107; for brainstorming 34–36; ethics in 49, 115; note-taking 107–114; settings 64, 66, 97; stance/ positionality 115; in writing questions 40; see also participant observation openness 78, 133–134, 191 participant observation 104, 106 participants: ethics in 48–49, 75, 115, 146, 203–204, 232; informed consent 63–64; interacting with 107–109, 149–151; positionality 71–74; protection of 61–68; vs subjects 60 persistence 78–79, 81, 133 place-based 7–8, 36, 111, 209, 213, 225, 231 portfolio 87, 120, 127–128, 150–151, 160, 227 positionality: in artifact analysis 121, 128–129; in data analysis 180, 203; in interviews 149–150, 162–163; in observation 105, 111, 115–116; in planning 69, 71, 73–74; in reading 25, 103–104; recognizing 11–15, 207, 209; in research questions 43–49; in research writing 225–226, 232; in selecting tools 98–99, 101; in surveys/questionnaires 146; see also stance problem statement 39–43, 57, 69 qualitative research 13–16, 35, 180; ethics in 75, 204, 231–233; kinds of 99; positionality in 74 quantitative research 16n1, 127 questionnaires see surveys/questionnaires questions 18–19; ethics in 48–50, 75, 146, 163–164; finding answers to 53–54, 101–103; generating 12, 29, 34; liking your 11, 20–21; phrasing of 41; positionality/stance in 43, 47, 71–74, 103, 146, 228; in reading log 28; in research proposal 68–69; scope of 39–41; talking through 36–38; see also interviews and surveys/questionnaires reading: to develop questions 22–23; ethics in 104; for literature review 23–28; log 28; as method 102–103; positionality/stance in 25, 28, 103; see also data, literature review, methods reflection 175, 184; positionality in 47, 73; see also metacognition RefWorks 103, 232 research: academic/professional 4; attitude toward 97, 100; bias in 11–13, 44–48, 74, 146; findings 64, 68, 204; gaps in 17–18, 29, 41–42, 57; inventorying interests 19–20;

Subject Index 241 memos 176, 199–201; online 24–25, 117; outcomes 3, 69, 88, 100, 179; personal 2–4; proposal 54–60, 68–71, 77–96; recursive nature of 14, 18–20, 70, 183–184, 186–187, 206; as reflective activity 11; scope 53–54; stages of 14–15; success factors 6; timeline for 31, 69, 95; see also data; ethics; methods; qualitative research; quantitative research; questions; settings researcher: becoming a 6, 11; confidentiality 61, 65; credibility 229; habits 35; thinking like a 4, 15–16; what it means to be a 1 researching for life purposes 2–3 responsibility: of audience 92; as habit of mind 41, 78–80, 83, 85–88, 133, 150, 160–161; of researchers 103, 207, 232 rhetorical: analysis 9–10, 66, 91, 93, 121–122, 127–128, 230; situation 91–93, 121–122; theory 91; see also theory self-advocacy 8, 18, 42–43, 55–56, 77–78, 81–88 settings: ethical concerns 48–49, 75, 115; for interviews 149, 158; online 66, 90–95; organizing data related to 181; selecting 11, 21, 34–35, 60–67; selecting tools 97–100, 104–111 sites see settings sources for research 2, 23, 25–28, 55, 57–59; secondary 117–119 spelling 126–127 stance: in artifact analysis 121, 128–129; in data analysis 180, 196; in interviews 158, 162–163; in observation 105, 111, 115; in planning 57, 62, 69, 71, 73–75; in reading 25, 28, 103; recognizing 11–15, 49, 207–209; in research writing 225, 229, 231–232; in selecting tools 98–99, 101; in surveys/questionnaires 146; see also positionality subjectivity 44, 47–48, 101, 203 SurveyMonkey 137, 143

surveys/questionnaires: constructing 137–142; differences between 132, dissemination of 143, 144, 145; ethics in 146–147; examples of 133–136, 166–173; motivating participants 143; online 137, 140, 143; sampling 138, 140–141; stance/ positionality in 146; uses of 131–137 teacher outreach 186 teacher research 64–65, 99, 208; movement 11; see also qualitative research technical communication (technical communicators) 5, 211 terministic screens 45, 115 thematic analysis 127–128 theory: cultural-historical activity 93–94; grounded 187; impact of 71; rhetorical 91; visual rhetorics 91 thesis committee 69–70, 208 thick description 106–107 transparency 33, 45 triangulation 101, 200–201 usability 5, 195 visual rhetorical analysis 9–10, 90–93, 122–123, 124–125; see also theory Wikipedia 24 writing: advocacy in 224–225; ethics in 232–233; feedback in 34, 138, 221–223; focus 217–219; genre selection 9, 212–217; interpretation in 206–207; persuasively 69, 219–221; purpose 204–206, 210–212; stance/positionality 225–231; see also annotated bibliography; audience; interviews, developing questions for; literature review; problem statement; research proposals Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) 211, 218 Zotero 103, 232