Contents
Conference Article and Handouts (In Progress)
Philosophy of
Education
I could
not agree more with William Butler Yeats when he wrote, “education is not the
filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” In other words, students are
not meant to be spoken at, but spoken
with. Learning takes place through
the intellectual discussions and imaginative journeys students and teachers
engage in together (as they experience new texts and new ideas), not through a
teacher lecturing day after day. Learning does not take place in a vacuum, but
in a community of readers, writers, thinkers, and orators.
Thus, my
job as an English/language arts teacher is twofold. On one hand, I need to
expose my students to myriad learning experiences that allow them the freedom
to follow their interests and satisfy their curiosities as they relate to
language and literature. On the other, I need to give them a firm grasp of the
expectations and standards other people and institutions have for them so that
they can find ways to do what they want to do in a realistic and responsible
manner. As an Integrated Language Arts teacher, I not only expect my students
to engage in thinking, reading, writing, listening, speaking, and viewing
activities (designed to help them question themselves and their world), but I
expect to have activities which can be approached from multiple perspectives
and backgrounds. My emphasis is not so much on what someone thinks; it is on how
someone can defend his or her thinking within a community of learners and
within communities which are often governed by very specific standards. Because
individual and group questioning is so important to my classroom, students will
be expected early on to value, and respect, a safe and open learning
environment.
So what do I think about how language
and literature should be taught? Language is the ocean we live in; it surrounds
us, it is a part of us, and it is the mode by which we progress. Learning about
language and literature is something that transcends all disciplines. It permeates
our existence. Technology, history, culture, and communication are rendered
almost meaningless without language and literature. Therefore, special attention will be paid to
how those aforementioned concepts intersect with language, reading, writing, and
research. Also, as students in my classes explore language and philosophy in
what they read (and I use the term
loosely, to imply not only reading, but how they view each new experience they
encounter), they will be asked to apply notions, such as context,
appropriateness, and audience, to their spoken and written works. Language
variation will not only be inevitable among the students in my class, it will
also be a topic of discussion, because all spoken
dialects of English should be valued equally in educational settings (just as
all writing assignments should be). However, in certain contexts and with
certain audiences, specific spoken and written language rules, conventions, and
pronunciations will be valued more than others. My job, then, is to make sure
that my students are aware of these language prescriptions and that they have a
deep understanding of a plethora of contexts, audiences, and genres. Thus,
their adherence to these language prescriptions in class assignments becomes
the way in which I will assess my students’ understanding of writing and
speaking in varied contexts, forms, and genres.
In sum,
my philosophy of teaching the integrated language arts is to expose my students
to new avenues for exploration as they relate to language and literature, to
engage them in a dialogue about the different ways language is used to convey
meaning, and to have them understand and appreciate the ways in which language
has worked, does work, and can work in varied forms, contexts, and settings.
Conference Article
The Importance of Research in Creating and Sustaining Democratic
Communities
“Research is formalized curiosity. It’s poking and prying with a purpose.”
–Zora Neale Hurston
Why Research?
Those words above come from an underrated anthropologist, a gifted writer, an extraordinary liar, and an expert researcher. Hurston excelled both at chronicling stories and cultures and at writing them in large part because research wasn’t just an academic activity for her, but an activity of living. As Paulo Freire would say, she was not just writing words, she was writing her world. Whether it was collecting data (in the field) on the language and culture of black communities in Florida, writing a novel, or putting together a convincing, yet fictitious autobiography, Hurston used research in and for writing about a variety of topics that fulfilled both personal and professional goals.
As someone who has come from Anthropology to English Education (a field which shares its courses at West Virginia University between both the College of Human Resources & Education and the English Department in the College of Arts & Sciences), I find myself identifying with some of Hurston’s multiple voices and past studies. I find myself in between many worlds that, together, make up my world. They are all a part of me and I a part of them. I read and write, listen and speak, argue and laugh, in each one for all of them and for myself.
Thus,
whatever imagined relationship I have had with Hurston
is because of research and it is precisely because of research that I haven’t
been able to stop my mind from wandering over her life ever since I started
looking into it more than a year ago while helping to teach an African-American
literature course at
For me, research has become much more than just part of the writing and thinking processes that the academy values. Research is the gateway to learning valuable tools that help people make sense of their world and that help people to communicate and act in meaningful and productive ways with others. If interpreted broadly, research (and research-based pedagogies) can provide the basis for creating and sustaining democratic communities in the classroom and beyond.
What is Research? / What Counts as Research? (Its Many Forms)
So how exactly can we define, or redefine, research? What are the many forms that it can take on? To answer these questions, we must first turn to how research should be conceptualized and contextualized within the realm of educational theory.
As someone who embraces many of Paulo Freire’s insights into education, I believe that challenging conversations (such as with the dialectic) are integral to learning because they are a method of inquiry which acknowledges how “thinking, doing, writing, reading, thought, language, and reality” are “impossible to separate and dichotomize” (Freire 1). Much as John Dewey proposed that students learn best by doing (a process which encompasses cognition, emotion, and action), I too believe that doing and engaging are the most effective ways of learning. Both doing and engaging imply a dialectical relationship because there is at least one other that is being studied, worked on, or invoked. While writing is but one way of doing, or engaging with others (or the other), research is a process of doing and engaging that cannot be defined by one medium. While both writing and research are processes, and are intricately connected, only research allows students the freedom of entering into new socially-charged mediums that do not necessarily (or immediately) involve writing or typing (e.g. watching a film on a topic of interest, listening to oral traditions, photographing a subject from different angles, interviewing a friend, etc.). Thus, research is not just a liberating activity, it is also a hard endeavor to pin down because of its multiplicity and because of its constant applicability to the interconnected activities of “thinking, doing, writing, reading, thought, language, and reality” (Freire 1).
In “The ‘Research Paper’ in the Writing Course: A Non-Form of Writing,” Richard Larson contends that research can take on many forms such as:
systematically observing events, finding out what happens when one performs certain procedures in the laboratory, conducting interviews, tape-recording speakers’ comments, asking human beings to utter aloud their thoughts while composing in writing or in another medium and noting what emerges, photographing phenomena, watching the activities of people in groups, reading a person’s letters and notes…looking up information in a library or in newspaper files. (217)
He claims that “we could probably define ‘research’ generally as the seeking out of information new to the seeker, for a purpose, and we would probably agree that the researcher usually has to interpret, evaluate, and organize that information before it acquires value” (217).
While Larson acknowledges the importance of research, he also challenges the idea of the traditional “research paper” and asks that it be reinterpreted in a meaningful and specific way so that research becomes contextualized based on a relevant field or problem. He makes the point that “acting as if there is a generic concept defensibly entitled the ‘research paper’—we mislead students about the activities of both research and writing” (217). He argues that teachers of English should “abandon the concept of the generic ‘research paper” because “research can inform virtually any writing or speaking if the author wishes it to do so; there is nothing of substance or content that differentiates one paper that draws on data from outside the author’s own self from another such paper…” (220-221, 218). Because of the lack of substance in the term research, then, Larson concludes that people need to “…view research as broadly, and conduct it as imaginatively, as they can” (220). Pedagogues Susan and Stephen Tchudi, the authors of The English Language Arts Handbook, would agree. They think “that the notion of the research paper has been too narrowly confined in terms of how it is researched, how it is written, and who benefits. Everyone benefits from researching, from finding out answers to burning—or just interesting—questions… the process of researching can be both enjoyable and enlightening” (174). Research appears to be in need of a make-over; its possibilities and potentialities must be more thorough explored.
In
their anthology, The Subject is Research:
Processes and Practices, Wendy Bishop and Pavel Zemliansky seem comfortable choosing a list of activities
that help make up research. In the introduction to their book, Bishop and Zemliansky rely on Roget’s
College Thesaurus to explain research as something which involves the activities of inquiry, investigation, study, and
exploration (vi). Also, as a way of
introducing Part I of their five part anthology, they give Webster’s 2nd College Edition’s definition of research,
which reads: “Careful, systematic, patient study and investigation in some
field of knowledge undertaken to discover or establish facts or principles”
(1). Perhaps this is as specific and concise a definition as can work with the
idea that research is a multipurpose tool which allows students to do or engage in the world.
Then there’s Hurston’s definition of research (i.e. “Research is formalized curiosity. It’s poking and prying with a purpose.”). In the courses I teach, the only definition of research that my students encounter in class is this one, not only because it is the most practical, but because it makes them reassess research in terms of fulfilling and formalizing their curiosity around, or with, a purpose. They are forced (into a dialectical encounter) through in-class writings and discussions to reevaluate what research is. Instead of being a scary or sterile academic exercise, it becomes just another term that relates to the fulfillment (or attempted fulfillment) of their wants and needs. Yet, what students come to realize from engaging in research that is student-directed is that there are a lot of people involved and invested in the personal and professional issues they care about. Students find that their voice sounds better with others and that others can sound better through their voice. The process of research or researching, then, also entails reciprocity, negotiation, and the sharing or merger of ideas on a given topic.
Even the term itself, “research,” speaks to a re-searching of ideas and people, past and present. In fact, in re-searching, there is an implied recursiveness in the word. Research isn’t just inquiry, investigation, study, and exploration, but it is about constantly reflecting on these activities through time with different perspectives always at work.
Creating, Reinforcing, and Recreating Democratic Voices
through Research
In Teachers as Cultural Workers: Letters to Those Who Dare Teach, Paulo Freire asserts that language does not exist without a social construction and context. He also contends that no one learning and teaching situation is alike because of different social variables. It is for this reason that Freire warns against the use of prepackaged lessons and compartmentalized dialogues because it hinders teachers and students from becoming “critical, daring, and creative” (Freire 8). Instead, Freire, like Dewey before him, advocates problem-posing education and discovery learning, which Lev Vygotsky helped to popularize. And what is important to note about these two types of learning within the context of this paper is that neither can be engaged in without research, regardless of discipline. To answer or attempt to answer a problem as many research papers across disciplines do is certainly one of the aims of problem-posing educational assignments. Likewise, discovery learning relies on formalizing curiosity through exploratory research. Freire, like Dewey, believes that teaching and teaching practices should always, at their core, set forth values of democracy. So how and where does research tie in? In Teachers as Cultural Workers: Letters to Those Who Dare Teach, Freire says that teachers need to concern themselves with becoming authoritative (to act as a resource or guide in class) rather than authoritarian (which is consistent with banking approaches to education). He argues for teachers to become reflective practitioners, or cultural workers, who dare to take on the responsibility of fostering democratic communities in the face of dehumanizing educational agendas. His implication is that students too must find ways of becoming authoritative cultural workers so that democratic communities emerge and thrive. I would argue, from my experiences as both a student and a teacher, that it is impossible to be a cultural worker, a reflective practitioner, and an authoritative voice in the classroom and beyond without continually engaging in research. How else can data be gathered, organized, and reflected upon?
Similar to Freire, Karen Burke LeFevre argues that specifically invention (which, as a canon of rhetoric, contains research components) needs to be seen as a social act as well. She notes that “…we have often arranged the research situation to exclude social interaction, thus eliminating often significant elements in invention” (LeFevre 125). In a critique of individualistic theories on invention in her book Invention as a Social Act, LeFevre writes, “A Platonic view of invention leads us to favor individualistic approaches to research and to neglect studies of writers in social contexts” (25). She goes on to argue that research needs to be viewed as part of social contexts and that researchers must “examine the relationship of a text to other texts and to conversations that precede and follow it; they will also take note of the writer’s relationships to other people” (LeFevre 125). How else can relationships of a text to other texts, and a text to other people, be examined without research? Research is a social act on its own and helps expose and create different voices at work in our society.
Taking LeFevre and Freire into account then, research is a social and collaborative activity that connects, reshapes, and deepens perspectives across time and space. As Bishop and Zemliansky expound upon in The Subject is Research: Processes and Practices:
Research allows the student
writers you teach to address new subjects and to communicate maturely with
audiences. The research paper is crucial for the way it allows these writers to
join a community of peers. To research is to learn, to expand one’s boundaries
and to develop one’s thinking; to have researched—and presented our findings—is
to have created a place to stand in relation to others. This book encourages
conversation between students and teachers about such writing: both process and
product. (Bishop and Zemliansky viii-ix)
Research is an enabler because it “allows” students to address new topics and to work on communicating “maturely” within and across social networks and relationships. Also, reminiscent of Freire’s call for conversation, Bishop and Zemliansky note the importance of conversation in, with, and about research, and its written components, for students and teachers. Teachers and students, it seems, have a duty to participate in the processes and practices of research together—to become more authoritative, to become better cultural workers, to become stronger citizens of a democracy—by engaging in challenging conversations.
Larson even goes so far as to suggest that through research people can “…be held accountable for their opinions and should be required to say, from evidence, why they believe what they assert…they should be led to recognize that data from ‘research’ will affect their entire lives, and that they should know how to evaluate such data as well as to gather them…they should know their responsibilities for telling their listeners and readers where their data came from” (220). In this passage, he seems to be implying that research is a process that challenges people to evaluate or re-evaluate “why they believe what they assert.” He also points out that there is a responsibility that can be taught through engaging in research as a student or teacher’s voice must find ways to effectively mix and negotiate with the voices of other writers and speakers.
One research-based pedagogy in particular that has been thoroughly articulated and that offers insights on how student and teacher voices learn to negotiate and value differences is that of fieldworking. As Bonnie Stone Sunstein and Elizabeth Chiseri-Strater explain in their textbook, Fieldworking: Reading and Writing Research, fieldworking involves “talking, listening, recording, observing, participating” at a site of research; it is the “process of living and studying among other people in their own context” (1, 50). By putting a researcher into a dialectical relationship or challenging conversation, fieldworking forces that person to confront her or his self in relation to new and different people and culture (i.e the other). Learning to live, succeed, and be happy in a democracy is learning how to deal with multiple (and therefore different) voices and perspectives, which all have a right to be heard.
What Sunstein and Chiseri-Strater believe will happen to student and teacher researchers engaging in fieldwork is that they will enter into, or take on, intersubjectivity from their work—intersubjectivity being “the process of collecting and connecting many different perspectives on one piece of data…in photography, this would translate into taking many pictures of the same object from different angles” (Sunstein and Chiseri-Strater 154). Through intersubjectivity then, student and teacher researchers learn and practice respectful and sometimes difficult conversations and negotiations that prepare them to meet the demands of being an American citizen in a globalized world. Also through this intersubjectivity and the conversations that emerge from it, students and teachers come to know their own voices and the voices of others more intimately; this not only makes them better writers, but better thinkers as well.
As Sunstein and Chiseri-Strater explain in their textbook, “Ordinary living involves all the skills of fieldworking—looking, listening, collecting, questioning, and interpreting—even though we are not always conscious of these skills (1). However, by becoming more cognizant of these skills, we might find more meaning, purpose, and direction in our lives as well as in the lives of others. Like Hurston, we too may become too complex for a disciplines or label to contain. Like Hurston, we may mirror the complexity of the world in ourselves rather than simply marvel or submit to the complexity that surrounds and confronts us.
What Now? Developing Research-based Pedagogies
Donna Qualley in her book, Turns of Thought: Teaching Composition as Reflexive Inquiry, admits that even though she emphasizes that "a research essay is not like the traditional (“I-less”) high school term paper, many students still fell bound by this tradition” (131). So how do we go about developing research activities and pedagogies that repackage research in more practical and imaginative ways?
In
English 101 at
In fact, unlike many of my colleagues, I use the multigenre research composition as the first major assignment in my course because it sets the mood that students are in a new kind of environment with new expectations and practices. The multigenre research assignment allows students to select any topic that is important to them to write about. They come up with or find a need or purpose for writing about the topic and then begin finding different genres and perspectives on their research question or topic. While many students initially feel overwhelmed by the newness of the assignment, almost all say that it is worth it for the freedom it gives them to pursue their interests creatively and critically. Many do not realize that engaging in the writing of a multigenre research composition is something that will also help them acquire and use research tools and strategies for the future. I like exposing my students early to research and the many ways it can be conducted. As students experiment with different kinds of research dependent on different genres and contexts, they also experiment with new voices and new relationships. Thus, throughout my classes, I have attempted to help my students find an ethical agency (as Qualley calls it) by using reader-response strategies that ask the student to write from her or his “own experience” before moving to student-directed research activities that capitalize on the student’s need to find and create meaning with others.
Because conducting research relies on coming in contact with and valuing other people, ideas, and realities, I have seen how students gain and refine their voices to make them more creative, more critical, and, ultimately, more meaningful. Because research inherently puts people into conversations and promotes collaboration in learning, it is one of the most important tools in helping students and teachers alike form new connections to their world, discipline, and to each other. Through these connections, new literacies will emerge that can only help to empower and enlighten democratic communities.
For more information on ways to develop research-based pedagogies of your own, see the springboard to practical research activities, assignments, and insights on page 10. Be sure to reinvent or recontextualize them to your course, classroom, and students.
Resources for constructing
Research-Based Pedagogies (A Springboard to Different Research Practices):
In the “Scandalous Research Paper and Exorcising
Ghosts,” Jennie Nelson endorses the underused Recursive Research Approach to writing which gives a practical
application of how reflexive inquiry can be engaged in through research (Bishop
and Zemliansky 10).
In “Revisiting the Library: Old and New
Technologies for Effective Research,” M. Linda Miller elaborates on the many
kinds of library and internet research
which now exist and can help teachers and students engage more effective,
creative, and ethical research experiences (Bishop and Zemliansky
60-68).
In “Multigenre
Research Inquiring Voices,” Cheryl L. Johnson and Jayne A. Moneysmith
discuss the process and benefits of engaging in multigenre research projects (Bishop and Zemliansky
178-192).
In The
Subject is Research: Processes and Practices, Bishop and Zemliansky offer a wide variety of research activities in
“Part V: Research Hint Sheets for Students and Teachers.”
Sunstein and Chiseri-Strater’s Fieldworking: Reading and Writing Research is filled
with myriad and organized research activities and assignments so that a teacher
has the option to design an entire course around the text, to do a unit on fieldworking, or to simply use an exercise or two. Research
techniques such as taking double-entry
notes on readings, or on what is seen in the field, combine reader-response
and research-based activities into one. How to implement, use, and evaluate research portfolios is also explored.
For a highly collaborative research activity
involving researching the writing that takes place in, and is needed for,different fields and
professions, see the bottom of page 130 and the top of page 131 in LeFevre’s Invention
as Social Act.
On pages 174-175 in Tchudi
and Tchudi’s The
English Language Arts Handbook: Classroom Strategies for Teachers, a
listing of suggestions for fruitful high
school research activities and assignments are given.
For research practices and pedagogies that can
extend to parents, see Debra Miretzky’s article, “The
Communication Requirements of Democratic Schools: Parent-Teacher Perspectives
on Their Relationships,” which studies the importance of talk among parents and
teachers of students in grades 4-8. Her work reveals that “these conversations
act as both a research methodology and as a desired outcome in creating and
sustaining democratic communities that support school improvement” (Miretzky 814).
Keep in mind that this springboard is by no
means comprehensive. It is meant simply to give an overview of the kinds of
research practices which already exist and which may offer ways of developing
new practices and pedagogies in the future. If you have additional questions or
suggestions concerning research ideas and texts, please feel free to email me
at mark_kohan@yahoo.com.
Works Cited
Bishop, Wendy and Paul Zemliansky,
eds. The Subject
is Research: Processes and
Practices.
Freire, Paulo. Teachers as Cultural
Workers: Letters to Those Who Dare Teach
Larson, Richard. “The ‘Research Paper’ in the Writing Course: A Non-Form of Writing.”
The Writing Teacher’s Sourcebook. Eds. Edward P.J. Corbett, Nancy Myers and
Gary Tate.
LeFevre, Karen Burke. Invention as a Social Act.
Miretzky, Debra. “The Communication Requirements of Democratic Schools: Parent-
Teacher Perspectives on Their Relationships.” Teachers College Record. 106.4 (April 2004): 814-851.
Qualley, Donna. Turns of Thought: Teaching Composition as Reflexive Inquiry.
Sunstein, Bonnie Stone and Elizabeth Chiseri-Strater. Fieldworking:
Writing Research. 2nd
edition.
Tchudi, Susan J. and Stephen N. The English Language Arts Handbook: Classroom
Strategies for Teachers. 2nd edition.
HANDOUT ON RECONCEPTUALIZING RESEARCH
What Counts as
Research?
“Research is formalized curiosity. It’s poking and
prying with a purpose.”
~Zora Neale Hurston
In English ____________, we
challenge you to take a broad view of research. Whether engaging in a multigenre research paper, an interview essay, a rhetorical
analysis, or just looking for research and writing ideas on the internet, TV,
or radio, or from a person or cultural artifact, you have a wide variety of
research resources at your disposal for personal, professional, and academic
endeavors. For writer and
anthropologist, Zora Neale Hurston, research was about formalizing her
curiosity. How do you define it?
Consider these points as you
look to research for help in inventing, organizing, writing, and arguing ideas
in the classroom and beyond:
Ø
Research is the
seeking out of new information for a purpose and involves the interpretation,
evaluation, and organization of that new information before it can be used or
communicated effectively.
Ø
Research involves
fieldworking which is the process of collecting and
connecting many different perspectives on a specific topic, data set, or question.
It also includes conversing, listening, observing, recording, and participating at a
site of research. Keep in mind that a site of research may be a physical
location, a person or peoples, and/or a material item, such as a book or other
written text.
Ø
When looking at
multiple perspectives on the same set of data, see what different books, news
articles, journals, or internet websites have to say about the same person or
topic. After you’ve consulted multiple sources and weighed the credibility of
those sources, decide how and where you want to locate yourself.
Ø
Consult the
library and/or library websites for access to important electronic databases
that allow you to search millions of popular or professional newspaper,
magazine, and journal articles. Ebscohost and Lexis-Nexis
are but two of some of the most widely used databases today.
Ø
Look up context
information on writers, speakers, words, or concepts if they are confusing to
you. Using credible online sources, such as The Oxford English Dictionary,
Miriam-Webster’s Dictionary, and the Literature Resource Center
(a Gale database), can help you focus your research. Subscriptions to the OED
and the LRC are required, but they can often be accessed through your local
public or university library (or their corresponding websites).
Ø
Don’t just think
of research as something that has to be done for a paper. It’s about how you go
about educating yourself on a wide-variety of topics. From deciding what
technology and brands are best to buy, to picking a health insurance plan or
provider, to figuring out how to apply to or graduate from a college or
university, to finding out what a certain word means, research informs all
kinds of life activities.
Ø
Because the world
values intellectual property, written research must be documented and
documented appropriately. For English courses, MLA documentation is
appropriate.
For more on topics related to
research writing, such as MLA documentation, see:
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/research/index.html
Poems
What Multigenre is: A Haiku
Multigenre is
A blending of the seasons
To know the whole year.
________________________
Seasoning
I was born
Into a grey springtime
Where cities explode—bleak and numbing
Consciousness
Lulled to sleep and dreams
Wet, slippery, muddy clay thick
Summer splashes golden rays
on the grey and gripped
false light, like a beacon in the fog,
Consciousness
Cut and combed
Vainly paraded high
But sinuous summer
stains sepia and slow
To a stink, humid hot
Cities pave and smoke
Yet, for a few,
a moment, a season,
Blows in before all is piss and stale
Wind brings a song
To the mundane and the execrable
Now is the chance
To flash with brilliance,
A short time, to show thyself
And sing with others
Now is the time for brilliance
Before being whipped away by a winter wind
In the cold and the snow,
Finding a flame from the Fall
Now is the time for brilliance…