Research Paradigms and Methods in Composition
English 569-Winter 2011
Candice Rai
This seminar considers core research paradigms in composition studies. We will focus on major epistemologies (what we know and how we have come to know what we know) in the field of composition (and, to a lesser extent, rhetorical studies) and on the relationship among epistemology, research design, and methodology.
Some central research questions in composition studies have included: What is a writer and how do people write in myriad contexts? What do we know about how to teach writing and how do we train the teachers to teach this way? What has our research shown us about writing, writing instruction, transferability of skills, teacher identity, assessment, discourse and power, politics and literacy, global literacies, digital writing, and rhetoric in public life?
This is not, therefore, a “how to” methodology course on research design, data collection, analysis, and reporting, although such concerns will certainly surface. Rather, we will assume that methods represent political commitments and tacit assumptions about what counts as socially valuable knowledge. In other words, research design and methodologies contribute, in and of themselves, to the constitution of knowledge. Yet, in the sciences and social sciences, methodology is often the invisible warrant that justifies the legitimacy of the research study. If the method is sound, so, too, are the findings produced by the method. We will be interrogating such warrants.
I hope that by taking a long and hard look at our research paradigms and methods that we might recover abandoned inquires that have become less shiny, call into question contemporary hegemonic epistemologies, think up new types of questions and methods that might better get at whatever it is that needs to be gotten at, and figure out what inquires are worth exploring in the first place.
Participants will be expected to do ample reading and writing in this course. We will work through and ground our discussions in independent and collaborative research projects that enable us to practice nuts and bolts skills while keeping our theoretical questions in tow.
Texts under consideration, in addition to course pack readings:
Bazerman, Charles, et al. Traditions of Writing Research, 2010.
Johanek, Cindy. Composing Research: A Contextualist Paradigm for Rhetoric and Composition, 2000.
Kirsch, Gesa, and Patricia A. Sullivan, eds. Methods and Methodology in Composition Research, 1992.
McKee, Heidi and Danielle Nicole DeVoss, eds. Digital Writing Research: Technologies, Methodologies and Ethical Issues, 2007.
North, Stephen. The Making of Knowledge in Composition: Portrait of an Emerging Field, 1987.
Smagorinsky, Peter. Research on Composition: Multiple Perspectives on Two Decades of Change, 2005.