NOTE: At this point we are not using the calender in an accountable way.  USE THE BLOG as your guide for how to prepare for the next class.  If you have questions, send me an email.  

We started class with a workshop on the short analysis projects.  You used the worksheet (posted to the right) to brainstorm, focus + develop your analysis for this project.   I circulated through the groups - and by the end of the first half of class everyone seemed to have a clear workable question, some ideas of the codes/categories they would use to describe patterns + develop hypotheses, and some of you had some theories to explain overall patterns.  So GOOD!

Model essay for Senior Seminar reflection piece + writing process as research
During the second half of class we had a discussion of Mary Elizabeth Pope's "Composing Teacher Training."  This essay is both a "model" essay for the kind of writing you will create to accompany your Senior Seminar project for the Writing Option Major, and it is an illustration of how reflective, analytic writing both complements a research process, and IS a research process in its own right.

After we read excerpts from the essay, Teacher Training - we talked through "Composing 'Teacher Training'" with particular attention to the steps Pope took to compose her "Teacher Training."

We noticed the following (below is what we wrote on the board followed by an overview of class discussion):

Activities associated with finding a focus
thinking back on a childhood experience (bad)
a journaling activity where she made a list of topics she would never writ about = conflicted material

freewriting

With respect to these activities, we noted that onflicted  material - things we feel bad or confused about - can often provide good material for research and creative work.  They are "unresolved" = so there is a drive to explore them, and the researcher/writer will have a REASON (other than whatever the assignment demands) for digging into the project. We also noted that freewriting, random associating, talking to friends, browsing the internet, taking a walk = anything that lets material pour into your mind (and turns off your editor) can work as a way to get you to open up new ideas. Putting ideas together in ways you haven't put them together before is central to seeing things "new." 

Research activities

connecting to experience (thinking back on what happend)

visiting physical  places and things associated with your idea

talking to others who were there - or have similar experiences 

peer workshop (discussions with other writers about what connects to your ideas)

As with the "brainstorming" ideas - we noted that the research process seemed to take place through out the writing process . Pope went back and forth between writing - finding more ideas - deciding how to put her ideas into words - writing - and then going through the loop again.  Research activities are not only about reading other texts - for Pope they were about going back to her early experiences.  Psychologists have observed that physical objects - and other people - can serve as "triggers" to detailed memories that might otherwise remain inaccessible.  Photos, places, objects, and other physical artifacts actually seem to "hold" memories for human beings. 

Writing process

trying to write the introduction = part of discovery process

discovery/invention takes place throughout the whole writing process

journaling - to find truth + to craft essay to meet audience demands

clustering = organization association exhaustive categorization/coding

reflective rhetorical analysis = balance between audience + individual truth

We noted that Pope seemed to use her writing process AS PART OF her research process. We also noted that she used her movement among brainstorming, researching, and writing activities as a way to negotiate HER truth into a truth appropriate for her audience.  In some ways, she found what she wanted to say by thinking (and writing) about how BEST to put her feelings into writing.  

Gee and Discourse Analysis

We spent the last half hour of class reviewing Gee.  In many ways this book is very readable - with lots of examples.  You are READING this text as practice for reading other research methods texts - for when you do research on your own => so you can learn new methods through reading what others have written.  

I noted that Gee's book is set up so that it defines terms, uses them, and then used the terms it has already defined to define and illustrate new terms.  You need to be comfortable with the language in the early chapters in order to be able to understand and use the methods described later in the book.  We identified important terms and page numbers - and that was about all we had time to do.

For next class:

Read: Gee, chapter 5

Blog 13 & 14: (this counts as 2 blogs): post your draft short analysis project

In class next week we will go through some of the examples for Gee and as a class, apply some of his tools to our own data sets.  

We will also spend some time working on your data collection tools (many of you will be using interviewing), and  going through the permission forms and talking about how to use them.