College Composition and Communication

78 articles
Year: Topic: Clear
Export:
qualitative research ×

February 2003

  1. Changing the Process of Institutional Review Board Compliance
    Abstract

    The CCCC Guidelinesfor the Ethical Treatment of Students and Student Writing in Composition Studies written by Paul Anderson, Davida Charney, Marilyn Cooper, Cristina Kirklighter, Peter Mortensen, and Mark Reynolds provides a common frame to help composition specialists as we navigate and discuss the various ethical dilemmas we face while conducting research. As a graduate student involved in my own qualitative research, I find the Guidelines beneficial, and I am committed to following them, including the first guideline that calls for composition researchers to comply with all Institutional Review Board (IRB) policies.1 However, in the past two years I have submitted proposals for the same study to eleven IRBs at colleges and universities across the country. While I strongly support the need for obtaining IRB approval, I believe as a discipline and as individuals we need to work to revise the IRB process. As it is now practiced at many institutions, the IRB process positions composition researchers and composition research in potentially problematic ways. In fall 2000 when I began my research into the Intercollegiate E-Democracy Project, a national online project where students across the country discuss various social and political issues, I knew I had to mail consent forms to

    doi:10.2307/3594176

June 2000

  1. Evaluating Writing Programs in Real Time: The Politics of Remediation
    Abstract

    A case study of the evaluation of a three-year pilot project in mainstreaming basic writers at City College of New York suggests that the social and political contexts of a project need to be taken into account in the earliest stages of evaluation. This project’s complex evaluation report was virtually ignored by college administrators.

    doi:10.58680/ccc20001398

December 1999

  1. Ethnographic Writing Research: Writing It down, Writing It up, and Reading It
    doi:10.2307/359046

September 1998

  1. Voices and Visions: Refiguring Ethnography in Composition
    doi:10.2307/358370

February 1998

  1. On Writing Qualitative Research: Living by Words
    Abstract

    1.To you from us 2.What is there about writing? 3.Creating forms - informing understanding working in analytic modes 4.Working in interpretive modes 5.Negotiating, collaborating, responding ripples on the self/ripples on others 6.Qualitative research writing - what makes it worthwhile after all?

    doi:10.2307/358568

December 1997

  1. Interchanges: On Objectivity in Qualitative Research
    doi:10.58680/ccc19973167
  2. Changing Work, Changing Workers: Critical Perspectives on Language, Literacy, and Skills
    Abstract

    Changing Work, Changing Workers looks at U.S. factories and workplace education programs to see what is expected currently of workers. The studies reported in Hull's book draw their evidence from firsthand, sustained looks at workplaces and workplace education efforts. Many of the chapters represent long-term ethnographic or qualitative research. Others are fine-grained examinations of texts, curricula, or policy. Such perspectives result in portraits that honor the complex nature of work, people, and education.

    doi:10.2307/358465
  3. Getting Restless: Rethinking Revision in Writing Instruction
    Abstract

    [This book] is a must for those committed to voicing the personal conflicts writers experience and to turning those confusing and sometimes dismaying moments into productive sites for questioning textual relations. - Journal of Advanced CompositionIn Getting Restless, Nancy Welch calls for a reconception of what we mean by revision, urging compositionists to rethink long-held beliefs about teacher-student relations and writing practices. Drawing primarily on feminist and psychoanalytic theories, she considers how revision can be redefined not as a process of increasing orientations toward a particular thesis or discourse community, but instead as a process of disorientation: an act of getting restless with received meanings, familiar relationships, and disciplinary or generic boundaries--a practice of intervening in the meanings and identifications of one's text and one's life. Using ethnographic, case-study, and autobiographical research methods, Welch maintains two consistent aims throughout the study: to show how composition teachers can create for themselves and for their students environments that encourage and support revision as restlessness and as a process of intervening in a first draft's thoroughly social meanings and identifications to demonstrate how composition's process legacy is revitalized when we understand that our means to form and change communities- to form and change constructions of authority--are located in revision. In achieving these ends Welch examines three academic sites: a campus writing center, undergraduate writing classrooms, and a summer workshop for K-12 teachers. This book will appeal to a wide audience, including classroom and writing center teachers, historians and theorists in composition and rhetoric, feminist theorists, and those engaged in literacy studies, teacher education, and connections/tensions among teaching, writing, and psychoanalysis.

    doi:10.2307/358474

May 1995

  1. I Came to Believe: Ethnography, Anonymity, and the Private I
    doi:10.2307/358433
  2. Interchanges
    Abstract

    Conflict Pedagogy and Student Experience Ships in the Night Revisited, Gerald Graff, I Came to Believe: Ethnography, Anonymity, and the Private I, Anonymous Response, Beth Daniell, Interpreting Interpretations of Divergence, Thomas G. O’Donnell, Response, Helen Rothschild Ewald and David L. Wallace

    doi:10.58680/ccc19958746
  3. I Came to Believe: Ethnography, Anonymity, and the Private I: Response
    doi:10.2307/358434

May 1994

  1. Writing in the Workplace: New Research Perspectives
    Abstract

    Rachel brings together nineteen previously unpublished essays concerned with ways in which recent research on workplace writing can contribute to the future direction of the discipline of technical and professional Hers is the first anthology on the social perspective in professional writing to feature focused discussions of research advances and future research directions.The workplace as defined by this volume is a widely diverse area that encompasses small companies and large corporations, public agencies and private firms, and a varied population of writersengineers, managers, nurses, social workers, government employees, and others. Because much research has been conducted on the relationship between workplace writing and social contexts since the ground breaking 1985 publication of Odell and Goswami s Writing in Nonacademic Settings, Spilka contends that this is an appropriate time for the professional writing community to consider what it has learned to date and where it should be heading next in light of these recent discoveries. She argues that now professional writers should try to ask better questions and to define new directions.Spilka breaks the anthology into two parts. Part 1 is a collection of ten essays presenting textual and qualitative studies conducted by the authors in the late l980s on workplace has chosen these studies as representative of the finest research being conducted in professional writing that can serve as models for current and future researchers in the field. Barbara Couture, Jone Rymer, and Barbara Mirel report on surveys they conducted relying on the social perspective both to design survey instruments and to analyze survey data. Jamie MacKinnon assesses a qualitative study describing what workplace professionals might need to learn about social contexts and workplace Susan Kleimann and editor Rachel discuss multiple case studies they conducted that help explain the value during the composing process of social interaction among the participants of a rhetorical situation. Judy Z. Segal explores the negotiation between the character of Western medicine and the nature of its professional discourse. Jennie Dautermann describes a qualitative study in which a group of nurses claimed the authority to restructure their own procedural information system. Anthony Parefinds in a case study of social workers that writing can be constrained heavily by socially imposed limitations and restrictions. Graham Smart describes a study of discourse conventions in a financial institution. Geoffrey A. Cross reports on a case study of the interrelation of genre, context, and process in the group production of an executive letter and report.Part 2 includes nine essays that assess the implications of recent research on workplace writing on theory, pedagogy and practice, and future research directions. Mary Beth Debs considers research implications for the notion of authorship. Jack Selzer explores the idea of intertextuality. Leslie A. Olson reviews the literature central to the concept of a discourse community. James A. Reither suggests that writing-as-collaboration in the classroom focuses more on the production of texts to be evaluated than on ways in which texts arise out of other texts. Rachel continues Reither s discussion of how writing pedagogy in academia might be revised with regard to the social perspective. Patricia Sullivan and James E. Porter respond to the debate about the authority of theory versus that of practice on researchers notions of methodology. Mary Beth Debs considers which methods used in fields related to writing hold promise for research in workplace Stephen Doheny-Farina discusses how some writing researchers are questioning the underlying assumptions of traditional ethnography. Finally, Tyler Bouldin and Lee Odell suggest future directions for the research of workplace writing.

    doi:10.2307/359030
  2. What's Wrong with Ethnography?
    Abstract

    This stimulating and refreshing study, written by one of the leading commentators in the field, provides novel answers to these crucial questions. What's Wrong With Ethnography provides a fresh look at the rationale for and distinctiveness of ethnographic research in sociology, education and related fields, and succeeds in slaying a number of currently fashionable sacred cows. Relativism, critical theory, the uniqueness of the case study and the distinction between qualitative and quantitative research are all examined and found wanting as a basis for informed ethnography. The policy and political implications of ethnography are a particular focus of attention. The author compels the reader to reexamine some basic methodological assumptions in an exciting way, Martin Bulmer, London School of Economics.

    doi:10.2307/359023
  3. Knowledge, Culture and Power. International Perspectives on Literacy as Policy and Practice
    Abstract

    Introduction - explanations of current international crises, A.R. Welch and P. Freebody literacy strategies - a view from International Literacy Year Secretatiat of UNESCO, L.J. Limage pen and sword - literacy, education and revolution of Kurdistan, A. Hassampour aboriginal education in Northern Australia - a case study of literacy policies and practices, C. Walton rights and expectations in an Age of Debt Crisis - literacy and integral human development in Papua New Guinea, N. Ahai and N. Faraclas literacy and primary education in India, K. Kumar adult literacy in Nicaragua 1979-90, C. Lankshear literacy and dynamics of language planning - dynamics of Singapore, A. Kwan-Terry and J. Kwan-Terry the troubled text - history and language in American university writing programmes, J. Collins workplace literacy in Australia - competing agendas, P. O'Connor individualisation and domestication in current literacy debates in Australia, P. Freebody and A.R. Welch.

    doi:10.2307/359021

December 1993

  1. Sociomedia: Multimedia, Hypermedia, and the Social Construction of Knowledge
    Abstract

    Part 1 Perspectives: education by engagement and construction - a strategic education initiative for a multimedia renewal of American education, Ben Shneiderman is there a class in this text? creating knowledge in the electronic classroom, John M. Slatin varieties of virtual - expanded metaphors for computer-mediated learning, Patricia Ann Carlson cognitive architecture in hypermedia instruction, Henrietta Nickels Shirk multimedia - informational alchemy or conceptual typography?, Evelyn Schlusselberg and V. Judson Harward dimensions, context, and freedom - the library in the social creation of knowledge, Gregory T. Anderson multimedia and the library and information studies curriculum, Kathleen Burnett the virtual museum and related epistemological concerns, Glen Hoptman an epistemic analysis of the interaction between knowledge, education, and technology, David Chen the many faces of multimedia - how new technologies might change the nature of the academic endeavour, Alison Hartman, et al. Part 2 . . . and practices: bootstrapping hypertext - student-created documents, intermedia, and the social construction of knowledge, George P. Landow the CUPLE project - a hyper- and multimedia approach to restructuring physics education, E.F. Redish, et al collaborative virtual communities - using Learning Constellations, a multimedia ethnographic research tool, Ricki Goldman-Segall the crisis management game of Three Mile Island - using multimedia simulation in management education, Thomas M. Fletcher restructuring space, time, story, and text in advanced multimedia learning environments, Janet H. Murray the virtual classroom - software for collaborative learning, Starr Roxanne Hiltz medical centre - a modular hypermedia approach to programme design, Nels Anderson prototyping multimedia - lessons from the visual computing group at project Athena Centre for educational computing initative, Ben Davis Engineering-Design Instructional Computer System (EDICS), David Gordon Wilson computers and design activities - their mediating role in engineering education, Shahaf Gal the need for negotiation in cooperative work, Beth Adelson and Troy Jordan teaching hypermedia concepts using hypermedia techniques, Peter A. Gloor computer integrated documentation, Guy Boy the Worcester State College Elder Connection - using multimedia and information technology to promote intergenerational education, Virginia Z. Ogozalek, et al paradoxical reactions and powerful ideas - educational computing in a Department of Physics, Sherry Turkle.

    doi:10.2307/358396

May 1993

  1. Methods and Methodology in Composition Research
    Abstract

    In original essays, fourteen nationally known scholars examine the practical, philosophical, and epistemological implications of a variety of research traditions. Included are discussions of historical, theoretical, and feminist scholarship; case-study and ethnographic research; text and conversation analysis; and cognitive, experimental, and descriptive research. Issues that cross methodological boundaries, such as the nature of collaborative research and writing, methodological pluralism, the classification and coding of research data, and the politics of composition research, are also examined. Contributors reflect on their own research practices, and so reflect the current state of composition research itself.

    doi:10.2307/358846

May 1992

  1. Academic Literacies: The Public and Private Discourse of University Students
    Abstract

    Academic Literacies suggests that the narrow focus on academic ways of reading, writing and thinking is limited and limiting for both students and teachers at the college level. Chiseri-Strater uses ethnographic field methods to uncover the multiple literacies that two college students bring to different disciplines and shows how factors such as gender, human development, and private talents are ignored in the college curriculum. She works against Hirsch's restricted view of literacy and offers many suggestions for expanding our notion of what it means to be literate in an academic setting. This book joins the continuing debate over cultural literacy, but unlike Hirsch's and Bloom's works, it offers a new point of view - the students'. Those who plan curricula and set goals for higher education too often ignore these individuals who are the patrons of the system. In addition, composition scholars who are involved in the emerging field of academic discourse communities will find Chiseri-Strater's position of interest. Finally, since the book offers a critique of the dominant mastery mode of teaching in colleges, it should appeal to those woman's studies scholars who are developing a feminist pedagogy that brings women students into the conversation about womens's ways of knowing, perceiving and learning.

    doi:10.2307/357570

February 1992

  1. On Blocking and Unblocking Sonja: A Case Study in Two Voices
    Abstract

    Preview this article: On Blocking and Unblocking Sonja: A Case Study in Two Voices, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ccc/43/1/collegecompositionandcommunication8895-1.gif

    doi:10.58680/ccc19928895

December 1990

  1. A Program Development Handbook for the Holistic Assessment of Writing
    Abstract

    This book is a major breakthrough for developers of writing assessment programs who must certify the writing competency of undergraduate students. Legislators and accreditation boards across the nation have called for and implemented large scale projects to measure educational outcomes. This single source provides comprehensive information on the history, underlying concepts, and process of conducting a large scale writing assessment program at a specific institution of higher education. The handbook opens with an analysis of the rationale for the assessment of writing during the junior year of the undergraduate curriculum. The authors then turn to a case study of the success of their own institutional wide assessment program. A history is provided of 20th century writing assessment practices; as well, attention is given to defining levels of literacy. After describing an assessment process model, discussion turns to the design of questions, the administration of the assessment, the rating of papers, and the statistical analysis of data. Attention is also given to the design of a course for those who are unsuccessful on the assessment. The study closes with directions for further research and over 200 references in the bibliography.

    doi:10.2307/357942

October 1989

  1. Composition Research/Empirical Designs
    Abstract

    Intended for writing instructors at all levels who lack the training to deal effectively with the increasingly important role played by empirical research in their field, Composition Research explains ten of the most common empirical designs used in the social sciences. These include: case study, ethnography, sampling/survey, quantitative descriptive research, prediction and classification studies, true and quasi-experiments, meta-analysis, and program evaluation. Each design is explained with reference to at least two specific composition studies, and includes a separate bibliography that identifies further writing studies that use it. The book also features a chapter on measurement, an appendix on statistical analyses, a glossary of technical terms and symbols, and guidelines for research on human subjects.

    doi:10.2307/357782

February 1989

  1. Ethnography in the Writing Classroom
    doi:10.2307/358183

May 1986

  1. Writing Instruction in Nineteenth-Century American Colleges
    Abstract

    Defining a rhetoric as a social invention arising out of a particular time, place, and set of circumstances, Berlin notes that no rhetoricnot Plato s or Aristotle s or Quintilian s or Perelman sis permanent. At any given time several rhetorics vie for supremacy, with each attracting adherents representing various views of reality expressed through a rhetoric.Traditionally rhetoric has been seen as based on four interacting elements: reality, writer or speaker, audience, and language. As emphasis shifts from one element to another, or as the interaction between elements changes, or as the definitions of the elements change, rhetoric changes. This alters prevailing views on such important questions as what is appearance, what is reality.In this interpretive study Berlin classifies the three 19th-century rhetorics as classical, psychological-epistemological, and romantic, a uniquely American development growing out of the transcendental movement. In each case studying the rhetoric provides insight into society and the beliefs of the people.

    doi:10.2307/357527

May 1985

  1. Articles from the "California Divorce Project": A Case Study of the Concept of Audience
    Abstract

    Arthur E. Walzer, Articles from the "California Divorce Project": A Case Study of the Concept of Audience, College Composition and Communication, Vol. 36, No. 2, Writing in the Academic and Professional Disciplines: Bibliography Theory Practice Preparation of Faculty (May, 1985), pp. 150-159

    doi:10.2307/357435
  2. Articles from the “California Divorce Project”: A Case Study of the Concept of Audience
    Abstract

    Preview this article: Articles from the "California Divorce Project": A Case Study of the Concept of Audience, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ccc/36/2/collegecompositioncommunication11764-1.gif

    doi:10.58680/ccc198511764

October 1983

  1. Topical Structure and Revision: An Exploratory Study
    Abstract

    It is unfortunate that so many college teachers of writing and composition textbooks describe revision as the process by which a writer merely cleans up the mechanical and stylistic infelicities of an otherwise completed text. This simplistic view presupposes something akin to the three-stage linear model of composing set forth by Rohman and Wlecke in the 1960's.2 Research during the past decade, particularly that of Emig and Sommers, challenges the assumption underlying such a view of revision by demonstrating that revision is not the end of a linear process, but is rather itself a recursive process,3 one which can occur at any point during composing. Recent research also shows that different groups of writers revise in different ways, a finding reflected in, for example, the work of Beach, Bridwell,5 Faigley and Witte,6 Flower,7 and Murray,8 as well as Sommers. Finally, recent research has developed classification systems to explain those revisions. Such efforts appear, for example, in the work of Sommers,9 Bridwell,'o and Faigley and Witte. However much this body of research helps us to understand the results or effects of revision, it does considerably less to help us understand what causes writers to revise. The most promising research on the causes of revision, of course, is that of Flower and Hayes. Reporting on their use of composing-aloud protocols in a case study format,'2 they conclude that when expert writers redefine or clarify the audience and the goals of their texts, they frequently revise.13 This research offers the best hypotheses about the situational or contextual causes of revision. But while Flower and Hayes suggest that the produced so far becomes part of the situational context, they do not adequately explore specific textual cues that may prompt revisions. Indeed, apart from what little can be gleaned from studies which look to errors14 in the text for causes of revision, we know very little about

    doi:10.2307/358262

May 1983

  1. Problem-Solving Strategies for Writing
    Abstract

    A Portrait of Writers in Action. Understanding Your Own Writing Process. Case Study: A Personal Profile. Planning and Learning. Making Plans. Generating Ideas. Organizing Ideas. Analyzing a Problem and Building a Thesis. Designing for a Reader. Writing Reader-Based Prose. Revising for Purpose and Editing for Style. Editing for a Clear Organization. Two Case Studies.

    doi:10.2307/357420

February 1982

  1. The Writing Teacher's Sourcebook
    Abstract

    Preface 1. THE CONTEXTS OF TEACHING PERSPECTIVES Richard Fulkerson: Four Philosophies of Composition James Berlin: Rhetoric and Ideology in the Writing Class Edward P.J. Corbett: Rhetoric, the Enabling Discipline Min-Zhan Lu and Bruce Horner: The Problematic of Experience: Redefining Critical Work in Ethnography and Pedagogy TEACHERS Peter Elbow: Embracing Contraries in the Teaching Process Donald M. Murray: The Listening Eye: Reflections on the Writing Conference Lad Tobin: Reading Students, Reading Ourselves: Revising the Teacher's Role in the Writing Class Dan Morgan: Ethical Issues Raised by Students' Personal Writing STUDENTS Mina P. Shaughnessy: Diving In: An Introduction to Basic Writing Vivian Zamel: Strangers in Academia: The Experiences of Faculty and ESL Students Across the Curriculum Todd Taylor: The Persistence of Difference in Networked Classrooms: Non-Negotiable Difference and the African American Student Body LOCATIONS Hephzibah Roskelly: The Risky Business of Group Work Gail E. Hawisher and Cynthia L. Selfe: The Rhetoric of Technology and the Electronic Writing Class Muriel Harris: Talking in the Middle: Why Writers Need Writing Tutors APPROACHES Min-Zhan Lu: Redefining the Legacy of Mina Shaughnessy: A Critique of the Politics of Linguistic Innocence Mariolina Salvatori: Conversations with Texts: Reading in the Teaching of Composition Gary Tate: A Place for Literature in Freshman Composition Carolyn Matalene: Experience as Evidence: Teaching Students to Write Honestly and Knowledgeably about Public Issues 2. THE TEACHING OF WRITING ASSIGNING Mike Rose: Writing Courses: A Critique and a Proposal David Peck, Elizabeth Hoffman, and Mike Rose: A Comment and Response on Remedial Writing Courses Richard L. Larson: The Research Paper in the Writing Course: A Non-Form of Writing Jeanne Fahnestock and Marie Secor: Teaching Argument: A Theory of Types Catherine E. Lamb: Beyond Argument in Feminist Composition RESPONDING AND ASSESSING Brooke K. Horvath: The Components of Written Response: A Practical Synthesis of Current Views David Bartholomae: The Study of Error Jerry Farber: Learning How to Teach: A Progress Report COMPOSING AND REVISING Nancy Sommers: Between the Drafts James A. Reither: Writing and Knowing: Toward Redefining the Writing Process David Bleich: Collaboration and the Pedagogy of Disclosure AUDIENCES Douglas B. Park: The Meanings of Lisa Ede and Andrea Lunsford: Audience Addressed/Audience Invoked: The Role of Audience in Composition Theory and Pedagogy Peter Elbow: Closing My Eyes as I Speak: An Argument for Ignoring Audience STYLES Robert J. Connors: Static Abstractions and Composition Winston Weathers: Teaching Style: A Possible Anatomy Elizabeth D. Rankin: Revitalizing Style: Toward a New Theory and Pedagogy Richard Ohmann: Use Definite, Specific, Concrete Language

    doi:10.2307/357852

May 1980

  1. Intentionality in the Writing Process: A Case Study
    Abstract

    Preview this article: Intentionality in the Writing Process: A Case Study, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ccc/31/2/collegecompositionandcommunication15951-1.gif

    doi:10.58680/ccc198015951