English 598
Fall 2008
Researching Teaching: Inquiring into Learning
598 Research Project
Overview During the next several weeks, you’ll have the opportunity to dig deeper—to immerse yourself, even—in investigating
one of the enduring/rich questions about teaching that you’ve come to in your teaching adventures so far. We’ll work through the
kinds of processes that (ideally) support all researchers, although at different levels of depth and intensity.
Ultimately, you’ll work through the research process to arrive at several things: a research-informed wiki page (we’ll develop criteria
together) whose audience is us, for starters. Along the way, though, you’ll work to keep track of what and how and why you
encounter the research you’re doing.
Okay, but Why? Because it matters. Because inquiry is an integral part of teaching.
I deeply, strongly believe that in order to develop your own theories of practice—of teaching, of learning, of who students are, of
who instructors of writing are, of what writing classes can and should be—you have to think about teaching at a range of levels.
What we do in the classroom is a manifestation—an outward marker—of what we believe and know and understand about students
(and teaching and learning and…you get it). You’ll want to know how others have thought about issues that matter to you; you’ll
want to think about what you think, in light of others’ thoughts.
Readings:
*All/any of our readings from 598, of course
*Another good research strategy: scour the bibliographies of the readings that resonate with you
*Independent research (explained under Source Reflections, below)
Step 1: Research Proposal
due Thursday October 23; 1-2 pages
Your research proposal is an exploration—an informal “thought draft,” a place for you to explore the questions and issues about
teaching that interest you. Questions to consider for your research proposal:
*What question(s) do you keep returning to? Why do you think this is?
*What matters to you/interests you/bothers you/intrigues you about this question/set of questions?
*Part of your researched essay project includes some kind of classroom-based research. What kind of classroom-based
research can you imagine doing related to this question (collecting some feedback from your students? Observing someone else’s
class? Surveying students? Instructors? Taking careful notes on a particular issue in class? …)
*What do you hope to find/learn/understand as a result of doing this research?
Step 3: Research Process and Source Reflections
in-progress check-in on Thursday Oct 30
due Thursday November 6
6+ selected academic sources
2+ non-academic sources
1 Classroom-Based Research project
For the academic and non-academic sources:
After you’ve thought through what it is you want to learn more about, you’ll dive into learning all you can about what others have
thought about, learned, considered in this area. During your independent research time, you’ll scan lots and lots of work—roughly,
you’ll skim 5-10 potentially useful sources for every 1 that really is useful. For each “really useful” source and your classroom-based
research project, you’ll write a Source Reflection. This is a kind of annotated bibliography; you’ll want to do the following:
*List the source in MLA format;
*for each source, briefly summarize it (1 paragraph) and briefly explain how it adds to/complicates/extends your thinking
(1 rich paragraph).
For the Classroom-Based Research Project:
At the same time that you’re immersing yourself in what others have learned, you don’t want to lose sight of all that you can learn
from the “text” of your classroom. Conduct a very modest classroom-based research project connected to your question,
something that’ll help you learn more about your question(s). As part of your Source Reflections, please reflect on this project in
slightly more detail; do the following:
*Briefly (2-3 paragraphs) summarize what your C-B Research project was
*Briefly (2-3 paragraphs) explain how it adds to/complicates/extends your thinking and that of the others you’ve read.
The Goal! A Researched Project
due Thursday November 13
The goal for your researched writing project is to a) understand an issue/set of questions in a richer, more complex way and b) share
that new understanding with us. Your audience is in many ways yourself; it’s also the rest of us. Therefore, since a traditional 10+
page academic essay is likely less useful/readable for all of us, your researched projects will culminate as a wiki page/set of wiki
pages that lets the rest of us learn from what you’ve learned. (We’ll set the expectations for these pages (how many? How many
links? A loosely-structured format? And so on) together.