For this class, I have two different ideas that I think would work as an ethnographic research project. I am unsure which is the better choice, but my group mates seemed most interested in the second idea.
1) While teaching at the U of Central Arkansas I lived in a residential college (a dorm where students live and take classes together) as a faculty-in-residence. The student behaviors that I saw really intrigued me. I saw students who were working harder on their papers than most of their teachers would have imagined; students who worked leaned on each other in impromtu peer review sessions; and students who were really eager to get on-the-spot assistance during the writing process. Most interesting of everything I saw was the students' using writing to communicate within the dorm. Students in the dorm used writing within their community in sophisticated ways. Again, something their teachers never would have expected. I wasn't surprised to learn that the students were rhetorically saavy in their home communities, but I was surprised by how often their turned to writing as a mean of community action. For my project my research question would be: how do students in residential colleges use writing in their daily lives? Because I did a conference presentation on this, it seems like a good idea to continue the work. It is a project I have always wanted to do more with.
2) My second project idea stems from my current teaching context: a regional university in Northwest Missouri with many students who are from farming families and who intend to return to farming after receiving a college education. Unlike many college students who see college as a way of moving into a new lives or new career paths, these students are returning to family businesses and their original rural communities. My research question would be: how do students' academic writing experiences transfer (or not) when the students transition back to the farm and how does this impact the large farming community? This topic is most directly relevant to my everyday life as a teacher in Northwest Missouri and would help me better understand the students who make my life so interesting.
Writing Fieldnotes
14 years ago
2 comments:
Robin-
Researching students returning to their agricultural lifestyle after their college education is an intriguing idea! Those of us in rural areas would certainly be interested in reading about this enthnographic study.
Robin,
Both of these topics are excellent! If you go with the first one, you can certainly find plenty of scholarship done on "out-of-school literacy practices" and how these practices contribute/interact with the academic literacy practices of school contexts. Suresh Canagarajah, Brain Street, Luis Platt, Kris Gutierrez are just a few names on top of my head.
The second topic of yours really grabbed my attention. It's certainly an excellent way of understanding the real meaning of school literacy and how it relates back to students' real lives. Both of the ethnographic studies we will read (well, especiallyHeath's) will be directly related to your idea. I see a great research (especially an ethnographic inquiry) in your second topic. Since you are teaching in this context, you can bring a deep ethnograhic framework understanding after school literacy practices of such student population.
Well, having said that, I'd certainly recommend you to work on both of these topics at some point. It seems to me that the second one would really be worth exploring in the context of this course.
Great ideas!
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