General patterns in presentation for writing studies research essays: We used Robin Martin's study of relationships between teacher's written comments and student revisions as a model for what kinds of information writing studies researchers put in each section of a research essay. Our analysis was as follows.
Introduction: identify the focus of the research, identify the research question and develop a discussion of the importance of the research; connect to other researchers + state how the current project is different, give a general description of the project + a general description of the findings
Literature review: discuss research studies that have the same focus, use the similar methods, develop important language or theories, or present findings important to your research study. Be sure to point out how your study brings something new to the findings and methods presented in the methods.
Presentation of your study: This section (or several sections based on the sub-headings in Martin's study) should present an overview of what you did, your methods (including where you did your study, who your participants were, etc) and a presentation of your data. If you do a case study or discourse analysis = clearly you will not present ALL your data. Rather you will present the data relevant to the focus of your study. If your study is a case study, an ethnographic study, an oral history or a study of literacy narratives or other kinds of data presented in stories = it may look more like a literary essay - and less like the presentation of the charts and data in this essay. At the same time - the idea that you present "evidence" from the data you collected => and then state what it shows with respect to your research question = is the same.
Discussion of data. The discussion of the data deepens and develops your exploration of what your data mean. You may go back to your research question and make a series of points (using the data) to illustrate what your data has found.
Conclusions. This section draws the discussion of data together by restating the main findings and pulling together and re-stating any generalizations that may come out of those findings. It also points out any unanswered questions - or ideas for taking your study to the next level. It might also - as in the Martin study - point out the limitations of your study design or data sets.
Working toward a do-able project with a focused research question. You spent the rest of class working in small groups to tighten your focus and move in on your research question. I asked the "listeners" in the group to ask the presenter questions about what they hope to find? where they expect to conduct their study? what kind of data? what methods? how they expect to analyze their data and so on. . . from the wrap up at the end of class, this seemed as if it went fairly well. If you changed your ideas or re-focused your project => update your blog so I can respond to "where you are" with your project. I will be replying to your blogs beginning Friday.
For next class:
Update Blog 7 (optional)
Blog 8: After you receive my comments to Blog 7 - do some more work on developing your research project. List references, write to the prompts for 4 & 5 on "developing a research plan" => or develop writing useful for where ever you are in terms of developing your project.
Bring (or email me at the course email) a copy of an essay with teacher comments. If you bring a print copy feel free to blank out your name. I will make copies to distribute to the class
In class on Tuesday we will use your commented-on-essays as a data set. You will work in groups to identify a research question and propose a project where you would study this data set for some purpose related to writing studies.
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