Tag: research

mccomas, July 3, 2002 at 7:09:08 PM CEST

Revised Essential and Foundation Questions

Essential Question:

How did Kelly move from a place of unknowing, confusion, and anxiety to a place of knowing, clarity, and confidence?

Foundation Questions:

What is the story of Kelly preparing for the assignment?
What is the story of Kelly doing the simulation?
What is the story of Kelly analyzing the data?
What is the story of Kelly writing the paper?
What is the story of Kelly's revision processes?
What is the story of Kelly's experience overall?

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mccomas, July 3, 2002 at 6:41:18 PM CEST

Foundation Questions

Ah...looks like I'm nearly the last to respond to this question. I purposely waited until after the retreat, hoping that there I would receive inspiration and direction that would enable me to focus on some foundation questions. Mine, unlike the rest of the class, are a little different because my research project is a narrative inquiry, meaning that I'm using a specific set of data (interviews, student work, etc.) and studying that to see what themes emerge or are present. At any rate, here's my version of foundation questions:

What is Kelly's story with regard to the assignment under investigation?
What is Alex's story with regard to the assignment under investigation?
What is Kristi's story with regard to the assignment under investigation?

As I spoke with the writing mentors at the retreat last week, we decided that I should begin by writing each person's story. Once all three of the stories are written, I can then begin to tell my story (which flips back to my essential question). My story will evolve from the stories of these three students. For the purpose of this summer, and a do-able project, I'm only going to be focusing on Kelly's story. For her, I'll be trying to understand these things:

What is the story of Kelly preparing for the assignment?
What is the story of Kelly doing the simulation?
What is the story of Kelly analyzing the data?
What is the story of Kelly writing the paper?
What is the story of Kelly's revision processes?
What is the story of Kelly's experience overall?

I'm just overwhelmed by how big this project really is, but I certainly learned a great deal in the process of figuring that out. For example, I learned how complex the assignment really is and how much more there is to be learned by doing this assignment than I originally thought. Just knowing those things, I expect, will enable me to be better equipped to assist future students in completing this particular assignment more successfully.

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mccomas, June 25, 2002 at 5:13:04 AM CEST

Organizing I

What content most dramatically embodies the binary opposites in order to provide access to the topic?

[I'm not real confident I understand what this question is asking, but I'll take a stab at it!]

While I need to re-read the reflections that the students submitted with their assignments, I suspect that the interviews provide the most dramatic representation of the binary opposites. I know when the students talked about reaching their epiphanies they used strong and vivid words (...magic...it hit me....swept across my mind...). I think, too, the interviews represent the embodiment of the binary opposites simply because I asked questions about before doing the project, during the doing of the project, and after the project. This particular binary opposite of powerlessness to powerful that teeters on the fulcrum of the epiphany naturally emerges from those kind of questions.

Because this question is asking about "access to the topic" I expect it is suggestive, in a way, that one might enter the story through the content that embodies the binary opposites...meaning that I should work through the interviews, using them as my main field texts (I'm making this up now...guessing...saying something "out loud" to see if it sounds really stupid)...or perhaps it is suggesting that the interviews might provide a natural theme around which to tell the larger story of these three smaller stories.

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mccomas, June 25, 2002 at 1:28:38 AM CEST

Narratives and Stories

Jon Franklin, in Structuring Stories for Meaning (Nieman Reports, Spring 2002, p. 43) reminds me that meaning is...

...not something you bring to a story. It's something you find in the story and extract from the story.

Narrative is a chronicle: this, then that, then this other thing. There's no meaning there. A story grows from narrative when it is reworked to have a different shape so that it now carries meaning. A story answers these questions:

What does this mean?
What does that mean?
What does this other thing mean?

The shape of a story is this: in the beginning, there is a character; at the end of the beginning of your story, this character runs into a complication (Franklin emphatically states that this does NOT have to be conflict; complications are sufficient as they will make the character "exert an effort"); then the story develops according to the plot which involves your character's effort to deal with the complications that arose earlier.

In the development, Franklin suggests that three things happen:

the person digs in deeper
the person digs in deeper yet
the person has some kind of insight (this occurs at the end of the middle/beginning of the end -- often referred to as the "point of insight")

Not long after the point of insight is revealed, the story ends.

analysis of narrative: begins with stories told and moves toward common themes
narrative analysis: uses stories told to construct a larger story
protagonist/antagonist???

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mccomas, June 24, 2002 at 3:36:45 PM CEST

Text Notes

Notes from Narrative Inquiry: Experience and Story in Qualitative Research by D. Jean Clandin and F. Michael Connelly

3-Dimensional Narrative Inquiry Space	Interaction (personal/social) Continuity (past, present, future) Place (situation)
Inquirers travel	Interaction (inward and outward) Continuity (forward and backward) Place (travels situated in place)
Inward travels	toward internal conditions (feelings, hopes, aesthetic reactions, moral dispositions)
Outward travels	toward existential conditions of the environment
"being in the midst"
reaching across autobiographical boundaries if possible	narrative analysis starts with autobiography of the researcher (the researchers own narrative of experience) in order to "acknowledge the centrality of the researcher's own experience"
documentation	field --> field texts --> research texts
fall in love (in the field)	coolly observe (while creating field texts)
narrative inquirers...	...be aware of the narratives at work in the research space ...imagine how these many narratives might intersect ...anticipate potential emerging narrative threads ...records actions, doings, and happenings (all are narrative expressions)
field texts	teacher stories autobiographical writing journal writing field notes letters conversation research interviews family stories/stories of family artifacts (documents, photos, memory boxes) life experiences
research texts	theoretical (narrative inquiries begin with experience, not theory) practical, field text-oriented (we shift from living the stories with our participants to retelling the stories in the research text...discovering and constructing meaning in our field texts interpretive-analytic (What are the meanings of our field texts? What does it make a difference to try to figure out the meanings, or possible meanings? Deal with matters of character, place, scene, plot, tension, end point, narrator, context, tone) Look for: patterns, narrative themes, tensions, themes

Narratives are the chronological recounting of events and actions. Stories are the retellings of those narratives in such as way as to convey meaning.

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mccomas, June 23, 2002 at 5:49:27 PM CEST

Follow-up on Essential Question

On Friday I came to a conclusion about my essential question. I didn't work on it yesterday (well, I did roll it around in my mind a time or two) and have returned this morning to see how this question fits my purpose, intent, and goals. I made the following note on the printed copy of Friday's posting on essential questions:

I want to use the stories told by my three students to be able to tell my story -- the story of how students move from one place in their work to another place [no, I want to tell the story of how students leap from one place in their work to a very different place]. My hope is that others will understand their task better by reading these stories ("we make meaning through stories").

A year ago I read an article by Marsick that suggested "we make meaning through stories" and I've been trying to understand that ever since. On one level it makes perfect sense; on another level it remains an ambiguous and untouchable construct to me. I think about times when I'm trying to learn something and I say, "Give me a for instance." I think about in class when students ask for an example. I'm thinking about how, when I give students written instructions for an assignment, they never seem to be comfortable with those instructions until they hear me orally talk about them. We, the students and I, are attempting to use stories as a way to understand what someone else is saying. So, with this assignment, instead of (or in addition to) telling the students how to do the assignment, it may just be useful to tell them a story about how one, two, or three students completed the assignment. By hearing these stories, they would have choices about whether to attempt to replicate the processes these students use or to carry on with their own path toward completing the assignment.

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mccomas, June 21, 2002 at 9:14:03 PM CEST

Essential Question

Time for someone to break the ice here. I've been working like mad this week trying to get some focus. Did some writings earlier in the week (in response to some questions Dolores gave me to answer). From one of those writings I even looped into two other writings, chasing down interesting concepts in different directions. Today, I wrote in response to two other questions and believe I have arrived at my focus. So, my essential question for my research is (drum roll, if you please!):

How do students move from a place of unknowing, confusion, and anxiety to a place of knowing, clarity, and confidence?

As to what I already know (or don't know) about this topic, that's kind of hard to say. Since I'm doing a qualitative study, and perhaps it is a narrative analysis (the stories of three students as they complete this particular assignment), the rule of thumb is that in narrative analysis we don't start with theory, we start with experience. By studying the stories, or the experiences of these 3 students, I can then find out what I know or need to know about the topic.

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