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10/24/2004 Archived Entry: "The Discipline"

The Discipline (Hey! Punish!)
I hope this is not a breach of professional etiquette (quoting without asking?), but I want to quote from a post to WPA-L today and offer some thoughts. Yo! Do it on the listserv, man. Yeah, well, that usually gets nowhere fast. Silence, baby.
Here's a piece of what I read, archived here:

As well, composition has come to value qualitative over quantitative
research methods, and if we narrow our research methods we become less able
to ask and answer certain types of research questions that can provide
important information for audiences in and outside the field. So, while
there are certainly some constraints about what kinds of research can be
expected and accomplished by an applied field with huge service, teaching
and administrative commitments, I fear we have allowed composition to become
less strong and defensible by de-emphasizing empirical research.

Here’s the beef:
1. Over concern with image (Sprite’s point notwithstanding) and not enough concern with writing. All this effort to prove the un-provable might be better spent working with issues of writing, what this author (who I leaved un-named, but I know his name) places in the category “qualitative” (debatable too). Are we less defensible because we don’t have enough studies saying it takes Johnny X minutes to do X things in X amount of times? And when you prove all that, then what? Positivism.
To be fair, this was part of a larger thread put out asking for responses for an NCTE questionnaire kind of thing which solicits the highly answerable, always can’t agreeable string of items:

1. What do we know about the teaching writing? What best practices, research,
and/or beliefs are most influential in shaping our understanding and teaching
of writing?

2. What documents and/or activities are most influencing or impacting writing
and the teaching of writing?

3. What are the most important issues and concerns regarding writing and the
teaching of writing that
confront you and/or your constituents now?

Answer: Everything and nothing you want to hear, man.
2. Back to point 1. and responding to these questions (which will do nothing new for us) Writing itself. Here we find another example of composition sitting on the side-line pretending to be science (Research in Written Composition all over again), while writing goes on around it. Take this empirical formulae, and slap it on new media. Then you get: X student wrote X amount of weblog entries in X amount of times (X often exchanged with the race/gender/class variable). Good ole X (the student) says: “Uh, hey. I just wanted to blog that song I dug and link back up to another post I read over here and….”
3. Some self hype warranted again (Mailervision). This is the stuff I write about. So pertinent to the ’63 story and the dawn of new media. Visual Rhetoric? I ask in the last chapter. Oh man. Was there all along (Sketchpad, Blue Note, McLuhan). That Handa and crew just got to it (Look at how images work) is the result of years of “studying” variables (check out Braddock et. al diss TV and film, and even GASP the typewriter) while ignoring usages. The Composition Bubble Boy. “What do we know about the teaching writing?” You: nada. Me: still learning.
4. Is there anybody out there?
5. So yeah. Should ‘of posted all this to the listserv. Would have heard the Vitanza silence (I told ‘em to apply cult studies to OUR own practices…the room was silent).

Posted by John Lovas @ 10/28/2004 01:54 AM EST

"I'm beginning to learn that just saying "empirical" or "quantitative" is an easy way to get a rise out of you, Jeff."

Maybe, John. I think I've just grown tired listening to comp folks go on and on about "proving" some part of the writing process. All this time wasted on studying variables, conditions, etc. and in the end, the field pays little to no attention to how folks are writing, or particularly in my work, using technology for purposes of writing. As Collin notes, this empiricism is promoted as "certainty" when it's anything but. I could say the same about many ethnographic studies that pose as empricism as well.

Posted by jeff @ 10/26/2004 07:22 AM EST

I'm beginning to learn that just saying "empirical" or "quantitative" is an easy way to get a rise out of you, Jeff.

We shouldn't be empirical for the sake of image, but we should be empirical for the sake of moving knowledge forward.

A while back we reached loggerheads when I claimed the field of composition essentially ignores half the sites of college composing, namely community colleges. You rejected my claim on the basis of your personal reflection, and you didn't like my use of the word "empirical" there.

Using search engines to find the key words in political speeches is both empirical and about writing. Doing sociolinguistic surveys to document relationships between certain text features of student writing and their cultural and linguistic background is empirical and could shed light on issues in composition.

One could argue the best proportion of qualitative inquiry to quantitative inquiry to push our knowledge forward, but I see no point to arguing quantitative research as inherently a bad thing.

Posted by John @ 10/26/2004 02:43 AM EST

"Older I get, less likely I am to rise to this kind of baiting. I'd rather just write, man."

Indeed. And yet, I am a product of the agonistic postmodern condition. I have my metaphoric stick and I poke the discipline: POKE POKE ARE YOU DEAD YET LET ME POKE YOU AGAIN! WHAT IS THIS DRIVEL YOU ARE SPOUSING?

Posted by jeff @ 10/25/2004 01:07 PM EST

listserv, mistswerve. the question itself is a non-starter. It's asking for general answers to what is inescapably a local, specific activity. The only possible answers are individual ones (what do I like? what do I do?) but the question disguises them as field questions (what do we like? what do we do?). Field's too big for anyone to actually answer, so people just project their own insecurities (I like the "certainty" of empiricism, others don't seem to buy it, ergo the field doesn't have enough empirical work)...blah blah blah.

"less strong and defensible"?! Doesn't this start from the idea that there are attacks looming? Who do we really have to "defend" ourselves against?

Older I get, less likely I am to rise to this kind of baiting. I'd rather just write, man.

cgb

Posted by cgb @ 10/25/2004 12:14 PM EST

Or maybe you meant the first comment I make on the "image" of the profession? In that case, that is the position the original call made. "We need to improve our image with more studies which support what we do."
To that, I say, nope. Won't work. Doesn't work. And you end up not teaching writing.

Posted by jeff @ 10/25/2004 11:51 AM EST

Not a dichotomy. The point being that it takes composition forty years to discover visuality. A major reason is that it was/is too obsessed with empirical research, with proving both itself and its practices. The proof wasn't/isn't in the pudding. While all this so-called research is going on, writing is taking up the visual in all kinds of ways. The classroom, as usual, is the last place to realize, as Marvin Gaye says, what's going on.

Posted by jeff @ 10/25/2004 11:47 AM EST

I don't see the image/writing dichotomy here. Isn't the unamed poster talking about composition research---e.g. the way scholars write about classroom and institutional practice, the ways the field is delimited and articulated through writing?

I'd take another tack and say the whole point of the post (and much of the subsequent thread) is to reinforce the need for quantitative research. It's the hammer---oh, that must be a nail. I say that because not all empirical research needs to be quantitative, and the argument here (and elsewhere) tends to erase that difference.

Posted by cbd @ 10/25/2004 09:51 AM EST