CCR 691: Researcher Profile

Evolving from My own Social Evolution: Thinking about Thinking

Since very early in my life, I have helplessly but happily analyzed my social, political, and cultural surroundings. Throughout my schooling, every class I attended had multiple purposes for me. Of course, it was my purpose to be a student learning content and socializing with peers; however, each year I also analyzed the social community where I was currently interacting, evaluating political roles such as “student” and “teacher” and asking questions about the rhetorical nature of these interactions. Certainly I could have never framed my behavior then in the terms I use now, but looking back it is clear to me that I’ve constantly lived in a state of meta-awareness. Giving such attention to my social surroundings I immediately recognized my wish to eventually participate in the roles which I couldn’t now, so I concluded that I would pursue a career as a teacher. Therefore, in kindergarten I knew I wanted to teach kindergarten; in fifth grade I knew I wanted to teach fifth grade; in eleventh grade I knew I wanted to teach eleventh grade, etc. Since I “knew” I wanted to teach each year that I attended, much of my time in the classroom was dedicated to evaluating the role of teacher, making pedagogical decisions like, “Oh, I wouldn’t do that,” or “I loved this! I will absolutely use that someday.” Although it shouldn’t surprise me, it makes me laugh when I recall that after my first composition class as a freshmen in college I spent one week designing my future syllabus and calendar (I have it still and it’s hilarious that I have four units: summary, compare/contrast, descriptive, and research).

So although my interests appear to have changed, they’ve really thematically stayed the same: I strive to practice teaching and research within the social and institutional world which I’ve thus far been exposed. In that sense, I consider myself very fortunate that it has been a relatively uncomplicated task for me to perceive and elect the kind of work in which I wish (almost need) to engage. Some of my closest friends and family remain uncertain about their interests and future career plans—some with enough college credit to receive two degrees by now. Since I suspect my awareness and strong convictions arise from chance and not skill, I’m grateful for my ability to recognize within myself the disciplinary interests that ultimately drive my pursuit for education and research. I’ve come to understand that my perceptions about those interests evolve foremost from the inherent uncertainties, questions, or suspicions I have about the social world around me, particularly the social and political realms in higher educational institutions. These questions change as I change and are constantly being rethought, reconsidered, and reformulated. To profile myself, then, as a novice to critical inquiry within the field of rhetoric and composition, I’ll first explain the kinds of questions that have so far prompted my research interests. Next, I’ll discuss the perspectives and research methods that have framed my investigations, thus guiding my pursuit to discover some preliminary answers to those intrinsic questions I hold.

Being perceptive of the kinds of inquiries driving my research is an easier task for me than is defining those interests to a broader audience. However, I can at the very least attempt to explain how I have become increasingly attracted to research in rhetoric and composition. Generally speaking, my interests can each be identified as stemming from what I see as the reflexive, reflective, “meta” quality of the discipline. I find great satisfaction that in this field I am given the opportunity to write about writing, teach about teaching, theorize about theory, and, eventually, research about research. I happily embrace the inability for me to escape my own critical analyses and investigations of the interactions and institutions through which I participate. When entering graduate school, for example, I immediately began to question the departmental, university, and disciplinary practices in which I was beginning to socially interact. It is no surprise, then, that in my master’s thesis I explored how some scholars have negotiated their entrance into academic discourse communities through the writing of theses, dissertations, and manuscripts for publication. It felt natural to examine and write about the transitional period experienced by other scholars that I was simultaneously initiating for myself in that very moment through the research and writing of my thesis. I felt mystified by how I might someday initiate myself as a professional in the field, and I was curious about how others before me had achieved that transition as well as what struggles or disadvantages they faced and overcame. Not only did I hope that my conclusions would speak to my own current and future experiences as an academic, but I also aimed for my conclusions to speak to larger issues, including current conversations about disciplinary practices of academic writing and publication. Lastly, conclusions such as those from my thesis also inform my teaching practices since the power structures and institutional practices I attempt to analyze and challenge are precisely the discourse communities my students seek establishment within. Through this recursive quality of doing research in the field of composition and rhetoric, I can see for myself a wide array of possible topics to explore.

For me, it’s for grander purposes of gaining meta-awareness about my discipline and its practices that I have garnered questions about academic institutional practices. I imagine that my experiences as a student have guided me to view critically the institutions I have been socially constructed within. And within the last two years, I have also begun to view critically my own responsibilities as a writing instructor as I analyze for myself and now with my students the ways meaning is constructed in the discipline and in the university. Teaching nonnative-English speaking (NNSE) students, for example, has led me to be reflective of the conventions in writing in English that writers for Western audiences follow and enforce—conventions which are inherently cultural practices. In response to my own attempts to remain critically aware, I also make it a habit in my classes to ask my students to initiate in similar critical inquiry by working to identify, explain, practice, critique, and challenge these devices writers use for constructing knowledge. As already indicated, then, it is my objective to explore topics in order to become competent in identifying, questioning, and challenging the ways higher institutions maintain social and cultural hierarchies. Although my interests continue to develop, I have recently become interested in questions such as the following:

• How influential are Ph.D. programs in an individual’s negotiation for “legitimate peripheral participation” (Lave and Wenger, 1991) within his or her discipline? How are these disciplinary socialization processes carried out? How should these processes be carried out? Should there even be globally practiced standards for these processes? What experiences and perceptions do individuals have regarding these processes and their programs? What does this all mean for the discipline? The institution? The department? The individual?
• Historically, how have composition courses for nonnative speakers been designed and initiated within English, writing, and linguistic departments in universities across the U.S.? Depending on where these courses are housed, what are the assumptions acting as foundation for the construction of such programs and course objectives? What are the disparities and similarities among courses housed in different departments? In what ways do university composition courses for native speakers differ from courses for nonnative speakers? What objectives should courses for native and nonnative speakers of English share? How and for what reasons should objectives differ? How does evaluation and university credit fit in? In what ways has international composition in English been enacted or effected as a result, if at all?
• And applied to each of the two sets of inquiry listed so far, I also question to what extent are definitions of authorship blurred, complicated, or transformed through disciplinary practices? To what extent do sociopolitical interactions influence and shape the knowledge constructed and reconstructed by individuals, departments, institutions, and disciplines—sociopolitical interactions such as those occurring between the undergraduate, graduate, faculty member, and/or professional writer with the professor, mentor, colleague, friend, reviewer, and/or editor involved in the composition of any given text?

While I still struggle to understand which research methods will best assist me in my investigation of institutional practices in academia, my role as a researcher in the field was first commenced through the writing of my master’s thesis. Although most of my fellow classmates based their theses on rhetorical theory and analysis—where their evidence was generated by their review of literature and personal observations—I quickly realized that such an approach, although helpful for its own purposes, would not satisfy the kinds of information I wanted to gather and analyze. Because I attempted to interweave two of my areas of interest (second language acquisition of English and access to higher academic institutions) and since I sought to genuinely contribute to the current literature on this topic, I felt compelled to partake in data-driven research. My method, therefore, advanced to be descriptive empirical research following a case study approach. Qualitative results were presented based on interviews with three NNES participants regarding their experiences and perceptions with writing and publishing in English. This experience helped me to gather some knowledge about the processes that accompany data-driven investigations, such as writing a research protocol, being educated in ethical research practices, working with the Institutional Review Board to receive approval on using the participation of human subjects in research, as well as practicing strategies for managing, transcribing, analyzing, cataloging, framing, and presenting data.

At the time, using a case study approach seemed the most appropriate and the most plausible: interviews with faculty appeared to be the most efficient way to examine the perceptions and experiences of participants, and doing case studies would allow me to make meaningful and complex conclusions about a handful of individuals within a short and manageable period of time. Methodologically speaking, I see great value in collecting detailed narratives of individual writers since I imagine these experiences speak to larger populations of writers and academics. However, I also wish to extend that discussion across wider audiences using additional research methods that will ideally bridge qualitative research with quantitative results. Therefore, while I am still comfortable and happy with the approach I took, I now seek to explore more globally the local issues that I discovered. And currently, that is where I stand: I am now left wondering which methods are best suited for my research goals. How do I make use of a range of methods to gather and present data? How do I present those methods and data in a way that persuasively frames my findings as being applicable across larger populations? How do I position my methods and methodology in a way that gives credibility and justification for my study? To grow and advance as a researcher in the field, then, I hope to garner a critical understanding of which research methods are specifically effective in researching my topics of interest, why these methods may be stronger than others, what other methods are available to achieve similar research goals, and what potential drawbacks accompany each of these methods and why.

And last, since I often feel inclined to critically view whatever social interactions I embrace within higher academic institutions, I suspect that my knowledge of research methods and my participation in researching in the field will lead to my own research on research methods and methodologies. This perspective has already initiated a new set of questions regarding research practices in rhetoric and composition studies. Similar to how I am drawn to analyzing my own participation and socialization as a writer for- and an instructor within- academic institutions, I strive to remain critically aware of what methods are available to me, what purposes these various methods serve, what the role of researcher entails, and what effect certain methods have on the construction of knowledge in the discipline.