DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

On this subpage, we are looking at different kinds of academic research. We will use the authors here as examples, mentors, and guides.  Each researcher draws on multiple disciplines to push against social norms, to draw new connections, and to see alternative possibilities.  These are your goals also as a researcher.

 

We will not simply focus on WHAT these researchers say but also HOW they say it.  As you read, ask yourself these GUIDING QUESTIONS:

  1. What texts do you think the researcher has read?  How can you tell?  (text can mean books, song, video, etc)  Remember: researchers must know their stuff.
  2. How would you describe the researcher’s knowledge background? How can you tell?  Remember: researchers are shaped by what they have studied and learned in all kinds of media.
  3. What has the researcher experienced? How can you tell?  Remember: researchers are influenced by the things they have seen and gone through in their own lives.
  4. What is in the researcher’s ideological backpack? In other words, what are his political beliefs? How can you tell?  Remember: researchers have their own politics that always show through in what they say and how they say it.
  5. How does the researcher set up her argument?  Where does she start and where does she take you in the end?  Why do you think she does it this way?  Remember: researchers think critically about what comes first, second, third and so forth in order to take their readers somewhere.
  6. What is the researcher’s data or artifact?  What is she SPECIFICALLY looking at?  Remember: researchers are looking at SOMETHING, not just summarizing the studies that have already been done or the histories that have already been recorded.
  7. What makes this research different or unique? Remember: researchers are trying to add a new voice on to the horizon.
DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.
Focus Group Models

The work of Tara Yosso, William Smith, Miguel Ceja, and Daniel Solórzano in “Critical Race Theory, Racial Microaggressions, and Campus Racial Climate for Latina/o Undergraduates” will be one of our research examples/models.   Look at the way these researchers analyzes the impact and influence of higher education on Latin@ students.  What is especially creative in this project is that it uses multiple focus groups of Latin@ students to speak back to higher education; the project is also an extensive, collaborative project.  For those of you interested in focus groups, please read this article closely.  The researchers go so far as to argue that the experiences of Latin@ college students offer us a theory of justice and resilience in schools.  Keep this in mind as you too will be asked what your interviews and focus groups offer when you do your research.  Can you be so bold, brave, and original as to say that your interviews give us a new theory of something? Click here for reading.

 

The work of Elaine Richardson, ” ‘She Was Workin Like Foreal’: Critical Literacy & Discourse Practices of African American Females in the Age of Hip Hop,” will be one of our examples/models.   Look at the way Richardson analyzes the impact and influence of public texts in our current culture: in her case, the public text is rap videos.  What is especially creative in this project is that she uses a focus group of young women to speak back to the video and chronicles that discussion as her research.  For those of you interested in focus groups, please read this article closely.  Richardson goes so far as to argue that these women’s conversations offer us a theory of justice.  Keep this in mind as you too will be asked what your interviews and focus groups offer when you do your research.  Can you be so bold, brave, and original as to say that your interviews give us a new theory of something?  Click here for reading.

 

 

 

Interview Model

The work of Eric Darnell Pritchard in his “For Colored Kids Who Committed Suicide, Our Outrage Isn’t Enough: Queer Youth of Color, Bullying, and the Discursive Limits of Identity and Safety” will be one of our research examples/models.  Look at the way Pritchard combines multiple texts and multiple types of analyses:

  • he uses research studies
  • he uses theory
  • he uses interviews
  • he uses popular media
  • he uses his own experiences

And he does all of that in one essay!  Look at what he is saying and ALSO how he is saying/organizing it! Pritchard goes so far as to argue that noticing the unique circumstances of queer people of color offer us its own theory of justice.  Keep this in mind as you too will be asked what your public texts offer when you do your research.  Can you be so bold, brave, and original as to say that the public texts you are researching give us a new theory of something?  Click here for reading.

 

 

Case Study Model

This research project looks at the digital and multimedia age and its impact on young people.  In this piece, Monique Shetayh, an undergraduate student at Moravian College, looks at the ways young people use blogging as authentic communication and writing experiences.  She makes an argument that young people’s technology use challenges traditional ideas about reading and writing. Click here to read Shetayh’s’s article and see it as a model for what you can do in your own project. Please read this article for class.

 

Shetayh goes so far as to argue that these public texts offer us a view into how traditions of reading and writing are being changed in critical ways.  Keep this in mind as you too will be asked what your public texts offer when you do your research.  Can you be so bold, brave, and original as to say that the public texts you are researching give us a view into how traditions of reading and writing have been changed by the very subjects (people you interviewed) of your research?

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.