Books for Upper Level Writing Research Courses

Writing Studies Research in Practice: Methods and Methodologies by Lee Nickoson, Mary P Sheridan

An essential reference for students and scholars exploring the methods and methodologies of writing research.

What does it mean to research writing today? What are the practical and theoretical issues researchers face when approaching writing as they do? What are the gains or limitations of applying particular methods, and what might researchers be overlooking? These questions and more are answered by the writing research field’s leading scholars in Writing Studies Research in Practice: Methods and Methodologies.

Editors Nickoson and Sheridan gather twenty chapters from leaders in writing research, spanning topics from ethical considerations for researchers, quantitative methods, and activity analysis to interviewing and communitybased and Internet research. While each chapter addresses a different subject, the volume as a whole covers the range of methodologies, technologies, and approaches—both old and new—that writing researchers use, and examines the ways in which contemporary writing research is understood, practiced, and represented. An essential reference for experienced researchers and an invaluable tool to help novices understand research methods and methodologies, Writing Studies Research in Practice includes established methods and knowledge while addressing the contemporary issues, interests, and concerns faced by writing researchers today.

Practicing Research in Writing Studies: Reflexive and Ethically Responsible Research by Katrina Powell & Pamela Takayoshi

 Research pratices-much like literacy and writing themselves- are shaped by and responsive to context. Contemporary research methodologists have increasingly called upon researchers to be explicitly and systematically reflexive about their practices. As writing researchers have begun untangling the complexities of ethical reserch practice, new practices have developed and new issues have arisen. This volume contributes to the continuing examination and development of ethically responsible, self-reflective, and systematic research on writing. With a look toward the ways diffractive methodology can inform our self-reflexitivity, this volume highlights particular ways of looking back and forward, as ways to complicate our practices in the moment. This text inculdes chapters focused on theories of research, research and institutional practices and reflexive/diffractive research practices.

On Digital Literacy Narratives

Issue of Computers and Composition online that has a lot on digital literacy narratives.

Digital Storytelling in the Composition Classroom: Addressing the Challenges by Ghanashyam Sharma

Archiving the Literacy Narratives of Our TimesAn Interview with Dr. Cynthia Selfe and Dr. H. Lewis Ulman By Megan Adams, Bowling Green State University

Writing Commons

Welcome to Writing Commons, the open-education home for writers. Our primary goal is to provide the resources college students need to improve their writing, research, and critical thinking. We believe learning materials should be free for all students and teachers.

FYS

Where does food come from? What's for dinner?

Take a meal and find out where it came from.

Materials: King Corn and Barbara Kingsolver
Project:

Book of Choice (cod, tomato, etc.)

Where does our food come from? (Fast Food Nation)

What is what we're eating doing to us? (?)

Units:

1. What's for dinner?
2. Where does dinner come from? (Fast Food Nation and Corn King)
3. What is dinner doing to or for us?
4. What else might we eat for dinner?

Find a list of other documentaries about food.
Find an academic article from different fields about each of these issues (perhaps enlist Carol Cummings?).

Videos on Professional Writing

Here is a collection of the video lecture-tutorials mentioned in my posts. (All are between 9 and 15 minutes long.) I’ll be adding links to the sample documents that appear in those lecture-tutorials. You can also retrieve them on the Docs page.

The More Things Change (III)

During the past few years many of our staff have become concerned about the quality of written and spoken English of our students. This concern is, in a large part, the outgrowth of our graduate program and the realization that advanced students lack, not merely good writing technique, but even an appreciation of the necessity for expressing themselves clearly. They feel that if writing doesn't come easy--and few of us of whom this is true--that it is impossible. They don't see the need for rewriting and polishing.

Professor Wilbur L. Bullock, Acting Chairman of the Department of Zoology (UNH), as qtd. in the Annual Report of the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts (UNH), 6/30/1952

The More Things Change (II)

The overwhelming majority of our students come to us seeking, primarily, material success. They seek preparation for a particular job and they are impatient with any courses or requirements which do not, in their judgment, advance them toward their materialistic goals. These students have been encouraged in their goals by their parents and friends. Their interest in the college diploma as a meal ticket reflects the perennial national quest for material security.

Annual Report of the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts (UNH), 6/30/1952

The More Things Change (I)

It is important that each member of the faculty, not the college alone but of the University as a whole, understand that he shares responsibility for the success of the student in acquiring an ability to express himself orally and to write with clarity and effectiveness. For whatever reason, young people entering college in these days are handicapped by lack of background; background that in the past was obtained through reading. Currently, most young people, unless they make an effort, acquire their background from the radio and the so-called "funny books", a combination which makes a far from dependable foundation for college work.

excerpted from the UNH "Annual Report of the College of Liberal Arts," 1946-47

Students' Research Processes

How the Writing Context Shapes College Students' Strategies for Writing from Sources. Technical Report No. 16

"This Was an Easy Assignment" Examining How Students Interpret Academic Writing Tasks. Technical Report No. 43 /

Constructing a Research Paper A Study of Students' Goals and Approaches. Technical Report No. 59 /

How Does Writing Emerge from the Classroom Context? (A Naturalistic Study of the Writing of Eighteen-Year-Olds in Biology, English, Geography, History, History of Art, and Sociology) /