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.