Week 7

2/25/2014

I was struck by Annie Dillard’s (2005) comment: “Never, ever, get yourself into a situation where you have nothing to do but write and read. You’ll go into a depression. You have to be doing something good for the world, something undeniably useful; you need exercise, too, and people” (p. xiv; as quoted in Broad, 2012, p. 2006). When I planned a project for this course, I was concerned with how to answer the call of Powell & Takayoshi (2012) that our work should “extend our ‘use value’ beyond academe” (p. vii). Similarly, Sullivan & Porter (1997)’s critical approach to research as praxis outlines a road map of transformation from the personal to the public (p. 62). Should I launch an activist project that aims at changing the way second language students learn writing in this institute? I am excited at the very thought of delivering any actual change to practices within a community. Kemmis, McTaggart, & Nixson’s (2014) The Action Research Planner, Grabill’s (2012) community-based research, and Blythe’s (2012) activist research all suggest that the ultimate goal of research is to “change social practices” (Kemmis, McTaggart, & Nixon, p. 2). If the real value of research is in social practices, dramatic changes are expected to take place in the current academic values and organization. The “publish or perish” dictum should be geared more towards practical uses of research in our field, much as industrial application and patents are in scientific fields. As we often lament on publications that have only a handful of readers, we must change the value-orientation of research to give more credit to practical implications.

This ideological change necessitates an epistemological change in our field from a exclusively constructivist perspective to a more inclusive one. Haswell’s (2012) call for appreciation of quantitative methods, Broad’s (2012) proposal of empirical-qualitative research, and Calfee & Sperling’s (2010) mixed methods all ask us to go a bit beyond the social constructivist castle. What matters in this school of thinking is an epistemological awareness that knowledge is not located only in the social and the subjective. It is true that the subjectivity of the researchers may serve as “an interpretive lens” (Powell & Takayoshi, 2012, p. 112), but we might close up alternative perspectives from the contextual (Broad, p. 205) and the public and social (Sullivan & Porter, 1997, pp. 62, 68). That a researchable problem is located in the personal and the subjective (e.g., Powell & Takayoshi, p. 113; Lakeslee & Fleischer, 2007, p. 18) should not be taken as an attempt to separate the subjective from the objective, contextual, and social practices. In fact, Powell & Takayoshi (2012) and Sullivan and Porter (1997) contend that research should often be “collaborative and participatory” to have “empowering potential” (Addison, 1997, p. 111, as quoted in Powell & Takayoshi, p. 9). The warning that Sullivan and Porter (1997) issue in their critical approach is that we should not cut off our connection with the communities of participants, researchers, and policy-makers (p. 68). It seems likely that a researchable problem is located in the gap between the personal and subjective and the contextual and objective. We are creating a researchable problem by constantly comparing our perceived problem that the actual, “real” problem “out there.”

Along with what is researchable is the issue of what to research. Echoing Sullivan and Porter’s (1997) critical approach that identifies ideological, practice and method components in methodology (Grabill, 2012, p. 211), Grabill (2012) suggests that we look at such stance issues as the identity, purpose, power and ethics, and position (p. 215). In her response to Blythe, Takayoshi articulates the value of such meta-research as improving communities of participants and researchers (Powell & Takayoshi, 2012, p. 285). I do not repute the value of meta-analysis, or research about research, especially in regard to reflexivity, subjectivity, and ethics, but we still have to answer a core question: what can our work do to benefit the social? If, for confidentiality issues, Teston’s study (in Powell & Takayoshi, 2012) only lends to our understanding of the research process, we are left with the question about the real value of our research.

Can we eventually produce any good for the community in the way science does to industry? To me, the question involves our value orientation and ethics. For the former, we will need to change what we view as valuable in the academic circle. Specifically, we will need to break the binary of public or perish and give due credit to social practices. For the latter, we must extend ethical considerations to the participants. Rather than promising some intangible and remotely relative benefits, we will need to bring real changes to the participants’ community. We are not to “leav[e] people to decide for themselves” (Barton & Marback, 2012, p. 76) in case of ethical issues, but to acknowledge our power as the researcher and take action to deliver some real changes. 

2/4/2014

Calfee and Sperling (2010) argue that a major purpose of mixed methods researchers is “to present a valid ‘story of reality’ (Luyten, Blatt, & Corveleyn, 2007)” (p. 15). Particular versions of reality, it seems to me, divide researchers into various methodological traditions. In regard to language and literacy, positivists are concerned with the true score of students; while constructivists are focused on diversity of literacy. Which of the two is a truer story of reality? Granted, statistics that claim to be generalizable to a large population inevitably flatten representation of what might be the reality. But, is there any value in this type of representation? A large, state-mandated test that finds a particular subgroup of the population to be insufficient in literacy is an easy target of constructivist criticism.

I’d suggest caution here for two reasons: 1) statistics or any other type of experimental, positivist research is by definition limited in its generalizability. A correlation study, for example, claims and sets out to find only a partial account of the whole picture. Correlation between teachers’ comments and their effect on students’ writing explains only one category of factors, with other known or unknown factors being controlled, that might be at work. The research has neither an intention to objectify students who are diverse human beings nor an ability to overgeneralize the contextualized. Correlation researchers will be content to find that an identified factor accounts for a certain percentage of a phenomenon.

2) What counts as “a story of reality?” A satisfactory answer to this question should not stop at offering an overall claim that diversity is the reality. What if a large-scale, standardized test finds a less-privileged subgroup to score lower than a traditionally privileged subgroup? Should we take the result as the representation of a reality or criticize it for creating that reality? The latter standpoint is ethically unassailable, but methodologically problematic. As a technology, testing may be intentionally or inherently discriminant. If designed, administered, or interpreted intentionally to the disadvantage of a particular group of people, a test is no doubt discriminant. However, in some cases tests may represent differentiated performances and achievements of test takers. If any subgroup falls within the low-achieving section of all test-takers, should researchers at least consider if this is an existing, rather than created reality? Before jumping to conclude that differentiated test scores are racially, socially, economically, or culturally discriminating, should researchers at least see if discrimination has already created differentiated achievements that are only accurately represented in tests and test scores?

It is just too easy to problematize standardized tests by politicizing any such tests, and along with them, any quantitative methods and measurements. Calfee & Sperling’s mixed methods should be more important than an attempt to bridge qualitative and quantitative methodologies; they should bring changes to our epistemology. Seeing knowledge as socially constructed has the benefit of foregrounding diversity and complexity in literacy, but runs the risk of losing sight of patterns and trends. Similarly, search for patterns and causality would necessarily overlook individual cases. What may serve the purpose of bringing qualitative and quantitative communities together entails an ideological and cultural overhaul, if we are not content with mere talk.

More specifically, a major issue at hand is whether or not researchers see any commonality in their individualist, democratic practices of literacy instruction and research. Let me offer an extreme case to illustrate the issue. Suppose a literacy instructor or researcher is fully aware of cultural, racial, and social diversity in his or her class and has developed a successful coping strategy. What then? Should he or she promote the strategy to a larger population or constrain it to the specific context of a class? Should he or she not choose to generalize the practice in fear of making a quantitative mistake, is this not exactly what we mean by discrimination? Or, should the diversity-driven instructor or researcher move further to erase diversity by promoting the practice in his or her district, state, and the entire nation? Isn’t this exactly what a standardized test is doing? Finally, is diversity a merit to celebrate or a status to change? These questions compelled me to believe that the real worth of Calfee & Sperling (2010) lies in a proposal for revolutionizing our epistemology.

Thinking of the qualitative and the quantitative not as a binary but as a dialectical continuum has the benefit of a fuller understanding of accountability. Everyone, instructors, students, and policy-makers, should be held accountable for progress, not diversity, in literacy. Please correct me if I am too bold: diversity is as irresponsible and discriminatory as homogeneity.