Post 1

            At this moment I am unsure as to what type of data I am going to collect.  Ideally, I would like what I collect to be useful to me in the future, but since I am still working on my IRB for my pilot study, I cannot use what I find.  Although I would like to use video, I am not sure how I can collect this type of evidence without being further intrusive. Audio is less noticeable than a camera set up, but both items create a feeling of ‘being watched’ and participants may feel they must monitor their behavior or ‘say the right thing’ because the conversation is being recorded. I realize that as researchers we have our own biases and influence the data collected, especially in a conversational situation. It is important to address these issues in the findings.  

            I have a few thoughts on the types of conversations I would like to record and the places I would like to go, but none of them are solidified at this point.  I would like to record a conversation with my interns, maybe an overall discussion about what is happening with them right now in their current placements. I would like to know their feelings, their experiences, highs and lows they may have encountered, things of that nature.  That would be extremely difficult to transcript, but I could use the practice.  I have yet to transcribe multiple speakers.  If that is not able to occur, I would be able to record a session between myself and my ‘writing coach’ in my ENG 462 class, which would not be personally beneficial for future use in my own research process, but it would be interesting to dissect.  I also thought about recording a part of my teacher evaluator training that I will attend on Friday, because the dynamics of these training sessions are fluid yet tight at the same time, due to the nature of the material. 

            As far as my mini-lit review, I will be gathering articles that relate to Discourse Analysis (DA) and  English as a Second Language (ESL) teaching.  I have one article that I stumbled across two years ago that uses Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and an ESL college student, and when I first encountered it, I liked what I saw about CDA and wanted to learn more. I held onto it because it struck a chord with me. I have the opportunity to find more about it.  Although I am drawn to the ‘critical’ side of discourse analysis, I do not believe I will limit my search to only CDA.  I am drawn to CDA in part because of a previous course I took which was Critical Race Theory (CRT).  That class was eye-opening and shifted my view of the world dramatically, especially based on my background of teaching low SES black students for a very long time, and now working with non-native speakers, many of whom are faced with prejudice and unfairness in our systems (schools, government offices) on a daily basis.  Had I not lived those prior experiences, I do not believe the course would have had the same impact. In the beginning of Rogers et al. (2005), the piece discusses what is critical about CDA, and the idea is that “…injustice and oppression shape the social world” (p.367).   That idea is present in CRT as well, and now that I have read a few CRT articles and CRT scholars’ works, I cannot help but to use that lense when I am in schools.  To me, that idea makes sense, but it is also extremely frustrating to see when I am hearing about standardized tests written in English for students who do not speak English, yet they are unable to receive any accommodations for said tests.  That is just one example.  I also feel as if I have experienced a certain ‘power struggle’ with my children’s school and their scripted reading program.  I would have liked to have recorded that conversation and had a CDA scholar examine and analyze that data. 

            The article for today, Critical Discourse Analysis in Education:

A Review of the Literature (Rogers et al. ,2005) is extensive, thorough, and dense.  You discussed in the first night of class that it is less difficult to trace the origins of DA in academia, and this group takes it one step further, finding the role of CDA in educational settings.  Not only does this group of authors discuss the origins of CDA, but they also give the methodology of how they filtered articles—what I found interesting is that out of 803 articles, the group found 40 that were worthy of the literature review.  That in itself seems to be a monumental task, but since there are multiple authors, they could divide the work.  Although you stated in class that Gee is not a primary DA author for you, they do use Gee’s tenents of CDA, and I am asking this—do all disciplines (is that even the right word) have tenents?  CRT has tenents as well, but is that due to the ‘critical’ in the discipline?  Is CDA a method, like case study and ethnograpy?  Ethnography, too, has tenents, but I do not believe they are addressed as such, as in they are not labled, “Tenents of Ethnography”.  The more I read, the more I am trying to piece things together.