Although I did not take DP, the method section of Lester
& Paulus (2011) is something that I may refer to when analyzing my own data—I
am going to get the references and look up the articles/books used in this
section so I can model this type of method of coding. I was initially planning to look at
interesting things on my first go-round, but then I wasn’t quite sure where to
go. Gee’s tools are helpful, and I may
somehow incorporate a couple of those, but I also need a research question—somehow
I want to include a critical analysis, possibly CDA (?) as a method, but I need
to look more into that. My text document
that I am analyzing along with my video data is raced and classed to the
dominant culture. My student is a
non-native speaker, and the inherent bias in the assessment affects her
outcome. Somehow I need to frame that—and
I’m still working on it, hence the reason I am grateful for the group
activities.
So, in regards to the readings—I was wondering about
blogs. In this class (and many others) we
blog. In two of the courses I took, it
was required to respond to other posts, and we also had a ‘blog group’ or
partner. Although I am not sure if I
used the “I don’t know” to distance myself—I am wondering about blogs that are ‘available’
for the class to view, but not required to have a response. In both of the articles, the blogs themselves
must be viewed and have a response by the students in the class, which seems to
make them take up the assignment differently than if the blogs were private. In this course, we have access to everyone’s
post, but we are not required to read them.
Our blogs are on a public forum (at least mine is) which means they are
accessible to anyone if they know the url.
With that being said, I wonder if there is any difference between the
blogs in this course (or a different course that was the same 600 level with
less students) and the undergraduate blogs.
At this point in my academic career, I welcome any and all feedback, and
I do not concern myself with the public or private state of my post. If people read and comment, great. If it is to the instructor only, fine. Are undergraduate students the same in their
thought process? Are they ‘comfortable’
with their own writing so it is not a ‘delicate’ thing? Maybe for future reference you can examine
the posts of your graduate students using the same question and method—wow. That was very quantitative and positivist of
me, wasn’t it? Trying to replicate a study?
Yikes. Regardless, I kept
thinking about how my peers and I discuss blogging amongst ourselves, and I
wonder if you would find similarities.
Argh, blogger is killing me. Just wrote a long post and it disappeared - this started happening last week as I was responding to posts. Anyway, I think what I said was that I was over on Sarah's blog reflecting on some of the same questions you raise here (and you discuss them in more depth and with better reflection) about the differences between the undergrad blogs and the blogs you are doing as grad students.
ReplyDeleteAlso, regarding this: "My student is a non-native speaker, and the inherent bias in the assessment affects her outcome." What evidence do you have of this from the recorded data? Be sure to not get too far away from what is actually happening in the interaction. I know you want to consider the larger context, and I do think there's a lot going on there and yes, a research question at this point is good (along with a possible theory or two) but it needs to be about how language is being used to accomplish something between the participants.