As in most research, serendipity is important: it helps to be alert for unexpected opportunities. -- Wood & Kroger, Doing Discourse Analysis
A serendipitous data collection opportunity
This week I will begin observing collaborative faculty meetings held each Thursday morning at a local high school where I use to teach. This is one of two data collection options I am exploring this semester for Discourse Analysis. Unlike my Plan A context, in which I am essentially a researcher-participant, I had to negotiate entry into the high school site, and I am still not entirely certain if and when I will be able to obtain discourse recordings there.
As I have described in previous reflections on research contexts, this opportunity to do fieldwork came about through a chance encounter with a good friend and former colleague who happens to chair the collaborative team. As such, I am just trying "to roll" with this one! I am going to try to assume the stance of an explorer, who might use "whatever data" I can lay my hands on (ten Have, p. 71).
But it's hard not to anticipate what I might find!
Once a perennial low-performer with roughly 80 percent low-SES student population, the school in question began a massive reorganization four years ago upon threat of state takeover. It is now divided into vocational learning communities, and I will be observing collaborative talk between teachers and support staff who work in what is referred to as "the health sciences learning community." Last year, for the first time since the inception of the No Child Left Behind law, the school posted annual yearly progress in all areas. So, to some extent at least, the reforms are working, and by all accounts the school is a more energizing and exciting place to work and to learn than it ever was in the six years I was there.
It is impossible to overstate the level of teacher dis-empowerment that existed when I left the classroom in 2005. Opportunities to work or even to talk collaboratively were few and far between. You might say "professional talk" occurred, but it was more like venting, griping, and "sounding off," usually over rushed 25-minute lunches or while standing in line to make photocopies. Time was not carved out during actual contract hours for teachers to work face-to-face with their peers.
This semester in Dr. Allington's REED 605 (Organization and Administration of School Reading Programs), we are studying how schools can transform into places of "thoughtful literacy" through a number of reform measures, including professional dialog and distributed leadership models. This leads me to wonder about the impact of the collaborative team meetings on the quality of literacy instruction at my former school.
Has the emphasis indeed shifted from "minimum literacy competencies" to "higher-order literacy" (Allington & Cunningham, 2007, p. 129)? Will this be reflected in the collaborative team dialog? Is there a connection between collaborative, problem-solving dialog among teachers and collaborative, problem-solving dialog among the students they teach?
And there I go, formulating ridiculously ambitious questions that cannot possibly be answered within the short scope of this data collection exercise. Worse, I fear I am so blinded by my own narrow interests and expectations that if I were lucky enough to stumble upon some analytically worthy chunks of data, I won't recognize them. After two years of intense, graduate-level study, far removed from the participants and contexts I claim to "know" so well, will my vision re-adjust to the outside world? Or, am I permanently handicapped by the researcher's lenses? Some form of theoretical myopia?
For these reasons, I took to heart the summary of ethical issues and the final cautions about data sources in Wood & Kroger's Chapter 4. In a case such as mine, where I have "happened upon" discourse in serendipitous fashion, it is best to "open up" the questions and maybe let go of them entirely. I also need to be content with understanding the discourse where it is situated, between professionals around a conference table. As much as I want to explore connections to classroom instruction and teacher-student interactions, this is not the route for doing so.
On a slightly different note, insofar as the actual recording procedure goes, events in the last few days have especially sensitized me to the "ethical and practical concerns that require the modification of ideal practice" (p. 64). I have been advised by the principal/gatekeeper to not record during my first few observations, so as not to interrupt the participants' collaborative flow. I spoke to the chair of the collaborative team about this stipulation, and she remarked that she couldn't think of a single member who would object to being recorded. They are, she said, a fairly "unbridled and brazen bunch." As a former teacher, I can relate to this. Because so much of our work day is routinized, scripted, regimented, and timed, we embrace opportunities for collegial interaction -- perhaps too much! Teachers tend to let loose when in each other's company. And that, of course, may be the very reason why the principal wants me to go slow and make my presence known.
As I have described in previous reflections on research contexts, this opportunity to do fieldwork came about through a chance encounter with a good friend and former colleague who happens to chair the collaborative team. As such, I am just trying "to roll" with this one! I am going to try to assume the stance of an explorer, who might use "whatever data" I can lay my hands on (ten Have, p. 71).
But it's hard not to anticipate what I might find!
Once a perennial low-performer with roughly 80 percent low-SES student population, the school in question began a massive reorganization four years ago upon threat of state takeover. It is now divided into vocational learning communities, and I will be observing collaborative talk between teachers and support staff who work in what is referred to as "the health sciences learning community." Last year, for the first time since the inception of the No Child Left Behind law, the school posted annual yearly progress in all areas. So, to some extent at least, the reforms are working, and by all accounts the school is a more energizing and exciting place to work and to learn than it ever was in the six years I was there.
It is impossible to overstate the level of teacher dis-empowerment that existed when I left the classroom in 2005. Opportunities to work or even to talk collaboratively were few and far between. You might say "professional talk" occurred, but it was more like venting, griping, and "sounding off," usually over rushed 25-minute lunches or while standing in line to make photocopies. Time was not carved out during actual contract hours for teachers to work face-to-face with their peers.
This semester in Dr. Allington's REED 605 (Organization and Administration of School Reading Programs), we are studying how schools can transform into places of "thoughtful literacy" through a number of reform measures, including professional dialog and distributed leadership models. This leads me to wonder about the impact of the collaborative team meetings on the quality of literacy instruction at my former school.
Has the emphasis indeed shifted from "minimum literacy competencies" to "higher-order literacy" (Allington & Cunningham, 2007, p. 129)? Will this be reflected in the collaborative team dialog? Is there a connection between collaborative, problem-solving dialog among teachers and collaborative, problem-solving dialog among the students they teach?
And there I go, formulating ridiculously ambitious questions that cannot possibly be answered within the short scope of this data collection exercise. Worse, I fear I am so blinded by my own narrow interests and expectations that if I were lucky enough to stumble upon some analytically worthy chunks of data, I won't recognize them. After two years of intense, graduate-level study, far removed from the participants and contexts I claim to "know" so well, will my vision re-adjust to the outside world? Or, am I permanently handicapped by the researcher's lenses? Some form of theoretical myopia?
For these reasons, I took to heart the summary of ethical issues and the final cautions about data sources in Wood & Kroger's Chapter 4. In a case such as mine, where I have "happened upon" discourse in serendipitous fashion, it is best to "open up" the questions and maybe let go of them entirely. I also need to be content with understanding the discourse where it is situated, between professionals around a conference table. As much as I want to explore connections to classroom instruction and teacher-student interactions, this is not the route for doing so.
On a slightly different note, insofar as the actual recording procedure goes, events in the last few days have especially sensitized me to the "ethical and practical concerns that require the modification of ideal practice" (p. 64). I have been advised by the principal/gatekeeper to not record during my first few observations, so as not to interrupt the participants' collaborative flow. I spoke to the chair of the collaborative team about this stipulation, and she remarked that she couldn't think of a single member who would object to being recorded. They are, she said, a fairly "unbridled and brazen bunch." As a former teacher, I can relate to this. Because so much of our work day is routinized, scripted, regimented, and timed, we embrace opportunities for collegial interaction -- perhaps too much! Teachers tend to let loose when in each other's company. And that, of course, may be the very reason why the principal wants me to go slow and make my presence known.
Designing a transcript
Serendipity is great for data collection, but not so much for transcription, I think. A novice who attempts Gail Jefferson's approach of noting every feature "because it's there" will surely go mad before completing a transcript! Somewhere between collection and transcription, a researcher must begin to focus her goals, aims, and objectives.
This week's readings on the topic of transcription gave me a chance to revisit some of the concerns I raised in my earliest DA post: namely, just how is it you prepare a transcript with such attention to detail and NOT have a clearly defined research question?
I can see now that it is less a matter of defining questions as it is continually refining questions, such as the "spiralling fashion" noted by ten Have (p. 69). To that end, Wood and Kroger's advice about "initial readings" was especially helpful for identifying an analytic approach as well as segments of data to analyze; although, it implies an even greater time investment for the transcription process than I had initially calculated. I also will the "strategy of reversal," in the event I end up with an uninspiring data set, which is entirely possible due to my narrowing window for data collection.
Of all the readings, I found ten Have's discussion of the "practical aspects" of transcription to be the most accessible, particularly the sections on timing of silences and formatting issues. His process of going in "rounds," starting with a verbatim rendering that grows increasingly descriptive with the systematic layering of "how's," made a lot of sense, especially in light of the practice sessions conducted in class.
I found the Ochs chapter to be the most challenging. It was the way that she described selectivity as a desirable outcome of transcription and not just an inherent problem of transcription that really made me think! After reading Jefferson, I was struck by Ochs' statement that a transcript should not have "too much information.... A more useful transcript is a more selective one." Over and over again in the literature, we are warned about the impact of researcher bias in the production of transcripts. Yet, Ochs seems to recommend we embrace selectivity -- but with our eyes open. Ochs' less-is-more advice sets up an interesting contrast to Jefferson's "if it's interesting put it in" approach.
Problems of selectivity vary from discipline to discipline, according to the researcher's phenomenon of interest. For example, like the other theorists, Ochs discusses strategies for the representation of verbals and nonverbals, but not in the manner I had come to expect after reading ten Have and Wood and Kroger. Unlike the other theorists who warn against privileging nonverbals, Ochs warns against "verbal foregrounding," which, understandably, poses a problem in her field of study, child language acquisition.
In sum, selectivity is inescapable; it is only problematic in the absence of researcher reflexivity. Regardless of one's field, a lack of reflexivity during the transcription process has "consequences," a point Ochs makes repeatedly. It reveals our biases about spatial organization, contingent relationships between utterances, directionality, verbal and nonverbal behavior, and adult communicative models.
This week's readings on the topic of transcription gave me a chance to revisit some of the concerns I raised in my earliest DA post: namely, just how is it you prepare a transcript with such attention to detail and NOT have a clearly defined research question?
According to Elinor Ochs, you don't. She says, "...the transcript should reflect the particular interests -- the hypotheses to be examined -- of the researcher" (p. 44).
Of all the readings, I found ten Have's discussion of the "practical aspects" of transcription to be the most accessible, particularly the sections on timing of silences and formatting issues. His process of going in "rounds," starting with a verbatim rendering that grows increasingly descriptive with the systematic layering of "how's," made a lot of sense, especially in light of the practice sessions conducted in class.I found the Ochs chapter to be the most challenging. It was the way that she described selectivity as a desirable outcome of transcription and not just an inherent problem of transcription that really made me think! After reading Jefferson, I was struck by Ochs' statement that a transcript should not have "too much information.... A more useful transcript is a more selective one." Over and over again in the literature, we are warned about the impact of researcher bias in the production of transcripts. Yet, Ochs seems to recommend we embrace selectivity -- but with our eyes open. Ochs' less-is-more advice sets up an interesting contrast to Jefferson's "if it's interesting put it in" approach.
Problems of selectivity vary from discipline to discipline, according to the researcher's phenomenon of interest. For example, like the other theorists, Ochs discusses strategies for the representation of verbals and nonverbals, but not in the manner I had come to expect after reading ten Have and Wood and Kroger. Unlike the other theorists who warn against privileging nonverbals, Ochs warns against "verbal foregrounding," which, understandably, poses a problem in her field of study, child language acquisition.
In sum, selectivity is inescapable; it is only problematic in the absence of researcher reflexivity. Regardless of one's field, a lack of reflexivity during the transcription process has "consequences," a point Ochs makes repeatedly. It reveals our biases about spatial organization, contingent relationships between utterances, directionality, verbal and nonverbal behavior, and adult communicative models.
References:
Allington, R. L., & Cunningham, P. M. (2007). Schools that work: Where all children read and write (3rd ed.). Boston: Pearson.
Jefferson, G. (2004). Glossary of transcript symbols with an introduction. In G. H. Lerner (Ed.), Conversation Analysis: Studies from the first generation (pp. 13-31). Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Ochs, E. (1979). Transcription as theory. In E. Ochs & B. Schieffelin (Eds.), Development pragmatics. New York: Academic Press.
ten Have, P. (2007). Doing conversation analysis: A practical guide (2nd ed.). Los Angeles: SAGE.
Wood, L. A., & Kroger, R. O. (2000). Doing discourse analysis: Methods for studying action in talk and text. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
I like this: "selectivity is inescapable; it is only problematic in the absence of researcher reflexivity."
ReplyDeleteand this:
"I can see now that it is less a matter of defining questions as it is continually refining questions, such as the "spiralling fashion"
There's no way around the interpretive nature of research, decisions really do depend on who you are and what your data is, so in large part we have to figure it out as we go along. This is, of course, not comforting to students.