Congratulation, Peter, with getting the Janet Emig Award! I like your speech
a lot!
A few months ago I was sitting on a very interesting doctoral dissertation
defense of Bonnie Anderson (now Ph.D.!) discussing the relationship between
5-paragraph formulistic writing and scores on Delaware high-stake writing
tests. The findings were that (if I remember correctly): 1) essays earning
high scores on the Delaware high-stake writing tests were more likely
written in non-formulistic ways (which seems to mean that writing using
5-paragraph essay way reduce chances to be scored highly). 2) There is not
evidence that using 5-paragraph formulistic writing increases students'
chances to pass the tests. 3) Not using 5-paragraph formulistic writing does
not increase the students' chances to fail the test.
Eugene
_____
From: Peter Smagorinsky [mailto:smago@coe.uga.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2003 8:16 AM
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: Re: Multidisciplinary perspectives
I"m giving the attached talk next week. Though not couched in chat terms, it
may fit with Phil's remarks, or raise related issues. Peter
At 06:47 PM 11/12/2003 +0700, you wrote:
At 15:26 11/11/03 +0000, Eugene wrote:
our approach is on odds with mainstream institutional demands judging
quality of our work based on individualistic authorship.. I feel that behind
authorship of articles that I contribute is a broad academic community (or
even communities).
Eugene,
I have just finished writing a paper for my coursework that focuses on this.
One of my conclusions, following Wardekker, W. L., (2000) "Criteria for the
Quality of Inquiry", Mind, Culture and Activity, 7(4)was that too much
emphasis is placed by institutions on the product of research rather than
the process of change that it engenders in all those involved. The great
benefit that I gained from writing the paper was developing an understanding
of CHAT (or whatever we call it) research vis-a-vis how learning processes
experienced in a research study enhance a person's (researcher's,
participant's, report reader, etc) culturally-held meaning systems. I am not
sure how much of Wardekker's and others' work I appropriated, but I am left
viewing CHAT research (in education) as a platform for change and learning,
and as a means of understanding the relationship between change and learning
to actions. I'd love to learn more about intervention research now!
The value of XMCA in this respect is extreme if one's work is to have
generative power for future practice. That is a little more relevant than
positioning yourself as the all-knowing author who has something for the
community to generalise across time and space. I was particularly drawn to
Wardekker's following quote:
[The product of research should be conceived as]an understanding of the
change processes in a specific situation that may or may not have
implications for other situations. Knowledge is a mediational means for
focusing our attention on specific aspects of a practice (Wardekker, 2000,
p. 269).
These thoughts may not be new fodder for many in this community, but I have
certainly experienced some epiphanies over the last couple of weeks!
Phil
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