Developing New Knowledge: "Factness"

In his book, Inquiry and Genre, David Jolliffe proposes three criteria for acquiring new knowledge, which is the goal of the inquiry process. You can use these three criteria--"factness," comprehensiveness, and "surprise value"--to guide your search.

Today, we'll focus on his first criteria, factness, or the degree to which the material you learn can stand up to the scrutiny of careful questioning. We usually think of "facts" as information that can be verified by observation or experimentation. In other words, we know facts. However, "factness" can also refer to what other people think, feel, and believe about issues concerning your subject.

Guidelines for today's in-class writing:
Reread your inquiry contract proposal, noting any changes you want to make in its three sections (why the subject is important to you, what you know about it already, and what questions you need to ask about it). Then, respond to the following questions on your blog:

Whom could I talk to who could provide me with information that has factness about this question?

What could I read that would provide me with information that has factness about this question?

What else could I do besides talk to people and read to acquire information or factness about this question? (Jolliffe 75)

This week, schedule an interview with someone who can provide you with information about your inquiry project topic. See The Free Management Library for guidelines on conducting interviews.

Revisiting the Inquiry Contract

Part I: Reflecting on your own writing

In his book, Inquiry and Genre, David Jolliffe proposes the following questions to consider when engaging in scholarly inquiry. Reread your inquiry contract, then spend the first 20 minutes of class time writing in response to the following prompts:

When the general public considers the subject I’m working with, what are the issues, questions or concerns that they think are important to discuss? Do these questions and concerns differ from those of the scholarly discourse community?

In discussions of my subject, what are some of the status quo assumptions that appear to go unsaid but nonetheless seem almost universally believed? For example, if I am exploring how writing should be taught in high school, what do most people tend to believe about the kinds and amount of writing that high school students should do? What do people believe writing teachers should do to prepare students for the world beyond high school? How do people believe that teachers should respond to students’ writing?

In texts that people produce about my subject, what kinds of outcomes or results do they expect the texts to have with readers? Do writers about my subject usually expect a reader simply to consider their ideas, to believe in them strongly, to take some specific action? What?

Part II: Reading each other’s writing

Exchange your Inquiry Contract with at least two other students in class and read one another’s revised drafts. Discuss why the questions you’ve posed are important and what you’ve learned so far. What do you know now that you didn’t know before you began your research? What do you still need to find out in order to answer the questions you’ve posed?

Wednesday's Assignment:
Read one selection from Cross-Talk: either Trimbur (p. 461) or another article from Cross-Talk in Composition related to your research topic. Post to your blog a summary and response.

The revised version of the Inquiry Contract will be due Monday, November 5.

Inquiry Contracts due Monday

On Monday, you will review and respond to each others' drafts of the Inquiry Contract. Please bring two hard copies of your draft to class: one for peer review, and one to hand in to the instructor. (I encourage you to save a copy to a disk, USB, or some other media that you can access for in-class revising.)

As described in the Inquiry Project Description (on the Blackboard Course Documents page), the Inquiry Contract is a one-page (single-spaced) project proposal. There are three parts:

1. In the first section, explain why are you interested in this topic: What do you want to know? What motivates you to learn more about this topic?
2. In the second section, describe at least two things you already think, feel, or know about this topic.
3. In the third section, raise two questions that you could reasonably address in a seminar paper on your topic.

It would be helpful to attach a list of the sources you plan to consult in the course of the research. This may include secondary sources (such as books and articles), as well as first-hand sources (interviews, observations, and personal experience).

Drafts of inquiry contracts from last spring's English 401 students may be found on the Course Blackboard (Discussion Board--> Inquiry Project Topics and Questions).

As I announced Friday in class, there is no common reading assignment for Monday's class meeting. In lieu of course readings, I encourage you to continue reading and note-taking on the sources you've found so far on your Inquiry Project topic.

Peer tutor groups will meet on *Friday* with Ian Turner for focused group discussions of the practicum experience.

Exploring your Inquiry Project Topic

If you are feeling confident in your choice of a particular topic for your Inquiry Project, you may only need to write about that topic. If you are unsure, explore two or three topics by responding to the following questions on your personal blog:

Part I: Exploration
1. Identify the issue or problem that you plan to focus on in your Inquiry Project.
2. What is your personal connection to and interest in this topic?
3. What opinions do you already hold about this topic?
4. What knowledge do you already have about this topic. What are your main questions about this topic? What are you most curious about?
6. How might composition theorists and researchers approach or study this topic? Does this approach differ from those of other related disciplines (such as communication studies)?
7. How could you research this topic outside the library (for example, through interviews and/or observations)?

Part II: Focusing
Write an initial claim, or an open-ended question, to guide your research on this topic. Make it specific but exploratory. Remember that a good claim opens up an area of inquiry about a topic; a claim should invite evidence, support, and debate.

Blog posting for Lu's "Professing Multiculturalism" POSTPONED until Friday

The blog posting for Monday's assigned reading (Min-Zhao Lu's "Professing Multiculturalism") will be postponed until Friday, October 26. (During the first half of Friday's class, we will discuss the article's implications for peer tutors, then you will meet with your peer tutoring conference group.)

I've discussed with some of you topics for the Inquiry Project. During Monday's class meeting, we will share potential topics and discuss requirements for the project. On Wednesday, October 24, we'll meet at the library instruction room to begin library research on your proposed Inquiry Project topic.

To prepare for tomorrow's class, please read the Inquiry Project Description, which is posted on the Course Documents page of the English 401 Blackboard. You may post your initial topic ideas as comments to this page. During the second half of Monday's class meeting, you'll do some in-class writing and invention to discover what you already know about your topic as well as what you want to discover.

See you Monday morning. Please email me with questions or concerns at bridgeto@elmhurst.edu.

Peer Tutoring Group Meetings

In advance of Friday's class meeting, I urge you to visit your tutoring client's
personal blog, which are linked to the main ENG106 course blog at:

http://106research.blogspot.com/

106 students are blogging their research topics and questions as they evolve through
processes of invention (e.g., asking questions, refining topics, defining what they already know/want to know). Any collaborative feedback and/or planning advice you can offer will be appreciated by your tutoring clients!

(For those blogs that aren't linked to students' names: "Haunted English" is Clark's blog, "Gazing Forth" is Anthony's, and "Stream of Consciousness" is Juliet's.)

On Friday, I'll ask you to connect your practicum experience (which may include reading and/or posting to your client's blog) to this week's readings. You might, for example, analyze your practicum experience in terms of any of the following topics or issues:

--silence and voice

--inner-directed and outer-directed theories of writing

--cognitive processes vs. familiarity with the "conventions" of academic discourse
communities

--notions of "subjectivity" and "difference" (however you define them. . .)

When the First Voice You Hear Is Not Your Own

Jacqueline Jones Royster reflects on the experience of having one's "subjectivity" denied or disrespected in academic culture. What do her experiences reveal about voice, difference, and what may be gained and/or lost through membership in the "academic discourse community"?

Today, we'll explore this question through the kaleidoscopic lens of our collective experiences. I invite you to compose a "scene" from your own experience, drawing on Royster's article for inspiration. You might tell a story about a "cross-boundary exchange" that you witnessed or in which you participated. You might offer your personal testimony as 'subject' within an academic discourse community. I leave this writing prompt open to invention and discovery.

I encourage you to reflect on experiences that have been a source of dissonance, experiences that moved you out of your comfort zone into what Mary Louise Pratt calls contact zones--"areas of engagement that in all likelihood will remain contentious" (Royster 615).

Write for about 25 minutes. You may choose whether or not to post this writing to your blog. At 9:45, I'll ask volunteers to tell their stories so that we can hear them, in order to "include voicing as a phenomenon that is constructed and expressed visually and orally, and as a phenomenon that has import also in being a thing heard, perceived, and constructed" (Royster 612).

My sense of things is that individual stories placed one against another build credibility and offer. . . a litany of evidence from which a call for transformation in theory and practice might rightfully begin. My intent is to suggest that my stories in the company of others demand thoughtful response (Royster 612).

Blogging Bizzell

As you compose your summary and response for Monday morning's class, I invite you to check out the following grad student blogs on Bizzell's "Cognition, Convention, and Certainty."

Linda's Blog (University of Minnesota)

Securing a Space (at Syracuse University)


Notice how each writer frames the key points of Bizzell's article. What seems to be each writer's purpose? Do they seem to be responding to an assignment, or something more?

Do specific features mark these blog postings as "academic discourse"? As such, do they invite dialogue or would you characterize them as knowledge-telling or "bastard" discourse?

And finally, can a blog help to fulfill the Bizzell's purposes of teaching writing, as paraphrased by the author of "Securing a Space:"

it will help explain the often difficult transition into an academic discourse community; it will enable student writers to understand the makeup and conventions of different discourse communities; and it will help student writers define his/her goals in terms of the specific discourse community in which they’re writing in or to.

Just curious. . . I look forward to reading your blog postings!

Inventing Academic Discourse

Thanks to all who posted a summary and response to Flower and Hayes' cognitive process model. On Friday, you'll meet with your peer tutoring group to further explore your role as "collaborative planners" with your peer tutoring clients.

In order to prepare for thoughtful consideration of how collaborative invention happens, I have asked you to read a short excerpt from Linda Flower's 1998 textbook, Problem-solving Strategies for Writing In College and Community, which I handed out in class today.

On several of your blogs, I have posted comments and questions about the role of invention and discovery in the cognitive process model. As you may recall, David Bartholomae critiques the cognitive process model of invention as being a strictly cognitive/mental process, one that happens outside the act of writing. Does Flower's 1998 advice on collaborative planning (see handout) seem to be moving closer to Barthomae's notion of "locating subjects in a field of discourse"? That is, does Flower still seem to locate invention in the mind of the writer (i.e., as cognitive problem-solving), or does her later work seem to locate the problem of invention in a discourse community? I invite you to respond here, or to post a comment to one of your classmates' blogs.

On Friday, you'll share weekly reports and add Flower and Hayes and Bartholomae to your revised version of the Tutors' Guide to Comp Studies. See you then!

What is "Academic Discourse"? (Part Deux)

You have been assigned to a "mystery text" from Linda Flower's composition textbook, Problem Solving Strategies for College and Community. These sample texts come from different discourse communities, including academic discourse published in journals and student writing for courses as well as popular journalism and professional writing. Read your mystery text and decide: Is it an example of "academic discourse" or not? Was it written by a professor, a graduate student, an undergraduate, or a nonacademic writer? Make a note of at least three features of each text that you saw as "tip-offs."

In your response, please note whether this text fits your group's definition of academic discourse from last week's posting on Bartholomae's "Inventing the University." If not, does your group need to revise your definition in some way?

Post your response as a comment here; please remember to identify the text number in your posting.

After you have finished, compare your responses to those of other groups. Which features did you look for to evaluate these mystery texts? Do these features reveal important similarities or differences among our collective mental images of "academic discourse"? What is the focus of your image: words, rules, and local stylistic features, or rhetorical ones? Do these mystery texts let you speculate on different ways people in this particular discourse community--academic discourse--seem to use writing?

With these questions in mind, post a response to at least one other group's posting.

Flower and Hayes' Cognitive Process Theory of Writing

For next Wednesday's meeting (10/10), please post to your blog a response to Flower and Hayes' (p. 273). In your summary, please describe the various tasks and functions of each stage of the cognitive process model.

inventing "academic discourse"

During Wednesday's class meeting, I'd like to focus on "academic discourse"--a term that is often used but difficult to define.

Find a group to work with and pursue the questions below in some fashion. Aim at creating a complicated definition of academic discourse, in which you respond to ideas from Bartholomae and at least two other theorists we’ve read in Cross-Talk.

(The following questions contain some redundancy; one version of a question may make sense to you while another may not.)

*What is the context for academic discourse?
*What is the purpose of academic discourse?
*Who decides what it is and is not?
*Who or what is included in academic discourse?
*Who or what is excluded from academic discourse?
*What are the prevailing patterns of this discourse?
*What are the prevailing topics of this discourse?
*What are the prevailing styles?
*What are the prevailing methods of making an argument?
*How do you know academic discourse when you see it, or when you don't see it?
*What exceptions can you think of to all the generalizations you've made so far?
*How have you learned academic discourse; to what extent have you learned it?


Post your definition as a comment below.