I have been debating with myself till the very last moment whether I want to conduct my research on the performance of online identity by professional women (a topic I relate with in my old avatar as a journalist) or on the success or failure of rubrics when grading writing on closed and open forms of prose. The second topic relates with my new avatar as a classroom teacher at DACC. I have finally decided to go with the second topic; so sorry for the delay.
My tentative research question: Do rubrics really work when grading?
My subject: A class of 21 developmental students/freshmen at Dona Ana Community College.
My aim: To analyze assignments that my students turn in to figure out how successful the use of rubrics has been when grading these papers.
The variables: The types of writing — open form of prose and closed form of prose — with the first requiring free writing and the second, research, analysis of information and use of logic and reasoning to come to conclusions.
Research tool: Myself, the sole researcher.
My observations so far: Even though the concept of rubrics doesn't always work when grading a piece of writing, I discovered in the last few weeks that I have been teaching, the prescribed "Focus, Development, Clarity" headers work quite well for the purpose of teaching/learning. For example, when I used the "storytelling" method to teach open prose form, the "I am from" essay helped the students "focus" on their own story, "I am (like) a" helped them "develop" the thought to the next level using metaphors or similes; and finally "Diversity in the classroom" took the development of their ideas to the big story while at the same time refining their writing through revisions, thus achieving an impressive degree of "clarity."
Tentative inductions:
1. That rubrics work when grading closed form of prose but not when grading the open form.
2. Rubrics work better when teaching/learning than when grading in general.
Heuristics: How do you make rubrics a useful tool when teaching?
The paradigms I saw myself adhering to when conducting my research:
1. Contextualist: Jonanek may not be our favorite theorist in class, but I did find her directions pretty useful when conducting my classroom research. I saw how the classroom could be the naturalistic setting for my reseach without necessarily being a lab setting! It helped overcome the location issue that muddies the distinction between empirical and library or lab-based research.
2. Case studies: Of course I was doing case studies as well when I looked at how my students attempted the two kinds of prose.
3. Texual analysis: That's what I was doing when analyzing all these papers for evidence of the success or failure of rubrics when grading.
My conclusion: I think I'm into mixed methods... please let me know if I'm all mixed up!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
4 comments:
Moushumi:
I'd definitely say you are "into mixed methods" and obviously you are ahead of many of us in applying your skills!
I'm wondering, if you were working on a proposal for a brand new project, how would you place yourself in terms of worldview or paradigm? Would you stick with pragmatism, as you seem to indicate on my blog, or consider something else to be more descriptive of your view?
Well, this is in fact a brand new project. I started teaching only a few weeks ago and this idea is the result of the first bunch of papers I graded few days ago! I suppose the descriptive aspect would accompany textual analysis of the papers which I have to do anyway to draw my inferences. And the pragmatism bit would help decide how best to teach, grade and so on. Yes, I see it as a mixed method project indeed.
Like Aaron, I am impressed to see how developed your research topic is already. It sounds like the beginning of a cool project.
I'm wondering too what sort of research paradigm you see yourself operating from. Your focus on mixed methods seem to indicate that you would be comfortable thinking of knowledge as socially constructed or, as Aaron suggests, something that we take on in a pragmatic way.
I think it is important to identify our own larger views of research and knowledge-making as we take on more specific research projects.
Jen
Wow! I'm with everyone else on this Moushumi, you have a great start here. I am quite impressed with the thought you have given this so far. I agree that it looks like you will be doing mixed methods. You seem to have a good sense for what you are looking at and the process you plan to take.
Post a Comment