You had Me at Research (Please Drop the Paper)

Hold on folks, I found yet ANOTHER blurb today while reading that made me feel incredibly guilty.

So. I feel pretty confident in saying that none of us probably wrote like experts in high school, especially when doing research projects. I mean I can at least speak for myself and say that I was a last minute procrastinator to the absolute MAX. I could bullshit a paper, get an A, and tell myself it was probably the best I could do anyway (not true btw). 

Upon reading A Guide to Composition Pedagogies, more specifically Rebecca Moore Howard and Sandra Jamieson’s piece “Researched Writing,” I found this quote about first-year writing students at university:

“Those students do not seem to be engaging with the entire text, and they frequently simplify or partially misrepresent the source to make it fit their arguments.”

Basically, this was stating that one of the current problems with teaching research writing, is that students still do not know how to properly engage a text, and are more likely to pull out one quote that sounds like something that would fit their argument regardless of the context.*

*’Scuse me while I tangent and explain so that I feel like I wasn’t being a filthy hypocrite and doing exactly what they said to avoid.

If I’m going to be flat out honest, I feel like I remember one of my high school teachers basically telling me to do this at some point. I’d like to think I’m wrong, but I remember her telling me, “You just need one quote that fits your thesis.”

Thank God I outgrew this habit in college, but other people aren’t that lucky and still don’t know, so it’s important we start reteaching our students about how to properly work research into our writing. 

Personally, I’m not sure I know how to do this, so thankfully, Howard and Jamieson have some tips on how to do this, and the best advice that they give, is to focus less on the research paper, and to focus more on teaching students the process of research.

Thankfully, this doesn’t mean hours in the library having a librarian show you how to navigate your different browser and database options, because, thanks, students do know how to do that already. We’ve all had to sit through those lectures at least 5 times.**

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**Note: sometimes students really do need this though. Please just take an anonymous poll of the room first.

My favorite method that is discussed that specifically approaches fixing the way students only skim-read articles, is just doing lessons that teach “engaged and critical reading.” Basically, we need to start focusing on teaching students that it’s important to read and understand the whole of what an author is saying. So, instead of a research paper, assess and help their ability to simply read and review research.

Truthfully, when you’re doing this correctly, it’s a lot of work. Having students read and review research, plus finding an effective way to sum it up truly a whole project and lesson on it’s own. 

High school educators, in particular, need to take a step back and help students along the journey of doing proper research before we start to focus on the writing portion. We’re all just trying to help our students become better writers. Sometimes we just need to curb our enthusiasm and take a step back to remember our students are not masters and need to know the basics first.