I don’t think I’ve ever had an article written about anything I’ve done before. But, lo and behold, this morning Shelley and I made the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, and–I guess–several other papers. Who would have thought that research in college writing classes would be interesting outside of the academy?

On May 30th, I attended the North Carolina Scholarship of Teaching and Learning day at UNC-Greensboro with my colleagues Wanda Lloyd and Kate Hagopian. It was a great day to network with people from around the state, and I felt like I had one day that was completely dedicated to thinking about new directions for my own research on teaching and learning. I co-presented on “Going Public with SoTL” with Laura Cruz, from Western Carolina University, and her fabulous slides made me look well-prepared. I don’t mean to be too touchy-feely, but I think that for the first time in the two years I’ve been in NC, I felt like I had found a community of teacher-scholars who spoke my language. AND, I felt like we discovered a community that could be a catalyst for designing some innovative initiatives in our writing program at NC State. One idea I had: a mini-fellowship for lecturers in the writing program based on the Carnegie Scholars and Maricopa Institute for Learning models. What do you think?

Attending the conference also raised my awareness about several other opportunities around the state that will be coming up soon for those interested in professional development. The Carolinas Writing Program Administrators will be holding their annual conference in September in Little Switzerland, NC. The North Carolina English Teachers Association will host their annual conference in Winston-Salem in October, and UNC-Greensboro will hold the Lilly Conference on College and University Teaching in February, 2009. I also can’t resist plugging the first North Carolina Symposium on Teaching Writing that we’ll be hosting at NC State October 17 and 18 of this year. More info soon!

In our graduate seminar this week, we read a decade-old book by Sullivan and Porter titled Opening Spaces: Writing Technologies and Critical Research Practices. I enjoyed revisiting this text, partly because I found myself questioning (and sometimes remembering) the reactions and responses I had to the text the first time I read it as a graduate student. I remember originally feeling relieved when I read this book–someone was validating my desire to contextualize the research I was doing in a way that reflected the theory I was reading. As I read, I found myself realizing how much research has (and has not) changed since then.

Several of the students in the class commented on how the text introduces ideas and approaches to research that are not all that new anymore. Absolutely true. Yet, I’m struck by how pervasive the divisions between empiricism/theory/practice still are, as well as between qualitative and quantitative research.

And revisiting this text caused me to question some of my own assumptions a bit. For the sake of brevity, I’ll just list a few:

• How much self-reflection is enough? I accept that reflection is an important part of research and practice, but is there a point at which the reflection and the contextualization can begin to get in the way?
• Is there a way to get past the paradox that acknowledging one’s context introduces limitations that affect the interpretive power of data collected?
• In class last week, I asked a question about the perceived agency we assign to technology. If I adopt a position that technology has no (or limited) agency, am I denying the potential impact(s) of the designer of the technology? Or does the agency reside with the designer?