"Encouraging Composition Scholars...
...to Look Outside of the Field."
Presented by Rebecca Rickly
Rebecca Rickly teaches at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. Her podcast discusses what research is in composition studies. She adds technical communication to the larger area of composition studies because it is an important subset of rhetoric and composition. She argues that scholars should be creating research methods to make knowledge. She cites Sandra Harding's work as the starting point of a useful framework for research. Harding differentiates the terms "method," "methodology," and "epistemology." Method is the technique or way of gathering information. Methodology governs the way that the method is employed; it is often disciplinary in nature. Epistemology is a way of thinking of or understanding the material. She has found that these terms are very helpful in guiding her own research. She can use these terms to not only understand her research but also articulate her work to outside observers.
Other influences she cites include those in fields outside of composition studies. She mentions John Creswell and John Law as particularly useful and influential researchers, again from outside of composition students. She encourages listeners to seek out sources beyond the discipline because much of what rhetoric and composition studies deal with is a blurring of disciplinary lines. A recent article she worked on with other colleagues used ecosystems as a metaphor for composition studies. She encourages the use of clearly articulated methods to demonstrate the rigor of the research being done.
She offers the following advice to new scholars: Research is often messy. Prepare and focus on your work before you start, but once you dive in, you must deal with the issues that have arisen. Be prepared for the mess and do not get discouraged. Researchers need to be thinking rhetorically and to be open to learning from mistakes. Know that you do not know everything, but be able to apply rigor to your research in order to explain and defend it to someone else. She discusses some things she does in her own courses to help graduate students prepare for their own future research. One item she mentions is the Institutional Review Board (IRB) form to give students some experience with preparing the human subjects approval forms and process. Usually in rhetorical studies, unlike medical studies, IRB forms are expedited or exempted, but Rickly believes that all students should have the experience so that their research work will have that added layer of ethical credibility and scrutiny. The IRB forms also give the research institutional sanction. She suggests that students seek out these opportunities in the safety of graduate school because they will be less likely to seek these opportunities as new faculty members given the pressures in that arena.
She ends her presentation with a brief discussion of one of her current projects. A portion of the project is a survey of rhetoric and composition graduate programs. Her survey found that most graduate programs required at least one research methodology course, but the contents of the courses were very diverse. Thus, many new faculty members do not feel that they are fully prepared to conduct research. Since that first survey, she and her colleagues are retaking the survey each year to review the overall faculty perception of what is and is not working in the research preparation portions of composition graduate programs.