English Education - Volume 30, Issue 2, 1998

States that in a methods course for elementary education majors, students are asked to keep a notebook to respond to course readings, collect writing starts, reflect on their schooling histories, and collect data from their 10-week field experience in an elementary classroom. Discusses one notebook; presents a sample ethnographic research assignment.

Provides one account of a “messy,” critical research process, drawn from a dissertation project: a study of students’ and teachers’ responses within three university writing courses which were focused on "The American Experience" and which fulfilled the institution’s diversity requirement. Aims to achieve some degree of methodological metaknowledge about ways the research process failed to be critical.

Available in print version only.

Available in print version only.