JAC Volume 13 Issue 2

Gesa Kirsch and Patricia Sullivan's Methods and Methodology in Composition Research is a sophisticated, up-to-date collection of essays by researchers and scholars of various stripes who engage in considerable reflection/reflexivity in discussing the research methods they know best. Because it is an edited collection rather than a single- or coauthored work (as was the case with Stephen North's The Making of Knowledge in Composition, or Janice Lauer and William Asher's Composition Research: Empirical Designs), the reader is afforded multiple perspectives on composition research. The result is a rich, synoptic view of the field of rhetoric and composition that brings together diverse perspectives from researchers who are both seasoned veterans and promising newcomers.

The editors have made excellent choices of "exemplars" of particular approaches, among them Beverly Moss (ethnography), Tom Newkirk (case study), Susan Miller (hermeneutical scholarship), Tom Huckin (discourse analysis), Richard Beach (experimental/descriptive research), and Robert Connors (historical study). Other researchers provide literature reviews of discipline-based approaches, such as Karen Shriver's discussion of the expanding cognitivist perspective which has undergone considerable change in the last decade, and Peter Mortensen's examination of the research traditions and theoretical perspectives related to recent studies of writing in classroom conference settings. A third group of researchers, rather than describing and reflecting upon specific research procedures, address broader political questions related to composition research and scholarship. Ruth Ray's essay on teacher-based research, and Patricia Sullivan's reflections on her participation in feminist reexaminations of received knowledge and texts, are two examples of "movement-based" discussions which interrogate the methodological status quo. The above essays constitute the first ten chapters of the book.

The final four chapters of the book have been assembled under the rubric of "Research Problems and Issues." These essays present four very diverse discussions of methodological issues related to different research traditions, from Keith Grant-Davie's highly focused examination of the complexities of coding data in empirical research (specifically, protocol analysis) to Gesa Kirsch's thoughtful analysis of the post-positivist, naturalistic assumptions that underlie much recent qualitative research. Also included in this section is Duane Roen and Robert Mittan's use of key concepts from the writings of Vygotsky and Bakhtin to frame a discussion of the strengths and limitations of collaborative research and writing. Lisa Ede's brief memoir of her development as a scholar in the context of a critical examination of key works on composition studies (Phelps, North) concludes the book. The editors apparently asked their contributors to write personal, anecdotal essays and reflections rather than traditional scholarly literature reviews. The result is that the strength of many of the essays in this collection lies in their informality. Donald Graves' catch phrase "warts and all," which he used to characterize his approach to naturalistic research and his nonacademic writing style, came to mind as I read many of these essays.

Although the collection is a bit uneven in the quality of its offerings, readers both old and new to the field will find much useful material. For this reason alone, I would recommend Methods and Methodology to a colleague interested in an up-to-date collection of essays that articulate critical questions related to the conduct of inquiry in composition studies. But beyond its breadth of perspective, Kirsch and Sullivan's collection has a special attraction for me. At the heart of the collection (for me, at least) is the vexing question, "What constitutes inquiry in a human science such as composition studies, institutionalized as it is in academic culture?" Ede argues, following Louise Phelps, that a more fitting teleos than the production of knowledge is phronesis, or practical wisdom, or that which emerges from "engaged and committed activity." Ruth Ray strikes the same chord in her essay on teacher research when she argues that "teacher researchers assert that much university-based research results in counterintuitive findings that are inappropriately applied to the classroom." This is a compelling argument, one that I have heard from a number of graduate students who were formerly public school teachers.

For many academics who teach undergraduate writing courses, part of the process of professionalism has involved becoming socialized into the role of producer of knowledge. In rhetoric and composition, as in most academic disciplines, this means becoming familiar with the issues in the field (and the history of those issues) and the questions/problems that are foregrounded in the disciplines various forums—in short, becoming acquainted with the current topoi of the discipline. Similarly, our professional forums such as CCC have changed, as well, as a result of the recent professionalization of the field. Authors' local narratives of what happened in their classrooms have been replaced by other genres: the research-based essay, the theory-laden interrogation of some current practice or perspective, the reflective and heavily-referenced "personal essay" by a well-known figure in the field. Thus, the institutionalization of composition studies as an academic discipline has brought with it the typified communicative forms, the use of which signifies membership in the broader academic tribe. Ironically, as the field has come of age, the first-person accounts representing local knowledge have been replaced by that which is non-local: the heavily intertextual genres that are the sine qua non of a knowledge-producing enterprise.

What I'm suggesting is that the question of "what kinds of inquiry count" is not an abstract one; to the contrary, "what counts" is directly tied to our brief history as an academic field, as are questions about "what counts as evidence" and "what counts as warrants for the claims we make." These questions also index complex socioeconomic and historical factors which function to problematize the calls for methodological pluralism made by Kirsch and Shriver in this collection.

Despite the above caveat, the strength of Methods and Methodology lies in the intense scrutiny of various methodologies that constitute the field of composition studies. The many readers that this collection of essays will attract should therefore appreciate the facility with which the editors balance the multiple perspectives and contradictory orientations of its contributors. We may not be one big happy family, but we are a reflective and articulate one.