Basic Plots

I had a dream last night that led me to a question about recycling basic plots in TV shows. When I woke up and thought about it a little, it led me to a Google search for "100 basic television plot lines". This led me to this blog entry and subsequently to Hatch's Plot Bank.

HPB could be used to develop a tool for classroom creative writing and for camp scriptwriting.
Some of the plots listed in it wouldn't be appropriate for kids, so a derivative would have to be developed.


The blog entry suggests that there is no definitive list of TV plots, but that several people have versions of it, including:

20 Master Plots (And How to Build Them) by Ronald B Tobias

1. Quest
2. Adventure
3. Pursuit
4. Rescue
5. Escape
6. Revenge
7. The Riddle
8. Rivalry
9. Underdog
10. Temptation
11. Metamorphosis
12. Transformation
13. Maturation
14. Love
15. Forbidden Love
16. Sacrifice
17. Discovery
18. Wretched Excess
19. Ascension
20. Descension

6 stories/plots according to Stephen King (From Secret Window, Secret Garden -
Four Past Midnight)

1. Success
2. Failure
3. Love and Loss
4. Revenge
5. Mistaken Identity
6. The search for a higher power, be it God or the Devil.

Literary Conflicts

1. Person vs. Self
2. Person vs. Person
3. Person vs. Society
4. Person vs. Nature/Environment
5. Person vs. Supernatural
6. Person vs. Machine/Technology

Christopher Booker's The Seven Basic Plots

1. Overcoming the Monster
2. Rags to Riches
3. The Quest
4. Voyage and Return
5. Comedy
6. Tragedy
7. Rebirth

Georges Polti's list of 36 is also mentioned. More on this later.

Recommended Book

Dr. S recommended this book for all qual researchers:

Qualitative Research and Evaluation Methods By Michael Quinn Patton

Notes from A's Class

structural analysis

• syllabication
• prefixes and suffixes
• compound words
• contractions

compare/contrast
re|cent
cor|ner
mo|ment

word recognition

• sight
• phonics
• structural analysis
• context clues

Ex. Teaching prefix sub
Start by brainstorming words that begin with sub

game with compound words
act out each part of the word
1 finger for first part
2 fingers for second part
sidewalk, runway

Teaching contractions
You are teaching them the role that the apostrophe plays in a word.
(Get the words out of the kids)
Do you have a million dollars?
I do not.
Oh, you speak so well. [Write it down.] You said 'do not'. Some of us are lazier than that. We say... [class answers 'don't']
Look at these two words.
How many letters are in the first word? How many are in the second? Which letter is missing? That's right, so that's where you put the apostrophe.

Practice getting words out of your friends' heads so that you can do it in front of kids.

Figure out what matters; the rest does not make a difference.

Reading levels

• independent level - easy reading; reader knows the words
  
• instructional level - 95/100 or 95% words read correctly
  
• frustration level - more than 5 words wrong out of 100; less than 70% on comprehension questions

If a kid is always taught at their frustration level, they aren't getting any better. A 1st grade kid taught at 1st grade level, when that's his frustration level, isn't going to progress.
All of the reading you do for pleasure is at your independent level. That's the biggest problem in reading in schools today; not necessarily the method. All kids should be taught at their instructional level.

Sharing pattern books.

Keep the kids engaged and you won't have behavior problems.
When you are planning lessons, keep the kids in mind. What are the kids doing at each part? What are they thinking?

Study now for the midterm.
Lesson plan due next week.

Genre Research Process So Far

For this lit review, I'm researching two main bodies of work:

1. genre as it pertains to literature and writing in school, and
   
2. genre as it pertains to films and filmmaking

To begin a search for published research in the first category, I manually searched article titles for the past ten years (1999-2008) of Reading Research Quarterly (RRQ) for references to genre. I then searched the same time period in Research in the Teaching of English (RTE). I chose the ten year span because I wanted to capture the most recent research on this topic. I plan to review the references in the articles captured through this search to identify seminal pieces from before the ten year period. RRQ and RTE are top tier education research journals and should contain references to other work that will pertain.

To begin a search on the second category, I spoke to the research librarian for education at the USF library. We tried several searches, refining down to a search using Google Scholar (Advanced: contains "genre" AND exact phrase "film studies", 1999-2008). One of the articles produced from that search is Mittell 2001, published in Cinema Journal. That article referenced a book, Film/Genre by Rick Altman, which Mittell identifies as the key work done in examining genre as a discursive practice. Mittell also refers to Jane Feuer's essay in Channels of Discourse as the "most comprehensive discussion of television genre theory".


From here, I will move forward from Mittell 2001 to see what subsequent works cite him and return to the original search results. I also may do a title search, similar to those done for RRQ and RTE, in Cinema Journal and another journal suggested by the earlier search results. I also have to continue tracking down resources for the literature/writing side of the lit review.

Defining Questions of Genre

At summer camp, we teach a lot of different aspects of film-making, and story-telling in general. One that I've considered but haven't yet included in any serious way is genre. I have a sense that genre is important in the creation and viewing of mainstream movies and that a better understanding of genre will help the kids in their productions. One group this summer made a classic heist movie. It occurred to me at the time, but I never had the opportunity to talk to them in any detail about this. Understanding that they were working within an established genre might have helped them make creative choices and might have given them a better understanding of how that particular kind of story works. A lot of movies made at the camp would fall into a horror or horror/comedy genre. Others fit the action/adventure genre. Many combine one genre with elements of parody, like the techniques seen in "Scary Movie", "Epic Movie", "Another Teen Movie", etc.

The second formative moment comes from an interview with one of the campers at the end of the week. In response to a question about making movies in school, he said that they don't make movies in school. Then he corrected, "well, unless it's like, a documentary."

Filmmaking constitutes a literacy skill that is newly accessible through digital video and computers. As filmmaking moves into schools, so far it takes the form of documentary films. Video is allowed, if you are creating a documentary about photosynthesis or the Civil War or some other content-area, documentary topic. That's great, but what about narrative?

Documentary filmmaking is analogous to expository writing. So, the analog to narrative filmmaking in the classroom would be narrative writing or creative writing. If we teach kids to write stories, why don't we teach them to tell stories with film? More to the point, why should we and how do we?

I began with the following questions and rationale:

Title: Genre in Film and Genre in the Classroom

Questions
What models of genre are used in the classroom with regards to reading? With regards to writing? What models of genre exist in the field of film studies? How are classroom deployments of genre similar to narrative film deployments of genre? How are they different? What concepts about filmic genre may be successfully ported over to classroom practice?

Rationale
Video production is becoming an accepted form for student productive behavior in the classroom. So far, most of that student-produced work takes the form of documentaries, i.e. a movie about the water cycle, a video report about Martin Luther King, Jr.

If video production is going to be an accepted form of literate production in the classroom, then the range of acceptable student work needs to expand to include narrative film production. If that is the case, classroom teachers need a framework to understand, teach, and evaluate narrative film production. Part of that framework involves genre.

A rich body of research and tradition of classroom practice involves the use of genre in literature and in writing. Genre is also a well-established construct in the field of film production. Finding the ways in which film genre and literature genre coincide and the ways in which they conflict is the first step in bringing a filmic understanding of genre into the classroom.

After a discussion with Dr. S about these topics, I narrowed the focus of my questions to look at two processes of composition and their models:

How is genre enacted in literature as a model for the writing process?
How is genre enacted in film as a model for the filmmaking process?

More Notes on Mittell

Mittell, J. (2001). A cultural approach to television genre theory. Cinema Journal 40, No. 3, pp. 3-24.

For my paper, I may need to look at film and television genre separately. I want to keep a value structure for importing ideas into the classroom that includes usefulness and practicality.

"Even the most comprehensive discussion of television genre theory, Jane Feuer's essay in Channels of Discourse, ultimately concludes that genre analysis does not work as well as a paradigm for television as it has for film or literature."

Mittell identifies this essay as a first step toward a more comprehensive theory of genre for television. I need to see

1. what follows this work by him
2. and what other work cites this essay
   

Mittell identifies three traditional approaches to genre analysis:

1. definitional - looking for core elements
2. interpretation through a theoretical lens
3. historical - looking at how genres shift over time, "evolutionary dynamics"

He locates one main weakness in most genre analysis as the view of genre as a "textual attribute", a "component of text". Instead, he argues persuasively that genre is not intrinsic to texts, but that it is dependent upon intertextual connections. "Genres emerge only from the intertextual relations between multiple texts, resulting in a common category." He gives many examples, one being "The Great Train Robbery", which was originally classified as a crime film, and years later as a western. The text did not change, but the cultural discourse did and so the genre definitions shifted. He also notes that only some characteristics are used to define genre, for instance, we don't make generic differentiations between TV shows set in different cities, but we do differentiate between shows set in hospitals versus those set in police stations. We cannot understand genre by looking at sh0ws in isolation; we must look at the entire community that creates the genre - including the TV industry, fans, critics, etc. "...(T)exts themselves are insufficient to understand how genres are created, merge, evolve, or disappear. We need to look outside the texts to locate the range of sites in which genres operate, change, proliferate, and die out." (p. 7)

Genres are not timeless and unchanging. "We need to look beyond the text a the locus for genre and instead locate genres within the complex interrelations among texts, industries, audiences, and historical contexts." (p. 7) Analyzing texts is necessary, but insufficient for understanding genre.

Mittell brings in Foucault's "discursive practices" and situates this essay theoretically in line with poststructuralism.

Mittell says that to analyze genre, we need to look at "what audiences and industries say about genres, what terms and definitions circulate around any given instance of genre, and how specific cultural concepts are linked to particular genres." (p. 8) He advocates decentering the text. Instead of seeing the text as a stable object, he sees texts as "sites of discursive practice". (p. 9). He mentions mapping generic discourses. He also brings social situation and power into the discussion.

Mittell acknowledges previous work on genre as a discursive process and cites Rick Altman's book Film/Genre as the key work, described as his "influential textualist semantic/syntactic theory of genre". Mittell contrasts his work with Altman's, saying that Altman still remains too bounded by the text.

"Altman convincingly argues that the film industry promotes multiple genres around any single movie to maximize audience appeals." (p. 10). I need to look for this specifically in Altman's book. This is important to understanding genre, I think. It's also interesting to consider this in light of the parody videos on YouTube, like "Scary Mary", that repackage familiar movies in different genres.


"... genres work as discursive clusters..." p. 11

Mittell's definition of genre:

"... genres are categorical clusters of discursive processes that transect texts via their cultural interactions with industries, audiences, and broader contexts."

Mittell gives a case study in genre analysis using Michael Jackson's music videos, Billie Jean, Beat It, and Thriller. He outlines how traditional approaches might look at the texts, then how he proposes genre should be examined. In his example, he identifies many cultural influences on the work that are essential and are unaccounted for in any examination of genre that stops at the boundaries of the text.

Mittell concludes with five principles of cultural genre analysis:

1. Genre analysis should be specific to the medium, i.e. don't use film genre theory for TV
2. Genre studies must balance between the general and the specific.
3. History of genre should take discourses into account.
4. Genres have to be understood by looking at how they tie into to the larger culture.
5. Genres have to be understood within hierarchies of power within culture.
   

Class notes- book talk

Class notes on book talk:

Language and Control in Children's Literature by Murray Knowles and Kirsten Malmkjaer

Examines how adults teach culture to children through children's literature

Identifies the mechanisms of control, such as dissimulation, euphemism, unification, fragmentation, reification, 

"Suspension of dissent", analogous to suspension of disbelief

Leech and Short, 1981

I wonder about the theoretical framework of this book.

-critical linguistics

Does it take a position on the use of language in children's books to spread culture?

In discussion, Dr. L recommends Shirley Brice Heath's Ways With Words (originally 1983).

Notes on Mittell 2001 A Cultural Approach to TV Genre Theory

Mittell, J. (2001). A cultural approach to television genre theory. Cinema Journal 40, No. 3, pp. 3-24.

This is a theoretical essay that advocates a cultural approach to genre theory as it applies to television.

"Industries rely on genres in producing programs... self-definition... scheduling... Audiences use genres to organize fan practices... personal preferences, and everyday conversations and viewing practices." p. 3

"Importing genre theories into television studies without significant revision creates many difficulties when accounting for the specifics of the medium." p. 3

He's talking about the inadequacy of importing film genre theory into television; the same hold for importing any media studies genre theories into classroom video practice.

Online Reading

Food for thought:

Mark Bauerlein's essay, "Online Literacy Is a Lesser Kind" from the chronicle of higher education.
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v55/i04/04b01001.htm

Will Richardson's blog entry, "Reading Online is Not Reading On Paper"
http://weblogg-ed.com/2008/reading-online-is-not-reading-on-paper/

Mark Federman's essay, "Why Johnny And Janey Can't Read, And Why Mr. And Ms. Smith Can't Teach: The challenge of multiple media literacies in a tumultuous time
http://individual.utoronto.ca/markfederman/WhyJohnnyandJaneyCantRead.pdf

Note Will Richardson's subsequent blog post where he clarifies some points:
http://weblogg-ed.com/2008/color-me-embarrassed/

None of this seems to take into account the really interesting work being done by the UConn New Literacies people:
http://www.newliteracies.uconn.edu/

Notes on A's class

Umbrella example - difference between looking and focusing

Balancing umbrella

Using die mind reading trick

I'm showing you that it's all about focus.

You've got to get the students impressed with their mental capabilities. Dots are called pips.

Make a configuration of four pips. Now put a fifth pip. Raise your hand if put that fifth dot somewhere other than the middle.

quincunx

spell it for them

How many letters?

How many syllables?

Magic fingers, spell it in the air.

If you have three babies, you have _

If you have four babies, you have _

If you have five babies, you have _

quin - means five.

What letter does it start with ?

WHat's next?

How can you make a u into an n?

How many n's were in it? How many u's are in it?

What letters dropped out?

Make students pay attention to the distinctive features of a word.

I'm forcing you to pay attention; i'm not telling you. Tellers belong in banks. You are a teacher. You are activating their minds. Making them do things with it in their heads.

To teach a word by sight, the cardinal principle is this:

Never teach a child to read a word that is not already in the child's head.

What's teh first thing I did with quincunx? I made sure that you knew what it was. Next, I forced you to pay attention to its distinctive features. Use as many of the modalities as possible. Then there needs to be reinforcement.

Can you think of 3 or 4 or 5 things that I did to do that? Write them down.

What letter am I covering up?

What else? I could cut the letters up. Ask repeating letters.

Can you use design on your paper to make an x by connecting dots? And that's the last letter in the word.

The eyes looking is not mental. You need their minds engaged.

Reinforcement can be Word Wall, Puzzle, games (remember games you played as a child - go fish, etc.).

Word recognition

There is no one way. We're all different.

Sight words - What and why -  Fry, Dolch, high-frequency word list. These 300 words make up 65 - 66% of the words you will ever need to read. First 100 words, 1st grade. 2nd hundred, 2nd grade. 3rd hundred, 3rd grade. These basic sight words should be mastered by third grade. No reason for every third grader not to know these words. A word a day is not difficult. But, if you don't have any type of plan, it won't get accomplished. Kids will get out of third grade not knowing these words. Make a plan. Get with the other teachers. Make sure that first grade teachers make sure all kids know these 100 words. 

Can you see all the names on a spreadsheet? Can you see all the words listed off? Can you see making small groups for activity so that you can check off on that spreadsheet?

Put the words on cards. Shuffle the cards. Make it a game. Flip a card. If you know the word, you get the card. If not, it's mine. What's the score? It's simple. It's a game. And when I'm done, I have all of the cards I know I need to work on.

Think about schools. It's reading time, take out your books. And they do lessons, and they're nice lessons, but at the end of the day, are you absolutely sure that your kids have learned?

Make sure that you teach them:

• They are common. (highlighter, newspaper activity)
  
• Many of them are phonetically irregular. (home, raid - rules of phonics. o in come, a in said - phonetically irregular). How many of you have a friend named Jennifer? Do you ever call her Jen? How about Elizabeth? Liz? A long vowel is long because it takes longer to say an a than it takes to say a short vowel. That's why we call them long vowels. Now... we are basically lazy. Over the years we have taken words that have long vowels and we have shortened them. We are lazy. The most frequently used words tend to be irregular because we have shortened them. Write the word TOME. It's a big book. How often do you use the word TOME. Infrequent, so it kept the long sound. How about SOME? We use that all the time, so it's shortened vowel sound.
• Allows them to make use of context clues.

Can you teach any word by sight? Yes. I taught you.

What? Why? How? Study by that.

Phonics

What is it? phoneme-grapheme correspondence

Phoneme - smallest unit of sound

Grapheme - smallest unit of written text

You are putting a sound to a letter.

Here's the problem: How many letters do we have? 26. It would be easy if we had one to one, but in English, we have 44 sounds. That's why English is hard to learn. 

Kids - learning ABCs. You know the word alphabet. Have you made the connection that the word alphabet is from the Greek letters for a and b.

Why do we teach phonics? 

1. Our language is phonetic. Some aren't.
   
2. It's an independent means for students to learn words.
   

We have 26 letters, divided into vowels and consonants. What is a vowel? Has to do with the way we make the sound. 

a, e, i, o, u, sometimes y, w

Open your mouth. Let's do long a to short a, all the way down to u.

Now let's do it with consonants. Starting with B. Let's go. Did you keep your mouth open? You were supposed to keep it open.

A vowel is a sound produced by an unobstructed flow of air. 

What is a consonant?

Now I want you to write down what a consonant is. You're smart now.

Now what is it?

A consonant is a sound produced by an obstructed flow of air.

What are these obstructions? l sound, tongue and roof of mouth, th = tongue and teeth

Season after Fall = winter. Mouth is closed, w is a consonant.

White stuff that falls during winter up north = snow; mouth is open, it's a vowel.

Yellow, y is a consonant.

By, y is a vowel.

Every syllable must have a vowel sound. Otherwise, nothing would come out of your mouth. The vowels allow the sound to come out.

Spelling test: who can spell rhythm. There are two syllables, two vowel sounds, even though only one vowel.

Remember when you learned how to tell when to add s and when to add es to make something plural.

tax

Plural is taxes, two syllables.

key

Plural is keys, one syllable, no e

Build grapheme tree

Show them GHOTI

Between the lions

Phonogram 

What? a unit of sound made up of an onset and a rime. Also called word families.

Why?

1. When you learn one, you learn many
   
2. It circumvents the need to teach the vowel rules.
   
3. It's fun. They are rhymes. The brain is wired to enjoy rhymes.
   

Game - word family, win - lose - or draw

dice, mice, slice, rice

Yall are much happier now than when we were talking about digraphs and diphthongs. Diphthongs don't do it for you. You like phonograms.

There are rules of phonics but we don't use them. Why do we insist that kids learn them?

ab is a phonogram. If I have ab, I can have slab, stab, blab, grab, tab, nab, crab, dab... when you learn one word, you learn 10-15 other words.

ack gives us back, flack, track, stack, sack, tack... it takes us pretty far, so teach it.

five - hive, live, dive, thrive, strive, arrive, jive

bed - fed, Ted, red, shred, shed, bled, not dead or tread (Don't confuse them by using words that aren't in the word family)

Two weeks from today, word recognition lesson due. Easiest thing: a phonic element. Mini-lesson, small group. You could do the BL blend. You could do a phonogram, like a ake word family. 

First, select the element you are going to teach.

Second, come up with words that contain that element.

Third, from those words, choose one as a theme word. (For instance, you are teaching TR blends, may choose the word TRAIN. That gives you a theme. Can't you see a train going in a tunnel? It makes your lesson more interesting - spices it up.

Fourth, get the words that I want to teach from the students heads. (Remember, never teach them a word they don't already have in their heads.)

Fifth, get the students to determine what they have in common.

Sixth, bring in other BL words. Let them see that they all sound the same.

Seventh, a game or activity to reinforce it. 

Example, big blazer velcro words to it. Or blue blanket, they reach under and feel things under it, maybe a block. Think about universals to get their attention. 

Next week, structural analysis, context clues, get you ready for lesson due in 2 weeks.

Structural analysis

Context clues - look at all the words around it, figuring out what the unknown word is.

Rosenblatt Chapter 6

In the space of a few pages in chapter six, Rosenblatt has touched on so many themes I've been working through over the past few semesters. Chapter 6 starts with some observations about how much the world has changed, which seem dated. Eventually, she comes to a discussion of science and the artificial divide between literature/the humanites and science. She's on the other side of the wall from Krulwich. He says science is poorer without story. She says the study of literature is poorer without science, and that science has gotten a bum rap about being necessarily dry and unfeeling. She criticizes the adoption of physics as a model for social sciences. She criticizes an over-reliance on behaviorism.

She also talks about art and the role of the artist in communication.

She also talks about the inescapable subjectivity of research and the need for researchers to interrogate their own cultural biases and agendas.

Complexity

On a recent mini-episode of Radio Lab, Robert Krulwich presented a recent speech at Cal-tech. He implored the audience of future scientists to talk about science to the non-scientists in their lives. He told the story of Newton who published his most important work in the most dense, academic language possible. Newton, according to Krulwich, did this intentionally to eliminate the need to talk to non-scientists about his work. He didn't want to be bothered by questions from people who weren't working on his level. Krulwich contrasts this approach with that of Galileo, who certainly could have chosen to publish his work showing that the sun, rather than the Earth, was at the center of the solar system in scholarly Latin. Instead Galileo chose to put his ideas in a story about friends on a vacation, discussing theories. And he wrote it in Italian so that everyone could understand what he was saying. He wanted to reach a wide audience. He succeeded, and, of course, was placed under house arrest and called a heretic for his ideas.

So the other day, I read a piece by Patti Lather and I found it very difficult to comprehend. On the second reading, I started to get it and then got the feeling that after a few more readings and more work, it would start to become more clear to me. This work is full of dense terminology with complex meanings that have to be painstakingly unpacked before beginning to make sense. For Lather, the payoff is there. When I put in the work, I got a lot out of it. My colleagues are all big fans of Lather, and J explained that Lather uses that language to limit her audience. "If you want to understand what I have to say, you're going to have to work for it", she seems to be saying.

Lather is being like Newton and I think that this question of representation must be a common, if not universal, one for scholars. Do I want to be understood by the masses? Or by the elite few who have the intellect or the patience?

It's a question of accessibility. The question exists for artists too and I wonder if it is the same question. Sondheim, for instance, is difficult at first. He's not going for "easy" and he's not going for "common". But I love Sondheim's work and it's not because his work is difficult. Once you get your brain around it, there is beauty in the complexity of his use of language and music. I don't think his motivation is like Newton's. Or maybe it is. Maybe Krulwich is selling Newton short. Maybe Newton wasn't willing to compromise his vision to make it more easily comprehensible. Saying something using different words is saying something different.

This also reminds me of a classic Radio Lab episode that included a story about the public reaction to Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. When it was first performed, the music was so difficult, radical, so unlike anything that had come before that there was a literal riot at its debut. One year later, it was met with accolades, and within a few decades it was so non-radical that it was included in the score of Disney's Fantasia. In that episode, Jad and Robert explain that our brains are incredibly good at finding patterns and that music is all about patterns. Given this, something that initially sounds shocking will always eventually sound normal. Look at the initial establishment reaction to jazz, to rock, to punk, to metal, to anything. Initially, people get upset, but eventually our brains tame the material and we "get" it.

Is the same true with non-musical ideas? If I read Einstein enough, will my brain work it out? If so, maybe we just don't spend enough time dwelling on scientific concepts for our brains to work them out.

I don't know, but I'd love to ask a scientist and a composer to have a conversation about it.

Notes on Leander and Rowe 2006 Rhizomatic

Mapping Literacy Spaces in Motion: A Rhizomatic Analysis of a Classroom Literacy Performance
Kevin M. Leander and Deborah Wells Rowe
Reading Research Quarterly, Vol. 41, No. 4 (Oct. - Dec. 2006), pp. 428-460
International Reading Association
Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/4151813 on 9/14/08.

This paper outlines an alternative way to describe and evaluate literacy performances in the classroom - rhizomatic analysis.

1. Research Questions
In this article, Leander and Rowe are exploring alternative ways of conceptualizing literacy practice. Looking at literacy in a representative way emphasizes stability and continuity. They posit that literacy is much more interactive, fluid, and creative than can be captured in a traditional representation. To this end, they draw upon Deleuze and Guattari's (1987) conception of rhizomatic analysis and use it to analyze a single literacy performance.

2. Subjects, Setting, Context
The researchers analyzed video recordings from a large collection of recordings of classroom performances. They sought methods of representing what they found.


Other Comments
A performance can be mapped and would resemble a map of a large root system. There are larger roots which seem to signify some orderly organization and some segmentation. Then there are many other roots that shoot off in seemingly random directions, criss-crossing and providing multiple points of departure. If this is applied to a classroom literacy performance, lines of segmentarity are those that seem to carry the idea of structure (like the introduction, following an outline, anything that is conventional and predictable) and lines of flight are the many criss-crossing other roots.
Rhizomatic analysis is primarily concerned with the movement of ideas and the interaction of concepts and bodies, not in defining and organizing meaning.

Rhizomes in this context are an analogy to rhizomes in nature. Rhizomatic relations are seen in roots, particularly things like crabgrass that grow in every direction at once. They are contrasted with arborescent, or tree-like, relations that are hierarchical.

Key Concepts
multiplicity
connection
heterogeneity
asignifying ruptures
lines of flight
lines of segmentarity
assemblage
deterritorialization

Notes on Marsh 2006, Pop Culture in the Literacy Curriculum

Popular culture in the literacy curriculum: A Bourdieuan analysis
Jackie Marsh
University of Sheffield, Sheffield, England

Reading Research Quarterly, Vol. 41, No. 2 (Apr. - Jun. 2006), pp. 160-174
Published by International Reading Association
Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/pss/4151728 on 9/14/08.
----

1. Research Questions
1) "What are the beliefs and practices
of preservice teachers with regard to the use of popular-culture and media texts in the primary literacy curriculum?"
2) "How do structural and agentic elements shape the dynamic between these beliefs and practices?"

2. Subjects, Setting, Context
This longitudinal study looked at the attitudes, beliefs, and practices of preservice teachers in regards to the inclusion of pop culture in the literacy curriculum. Marsh uses a theoretical lens based on the work of sociologist Pierre Bourdieu to examine how the agency of the teachers was limited by the institutional stance on pop culture.
18 teacher education students were interviewed over the course of their 3 year program. Responses of 3 students were analyzed.

3. Procedures (briefly)
Group and individual interviews were conducted. Transcripts were coded using inductive coding. Validity was enhanced by having dyads of students independently code samples. The coded data were then organized into concepts.

4. Findings
1) Student teachers may be excited about the idea of incorporating popular culture texts into the classroom, but they are pressured to conform to norms of the school structure and not include these texts.
2) Teachers capitulate to the values of the structure that has become habitus for them and that is reinforced throughout.

5. Strengths and Weaknesses of Study
All of the data are based on self-report from the participants. Although member checks were performed, this remains the strongest limitation of the study.

6. Implications
More work needs to be done on the inclusion of popular culture texts in the classroom. There seems to be a disconnect between the vision the field of education has about what are appropriate texts for children and the actual texts that are present in the lives of children outside of school today.

7. Other Comments
Bourdieu believed that structures, such as a school curriculum, impose the sociocultural values of one unfairly advantaged group over all other groups in a society and that individuals within such a system can comply (passively or actively) or resist the reconstruction of the dominant value system.

In Marsh's section titled "Restricted beliefs and practices", the author discusses teacher concerns about the inclusion of popular culture texts in the classroom because of what is perceived as non-age-appropriate content. That section also discusses teacher anxiety over technological innovation and invokes the Freudian concept of the "uncanny" to explain this unease. This section applies to the tension that the counselors and I experience during the summer camp because of the inclusion of popular culture texts.

Notes on Zines for Social Justice

Zines for Social Justice: Adolescent Girls Writing on Their Own
Barbara J. Guzzetti and Margaret Gamboa
Reading Research Quarterly, Vol. 39, No. 4 (Oct. - Dec., 2004), pp. 408-436
Published by: International Reading Association
Retrieved electronically on 9/13/08 from http://www.jstor.org/stable/4151741

This is an important study for our work with Fast Literacies because of its theoretical framework and research design. It contributes to broadening understandings of the relationship between in-school and out-of-school literacy practices. The theoretical framework also includes gender and identity formation.

1. Research Questions
1) What influences and enables adolescent girls in writing zines that promote social justice and refute stereotypical notions of how gender, sexuality, class, and race should be performed?
2) How do these adolescents develop and use literacy practices to form and express their identities?

2. Subjects, Setting, Context
The subjects were three adolescent women (AP students) who write and publish a 'zine. Data collection occurred at and near a high school.

3. Procedures (briefly)
Case study - "complete study of a bounded and integrated system". Did not look at writing process; only considered the writers, their content, and their motivation. Data collection included formal and informal interviews, observations, artifact collection (including the zines, in-school writing samples, photos of bedrooms and workspaces, influential music), open-ended questionnaires, field notes, and structured focus groups. Member checks were conducted with participants.
Data were analyzed using constant comparison. Trustworthiness established. Established "warrants" for assertions. Sought outside perspectives from other researchers.

4. Findings
1) The participants were influenced and motivated by a punk rock DIY ethic and feminist and progressive beliefs. They were supported by their middle class status, their race (white), and the technology tools used for publication.
2) The participants violated writing rules and expectations of in-school writing and chose topics freely based on interest. They borrowed from and responded to popular culture forms.

5. Strengths and Weaknesses of Study
This study adds to the breadth of adolescent literacy practices described in research. It provides a rich description of this particular case. The study is not generalizable to any other population and should not be interpreted too broadly in its implications for other students. The participants are all white, middle class or higher, and female.

6. Implications
The authors conclude (with the assent of all involved) that zines should not become writing assignments in the classroom. This kind of sanctioning would fundamentally change the nature of the writing. Instead, they recommend teachers adopt more opportunities for choice in writing topics, genres, etc., and that teachers adopt the "ethos" of zines. They also recommend more opportunities for ungraded writing and unshared writing.


7. Other Comments

"Why is it important to study why and how adolescents produce and consume zines as a literacy practice? There are two reasons offered by literacy researchers. First, as Donna Alvermann and Allison Heron (2001) noted, it is important for teachers to become aware of how students use literacies to form and represent their identities, to construct meaning, and to pursue their own interests. If teachers can become aware of who their students really are, and what motivates them to read and write, and learn how adolescents develop, practice, and refine their literacies outside of school, educators will be better equipped to connect those out-of-school literacy practices to the work students do in school. " p. 411

Research cited to show that students of both genders tend to write in gender-stereotypical ways: Burdick, 1997; Christie, 1995; Dyson, 1997; Kamler, 1994; MacGillivray & Martinez, 1998

"Susan Hunt (1995) discovered that adolescent males were more likely to write about philosophical questions, adventures, and social problems, while female students were more likely to write about relationships." p. 412

Research cited to show that some girls write against stereotype and cultural expectations: Blair, 1996; Christie, 1995; Guzzetti, Young, Gritsavage, Fyfe, & Hardenbrook, 2002.

As part of their theoretical framework, the authors cite Gee 1996 and Street 1994 to establish a sociocultural perspective on literacy as more than technical reading and writing. They also cite Scribner & Cole 1981 to establish that students' beliefs about purposes and value of literacy shape how they learn and practice literacy.

The authors' theoretical frame include identity construction (Bakhtin), d/Discourse (Gee), and gender (including Lather, Heath). This theoretical frame would be useful to examine in greater detail in any study dealing with gender representations at the camp.

Brief Notes on Rosenblatt Sections 1 & 2

Section 1: The Province of Literature

Chapter 1: The Challenge of Literature

Literature should be viewed as a living context, without limitations of any particular lens. "...the teaching of literature necessarily involves helping the student handle social, psychological, and ethical concepts"

Chapter 2: The Literary Experience

Reading is transactional. Understanding does not exist on the page or in the head, but in the space between. While understanding the author, the literary movement, the time period, etc., are important, it's ultimately about a transaction between the author and the reader. The reader has to have sufficient life experience to understand what the author is trying to communicate.

Section 2: The Human Basis of Literary Sensitivity

Chapter 3: The Setting for Spontaneity

The relationship between the teacher and students that allows productive interchange with literature.

Chapter 4: What the Student Brings to Literature

Preoccupations and needs the adolescent brings to literature.

Chapter 5: Broadening the Framework

Clarifying the student's response to literature; the kinds of knowledge that will contribute to understanding.

Life Online

I read a great article this morning about the peculiarities of life online.

NY Times article

The article hints at how our participation in sites like Twitter and Facebook change our behavior. While a person may have the same number of strong ties, technology is allowing us to have a great many more weak ties. According to the article, more weak ties make us more able to solve problems. There are many upsides and downsides explored in the article, but I think that it's clearly not a matter of individual choice. The great societal ouija board is moving toward more access to the personal information of more people. Individuals may choose to opt out, but there is a cost, and that cost is increasing. People my age and older may be a lot less uncomfortable about publishing their lives, but a lot of younger people are a lot more at ease living in the digital spotlight. I also think that privacy is largely an illusion these days, so even if you think you  are flying under the radar, you are fooling yourself.

A's Class, after the break

Notes from A's class

Pattern Book Lesson

* First, describe who you are teaching.

(Highlight ESOL adaptations. Pattern book lessons by nature are good for ESOL students.)

Title of the book

Describe the environment. (Env. is important. Most of you can remember where you were when you were read to.

Using Rosie's Walk. Hook them, start engaging them. (Maybe where overalls.)

That book is one sentence. What's the pattern? (across yard, around haystack, under beehives) What's the theme? being on a farm.

Have a theme; brings life to your party. Have nice extra touches. When you have a theme, you think of these extra things. Without the theme, you don't.

Back to Rosie's walk. Maybe a matching activity post-reading, to match those nouns with the prepositions. They may not know what a mill is. So maybe bring in a bag of flour, build that schema. Rosie also goes under the beehives. Bring in honey, show them the process on the computer.

When I see flour and honey, I think of cooking. Maybe the cooking is in the post-reading section. Let's get some math in there. Make biscuits, cut them in halves, cut them in fourths. In the end, in the celebration, we're going to have biscuits and honey. They're going to know where everything came from. Get them thinking about where the things that they eat come from. That gets them to be thinkers. That's not on the Sunshine State Standards, but it's what's important.

Rosie the hen is a female animal. I might have a bulletin board of female animals. Female deer is a doe. Female horse is a mare. I'm increasing their schema. Not for this book, but in general.

Reading

We'll have about 4 readings. With each reading, add a layer, and a modalities.

First reading, working on conventions of print, moving my finger from left to right.

Second reading, I want to get the words into the kids' head. (One way is rhythm. Book lends itself to what to do  in each reading. Could be getting kids to fill the picture word.)

Third reading, get the kinesthetic in, and some repetition. Make each of the preposition into a hand motion. Let the kids decide the movement for each one.

Reading four, they are reading it using the labels and acting it out in class.

Sequence

Day 1: Pre-reading and first reading (maybe 20 min)

Day 2: Review pre-reading, add something new (maybe teach them the word oblivious). Reading 2.

Day 3: Reading 3, reading 4. Maybe bring in blue celophane and make a pond. Bring in stuff each day to make something else. Print the words on the floor. Soon you'll have them acting out the book. 

Day 4: Post

Day 5: Post

Story about teacher with neighbor kid:

"We've been working at it for a long time." To be successful with kids, it needs to feel like fun, not work.

Post-reading

Next week

Second thing: make use of the arts. 

Third thing: food.

Integrate curriculum.

Let's say you do the apple tasting. Tie in math, in the shapes you cut or the fractions. Tie in science - taste buds, etc., social studies, etc.

If it has a seed in it, it's a fruit.

I want them to learn Mozart. Don't limit them based on when you learned something. When you feel you are losing them, say this, "I'm going to tell you something that you're not supposed to learn until fourth grade. Don't tell anybody that I'm teaching you this in first grade." They will want to share that with others, their parents.

PRODUCT

find letters that make

PROUD

You want them to have pride in what you've taught them.

Enrich your lessons.

Why shouldn't all children have an enriched curriculum? Don't make it just the basics for them.

A's Class

Notes from A's class:

Began by reading from fun facts cards. Reminds me of a segment from a talk show. This occurred while people were arriving.

Sets goal for today: review, get you ready for Pattern Book lesson, due in 2 weeks.

Review of C-L-R. Model is drawing of head with C & L in it and a children's book sitting on top of it. Refer to new document on Bb that reviews cuing systems for each area. Good readers rely on syntactic and semantic, not graphophonic. Proved that by "Oxford study" text on screen and by exercise with "Forty years ago today, Martin Luther King gave his famous I have a dream speech..."

To make you use semantic and syntactic, take away graphophonic. That's teaching. Teaching is not telling. If you want to be a teller, go work at a bank.

Teaching is changing behavior.

Help kids read with expression by demonstrating it. You can't just tell, you must teach. Those of you who've been around kids and pools, how well does it work to just tell them to slow down and not run. That doesn't work. Many of you have had too many teachers who are tellers, so you think that's what teaching is.

The other thing from last week was the relationship between the language arts. Last week, I drew the diagram. This week, I'm just saying the words and motioning. I'm transferring it to your brain. (Review, what's the relationship b/t listening and speaking? etc.) 

Want kids to be able to express themselves. Teaching is changing.

We also talked about modalities. Wrote on back, forced her to use tactile and kinesthetic, could not use auditory, visual, etc.

Helen Keller had many teachers (let's not call them teachers, because her behavior didn't change). Along came Annie Sullivan, her teacher was Grace Fernauld. Together they came up with the VAKT method - visual, auditory, kinesthetic, tactile.  That famous scene, using all of the pathways, breakthrough. Once you open up one of those pathways, the others will open up. Clogged drain analogy.

Modalities are very important when you are teaching. Use all of them, as much as you can.

New topic of the day: Emergent literacy

We're going to start with young children, and I'll teach you how to teach them, then we'll move all the way up to 6th grade. Structure of course.

Emerge = morpheme

Two plots of land, growing flowers. One gets fertilizer, testing, planning, pull weeds. Both get sun and water. 

Ask about process of making literacy notebook. Ask about stories that they got from parents. Favorite book that you liked to read every day - your emergent stage.

If you don't remember learning to read, it's because it just happened naturally. How many of you were read to as a child?

Call out stories from crowd. How do I remember your stories? What does mem mean?

Reading highway analogy.

What is your schema?

Highway 4310, which way does it go? East-west, because it ends in an even number.  Odd numbered highways run north-south. When should kids learn that? Teach them this when they learn even and odd numbers. It's simple to learn. It makes you start thinking. You are trying to create learners and thinkers. You'll see a highway and think about which direction it runs.

Places cars on reading highway. We don't want the kids who are just learning to drive, on the reading highway. They are on the on-ramp. When you are going onto the highway, you have to merge. e-merge-nt. We want to help them get ready to merge. If they go in too soon, what will happen? They'll crash. Then they'll need a tow truck. It's not right to be a failure at 5 years old. When you fail, you feel like a failure. The moment they are not sure and you feel like they are not getting it, back off. Make sure they are ready to succeed. How do we make sure they are ready? C & L. Talk to them about lots and lots of things. Read to them on a regular basis. Teach them the letters of the alphabet, and sounds with letters. 

Google "phonemic awareness".

I'm thinking of a word that rhymes with small. It begins with a b, my word is...

I'm thinking of a word that rhymes with cat. It begins with a b, my word is...

That makes you feel successful.

Should be natural to learn at the emergent stage. Letters on refridgerator. Playing rhyming games.

Story about student program at church; emergent literacy. Bradley, student in LA, poor child from cotton fields. Teacher said Bradley would disrupt the whole program. I know that students who will try to disrupt the whole program because he's frustrated. You're asking him to drive on the highway, and he's just on the on-ramp. Don't judge them, don't label them, meet them where they are.

On the emergent ramp, I want them to have a store of about 50 words that they can read. Helpful to know initial sounds. (Put ball and boy together. Put together things that begin with a T). Conventions (or concepts) of print.

You'll meet some kids that are on this ramp that should not be taught to read yet because they don't have all of this stuff. That's where your pattern book lesson comes in.

Bring in pattern book next week so that I can make sure you have a book that will work. 

Repetitive syntax

Consistent theme

May have rhyming pattern

Look for a book that the kids will have memorized after 3 or 4 times

Teaching concepts of print (left to right, top to bottom)

How to do this:

Come up with a catchy syntactic phrase

Get a theme

Add a rhyming word

Suggest not Dr. Suess

Wonderful to read to children

Not wonderful to teach them to read

- Long (64 pages)

- Words spread all over and around page

- Made up words

Brown Bear, Very Hungry Caterpillar

Could be colors, days of the week, opposites, etc.

You could make your own book. 

Lesson format: Pre-reading, reading, post-reading.

No objectives, because I know what the objectives are.

Pre-reading: Activate schemata. (May need to develop schemata). Create interest.

Check to make sure that they have the necessary schema. Focus on cognitive and linguistic. (If they don't, you are setting them up for failure. It should be a slam dunk for the kid, if you are doing your job right.) 

T-ball analogy. We know that kids at that age aren't equipped to hit the ball. So we...

Tricycle analogy. We know they can't balance a bicycle, so we set them up for success by having three wheels. Move to bicycle with training wheels.

For a pattern book lesson, the training wheels are the repetitive patterns. They will feel like they are reading - we know they are not. But they feel like they are.

Validity in Qualitative Research

Schneider, J. (1999). "I said that on purpose": Using Paranoid Validity to Examine the Researcher and Researcher Effects. Journal of Research in Education, vol. 9, no. 1.

Lather, P. (2007). (Post) Critical Feminist Methodology: Getting Lost. Paper presented at AERA, Chicago, 2007.

Golafshani, N. (2003). Understanding Reliability and Validity in Qualitative Research. The Qualitative Report, vol. 8, no. 4, December 2003, 597-607.

What does validity mean in a qualitative study? What happens when the researcher begins to see herself reflected in the data?

There's a bias of hard science that says that data should be pure, that the researcher must be unbiased. It's a kind of mysophobia that wants to wall off data from infection.

But is that really possible in qualitative research? Is objectivity really possible whenever humans are involved?

Schneider posits paranoid validity.

Schneider conducted a qualitative study of the relationships between writing instruction and writing practice in an elementary classroom. This paper does not present the results of that study. This paper examines the interaction between the researcher and the researched and questions the many ways the researcher can become the data. She conducted long-term observations in the classroom and attempted to become invisible, or at least well camouflaged. She does not succeed. The reader is led through her initial discomfort with the realization of her own effect on the classroom to a deeper understanding of the challenges of field studies for qualitative research in education. Her observations are frank and honest and immediately ring true. This is a wonderful article. Every qualitative researcher should write an article like this after finishing a study. If Sondheim did educational research, he might write something like this.

I'm going to need to read Patti Lather again, as well as a good amount of other background reading in order to discuss her paper. I like it, but a lot of the language went over my head. I need some time to unpack those terms. I'm intrigued by Lather's description of Pam Bettis' and Natalie Adams 2003 feminist deconstruction, Cheerleading! An American Icon. That's going on my Christmas list for a friend. Lather describes a move toward less definite knowledge, more tentative, "the ambiguity of constancy and variation as a sustainable orientation".

Great Quote from Barry

On p. 19 of Barry:

"And as Keats said, 'we distrust literature which has a palpable design upon us', that is, literature which too obviously wants to convert us or influence our views."

House 2007 Computers and Reading Achievement

House, J. (2007). Relationships between computer use and reading achievement of elementary-school students: Results from the PIRLS 2001. International Journal of Instructional Media, vol. 34 (4).

PIRLS is the Progress in International Reading Study conducted  in 2001. House has published a series of articles analyzing data from the PIRLS. This article examines statistical relationships between a student's use of computers and performance on the PIRLS reading comprehension test.

My first question is about the PIRLS test itself. There isn't enough detail in this article to know how valid and reliable the PIRLS is, but I want to know how they defined reading comprehension and how they constructed the instrument used to measure the students. What were the reading passages and where did they come from? House mentions the selection process for the schools and classrooms, but I wonder if different regions of the country were represented. I don't know that it would make a difference in the results, but I am curious if it was a consideration.

So, the reading comprehension of 3,385 students was assessed using a test booklet containing two reading blocks, and, presumably, questions about the text. The students were also asked where and how much they use computers. House used several statistical procedures (most of which are currently way beyond me) to compare the data.

The results were mixed. Students who use computers more frequently at home also scored higher on the test. However, students who used the computer for writing, scored lower on the test. House notes several studies with results that are consistent with his and several studies with results that are inconsistent with his results.

I think that these studies are likely measuring different things. There are a number of factors that differentiate the quality of computer use that are not considered in this study. The statements about computer use on the assessment were: "I use the computer at home."; "I use the computer at school."; "I use the computer in some other place." That doesn't give a meaningful level of information about what is happening. "Using a computer" is far too general an activity to be meaningful for research. If I use an oven for three hours and you use an oven for three hours, we're not necessarily going to end up with the same cake.

My second concern is about a presumption of causation. House didn't go there, but others easily could. "Oh, using a computer more at home improves reading ability. So to help kids read, they should use the computer at home." No, no, no, no. What if that correlation is just that? Maybe a higher level of home computer use just signifies a more affluent home, and a more affluent home means more access to early text experiences, or a higher level of parental academic achievement, and one of those things causes the reading comprehension gains. If that's the case, just increasing home computer use won't help reading achievement at all. It would just cost a lot of money and could end up depleting resources that could be used to impact reading ability.

Stats-a-gogo

Last night was the first full, regular night of Stats 1. The pace was very slow, even, and steady. It was comforting. Dr. K is very soothing. He makes you feel like everything is comprehensible. And so far, nothing has been too surprising. In fact, most of what we've covered so far, I taught in fourth grade math in the not-too-distant past. People had difficulty grasping a stem-and-leaf plot last night, and I wanted to say that it is in the fourth grade curriculum, but thought better of it. Besides, it's not that it's difficult. Stem-and-leaf plots look like some kind of game when you first see them... something closer to sodoku than to statistics. It's difficult to see why they would be useful.

We were constructing each of the graphs from the data by hand last night. Of course, most of the time, we'll be using computers to build graphs, but I think it's important to build them by hand to begin with in order to get a strong conceptual understanding. 

So, there was a lot of refresher for me last night. The one thing that I learned - and it's a little embarrassing to acknowledge that I didn't realize this before - is the hierarchical nature of the levels of measurement. I knew the attributes of each level, but I didn't get that each successive level has all of the attributes of the previous levels. Nominal only tells you difference. Ordinal tells you difference and sequence. Interval tells you difference, sequence, and distance between points. Ratio tells you difference, sequence, distance between points, and distance from an observable zero point.

Although necessarily slow paced, the class went until after 9 PM. I wonder if the pace will increase throughout the semester. I hope that, as things get more complex, the pace continues to be slow. Lots of homework for next week... and I have to figure out why SAS dumped my data.

Discussion of Risko, et al.

The level of rigor and scrutiny described in this study is impressive, daunting, and inspiring. When I imagine something that I've written under this level of scrutiny, I shudder. Every time I thought they had taken their analysis of the studies as far as they could, they would back up and come at them a different way. Each decision that they made seems to be arrived at through careful and logical evaluation of the needs of the study. I would have liked for them to say, "and here's how we screwed up..." just to make them appear a little more human.

Of course, I'm also so grateful that they (a) did this analysis, and (b) published their procedures in such incredible detail. I have the feeling I'll be using Risko, et al., as a model for research for years to come.

Interestingly, the researchers note the lack of historical context provided in the studies they reviewed. I am interested in the progression of ideas through time and in contextualizing the work of individual researchers. I would be interested in doing some kind of paper that examined the relationships between different researchers' work, or perhaps tracing the movement of ideas across time.

Part 3 - Risko, et al.

Part 3 - Risko, V., Roller, C., Cummins, C., Bean, R., Block, C., Anders, P., Flood, J. (2008). A Critical Analysis of Research on Reading Teacher Education

Method for Data Analysis

Most of the studies were qualitative. The researchers applied "an inductive paradigmatic analysis process (Polikinhorne, 1995)" to analyze the remaining 82 studies.

They first categorized the studies by classifying details, events, and situations - producing 7 categories. Next, they identified the primary foci and reduced the categories to four:

1. beliefs
2. knowledge
3. pedagogy
4. program research

Next, they produced a detailed analysis of the layers of logic in each study. Finally, in contrast to their microanalysis, they produced a macroanalysis that produced a coding matrix of patterns within the studies.

Limitations

1. US only
2. Although their categories for analysis are supported by the data and methods, there may be other equally valid ways of organizing the data.
3. All research focused on prospective teachers.

Part 2 - Risko, et al.

Part 2 - Risko, V., Roller, C., Cummins, C., Bean, R., Block, C., Anders, P., Flood, J. (2008). A Critical Analysis of Research on Reading Teacher Education

Method for Lit Review

Risko, et al., evaluated the methodology and research design of each study in relation to its research questions. For this, they cite the "logics in use" concept from Kaplan (1964) and Howe and Eisenhart (1990).

Parameters for inclusion:

1. Published, empirical, peer-reviewed
2. Pub between 1990-2006
3. Pre-service K12 Reading teacher focus
4. In the US (this was added after finding only 3 from outside the US)

Search procedure:

1. Electronic search of databases (ERIC, InfoTrac, ISI Web, PsycINFO)
2. Manual search of annual conference yearbooks (NRC, CRA, ARF)
3. Manual search of recent journals not yet included in databases
4. Bibliographies of other reviews (Risko didn't list this source in the search procedure, but did list it as a source of studies included)

Sources of 233 selected studies:

• 79 electronic searches
• 53 NRC
• 24 ARF
• 40 CRA
• 8 manual journal search
• 29 from bibliographies of other reviews

The researchers established criteria to assess the quality of the studies, based on the work of others and in consultation with other experts. In addition to the 3 standards, they identified 7 criteria which could be used as a model for assessing quality of research. The standards are:

• Standard 1 - Clear and coherent argument and reasoning, connecting theory to research.
  
• Standard 2 - Clear disclosure of rigorous methodology.
• Standard 3 - Findings match the question and are supported by the data.

Coding for Inclusion

The researchers established a rigorous procedure for evaluating the 233 studies. They first carefully established inter-rater reliability. Then they went through several iterations of evaluating studies on a 3 point scale, rating each based on the 7 criteria. Those that met all 7 criteria were rated 3. The rest were eliminated.

They then coded each study for (1) level of explicitness, i.e. explicit instruction, modeling, etc. and (2) effect strength, examining what percentage of participants exhibited an effect.