So far, the library databases have proven useful for my I-Search research. Their wide breadth of information makes the databases useful for researching almost any topic. The ability to search multiple databases yielded a ton of information relevant to my topic. I chose Academic Search Complete, Education Full Text, and ERIC (my favorite so far). The refine results tool is useful for narrowing down material published in the last few years. I was finding that many of my results were coming from the early 90's, and we've made such great strides in education and the teaching of writing that I consider some of the dated stuff obsolete.
In addition to papers that were published when I was in kindergarten, I quickly noticed another pitfall of researching for this topic: bias. There were many articles, even though they were published in peer-reviewed journals, where the author's bias was blatantly present. I found it challenging to find works written by someone without an agenda slanting their writing; and I find biased works less useful for use in an inquisitive research project where I'm not out to support a thesis. Still, these works have their use in terms of the raw data they provide and in assembling a collection of sources from diverse viewpoints.
One article I've found useful so far is "Talking to One's Self," written by a Writing T.A., describing how elements of creative writing enhance non-fiction writing within the classroom. I also discovered some articles that broadened the scope of the implications of my research. "Creative Crisis" by Brown and Buskey, addresses the issue of violence within students' creative writing. In the age of school violence awareness, violence in students' writing is always worth noting and comes in many forms. Concern over the well-being of students is a top priority, and students may give hints to their well-being (intentionally or not) through their creative writing. Going into this topic, I did not consider the role of an ELA teacher acting as a first responder after picking up on "warning signs" in students' submitted creative writing.
I have actually also read the article "Creative Crisis" to see if it would be helpful to me topic (it wasn't helpful to me, but I'm glad it was helpful to you) and I thought that it was a very interesting article about creative writing and different things that we can learn from creative writing. The article does talk about how many students write about disturbing things at one time or another, which I thought was very interesting and I did not think as many students wrote violent or disturbing things as the research has found. This does show that creative writing is very fluid and that there are many things that can come from creative writing, especially when thinking about the other article that you found saying that creative writing can help form non-creative writing (which I'm interested about--I may use it! Haha). Either way, I'm glad you are finding good sources that are aiding you in your research!
ReplyDeleteChris,
ReplyDeleteAlthough it seems you are having trouble with your research I would have liked to hear more. I'm curious to see what kind of things you might stumble upon as I'm not sure this subject is given the credit it deserves. I think creative writing is something many people take for granted and tend to overlook and therefore don't give it the attention and research it might need. Given that I don't know much about the topic I was hoping you'd be able to offer me some insight. I hope down the road your knowledge expands so that you may educate me and the other classmates. As I said before, creative writing in classrooms is something often overlooked, so as future teachers I think it's important we all understand how critically important it is to incorporate this into all studies.
Thank you for the input! I'm excited to see where your research takes you.
Chris,
ReplyDeleteI too found that my search results were yielding many outdated texts, and like you I also refined the search. I think that was a good idea on your part so that you aren't bogged down with irrelevant information. With that being said, I am curious as to what the articles you did find entailed. I would have liked to hear a bit more about individual articles, and examples from those articles. Like Brianna, I feel that creative writing is underrepresented in our nation's schools, so I think that it is great that you are shining light onto this topic. You mentioned that you were less than pleased with the bias that was presented in some of the articles since they had a clear stance, perhaps you could have elaborated on some examples of the bias. I'm not sure that it is bias, but rather I think that most writers (outside of the I-search process) begin their writing by taking a stance. The information they found along the way to support that thesis shouldn't necessarily be disregarded, and if you happen to end up supporting their thesis in your own writing, that might be fine too. This is a journey that is meant to help us discover what has been said about our topics, and why it all matters. I think by opening yourself up to various stances on the topic, you might be able to get a bit more out of the writing.
Overall, I think you have a great topic, and I'm excited to read the final outcome!