Visiting Assistant Professor/Houston Writing Fellow - University of Houston
RESEARCH PROJECTS
Let us not be content to wait and see what will happen, but give us the determination to make the right things happen.
~ Horace Mann
The framework of my research is grounded within three areas of exploration: technical and professional writing, responding to student writing, and critical discourse analysis. I consider myself a scholar of diverse interests and varying perceptions due to my experience as both a practitioner and academician. I believe my interests are characteristic of a researcher who is immersed in spaces of rhetoric and composition representative of both the current and future path of the field.
Critical Discourse Analysis
I am currently researching the topic of Education Reform within the context of my dissertation. My dissertation is positioned within Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), employing the works of van Dijk, Fairclough, and Gee as the foundation of my methodology. In applying the contentions of these scholars with regard to critical discourse, I have analyzed the speech acts, including specific speeches of Bill Gates, President Obama, and dissenters of the current public education policy we know as the Common Core Standards, in order to underscore the synergies between language and power. The replication of power in society occurs when there is consent among the people.
Consequently, the result of this power-consent dichotomy is the social construct of society which is produced by language. The hegemonic structures formulated from this unification of language and power allows us to examine how change is influenced in society and hence, provides us with a heightened awareness of the inequities propagated by such power relations. I plan to submit for publication, several chapters of my dissertation in critical discourse journals.
Responding to Student Writing
This is an area of study I consider essential in providing the student with the most support and guidance in the writing process, beginning with invention. I have conducted research of various types of multi-modal technologies that assist in the facilitation of responding to student writing. In this process of evaluation, I have examined both the student perspective and teacher perspective with regard to usability and effectiveness.
In building upon the work of Odell, Horvath, and Straub, my teaching experience continually opens up new perspectives on responding to student writing. Thus, I have discovered multi-modal technologies as mechanisms for improving the practice of teacher-student feedback. In presenting at two conferences (4C’s and Computers & Writing) earlier this year, my usability study of these technologies examined both the teacher and student perception of such elements as learnability, efficiency, memorability, errors, satisfaction, cognitive load, delivery, and effectiveness. In my analysis of two types of software, one audio and the other text based, the results formed a clear conclusion that not one mode of feedback fulfills all needs of both student and teacher. However, teachers recognized that students welcome the variety of feedback modes (written, audio, or visual). My future goal is to expand on this research using a wider sampling of participants and more robust technologies for responding to student writing.
Technical and Professional Writing
As both a seasoned practitioner and teacher of technical writing, I find that the lines are often blurred between business writing and technical writing. Although textbooks tend to meld the two as being more similar than not, the practitioner side of me knows that there is a clear and distinct difference between the two genres.
My extensive professional experience as a technical writer has provided me with a unique perspective on bridging the gap between industry and academe. I recently spoke about this at the RMMLA conference, where I advocated for methods on closing this gap between our classroom technical writing courses and industry technical writing.
In part, my research emphasizes textbook (mis) representations of what technical writing is and their interpretation of technical writing tasks in the workplace. My analysis and comparison between technical communication textbooks and business communication textbooks unveiled the likeness of several projects outlined within each genre. Many of the shared subjects between these books are what I consider ‘low tech’, such as: emails, letters, memos, proposals, and reports. In an effort to more aptly outline a clear definition of technical writing, I plan to pursue publication of journal articles and a textbook on this conflict.