Traversing the topical landscape: Exploring students' self-directed reading-writing-research processes

• Published in: Reading research quarterly 1996-01, Vol.31 (1), p.12-35
• Main Authors: Many, Joyce E., Fyfe, Ronald, Lewis, Geoffrey, Mitchell, Evelyn
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: childhood; Children; content literacy; Curriculum subjects: programmes and methods; early adolescence; Educational sciences; Expression and communication; Field notes; genre; Intermediate Grades; learner; learning; Literature; methodology; purpose; qualitative; reading; Reading Research; Reading Strategies; Research Papers (Students); strategies; Student Research; study; Teachers; Teaching methods; topic; Transfer students; type; World War II; World wars; writing; Writing assignments; Writing instruction; Writing Processes; Writing Research
• ISSN: 0034-0553; 1936-2722
• DOI: 10.1598/RRQ.31.1.2

This 7-month naturalistic study investigated students' reading and writing engagements as they conducted a research investigation related to World War II. Students were free to choose their research topics, to search for and to select from source materials, and to write up and present their findings in their own way. The participants were 11- and 12-year-old pupils in an open-concept school in Aberdeen, Scotland. Data took the form of fieldnotes, photocopies of research booklets and source texts, structured, unstructured, and debriefing interviews, and audio and videotapes. Ongoing data analysis led to selection of key informants whose work sampled the range of composing-from-sources processes which were apparent in this context. Three major task impressions were uncovered: research as accumulating information, research as transferring information, and research as transforming information. These task impressions were characterized by differing emphases on the following research subtasks: planning, searching, finding, recording, reviewing, and presenting. Students did not carry out these subtasks in either a strictly linear or a strictly cyclical pattern. Task impressions were also related to the differential use of the following strategies when working from sources: duplicating, drawing, and labeling, sentence-by-sentence reworking, read/remember/write, cut-and-paste synthesis, and discourse synthesis. The task impressions and strategy use of individual students influenced and were influenced by the materials used and the social and instructional context of the classroom. Students who viewed research as a process of transforming information were more likely to demonstrate a range of strategies which allowed them to traverse their topics from multiple perspectives. /// [Spanish] Este estudio naturalista de siete meses de duración investigó las actividades de lectoescritura en las que se involucraron los estudiantes mientras hacían una investigación sobre la Segunda Guerra Mundial. Los estudiantes pudieron elegir libremente los tópicos de investigación, buscar y seleccionar información de las fuentes y redactar y presentar los hallazgos a su manera. Los participantes fueron alumnos de 11 y 12 años de una escuela de concepción abierta en Aberdeen, Escocia. Los datos tuvieron la forma de notas de campo, fotocopias de folletos y textos de investigación, entrevistas estructuradas y no estructuradas y grabaciones de audio y video. El análisis de los datos condujo