Rhetoric and Composition Doctoral Program Professional Writing + Emerging Media

Executive SummaryEmpirical studies of concrete, situated practices can uncover the local pattern of activity and the cultural specificity of thought, speech, and discourse. ~Engestrm and Miettinen, 1999 Activity theory proposes that activity cannot be understood without understanding the role of artifacts in everyday experience, especially the way artifacts are integrated into social practice. Activity theory is concerned with practice, that is, doing and activity. ~ Nardi, 1996

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hat follows are microstudies of the complex, protean practice of writing. These microstudies were conducted by researchers in the Rhetoric and Composition doctoral program and the undergraduate program in Professional Writing and Emerging Media at Ball State University. The studies here are motivated by a simple question: how is a given writer situated, and what does it mean for that writer to be situated in the ways they are? These studies were undertaken at a time when the researchers were developing their understanding of activity theory, a set of empirical approaches originating in the work of the Soviet psychologist Vygotsky in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Activity theory was developed primarily by two of Vygotskys students, Leontev and Luria (Wertsch, 1981), and extended by the work of many contemporary researchers, including Engestrm, Kaptelinin, Nardi, andin writing studiesRussell, Spinuzzi, and Hart-Davidson. Activity theory, therefore, is a research framework and set of perspectives (Nardi, 1996, p. 7) that is currently applied in a wide range of disciplinesfrom developmental psychology to educational research to writing studies, among many others. A key component of activity theory as a research framework is a focus on contexts and how those contexts came to be, in cultural and historical terms. Notably, our contexts are comprised, in part, by the tools and artifacts we use, the genres we practice, and the spaces that enable and constrain our pursuits. This white paper explores how these various aspects of context, encapsulated in the term situatedness, mediate meaning for the writers we studied. Sarah Elisabeth Chaney Brian J. McNely Elmar Hashimov Jennifer Stewart Laura Romano Nicki Litherland Baker Elizabeth Imafuji

To cite this white paper: Chaney, S., McNely, B., Hashimov, E., Stewart, J., Romano, L., Litherland Baker, N., & Imafuji, E. (2012). Meaning in mediation: Microstudies of situatedness. Ball State University, Muncie, IN.

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Table of ContentsIntroduction....................................................................................................................................5 Elmar Hashimovs Situatedness and Activity: Steph Writes All The Things ........................................................7 Jennifer Stewarts Exploring the Situatedness of the Administrative Assistant....................................................11 Sarah Elisabeth Chaneys The Writing Process of a Journalism Student.......................................................................16 Laura Romanos Examining the Situatedness of an Elementary School Teacher..............................................21 Nicki Litherland Bakers An 8th-grade Writers Situatedness.......................................................................................24 Liz Imafujis Situatedness of Japanese Adjunct Teaching Work................................................................30 Key Resources for Activity Theoretical Approaches to Writing...............................................35 Bibliography.................................................................................................................................. 39

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Introduction

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ygotsky (1986, 1978; Wertsch, 1985) promoted a genealogical mode of psychological investigation focused on cultural-historical factors impacting everyday life. Students of Vygotsky (Leontev, Luria, and others) suggested that approaches to studying genealogical, cultural, and historical factors should focus on activity as a way of determining those factors. Lave and Wenger (1991) see activity in practice: complex, culturally and historically mediated systems of relations among people, artifacts, and activities. The artifacts used within a cultural practice, they argue, carry a substantial portion of that practices heritage (p. 101). Spinuzzi (2003) notes that sociocultural research approaches such as activity theory are non-Cartesian, embrace material-human interaction, and focus in particular on the complex confluence of the social, cultural, and historical. Such approaches require nuanced and systematic ways of seeing and understanding activity in/as situatedness. Lave and Wenger, in fact, argue that we need a more fully worked-out view of the social world (p. 54), and they contend that situated learning and legitimate peripheral participation are borne of their need to better characterize situatedness (p. 31).

But studying situatedness is tricky. Identifying object(ive)s (Russell, 1995), activity theory tells us, will help us delineate activity. In turn, we may use activity theory to frame our perspective of a given subjects situatedness, to bound case study research (Spinuzzi, 2011) without falling into the potential chasm of ever-expanding contexts. And yet the pull of contexts is strong. Nardi (1996a) tackles the problem with aplomb. In her exploration of contexts in situated action models, distributed cognition, and activity theory, she argues that it is simply not possible to understand how people learn or work when the unit of analysis is the unaided individual with no access to other people or to artifacts (p. 69). She also asks, crucially, how we might study complex, situated contexts while still producing research findings that are generalizable (p. 70). Nardis (1996a) discussion of activity theory can help us better approach contexts in balanced and productive ways. Here, activity systems are the unit of analysis, comprised of subject, object, actions, and operations, where the object(ive) held by any one subject motivates activity and gives it shape and direction (p. 73). Actions are goal-directed processes that must be undertaken to fulfill the object, she notes (p. 73). Actions are conscious, and different actions may be linked in the service of the same goal. Objects, she notes, are not immutable structures, but they also dont change on a moment-by-moment basis, offering participants in an activity system some stability (p. 74). Actions also have operational aspectsroutinized, unconscious operations (such as accelerating and braking while driving a car). As Nardi explains, Activity theory holds that the constituents of activity are not fixed but can dynamically change as conditions change. All levels can move both up and down (p. 75). Nardi describes mediation as a key notion in activity theory approaches. Artifacts carry with them a

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particular culture and history, she argues, drawing on Kuutti (1991), and they are persistent structures that stretch across activities through time and space (p. 75). Theorists of North American genre theory (cf. Bazerman and Russell, 2002), have persuasively argued that genres often constitute persistent structures within a given activity system. Activity theory, therefore, has a very strong notion of context: the activity itself is the context. What takes place in an activity system composed of object, actions, and operation, is the context (Nardi, 1996a, p. 76; emphasis in original). Spinuzzi (2002, 2003) explores the role of genres in mediating human activity. In most writing scenarios, people work within an ecology or assemblage of genres and artifacts (see also Propen & Schuster, 2010). Indeed, people work, play, and learn within these ecologies through what Spinuzzi calls compound mediation, the ways that people habitually coordinate sets of artifacts to mediate or carry out their activities (2002, p. 98). Seeing genres in an ecology of compound mediation highlights the ad hoc, idiosyncratic, divergent understandings and uses of artifacts and the practices that surround them as they develop within a given cultural-historical milieu (p. 99). In sum, determining a writers object(ive) can help us understand her activity, which we know will be jointly mediated within an ecology of genres, artifacts, and practices laden with cultural and historical meaning. This is where we may find and explore a given subjects situatedness. The studies in this white paper follow the precedent of Nardi (1996b), which is to say that the researchers microstudies were informed bybut not strongly framed withinactivity theory. These microstudies were conducted early in a graduate seminar on activity theory; near the end of the seminar, these researchers reflected on how their studies could be more strongly articulated within activity theory framework. In this way, the researchers grappled with the methodological and theoretical problems of studying contexts and situatedness first, reflecting later (as does Nardi, 1996b) on how their work might have benefited from a stronger activity theoretical approach. We think this perspective strengthens the value of these studies for you, our audience. In addition to the six excellent microstudies that follow, we have included an annotated list of key sources for activity theoretical approaches to the study of writing. We welcome your feedback! Brian J. McNely, Ph.D. brian.mcnely@gmail.com

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Situatedness and Activity: Steph Writes All The Things

[Elmar Hashimov]

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teph Hedge is a Ph.D. student in rhetoric and composition at Ball State University, located in Muncie, Indiana. Steph is Canadianan international student like I amso, when we met for about an hour on February 6, 2012, we began chatting about things that perhaps only other international students living in the U.S. would truly appreciate: stressing over visa and legal status issues, not being able to work outside of our graduate assistantships, and researching why airport codes are different in different countries. Steph was (and is, as of this report) in the middle of coding data for her dissertation, and I contacted her earlier that day requesting that she become the participant of this microstudy on her writing activity and her situatedness as a writer. Steph was happy to oblige. I frame my microstudy within activity theory: as Nardi (1996) posits, activity theory proposes a strong notion of mediationall human experience is shaped by the tools and sign systems we use. Mediators connect us organically and intimately to the world (p. 10). Moreover, as Nardi (1996) argues, Consciousness is located in everyday practice: you are what you do (p. 7). Finally, as Lave and Wenger (1991) point out, there is no activity that is not situated (p. 33). Thus, I provide here a brief narrative based on the one-hour microstudy on Stephs writing activity. Methods I selected Steph to be my participant for two main reasons: (1) Like me, she is a Ph.D. student in rhetoric and composition, an international student, and a graduate assistant, so I wanted to learn how somebody in a situation similar to mine writes, what tools/spaces she utilizes, and how she utilizes them; (2) Steph and I are friends, she was the most convenient choice for a participant. To paint a rich picture of a small snapshot of Stephs writing practice, I chose to collect three data types: (1) an observation with detailed fieldnotes; (2) a semi-structured, stimulated-recall interview; and (3) a small sampling of artifacts, consisting primarily of photos of the space and screenshots from Stephs laptop. I based my Findings section (below) on data triangulated from these three data types. Finally, I utilized member checks with Steph after this draft was written to ensure data consistency. Findings I arrived at Stephs on-campus apartment around 2 pm on Monday, February 6, 2012. We chatted about our international student struggles and airports, while she boiled some water and made tea for us. Her TV was on in the living room, with the sound volume set lowit was on the Cartoon Network, playing Tom and Jerry Kids when I first arrived. My arrival interrupted Stephs writing work. Her kitchen table seemed to have been transformed into a desk and her kitchen into a study. On the table, covered with a black tablecloth, sat her 15 MacBook Pro laptop, a yellow legal pad with scribbles and tally marks all over the front page, and a large glass bowl filled with clementines. It is an uncharacteristically warm and sunny day, and the kitchen is brightly lit by natural light shining through the glass patio door. As we sat at her workstation, drinking hot black tea, I told Steph about my microstudy project, and Steph informed me

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that she is currently coding data collected through Survey Monkey. As I finished my tea, Steph went back to work at her makeshift writing desk (see Figure 1), and I sat in the adjacent living room to observe her. As Steph typed in a Pages document, occasionally sipping her tea, I noticed her good posture her back straight and her shoulders relaxed. With the exception of her fingers, which moved fast, her body was perfectly still. Every few minutes she would stop typing and scribble something on her legal pad. Occasionally, she would exclaim something or laugh, reading a particular students survey response. For instance, she turned to me to say that one student, when asked whether or not there was a difference between his or her online and offline identities, answered, Yes, one is on the computer; the other one is not. Steph added, laughing, Thanks, kid. She would then go back to typing.

Figure 1. Stephs Workspace

I also noticed that she had set her cell phone on a shelf in the living room (later she explained her phone was a distraction), away from her workstation. While working, she was immediately surrounded only by the tools that she needed to code her dataher laptop, a legal pad, and a pen. All the while, the TV whispered in the background, now playing a bizarre cartoon called Almost Naked Animals. After my observation, we sat down for a fifteen-minute interview. Steph and I being friends, we wasted a little bit of time laughing about a few memes she saw someone Tweet earlier. I first asked Steph if her current workspace was typical, to which she emphatically nodded. Yes, she said, adding that usually she has more books aroundon the desk and on the chairs. Throughout the interview she repeatedly referred to her kitchen table as her desk. She added, I have to sit at the desk with my computer in front of me because if its on my lap, that just leads to... the internet! ...If Im actually trying to get serious work done, I have to be at a desk or I wont do anything. I asked Steph if she typically did her research writing at home, and she explained to me that because she gets easily distracted by her officemate on campus, lately she has been doing more writing work at home. We then spent a few minutes talking about her use of writing tools. Explaining what she was working on that day, she said, Im kind of half-coding, half-memo-ing. She turned the laptop toward me to show me her desktop and the Pages document she had been working in (see Figure 2). She explained that the bolded words were key terms that will eventually become code. She was copying and pasting them from the Survey Monkey, also open on her laptop but minimized. Other applications that I noticed were running included Mail, Calendar, iTunes, Acrobat, Twitter, Numbers, Chrome (her official browser), and Firefox (her for-fun browser). When asked about those, she said, laughing again, that because the work she was doing at the time was low pressure, she could afford to get distracted by all the things. If she were writing a high pressure project, like a paper that was due the next day, she would have closed

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all of those apps. But for now, Its still open and its still there, but its not immediately accessible, so she could be productive.

Figure 2. Apps open on Stephs laptop

When asked about the positioning of her desk, Steph told me that she prefers working under natural light, especially in the winter, partly because she has Seasonal Affective Disorder. She chose the kitchen table to be her writing surface because of where it is situated in the apartmentclose to the stove, where she can make tea for herself, and close to the nibblies as she calls them (nuts or oranges, for example). Curious, I asked Steph about the story behind the table itself. She told me, Its traveled with me through undergrad, my masters, and here. She has used it as her writing surface for quite a few years. She added, It helps me get into the mood to work. She told me she likes to change what her space looks like, so she regularly changes things like the tablecloth or wall art, because it can change the whole tenor of the room. Her workspace is also close to the TV, her white-noise machine. Steph explained, laughing, that she prefers to have her TV on but to sit somewhere where she cannot see it. The TV is always on. Cause it makes me feel less lonely, she added, laughing again. She usually has it on in the background, with the volume low, on the Food Network or the Home and Garden Network. She likes seeing light and the colors moving with her peripheral visionIts just sort of white noise in the background. When asked about the yellow legal pad, Steph said she uses it for raw numbers and key terms. She noted that she finds writing on paper helpful for making connections, ...to visually see some of the connections... explain the relationships between things. She finds this more useful than typing on a computer right away because for her, it is easier to spatially move things around on paper: I like the way my writing looks when I write stuff... handwriting. And it sort of like... gives it permanence in a way that the Word Doc [sic] doesnt necessarily. ...Its specifically not prose, its just jotty, quick ideas. She said also,

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the act of drawing a line underneath a word is different [on paper]... a different cognitive thing. Discussion My immediate interest in Stephs workspace was rooted in my growing (self-)consciousness of my own writing spaces. Though similar in many ways, Steph and I are also different in many other waysin culture, gender, background, personality, daily habits, and so on. So, while I was also interested in Stephs broader situatedness as an international student at Ball State, what I was after for this microstudy was more of a snapshot of her daily writing practice. While small in scale, the project generated meaningful findings, the most interesting insight being how Steph literally situates herself when she writeswhere she sits, what tools she surrounds herself with, what she avoids when writing low-stress and high-stress projects, how she positions her body to see and not to see certain things, as well as how she uses writing toolselectronic and paper-based. Given the brevity of this project, I was able to but scratch the surface in this areamore in-depth study would certainly be helpful. As far as physical space is concerned, I was particularly fascinated by how things like lighting and TV- generated white noise can deeply affect her focus and productivity. I was equally fascinated how Steph assigns different roles and functions to typing on a computer in contrast with writing pen-on-paper, and how the physical and kinesthetic aspects of the activity helped her better code her research data and discover (or create) spatial relationships between ideas. What is also noteworthy is how she found doing the same activity on the computerin a digital spacerestricting, and how she basically reserved typing things up electronically to final drafting stages of this particular type of writing work. Thus, as represented by this microstudy, Steph and her physical and digital spaces constitute her situatedness; and her writing activity is richly mediated, and therefore, as Nardi posits, is complexly shaped by the tools and sign systems Steph uses and the tools she utilizes connect her organically and intimately to the world (p. 10). Activity Theoretical Reflection While this microstudy was generally informed by activity theory, in hindsight, it was not necessarily framed in it, as I claim in the introduction. If I were to do this project now, after having studied activity theory more in depth, I would do a number of things differently to frame it more soundly: 1. I would discuss Stephs writing activity in terms of an activity system. I would, perhaps, create Engestrms activity-triangle diagram to represent the elements of that system. I would then examine the relationships and contradictions between the elements. 2. I would apply Spinuzzis genre ecologies model (GEM) to zoom in on the way her tools mediate her writing activity. I would discuss the compound mediation these tools create and illustrate it graphically for further clarification. 3. I would discuss the object of Stephs activity in more detail, making it the focus of my study. 4. Finally, I would have some discussion of Stephs writing activity system in the context of other activity systems she is a part ofintersecting and overlapping each otherand provide a clear socio-cultural context for this particular activity system.

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Exploring the Situatedness of the Administrative Assistant

[Jennifer Stewart]

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n many workplace settings, there is often a sort of lore associated with administrative assistants: if you want things to run smoothly, respect the secretary. This statement is just as true in the university setting. But why? What is it that administrative assistants do to engender such respect? How are they situated in the workplace? To begin to answer this question, I chose to study Shant Howard, the Program Assistant for Staffing and Curricular Records for the Department of English and Linguistics at IPFW, a public university that serves a student population of over 14,000. Shants Situatedness Shant is a 32-year-old African American mother of three children. She exists in both departmental majorities, in that she is female, and departmental minorities, in that she is African American and she is staff. Because Shant manages many important deadlinesspecifically book orders for all 100+ faculty and the overall management of the over 75 member part-time faculty, she has earned the reputation of departmental task master. She has been in her position for four years. Of the three administrative assistants in the Department of English and Linguistics, Shant has been with the department the longest; she was brought in by the departing Office Manager Janine Moore, so she carries some of Janines departmental affection and respect. Because of her longevity and lineage, she is often the go-to person for faculty members questions. In the past four years of her employment, Shant and I have developed a relationship built on honesty, humor, motherhood, and cursing. We maintain communication beyond the workplace via Facebook and instant messaging programs; we share personal information with one another that moves beyond the designation of professional acquaintance. She agreed to let me observe her for this microstudy because our history has built a trust that I will represent her fairly. Methods I observed Shant in her workspace in the Language Arts building at 3:00 pm for 20 minutes. During the observation, I took field notes of Shants work activity and remained a silent observer save two instances: 1) when I asked her to perform a screen capture of her work, and 2) when I responded to a faculty member who entered the room. After the observation, I took pictures of Shants workspace. After reviewing my field notes and observations, the following day I asked Shant several questions that developed from a review of my field notes and pictures via Facebook that tasked her to elaborate on or describe actions she performed.

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Data and Findings Workspace Shants workspace is rich with both personal and professional details. As evidenced in Figure 1, she uses a dual monitor system that can be moved up or down. Her L-shaped work station contains a phone, copier/scanner/printer, keyboard, cell phone, office supply organizer (see Figure 2), and various university and departmental documents/booklets/texts. When asked her if her organization of materials was deliberate, she replied, Yes if Im working on multiple things at once. My desk can become cluttered if I have too many things going at once. This overwhelms me at times and Ill have to put everything away and then start over. Her workspace contains personal details that are seen by visitors (see Figure 3) and for her alone (see Figure 4). Shant explained the personal material this way: I once read an article about relieving stress in the workplace. The main thing that I got from that article was to make your work space as personal and comfortable as your supervisor will allow. Examples given were pictures of friends and family, kids

Figure 1. Shant at work

Figure 2. Workspace Materials

Figure 3. Visible Personal Materials

Figure 4. Hidden Personal Materials

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art work, things that comfort you (the shoe goddess cup and new shoes fund jar.) The familiar things help you feel more relaxed and comfortable and it brings color to my area. When I get too stressed my kids pics help calm me down. Work Activity Shant performed the writing activities detailed in Table 1 within the 20 minute observation period. As she acted, she would make statements to herself/me about her activities.

Table 1. Detail of Shants Activity

Time 3:00

Activity/Shants Metacommentary Composing emailword processing and using mouse Managing among multiple windows on her desktop Adjusting design of email (font, color, size) Continues to adjust color/font size of email This is nice and springy Moves back and forth among 4 windows in 30 sec Creates a Word document Manages an Excel document to present material (preparing for work) Moves back to email Refers to date book Uses email to manage information (access names, dates, etc.) Im looking for an email that I sent out last year at this time so I dont have to type it. Copies 2011 material into 2012 email Oh really?! I had that much open? (in response to discovering how many screens she has open when I ask her to screen capture [see Figure 5]) Modifying text Manages attachment documents 24 clicks of the mouse among 4 screens (2 documents/1 email/1 folder) in a 60s period I wonder how many people will complain.

3:05 3:10

3:15

Figure 5. Desktop Screen Shot

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During this observation, Shant makes three explicit physical moves: As she begins her work, she removes her shoes, explaining to me, I cant work with them on. While waiting for her computer to catch up with her actions, she bobbles in her chair and taps her fingers on her desk. As she begins to work on the email message content, she pulls the screen closer to her and hunches forward in an almost getting down to business move. Interruptions In the 20 minutes that I observed Shant, there were three other individuals in the office at varying times: 1. Teri, the front desk secretary, left for the day at 3:05. She did not interact with Shant on a 2. professional level during the observation at all save saying, Have a good day before she left. Shant responded, You too. 3. Student 1 entered the office at 3:14 and placed something in an instructors mailbox; Shant looked up, made eye contact with the studentshe did not stop working on her project. When asked about this event, Shant elaborated, I knew that the student was one of Professor As students. Her students have been instructed to go directly to her mailbox to submit things or to pick up anything she may have left. That student has been in several times this semester and knows the routine. 4. Carolyn, a part-time faculty member, entered the office at 3:15 and asked Shant information about forms for the fall semester; Shant stopped working on her projectto the extent that she physically swiveled in her chair to engage Carolynand interacted with this individual for the remaining 5 minutes of the observation, only turning to her computer to access information to answer Carolyns questions. The phone rang 3 times during the observation period. At 3:04, Shant ignored the phone call, mentioning to me that was my sister. At 3:07, she takes the phone call; its personalabout her lunch order. At 3:13, she ignored the phone call. When asked how she determines what to answer and what not to, Shant responds, I will answer unknown numbers because they are usually work related. I will ignore personal calls (a number I know) if Im in the middle of something or if someone is at my deskunless its my kids schools. Personal calls can be ignored because if its an emergency, the personal caller knows to call my cell if they cant reach me at my desk. Discussion Through this observation, spatial analysis, and interview, it is clear that Shant works in an environment that requires careful prioritization of distractionsboth personal and professionalin order for work to be completed. Shants management of her workspace and response to inquiries about her actions indicate that she is very conscientious of the ways in which her actions are situated: she is well aware that her job is hectic and stressful, and she makes overt moves to mitigate that stress. She makes physical moves to attend herself to her tasks (facing faculty members to give them attention, pulling the computer screen to her). Even the seemingly simple act of sending a book request email to a large number of faculty involves multiple acts that are deliberate and efficient. Shants ability to decide quickly which distractions require her attention and which do notand how to best attend to those distractionswhile at the same time managing her work product clearly contribute to the legend of the administrative assistant. Activity Theoretical Reflection Had I approached this report using Engestrms activity triangle as a theoretical and methodological frame, I may have paid better attention in my analysis to how the aspects of community, rules, and division of labor mediate Shants actionshow they both assist and interrupt her attempts to achieve her

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outcome: sending the book order email. For example, taking into account that Shants job description (the rules of her position) indicates that she must prioritize helping faculty members over email communication would have explained more clearly why she chose to disengage from her objective to answer Carolyns questions. Conversely, recognizing that Professor As Student was not addressed upon entering the office indicates that Shant internalizes and instantaneously prioritizes both community and division of labor (Professor A, students, faculty who need book orders, the bookstore, the federal government mandating a book order deadline). Nardi (1996c) asserts that activity theory vocabulary is much more precise, careful and theoretically elaborated (p. 242); this is true, the terminology of activity theory is much more effective than the general terms Ive used in this observation analysis. Positioning the analysis within the rich theoretical history of activity theory could have provided a stronger analysis of Shants collaborative mediation of tools and the interruptions that created disturbances in her workflow.

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The Writing Process of a Journalism Student

[Sarah Elisabeth Chaney]

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n activity theory, the structuring of activity is determined in part, and in important ways, by human intentionality before the unfolding in a particular situation (Nardi, 1996b, p. 82). Building on this idea of human intentionality, I conducted a microstudy on a subject participating in writing practices in order to look at how her situatedness impacts the way she writes. By conducting a follow-up interview, I also noted how her conscious motivations also integrated itself into the writing process. Methods For this microstudy, I observed and interviewed Amanda, a senior Magazine Journalism student at Ball State University. I observed her as she worked on a journalism story for her Multimedia Reporting class for forty-one minutes while simultaneously taking field notes. About halfway through the observation she switched writing topics to an online writing prompt for another journalism class. This enabled me to observe her writing process for two spearate writing projects: one in response to a prompt posted in a public forum online, and an open-ended project that was to be turned in privately for a grade. After reviewing the field notes and artifacts produced during the observation, I constructed thirteen follow-up questions for an interview the next day about certain behaviors that stood out to me as she worked on her writing projects. Findings and Discussion Television The observation started with Amanda sitting cross-legged on the couch in front of her television, which she watched as she worked. She muted it only during commercials and was often distracted by what was on the screen as she began to write, often looking up and laughing. Even after the program ended, Amanda left the television on but kept it on mute. Despite this, it showed little discernable impact on the pace that she wrote. Instead of watching the television once the program she was watching ended, she would pick up her phone and start texting instead. When I followed up the next day with an interview, I asked Amanda what purpose the television served her. She responded that it was a habit from when she was living alone last year because she liked to have other movement and voices in the apartment. It seemed that she used the television not as a distraction, but as a source of comfort. Amanda said that leaving the television on was not really part of [her] work environment necessarily. She said she usually kept the television on even when she cooks or reads a book, but it clearly provides a necessary element in her writing process. The situation in which she uses the television as a replacement for human companionship shows how living alone for a year impacted her writing process. Deleting words Over the course of forty-one minutes, Amanda wrote a total of ten lines, split evenly between her original writing project and a writing prompt that she switched to twenty-eight minutes into the

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observation. During the observation, however, she wrote much more than just ten lines, but she was constantly erasing words, sentences, and even whole lines at a time. Sometimes she would type a word and instantly delete it. In the follow-up interview I asked her how she writes with pen and paper to see if the technology she used perhaps impacted the pace that she erased what she had written. Amanda said that she rarely writes with paper, revealing how she is situated as a student who grew up with access to technology. While some teachers advise students to write on paper to prevent deleting, the process of deleting is important to Amanda in order to get her projects done. When I asked why she constantly deleted what she wrote, Amanda responded that she wrote down the first thoughts in her head and then immediately starts polishing her writing to make it smooth. From this observation, I wondered if this habit could have been stimulated by her time as a journalism student in which deadlines are important and she has to have the ability to whip out a short, polished article quickly. Simulated typing Vygotsky (1986) wrote about how gestures are visual signs for children that will later become writing. In a particular example he talks about how children preface drawing on paper by using gestures as an aid in drawing: A child who has to depict running begins by depicting the motion with her fingers, and she regards the resultant marks and dots on paper as a representation of running. When she goes on to depict jumping, her hand begins to make movements depicting jumps; what appears on paper remains the same. In general, we are inclined to view childrens first drawings and scribbles rather as gestures than as drawing in the true sense of the word. (p. 107) While I was observing Amanda, I noticed on several occasions that she would simulate typing by tapping her fingers on the keyboard without actually pressing the keys. Immediately following this action she would delete a few words and then start typing again. This seems to be a connection between Vygotskys observations of children using gestures, just as Amanda simulated typing to help her begin to actually type. When I asked about this habit in the interview, Amanda admitted that she had never noticed it before. Switching writing projects Twenty-eight minutes into the observation, Amanda announced aloud she was bored of writing the story and switched to a writing prompt for another journalism class, writing it within the same document as her previous writing project. Since I was able to view Amandas writing process for two different projects, I noticed a few elements that differed from one project to the other. In the first writing project where Amanda had the freedom to write on any topic and from whichever angle of the story she chose, she seemed to have more trouble putting down her thought in words. I noticed that she wrote in an outline style by writing a line, making two paragraph breaks, writing a new topic sentence and so on. This process of outlining and mapping out the writing process is a style that is highly encouraged in high school, which may have impacted the style in which Amanda chose to write. In the second writing project where she had to respond to a specific writing prompt, however, Amanda began to write paragraph style, although she still deleted what she had typed constantly. In the second project, it was less of an outline and more of an actual paragraph. When I asked her about this, she said she commonly does outlines when she is trying to figure out what angle to take on a story, but the writing

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prompt was more specific, so she could start answering it right away. Amanda said that her writing process moved more slowly because she was thinking about word choices as a journalist, but when I asked her if she also thinks about word choice for projects that were not for public consumption, Amanda acknowledged that she did. I always try to follow journalism standard partly to show the teacher that Im paying attention and that I put thought and effort into my writing and partly just for the practice of talking like a journalist on paper, like writing like a journalist. Just as Lave and Wenger (1991) talked about the importance of practice in activity, he also said learning involves the construction of identities (p. 53). Amanda is learning to construct her identity as a journalist through the conscious practice of writing like a journalist, even if it is not explicitly required of her. She realizes the importance of gaining the skills and knowledge of a journalist in order to become a part of that community. Objectivity The most interesting detail I noticed in my observation with Amanda was a point in her writing where she started a new paragraph and simply wrote, I think She hesitated, erased it, and the replaced it with It was interesting that She stared at the computer monitor a bit longer and then deleted it and typed, Huffington said that It was clear to me, even as an outsider, that Amanda was struggling with the word choice and each time her statement became increasingly objective. In the short time I was a student in the journalism department, I remember that objectivity is crucial in writing news. In the interview, Amandas response to my observation reflected my own opinion when she admitted that as a journalism major and as a student, she was much more aware of her word choices. She said that the progression toward objectivity was her putting on [her] journalism face. Amanda is keenly aware of how journalism impacts her writing process and says that in class they are taught no one cares what you think. Despite this, Amanda pointed out the contradiction in what they are taught in the journalism department, you can tell what a writer thinks by how they write something and the words that they use. So I mean, obviously Im putting down my thought without actually saying I think. She finished up her response by adding, If its written by a person, it isnt objective. Even though Amanda is situated as a journalism student, her other life experiences impacts how she filters what is taught to her as a journalism student, including the idea of objectivitywhich she does not believe in. This idea of multiple identities is what makes observing situatedness unique to each person and difficult to predict. Situated in the world The very next question I asked Amanda after our discussion about objectivity was about how she saw herself situated as a writer and how that affects her writing process. Her response conflicted with what she had just told me about the impossibility of being objective. She said she does her best to keep personal thoughts and feelings separate even though she might not agree with the view point due to her life experience as a white woman from California or based on her socioeconomic status so that she can just say what [shes] supposed to say. As a part of the journalism department, Amanda reveals her desire to become objective and to figure out how best to portray a story to an audience. Vygotsky (1978) writes about how the childs ability to control another persons behavior becomes a necessary part of the childs practical activity (29). This is evident in Amandas ability to adapt to whatever situation she finds herself in, although she was vague in her answer of to whom she is trying to be objective for. This is intrinsically linked to rhetoric and the idea of Amanda using the way she is

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situated in the world to adapt to change and expectation, just like the same story she wrote about for her journalism class would be vastly different from the story she tells her family. When Amanda told me that she tried to be objective so that she can say what she is supposed to say, I pressed the matter further and asked her who she was referring to when she said she doesnt write for herself. She responded, for whoever Im supposed to be writing for. So when Im writing for the Daily News then Ill write it one way. If Im writing for a professor Ill write it another way. I guess its kind of people pleasing, I dont often write what I actually think I write for my audience. Amanda saw herself as a people pleaser, while I saw her as a rhetorician who was observant enough to know how to target her audience and best coordinate with them. Her position as a student and as part of the journalism department taught her how to relate to her audience and give them what they want, which is an important aspect in the way she is situated that she did not bring up in the interview. Even in her attempts to consciously remove biases from her writing, Amanda does not acknowledge that everything she does is based off of how she is situated in the world, including her insistence that she removes biases in her writing. Conclusions Amanda showed an awareness of how she was situated as a journalism student, but viewed it as something that could be manipulated or even removed, failing to acknowledge how other ways she is situated in the world are defining and guiding her motivations. I only observed a few of the ways Amanda is situated in the world, since it would take extensive research to even scratch the surface on all the different ways she is situated in the way she writes. From the data I gathered from this observation, interview and study of the artifact produced during the observation, I found several potential focus points for research questions if I were to conduct a large case study on the topic writing processes. In particular I would be interested in seeing how students from other disciplines view themselves as situated in the world and construct their writing around these identities. Activity Theoretical Reflection Looking back on this microstudy knowing what I know now about activity theory, I would have incorporated activity theory terminology to better indicate the relationship between Amandas writing habits as a journalism student and her other identities within the acitivity system of writing. If I had used activity theory as a framework, I would have been better equipped to follow through with my research question of how Amanda is situated as a writer. For a microstudy, looking at Amandas situatedness as a writer was such a broad category that I could have narrowed down to, How does Amandas position as a Journalism student affect her writing? and would have focused my attention more on specifics rather than just broad strokes. As a writer, Amanda is part of a larger scheme of activity systems in which she is a journalism student, a graduate of high school where she learned very specific writing styles, a student of Ball State University where she was required to take composition classes with their own expectation on writing, and so on. All of these activities are in the constant state of collision and require adaptation and change that can be defined by using an activity theory perspective. As Kuutti point outs, Activity theory sees contradictions as sources of development; activities are virtually always in the process of working through contradictions (p. 34).

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Even without extensive knowledge of activity theory at the time of this microstudy, I noticed the contradictions in Amandas writing activity as she struggled to remain objective in her writing from a journalists viewpoint as it collided with other writing activities that emphasizes the importance of personal opinion. These contradictions resulted from a collision and overlapping of different activities within her activity system, and it would have been beneficial to my study if I pursued these contradictions in more detail to see how she negotiated and adjusted her writing to adapt to these problems.

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Examining the Situatedness of an Elementary School Teacher

[Laura Romano]

T

his project came out of a response to an interest in the way public school teachers have reacted to recent legislation on writing standards. The purpose of this study was to critically examine the views of a teacher on this topic by looking at her interactions with various key forms of data within the classroom and observing her response to them in light of her reaction to the new standards. The subject of my project is Angela, a 48-year-old teacher of second grade at a medium-sized Midwest elementary school. She is currently teaching twenty-two students between the ages of seven and eight. I chose Angela because I thought it would be interesting to look at the response of her writing to the newly-imposed writing standards, considering that she is a relatively new teacher. Methods I obtained three forms of data: a one-hour interview with Angela, a journal of student quotations which Angela keeps on her desk and writes in frequently, and a batch of corrected student essays. I transcribed the parts of the interview that I deemed interesting in looking at the way that Angela views her writing and the influence on that writing by recent changes in government education requirements. I coded the journal of quotations as well as the batch of assignments, looking for themes that were relevant to Angelas situatedness as a writer. I then created two simple memos from the data with major ideas I had gleaned. Data Each form of data yielded a distinctly different type of information. The interview was probably the form of data that yielded the most useful information. Through it, I was able to understand Angelas background and events in her life that may have brought her to her current relationship with writing. I was also able to ask questions about the graded essays and the journal of quotations in order to better understand Angelas interpretation of her writing in these two forms of data. The graded essays were an obvious link to the new requirements imposed by the public education system in Indiana that require a certain proficiency in writing as well as a required 90-minute reading block each day. Both of these requirements are new this school year. The journal of quotations showed Angelas personal connectedness to her students in a way that was not obviously linked to the new government requirements. The journal is a composition notebook with approximately 60 pages (about half of the book) filled with student quips that Angela has written down. The quips are humorous, poignant things her students have said during this academic year, as well as interesting observations made by the students. The journal clearly has an important place within the classroom, as when I was there to conduct the interview the students mentioned the book and asked that a particular quotation be written in it. I chose the journal because I thought that this piece of writing, more than any other, would offer insight into the situatedness of Angelas writing.

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Findings Angelas situatedness as a writer is deeply influenced by her personal ideals, as colored by her past experience. Angela is a two-time survivor of breast cancer, and she mentions twice during the interview that her bouts with cancer drastically changed her outlook on life, giving her more of a focus on enjoying people and relationships than she had before. This attitude is reflected in the way that Angela runs her classroom and the way that she interacts with her students. It is also reflected in her writing. In fact, the journal of quotations is a prime example of how Angelas writing as a teacher does not always have an academic focus. The journal is filled with brief quotations of her students, things that they have said which struck her as funny, observant or poignant. Coming into a teaching career later in life has also impacted her writing. Angela previously had a career as an administrative assistant, a career which she enjoyed for two decades before deciding to go back to school to earn her teaching degree. Thus, at age 48, Angela is only in her second year of teaching school. This later-in-life career change is evident in Angelas pedagogy. She is passionate about her students learning as much as they can, and just as passionate that they learn to enjoy life and become happy, fulfilled adults. Angelas writing is also heavily influenced by the fact that she is a mother. Her two high-school-aged children are frequently in her classroom, and she acknowledges during her interview that they have greatly impacted the way that she views teaching and writing. She said that because she has children, she wants the classroom writing that her students do to fulfill a purpose, namely to help them define themselves and understand themselves more thoroughly. She tries to design her assignments so that they will enable her students to learn more about themselves through their work. This shows in the graded essays that were one form of data for this project. The comments that Angela makes on these papers are often personal in nature, with an emphasis on support of the students interests or encouragement for writing about something that he or she is interested in. Her comments are less focused on grammar and mechanics. The new standards for teaching reading and writing in Indiana public schools also influence Angelas writing activity. While the Regents school system has traditionally been strong, new expectations for writing proficiency and a daily mandatory 90-minute reading block, both state-issued requirements that are new this school year, certainly influence her teaching and, therefore, her writing. In the interview, Angela says: I do feel challenged by the big brother aspect of the new reading block requirement and writing standards. The necessity to meet or exceed goals weighs on all of us as teachers. I feel that sometimes I am teaching for the test, and this changes the way I interact with my class. Indeed, in a practical sense, the requirements have a large effect on Angelas classroom writing, because she said that she has less time to write extensive comments on student compositions as well as less time to write quips in the classroom journal now that the new standards are in place. Discussion It seems that, for Angela, her classroom writing is all about striking a balance between her personal convictions and the government regulations which, in her opinion, constrict her own writing as well as her teaching of writing. Angelas personal situatedness has developed from a variety of aspects of her life, including her experiences with cancer, her relatively late entry into teaching, and the fact that she is a mother. The requirements placed upon her writing by the public education system include a more specific writing proficiency requirement and a mandatory daily 90-minute reading block. To Angela, these restrictions mean that she must reassess her writing activity and conform to what she feels the regulations are pushing her to: a less personal teaching style and classroom writing style.

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In practice, Angela feels that this means she must spend less time on personal writing practices such as the journal of quotations, which is problematic because the journal is something that she strongly feels helps to build her students up and promote unity and closeness within the classroom. She must also spend less time on using extensive comments in her grading that tend to lean toward the more personal, which is another aspect of her writing that she felt was most valuable to her students. Angela believes that, her classroom writing must be made different in order for her to fulfill the demands of the government legislation and that this is necessary in order for her to keep her job, but she strongly feels that in doing so she is compromising the value of the education she is giving her students. Activity Theoretical Reflection If I were to conduct this study again, I would be more explicit in my use of activity theory as my preferred theoretical lens. There is, arguably, no better lens through which to observe an entire activity system, including Angelas cultural and social views, and no better framework for analyzing and understanding the choices Angela has made. Kaptelinen and Nardi (2006) argue that In activity theory, people act with technology; technologies are both designed and used in the context of people with intentions and desires. People act as subjects in the world, constructing and instantiating their intentions and desires as objects. Activity theory casts the relationship between people and tools as one of mediation; tools mediate between people and the world (p. 10). Examining the data through the theoretical lens of activity theory would offer the chance to more closely examine Angelas relationship with the journal of quotations, for example, and how this relationship colors the work she does with this tool. This framework would also offer the opportunity to look at action sequences, allowing for the analysis of interplay between action and situatedness.

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An Eighth Grade Writers Situatedness[Nicki Litherland Baker]

I

n the 8 years I taught English to middle-school students, I never thought about my students as apprentice writers situated in a milieu of history and culture. Now that Im becoming aware of the constructed nature of writing, I no longer have middle-school students to study. Fortunately for the timing of this analysis, my son, Adam (13), needed to write a draft of an expository essay for his 8th-grade English class. This convenience, along with a desire to better understand adolescent writers in general, led me to conduct my microstudy on Adam to observe his activities, tool use, and relationships to see what they reveal about his situatedness in the school writing community. He wrote the introduction and planned the topics of his 3 body paragraphs at school. Because we came home late from a wrestling meet, he had to start working on his paper at home at 8 pm the night before the draft was due. Although we have a laptop, he chose to write his paper in our office on a desktop. The office is a quiet room without distractions. Adam titled his document USAAF Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. Methods Field Notes I observed Adam writing his first body paragraph and part of his second. While he typed, I wrote down the physical process he was going through, including what he pulled up on his screen, what he said to himself and to me, and how much he was writing. Pictures The pictures included in this file (figures 1 and 2) are of Adam sitting at the computer: one with his Word document on the screen and one with a source on the screen. Also in the picture, you can see the physical space in which he was writing and what tools were available to him. Written Artifacts Another artifact included a copy of Adams finished rough draft, which I saved immediately after he was finished with the assignment. Interview When Adam had all but his conclusion finished, I asked him questions about his situatedness, asking for more detail and elaboration based on his responses. The interview was informal in tone; I didnt record the answers, only handwrote the details and reporting them in paraphrased form. 1. What tools did you use to prewrite and write your introduction before you came home? 2. How do you know how to write this type of report? 3. How did you decide on your topic? 4. What is the point of this assignment? 5. Who is your audience?

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6. What will you do with the finished draft? 7. What do you hope to accomplish by completing this assignment? 8. Where did the rules for writing a good expository report come from? 9. How do you know if your teacher is teaching the right rules? 10. How is this writing different than other writings youve done? 11. Does all writing fit into a category? 12. What do others do with expository writing? 13. How is your writing different than that of professional expository writers? 14. What would be different about you if you were a professional expository writer? 15. Are you going to cite your sources? Data Field Notes Adam opened his file from a flash drive at 8:05 pm. He went to Google to search a How Stuff Works site. He used predator as his search term and clicked on results until he came to the section about UAVs. He skimmed the section titled In Battle and Spy in the Sky because he knew what the topics of his paragraphs were going to be. He talked to himself a few times in the beginning, saying, Here we go. And Predator, but he stopped talking to himself once he started working on typing his paper. He chewed gum and blew bubbles the entire time he was working. Adams process was to go to the source, skim it for relevant information, go back to his document and type the information in his own words, go back to the source to look for more information, and so on until he completed the paragraph at 8:25. He edited as he went. At one point he misspelled recconnaissance which was flagged by the spell checker. He right clicked on it, but no suggestions popped up. He then went back to the source and found the word, changed a letter in his file and tried the spell checker again. This time, there were suggestions, so he chose the correct spelling. Knowing that Im an English teacher, Adam asked me a couple of questions while he worked. Is this apostrophe right since the advantages belong to the UAVs? Do my body paragraphs have to go in order of my thesiss 3 points? He also asked me how to find other sources because I had told him earlier that I could help him find good sources through Ball States databases. He interrupted himself reading his source to tell me that a fact he found out about UAVs was very interesting and he commented on the fact. Pictures Figures 1 and 2 show the physical tools that were available to Adam: the computer, the word processing software with spellchecker and automatic formatting, his flash drive, the internet sites he used as search engines and sources, and his mom in the room. Additionally, he used academic language. Written Artifacts The finished rough draft is double spaced with 12 point font. The title is centered and bolded. Adam structured the report in the 5-paragraph essay format with his 3-point thesis at the end of his introduction, 3 body paragraphseach with a transitioning topic sentence, and a conclusion that repeats his thesis and wraps up the report. Although the academic-sounding language appears to be copied from the source, Adam did put the facts in his own words. However, he didnt cite sources or put a works cited at the end of the paper.

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Interview During the interview, Adam reported the following: Among the tools Adam used to write his report were the online resources to write his introductionto find the different capabilities of UAVs. He also used his mind to process the information and to evaluate the information. He used what he thought would be needed and took out the unnecessary. And he used Office for word processing. When asked how he knew what to do, he explained that he used the proper formatting taught to him in class. He bent it to his own needs because he needed to be creative for the audience to keep reading. Adam chose his topic based on what interested him; he knew something about UAVs already and there was information available about UAVs. The point of the essay, he said, is to inform people about UAVsthe cutting-edge technology. He reported that his audience is anybody who is wanting to know about UAVs. But when I asked how this audience would get the report, Adam changed his mind and said that his audience is his teacher. Is he trying to inform his teacher? No, the real purpose of the report is to give him more experience in writing expository reports. Adams plans for the essay were to begin taking the report through peer revisions and self editing the next day. Then he would make a final draft and turn it into his teacher. By completing the assignment, he hopes to get a good grade so that he can keep his opportunities open and set an example for himself for future writing assignments. Getting a bad grade would disappoint him and give him fewer opportunities. Adam cares what teachers think of him. Adam said that the rules for expository reports come from the different genres. Over the years, people have collected rules that make writing better and his teacher passes them on to her students. No single person made the rules, but theyve collected over time and have changed over time. Adam knows his teacher is teaching him the right rules because he trusts her to know the rules. He trusts her extensive teaching experience and people say good things about her. To explain the differences between this assignments and others he has completed, Adam said that in the past, he hasnt written much expository writing. He mostly has experience with persuasive writing with a viewpoint. He explained that all writing fits into categories because there are so many kinds. People know what format theyre using, and the formats can overlap. Others, like journalists and reporters, use expository writing professionally. Adams writing is different than that of professionals, he said, because his is for a grade and theirs is for money. They also write to a broader audience and give more first hand information that they gathered themselves. They know how to do these things because they have had college training on that type of writing. Theyve learned more about structure and ways to make the writing more interesting. According to Adam, if he was a journalist or a reporter, he would do more travel to get the first-hand information. He would talk more proficientlymostly about his job and the things he saw, but he would dress the same. Believing that citing means including a works cited page, Adam said he was going to cite his sources at the end but he forgot to include the works cited page at the time of the observation.

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Figure 1. Adam uses Word to type his first body paragraph.

Figure 2. Adam uses How Things Work as a source.

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Discussion Legitimate Peripheral Participation Lave and Wenger (1991) note that learners inevitably participate in communities of practitioners and that the mastery of knowledge and skill requires newcomers to move toward full participation in the sociocultural practices of a community (29). Adam is working his way into the community of academic writers. The following table suggests that Adam is not a newcomer to school writing.Table 1. Familiarity with school writing

Activities Uses 5-paragraph formula with transitions, etc. Puts information from sources into his words.

Tools Uses word processing, spell checker, search engines with appropriate search terms, internet sources. Types quickly on a full keyboard.

Relations Uses terms: audience, formatting, to inform, peer revision, drafting. Uses academic-sounding vocabulary and sentence structure.

However, neither is Adam an old-timer according to the following.Table 2. Unfamiliar aspects of school writing

Activities Uses sources without citing. Doesnt include a works cited page. Doesnt attempt to adjust the 5-paragraph formula.

Tools Doesnt use reliable sources or a variety of sources. Doesnt use academic databases.

Relations Sees the teacher, mom, and professional writers as all-knowing with the correct informationas the other. Reported a fake audience.

Adam works hard to master the knowledge and skills to become a full participant because he wants to please his teachers, whom he looks up to, and also to reach his career goals. He knows that he needs good grades to get into honors classes in high school that will increase his chances of getting scholarships to college. He wants to live on campus and knows that his parents cant pay full tuition and residential fees, so he is trying to get scholarships. Although Adam clearly uses language and shares beliefs that are socially constructed by the school English class culture, he is unaware of the social and cultural construction of those beliefs. He believes that the expectations are rules with final truth. However, I believe the process of answering my questions forced Adam to understand that his teacher might not have all of the answers. For example, he seemed perplexed when I asked him how his audience was going to read his report. He appeared to realize that what his teacher said was his audience was a pretend, imagined audience while the actual audience was really only his teacher. At the same time, when I asked him about the purpose of the assignment, he realized that his writing assignments were for his own benefit, not for an imagined audience. Because of Adams advanced academic skills, for a 13 year old, and because of the unusual amount of language discussions that take place in our house, I believe Adam is more of a participant in the academic writing community than most 13 year olds. Yet, to move beyond a student of writing into an active participant with authority, Adam will need to learn more socially and culturally-expected activities, tool use, and relationships between himself and other writers and teachers in the community. Another study

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with his classmates would provide an opportunity to compare data among students who pass and dont pass ISTEP or who have learning disabilities or who learned English as a second language. I would expect to find 10 to 25 percent of his classmates who dont complete the writing assignment. Even so, interviews would reveal their knowledge of writing terms and beliefs. Another large percentage would probably fail to follow the 5-paragraph formula without replacing it with a rhetorically-active alternative. Plenty of students would show difficulty with using Word or spellchecker effectively and would have trouble using helpful search terms. This type of analysis could reveal what knowledge students are missing. Schools usually use the students final product to reveal problems, but taking a look at the activities, tool uses, and abilities to use expected language and behaviors can help with the big picture. Activity Theoretical Reflection Since writing this analysis of my sons situatedness in writing his essay, I have learned quite a bit about activity theory that would change the way I would write this assignment if I studied Adams situatedness today. First, I would have used the term actions in place of activities. The activity in this case was the writing of the essay. I would also refer to the immediate goal of the activity (getting a good grade) as the object and the long-term goals (pleasing his teacher, keeping his grade up, getting scholarships) as outcomes. Some other activity theory terms Ive learned since writing this analysis would provide a heuristic for asking more questions. For example, I could ask about the division of labor for the activity. What did his teacher do leading up to the drafting stage to get him ready? What was the assignment exactly? How long had the class been working toward the writing of the essay? I know that he learned about 5-paragraph essays this year and that each of his other 8 years of schooling, even before schooling, from the time his dad and I read him stories and taught him his letters, contributed to the writing of this essay. I would also follow this night up with the actions that took place later. What tools did Adam use to revise and edit his paper at school? Did he use peer editing, and how did he know what to do with peer editing? What procedures did his teacher have for collecting the essays and what did he do with the essay when she returned it to him? Besides following the activity theory heuristic, the 5-paragraph essay format is begging for a genre theory analysis. Given more time, I would do a literature review about the 5-paragraph essay to find out the origins and the historical characteristics. From what I have already read in composition studies, I know that this genre is hated by compositionists, but why does it stay around? The answer to this question would surely lead me to standardized timed testing. I could take a look at timed testing training guides and rubrics. What does Adams teacher expect in her essays that are aimed toward the passing of these timed tests? What kind of negative and positive transfer will Adam experience as a result of this genre training? How does his teacher address genre and transfer when teaching other writings? For that matter, how are his teachers actions effected by the political state changes in education from the past couple of years? These and many other questions stem from activity theorys focus on the activity, which is always mediated by tools and artifacts and driven by objects and outcomes. Rather than looking at Adams essay and drawing conclusions about him as a writer from this one piece of writing, an activity theorist looks at the bigger picture and sees the context. Reading about activity theory and its applications for more than three months has made me see the world of activities through a wider lens and has unlocked areas that call for investigation.

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Situatedness of Japanese Adjunct Teaching Work

[Elizabeth Imafuji]

apanese, Spanish, and German languages (and so on) are academic disciplines, as is foreign language teaching. Why, then, should someone be hired to teach college-level Japanese based solely on native-speaker status, not on academic qualifications? Unfortunately, this hiring practice seems common at large public universities: adjunct positions in foreign languages are often filled by native speakers with degrees in unrelated areas. The subject of this study is Kaito, a native speaker of Japanese who teaches Japanese at a large public university in a major city in the Midwest. Kaito has no graduate-level degrees or training in Japanese or foreign language teaching; he has an M.B.A. and a primary career as an English-Japanese business translator. Ironically, if we believe in the importance of a university instructor having a degree in the subject, he has won recognition for best student evaluations in the large foreign languages department that employs him, and he receives requests from other Asian-language instructors to observe his class for ideas on how to teach a more engaging lesson. I wanted to investigate how Kaito, as an academically-unprepared faculty member who seems to be excelling, uses writing to do the work of teaching Japanese. For this project, I observed him as he graded papers, and I conducted an interview. Methods In order to learn more about the writing work in Kaitos teaching of Japanese, I observed him during one grading session. This session consisted of grading 10 students four-page quizzes and 11 students one-page workbook exercisesall from one section of second-semester, first-year Japanese. I recorded time spent marking each quiz or workbook exercise, and counted the number of marks he made per quiz or exercise. After grading was completed, I looked at each quiz and assignment, making note of each type of mark or written comment made during grading, including whether the marks were written in English or Japanese. Finally, I conducted an interview to learn more about Kaitos own attitudes toward the writing work of adjunct Japanese teaching, how he learned to teach Japanese, and his role in the institution. I asked the following questions: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Tell me about how you use writing in teaching this course. How did you learn to teach this course? How do you feel about your role in the department? How do you feel about your role in the students learning? How does teaching Japanese fit in with your career overall?

J

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Findings Grading Sessions Student work was written entirely in Japanese. I coded Kaitos grading for two types of marks: simple and extended. Simple marks were an X over a Japanese character that should be removed, a carrot with a Japanese character or two that should be inserted, or an underline of instructions that the student failed to follow. Extended marks were comments explaining what the student did wrong, such as: Referring to a quiz section with a recurring error: You are generalizing things. E.g., [Japanese characters] means (all the) towns are quiet. Referring to handwriting: Small letters should be at the bottom. Not in the middle. Table 1 indicates the number of marks made (including both simple and extended) for each paper, with the accompanying time spent marking. Whether a paper received extended marks is noted in column 3; no paper received more than one extended mark.

Table 1. Marks Made During Quiz Grading

Quiz Marks Time grading 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 8 10 6 11 12 10 4 10 11 3 2:46 2:49 2:53 2:43 3:49 2:39 1:48 2:10 2:08 1:01

Extended marks None In English None None In English & Japanese None In English & Japanese None None None

As Table 1 suggests, there does not seem to be a clear, direct correspondence between number and type of marks and length of time spent grading. For example, Quiz 2 took almost the same amount of time (within 4 seconds) of Quiz 1 and 3, even though Quiz 2 had more marks overall, including extended marks.

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Interview In the interview, a few themes emerged: a sense of powerlessness, a sense of agency, and a disregard for the importance of writing in teaching Japanese. Table 2 lists these themes with examples of relevant comments.Table 2. Interview themes

Powerlessness

I just follow the syllabus I was given. I would like to have more power over what I think they should be learning. Im just a part-time employee. I have no role there [in the department]. Because I dont have an office in the department, they dont give me any options [for submitting grades.] They dont tell me anything. Im important to my students learning because Im the only resource they have. I am using this teaching experience as my opportunity to teach them real life Japanese culture. About grading: I have to consider many aspects of students understandings of Japanese language. I have to balance otherwise they dont get any points. I dont write the quiz. I copy and paste from the workbook. I think they want to learn how to speak, how to have a conversation, rather than how to write. Theyll never write anyway; theyll never use it. But its an academic course so thats why it has to be reading and writing I guess.

Agency

Writing

Discussion Although Japanese language teaching is not Kaitos primary career and he has no education or training in the field, he seems to have a complex and conscious view of correctness in Japanese writing, and a conscious concern for student motivation. As shown in Table 1, some quizzes with fewer marks took longer to grade, though nothing I could see accounted for these differences in timing. During the interview, Kaito revealed some of the invisible process of grading Japanese: while grading each quiz, he is considering the individual student, the various ways to write correct Japanese, and weighing what to mark wrong: Grading quizzes is hard because I have to consider many aspects of students understandings of Japanese language. I have to check alphabet, grammar, structures, and so forth. I have to balance; otherwise, they dont get any points... Some people learned Japanese in high school and they learned a different way of saying the same thing, but they are not learning that with me, with the textbook now. I dont know if they understand the new concept. Or, they arent doing the quiz answers right, but maybe they understand. Or, Chinese students write kanji but in their own way. I have to tell them thats not how we write kanji in Japan. Its not wrong; I can still read it. But its not right either.

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Thus, with so many factors to consider while grading, there is not be a straightforward correlation between the marks made and time spent grading. Kaito also articulated his philosophy for marking incorrect Japanese writing on workbook exercises: I mark whatever is wrong, but I give all the points just for trying. Thats their motivation to try. Unless they make nonsense answers just for points; they know I think thats cheating. Because he does not take off points for workbook exercise errors, he does not have to weigh the effects on student motivation if he marks too many errors. Unlike with the quizzes, he is not concerned with the sliding scale of correctness, and he graded these exercises in as little as 18 seconds a page, much faster than the quizzes. When talking about how he grades written work or how he responds to students in writing, Kaito seems to have a clear sense of his own agency as instructor: he knows he has the freedom to choose how to grade, and he makes deliberate decisions about what features of writing to prioritize for each student in order to keep them motivated. He has certainly thought about his teaching practices, sees himself as responsible for student motivation, and has carved out the agency to motivate as he sees fit. According to the positive student evaluations, Kaitos effort to motivate students is workingand these efforts have been publicly acknowledged within the university through the recognition for top student evaluations. However, when asked about how he learned to teach, or about his role in the department, he only speaks of powerlessness, saying, I just follow the syllabus I was given... I just give them points. I just follow the calculation, and I have no role in the department. Certainly, adjuncts have very little power in a university system, and in this case they do not even get so much as the opportunity to choose their own textbook. Perhaps that powerlessness contributes to Kaitos downplay of the importance of writing in teaching Japanese. He claims that he doesnt write his own quizzes because he just cuts and pastes even though he chooses what he wants to cut and paste from an online workbook, what order, and how to weight each item. Though he uses a complex mix of Japanese and English when writing notes to his students to explain their errors on quizzesusing Japanese words they are learning interspersed with English to make sure they understand the markshe did not mention this practice as a use of writing in teaching the course. All of the grading work Kaito completed during this study was some type of writing, but when asked about using writing to teach, he spoke only of the writing that the students do. He says, with a sigh, he would really rather be teaching conversation instead. Kaito is an unqualified Japanese instructor, hired without the appropriate academic background and given no training, but he managed to succeed by developing his own methods to maximize motivation and learning. This hire seems to be working out for the students benefit, and during the interview, Kaito listed several benefits he too is reaping from the position. Still, he never forgets that he is just a part-time employee without the proper background, so it is no wonder he does not appreciate the depth and value in the writing he and his students do. Activity Theoretical Reflection Activity theory provides a framework for discussing the division of labor in an activity system. As described by Kari Kuuti (1996) in his overview of activity theory, Division of labor refers to the explicit and implicit organization of a community as related to the transformation process of the object into the outcome (p. 28). If this study would have been better informed by activity theoryif I would have conducted it at the end of a semester of learning about activity theory rather than at the beginningI would have focused more on Kaitos situatedness within the division of labor, and how the division of

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labor is related to other aspects of the Japanese teaching activity system. In fact, the division of labor seems to have been quite important to Kaito, as he kept mentioning his limited role as an adjunct. However, I was so focused on the behaviors visible to me, primarily the marking of papers, that I did not pay enough attention to the overall context. An activity theory approach would have allowed me to map out and analyze Kaitos position within a broader community, with specific rules and a division of labor influencing the writing work that I observed in this microstudy. Another aspect of this microstudy that an activity theory approach would have allowed me to add is pay attention to operations versus actions. According to Kuuti (1996), operations are well-defined habitual routines used as answers to conditions faced during the performing of the action. Initially each operation is a conscious action When the corresponding model is good enough and the action has been practiced long enough, the orientation phase will fade and the action will be collapsed into an operation, which is much more fluent (p. 31). As I observed Kaito grading Japanese quizzes, I saw that some marking caused him to pause before writing deliberately, while other types of marking were extremely quick and even performed while Kaito was picking up and readying the next quiz to mark, I was not sure what to make of this difference or how it could be important so I did not pay much attention to these contrasting behaviors. Looking back, I can see that some of the marking was at the operations level; it was routinized and fluent and performed without conscious effort. Other marking was in the realm of deliberate, conscious action. If I had been informed by activity theory, I would have investigated the differences between these two types of marking. Some of Kaitos comments during the interviews and some of the results from the data on time spent marking hinted at this operations versus actions distinction. An activity theory approach would probably have prompted me to question further and to analyze data more purposefully. As with division of labor, an activity theory approach would have added depth and clarity to my approach and to the results of this microstudy.

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Key Sources for Activity Theoretical Approaches to WritingAmano, K. (1999). Improvement of schoolchildrens reading and writing ability through the formation of linguistic awareness. In Y. Engestrm, R. Miettinen & R. Punamki (Eds.), Perspectives on activity theory (pp. 183-205). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Amano looked at written communication in the context of Japanese schoolchildren with learning difficulties and learning disabilities. He gives context on the Japanese writing system, describing three different alphabet systems, one of which contains 71 letters and are often taught at an early age. Amano provides results from previous studies in which they conducted experiments on teaching linguistical awareness of syllables through a variety of methods, including using symbols as representation of sound length. According to Vygotsky, writing is more complex than speech because of its intentional and conscious activity. Once a child was able to acquire linguistical awareness, he or she was able to learn to read and write words that used special syllables. As Amano showed through various studies stretching over 30 years, there is a direct correlation between speech and writing, specifically with linguistical awareness. This is useful for writing researchers looking at literacy development and using oral speech as an aid in this process. Bazerman, C. (2004). Speech acts, genres, and activity systems: How texts organize activity and people. In C. Bazerman & P. Prior (Eds.), What writing does and how it does it: An introduction to analyzing texts and textual practices (pp. 309-339). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. In this article, Bazerman focuses primarily on defining and applying written genres. He uses the education system as his primary example to help define the terms used in the article, but acknowledges its use in other fields. Bazerman shows how context is important in defining genres and their uses in addition to providing an argument that examining genre sets allows researchers to see the work and knowledge required to accomplish that work. By understanding genre systems, researchers can see how writing is situated within a system and how it is directed by genre expectations. Bazerman concludes his article with a case study that incorporates all of the terms he discusses earlier in the chapter, providing concrete examples of how the terms are not only defined, but also how they are applied. This article is very useful for writing researchers in that it can help provide an in depth definition of terms frequently used in activity theory and how they can be applied to writing research. It also outlines the importance of genres in analyzing written text, as opposed to oral speech and why written text is important to the social structure of society. Ketter, J., & Hunter, J. (2003). Creating a writer. In C. Bazerman & D. Russell (Eds.), Writing selves: Writing socities (pp. 307-329). Fort Collins, CO: WAC Clearinghouse Publications. Ketter and Hunter conducted a case study on one student to investigate how her writing activity varies over two different writing communities: academia and public relations. Ketter and Hunter argue that the students negotiation between two writing communities help shape her understanding of being a good

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writer overall. Their aim in this case study was to see if writing in higher education actually translates to the workplace. To gain an understanding of the context within which the student writes, Ketter and Hunter describe the students relationship and standing within her liberal arts college in addition to her job duties as a public relations intern. The student is shown to have structured her writing in accordance within her own activity system, one that had the object of obtaining a good grade, while the teachers activity system was very different. Rather than seeing the end product as a good grade, the teacher saw the object as learning about the topic and applying it to the real world. Even within academia the student is shown to struggle with defining herself in writing depending on the class she is writing for. This article is useful in that it shows how writing activity is impacted and developed depending on the cultural and historical context within the writers community. By having a better understanding of who the audience is, writers will be able to write more efficiently. The student in this case study viewed her academic writing as restrictive and formulaic, while she saw her writing as a public relations intern as productive even though they both have separate and useful objects. Lundell, D. B. (2003). Dissertation writers negotiations with competing activity systems. In C. Bazerman & D. Russell (Eds.), Writing selves: Writing socities (pp. 483-514). Fort Collins, CO: WAC Clearinghouse Publications.