"The whole movement of life is learning" (Krishnamurti). "To be an act of knowing, then, the adult literacy process must engage the learners in the constant problematizing of their existential situations" (Freire). "Once you learn to read, you will be forever free" (Douglass). "I can learn anything I have the desire to learn" (White, S.G.).

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Spring Fever // Braindead Zombie Grad Student

The end of the Spring semester is always hard for me.  I want to be outside, I want to be gardening and weeding and eating on patios, I want to see which of my plants have survived the winter, I want to break my hibernation habits and go see friends and drink beer and do anything outside in the sun.  Sadly, being a graduate student means that I have to wait for classes to end before I can have anything resembling a social life!


The side effect of this is that I struggle getting in "school mode" to think about projects.  This weekend, Melissa and I did some really great social constructivist learning, which is my favorite kind of learning: the ability to bounce ideas off other people, brainstorm together, and tease your own ideas of a concept out of whatever tangled mess you half-way understood after class.  Thinking WITH really helps me solidify those concepts I've been thinking about on my own--it helps me build a bigger framework to put it in context of how others see things too.  Then we planted tomatoes and drank shandies, so it was a double-awesome day.



So I am thinking about our final paper for this class, and Melissa and I were both thinking about where to get started.  This morning I sat down and started reading the Molosiwa article, "Language and Literacy in Botswana," and the framework for the beginning of the article is really great!  The author goes through who the subjects are, a brief explanation of her idea, tags her own positionality, and describes her research gathering methods!   Wow, I needed that!

Now the question is:  Do I cite this paper in my references, since it helped me think about HOW I want to get started when I write my paper?
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3 comments:

  1. ldlayneApril 8, 2014 at 10:53 AM

    Caitlin-we are some like-minded individuals as to how we want to spend our time! I commented on Melissa's post that you ladies re-inspired me about my project and that I need to just grab someone and start talking because I've been in my own head this whole time-spinning wheels! I also liked the way Bostwana was framed- thorough yet simple enough for the reader to follow. I will be interested to see what Dr. Muth says about including it as a reference.

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  2. Shannon BeyApril 8, 2014 at 4:09 PM

    Love it Catlin! I wanted to skip class and let me hair down. Only a few weeks left.

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  3. Bill MuthApril 9, 2014 at 11:10 PM

    Yes indeed, Caitlin. I am super happy to see that you are reading these texts both for content and, at a more 'meta' level, for methods. So if you are borrowing a data collection or data analysis or data presentation approach from any of the articles, it would add rigor by citing the sources. (And EXTRA CREDIT if you also state how you are adapting or modifying those strategies to meet the needs of your project!) B

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