Tell Me How It Reads: Tutoring Deaf and Hearing Students in the Writing Center

2. The Research Context

22 C H A P T E R 2  The Research Context THE CONCEPT OF insider/outsider status is complex: “A single body cannot bridge that mythical divide between insider and outsider, researcher and researched.I am neither,in any simple way,yet I am both” (Weston, quoted in Olesen 2000, 227). Like Weston, as a researcher, I am both. I am an insider as a writing center person but an outsider to the actual tutorial relationship and to Deaf culture. Rubin and Rubin (1995) write that one way to gain insider status is to learn the language of those whom one is studying; for that reason, I have completed Level I and Level II sign language classes at the Center for Sight and Hearing in Rockford, IL. Neal Lerner (1996) also studied writing center tutors with ethnographic methods.Many of his observations are similar to mine.Seemingly, writing center theory is based on ideas from other fields that are applied to writing centers. North asks, “What happens in writing tutorials?” (1984b, 29). Lerner puts this idea into practice by recording tutoring sessions and interviewing participants. He focuses mainly on the tutors’ experiences, however. In contrast, I provide the viewpoints of all participants . Lerner finds that one of the key conflicts in tutoring is the tension between the tutors’ focus on process, the tutees’ desire to get their texts fixed, and the writing center’s reluctance to be seen as a fix-it shop. In The Research Context 23 my study, the writing center does not take on this kind of identity. I find that the main focus is the larger give-and-take between tutors and tutees, who have somewhat different goals and expectations for the sessions. These objectives relate to literacy, entering a discourse community, and enforcing that community’s expectations. While conducting the study I tried to remain flexible with my research methods. When I arrived at one of the research sites for the first interview, I realized I had forgotten my tape recorder, so I had to borrow one.After videotaping the first tutoring session, one of the deaf participants (Rae), the interpreter (Linda), and I began our first audiotaped interview with a borrowed recorder.As we were talking, I noticed that the “record” light was not on.When I bent down and turned up the volume,the light went on.When I tried to transcribe the tape,the beginning was so faint that I could not hear it.The first part of the interview had been lost. I found it ironic that the inability to hear would affect my data collection.We had discussed videotaping the interview,but I was too invested in my original plan to change. Finally, after the second interview, Rae suggested that I videotape the interviews. She explained that a deaf person is not represented on an audiotape—only the interpreter’s voice is there—so I took her advice and videotaped our third interview and subsequent interviews with another deaf tutee, Blue. Deaf study participant Kali declined to give her permission to be videotaped. I had not planned to videotape the interviews with deaf participants since I am not fluent in sign language, and I did not expect there would be any relevant nonlinguistic visual data. I also fully trusted the interpreters to accurately voice the deaf tutees’ words. I see now that I was both insensitive and naïve in not planning to videotape the interviews with the deaf participants.The drawback to the videotaped interviews is that the audiotaped interviews, when recorded at the proper level, are easy to transcribe, while transcribing videotaped interviews is extremely tedious. In the end, the videotaped interviews did not produce any extra usable data, but again, this is probably due to my rudimentary signing skills and my reliance on the interpreters for the deaf participants’ words and meanings. I did notice some facial expressions and gestures on the tapes, but I had already noted these in the observations. 24 Chapter 2 Methods in Grounded Theory The primary research methods employed were naturalistic observation and semistructured interviews. Other methods were general observation of context and collection of related documents such as student papers, handouts, and writing center materials. I also verified any other observations and tentative conclusions with the participants in the interview sessions and by means of participant feedback on drafts.This memberchecking procedure, or participant feedback (Lincoln and Guba...