ABSTRACT
Too often one reads of the theory-practice split in composition studies, where texts that emphasize one aspect of composition or the other fail to wed the two. Indeed, David Bleich, drawing on Stephen North’s The Making of Knowledge in Composition, noted that the split North identified between researchers-scholars and practitioners poses the problem of “how we as members of the composition discipline/profession can integrate all kinds of knowledge in our profession-those emerging from the variety of theoretical ‘methods’ along with the local knowledge of working teachers” (Bleich 176). This local knowledge is what North termed lore: the “accumulated body of traditions, practices, and beliefs in terms of which Practitioners understand how writing is done, learned, and taught” (North 22). Bleich proposed ethnographic studies of the classroom conducted by interested parties rather than by outside observers as a way to “loosen the boundary between theorists and teachers” (177). Similarly, in our experience, classroom research, the kind increasingly undertaken by writing instructors and increasingly represented in the body of literature of compo-sition studies, provides a key means of bridging the theory-practice gap. Although theory provides a vocabulary
through which to discuss writing and has a certain predictive value, allowing us to think systematically about and hypothesize what will happen in a given writing situation, classroom research helps us test and refine theories and to develop a greater understanding of what students actually do in the composing process. Through systematic research studies that formalize lore, several contributors to this volume refine or extend theoretical speculations about the writing process.1 Such classroom research projects, conducted through close observation, videotaping, and audio recording of students at work in collaborative groups, of whole-class discussions, of conferences, of protocols of students’ thoughts as they compose outside of class, and of cued question sessions provide valuable information for the instructor seeking to understand features of student writing left unaccounted for in theories of the composing process. Precisely because they are unaccounted for, these features become important in our research. In turn, this research provides us with practical ways of defining and redefining our roles in the classroom and our assignments in order to best facilitate our students’ learning.
