Polio and Friedman Ch 4 for 3/4

What are the advantages and pitfalls of this type of approach? What concerns do the authors point out? What attracts you or not about these types of methods? How could you use them to investigate your own topics of interest?

Ethnography and case study are widely and legitimately-used methods of L2 Writing research. There are various aspects of this method that appeal to me, the first being that these kind of experiments shouldn’t cause faulty cause and effect relationships to be drawn. The major concern in most experiments is identifying and accounting for all outside variables that could affect results; this is extremely difficult to do. A method like this in which you keep all of the differing variables simplifies this as researchers embrace differences instead of explaining them away. The way that this seems more contextualized and legitimate is a major pro.

On the other hand, although I don’t think there’s some ultimate teaching truth we are trying to uncover, I would be more interested in seeing studies with results that can be somewhat generalized. I think what we study should have the goal of influencing how we teach, and these kind of results are less compatible with studies of this kind. Polio and Friedman point out other concerns this this method as well, one of those being the Observer’s Paradox. Although I’m not proud of it, without a doubt I change my behavior depending on if I’m being watched. While the longitudinal nature of these studies helps minimize these effects, they shouldn’t be written off.

I also think it’s interesting that in the focal study of this chapter, Polio and Friedman call Maria a “somewhat atypical” participant of case studies. While I would agree that most people can’t relate to Maria’s life choices, this statement seems to have certain implications. Should case studies prioritize focusing on “typical” writers? This seems to conflict with some of the underlying ideas (the data isn’t meant to be generalized, the purpose is to investigate the diversity of the human experience, etc.). I’m not entirely sure how I could use this to investigate topics I’m interested in, but this is certainly a kind of study I would be open to doing in the future.