Composing Inquiry: Teachers’ Resources

Working with Readings: Reading as a Researcher

Example 1: following the method of research

Reading in preparation:

  • Julia Koza’s “Rap Music: The Cultural Politics of Official Representation”
  • the assignment (Koza is the starting point for assignment 2 in Cultural Politics and Public Discourse and assignment 2 in Reading Media)
  • Students will probably have read and discussed the introductory section, at least, of Chapter 6: Working with Texts so that the terms of close reading, textual analysis and content analysis will have already been considered

Class Discussion/activity:

Objective: have students understand the process Koza followed in conducting her research, so that they can approximate a similar study with a different topic. Since researchers rarely give their process in sequence or completely, readers have to piece the process together from what is said, what is implied and what they can guess.

Task: class creates a list of Koza’s steps on the board

Time: one class session

Next step/ homework: apply similar questions to their own project. For example:
Given the topic you’ve decided to investigate, which magazines (or other publications) will you include in your study? for how many years? what key terms will you have to use to find relevant articles? which databases will you consult? what type of secondary sources do you expect to consult?

Note: in a class with computer access, some time might be spent having students actually experiment with locating the appropriate key terms, generating a list of publications with the most “hits” and determining a reasonable time span. Or, teachers might have students work in teams to generate this kind of information with sample topics.

On the next page is a list of steps, some key passages of Koza’s text that we would expect students to turn to or cite as evidence of this process or that we would take them to if they had difficulty, and some discussion questions to prompt thinking.

We’re sure that there will be some disagreement among your students, as there always is among ours, about the answers to these questions. The real point is to help students to see how many decisions (and how much work) are hiding behind such a simple, straight-forward description of method.

Steps / Passages / Questions
  1. located all the rap-related articles in three magazines
  2. read these closely
/ the third paragraph of the introduction: “I did a close reading of all rap-related articles that appeared in three American weekly news magazines during the ten-year period from January 1983 through December 1992; the three magazines I examined were Newsweek, Time magazine, and U.S. News and World Report.” /
  1. How would Koza have decided on which magazines to examine? What justifications would she likely have for choosing these and not others?
  2. How would she have found “all” the rap-related articles?
  3. How do you suppose she decided on this time span? Does it seem reasonable to do ten years? these ten years? why or why not?

  1. determined appropriate magazines based on readership numbers and purpose of study – information not entertainment
  2. used reader’s guide to determine key terms and locate relevant articles
  3. determined an appropriate time span (perhaps as a result of #4)
  4. charted patterns of treatment of topic – numbers
  5. closely read and analyzed articles
/ See more detailed discussion of the selection process in the section “Selecting the General Media Sources” /
  1. What’s involved in a “close reading”
  2. How did she know which patterns might be important for her purposes?

  1. determine research questions that can be answered by a content analysis of media
  2. determine appropriate magazines and time frame for study
  3. find relevant articles using appropriate data base and key terms
  4. chart patterns of treatment of topic
  5. read through articles noting patterns of placement, language, construction of key elements (like performers, audience), associated images and symbolism
  6. consult secondary sources, theorists and other research for support of interpretations
  7. write final version of analysis to present findings
/ see discussion of “close reading” in Chapter 6
note Koza’s use of secondary sources and the frame that establishes her initial concerns/purposes for the investigation

© Margaret Marshall Composing Inquiry: Teachers’ Resources Prentice Hall 2008