Course Description & Objectives
English 552 is a required course for students in the Teaching of Writing MA specialization at SIUE.  This course should be one of the first courses that students in the program take.

The objectives of this course are (1) to provide you with a breadth of knowledge of empirical methods and methodologies employed in rhetoric and composition; (2) to help you become critical readers of empirical research reports; and (3) to give you experience posing research questions and planning a research design.  The course will focus on these questions:

• What types of research inquiry are used in composition/rhetoric?
• What types of questions are answered by different research methodologies?
• How does one design an effective empirical study?
• Can one design and implement the “perfect” empirical study?

An overarching question for the semester is should theoretical and empirical inquiry mutually inform one another?

During the semester, we will begin by examining the types of research methodologies common in rhetoric and composition.  We will then turn our attention to methodological issues such as subjects/participants, coding, validity/reliability, and ethics.  We will also examine emerging empirical research methods including teacher research and feminist research.   In addition to reading texts about research methods and methodologies, we will also read research reports as a way to understand how research is actually conducted using various methodological frames, to examine and problematize the decisions that researchers make, and to gain an understanding the genre of research reports.

Even if you think you will never conduct an empirical research study, this course is valuable because you will often be asked to justify curricular or programmatic decisions on empirical research studies; therefore, will need to be able to read these reports critically and argue about them knowledgeably.

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