Back to how I do research again. This time, we read an article in class called “What is it we Do When we Write Articles Like this One–and How can We Get Students to Join Us?” by Professor Michael Kleine at the University of Arkansas. His article starts with a scene in the library, something you’ll be familiar with if you are or have been a college student.
Even though it was a Sunday, students were everywhere—high school students and college students working in small groups at scattered tables, segregated by age: they were all writing RESEARCH PAPERS. I knew they were writing research papers because they were talking and laughing, but not about their work…I knew they were writing research papers because they were not writing at all—merely copying.
What Kleine describes here is similar to what I have previously posted as how I used to do research. Googling, or looking for easy sources to paste into my essays as my “researched” citation, research was somewhat a find-what-you-need process. I would look for information applicable to what I wanted, and then used those ideas to shape my writing or presentation.
Kleine breaks down the research process into two big-idea categories: Hunting, and Gathering.
Hunting: collecting data and writing with an established and focused sense of a goal.
Gathering: accommodating and considering unexpected data and insights that are discovered during the process.
Looking back at my previous “research,” processes, if there was a time I could even call that I did research, my method would have mostly fallen into the Hunting category. In order to answer a specific question in mind, or to just meet the requirement of having an academic source that my teacher assigned us, I was always after something. I would be hunting that would help my project and prove my point. I hardly ever think about the unlimited interpretations the material in front of me possessed. What a waste!
Research is not just hunting…literally.
But this time was different. I entered the archives without a clue of what I was going to study. I carefully gathered information from a random box that I didn’t even know why it was there. Then instead of looking for documents that exemplified my argument (didn’t have one to begin with honestly) I let everything I found land into its place in my paper. I expanded my own thought and provided my own interpretation of the particulars. Not hunting, but gathering instead, a different kind of research then I am used to, and maybe this is what.
Going back to Kleine’s article, he explains how a balance between the two styles are important, and we must know that we have a tendency to lean one way or another (as most things are in life). This archival project was great because I got a taste of a different approach to research, and closer to the balance that makes me an expert researcher.
(Source)