The Chronicle of Higher Education Almanac Issue came in the mail today. I’ve barely made my way into it; tonight I’m looking over the page 4 table that shows, by state, educational attainment, per-capita income, and poverty rate. (The “Attitudes and characteristics of freshmen” table on page 17 looks pretty interesting; the “Attitudes and activities of faculty members” on page 20 less so.) To do some initial rather unscientific work, I looked for the three states with the combination of highest per-capita income and lowest poverty rate, and the three states with the combination of lowest per-capita income and highest poverty rate. (A few states were anomalous: Massachusetts combines a high per-capita income with a moderate poverty rate, D.C. combines a high per-capita income with a high poverty rate, and Iowa combines a low poverty rate with a low per-capita income. Note also that some of the percentages below don’t quite add up due to rounding.)
So: first I looked at income and poverty rates.
Connecticut ($42,706 per-capita income; 7.5% poverty rate)
Maryland ($36,298 per-capita income; 7.3% poverty rate)
New Jersey ($39,453 per-capita income; 7.7% poverty rate)
Arkansas ($23,512 per-capita income; 17.1% poverty rate)
Mississippi ($22,372 per-capita income; 17.1% poverty rate)
West Virginia ($23,688 per-capita income; 15.6% poverty rate)
Then I looked at educational attainment.
Connecticut: 44.5% high school or less; 55.6% at least some college, and 13.3% with a graduate degree
Maryland: 42.9% high school or less; 57% at least some college, and 13.4% with a graduate degree
New Jersey: 47.3% high school or less; 52.8% at least some college, and 11% with a graduate degree
Arkansas: 58.8% high school or less; 41.2% at least some college, and 5.7% with a graduate degree
Mississippi: 56.5% high school or less; 43.5% at least some college, and 5.8% with a graduate degree
West Virginia: 64.2% high school or less; 35.7% at least some college, and 5.9% with a graduate degree
Some generalizations: in the wealthy states, more than half the adults have at least some college education, and more than 10% have a graduate degree. In the poorer states, less than half the adults have any college education, and less than 6% have graduate degrees.
This stuff might seem obvious, but it’s nice to have some statistical confirmation that education matters. And I’ve only just started, so it’s crude. But ultimately, after the initial sections where I sort out the class discourses of composition and computers & composition, I’d like to make an attempt to correlate this sort of educational data with data from the Pew Internet and American Life project (“The Ever-ShiftingInternet Population”, 4/03), the UCLA Internet Report (“Surveying the Digital Future: Year Three”, 1/03), and other sources, in order to give myself some sort of solid framework within which to hang all my theorizing about class.
The other empirical grounding I’ll have will come from the pilot study I’m planning for my two sections of computer-lab composition this semester. It won’t give me any definitive answers, since I’m still not quite sure what questions to ask, but it’ll at least help me shape those questions in ways that might offer answers most useful for shaping future pedagogies. And I’m still trying to work out how to shape this study. For students who check the “OK, I’ll participate” box on the consent form, there’ll certainly be an initial survey asking some questions related to attitudes about education and technology; I may also ask students for their home zip codes, for use with the Prizm categories I mentioned earlier. I don’t know quite how to ask about class, and I think those are some loaded questions, perhaps best saved for after-the-semester interviews with students who might be willing to talk to me about such questions.
Still, I’ll also ask those who consent to participate in the study for permission to use the writing they do for the course. Here’s my first-day assignment, that — in addition to asking students to start doing some thinking about the goals and context of the course — I’m hoping might offer me some interesting insights, as well.
- Ask students to get out a pen and a sheet of notebook paper. Yes, we’re in a computer lab, but one point here is that a computer isn’t necessary for writing.
- Pass out envelopes. Ask students to write their names on the envelopes.
- Put questions on the board: What’s your biggest worry about this course? What have been your experiences with and feelings about writing (any kind of writing: poems to personal essays, grocery lists to graffiti), both in school and out of school? What have been your experiences with and feelings about computer technologies both in and out of school? What are you hoping this course will do for you? What are you hoping a college education will do for you?
- Ask students to take ten to fifteen minutes to answer all the questions as completely as they can. Tell them to be as open and honest as they want: they’re going to put what they write into the envelopes and seal the envelopes when they’re done, and nobody else has to see what they wrote — not even me.
- After they’ve finished and sealed their envelopes, do a brief partner-introduction exercise; ask partners to share any one thing they feel comfortable talking about from their writing. Use those comments to start a discussion about and introduction to the goals of the course.
- At the end of the semester, when students are starting to write their final reflective analyses of their own writing over the course of the semester, pass these envelopes back and ask students to open them and read them. Offer them as a baseline or starting point from which their analyses might begin.
In this way, I’m hoping to make my classroom research as unobtrusive as possible; hoping to make it mesh as much as it can with the goals of the course. For me, it goes without saying that their education is of paramount importance, and whatever research I hope to do has to be fitted smoothly and carefully around it. And while I’m talking about ethical concerns, I’ll point out as well that I’m following all the IRB-recommended procedures, including having a colleague pass out and collect the consent form and initial surveys and hold them until after I’ve turned in final grades, so that there’s no way I can know who’s agreed to participate until after that point, and therefore no way that a student’s agreement to participate can affect her grade.
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