The synthetic stage of reading the article began with our interview with Dr. Bazerman and concluded with the creation of this site. The emphasis of the stage is bringing the disparate elements of our exploration together, or synthesizing them, into a cohesive understanding of both the underlying logic of the article and our own developing understanding of the text.
Synthetic Research (Ryan)
The interview plunged me further into the study of activity theory, and also placed genre theory in relation to it;
The interview also showed me the fittingness of the link between the Vygotskian perspective I had chosen for my paper and the article itself. I began working more heavily with Vygotsky’s theories as a result of this;
My research on writing instruction had begun to pull itself toward the issues of assessment and, specifically, standardized assessment in light of a paper I was writing for another class. However, this text brought me back to the circumstances and issues surrounding instruction, not assessment.
Synthetic Research (Ryan)