Standing Committee on Research

Function: To promote interest in research and research findings; to advise the Executive Committee and other Council groups on matters related to research; to advise the editors of Research in the Teaching of English; and to continue the research monograph series.

Members present: : Sarah Freedman, Chair; Sarah Beck; Joel Dworin; Maisha Fisher; Deborah Hicks; Mary Juzwick; Valerie Kinloch; Paul LeMahieu; Yolanda Majors; Martin Nystrand; and Melanie Sperling (ex-officio) and Anne DiPardo (ex-officio).

The following new members joined the Committee in 2007: Deborah Appleman, Carleton College; Arnetha Ball, Stanford University; Stuart Greene, Indiana University; Glynda Hull, University of California, Berkeley; University of Illinois; Cynthia Reyes, University of Vermont; and Mia Robinson; Colorado.

To promote research at NCTE, the SCR planned a series of program slots for the 2006 annual meeting, including a full slate for the Saturday Day of Research. The sessions seemed to serve to increase the research presence at NCTE and the research presence at the annual meeting continues to flourish. For the 2006 meeting year 77 proposals were received for slots on the 2006 meeting program, with a number of the proposals consisting of panels of multiple speakers. Fisher and Freedman took the lead in program planning but worked with most of the other members of the committee to review the proposals; we used the same rubric we have used for the past three years. Besides filling the 20 program slots on the research strand, several proposals were accepted by other groups; and an additional session was invited, with funding from and co-sponsorship of the National Writing Project. Fisher and Kinloch will took charge of planning the 2007 NCTE program and attended the planning meeting in Atlanta in February to finalize the research strand and to coordinate the sessions sponsored by the SCR with the general program. In 2007, 125 proposals were submitted to the research strand and only 45 could be accepted, causing a much higher reject rate. We are pleased about the substantial increase of interest in the strand and also that now two members of the SCR are invited to come to the program planning meeting and that this process is regularized. We are grateful to the Council for approving this change in policy for convention planning.

The SCR also oversees the judging of the Promising Researcher Award. There were 31 nominees for the 2006 award. The following are the recipients: Deborah Bieler, from the University of Pennsylvania, for her study "Re-Imagining Mentoring as Dialogic Process: Using Discourse Analysis to Examine Student-Teacher/University Mentor Talk"; Victoria Haviland, from the University of Michigan,  for "'Things Get Glossed Over': Rearticulating the Silencing Power of Whiteness in Education"; and Jessica Zacher, from the University of California, Berkeley, for "Analyzing Children's Social Positioning and Struggles for Recognition in a Classroom Literacy Event" . Beth Lewis Samuelson, who received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley was a finalist for her study, "Ventriloquation in Discussions of Student Writing".  We discussed and approved a new rubric for judging the award; however, we agreed to revisit the procedures for judging the award at our 2007 meeting, after another trial year, since it was not easy for the judges to come to consensus.

The 2007 Award committee was appointed. Deborah Hicks will again assume the role of Chair for 2007 and 2008. Colette Daiute agreed to assume the role of chair for the 2009 award and to be on the committee for 2007. Other members of the 2007 committee include Joel Dworin, Mary Juzwick; and Yolanda Majors.

At the meeting of the SCR in November, 2006, the committee received a report from the editors of Research in the Teaching of English. The SCR is pleased with the direction of the journal and the work of the editors. Submissions are up significantly from 2005 to 2006. We also received a report on the progress of the search for new editors and stressed the importance of a timely transition to the health of the journal. We also discussed the level of NCTE's support for the journal, which the current editors found inadequate.

SCR members were pleased to welcome Kyoko Sato and Joanne Yatvin of the NCTE President’s Council who suggested a number of ways to better coordinate the work of those based in the schools and those based in universities and to make better use of the research arm of NCTE. Anne Ruggles Gere, Director of The Squire Office for Policy Research in English Language Arts, also had suggestions.

The SCR will continue to meet on Thursday afternoon for 2007, so as not to conflict with session times.

ACTION ITEMS:

1. The Committee for the second year in a row expressed concern about the representation of research on the NCTE Webpage. The SCR is not featured and research articles from RTE are not made available. Further the Committee would like to see the PRA winners featured prominently on the web. Anne Gere noted that NCTE has denied online access to RTE articles on policy Web site and for the second year in a row the Committee strongly supported making articles more accessible. Other items for the website include easy access to and highlighting the RTE "At Last" articles and articles winning the Purves award on the web. There is also a desire for a special space for the PRA, with a place for posting the rubrics and posting the winning submissions.
2. The SCR expressed concern that articles from RTE are not available in any online databases, unlike some other NCTE journals. We charged the RTE editors to follow up on this item and to attempt to rectify this situation. Action on this item is urgent; if NCTE expects the research of its members to be used in the scholarly community, it increasingly relies on web access to articles. Without such access, RTE articles will not be used as much as other articles that are more accessible and the journal will not have the kind of lasting impact it should. We are concerned about the future health of the journal itself if web access is not widely available.
3. The SCR remains interested in revitalizing the research monograph series. The committee would like to publicize past monographs and generating interest in soliciting future monographs.
4. The SCR is concerned about the level of support for RTE and suggests that at a minimum the costs of inflation be built into a contract with new editors; and further that if there are multiple editors, all should have expenses paid to come to the annual meeting.
5. Since the SCR oversees RTE we also discussed the importance of consulting the committee before forming a search committee. This issue of consultation has come up in previous searches for new editors. We would suggest institutionalizing consultation in some way, perhaps by including a representative from the SCR on future search committees for editors of RTE.

Sarah Freedman, Chair