Research as Forming a New Question

_{Our Essential Lessons are a sequence of lessons that form the backbone of the Writing Program curriculum, illustrating what we want all students to learn across our program’s diverse course topics.}

Students often believe that the most important thing about writing a research paper is having a strong thesis and therefore try to produce that thesis as early as possible in the research process. But experienced researchers know that good research begins with questions, and that those questions drive the research and writing process, even as that process leads to revision and refinement of the questions. This lesson asks students to practice this approach.

Inclusion

This lesson encourages students to draw on their own life experiences and interests as they develop their projects, which not only helps them connect with the academic content more personally but also helps the class as a whole exchange a wider range of perspectives on the course topic.

Objective

Students will be able to explore background, theory/method, argument, and exhibit/evidence sources in order to generate and recursively re-formulate research questions with consideration of different rhetorical situations.

Key Terms

research question, claim, BEAM/BEAT

Timing

At the beginning of WR 15x, instructors should emphasize the importance of question-oriented discovery and research, and the first parts of this lesson will help lay that groundwork. As students embark on their semester-long research projects in Module 2, the later parts of this lesson will frame information searching as a way to explore and reformulate research questions.

Conceptual Framework

All claims or thesis statements are answers to research questions, but students do not always recognize the relationship between a research question and a central claim. Even students with writing intensive high school classes often find the task of developing and refining a research question to be challenging, since essay and AP exams already provide the student with a motivating and focused question that they must answer. WR 120 emphasizes a more rhetorical model, underscoring how making a claim requires first identifying a problem or question to which the claim responds. With this understanding, WR 120 teachers can guide students through rhetorical schemas that clearly articulate a problem statement, claim, and acknowledgment and response.

However, prompts in WR 120 or other introductory-level classes typically predefine the question so that students can focus on engaging content and articulating argumentative claims. As a result, students may have little experience formulating their own research questions. Finally, because of the importance often attached to claims and thesis statements, students sometimes fail to recognize the generative–if sometimes messy–value of engaging in research as an iterative and recursive process of questioning.

The WR 15x courses require students to be more autonomous in this regard. Instructors should emphasize that nobody provides real researchers with predefined questions: they have to decide which questions they want to answer, how those questions are born from or engage in the larger scholarly conversation within their field, and which methods will answer those questions. In their assignments, WR 15x-level instructors should explain parameters and potential topics, but they should strive to help students devise their own research questions to explore their topic and to use the act of researching itself to discover evidence or material that might allow them to develop an argumentative claim that answers the question.

Research questions may derive either from empirical experience (something that students have observed themselves and that inspires their curiosity) or from identifying a gap in the scholarly conversation. Either way, the answers to such questions will often provoke new questions that are even more significant or essential to answer. At other times, the answers discovered through research might lead to dead-ends and require that the researcher begin again with a new question, perhaps framed or focused in a new way. The more students understand that research writing is not always linear, the more they will be willing to see the reformulation of their question not as a failure, but as a productive and necessary part of any research project, and indeed of intellectual inquiry more generally. This is also an opportunity for students to consider more specifically how different disciplines and methodologies might answer the same question in different ways.

Lesson

Genre Awareness

Given the conceptual nature of asking good questions, the recursive process of questioning and discovery applies to many disciplines and rhetorical modes. However, students might compare how different disciplines and rhetorical modes use different methodologies to answer their questions, or pose the same question for different reasons. If or when appropriate, consider how certain genres, modes, and media–podcasts, film documentary, etc.–deploy the research question as a hook to begin the episode or scene, as well as establish the motivating purpose of the project.

Metacognition

Students should consider how their research question has evolved since they began their research, and note what new questions their research has unveiled. Students can reflect on how this approach to writing is distinct from assignments wherein students begin by finding a thesis rather than identifying a question, and how the comparative uncertainty of research-oriented writing affects them as writers, students, and people in general.

PART I: BRAINSTORM AND MAKE CONNECTIONS

Use the very beginning of the course to help students begin to imagine possible research questions, connected to their reasons for selecting this course topic.
Ask students to consider the motivating questions of the course topic, either as a full class, in small groups, or in a short take-home exercise.
Establish students’ interest.
Ask students to freewrite for a few minutes on the following questions:
- Consider the course topic.
- What do they want to know more about?
- What about this topic seems intriguing to them?
- How does it connect to something they care about?
Prompt students to begin forming some questions; have them write five different questions that might serve as motivating research questions for their projects.
Note that these questions may be linked, or they might represent different possible areas of interest within a topic. The task here is to articulate and reflect on possibilities for a project, not yet to narrow it down.
Prompt students to reflect on their questions, noting that all researchers are limited by the constraints of time and resources.
- Which of the above questions are too large or ambitious to answer for this project assignment?
- Is there a way to revise them so that they are more focused and constrained?
- Likewise, which of the above questions may be too focused and constrained, insufficient for driving a large research project?
- Is there a way to revise them or to connect multiple questions together into a single, coherent project?

PART II: HIGHLIGHT MODELS

Ask students to reflect on the research questions that the writer at hand hopes to answer, whenever you introduce argument or theory sources as course readings, and discuss how the writers answer those questions through evidence and analysis.
Use class readings to point out how all arguments are motivated by questions.
Help students to distinguish broad questions and narrow or localized questions, as well as the relationship among them, in the first “Course Foundations” module.

PART III: DRAFT RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND SEARCH TERMS

1. Help students identify the specific, researchable questions that will motivate their major writing project, right at the point in the semester when you introduce students to library resources with your librarian.
2. Pair students up and ask them to share their research questions with a partner (or small group). Each member of the workshop group should identify the one or two questions that seem the most relevant and interesting, and answer the following questions:
  - What makes this question compelling, and why?
  - What, as a potential reader or audience for this project, would you want to learn more about?
  - Do the questions seem connected in any way?
  - How do you envision that connection?
3. Discuss stronger and weaker questions as a class.
4. Discuss as a class the next steps–beginning research using search terms and the library website.
5. Model effective vs. ineffective search terms in a class session.
6. Ask students to choose one of their questions (or two interconnected questions) to begin researching.
7. Prompt them to think about the language and phrasing of the question, as well as associated search terms that might be useful when identifying resources.
8. Choose an example, connected to your course topic, of how students may begin approaching the use of library search terms.

For instance, imagine a research project interested in the effects of rising sea levels on vacation rentals in Florida. Searching for “rising sea level” and “Florida coast” might return very few hits on a library or resource database. Terms like “climate change AND tourism” would generate more resources, and the researcher could use other tools or additional language to narrow down those search results.

Ask students to develop and test their own list of search terms (beginning from key words in their questions) and keep track of which terms generate meaningful resources.
Set aside class time to allow students to begin researching.

PART IV: REFINE QUESTIONS AND IDENTIFY NEW DIRECTIONS

1. Prompt students to reflect on what they have learned from the sources they have gathered, especially new questions or variations of their initial question.
2. Discuss students’ challenges and discoveries, and prompt them to reflect on the process so far.
3. Ask students to what extent they have been able to find useful and reliable resources that will help answer their research questions.
4. Consider, as a class, the following questions; you may wish to have students write responses to them first, or discuss in small groups first:

What kind of resources were produced in your search, and why might the search terms you used produce those resources as top results?

Is your research question either too broad or too narrow? How might it–or the key terms you are using for your search–be adjusted to produce more helpful resources?

What areas of this topic seem to have grabbed the most scholarly attention? Why do you think other researchers are so interested in this aspect of your topic?

What were you surprised to find that you did not expect?

Are there any gaps in the research that warrant greater attention? What do these resources fail to discuss, and how might your own research address that gap in knowledge?

Prompt students to plan their next steps in the research process, given their experiences and reflections above.
Ask students whether they currently think they should revise their research question, abandon it (if it no longer seems feasible), and/or conceptualize new questions that came to mind after beginning their research.
Note that although all research writers need to be aware of the finite amount of time possible to complete their projects or papers, small adjustments to the research question–or the courage to find a better question–may end up saving time later.
Discuss research writing as a recursive process of asking questions, finding answers, and asking questions again.

Variations and Follow-Ups

For students

Turabian, Kate L. “Chapter 1: Imagining Your Project” and “Chapter 2: Defining a Research Question.” Student’s Guide to Writing College Papers, 5th ed., University of Chicago Press, 2019, pp. 13-44.
These chapters guide students through the discovery of a researchable topic, the articulation of a researchable question, and the practice of explaining the significance of that question. The chapters frame these discussions through the problem statement schema, and include adaptable models or formulas for students to use in their own work.
Cronon, Bill, Po-Yi Hung, and Abigail Popp. “How to Frame a Researchable Question.” Learning to Do Historical Research: A Primer, 23 March 2009.
This online resource uses models to schematize the research and discovery process, and explains how those models reflect research as an iterative process.
Chodorow, Stanley, “Chapter 3: Formulating an Open-Ended Research Question.” Writing a Successful Research Paper: A Simple Approach, Hackett, 2011, pp. 30-42.
This resource further emphasizes the relationship between a research question and a thesis. It offers examples of research questions that are either too narrow or too broad, and advice about how to revise and improve those questions for a researchable project.
The libraries on campus have created a number of useful guides and tutorials for students which may be of help as they work through this lesson.

For instructors

Gellis, Mark. “Teaching Research Skills in the First-Year Composition Class.” Strategies for Teaching First-Year Composition, edited by Duane Roen, et al. NCTE, 2002, pp. 583–599.
This resource argues for the importance of research in a first-year writing classroom, highlighting key concepts and learning outcomes for composition courses. The chapter discusses assignment design and the pedagogy that informs it, and offers an extensive FAQ and response for instructors who might be new to teaching research within the context of first-year writing.

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