Turtles All the Way Down: Academic Writing as Formalism
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| Title: | Turtles All the Way Down: Academic Writing as Formalism |
|---|---|
| Language: | English |
| Authors: | Labaree, David F. |
| Source: | Journal of Philosophy of Education. Jun 2020 54(3):679-693. |
| Availability: | Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www.wiley.com/en-us |
| Peer Reviewed: | Y |
| Page Count: | 15 |
| Publication Date: | 2020 |
| Document Type: | Journal Articles Reports - Evaluative |
| Descriptors: | Academic Language, Journal Articles, Writing for Publication, Models, Scholarship, Writing Processes |
| DOI: | 10.1111/1467-9752.12438 |
| ISSN: | 0309-8249 |
| Abstract: | At least in the United States, the presentation of scholarship is highly formulaic. The emblematic product of this professional domain--the academic journal article--is less a lump of clay waiting to be moulded than a set of fired jars waiting to be filled. Not only are the jars unyielding to the touch, but even their number and order are fixed. There are five of them, which need to be filled in precise order: research question, literature review, methodology, results and conclusions. Don't stir. Repeat. In this paper I explore the form and function of this formulaic medium. I trace its roots to a series of earlier formalisms that dominate American schooling. First comes the five-paragraph essay, a form that is chillingly familiar to anyone who has attended an American high school. This model continues to hold sway in college. Then in graduate school comes the five-chapter doctoral dissertation. Same jars, same order. By the time the doctoral student becomes a professor, the pattern is fixed. The Rule of Five is thoroughly fixed in muscle memory, and the scholar is on track to produce a string of articles that follow from it. The formula is useful for all of the actors involved, making it easy to write acceptable academic papers, to skim and evaluate these papers, and to build a credible CV and a high citation journal. The only thing it's not good for is transmitting meaningful academic insights. |
| Abstractor: | As Provided |
| Entry Date: | 2020 |
| Accession Number: | EJ1260705 |
| Database: | ERIC |
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| FullText | Links: – Type: pdflink Url: https://content.ebscohost.com/cds/retrieve?content=AQICAHj0k_4E0hTGH8RJwT4gCJyBsGNe_WN95AvKlDbXJGqwxwFfkbHwYHVzyukP0cacgnC5AAAA4zCB4AYJKoZIhvcNAQcGoIHSMIHPAgEAMIHJBgkqhkiG9w0BBwEwHgYJYIZIAWUDBAEuMBEEDOy82OFbeWtpUK2vRgIBEICBm4-7kyQgdoif10AWu_cTv0NX2_jaqqgKeaqUBrfwqIik8f8Lr91jIVZQc22FSMgy0yQ9DkNyNVRRLOYFOlRdTq3Irjzy90IqDIbEvh9bmwikFEPVnFxl-NzBnYMk8HFCpU5x6lT3WTl3qyxKH6KBGsBgu-TRb_WqvJCqDK4ygVXDxVkl5ejuAj9FZpGxQGPfCeOfarXcVVn1ZVsW Text: Availability: 1 Value: <anid>AN0144668311;7r501jun.20;2020Jul22.02:51;v2.2.500</anid> <title id="AN0144668311-1">Turtles All the Way Down: Academic Writing as Formalism </title> <sbt id="AN0144668311-2">INTRODUCTION</sbt> <p>At least in the United States, the presentation of scholarship is highly formulaic. The emblematic product of this professional domain—the academic journal article—is less a lump of clay waiting to be moulded than a set of fired jars waiting to be filled. Not only are the jars unyielding to the touch, but even their number and order are fixed. There are five of them, which need to be filled in precise order: research question, literature review, methodology, results and conclusions. Don't stir. Repeat. In this paper I explore the form and function of this formulaic medium. I trace its roots to a series of earlier formalisms that dominate American schooling. First comes the five‐paragraph essay, a form that is chillingly familiar to anyone who has attended an American high school. This model continues to hold sway in college. Then in graduate school comes the five‐chapter doctoral dissertation. Same jars, same order. By the time the doctoral student becomes a professor, the pattern is fixed. The Rule of Five is thoroughly fixed in muscle memory, and the scholar is on track to produce a string of articles that follow from it. The formula is useful for all of the actors involved, making it easy to write acceptable academic papers, to skim and evaluate these papers, and to build a credible CV and a high citation journal. The only thing it's not good for is transmitting meaningful academic insights.</p> <p>At least in the United States, the presentation of scholarship is highly formulaic. The emblematic product of this professional domain—the academic journal article—is less a lump of clay waiting to be moulded than a set of fired jars waiting to be filled. Not only are the jars unyielding to the touch, but even their number and order are fixed. There are five of them, which need to be filled in precise order: research question, literature review, methodology, results and conclusions. Don't stir. Repeat.</p> <p>In this paper I explore the form and function of this formulaic medium. I trace its roots to a series of earlier formalisms that dominate American schooling. First comes the five‐paragraph essay, a form that is chillingly familiar to anyone who has attended an American high school. This model continues to hold sway in college. Then in graduate school comes the five‐chapter doctoral dissertation. Same jars, same order. By the time the doctoral student becomes a professor, the pattern is set. The Rule of Five is thoroughly fixed in muscle memory, and the scholar is on track to produce a string of articles that follow from it.</p> <p>So let's trace this sequence of academic formats, from high school essay to doctoral dissertation to academic journal article. In the process, maybe we can figure out why this happened and what are the consequences.</p> <hd id="AN0144668311-3">THE FIVE‐PARAGRAPH ESSAY: WHERE IT ALL BEGINS</hd> <p>Les Perelman (2012) tells a story. In Summer 2007, one of the almost 1,000 scorers of the English Language and Composition Advanced Placement, Edward M. White (2008), wrote on the airplane home a 5‐paragraph essay that reflected and responded to the hundreds of 5‐paragraph essays he read while participating in the grading of 280,000 tests written by high school students. The fourth and 'clincher' paragraph of this essay reads:</p> <p>The last reason to write this way is the most important. Once you have it down, you can use it for practically anything. Does God exist? Well you can say yes and give three reasons, or no and give three different reasons. It doesn't really matter. You're sure to get a good grade whatever you pick to put into the formula. And that's the real reason for education, to get those good grades without thinking too much and using up too much time (White, 2008, p. 525).</p> <p>White's essay—'My Five‐Paragraph‐Theme Theme'—became an instant classic. True to the form, he lays out the whole story in his opening paragraph:</p> <p>Since the beginning of time, some college teachers have mocked the five‐paragraph theme. But I intend to show that they have been mistaken. There are three reasons why I always write five‐paragraph themes. First, it gives me an organizational scheme: an introduction (like this one) setting out three subtopics, three paragraphs for my three subtopics, and a concluding paragraph reminding you what I have said, in case you weren't paying attention. Second it focuses my topic, so I don't just go on and on when I don't have anything much to say. Three and only three subtopics force me to think in a limited way. And third, it lets me write pretty much the same essay on anything at all. So I do pretty well on essay tests. A lot of teachers actually like the five‐paragraph theme as much as I do (p. 524).</p> <p>Note the classic elements of the model. The focus on form: content is optional. The comfortingly repetitive structure: here's what I'm going to say, here I am saying it, and here's what I just said ('in case you weren't paying attention'). The utility for everyone involved: expectations are so clear and so low that every writer can meet them, which means that both teachers and students can both succeed without breaking a sweat—a win–win situation if there ever was one. The only thing missing is meaning.</p> <p>For students who need a little more structure in dealing with the middle three paragraphs that make up what instructors call the 'body' of the essay, some helpful tips are available—all couched in the same generic form that could be applicable to anything. According to one high school English teacher (Capital Community College, 2017):</p> <p>The first paragraph of the body should contain the strongest argument, most significant example, cleverest illustration, or an obvious beginning point. The first sentence of this paragraph should include the 'reverse hook' which ties in with the transitional hook at the end of the introductory paragraph. The topic for this paragraph should be in the first or second sentence. This topic should relate to the thesis statement in the introductory paragraph. The last sentence in this paragraph should include a transitional hook to tie into the second paragraph of the body.</p> <p>You will probably not be surprised that the second paragraph 'should contain the second strongest argument, second most significant example, second cleverest illustration, or obvious follow up to the first paragraph ...' And that the third paragraph 'should contain the third strongest argument ...' Well, you get the picture.</p> <p>For students in the upper tracks—the ones who are thinking about going to college one day—there is a variation that extends the model of the five‐paragraph essay to the five‐paragraph research paper. This is the version that leads most directly to the five‐chapter dissertation and five‐section journal article. The actual variation in form is relatively modest. In sum:</p> <p>Paragraph 1: Introduction—thesis statement and list of three pieces of supporting evidence.</p> <p>Paragraph 2: First piece of evidence.</p> <p>Paragraph 3: Second piece of evidence.</p> <p>Paragraph 4: Third piece of evidence.</p> <p>Paragraph 5: Conclusion—restate thesis, recap evidence, and suggest possible extensions of the argument (LATCC Writing Center, 2009).</p> <p>Got that? Expert opinion varies over whether you should put your strongest or weakest evidence first, but most authorities favour the former. And some versions offer other helpful tips, such as this admonition for the concluding paragraph: 'Do <emph>not</emph> recopy the topic sentence! You need to restate it' (Language Arts Blog, 2017).</p> <hd id="AN0144668311-4">ROOTS OF THE RULE OF FIVE</hd> <p>Where does the fetish for five come from? In part it arises from the nature of sentences. Language conveys meaning by organising words into an order governed by rules. These rules are what allows the listener to understand the relationship between these words in the way intended by the speaker. The core unit of conveying meaning via language is the sentence, and the rules that define the structure of the sentence are its syntax. By its nature, syntax—like the five‐paragraph essay—is all form and no content. Its entire utility derives from the fact that a particular syntactical structure can be used to convey an infinite number of meanings.</p> <p>Form, therefore, is not just a crutch for beginners to use in trying the learn how to write; it's also the central tool of writers who are experts at their craft. In his lovely book, <emph>How to Write a Sentence (and How to Read One)</emph>, Stanley Fish makes the point that, in writing, form comes before content: 'The conventional wisdom is that content comes first—"you have to write about <emph>something</emph>" is the usual commonplace—but if what you want to do is learn how to compose sentences, content must take a backseat to the mastery of the forms without which you can't say anything in the first place' (Fish, 2011, p. 25). Or, as he put it in one of his chapter titles, 'It's Not the Thought That Counts'.</p> <p>Think of all the syntactical forms that exist to define different kinds of relationships between words in the service of making a point. For example:</p> <p>If ___, then ___.</p> <p>Some argue ___, but I argue ___.</p> <p>On the one hand ____; but on the other hand, ___.</p> <p>Consider key words that signal a particular kind of relationship between words, ideas, and sentences:</p> <p>Addition: also, moreover</p> <p>Elaboration: in short, that is</p> <p>Example: for instance, after all</p> <p>Cause and effect: accordingly, since</p> <p>Comparison: likewise, along the same lines</p> <p>Contrast: although, but</p> <p>Concession: admittedly, granted</p> <p>Conclusion: as a result, therefore</p> <p>The last set of examples comes from <emph>They Say, I Say</emph>, a book by Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein (2014, pp. 304–305), which seeks to explain the rhetorical 'moves that matter in academic writing'. In the appendix they list a set of syntactical templates that extends over 16 pages. Graduate students in my class on writing find these templates very useful.</p> <p>The point is that learning to write is extraordinarily difficult, and teaching people how to write is just as hard. Writers need to figure out what they want to say, put it into a series of sentences whose syntax conveys this meaning, arrange those sentences into paragraphs whose syntax carries the idea forward, and organise paragraphs into a structure that captures the argument as a whole. That's not easy. It's also not elementary. Fish distils the message into a single paradoxical commandment for writers: 'You shall tie yourself to forms and the forms shall set you free' (Fish, 2011, p. 33). The five‐paragraph essay format is an effort to provide a framework for accomplishing all this.</p> <p>Ok, then, so what's the problem? The issue, I suggest, is this. As so often happens in subjects that are taught in school, the template designed as a means toward attaining some important end turns into an end in itself. As a consequence, form trumps meaning. For example, elementary school students learn to divide a number by a fraction using this algorithm: invert and multiply. To divide by ½ you multiply the number by two. This gives you the right answer, but it deflects you from understanding why you might want to divide by a fraction in the first place (e.g. to find out how many ½ pound bags of flour you could get from a 10‐pound container) and why the resulting number is always larger than the original.</p> <p>Something similar happens with the five‐paragraph essay. The form becomes the product. Teachers teach the format as a tool; students use the tool to create five paragraphs that reflect the tool; teacher grade the papers on their degree of alignment with the tool. The form helps students reproduce the form and get graded on this form. Content, meaning, style, originality, and other such values are extraneous—nice but not necessary. This is a variation of Goodheart's Law, which focuses on the paradox of measurement: 'When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure'. For example, if test scores become the way to measure student and teacher success, then both parties will work to maximise these scores at the expense of acquiring the underlying skills these scores are supposed to measure. Assess students on their ability to produce the form of a five‐paragraph essay and they will do so, at the expense of learning to write persuasive arguments. The key distinction here is between form and formalism. A form is useful and necessary as a means for achieving a valued outcome. But when form <emph>becomes</emph> the valued outcome, then it has turned into formalism.</p> <p>An extreme example of this phenomenon has emerged in the growing field of machine‐graded essays. Having experts grade large numbers of papers, such as for the advance placement composition exercise that Edward White took part in, is extremely labour intensive and expensive, not to say mind‐numbing. So the Educational Testing Service (ETS) and other companies have come up with automated systems that can take over this function by deploying a series of algorithms that purportedly define good writing. The problem, of course, is that these systems are better at identifying formal characteristics of these essays than at discerning their meaning. So Les Perelman, a professor at MIT, invented a Babel Generator that is capable of producing essays from any three keywords and gain a perfect score on the ETS assessment. He did this by gearing the generator to the ETS algorithms, which allows him to produce the desired measure without all that messy stuff about creating logical and compelling arguments. Here's the first paragraph of a Babel Generator essay defined by three keywords: classroom, pedagogy and inequality.</p> <p>Classroom on the contradiction has not, and no doubt never will be aberrant. Pedagogy is the most fundamental trope of mankind; some with perjury and others on amanuenses. A howling classroom lies in the search for theory of knowledge together with the study of philosophy. Pedagogy is Libertarian due to its all of the concessions by retorts (Babel Generator, 8/22/2017).</p> <p>As you can see, the algorithm rewards big words and long sentences rather than meaning. Try it yourself: <ulink href="http://babel-generator.herokuapp.com/">http://babel-generator.herokuapp.com/</ulink>.</p> <p>In sum, the five‐paragraph essay algorithm provides a strong incentive for students to produce something that looks like and feels like a five‐paragraph essay and for teachers to reward such products. It begs all parties to game the system. This is formalism with a vengeance. Content be damned.</p> <p>Of course, students still need to provide some semblance of subject matter for their essays. But there are plenty of handy resources available to produce relevant content on demand. When I was in school, the key resource for students who needed to write an essay on some topic or other was the encyclopedia. In my family, it was the <emph>World Book Encyclopedia</emph>, which offered glossy pages and ample illustrations, and which used fewer big words than the canonical but stuffy <emph>Encyclopedia Britannica</emph>. Look up the topic, read a short summary piece, and then crib it for your paper. In the 1950s and 60s in the US, encyclopedia salesmen sold these pricey products door‐to‐door and their pitch was compelling. 'Do you want your kids to have a good life? Then they need to succeed in school. And the encyclopedia is the key to school success, the added element that will move your children ahead of their peers'. It worked. Owning an encyclopedia (26 volumes, $500) became the badge of the middle‐class family—to the point where sociologists in mid‐century used encyclopedia ownership as a key criterion for coding subjects as middle class (Linden, 2014).</p> <p>The multivolume encyclopedia has receded into history; the last <emph>Britannica</emph> was published in 2010. Now students use Google as their primary 'research' tool, and the top search result for most topics tends to be Wikipedia. The latter serves the same function for students—capsulised and bowdlerised content ready for insertion into the five‐paragraph essay. Plug and play. The perfect tool for gaming the system of producing papers for school. Of course, if students are thinking ahead about the possibility of gaining admission to an elite university, then they need to up their game from Wikipedia to Google Scholar. Cribbing from the commons is bush league; if you're aiming for the Ivy League, you need to crib from the best—refereed journal articles by top scholars. Plug in a topic and Google Scholar provides you with the most cited pieces on the topic. You don't have to read them, just cite them as evidence in paragraphs two, three and four. Either way, it's game on.</p> <p>As we will see below, the five‐paragraph high school essay provides the template for the five‐chapter doctoral dissertation and the five‐section journal article. The skills learned in school and developed in college also work well in graduate school and in the professoriate. Form turns into formalism as the means becomes the end. Just like the high school student gaming term papers, the doctoral student and professor learn to set up five pots and then fill them with plausible material.</p> <hd id="AN0144668311-5">THE FIVE‐CHAPTER DISSERTATION</hd> <p>The transition from the five‐paragraph high school research paper to the five‐chapter doctoral dissertation is not as big a jump as you might think. The Rule of Five still lives on. The main change is in the content of those three middle sections that constitute the body of the work. For the high school paper, where the total length is likely to be no more than 500 words, the middle paragraphs are just three pieces of evidence to support the thesis spelled out in the introduction. For a doctoral dissertation, where the length may range from 15,000 to 80,000 words, you need a lot more stuff to fill up the pages—and you also need to check a series of boxes to demonstrate your professional expertise. So the canonical structure for the dissertation is this:</p> <p>Chapter 1: Introduction</p> <p>Chapter 2: Review of the literature</p> <p>Chapter 3: Methods</p> <p>Chapter 4: Analysis/findings</p> <p>Chapter 5: Conclusion</p> <p>In the various guides for dissertation writers, there is remarkably little variation in this format. The most frequent deviation is to divide chapter 4 in two, allocating chapter 4 for analysis and chapter 5 for findings, making the conclusion chapter 6 (Huett and Koch, 2011; Sage, 2017). But most authorities stick with the five‐chapter canonical model (Capella, 2008; Dissertation Doctor, 2017; Duquesne, 2017; SEMU, 2017).</p> <p>The guides specify the content of each of the five chapters in detail, with this detail looking remarkably similar across guides. Chapter 1 is supposed to have a problem statement and list of research questions. Chapter 2 needs to cover both the theoretical and empirical literature relevant to the research questions. Chapter 3 needs to spell out research design, measures used, research procedures and modes of analysis employed. Chapter 4 summarises the findings of the research and provides analysis of these results. And chapter 5 covers four canonical areas: summary of results, conclusions, limitations of the study, and recommendations for future research. Doctoral students can recite each of these elements from memory, and dissertation defences tend to be an extended display of how the study deals with each element. And they always end with a look at results, conclusions, limitations and recommendations. You can't pass the defence without checking these boxes, by name and in order.</p> <p>The five‐chapter model dictates the outline of the dissertation proposal, which needs to deal with each of the five elements in explicit fashion. A number of departments even set the norm that the proposal should constitute the first three chapters of the dissertation. And why not, since these are the elements that can be established before students have begun gathering data. This also gives the student the heady feel of being three‐fifths of the way through the dissertation before the research even begins. That in itself should give us pause. We're asking students to start 'writing up' their research study before carrying it out. If that's not an exercise in formalism, I don't know what is.</p> <p>Another sign of formalism is that students customarily explain their progress by referring to which chapter number they are working on. 'I'm working on my chapter 3'. No need to explain, since everyone knows that this is the methods chapter. And no need to mention specifics of the content, since they don't really matter. The chapter is just a phase you need to finish before moving on to the next one. In fact, generic labels are the norm in dissertations that follow the Rule of Five. Chapter titles in dissertations frequently adopt the titles used in the five‐chapter outline shown at the beginning of this section. Chapter 1 is not 'An Introduction to Topic X' it's just 'Introduction'. Chapter 2 is 'Review of the Literature', 3 is 'Methods', 4 is 'Analysis' and 5 is 'Conclusion'. Specifying content, personalising the presentation of results, tailoring the format to the demands of your own study—all of these are either not needed or forbidden. Your job is to reproduce the form of the five‐chapter dissertation, and you do so—literally.</p> <p>Another oddity that arises from the five‐chapter model is that chapter 4 typically swells to an enormous size relative to the others. After all, everything before this point is prior to the research itself, and what follows is conclusions, limitations and future work. So chapter 4 is in essence the entire story of the study itself: what you did, what you found, how you analysed these findings, and what sense you made of the whole exercise. It's not uncommon for chapter 4 to constitute one‐half of the total pages in a standard dissertation. This is one reason, perhaps, for the heretical suggestion by some authorities to cut it in two, separating findings from analysis.</p> <p>As a little empirical test, I tried searching in ProQuest for electronic versions of doctoral dissertations in the last 10 years in the field of education and written in English. It came up with 105,680 results. I looked at the most recent 10 dissertations. Of these, five consisted of five chapters and all used some version of the generic chapter titles. Four others used the first three chapters and chapter titles and then split number four into two or three chapters (for 6 or 7 total). One didn't use the model at all (Proquest, 2017). (This suggests it would be interesting to do a systematic study of this source of data, which is well beyond my capability.)</p> <p>Given how generic the format is, it's not surprising that enterprising companies are willing go one step farther and actually produce the dissertation for you on demand, for the right price. As with the Babel Generator, turning out a dissertation is not that difficult if you know the algorithm and produce something that looks and feels like a dissertation. Ads for these websites kept popping up as I was searching Google for information about the five‐chapter dissertation. I checked out the most prominent of these (the one that paid for placement highest on the list), called Grade Miners. They would produce any kind of school paper, but dissertations were one of their specialties. Drop‐down menus allowed you to make the appropriate selection. I chose PhD dissertation, APA style, 100 pages, 'professional quality', 'a top writer in this subject to do my work', 'professional quality check for my order', 50 sources, in English, and on the topic 'US Curriculum History'. On the 'urgency' menu, I selected that I wanted it within 30 days. The bottom line: I could get all this in a month for $9,623.99. Really, not a bad deal. For a little extra money, they will also carry out a plagiarism check. After all, there's nothing worse than a ghost writer who cheats by plagiarising (Grade Miners, 2017).</p> <p>While exploring the wonderful world of the five‐chapter dissertation, I encountered one other wrinkle in the story. Not surprisingly, the institutions that were most explicit in promoting the model were those at the lower tiers of the university hierarchy. Several of my key sources came from the following institutions: Duquesne University (School Psychology Programme), Southeast Missouri State University (College of Education), and Capella University (School of Psychology and Human Resources). These are doctoral programmes that are largely focused on preparing educational practitioners rather than educational researchers. You need a doctorate in order to do your job (school psychologist, superintendent, etc.) but you're not going to be spending the rest of your life carrying out research and publishing the results; you're not headed for the professoriate. In these cases, doing a dissertation based on empirical research is truly an exercise in formalism. In which case you might as well adopt the standard model and fill the five pots with plausible material. Done, and then move on.</p> <p>Another factor that encourages reliance on the model at lower tier institutions is that the doctoral candidates are less likely to have a broad liberal education than those at the upper tiers. The less cultural capital you bring into a doctoral programme, the more you are likely to need rubrics and frameworks to show you what research should look like in practice. You're encountering an unfamiliar genre and so they need to provide you with explicit directions for producing something that more or less fits this genre. The five‐chapter model fits the bill.</p> <p>In doctoral programmes at top research universities, the assumption is that students already know of lot of this stuff. They were selected in large part based on indicators of how much cultural capital they had already accumulated before entering the programme, as signalled by such indicators as status of prior educational institutions, test scores and faculty recommendation letters. Faculty can assume that incoming doctoral students have already read a variety of research studies and may even have engaged in research themselves, so they have picked up the basic elements of the form.</p> <p>In this way, acquiring cultural capital is like acquiring language. Natives learn how to use the language first—what makes sense, what works, what sounds right—and then learn the rules that govern it later on in school. In this case, the rules simply make explicit the implicit understandings of how to make yourself understood that you acquired through experience. But non‐native speakers need to learn the grammar and vocabulary first and then figure out how to put the pieces together to make meaning. They don't have the implicit understandings of the form that come from experiential learning.</p> <p>For these reasons, faculty in elite doctoral programmes may not feel the need to explain the rules or to provide students with a cheat sheet spelling out the five‐chapter model for a dissertation. They should figure it out on their own. And they might be even offended to have you treat them like dummies by spelling it out for them. Even though they are less likely to teach the form to students, they still may be using the form as the criterion for evaluating student work. This is a case of a general rule in education, that schools are better at rewarding cultural capital than at teaching it. So some advisors choose to make the form explicit as a way to level the playing field for students who arrive with different levels of knowledge about the rules of research representation. Others don't teach the model but expect students to follow it. Still others reject the model and explicitly encourage their students to adopt a form that best suits their topic. For students at such institutions, all this can be confusing.</p> <p>My own experience is that the five‐chapter model was more visible in educational doctoral programmes at Michigan State University (a second tier public research university with deep roots in the land‐grant tradition) than at Stanford (an elite private university). One department at MSU made it a general requirement for doctoral students, telling students to present a proposal for a doctoral dissertation that consisted of the first three chapters of the canonical model; and a considerable number of advisors demanded or recommended students to adopt the model. Which meant that dissertations overall were more likely to adopt the five‐chapter model than not.</p> <p>In education at Stanford, the model is less visible but still present. Some faculty advisors recommend the model for their students, but it doesn't have the canonical status that it has acquired in other programmes. To many students, it is simply unknown. Not long ago, I found this out in class to my chagrin. I was teaching a graduate course on academic writing, and one day I put up a slide summarising the five‐chapter model. The idea was to demonstrate the problems of formalism in academic writing and to show an extreme example of presenting research by the numbers. (For the same reason, I had earlier presented the Babel Generator.) The plan backfired badly. Instead of shaking their heads about the absurdity of the case, a number of students said things like, 'This is great', and 'Why didn't anyone tell us about this before?' I felt like I'd unleashed a monster. But this goes to show that learning to be a producer in a genre is harder that learning to be a consumer. Even people with a lot of cultural capital are eager for structures that help them approach the prospect of writing a book‐length research text from scratch for the first time. The problem is not in having rules of thumb but in reifying these rules, turning them into an inflexible structure of representation that becomes an end in itself.</p> <hd id="AN0144668311-6">THE IMRaD JOURNAL ARTICLE</hd> <p>This brings us to the top level of this examination of the Rule of Five, the way this form shapes the dominant genre of research production used by the professional scholars in the professoriate—the refereed journal article. This is the medium that governs the process of hiring, promotion and tenure within the academic profession. It's the way to get ahead and stay ahead in your career—the way to establish your reputation, gain a following and win accolades. It's the basis for the citation indexes that tell you where you rank in the academic hierarchy. For people in most fields who aspire to the academic life—who want to gain promotion and tenure, to move on to a better job and to win awards—the currency of the realm is the journal article. And in order to get past the gatekeepers in the process—editors and reviewers at top ranked academic journals—you need to produce papers that meet generally accepted standards. You need papers that look like, feel like, and sound like the canonical journal article. As we have seen at the lower levels, the content can be nearly anything as long as the form is correct.</p> <p>The journal‐article version of the Rule of Five is known by the mnemonic IMRaD (or IMRAD), which identifies the labels and order of the conventional paper. IMRaD is everywhere. Google it and you find a Wikipedia entry and multiple cheatsheets and guides showing you how it works (e.g. ASSH, 2011; CMU, 2017; The VCG, 2017). The letters stand for the required sections in the proper order: Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion. Check them off, and you're done. An article in Educational Researcher defines these sections this way: 'Tell them what you set out to do', 'Tell them what you did', 'Tell them what you found', and 'Discuss what you found' (Klingner <emph>et al</emph>., 2005, pp. 16–17).</p> <p>But wait a minute, you say; this is only four sections. What happened to the literature review? Well, it turns out that the lit review is incorporated within the introduction. In a short journal article, prior literature may only take up a paragraph or two of the text, so why waste a whole section on it? A guide published by the American Psychological Association ('Preparing Manuscripts for Publication in Psychology Journals: A Guide for New Authors') lays out the following aims for an article's introduction:</p> <p></p> <ulist> <item> to establish current knowledge of the field;</item> <p></p> <item> to summarise previous research, providing the wider context and background and the importance of the current study;</item> <p></p> <item> to set the stage for the present research, indicating gaps in knowledge and presenting the research question; and</item> <p></p> <item> to introduce present research, stating its purpose and outlining its design (APA, 2010).</item> </ulist> <p>Another guide to the IMRAD format lists the canonical four sections but introduces the literature review in brackets between the I and M, with a helpful explanation, 'This section is not part of the 'IMRAD' mnemonic, as it is considered to be self‐evident' (ASSH, 2011). And in their analysis of the rhetoric of all 28 articles published in volume 25 of the <emph>American Educational Research Journal</emph>, Marshall and Barritt note:</p> <p>One of the dominant features of these articles is the positioning of the research study in the domain of prior research and extant literature. Every article does this, usually within the first paragraph: Of the 28 articles in Volume 25, only five articles fail to have the first reference to prior research within the first paragraph; in three of those five articles, the first reference appears in the second paragraph; in the remaining two, the first reference appears in the third paragraph (Marshall and Barritt, 1980, pp. 594–595).</p> <p>Ok, then; we can relax. The Rule of Five lives on in spirit. No one is skimping on number two.</p> <p>IMRaD the journal article has also spawned IMRaD the abstract. Structured abstracts are all the rage in education and social science journals (Curran, 2016; Kelly and Yin, 2007). The idea is to make sure that every abstract covers all four IMRaD elements that are covered in the paper and in the same order. In the most structured version, authors need to label each part of the abstract, just so there will be no confusion. The editor of <emph>Teachers College Record</emph> provides a 'guide for preparing manuscripts' for the journal, which requires authors to 'prepare a structured abstract of about 200 to 400 words by completing each of the required sections listed below and as many of the optional sections as pertain to the particular type of manuscript' (Natriello, 2014, p. 2). The required headings are: 'Background/Context'; 'Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study'; 'Research Design'; and 'Conclusions/Recommendations' (<emph>ibid</emph>.). Some guides even dictate how many words in the abstract should be devoted to each. The Carnegie Mellon 'IMRAD Cheatsheet' specifies the following weightings for the abstract: 25 percent for I, 25 percent for M, 35 percent for R and 15 percent for D (CMU, 2017, p. 1).</p> <p>Some critics, of course, have pointed out that the IMRaD format is a bit, you know, rigid. Helen Sword wrote a book called <emph>Stylish Academic Writing</emph>, which I use in my own graduate writing class. In it she encourages scholars to break free of the rhetorical constraints that tradition imposes on scholarly publication, showing that although in the hard sciences the IMRaD rule is supreme but that scholarly journal articles in the social sciences have somewhat more freedom. In a sample of journal articles she examined, 56 percent of papers in psychology did not follow the standard format. But Sword realises she is trying to roll back the tide. She recognises the appeal that IMRaD has for readers and writers alike.</p> <p>For scientists and social scientists, the advantages of adhering to a conventional structure are many. Authors who follow the IMRAD model always open their articles with an introductory section that clearly states the purpose and scope of the current research, sums up previous work in the field, and probes gaps and flaws in the existing literature. Next, in sections with titles such as 'Data,' 'Methodology,' and 'Results' (the exact labels vary from field to field), they describe the data collection and results. Finally, in the 'Analysis,' 'Discussion,' and/or 'Conclusion' sections, they review their main findings, explore the wider implications of their work, and offer suggestions for further research. This paint‐by‐numbers approach prompts researchers to plan their research methodically, conduct it rigorously, and present it coherently, without leaving out any crucial information. Moreover, a conventional structure is relatively easy for new academics to learn; all they have to do is follow models established by others before them. Readers, meanwhile, know exactly where to look for key findings. They can skim the abstract, mine the literature review, scan the data, and grab the conclusions without wasting valuable time actually reading (Sword, 2012, p. 123).</p> <p>I love the last line—'without wasting valuable time actually reading'. This is the whole point of IMRaD and the Rule of Five, isn't it? It makes scholarly writing easy to learn, easy to read, and easy to evaluate. Like the five‐paragraph essay and the five‐chapter dissertation, IMRaD reduces the cognitive load involved in teaching, learning, producing, reviewing and consuming academic texts. If you choose not to write by the numbers, you risk alienating editors, reviewer and readers. You have a big incentive to make their lives easy, which will then increase the likelihood that you will get published and keep your academic career on track for success. Marshall and Barritt wryly address this issue in the abstract of their own <emph>AERJ</emph> article about the rhetoric of the journal:</p> <p>Academicians have expectations as well for the research texts they read. Scholarly articles are not sermons, nor poems, nor fairy tales. Before you began to read this article, you had expectations about how it should present itself, how it should address you as the reader, and how it should speak about its topic. You may never have considered those expectations, but now, as you read this article, appearing as it does in this journal, you are likely struck by its failure to conform to the usual expectations. You are likely wondering what is going on here, whether this article is scholarly and worth your time, and why the editors have accepted it. Sometimes, conventions must be broken in order that they may be examined. Sometimes, expectations keep us from noticing that the forms determine what can be said (Marshall and Barritt, 1980, p. 589).</p> <p>This is my point. The Rule of Five spells out five issues that need to be addressed in any representation of empirical research. Of course you need to: 1) make an argument, 2) show how it fits into the ongoing academic conversation, 3) demonstrate the validity of the data and methods you use in examining the argument, 4) spell out the findings you develop from this analysis, and 5) explain what it means and where you go from here. If you don't address all of these issues, then you are not doing an effective job of presenting your work. But addressing them only in this order and by confining each function of the argument to a hermetically sealed location within the paper, you turn a useful set of guidelines into an iron cage. It's dysfunctional—to say nothing of off‐putting, infantilising, and intellectually arid. But, then again, you avoid it at your peril.</p> <ref id="AN0144668311-7"> <title> REFERENCES </title> <blist> <bibl id="bib1" type="bt">1</bibl> <bibtext> ASSHC Academy of Social Sciences and Humanities (2011) The IMRAD Research Paper Format. Available online at: https://asshacademy.wordpress.com/2011/07/17/the-imrad-research-paper-format/ Last accessed: 24 September 2017.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibl id="bib2" type="bt">2</bibl> <bibtext> APA American Psychological Association (2010) Preparing Manuscripts for Publication in Psychology Journals: A Guide for New Authors. 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Available online at: <ulink href="http://thevisualcommunicationguy.com/writing/how-to-organize-a-paper/how-to-organize-a-paper-the-imrad-format/">http://thevisualcommunicationguy.com/writing/how-to-organize-a-paper/how-to-organize-a-paper-the-imrad-format/</ulink> Last accessed: 24 September 2017.</bibtext> </blist> <blist> <bibtext> White, E. (2008) My Five‐paragraph‐theme Theme. College Composition and Communication, 59.3, pp. 524 – 525. Available online at: <ulink href="http://thevisualcommunicationguy.com/writing/how-to-organize-a-paper/how-to-organize-a-paper-the-imrad-format/">http://thevisualcommunicationguy.com/writing/how-to-organize-a-paper/how-to-organize-a-paper-the-imrad-format/</ulink>.</bibtext> </blist> </ref> <aug> <p>By DAVID F. LABAREE</p> <p>Reported by Author</p> </aug> |
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| Items | – Name: Title Label: Title Group: Ti Data: Turtles All the Way Down: Academic Writing as Formalism – Name: Language Label: Language Group: Lang Data: English – Name: Author Label: Authors Group: Au Data: <searchLink fieldCode="AR" term="%22Labaree%2C+David+F%2E%22">Labaree, David F.</searchLink> – Name: TitleSource Label: Source Group: Src Data: <searchLink fieldCode="SO" term="%22Journal+of+Philosophy+of+Education%22"><i>Journal of Philosophy of Education</i></searchLink>. Jun 2020 54(3):679-693. – Name: Avail Label: Availability Group: Avail Data: Wiley. Available from: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030. Tel: 800-835-6770; e-mail: cs-journals@wiley.com; Web site: https://www.wiley.com/en-us – Name: PeerReviewed Label: Peer Reviewed Group: SrcInfo Data: Y – Name: Pages Label: Page Count Group: Src Data: 15 – Name: DatePubCY Label: Publication Date Group: Date Data: 2020 – Name: TypeDocument Label: Document Type Group: TypDoc Data: Journal Articles<br />Reports - Evaluative – Name: Subject Label: Descriptors Group: Su Data: <searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Academic+Language%22">Academic Language</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Journal+Articles%22">Journal Articles</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Writing+for+Publication%22">Writing for Publication</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Models%22">Models</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Scholarship%22">Scholarship</searchLink><br /><searchLink fieldCode="DE" term="%22Writing+Processes%22">Writing Processes</searchLink> – Name: DOI Label: DOI Group: ID Data: 10.1111/1467-9752.12438 – Name: ISSN Label: ISSN Group: ISSN Data: 0309-8249 – Name: Abstract Label: Abstract Group: Ab Data: At least in the United States, the presentation of scholarship is highly formulaic. The emblematic product of this professional domain--the academic journal article--is less a lump of clay waiting to be moulded than a set of fired jars waiting to be filled. Not only are the jars unyielding to the touch, but even their number and order are fixed. There are five of them, which need to be filled in precise order: research question, literature review, methodology, results and conclusions. Don't stir. Repeat. In this paper I explore the form and function of this formulaic medium. I trace its roots to a series of earlier formalisms that dominate American schooling. First comes the five-paragraph essay, a form that is chillingly familiar to anyone who has attended an American high school. This model continues to hold sway in college. Then in graduate school comes the five-chapter doctoral dissertation. Same jars, same order. By the time the doctoral student becomes a professor, the pattern is fixed. The Rule of Five is thoroughly fixed in muscle memory, and the scholar is on track to produce a string of articles that follow from it. The formula is useful for all of the actors involved, making it easy to write acceptable academic papers, to skim and evaluate these papers, and to build a credible CV and a high citation journal. The only thing it's not good for is transmitting meaningful academic insights. – Name: AbstractInfo Label: Abstractor Group: Ab Data: As Provided – Name: DateEntry Label: Entry Date Group: Date Data: 2020 – Name: AN Label: Accession Number Group: ID Data: EJ1260705 |
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| RecordInfo | BibRecord: BibEntity: Identifiers: – Type: doi Value: 10.1111/1467-9752.12438 Languages: – Text: English PhysicalDescription: Pagination: PageCount: 15 StartPage: 679 Subjects: – SubjectFull: Academic Language Type: general – SubjectFull: Journal Articles Type: general – SubjectFull: Writing for Publication Type: general – SubjectFull: Models Type: general – SubjectFull: Scholarship Type: general – SubjectFull: Writing Processes Type: general Titles: – TitleFull: Turtles All the Way Down: Academic Writing as Formalism Type: main BibRelationships: HasContributorRelationships: – PersonEntity: Name: NameFull: Labaree, David F. IsPartOfRelationships: – BibEntity: Dates: – D: 01 M: 06 Type: published Y: 2020 Identifiers: – Type: issn-print Value: 0309-8249 Numbering: – Type: volume Value: 54 – Type: issue Value: 3 Titles: – TitleFull: Journal of Philosophy of Education Type: main |
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