Inquiry Unit (u12813.xml)

The Transition from High School to College: The Change in Literacy Practices for Incoming Freshmen

Anthony Curtis (ajcurtis@uiuc.edu) (ready to use)

Coauthors

Kevin Roozen (roozen@uiuc.edu)

EXPLORE About the ethnographer

Unit Keywords

high school, college, literacy practices,

Partner Projects

Ethnography of the University

INQUIRE Rationale of the Unit

PRELIMINARY PLANS for your RESEARCH 1) What kinds of research questions (even if they're broad and vague) are motivating your research at this time? REPORT from the FIELD 1) What kinds of questions are driving your inquiry at this time? Have you refined your initial questions? Have you generated new questions?(Walk us through how how your research questions have developed since you started this project). FINAL FINDINGS and CONCLUSIONS What are the central questions that have driven your research? How have your research questions developed over the course of your research? (Walk us through how your research questions have developed since you started this project).

PRELIMINARY PLAN: 9/30/03
I want to compare their literacy practices. How does their regional background affect their literacy practices. I want to compare and contrast their backgrounds to gain a better understanding of their literacy practices.
1) Are the students interested in the reading and writing they do for academics? If so, why? If not, why not?
2) How have their literacy practices changed since high school?
3) What type of literacy environment exists at home? Do their parents promote reading and writing? What kind of reading and writing do they promote?
4) What influences their choices in reading and writing?
5) Does their region impact they type of reading and writing they do? If so, how?
6) Do they use writing as a form of expression? If so, what type of expressive ways is writing used?
7) How many books do the students read a month?
8) How many magazines do they read a month? What type of magazines?
9) Do the students feel like their outside world is brought into the classroom enough?
10) How much television do the students watch?
11) Do they go to libraries, cafes, or bookstores?

REPORT FROM THE FIELD: 10/26/03

When I first generated my initial list of questions, they were very general because I did not know exactly where I wanted to go in this research. I knew I wanted to find out how my participants literacy practices have changed since high school to college and understand why, and that is still my main focus. I also wanted to find out how their regional and ethnic backgrounds affected this change. And now I think I have a good sense of how their regional backgrounds have affected their research. North Dakota is less liberal than Florida, so “Zack’s” access to literature fit a certain mold established by his community, while “Slater’s” community embraced all types of literature. He was able to read Spanish material in high school, and read literature about the GLBT lifestyle.
Now that I’ve studied these participants for the past few weeks, I want to focus on their academic and outside literacy. Their literacy practices have changed slightly since they’ve been here, but I want to continue to understand this change, because as the next few weeks approach, their literacy practices are bound to change. First, I want to understand how their actual “studying” habits have changed or not changed. Second, I want to explore why they do not write inside and outside the classroom as much as they did in high school. Third, I want to extensively study how their interest in their respective majors have influenced their reading practices. I think all of these factors greatly correlate with their changing literacy practices.

Conclusions: 12/09/03
As a future educator I am interested and intrigued with the literacy practices of students. I want to understand how students learn to read and write and how those initial foundations of learning to read and write affect their educational careers. Therefore, I decided to explore the transition from high school to college for two University of Illinois freshmen.
The first question I tried to answer was how and why my participants’ studying habits have changed since they entered college. Both of my participants also expressed that they had less time to write in college, and I wanted to understand why this decrease and desire to write emerged. Finally, I wanted to explore the possible correlations between my particpants’ literacy practices, their academic worlds, and their personalities.
As I conducted my research I found the answers to all of these questions was influenced by the social context of my participants. As they entered college they realized that their studying and literacy practices had to adapt in order for them to become successful here at the University of Illinois. They realized how rigorous the academic world was here at the U of I, and shifted their practices to fit into that academic world.
As my research continued I learned a lot about "Zack" and "Slater" that I probably would not have learned otherwise, although I am friends with them. My main focus was to understand how their literacy practices have changed from high school to college, but as time went on I learned how unique and intelligent both particpants are in their own way.

Project diary


	INVESTIGATE	Go to Top

Research Plan

PRELIMINARY PLANS for your RESEARCH 1) Tell us about how you went about choosing the community you've decided to focus on for this research project. Which other communities did you consider? What interests you about the community you've chosen? What kind of access do you have to the community and its members? What can you tell us about this community? 2) Tell us about the literate practices that seem important to this community. What kinds of reading and writing have you noticed going on in this community? What kinds of texts seem important to this community? 3) Tell us about how you are thinking about conducting your research. Which research methods seem likely to be productive for your research? How will these methods help you address your research questions? 4) What can you tell us about your research project at this time? REPORT from the FIELD 1) Which methods have proven productive in your research thus far? Walk us through how you decided to utilize these particular methods. FINAL FINDINGS and CONCLUSIONS 1) Which methods proved productive in the research you've done for this project? Walk us through how you came to settle on these particular methods? Which methods did not prove very productive?

PRELIMINARY PLAN: 9/30/03

When Kevin first assigned this project and explained the details of what the project would be like I became interested. I have never thought about the different literacy practices in different communities, and never contemplated how the definition of literacy varies from community to community. I want to explore the academic work of students, but I want to observe their outside literacy world as well. Like in the article “Literacy and the Social Queens”, I want to explore the different literacy practices that are not considered standard in academic standards, and see what type of an impact the practices have on students. At first I was going to research African-American students at Urbana H.S., but none of those students are 18. Because of that change I’ve decided to explore the literacy practices of three freshmen students here at the University of Illinois.
I want to research three freshmen students here majoring in different fields. All of them are from different regional locations in the U.S. I want to see how different their literacy practices were before college, and see how they have changed since they have entered the U of I.
The three students I plan to observe are all males. One participant is a white male from North Dakota majoring in Crop Sciences. I’ve already notice that he enjoys reading material on psychology, the environment, and pop culture. The other is a Columbian male student from Miami, Florida majoring in Urban Planning. He is very interested in the entertainment world, but also enjoys reading about stocks, and architecture books. And the last participant is an undecided male freshmen from Country Club Hills, IL. He enjoys reading books about other African-Americans and sports magazines.
I’ve already noticed that all of them are learning how to really study in college. They all were good students in high school, but now their reading and writing practices have changed and I want to understand that change. I want to see how their literacy practices have changed since high school in their academic worlds, but I also want to observe their literacy practices outside of academics. I want to observe their novel, magazine, newspaper readings, and understand how it impacts their lives now.

REPORT FROM THE FIELD: 10/26/03

Interviews. So far, interviews have played a major role in my data collection. The first
interview was a group interview at Moonstruck café. It lasted about an hour and half, and I made a list of questions for both participants and had them fill them out the form. Then, I read through the answers, and individually asked more questions about their literacy practices and background. I used their initial responses to generate more elaborate questions about their literacy practices, and used this time to ask questions that I did not think of until I actually came face-to-face with the participants. I used this interview to gain some sense of their backgrounds socially and academically. After the first interview, I meet with both participants on two other occasions individually. This time I actually conducted actual interviews, with me asking questions and them responding to them as I write. In the second interview I asked about their exams and papers, thus far at the U of I. I also asked about their regional background (e.g. How did your regional location influence you reading and writing?). I also wanted to gain some insight into their studying habits, and find out what studying actually meant to them now that they were in college.
Observation. Thus far, much of my data has not come from observation. I did, however, observe both of my participants twice, without them knowing it. I invited “Slater” to Borders, and did my homework as he did his, and watched him as he did his homework. We stayed there for about 2 hours. I jotted down notes about his body language, constant moving and distractions. I also noted how he would get bored after every 15 minutes, and start some type of conversation. I did the same to “Zack” as well, as we sit in Borders doing homework. He was a little more attentive to his homework, and only started conversations once or twice in the three-hour time frame we were there. My notes were so detailed about the observation sessions that I even wrote down times when someone did something that struck me (e.g. 8:30 pm…starts looking around the café, 8:53..puts his book down in his lap, and puts his head down…I can’t tell if he is reading or sleeping). I told both of the participants about my observations after we left Borders.
In the next few weeks I also plan to observe both participants in one of their classes. I will attend “Zack’s” lecture in Crop Sciences, and “Slater’s” Economic lecture. I want to observe how they interact in class, and see how extensively they pay attention. I also want to make copies of their notes, and see how they take notes.
Texts. So far I’ve collected a few pieces of text. I have samples of both participants’ first papers, a few email conversations, notes from classes, and excerpts from some of their outside reading. In addition, to this text, they have both said they will give me copy of their class notes, other papers, lab reports, and anything else I need.

Conclusions: 12/09/03

The most productive method was interviews. My intial interview was a group interview at Moonstruck café. I typed a list of questions and had both participants fill out the questionnaire, and then I read the answers and asked follow up questions based on their answers. This interview help guide me on the path I wanted to go, because I was able to learn a lot about their literacy backgrounds. After gaining a better perspective on both particpants’ literacy practices, I decided to conduct some one-on-one interviews. For about 2 months, I meet with both participants individually and tried to learn more about their literacy practices.

I also did observations on my participants. And this helped a lot because they didn't know that I was taking notes on them. To understand how their studying habits influence their literacy practices, I decided to examine how my participants study. So, I decided to take both participants to Borders café, and observed their studying techniques. I did not inform them of my note taking and observation until we were in the car leaving, and it was interesting to see how each participant studied. “Zack” worked for the entire time, stopping for a brief conversation once, while “Slater” remained bored with his Microeconomics textbook. This observation helped me realize how inefficient or efficiently my participants studied in college.

Although much of my data collection includes text: papers, outlines, emails, reading material, and letters, some of my most important data comes from informal conversations. These informal conversations took place over the phone, in a car, or over dinner, and it was interesting to see the evolving perspectives my participants were taking on college. Sometimes these informal interviews provided the more information than the formal interviews. They began to realize how different high school academics were compared to college and attempted to adapt to this transition. Both participants want to succeed here at the U of I; therefore they changed their studying habits to ensure success.

Project diary

Readings, Keywords, and Constructs

PRELIMINARY PLANS for your RESEARCH 1) What readings from the coursepacket have been helpful to you thus far in your research? What other sources have proven helpful? REPORT from the FIELD 1) What readings from the coursepacket have been helpful to you thus far in your research? What other sources have proven helpful? FINAL FINDINGS and CONCLUSIONS 1) What readings from the coursepacket were helpful to you in working on your research project? What other sources proved helpful?

PRELIMINARY PLAN: 9/30/03

Many of the readings have forced me to think about the definition of literacy and whether or not there is one set definition. I’m constantly wondering what determines literacy and what does not. Academic and “junk” reading are often separated in terms of literacy practices and I want to understand why. I want to observe students’ literacy practices today and see how school and the outside world influences their reading and writing. Articles like “Literate at Home but Not at School”, “Cross-Curricular Underlife: A Collaborative Report on Ways with Academic Words”, and “Literacy and the Social Queens” have all encouraged me to gain a better understanding of the literacy practices of students. Not only do I want to explore the academic work of students, but I want to observe their outside literacy world as well. Like in the article “Literacy and the Social Queens”, I want to explore the different literacy practices that are not considered standard in academic standards, and see what type of an impact the practices have on students.

REPORT FROM THE FIELD: 10/26/03

The articles "En Lo Dos Idiiomas: Literacy Practices Among Chicago Mexicans", "Jacqes" and "Literacy and the Tough Cookies" have influenced my research greatly. In all of these articles the researches try to analyze how a person's social background influences their literacy practices. In my own research, I've noticed how regional backgrounds and school greatly influence both of my participants. "Zack's" academic life seems to influence his literacy practices much more than "Slater". While, "Slater" uses his literacy practices to learn about society and explore its different aspects.

My peer's projects have also been helpful in my research. I am able to get ideas from them on things like data collection, tentative conclusions and where to go next.

Conclusions: 12/09/03

As stated in the Report from the Field the two articles on student literacy practices influneced me the most. My intial influence was the Social Queens article. My peers' research projects also influenced me because I was able to discover other methods when conducting research.

Project diary


	CREATE	Go to Top

Field Notes

Project diary


	DISCUSS	Go to Top

Findings

REPORT from the FIELD 1) Which literate practices have you decided to focus on? What kinds of things are you finding out about these literate practices? FINAL FINDINGS and CONCLUSIONS 1) Drawing from your research, articulate what you consider to be the most significant and interesting findings and conclusions.

REPORT FROM THE FIELD: 10/26/03
I’ve known both of my participants for about two months before I started researching them. When I first told my participants about the research they asked for their identities to be kept confidential. “Zack” and “Slater” will be the names I refer to when I refer to them. When I initially started my research I had three participants, but I decided to eliminate the three participants because I felt three participants would be hard to research in such a short amount of time. Plus, I feel that I can thoroughly research and analyze two participants and learn more about incoming freshmen in the time I have left, than three. So for the past few weeks I’ve been actively researching “Zack” and “Slater”.
“Zack” is a freshmen student in majoring in Crop Sciences. He is a white male from Mandan, North Dakota, a small town of 16,000 predominately white residents. He graduated from high school with a 4.0 GPA and decided to come to the University of Illinois because of its great agricultural program. “Zack” said that he studied a lot in high school, and considers himself a hard worker. He studied about 35 hours a week in high school, and studies about the same amount of time in college. He does not go out during the week, and usually goes out just one night on the weekends. When he is not going out he is studying at the ACES library, undergraduate library, or in the study lounges in the basement of Weston Hall in the Six-pack. He’s always had the strong motivation to do well in high school, but works even harder at college, because he has to maintain a 3.5 GPA to stay on a scholarship.
Although “Zack” studies very rigorous in college, he tries to read outside of the academic world as well. He tries to read as much as possible, but stays busy so he’s reading sometimes lacks. While he was living in North Dakota, he tried to read a lot of self-interest or character building readings. He likes to read stories that can inspire and motivate him. He searches for literature that he can relate to in some way. Although he tries to read literature that can inspire him, he also enjoys a lot of non-fiction reading. One of his favorite novels is Ultimate Evil, a book about the Summer of Sam Murders. He also read books like Goosebumps, mostly in his beginning years of high school. Freshman and sophomore year of high school he read entertainment magazines like People and even Cosmo because of a subscription, or because it was lying around the house. His junior and senior year he started going to Barnes and Nobles to read magazines, because it was a place where he had a large access to magazines from around the country. North Dakota was a very restrictive area when it came to certain pieces of literature, so “Zack” took advantage of Barnes and Nobles varied types of literature.
In terms of writing “Zack” usually wrote and still writes academically. He writes lab reports, stories, and essays, but considers most of his writing “academic” and not necessarily fun. The only writing he considers outside of the academic world is the email and instant messenger conversations he types. He does not keep a journal or write for fun.
“Slater” is a freshman majoring in Urban Planning. He grew up in Miami, Florida and his ethnic background is Colombian. He graduated from high school with a 3.6 GPA and studied 3-4 hrs a week. He told me his definition of studying in high school was reading over notes from class, skimming chapters, but did not include writing papers. He considers writing papers different from studying. While “Zack” was interested in Science and Math, “Slater” was interested in Geography, English, and Spanish. These subjects were more interesting to him because he felt like he could “actually visualize the material”.
Like “Zack”, “Slater” also reads a lot of non-fiction material. He likes to know that the literature he is reading is factual. Some of his favorite books include books with the topics of urban planning. One of his favorite books is Injustices of a PS System. Most of his reading is influenced by his interest in his major, Urban Planning or his hobbies. When he walks into a Borders or Barnes and Nobles, the first section he goes to includes car magazines, and then he goes to find People and US. During one our interviews, he also mentioned to me that he would buy thick books and put them on his bookshelf to make him seem smarter. He wanted to prove to other people that he had a bigger interest in reading than he really did. This could stem from the fact that his high school was very competitive, and many of the students were middle or upper class students with high expectations and goals for the future.
“Slater’s” high school was very competitive in the writing aspect as well. Unlike “Zack” who mostly wrote lab reports and some essays and stories, “Slater” had to write 2-3 papers a week for English class. These were mostly analytical responses to stories, poems, and novels they read in class. “Slater” also mentioned to me that he wrote a lot in his AP Spanish class. Since he is Colombian, he was very interested in reading about his Spanish-speaking culture, so he read many Spanish novels for class, and wrote papers in Spanish about them. Now that he is here at the U of I, he does not do much writing, in Spanish or English, and even expressed to me that he missed writing. Although he misses writing, he does not take the time to write anything on his own. He does not keep a journal or write letters to people, and keeps his emails and instant messenger conversations very short, because he does not like to type too much. He would rather communicate in person or on the phone.
In terms of reading he still reads mostly non-fiction pieces of literature, but on occasion reads fiction pieces. Like “Zack”, he enjoys reading material he can relate to. “Slater” is homosexual, and enjoys reading material relating to the lifestyle. Queer Ass Folk, a television program and a paperback novel series, is something “Slater” reads often.
After gaining a greater insight into their general literacy practices, I started to explore their literacy practices since entering the U of I. Both of them have expressed lack of time as a reading for the declining outside reading. They still read magazines and “Zack” reads the Daily Illni, but they do not get to focus much attention on other outside reading. “Zack” still studies about 30 hours a week, while “Slater” studies a little under 10, which is an increase of studying time compared to high school. Learning this information made me curious about their current academic status, so I started to explore that as well.
I interviewed both participants and asked them questions about their first exams and papers here at the U of I. “Slater’s” first exam was a Human Sexuality exam, and he only studied for a few hours because he figured it would be easy. He went over notes, re-read and skimmed chapters one night, and feels he did well on the exam. He has not received his grade back yet. Since this test was not a challenge he described his first Urban Planning test to me. That test consisted of 30 Ids and an essay. This time he studied for about three days, about 2 hours a night. He went through notes, attentively skimmed chapters, and made an outline for the essay. He wanted to organize his ideas, because when he actually wrote the essay during the test, he could remember his outline and how it was organized.
“Zack’s” first exam was his Calculus exam. He described this exam as his hardest, because he feels he has to teach himself in this class. He constantly works on problem sets, and re-reads chapters to get a complete understanding of the material. For the exam, he took about three nights, 3 hours each night, and went over old exams given by the professor, and practiced problem sets over and over. His studying paid off because he did pretty well. He also learned how to study accordingly. However, on the second exam for the class, he realized that he did not study enough.
In terms of writing, both of them still only write emails and instant messenger conversations outside of the academic world. “Zack’s” first academic writing assignment was an outline for Speech Comm 101, and after getting it back realized how detailed his instructor was. “Slater’s” first paper assignment was a two-page paper about “property” for Urban Planning. He received a check on the assignment and when I asked him if he was disappointed he said no, because he did not put much effort into it. The highest-grade possible was a check plus.

Conclusions: 12/09/03

Both participants want to succeed here at the U of I; therefore they changed their studying habits to ensure success.
Their literacy practices began to change drastically after mid-term time. Both participants realized they needed to work harder, although “Zack” constantly worked hard. That’s also when I began to notice how their literacy practices reflect their personalities. I began to see how “Zack’s” strong and determined personality correlated with his drive for success, and how “Slater’s” social and easy-going personality correlated with his interest in society. After a mass amount of data collection, it was time to analyze what everything meant, and that’s what I did.
Once students come to college, their social and academic practices change. Their foundations of literacy practices help guide them in college, although they alter as they continue with their college career. Literacy practices are shaped by the social context of a person, and since people constantly move to different situations, so do their literacy practices. People learn to adapt their literacy practices for the goals they have to achieve or want to accomplish. I’m interested to see how both of my particpants’ literacy practices change as they continue with the rest of their educational careers.

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	CONNECT	Go to Top

Refer to other EOTU work

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	REFLECT	Go to Top

Project diary

REPORT from the FIELD 1) How could the class (in terms of organization, format, readings, discussions, etc.) serve you better as you conduct your research for this project? FINAL FINDINGS and CONCLUSIONS 1) How could the class (in terms of organization, format, readings, discussions, etc.) have served you better during this research project?

REPORT FROM THE FIELD: 10/26/03

I feel like the current articles about how society shapes literacy practices is helpng a lot in my research. I didn't realize how much soceity shapes our literacy practices. I also didn't realize how much a person is shaped by their literacy practices.

I just hope I get stronger conclusions and data in the next few weeks. Since this research project only last until the end of the semeter I'm worried I won't have strong answers to the questons I'm searching for. But now, I think I've found something that could interest me for my master's thesis or doctoral thesis.

Conclusions: 12/09/03

I believe all the componments of this course helped me: readings, disucssions, format. Personally, I wouldn't change anything. I especially enjoyed the fact that everyone presented their research to the class throughout the semester. It was interesting to hear about other literacy communities.

Project diary

Uploaded Files:
Eng381ReportfromtheField.doc
381FinalDraft.doc
381RoughDraft.doc

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