TRAVERSING THE TOPICAL LANDSCAPE - EXPLORING STUDENTS SELF-DIRECTED READING-WRITING-RESEARCH PROCESSES

THIS 7-MONTH naturalistic study investigated students' reading and wri ting engagements as they conducted a research investigation related to World War II. Students were free to choose their research topics, to search for and to select from source materials, and to write up and pr esent their findings in their own way. The participants were 11- and 1 2-year-old pupils in an open-concept school in Aberdeen, Scotland. Dat a took the form of fieldnotes, photocopies of research booklets and so urce texts, structured, unstructured, and debriefing interviews, and a udio and videotapes. Ongoing data analysis led to selection of key inf ormants whose work sampled the range of composing-from-sources process es which were apparent in this context. Three major task impressions w ere uncovered: research as accumulating information, research-as trans ferring information, and research as transforming information. These t ask impressions were characterized by differing emphases on the follow ing research subtasks: planning, searching, finding, recording, review ing, and presenting. Students did not carry out these subtasks in eith er a strictly linear or a strictly cyclical pattern. Task impressions were also related to the differential use of the following strategies when working from sources: duplicating, drawing, and labeling, sentenc e-by-sentence reworking, read/remember/write, cut-and-paste synthesis, and discourse synthesis. The task impressions and strategy use of ind ividual students influenced and were influenced by the materials used and the social and instructional context of the classroom. Students wh o viewed research as a process of transforming information were more l ikely to demonstrate a range of strategies which allowed them to trave rse their topics from multiple perspectives.