ILAN A SNYDER

RESEARCH METHODS FOR STUDYING THE USE OF

COMPUTERS IN LITERACY CLASSROOMS

This review's broad concern is the complex connections between literacy

practices and electronic technologies. More specifically, it looks at
research methods, taken to be a set of practices and discourses, for studying
the use of computers in language and literacy classrooms.
Different methods for investigating computers in literacy contexts reflect
distinctive ways of doing research: academics working in universities;
researchers and practitioners forming partnerships; teacher-led research;
and small-scale classroom studies, based on teachers' experience and their
informal observations. All are represented here.
Literacy is defined as the uses of reading and writing to achieve social
purposes in contexts of use. The idea that there is one monolithic type
of literacy is questioned; instead, there are literacies (Gee, 1990). When
computers are used for literacy purposes, the notion of 'computer-mediated
literacies' is preferred, explained as both social and technical practices
(Cochran-Smith, 1991). By contrast, the meaning ofthe phrase 'computer
literacy' is coloured by its colloquial usage (also see the review by Abbott
in Volume 2).

EARLY DEVELOPMENTS

The history of research methods in this emerging field parallels the trajec-
tory of the wider area of composition studies, but in a condensed timeframe.
The first computer-writing studies were most often quantitative, experi-
mental in conception and design. There was a gradual shift to qualitative
methods with an emphasis on the socially constructed nature of reality, the
intimate relationship between the researcher and what is studied, and the
situational constraints that shape inquiry. More recent studies have adopted
multiple perspectives which draw on methods from both traditions, while
others examine computer-mediated literacies through a particular ideolog-
icallens.
It would be a mistake, however, to represent the two decades of research
in this area as a process of evolution. Each of the earlier waves are still
operating in the present as a set of practices that researchers follow or
argue against. An array of choices now characterises the field with no

N.H. Hornberger and D. Corson (eds), Encyclopedia of Language and Education,

Volume 8: Research Methods in Language and Education, 239-248.
© 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers.
240 ILANA SNYDER

single approach privileged. Of course, there are no fewer problems and

difficulties, particularly in studies which attempt to blend methods from
different paradigms. Inevitable are tensions between the relativist, doubt-
ing, postmodern sensibility and the more certain, traditional, positivist
conceptions of research in this area.
There are a number of useful overviews of the research, extending
in their coverage almost to the present (Cochran-Smith, 1991; Bangert-
Drowns, 1993; Hawisher, LeBlanc, Moran & Selfe, 1996). Together
they establish what we already know about students and their computer-
mediated literacy practices as well as suggesting what we still need to
find out. Moreover, they address the difficulties of interpreting studies
that reflect contrasting conceptual frameworks and which differ in design,
methods of data collection, variables examined and modes of analysis.

MAJOR CONTRIBUTIONS

The first studies coincided with the availability of micro-computers and

word processing software (Gould, 1978). Investigators asked the classic
question in educational research (Does this innovation improve things?)
and chose the traditional method of exploring it (empirical), although
case study was also used. Experimental and quasi-experimental studies
assessed whether the quality of texts produced with computers was better
than those produced with pens. Chiefly through the perspective of cogni-
tive psychology, early research also examined the effects of the use of
computers on composing processes, particularly prewriting and revising.
Implicit was the conviction that if students planned carefully and revised
more with computers, their texts would be better (Collier, 1981; Bridwell,
Sirc & Brooke, 1985; Daiute, 1986).
Surveys examined students' attitudes to computers (Bridwell, Sirc &
Brooke, 1985) and case studies explored the responses of individuals and
groups to their use (Catano, 1985). By the mid-80s, there emerged a shift in
focus from the isolated writer to the writer in context. With this increased
sensitivity to the sociocultural setting in which the computers were used,
studies became more distinctly ethnographic (Dickinson, 1986; Herrmann,
1987).
This variation in method was accompanied by a new teaching emphasis.
Still interested in the effects of word processing on writing quality, revision
and attitudes, studies concentrated on the writing pedagogy, often a process
approach, that teachers adopted when introducing the technology. The
computer was investigated as a potentially felicitous tool that might both
facilitate and enhance a process approach (Sommers, 1985).
The research, like composition studies, was in transition: some
researchers were operating in the current-traditional paradigm, concerned