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May 2008

Using the I-Search to promote Student Investigation
Belinda A. Sauret, Ph.D.

• Pombal and the Jesuits: A decade of conflict
• Gratuitous se in Mexican colloquial speech: A longitudinal study
• Saramago in translation

They all fascinate me and reduce my students to glazed-over stupor. It's not always easy to find topics to interest and inspire students, and if I let them choose their own topics, I'm likely to read a lot of narrative. As it turns out some of the best student writing that I’ve received has come in the form of personal accounts with titles like "How I felt when I left my friends in Guanajuato," "What it’s like to learn English," or "What I miss most about Monterrey," but I really can’t limit instruction to just narrative forms. Other modes are necessary but a bit more difficult to incorporate into class, especially when the textbooks we use are focused on all things literary.

However, last spring when a colleague presented a talk about the I-Search, I felt that I had found a method that would allow me to combine the motivational power of affect with some real student research, and even some expansion into a more academic mode of discourse. The I-search requires rigorous foot-noting and crediting of sources, with the advantage that each teacher’s requirements can be adjusted to demand more or less academic reading. The crux of the process is that students identify real questions that matter to them. Students express these in terms of problems to solve; the instructions direct them specifically to questions words like how, which or why.

The link below gives access to my translation of the I-Search. (My friend took her information from Making the Writing and Research Connection with the I-Search Process:
A How-to-Do-It Manual by Julie I. Tallman, Marilyn Z. Joyce and she also found these websites useful:
http://www.asij.ac.jp/hslibrary/i_search/ and http://binguo.myweb.uga.edu/6210/isearch/index.html)

The version that I’ve included shows the first few steps of my own I-search. It only seemed fair, since I was asking them to be forthcoming about their interests and concerns, that I do the same. I told them about my sister’s diabetes and how I was really in the dark about meals to prepare for her, what snacks to make available, in short, how to celebrate the holidays among the hypoglycemic. My students rewarded my small confession (although they asked first if my sister really has diabetes) with their own genuine concerns: "How can I help my mother grow roses? She never could in México, but here we might have a better chance." Another posed a legal question for himself: "How can you clear a criminal record in El Salvador in order to get a green card in the U.S?" And others had health concerns like my own: "How can I help my dad so he won’t faint in the kitchen from diabetes?" I had the best results when I asked the students to turn in each step at a time, checking to be sure that my expectations were clear and that students were complying with them. In that way I was able to head off questions like "Why is Diego Maradona the best soccer player that has ever lived?" Even for that student the question was not altogether pressing and it certainly didn't meet the test of allowing a student to solve a problem.

Conclusion:
My first forays in using the I-Search have been successful, but I believe that the next time I will encourage students to stay within a particular topic: science and health may well hold their attention; we could comply a list of Spanish-language websites and library resources that are appropriate. Topics like diabetes and a related topic such as the growing incidence of obesity would allow us to retain the interest in the immediate and personal, but would also encourage students to see some of these problems in terms of community. One of the best things about the I-Search is the requirement that students react to the information that they read and compare it with their previous knowledge or with other sources. This directs students to draw their own conclusions about what sources are reliable and what sources are contradicted by other publications. Following is a brief list of student-approved resources. Some useful online resources.

Some of the most useful resources that my students used can be found at:
Muy Interesante: http://www.muyinteresante.es/index.php (popular, but offers varied articles in Spanish)
Camb16 (ESPACIO DE INFORMACION GENERAL, SA): http://www.cambio16.info/en_curso/default.html (in Spanish and geared to political topics)
Enlaces Internet: Relacionados con el Mundo Hispánico http://www.ensayistas.org/enlaces/periodicos.htm ( a listing of Spanish-language periodicals, with a couple of Portuguese dailies thrown in).

Here is my version of an I-Search in Spanish and a rubric for grading it.