Multiple Forms of Representation: Using Maps to Triangulate Students’ Tacit Writing Knowledge

Íde O’Sullivan, D. Alexis Hart, Ashley J. Holmes, Anna V. Knutson, Yogesh Sinha, and Kathleen Blake Yancey

Composition Forum 2022 web Open Access

Multiple Forms of Representation: Using Maps to Triangulate Students’ Tacit Writing Knowledge

Íde O’Sullivan, D. Alexis Hart, Ashley J. Holmes, Anna V. Knutson, Yogesh Sinha, and Kathleen Blake Yancey

Abstract

This article draws on examples of student interviews incorporating multiple modalities to explore the writing lives of students as part of a larger project focusing on participants’ experiences of writing within and beyond the university. We explain this innovative, iterative research method combining multiple texts and maps, characterizing it as a kind of triangulation operating inside the frame of the interview. Through students’ triangulated multiple representations, the interviewer learns about, and from, students’ tacit knowledge of their experiences as it is made explicit through multiple modalities: visual as well as linguistic (oral and written). Our study suggests that engaging students in multiple modalities allows researchers to get a more comprehensive understanding of participants’ experiences. Moreover, as we demonstrate from our findings, students found that the mapping activity helped them understand their own writing and the relationships among their spheres of writing more fully. We argue for the value of engaging research participants in multiple modalities as a way of eliciting tacit knowledge through triangulating the data in the discourse-based interview.

Journal: Composition Forum
Published: 2022
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Open Access: OA PDF Gold
Topics: discourse analysis
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Multiple Forms of Representation: Using Maps to Triangulate Students’ Tacit Writing Knowledge

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Multiple Forms of Representation: Using Maps to Triangulate Students’ Tacit Writing Knowledge

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