Pressing deadline

Ah, Friday. Good to reach it but if only it meant a cutoff in the academic world. My paper for AERA is due to be uploaded on 17 March. So the weekend (with a holiday thrown in on Monday, for Victorians)will have to be devoted to writing the paper. The AERA referee process helps -a detailed proposal (up to 2,500 words) which means that the paper has been thought through, largely. This paper will be the first that i have written from my PhD so that is another plus. I can draw on large sections of Chapter Six of my thesis. Nevertheless, there are decisions to be made.

My proposal, and thesis chapter, addresses help between two students. The sequence of talk that i analysed was influenced by the teacher's directive to one student that she should help another but not tell. While I've done a detailed analysis of the sequence, i now face a number of decisions about how the paper should be shaped up. For example, the sequence was an extended one- it continued over many turns at talk. While the analysis establishes some very interesting things it is a hard read. In my thesis I justified the analysis by explaining that the detailed analysis of turn-by-turn talk was necessary to establish the ways in which the teacher influenced interaction, with consequences for the two students involved. A chapter in a thesis is one thing -a paper is another.

Many tensions arise from just producing a paper. My CA "side" wants to stay true to the analysis of the long sequence. However, my "reader" side suggests that the analysis is a difficult read. I could "blot out" sections of it, for example where one student is just sitting and not doing anything. at the same time -his inaction strongly illustrates the consequences of the teacher's directive that "not telling" is required when help is given. Without being told what to do, a student who doesn't know how to spell a word is left inactive for a long period of time. The video recording of this sequence captures the student's painful inactivity. I stayed true to this in the analysis but, as i said -it is a difficult read.