Inquiry Log
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Inquiry Log 1: Listening
In groups, you established at least two questions that you would be exploring as part of your participation in your inquiry group's discourse community. As Burke notes, however, we are first tasked with listening. So, right now, I am asking you to get your inquiry feet wet by doing just that: listening in on the conversations that relate to your individual inquiry questions.
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Inquiry Log 2: A Complicated Dispute
Table 4.1 from "Identifying Issues to Formulating Questions" is fairly representative of where you currently are in your inquiry process. From the pitch proposal, a situation and issue were identified and you have since formulated a larger group inquiry question with a subset of questions for each of the members in your group. However, inquiry is a process of development and, as you embrace the inquiry process, it is likely that your individual inquiry questions will evolve as you do your due diligence to “read in the role of writer” (From Inquiry to Academic Writing, 73).
Inquiry Log 3: Extending Ideas and Understanding a Writer's Frame
For each of your sources, you will need to provide an account of what is at issue, what the writer's focus is on the issue, how you feel that it applies to your inquiry, and what is at stake in the topic. Then, you will also need to make the step to EXTEND those ideas related in EACH of the sources, so that you are the one creating content within the conversation and new questions that need to be addressed.In doing so, consider how, in light of the inquiry work that you have done so far, the writers' frames for understanding, questioning, and writing create avenues of exploration and discussion while limiting others.
Inquiry Log 4: Extending and Connecting with Peers
Now that you have done some independent research, go back and read posts from your peers in your inquiry group. As you do so, look to complicate the topic and consider ways that you might want your peers to develop their inquiries in ways that will connect to yours and the work of your group's larger inquiry question. Then, take the time to write a post about what you are thinking as you have been reading their work.relate your thinking, questioning, connections, and possible next steps.
Inquiry Log 5: The Breadcrumbs of Inquiry and the Development of a Contribution
At this point, you have well established the tenor of the conversation as it relates to your inquiry questions and your group's inquiry work. Now, however, it is time to begin envisioning how you might, as an inquiry group and as individual inquirers, enter your voice in the conversation through a contribution. Contributions, like inquires, can challenge us; we are often taking risks in the process. That said, Swales notes well the importance for feedback within a community. When you contribute, you are providing a new source, one that all of your other sources could turn to and gain something new from.
Contributions Statements are regular practice across different fields and Communities of Practice, though they sometimes will go by a different name. These statements articulate what it is that you will be contributing to a larger body of conversation.