Ideas for Research Project/ Week 2 & 3

*Combination of 2 and 3*
Idea

Have the systemic changes in traditional grammar instruction in New Jersey secondary schools affected student preparedness for their university writing?

Questions

How is traditional grammar currently being taught in New Jersey high schools?

How does this current method deviate from previous models/methods of instruction?

What was the impetus for this change? I.e what was the cause for the paradigm shift? 

Is there empirical evidence that can be offered as a proof of the validity of each new model of instruction-- what makes this model true, either objectively or subjectively?

What are the effects of a system that quantitatively tests students on a basis of both linguistic prescriptivism and Essentialist construction of language, but that teaches students the rules of grammar within a conceptual model married to linguistic descriptivism and post-modern methodologies?    

Can the tools currently used by the New Jersey Department of Education be used to accurately gauge high school students language and literacy proficiency if there is a schism that exists between these methodologies of instruction, examination and the understanding of language itself?

Test what entity the model of traditional grammar curriculum serves: if it is not adequately preparing the students for college prep, as that is the mission statement outlined on the Common Core Standards website, what or who are the parties winning and losing within the confines of the current paradigm?


Week 2- Playing with Ideas

I see this paper as part historical survey of traditional grammar instruction and part illustration of the paradigm shifts that grammar instruction has undergone in New Jersey high schools in the past thirty years. I will first outline the current standardized 9^th-12^th grammar curriculum, and then proceed to articulate where the current curriculum deviates from models of grammar instruction of the past thirty years. This will demonstrate not only what each individual curriculum is composed of but will also leave the reader with the question of why is it being instructed and why was it changed? Once I have accomplished this historical examination, I will then illuminate the epistemological differences in the various curricula for my reader to analyse. I will undertake my own analysis of who is actually benefiting from the changes in these curricula using a philosophical approach that borrows heavily from the ideas of Wittgenstein and Chomsky. I also plan on attacking the question from the avenue of an educator, by actually interviewing high school English teachers who have a particular fondness for a certain method of grammar instruction, and thus they form a certain cohort that can be quantitatively measured. Finally, I plan on interviewing freshman college composition professors to ask them—if they could design a high school grammar course, what would it include?