Questions for this week...

1) I am still not 100% sure what data that I will collect for the assignments.  I want to know what my dissertation area of interest is, but I am struggling.  I have a lot of ideas for work that I think need to be done in relation to current policy mandates and the effect on ESL teachers, professionally and in their identity as teachers.  I am just not sure that I want to spend that much time focusing on adults or ESL for that matter.  Struggling readers are my heart.  I really want to do something in that area that would benefit my students and the larger student body as a whole.  However, I am struggling coming up with a focus.  For this course assignment, I have been thinking about recording lunch conversations between my colleagues (getting their permission first, of course) and looking at the school discourse that comes up.  Again, I want to work with kiddos.  Would it be okay (for the purposes of this assignment) to record the conversations of kiddos during breakfast duty?  One thing that I thought of was recording a conversation between my son and his xBox friends.  There is a whole discourse happening there that reflects what we have been discussing in relation to community talk and related discourse that wouldn't necessarily be understood by someone outside of their circle.  Some of it relates to the specific game, some of it is general gaming terminology, and some of it is made up uses of already available words. What do you think about any of those random ideas?

2) For the mini-lit review, I know that I will focus on literacy and search journals related specifically to struggling readers.  I am hoping that I will find articles related to discourse analysis and the identity of these students.  Am I on the right track?