The Mongoose and the Rat in Composition Research: Insights from the RTE Annotated Bibliography

Abstract

In late nineteenth-century Hawaii, trading ships brought to the islands, among other things, an infestation of rats. As one way of dealing with the ensuing health problems, authorities decided to import mongooses, lithe, greybrown creatures which feed on small rodents. A shipment was therefore brought from India and set loose on the rat population of Hawaii. But things did not turn out as expected, for the mongoose proved to be a diurnal creature, a hunter by day, while the rat worked nights. The two animals thus lived side by side but very seldom met, and both populations flourished. Now Hawaii has a rat problem and a mongoose problem. Since 1984, I have been a co-author of the twice-yearly annotated bibliography of research for Research in the Teaching of English (RTE). In that time, I have observed a similar pattern occurring in composition studies. Researchers and theorists perceive a problem. A remedy is proposed-a new line of research, one of instruction, or more commonly a mixture of both. The remedy is implemented, only to reveal a new set of problems and concerns. Sometimes the research question may even be largely resolved, yet problems and concerns remain. For example, we have learned a great deal about how virtually every type of writer composes, from poets (Armstrong) to professors (Levi and Grasha), to pre-school children (Cox and Sulzby). But amidst the neat rows of results come new and even more beguiling questions: What good is knowledge of writers' processes without equally detailed knowledge of the contexts