Paper 3+4 requirement
Paper3--Annotated Bibliography DUE: Oct 20
Paper 4 + presentation DUE: Nov 20
Assignment: Analyze the current state of research in your field and explain its strengths and limitations, in the form(s) of the two assignments listed below. “Your field” will be a topic of inquiry relevant to you; that is, choose a topic that will serve you well outside of this class: Is there a piece you’re particularly excited about on an upcoming recital? When you leave WSU, do you imagine yourself as a particular kind of specialist? As an educator, is there a particular challenge you regularly encounter in the classroom that catches your attention (upon which you might even publish an article)? To that end, write:
1) An analysis of the Current State of Research in your field. More specifically, write an 8- to 10-page (double-spaced, 1” margins, Times New Roman, size 12 font) literature review on your topic. For now, know that your goal will not be to summarize major contributions and findings in your field, but to analyze for connections, value systems, and/or methodologies that operate within its discourses.
2) Annotated Bibliography: Towards helping you learn about the current state of research in your field, write an 8-10 page annotated bibliography of research on your topic. Pay special attention to the role(s) of methodology in the sources you encounter in your annotations and address the way(s) the source might inform. your own project. For more (including models for the formatting and structure of your annotations), see below.
Tips:
1) For this paper (and research generally) it is best to focus on one piece or idea related to something like your recital program, rather than the whole program.
2) Similarly, though you might be particularly passionate about teaching music to blind students, best to focus on something like “teaching visual staff notation to blind music education students,” rather than taking on all of music pedagogy for the visually impaired. Start as small as possible, and then branch out.
3) Best to choose a topic within the parameters of this class. Something to do with music history, theory, or pedagogy would be great. Topics to do with physiology or psychology/mental awareness, however, would be more challenging.
Grading Criteria: I will evaluate your assignments using the rubric handed out with this prompt. Although your grade will be determined holistically (i.e., by considering all five criteria in relation to one another, rather than evaluating each one separately), I will focus especially on those areas most relevant to each assignment (in the case of the Annotated Bibliography, the conceptual work; and the State of Research, the conceptual column and production of analytic [rather than reportative, summative] writing).
Other things to know: Ideally, you will also use this same field of research to complete your Paper II: Grant Proposal (due Oct 27) as well as your final presentation
EXAMPLE OF AN ANNOTATION
Citation Mello, Michelle M. and Leslie E. Wolf. “The Havasupai Indian Tribe Case— Lessons for Research Involving Biologic Stored Samples.” The New England Journal of Medicine 363 (2010): 204-207.
Summary
The content and research methods as they relate to your project
Mello and Wolf identify ethical and legal questions raised by the lawsuit raised by the Havasupai tribe against researchers from Arizona State University in 2004. They identify the challenges of getting informed consent from research subjects when “downstream uses” of biologic samples are unknown as the “core legal question” in the case (204). As a solution, they propose tiered consent because it “strikes the best balance between respecting participants and providing opportunities to advance science” (206).
Mello and Wolf make two important distinctions that will be important to the content of my [imagined] project. First, they X. Second, they Y. But there are some limitations to their work as well. First, their positivist method means
a. And the editing of the source material means b.
A MODEL FOR FORMATTING YOUR BIBLIOGRAPHY
Name Date
TITLE EXPLAINING THE TOPIC
This is your first bibliographic entry. It is single-spaced. If it goes on to the next line, you should format it so that it has a hanging indent.
Your annotations can be double-spaced and should be approximately 5-10 sentences (you will be the judge of how much information you need to provide). Your annotations should follow the format above, with special attention to the author’s methodologies and how the source relates to your own project (i.e. “This study will be most useful to me in x way,” or “The preface, in which the author discusses y, will be important to my project in z ways.”).
Here is your second entry. You can leave a space between your first and second (and third, etc.) bibliographic entries.
Some additional notes: If you encounter a collection of essays, you might decide to cite the whole book and generally explain its contents at first, but then list each individual chapter that serves your argument (in which case, you should indent the entries to show that they belong to the one above). You’ll explain that this is your plan in your annotation following the bibliographic entry for the whole book, and then go on:
Single-spaced citation for just one chapter within the collection. If this citation happens to be longer than one line, you will still want to preserve the hanging indent.
Double-spaced annotation starts at the normal tab indent. Single-spaced citation for another, second chapter starts here. And your next annotation will start here.
Here is your third entry. Whether to cite parts of a book or a whole book is entirely at your discretion.
I will only add here that your assignment asks you to write only 3-7 sentences in your annotations. I have sometimes found that students (to grossly exaggerate) submit something like only three sources in their final annotated bibliography, but write 3-page book reports on each as means of meeting the page requirement. The intellectual work of the assignment is the ability to gather a breadth of resources and then analyze for their methodologies and limitations: best to error on the side of too many resources, rather than too few.
Section Header
One additional note: You might also decide eventually (especially once you’re dealing with 10 pages of sources) to organize your bibliography into categories (i.e. “Source Material,” “Secondary Materials,” “Critical Editions,” etc.), in which case you are welcome to use headers like the one above to distinguish sections. The hanging indent of this note shows you that it’s formatted like a bibliographic entry, which is exactly what should follow a section heading.
And then the annotation would start here.
