How to Talk to Students about Research

Many developmental students have little experience with research. It's not just that they lack experience with databases and documentation: They may not even fully understand why information is important to professional people. Living in a world where information is instantly available via television, many students may not understand what researchers are looking for during their long hours in libraries.

Stories are a terrific way to introduce developmental students to the meaning and purpose of research. What follows is a story I tell all my classes about one of my own research experiences.

I know you're not going to use this story. What I'm hoping is that it will inspire you to do some digging into your own memory bank for a story to share. Consider this a model lesson, if you will. I'll follow the story with a few comments about making a connection with prep learners.

Here's how I tell the story:

A few years ago, I wrote a book about a play by Bernard Shaw, a famous British writer, called Pygmalion (better known as My Fair Lady). Many scholars had already written about the love story in the play, so I decided to do something different.

I thought Bernard Shaw was using the play to say something very important about education. He believed that education is the way to make the world better. And he believed that almost everyone has an amazing capacity for learning.

To write my book, I had to prove that Shaw really believed these things. So, on my first page, I put in some quotations from Shaw's writings about the importance of learning and the need for a new and better world. One of the sentences came from a letter he wrote to a friend of his, G.K. Chesterton. I couldn't find the whole letter in a book, but I found a sentence from it that made my point very nicely.

Finally I finished and sent the whole book to a university publisher. They liked what I wrote and wanted to publish it. But they had questions about that letter to G.K. Chesterton. When was it written? How did I know I had quoted it accurately? They insisted that I had to find the whole original letter.

I hunted and hunted in various collections of Shaw's letters. (He wrote thousands of them, unfortunately.) No luck. Finally I wrote to Dan Laurence, a scholar who's the world's greatest authority on Shaw. He has spent his whole life collecting information about Shaw. He has amazing files about everything Shaw ever wrote.

Dan Laurence sent me a postcard explaining that Chesterton's wife had put Shaw's letter into a book she wrote about her husband. And he gave me the title of her book.

I got his postcard on a Saturday afternoon after the college library had closed for the weekend. Impatient, I wanted to find out right away if the library had the book. So I logged on to my computer, went to the library website, clicked on the catalog, did a search, and found that it indeed had the book. Hallelujah! I copied down the call number (the "address" where the book is kept - every book in the library has its own call number).

On Monday morning I was standing at the door at 8:00 when the library opened. In my hand was a slip of paper with the call number on it. Two minutes later I had found the book. I looked in the index under "Shaw," turned to each of the pages listed there, and quickly found the letter.

Several months later I published my book, and I put a "thank you" to the both the college library and to Dan Laurence in it.

End of story.

Now I don't expect my developmental students to go through a research process like this. I don't even expect them to understand every bit of the story! But listening to my experience introduces them to the following ideas:

-Research has a purpose.

-Professional writers have to back up their ideas with evidence.

-Research is a collaborative process.

-Publishers require authors to meet certain standards.

-Experts are people who spend many years learning about a subject.

-The college website lists every book that the library owns.

-A book can be found quickly if you know the call number.

-An index is a useful part of a book.

Much of this--even though it seems simple to us--is a revelation to many prep students.

So I hope you'll look for a story of your own to tell. Don't worry if parts of it are likely to go over your students' heads. They are hungry (even if they don't admit it!) for glimpses of the world outside of their high-school experiences.

I find it helpful to imagine that I'm taking them on a brief trip to a foreign country. So what if they miss some of the local sights--at least they've been there!

And have fun. You may be astonished by the response you get from your students when you invite them to journey into your own world for a few minutes. It's one of the joys of teaching developmental classes.