Bob, I think you have the right idea, just the wrong culprits. The movement
toward qualitative research is not a new movement. It began in the early
80s and has almost completely taken over English and rhet/comp studies.
It's an aspect of postmodernism, which holds that reality is not knowable,
that perhaps reality doesn't exist, and that (a lot of other nutty ideas).
Thus, we are to use qualitative research to discover the truths that are
knowable only to ourselves.

It is no longer respectable to do quantitative research in
English-rhet/comp, so the folks at research universities that might be
expected to do such research are instead trying to figure out how to turn
freshmen into socialists. (This is called "critical pedagogy.")

For other discussion of this problem, especially as to its effect on
grammar, see Robert Connors, "The Erasure of the Sentence," CCC, Sept.
2000.

See also Davida Charney, "Empircism Is Not a Four-Letter Word," CCC Dec. 1996.

Bill

>Ed lists are all good reasons (copied below) why there seems to be
>a "dearth of quantitative research" on the pro-grammar side.
>However, I was wondering if another reason might be that the ethos
>of traditional grammar, and traditionalism in general, simply do not
>match with the ethos of quantitative research.  Isn't the drive toward
>quantitative research in the classroom part of the whole anti-
>tradition movement?  It seems to me that people who are
>interested in traditional grammar would have more scholarly
>motivations, less scientific; more rationalist world views, less
>empirical.  The ethos of classroom experimentation does not fit
>with the ethos of grammar teaching.  This would also imply that
>those who DO use quantitaive research would be predisposed
>against grammar.  Also, I heard someone in the social sciences
>talk about a new movement toward QUALITATIVE research,
>instead of quantitative, in the softer sciences.  Grammar teaching
>might be one of the softer sciences.
>
>>on the question of quantitative research. There has been very
>> little done recently, for a number of reasons:
>>
>> 1.) Cost.  Collecting and analyzing samples (oral or written) is
>> time-consuming and expensive.
>>
>> 2) Legal issues -- getting permission to use (analyze) samples of
>> writing from an entire class is not as easy as it was 30 years ago.
>>
>> 3.) Deciding what "grammar" is to be studied.  (Someone already raised
>> this question, but it is complex, especially since, even in this group,
>> there is little agreement on the definition of grammar. Are we talking
>> usage, or syntax?)
>>
>> 4) Samples -- how will samples be chosen? How will we know that the
>> students have, or have not, had instruction in precisely those
>> constructions that are to be analyzed during the preceding 6 months?)
>>
>> 5) Are the samples (raw data) available for inspection. As I suggested in
>> my essay on the definition of the T-unit, in the previous, famous
>> research, the researchers all defined the T-unit differently. Unless we
>> can see the raw data, the studies are highly suspect.  (See:
>> http://www2.pct.edu/courses/evavra/ED498/Essay009_Def_TUnit.htm)
>>
>> Note too that the recent discussion (and different opinions) on how
>> language is "mastered" in the first place also affects any quantitative
>> research. One of the reasons that O'Hare's study is flawed is that he used
>> the previous work of Hunt, O'Donnell, and Loban which showed that
>> subordinate clauses naturally blossom between seventh and ninth grade.
>> Probably for that reason, he chose seventh graders to study. But, once one
>> sees what is going on, his doing so created a "sling-shot" effect which
>> invalidates any application of his research to anything other than seventh
>> graders. (And it may not be valid for them either.)
>>
>>    I suggest that any quantitative study of the effectiveness of any
>> approach to teaching grammar will be flawed until we get a better
>> understanding of the natural development of what Hunt called "syntactic
>> maturity." And we are a long way from that because we can't even agree on
>> how to define basic terms. Ed V.
>>
>
>
>-----------------------------------------------------
>Sincerely, Robert Einarsson
>please visit me at
>www.artsci.gmcc.ab.ca/people/einarssonb
>
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William J. McCleary
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716-346-6859

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