The major piece of this Capstone Project will be what’s called an “I-Search Essay,” educator Ken Macrorie’s name for the self-reflective, narrative form of research he promoted in the 1980s and 1990s (I remember writing a number of these).  

 

Why is it called “I-Search”?  Isn’t it the same as “research"?  Well, it’s research, for sure, but it’s a little different.  If you’ve attended Prairie for a number of years, you’ve done some research, to be sure.  Your experience with research has likely included freshman year’s infamous Spartacus paper, wading through the complexities of those five primary sources; sophomore year’s challenging imperialism investigation, this time with a more complex thesis; and junior year's simply, though aptly, named Junior Thesis, which gave you the opportunity to choose a topic of interest in American history, develop a thesis, then research the heck out of that thing for ten or more pages.  This I-Search will be closest to your Junior Thesis experience.  With one major difference: you get to choose aaaaaaanything you want to investigate (well, within reason...I can think of a number of things right now that I probably shouldn’t allow you to investigate at school).

 

As an educator, Macrorie saw that traditional research--especially for students not yet in college or a particular career, where their major fields would require greater levels of complexity and professional rigor--too often created in students negative outcomes: it could encourage the regurgitation of other people’s thinking into a copied-and-pasted hodgepodge of a report (I actually remember--and confess-that much of my middle school career was spent copying almost word for word from my 1960 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica reports on countries or historical figures or castles--I liked castles); it opened the door, if not properly taught or guided, to plagiarism; it was typically teacher-driven (e.g., research X, Y, or Z but not A, B, or C); and it stunted students’ natural curiosity about their world, about issues and questions that were important to or interesting to them.  He wanted students to have opportunities to write meaningful, authentic, personally relevant research.  Hence, “I-Search.”  

 

The I-Search process (and the paper really does emphasize the process of research, not just the final product) begins with a student’s question, with reflection on what he or she already knows and thinks, and who the possible stakeholders (alive and dead) in the issue are, among other things.  This introduction sets the stage for the rest of the process.

 

In the main body of the writing, the student then “tells the story of the search in a first-person narrative,  explaining the route taken to find information and answer important questions, recording the way the central question evolves and changes.”*  In this way, the I-Search paper encourages critical thought and requires it to be made explicit.  Students narrate their search, reflecting on the revelations and epiphanies they have, as well as the roadblocks they encounter or the mistakes they make along the way, thereby gaining a greater sense of the complexities and possibilities of any kind of investigation or problem-solving.

The concluding section gives the student a chance to synthesize what they’ve uncovered within the time span of the project (there has to be a deadline, stopping point!).  They probably won’t have all their questions answered or have a complete understanding of their subject, but they will reach a tentative resting point at which to reflect and share.

 

* Lyman, Huntington. “I-Search in the Age of Information.” NCTE English Journal. 95.4. 4 Mar. 2006. 3 June 2014. <http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Journals/EJ/0954-march06/EJ0954Information.pdf>.