Doing research for the inquiry project seemed much more in depth than any research I had done before it. I was using peer-reviewed articles from the library instead of the usual Wikipedia page. This alone made me feel much more scholarly and gave me a sense that I knew what I was doing. I cranked out the research the I needed for my paper and wrote about how it was important to the topic. I cited the sources and made sure it made sense. After all I had done I was satisfied that this paper was different than any other I had written not just because of the sources but because of the fact that I had included a contribution to the topic. I had not just done a research paper, I had furthered the conversation of the topic. I was content with the work and talked about it with my group, we all agreed that our three papers combined would make a good strong contribution paper. We combined the pieces content that we were far ahead of the other groups with much more material than we needed. The paper was turned in and I was certain we would get praise for having done such a good contribution paper with just the right amount of research and discussion.
When I got the teachers feedback I was expecting a few comments on structure and the flow. It turned out our paper was far from being what it needed to be, there was too much research and facts and not enough discussion about these facts. From my point of view, being used to research papers and having never done a contribution paper, we had a lot of conversation. In reality I was looking at it much differently than I needed to be. I thought a few sentences of conversation and contribution would be more than enough to convey the point we were trying to make. This small amount of writing turned out to be much too little for the reader to understand our views. I need to change my paradigm of research into one of contribution. I am too used to taking research and spitting out a paper without analyzing it and forming a new view point of the topic.
Ben Coon 