This admin update will be updated regularly to reflect available resources.

Refer to our LDL Program web site for key information and ALL resources. This list is just some PDFs that have been added to the web site. But the web site has much more.

Here are some links to key resources:

• Exam-Dissertation Sequence Scaffolding Process (updated 7/16/2021)
• Navigating the Exam-Dissertation Sequence - with links to each step
• Suggested Timelines
• Peer Review Rubrics
• 5-Chapter Dissertation Model – by Methodology: (updated 7/16/2021)
• Dissertation FAQs

The exam-dissertation process is a sequence of activities culminating in a dissertation, where you demonstrate your capacity to be a scholar in terms of rigorous methodology and scholarly discourse, and where you demonstrate that you are able to push the frontiers of knowledge with original thinking.

Before he became a world-famous theorist of communication (and later a novelist whose books were turned into movies), Umberto Eco wrote a little book, How to Write a Thesis. After he became famous, it was translated into English.

Here, in Eco's words, is the thesis project:

This is a piece of original research through which the candidate must demonstrate scholarly capability of furthering his [or her! ... Eco writes in 1977] discipline. ... [O]ne must not only know the work of other scholars but also "discover" something that other scholars have not yet said. ...Writing a thesis requires a student to organize ideas and data, to work methodically, and to build an "object" that will in principle serve others. (pp. 2, 6)

This learning module covers a sequence of six courses which will take you step by step through the process of becoming a scholar as reflected in the construction of the artifact of the thesis. Your dissertation will enter the universe of published scholarly works where it needs to be of the same standard as peer-reviewed journal articles or books. In fact, you may want to pursue formal publication options, though this usually entails revision.

The six courses in the exam-dissertation sequence are as follows and must be completed in order and build off of one another::

• Course 1: General Field Research Seminar
• Course 2: Special Field Research Seminar
• Course 3: Methodology Research Seminar*
• Course 4: Thesis Seminar - Preliminary Examination
• Course 5: Thesis Research (1) First Full Draft of Thesis*
• Course 6: Thesis Research (2) Final Defense

*note that PhD candidates have slightly different registration requirements, but the course requirements apply to both the EdD and the PhD.

In each course, you will be creating text that can potentially be part of your final dissertation. In the Exam-Dissertation Sequence (EDS) we allow you to "triple dip".  What we mean is that the work you produce serves multiple purposes:

1. Admin updates and milestones to earn 4 credits towards your degree
2. Certain milestones can be submitted for qualifying, preliminary, and/or final examination
3. Milestones can be revised and adapted to meet the requirements of a research proposal and eventually a thesis manuscript that can be defended and deposited as your final dissertation

You will be adding to a single large work that will be your dissertation. For instance, from the general field and special field examinations, you will be creating sections of what might become a literature review section, the first part addressing the wider literature of your selected field of interest, and the second reviewing literature that emerges from the gaps identified from the general field and leads to your own research intervention. These two literature reviews will form Chapter 2 when they are integrated after the qualifying exams.  Chapter 3 addresses your theory and methodology for your research intervention.  It provides a deep examination of your chosen theory and methodology, a rationale for your chosen theory and methodology, and a detailed explanation of how it will be implemented.

The preliminary thesis examination is the culmination of work done in three research seminar courses.

1. introduction with the research question/s, hypotheses (Chapter 1)
2. Lterature Review (Chapter 2)
3. Selected theory and methodology and plan of going forward with research/project (Chapter 3)) it may also include a description of a proof-of-concept pilot study.

As you move forward, the earlier sections will inevitably change. Although the focus in each course will be in the newly added sections, the dissertation can continually evolve right up to the point of final defense and deposit.

Approach

Our aim in this course sequence is to create and nurture a vibrant scholarly community in support of a sustained intellectual project of your design. Not only is this an incremental process, where you work towards the overall task of the dissertation by working through a series of defined and manageable milestones. It is also, at every stage in the process, a social and collaborative process, with multiple cycles of peer review and feedback from your committee. We have taken this approach in order to address the two main criticisms of doctoral work: all-too-frequently it is experienced as a lonely process, and the final dissertation feels like a daunting thing, so daunting in fact that can easily slip from one’s grasp.

Key features of the approach we are taking in this course sequence are:

• Systematic peer interaction, semi-formally in online discussions, and formally in peer reviewed projects, section by section as the draft of the dissertation evolves.
• Flexible pacing with commitments made in deadline contracts at the beginning of each course (this is necessary for allocating peer reviews based on complementary interests).
• Peer mentoring, where peers who are further into the process offer support to those who have joined the program more recently.
• A student led support community.
• Weekly synchronous workshop meetings with the program instructors.
• A four-person faculty committee, whose members stay with program participants throughout the course sequence, reviewing interim work. At least three members of the committee will review the final works submitted for the General & Special examinations, and all four will review the work submitted for preliminary and final thesis examinations.

General References

• Dunleavy, Patrick. 2003. Authoring a PhD Thesis: How to Plan, Draft, Write and Finish a Doctoral Dissertation. London UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Eco, Umberto. 1985 [2015]. How to Write a Thesis. Translated by C. M. Farina and G. Farina. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
• Hayton, James. 2010. PhD: An Uncommon Guide to Research, Writing & PhD Life: James Hayton.
• Rudestam, Kjell Erik and Rae R. Newton. 2007. Surviving Your Dissertation: A Comprehensive Guide to Content and Process. Thousand Oaks CA: Sage.
• Walker, George E., Chris M. Golde, Laura Jones, Andrea Conklin Bueschel and Pat Hutchings. 2008. The Formation of Scholars: Rethinking Doctoral Education for the Twenty-First Century. San Francisco CA: Jossey-Bass.

Web Tips

• Writing a Dissertation
• LDL EDS Web site

Action Items

Action Item #1: Review several of the resources on the dissertation process

Action Item #2: Identify at least one other resource that you feel may be helpful to your peers

Action Item #3: Comment: Share what you found helpful in the resources above.  Share at least one other resource that you have found helpful and what in particular made it helpful. What are your initial reactions, thoughts about the dissertation process, based on your readings?

Building Your Research Diary and Bibliography
There are many different ways to develop a systematic record of your reading and thinking. We are going to suggest one, involving two primary artifacts, a research diary and a bibliographical database. Of course, there are many ways to be systematic, you just need to establish a way!

Research Diary

This is an evolving, private knowledge record.

• Create a single Word file or Google Doc
• Date each day’s work, the latest date at the start of the doc so the entries appear in reverse chronological order

Include:

• Notes cut/pasted from readings: be careful to include page numbers so you can cite without having to go back to the readings
• An index of other topics with page numbers where you might want to go back to an idea you encountered in your readings
• Tag or indicator if they apply to your General Field, Special Field, Theory or Methodology, if applicable
• Your own thoughts, but, very important (!) be careful to distinguish your own thoughts from notes to avoid accidental plagiarism. For instance, always put your thinking in square brackets, or a different colored text or column
• Copy/paste parts of updates, annotated bibliographies and literature reviews that you think would be helpful to come back to. Again, be very careful to distinguish text you have written from your notes and selections

Other Suggestions

• Use hashtags so you can find ideas you would like to locate again at some point, for instance #differentiatedinstruction. Create an index of hashtags at the beginning of the document. This of course will evolve and grow as your thinking develops
• Include citations in the text, inserted from your bibliography database
• Over the 16 courses of the doctoral program, regular courses and the exam-dissertation sequence, this document may become very large. The advantage of having a single document is that you will be able to search quickly for hashtags, authors, and other words.

Bibliographical Database

Keep all the references that you read and to which you may wish to refer in a bibliographical database program (e.g. Mendeley, Endnote, RefWorks, Zotero).

• Make sure you include enough data in each reference to create a well-formed citation; confirm the citation details as soon as you import the attachment
• Include pdfs if you have them, links to source pages, or notes about where you can locate a book or other item if you need it again
• Highlight text and copy and paste relevant notes from your research diary into the notes field
• Put citation makers into your research diary file

Citation Styles

There are different types of citation methods and protocols for acknowledging sources.

• APA (American Psychological Association) - Education, Psychology, and Sciences
• MLA (Modern Language Association) - Humanities
• Chicago/Turabian style - Business, History, and the Fine Arts

Some disciplines favor in-text bracketed citations, others footnotes or endnotes. Choose a citation method, and stay with it!  Also be sure to communicate to your reviewers which method you have chosen so that they can provide appropriate peer review feedback regarding your citations.

Action Items

Action Item #1: Decide on a system for note-taking and a bibliographical database.

Action Item #2: Comment: Describe your note-taking method and choice for documentation of readings and other sources. How might this be extended, improved, or changed?

Dissertation work in doctoral programs is often—and notoriously—a torturous and alienating process. If the candidate has an enthusiasm for an idea or a practice, that is soon exhausted by a feeling of being alone (after having been until this point learning with others in their coursework), and being a slave to methods. For the more humorous side of this experience, see @AcademiaObscura on Twitter... but like so many jokes, behind the joke there is something that is not funny, a failure of the scholarly experience. We want to do something different and better, while staying faithful to the intellectual ideals of academe. These, we want to say, are to create innovative ideas and transformational practices that address the ongoing challenges and aspirations of education in any of its many aspects.

This learning module supports the 6-course dissertation sequence in the Learning Design and Leadership program. We want to do two main things that are different (and other things as well, please help us work on these!):

1. Transformational: The thesis process should be imagination and agenda driven. We are doing this work to make the world a different and better place, in small ways perhaps but always connecting to bigger transformations. This means that we must not become a slave to methods. Too often we see doctoral theses whose focus has been narrowed by methods, and to the point where the answer to the question they address is obvious, and in retrospect, the question was not worth asking. The evidence is rigorous, but once its rigor has been established, the results are self-evident. Things have been "discovered" that could have spoken for themselves without having to be spoken for. Methods are, of course, very important, but they are never more than a means to an end. Keep the end in sight (remember, "innovative ideas and transformational practices"), and the work will remain motivating because it is purposeful.
2. Productive Diversity: The examination and dissertation process should build and draw upon the resources of intellectual peer community. The dissertation process is often alienating because much of the time the only relationship the creator has is between them and their screen. At the end of long, anxious-making stretches of time and seemingly endless stretches of lonely work, their committee reads their exams, prelim and dissertation, and proclaims pass/rewrite/fail. But apart from these short moments of feedback and ad hoc conversations with their adviser, the candidate is mostly alone. They have precious little in the way of interaction with their peers, and they you do it is informal, not an integral part of the dissertation process. The problem is that intellectual work and its practical applications are never this lonesome. Scholars work in labs, research teams, in intellectual communities where their work is peer reviewed, and in communities that discuss and apply the work once it has been published. So, the second big thing we want to do in this course sequence is to make it social, to create a sense of intellectual community whose fundamental value is "productive diversity." We want to transform the doctoral process, no less!

And, as Eco states in his How to Write a Thesis, "The rigor of a thesis is more important than its scope." (p.5)

References: See section 0.1

Comment: Academic horror stories? Academic dreams? Tell us what you have heard or seen...

The Collaborative Process

The peer review process is intended to be a learning and assessment exercise that will strengthen your own work in addition to providing feedback to your peers. Our approach is both traditional and innovative. For some centuries now, peer review has been the formal process for evaluating and validating academic research and knowledge. This is the foundation of scholarly journal and book publishing. Today is also a time of great innovation, spurred by developments in digital media and publishing technologies. For more about our thinking in this area, see Cope, Bill and Angus Phillips (eds), The Future of the Academic Journal, Elsevier, 2014.

It is not necessary that you have begun or enrolled in the dissertation courses to begin the peer review process. Here are some reasons to join early:

• Connect with others who have similar or complementary research interests.
• Help you define or refine your research interests.
• Become familiar with the dissertation process and deliverables.
• Guide you in your elective course selections.
• Learn new content, best practices, and how to critically analyze others’ works.
• Enhance your deliverables associated with your regular LDL courses and the dissertation courses.

Everyone will be assigned three peer reviews per project. Reviews will be assigned based on criteria of timeliness (someone needs a review and you are at approximately the same point in the exam-dissertation course), and relevance in terms of your interest. Sometimes, the work you are reviewing may be somewhat off topic because another person needs a review, but that is not always a bad thing. Ideally, we will try to arrange reviews for you based on the following criteria, though it may not always work out this neatly!

• We will aim to assign everyone is at least one peer review prior to completing their own project. We will send you a request to review, but if you are unavailable or it seems too soon, you can turn down the request. Please respond quickly so we can find another reviewer if you are not available or ready.
• Peer reviews in the Examination-Dissertation Sequence of courses will be open (i.e. not anonymous) because, through multiple, iterative cycles, participants will get to know each other's work. Not only would anonymity be impractical, we want to create an intellectual community here that is more like a collaborative research lab than the distant and objective judgments that anonymous peer review seeks to nurture.
• Try to differentiate your ratings across the different works you review. In first draft submissions particularly, works are more variable in their quality than they are in final submissions after the benefit of the peer review process.
• We recommend you annotate before you review. The most helpful coded annotations will have an approximately equal balance positive (+) and negative (-) judgments.

Some Additional Notes:

• Peer review rubrics have been provided to guide you in the peer review process. (See below) A meaningful peer review should take two to three hours to complete.
• Peer reviews should be completed within one week (or a maximum of 2 weeks), unless other arrangements have been made. You will receive a deadline for review submission with each review request.
• You must be nearly completed with your course requirements before officially registering for a dissertation-related course, however you may join our online course community, participate in the peer review process, and attend our weekly group advising sessions at any time. We encourage students to look ahead at what the process entails and examples from your peers who have already embarked on this journey.

Peer Review Rubric 

The Technical Process

You will write this work in the Creator area of CGScholar. It will not be connected to a project for peer review until you have completed the draft.

• Go to CGScholar => Creator, and create a new work. The title of your work should be the tentative title for your dissertation and include the type of work, such as General Field.
• Annotated bibliographies (the first work in the first three research seminars will be a part of a Shared work with your peers.
• Other major projects/milestones will be individual works. The very first project (General Field literature review) will be a newly created work. But for all subsequent works you will be duplicating the existing work. In order to create separate "projects" within the CGScholar functionality so that they can be routed for peer review), and this will stay with you all the way to your dissertation. Make good use of the structure tool which allows any number of levels of subheadings. Having many small sections within sections helps you to rearrange your thoughts. (A subheading is created by dragging the + icon in the section name in the Structure tool to the right.) For the moment, the top-level sections can be called "The General Field of ...," "The Special Field of...," "Methodology for..." Also indicate which is a newly added section, e.g. "The General Field of... (Revised)," "The Special Field of ... (New)." These temporary subheadings can be revised at each step and for the final dissertation.

• You will also need to maintain your cumulative work in Word in the approved Graduate College format so that it can be routed for advisor and committee review.

• When you have finished each of the exam-dissertation courses and you are ready to move on to the next course, duplicate your final work in the previous stage (Creator => About this Work => Versions => Current. Hover over this version and you will see the duplicate icon.) For the next course, add to this newly duplicated work.
• When you have finished your draft section, you are creating for the current course, go to Creator => About this Work => Publish, search for the publisher "LDL General Field Examination" and request connection to a project for peer review.
• After your admin has made the connection, submit your work for peer review.
• About this time (perhaps before or after you submit—as soon as we can find suitable reviewers), you will be asked to review three of your peers' works. Please prioritize reviews ahead of your own work.
• After three reviews have been received for your work, you will be requested to revise. Before you submit your revision, write a self-review beside the current version, and offer your reviewers feedback-on-feedback.

Action Items

Action Item #1: Reflect on the challenges and benefits of giving and receiving peer reviews, including examples of effective reviews

Add a comment within this update that addresses the following:

1. Offer some tips for peer review
2. Share at least three excerpts from one or more peer reviews that you have received in a previous course that you found helpful and explain why
3. Share what you value most in a review
4. Ask questions about the process

Respond to others' questions

 

As shared previously, the Exam-Dissertation Sequence provides a scaffolded approach to prepare for your qualifying exams, research proposal, your data collection, and ultimately your final dissertation.  However, as you begin the EDS, you will be asked to first focus on your general field.  This section is placed here to provide some preliminary information as you begin to embark on this journey of discovery.

There are three major genres of knowledge creation that can go into the making of a dissertation:

1. Empirical Research Approach. This is arms-length observation of processes of learning in a formal or informal setting in which learning occurs. Here, you are not an agent—you are a disinterested observer systematically analyzing learning processes. Your methods may be quantitative or qualitative. You will be expected to make an original contribution to knowledge, either by bringing to light new insights based on empirical experience nor new conceptualizations arising from your research data.

Empirical research involves careful and systematic observation of the world. It creates distance and relies on detachment between researchers and their subjects, with strategies to ensure fact-based impartiality and objectivity.

Discipline examples: sociology, psychology, education, arts, design, economics, business, natural sciences etc.

Methods examples: qualitative methods (e.g. case study, open-ended survey, interview, focus group); quantitative methods (e.g. select response surveys, measurement, statistical analyses); mixed methods (qualitative + quantitative methods).

2. Practice Research Approach. This is an interested intervention, where you do something to change conditions in setting where learning is occurring (a formal educational setting or an informal social setting). The intervention could be something that you have developed or implemented, for instance a curriculum resource or program, or a community participation strategy, or an educational technology. You might use qualitative or quantitative methods to evaluate the effects of the intervention. In the case of quantitative methods, an intervention/control comparison adds methodological rigor. This should be accompanied by logic model tracing the lines of causation between intervention and effect. You will be expected to make an original contribution to knowledge by demonstrating the relations between intervention and effect.

Practice or design research involves interventions in which the researcher is an active participant. This may entail any or all of either or all of scoping for feasibility, planning, implementing, and evaluating the effectiveness of the intervention. The credibility of the researcher’s reporting depends on triangulation with other sources and moderation with alternative perspectives, such as research subjects, stakeholders and independent experts.

Discipline examples: (same range as empirical research) sociology, psychology, education, arts, design, economics, business, natural sciences etc.

Methods examples: qualitative methods (action research, design research, agile software development); quantitative methods (randomized controlled trials, quasi-experiments, supervised machine learning); mixed methods.

3. Interpretive Research Approach. This involves mapping and reconceptualizing a field of knowledge based on available theoretical resources (philosophy, semiotics, social theory, cultural studies) or historical or contemporary documentary resources (primary and secondary sources). Here, you will be able to make an original contribution to knowledge by building a new theory (concepts defined in relation to each other), providing a reconceptualization of an existing body of knowledge (such as an historical re-interpretation), or offering a new agenda for action.

Interpretive research takes existing knowledge artifacts and parses them for their meanings: the things to which they refer, the agencies they reflect, the structures they have, the settings in which they appear, and the interests the reflect. The objects of interpretive research may include philosophical texts, historical documents, literary works, media objects, artworks, designed objects, observed behaviors, constructed environments, or available datasets.

Discipline examples: literature, philosophy, history, cultural studies, social theory, semiotics, linguistics, education, law, etc.

Methods examples: literary criticism, ontology (philosophical and digital), epistemology, critique, scenario planning, policy formulation, agenda development, data mining, quantitative meta-analysis, unsupervised machine learning.

Although we are not going to deal with research methods in any detail until the third course in this exam-dissertation sequence, this is a good time to start thinking in a tentative way about the methodological implications of your topic.  This information is placed here to remind you of the different approaches.

Definition of Research: Systematic seeing of the world and thinking about the world; carefully organized knowledge processes capable of insights (human and natural science) that are deeper and broader than the casual knowing that is incidental to everyday experience (the lifeworld).

There are three canonical types of research method:

1. Qualitative Methods (e.g. Qualitative Sociology, Anthropology)

Narratives of the world. These can be captured with the following research tools:

• Open-ended survey
• Action research or qualitative experiment
• Interview
• Focus group
• Recorded interaction analysis
• Document analysis
• Immersive participation
• Ethnographic observation
• Case study
• Single subject cases
• Insider research
• Narrative research
• Grounded theory

2. Quantitative Methods (e.g. Quantitative Sociology, Psychology, Computer Science)

Counting things in the world. These can be captured with the following research tools:

• Item-based or select response survey
• Experiments with quantifiable effects
• Quantifiable data collection
• Statistical analysis
• Data mining
• Digital humanities
• Data change: longitudinal studies

3. Interpretive Methods (e.g. History, Philosophy, Semiotics, Cultural Studies, Social Theory)

Modelling, explaining and arguing the world. These can be captured with the following research tools:

• Re-reading and re-analyzing existing scholarly and documentary resources
• Reading and writing theories, agendas, plans
• Defining terms with greater precision than ordinary language
• Linking terms into conceptual schemas (ontologies)
• Diagramming and visual modelling
• Explanation and argument
• Critique, critical theory
• Developing action agendas

Connection Between Research Genres and Research Methods

Here is a matrix showing some connections between research genres and research methods:

Methods are often mixed. Here are the possible configurations of research methods:

• Interpretive
• Qualitative + Interpretive
• Quantitative + Interpretive
• Quantitative + Quantitative + Interpretive

Of course, it can be said that all methods include an interpretive dimension. When empirical research does not have an adequate interpretive dimension, it is pejoratively labelled “empiricism.”

References

• Cope, B. & Kalantzis, M., eds. (2015). A pedagogy of multiliteracies: Learning by design. Palgrave.
• Cope, B. and Kalantzis, M., eds. (2016). E-Learning ecologies: Principles for new learning and assessment. Routledge.
• Kalantzis, M. and Cope, B.. (2016). Learner differences in theory and practice. Open Review of Educational Research 3(1):85–132.
• Kalantzis, M., Cope, B., Chan, E. & Dalley-Trim, L. (2016). Literacies (Edn 2). Cambridge University Press.
• Kalantzis, M. and Cope, B.. (2020). Making sense: Reference agency and structure in a grammar of multimodal meaning. Cambridge University Press.
• Kalantzis, M. & Cope, B. (2020). Adding sense: Content and interest in a grammar of multimodal meaning. Cambridge University Press.

We are not mandating a specific structure for your dissertation, but this update provides an outline of the classic dissertation format. You can of course make the case for a different chapter structure depending on your topic and methods.

The dissertation will contain several key elements of scholarly discourse. We are going to get you to express your initial idea in these terms. Of course, this idea is likely to evolve during the first courses in this sequence, and possibly turn into something different. But it is good to have a starting point as a way to master the genre of scholarly writing, and as a reference point to recall how your thinking evolves, and the extent to which it evolves.

KEY DIFFERENCE: Your General Field is NOT your Dissertation. But it is important to see how these iterative milestones help to shape your dissertation.

1. Title: Create a tentative title for your dissertation, and possibly also a subtitle. A title without a subtitle must be descriptive of the content of the dissertation. If you have both a title and a subtitle, once can be more figurative, a phrase in the form of a short quote, or a catchy idea. But at least one part of the title/subtitle must be plainly descriptive.
2. Research Question(s): Create research questions - one or two is a good number. The possible answers to the questions should not be "yes"/"no." Nor should the answers to the questions you ask be self-evident or plainly obvious.
3. Optional Hypotheses: What do you anticipate the range of answers to your research questions might be? Web tips: Constructing a Hypothesis (traditional empirical focus)
4. Abstract: What you are exploring in this dissertation, the reasons why this exploration is significant, the approach you expect to take, and the outcomes you expect to achieve. (Later on, if you keep part of this text, you will change this to the outcomes you have received.) Abstracts are particularly difficult to write—it's your whole dissertation in about 150 words! Following is a model.

Chapter 1. Introduction. Outlines what the thesis is about – it includes the background to the study, research questions, and how it will make a contribution to new knowledge or offer new solutions.

Chapter 2. Literature Review. This chapter consists of two parts, addressing the literature from the perspectives of the general and special field. The general field literature review is a summary and analysis of key literature that is relevant to the research question/hypothesis. Its focus is the general framework within which scholars have addressed these questions. It also reveals and discusses any gaps in the literature. The special field literature review then addresses the gaps revealed by the general field literature review and any finely focused research and thinking that may be relevant to the study’s research project. This chapter also includes an explanation about how the research project addresses an important gap in the scholarly literature or an important area of practical need.

Chapter 3. Theory and Methods. The first part of this chapter offers definitions of the key concepts, and the explanatory framework that connects these concepts for the area that the research project is exploring or testing. Connecting theory to methods are your hypotheses, or anticipated possible answers to your research questions, answers for which your methods will provide evidence. The second part of this chapter outlines and justifies your method (or methods). This will include an analysis of the underlying epistemology—how well these intensively focused knowledge processes render empirical data or explanations deeper and broader than knowledge casually acquired in everyday experience of the lifeworld? And as every methodology has its critics, what are the main critiques of this approach? What are the limitations of these methods? The chapter concludes by describing the techniques and instruments used to collect and analyze data, referring to the instruments themselves (in the appendices), and an implementation plan. (This presentation will be in the future tense for the preliminary examination, then revised into the past tense for the final examination.)

Chapter 4. Findings. Present the results of dissertation study/research project – what was discovered and what value does this have for knowledge or application?

Chapter 5. Conclusions. Discusses key results and implications of the study and its most significant outcomes. Presents models of action and recommends research agendas for the future.

Refer to the final two pages of the EDS Process Overivew document (5-Chapter Dissertation Model – by Methodology) for an illustration of how the structure may look for qualitative, quantitative, or interpretive methodology.

But this is looking ahead! During the General Field Seminar and Examination, you will just be creating the first draft of will become the first part of Chapter 2 of the dissertation. Refer to Updates #1.7 Part 1, #1.7 Part 2 and #1.7 Part 3 for specific details.

Action Item #1 (Comment on this Post): Map out your potential topic based on the details above and the guidelines below.  But keep in mind that you are not obligated to follow-through with this topic.  As this is a part of the prework, we anticipate that your topic may evolve as you progress through the updates.

1. Include the tentative title for your dissertation
2. Write one or more research questions
3. Describe what you want to explore
4. Explain why this is important
5. Define how you plan to approach your task

Include "0.7" and a subject-focused title for your post in the title of the update.

Courses vs. Exam Seminars: While your annotated bibliography, literature review or methodology work from a previous course may address something related to your dissertation topic, the exam seminar courses serve a different purpose and should be substantially new material not used in previous courses. In the exam research, your annotated bibliography and literature reviews should address the general field, special field or methodology in a way that specifically focuses on the tentative themes of your dissertation and addresses that exam’s specific questions.

General/Special Literature Review and Methodology Seminar Requirements: At least 15 new sources* not used in previous courses/exams and at least 70% new writing, approximately 5,000 to 6,000 new words. This exercise constitutes the scholarly foundation for your dissertation.

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NOTE: THE AB WAS ELLIMINATED EFFECTIVE FALL 2021; leaving here for historical purposes only

Annotated Bibliography: At least 10 new sources not used in previous courses/exams, 100 to 200-word commentary on each. This exercise demonstrates that you can find pertinent resources, cite them correctly and synthesize them succinctly.

*You are able to use the sources identified in your Annotated Bibliography in your Literature Review in addition to any other sources not previously highlighted.

The Scope of "Education"

Education offers you an unusually broad scope to choose potential research topics for your dissertation work. We define education as the science of "coming to know," and we don't mean science in its narrow sense. Broadly speaking, science means focused attention, systematic observation and thinking which may take a whole range of forms including any or all of empirical, theoretical or interpretive work. Education encompasses "coming to know" in the sense of the development knowledge by persons or in social practice. This includes learning in formal institutions, and informal learning in everyday life. This learning may be at different stages of life: babies, children, adults. Learning may occur in a range of sites: schools, workplaces, voluntary organizations, community settings, and in personal life. The good thing—and the challenge as you select a topic—is that the range of possibilities is enormous. In the following paper, we explore the discipline of education as a frame of intellectual reference:​

What is Your Interest? What is your Tentative Research Question? What is your General Field?

What do we mean by "general field?" In this course, we want you to frame the broad shape of the area in which you are working. What are its main challenges? What kinds of innovative ideas and transformational practices is the field begging, generally speaking? One rough measure of generality might be, if you were to create undergraduate college course introducing students to this general area of knowledge, what would you want them to know? What should they read to get a sense of the critical issues being addressed in theory, research and practice?

(By way of contrast, Course 2 in this sequence is the "special field examination," focusing in on theory and research related to the specific topic you have chosen for your dissertation, which will emerge as a result of your General Field Literature Review. Do not speculate in advance what your special field might be.)

Start with a Dissertation Focus - but then set it aside as you focus on investigating your General Field within the literature
If the focus of your dissertation work is to be innovative ideas and/or transformational practices, what is your interest? What needs to be done in the world? What are your initial ideas for a dissertation? Consider:

1. The topic of interest or the thing in the world that upon which you are going to focus?  Choose a purpose that is close to the work you do in the rest of your life. One of the wonderful things about the fully online doctorate is that you are not taken out of life to do it. Until the opportunities offered by "distance education" and now e-learning, university learning departed little from its origins in the medieval monastery. The student left "real" life to spend years in a dorm room, the reading room of the library, and to join the congregation of other students in lecture hall and the classroom. You have the advantage of staying in life while you study, so avail yourself of this opportunity. Create something, apply something, observe something in or for the life that you lead, be that a professional life, a passion, a vocation, or community commitment. This advice is in part practical, not to overburden your life with too many unrelated tangents. But you also have an advantage over on-campus students in that you don't have to venture out for your research to a strange place with uncertain prospects.
2. Initial, Tentative Research Question/s, while this could change as you progress on your journey of discovery, this serves as the motivation as you define and begin to explore your general field of interest.
3. Looking Ahead: The genre of the dissertation? (for instance: empirical observation research, interpretive reframing, or innovative intervention). Design a project that will be manageable but related to your tentative research question. You can read too widely. Your sample size can be too large. You might be doing too many interviews. The expanse of your historical study could be too broad. Your philosophical question may be too general. Your project must encompass just enough to say something worthwhile, and no more, otherwise you may never get your project finished. You won't necessarily know the precise dimensions of "enough" at the start, but at a certain point, you have to say to yourself, "enough!" And your review of the literature for both your general and special field will help you arrive at this point.
4. The subdiscipline of education (for instance: curriculum and instruction, educational psychology, history of education, philosophy of education, sociology of education)
5. General Field: A field associated with your tentative research question.
6. Special Field: Identified as a result of the gaps in the literature in your general field.

You need to define a general field and an initial, tentative research question that aligns your interests/passion with your desire to address a scholarly problem/challenge or social need.

1. Start with a tentative research question – not a research statement.

This should not imply an outcome or prejudgment! At this stage in the sequence, you should keep things open to a journey of discovery. You should consider a tentative research question while also choosing a general field of interest that will be the focus of your General Field literature review that you will submit for examination. We are using the word “tentative” here because we are assuming that your thinking will/ might change and evolve as you delve deeper into the literature, engage in feedback with your peers and progress with your dissertation.

Keep in mind that the final topic, hypothesis, and research questions of your dissertation should ultimately come from a journey of discovery as a result of the work you do during the General and Special Field seminars. But you of course need to start somewhere in order to identify your General Field.

Keep in mind that the final topic, hypothesis, and research questions of your dissertation should ultimately come from a journey of discovery as a result of the work you do during the General and Special Field seminars. But you of course need to start somewhere in order to identify your General Field.

2. How do you choose a general field? 

​Before you can ultimately select your general field, it is important to do some initial reading around what you think might become your general field.  Here are some decision-making questions to consider, but be careful not to design your actual research study at this point.

• What initial fields are present in your tentative research question?

• Which field is more dominant?

• What population do you seek to investigate (if your dissertation project will have an empirical focus)? (Determine how narrow you should go within the general field, such your particular topic within the context of higher education.)

• Based on what you have read so far, what have you found to be most prevalent related to your potential general field? What is lacking that you expected to find?

Topics For Your Consideration

Before we start with some suggestions, feel free to choose anything you wish. Push the boundaries of the possible—we like that! You don't have to do something that aligns with our research agenda or interests, but if you do, here they are (in no particular order):

• Multiliteracies: examining the uses of multimodality or the impact of digital media on literacy learning, including the academic literacies required today in all discipline areas.
• Transpositional Grammar: a theory of semiotics, history of media, and analysis of the processes of meaning in the digital era.
• Learning by Design: interventions and evaluations of the design, implementation of pedagogies that afford greater agency to learners.
• e-Learning Ecologies: exploring the affordances of digitally-mediated learning.
• Theories of Learning and Philosophy of Education.
• Learner Diversity: reflecting on the historical and social contexts of learning, and developing strategies for inclusive pedagogy.
• The CGScholar Platform: design, implementation and evaluation of learning modules, investigating the dynamics of peer-to-peer learning, multimodal knowledge representations, and learning analytics.  We have enormous amounts of historical data!
• Artificial Intelligence in Education: See our recent writings on this subject, and interventions using GPTs for machine reviews that complement human reviews.

References

• Kalantzis, M. and Cope B. (2022). New learning: Elements of a science of education (Edn 2). Cambridge University Press.
• Kalantzis, M. and Cope, M. (2014). Education is the new philosophy, to Make a Metadisciplinary Claim for the Learning Sciences." Pp. 101-15 in Companion to research in education, edited by Reid, D.A., Hart, E.P., & Peters, M.A. Springer.

Action Items: Make three Updates

Action Item #1: Make an Update (1.1A): Find and cite three dissertations in your area of possible focus and examine their literature reviews. Post your summary and engage with peers. Your summary should answer the following questions:

1. Provide a one-sentence summary of your general field (you'll elaborate in the next action item)
2. What were the research genres and methodologies of the dissertations you found?
3. Even if these were not explicitly marked, what do you infer were the general and special fields of the dissertations you found?
4. What do you want to emulate in your literature reviews and why? Share specific excerpts from the literature review portion of the dissertations.
5. What do you want to emulate in the dissertations and why? Share specific excerpts from the dissertations.
6. What would you want to do differently than the dissertations you found and why? Share specific excerpts from the dissertations.

Include "1.1A – Dissertation Examples" and a subject-focused title for your review area in the title of your update.

Action Item #2: Make an Update (1.1B): Find, summarize, and cite three scholarly articles that represent your general field and share why you feel they are relevant to the general field and why they are significant to your research. Be sure to include details that you can in turn apply towards your literature review. The requirements below refer to the elaboration expected when writing your literature review.

• Cite the article
• List the research questions
• Identify the hypothesis of the study, if applicable
• Copy the abstract, and if you have the PDF, include that as well
• Describe what the authors wanted to explore
• Define how the author(s) approached the task
• ​Share why the article is relevant to the general field
• Share why the article is relevant to your research

Include "1.1B" and a subject-focused title for your post in the title of the update.

Action Item #3: Make an Update (1.1C): Share what you selected to be your general field according to the guidelines below. We place this as the third action item because you should have completed some initial reading of the literature before feeling like you have a preliminary sense of the appropriateness of your selected general field and are ready to seek formal approval.

• What is your initial, tentative research question? (Note that this will almost certainly evolve and your ultimate question(s) will change or be revised as you work through your General and Special Field Literature reviews)
• What do you consider to be your General Field of interest? (This is the focus of your General Field Literature Review.)
• What have you found so far in examining the literature associated with your general field?
• What concerns do you have with your question and/or general field? Where can we help?

Include "1.1C – My General Field and a subject-focused title for your review area in the title of your update. Then share a link to your update with Dr. Francis and Dr. Kalantzis via email in order to receive approval on your General Field topic.

See also the General Field page on our web site

To reiterate Update 1.1, what do we mean by "general field?" In this course, we want you to frame the broad shape of the area in which you are working. What are its main challenges? What kinds of innovative ideas and transformational practices is the field begging, generally speaking? One rough measure of generality might be, if you were to create undergraduate college course introducing students to this general area of knowledge, what would you want them to know? What should they read to get a sense of the critical issues being addressed in theory, research and practice? Have you read enough of the literature to feel confident in teaching such a course?

You SHOULD NOT choose your Special Field yet, this will be determined as a result of the gaps in the literature from your general field. But here are some examples of general vs special fields to help you recognize the contrast.

Tentative Thesis Title	General Field Literature Review	Special Field Literature Review - Defined after you complete your General Field
Approaches to Differentiated Instruction in e-Learning Environments	Theories and Practices of Learner Diversity and Differentiated Instruction	Applications of Differentiated Instruction in Computer-Mediated Learning Environments
Pedagogical Innovation in English Language Arts at Springfield District 88 High School	Approaches Curriculum Reform at the School Level	Measuring Change: Evidence of Effect in ELA Curriculum Innovation
A Study of Peer Review in e-Learning Environments	Collaborative Learning in Computer-Supported Learning Environments	Mechanisms and Outcomes of Peer Review in Learning: Models and Research Evidence
A History of the Montessori Method to the United States, 1900-1950	The Progressive Education Movement in the United States, 1850-1950	The Origins of Montessori Education, and Its Introduction to the United States, 1900-1950
Theories of Learning in Wittgenstein’s Picture Theory	Wittgenstein’s Philosophy, and its Applications in Education	Picture Theory in Wittgenstein

Reminder: While this table helps to differentiate the layers involved, during the General Field seminar, your focus should be on just that - the General Field.

There is no need to make research methodologies a special focus at this at this stage, because we will do that in Course 3. However, do look out for the methodologies that are typically and successfully used in the area of your focus. Tag those articles you come across them; as you'll need that in order to provide the relevant context of the study (how was the data collected) and also may become relevant when you write up your methodology.

Prior to, during, and after you have settled on your general field of interest, you should be seeking out the literature to enable to be on a journey of discovery. The focus throughout this course should be on synthesizing the evidence and claims of the existing literature through a review of the literature.

As shared previously, conduct an initial literature search before you finalize your general field of interest. This will help you to feel more confident in moving forward. Once your general field of interest is approved by the Dissertation Supervisor (see previous admin update), you will continue to seek out more literature to demonstrate that you have a deep and wide knowledge of your selected field.

How should you focus your literature search?  Where do you begin?

1. Watch the videos prepared by our Education librarian, Nancy O'Brien. These provide a variety of tips on how to effectively use the library's online databases and search tools.
2. Identify your purpose and questions that you want the literature to answer, such as those previously shared in early admin updates: (definitions, theories, debates, history and evolution of the field, demographics and other variables investigated, interventions or practices investigated, challenges, benefits, critiques, etc.).
3. Avoid seeking out only answers or theories that you want to find or discuss.
4. Consider the publication dates of your sources, especially in fields that have experienced recent and/or incremental change and how the publication dates might impact how you refer to and organize your findings.

Finding and Selecting References

• In the library and on the Library Web site. Search for journal articles and e-books that are behind paywalls on the web. See also our library resources page.
• On the web. Be sure to supplement a general web search with Google Scholar. Not only does this narrow your search to scholarly articles and books. It has useful information about how widely a work and an author has been cited and their more recent publications. However, be careful with this information—quantity of citations does not necessarily mean quality or relevance to your interests. Less cited works may be very good or highly relevant.
• Read review articles. Look for review articles that address your topic or special field, because these will probably reference key works from the general field as well.
• Follow the gossip! When you find an article or book that you really like, or that you find very helpful, look at who this author is citing. If their work is helpful, they will probably have a good eye for things that you will also find helpful. Look out particularly for citations that may be obscure and not necessarily popular in the sense of garnering a large number of citations. Think of academic writing as a kind of gossip network. Who is talking about whom?

• Be careful not to cherry-pick the articles that say what you want to hear. The best work centers around critical dialogue. You should carefully seek out alternative perspectives and approaches. Without taking a stance yourself (at least, not in the literature review), contrast different points of view and the issues at stake. Your role here is to map the debates and arguments in the literature, highlighting the key issues at stake without (yet!) taking sides.

You are strongly advised to maintain an annotated bibliography. These should be the references that you consider to be the most important in the general field (to start off with) that you will in turn use within your General Field literature review. Note that you will also add entries for your special field examination in Course 2, so keep specialized works you might come across for then.  Keep trak of the methologies and data collection strategies as well, as those will become useful as you advance to Course 3.

​Purpose

The purpose of an annotated bibliography is to demonstrate that you can select the key publications of scholars who have also addressed the topic of your general field and eventually dissertation and who have addressed your general field focus and/or tentative research questions. This is an indicator of the sense you have gained of the shape of the general field, that you can cite key references appropriately and synthesize them succinctly. Your commentary will demonstrate that you can make astute synthesis and analysis of each publication, and connect publications in a way that is indicative of your understanding of the shape of the general field.

Web Tips

• Annotated Bibliographies
• How to Prepare an Annotated Bibliography
• Annotated Bibliography Samples
• Sample Annotated Bibliography
• How to Write an Annotated Bibliography

 

When writing your Annotated Bibliography entries, things to consider include:

• In your literature review, you will be expected to speak in the voice of the literature. What are the claims being made?
• Also, in your LR, you'll be expected to elaborate on the context of the study and the evidence that led to the claim - by adding this to your annotated bibliography entry, you make it much easier to construct your literature review
• The concepts and theory used by the scholar(s) who authored the book or article.
• Main empirical findings, if the work is based on empirical study.
• The methodology of the work, and how this has been usefully insightful in this case. Again, this will assist with providing context and elaboration of what led to the evidence and/or claims.
• The significance of the work in terms of its impact on the academic field, and the frequency with which it is cited. (Though of course, some works you may want to argue are important in their implications for the whole field, even if not widely known or cited.)
• Practical applications and real-world consequences, actual or potential. Creative and innovative extensions

Applying your Annotated Bibliography to your Literature Review

As a word of caution, do not expect to copy and paste and/or reference one source per paragraph in your literature review. Be sure to still synthesize a diversity of sources, in the voice of the literature. You may find that you need to revisit an article as you write your literature review. But maintaining and leveraging your annotated bibliography can help you with time management and recall of what you have read. It can also help you group sources into themes. This should be done in concert with your tags and what you have done to organize your sources in your bibliographical database.

Adding your Entries

You can choose where you maintain this. You can keep this in your own Word or Google doc or in your own work in CGScholar.

While there are no action items to submit your entries, if your literature review is sent back due to a lack of elaboration, you will be asked to share a copy of your annotated bibliography.

In this course, you will write a literature review to demonstrate your deep understanding of your general field that relates to your tentative research question. This can eventually become the first part of Chapter 2 of your dissertation.

But at this stage, your General Field literature review should involve a deep examination into the existing literature. Think of this as preparation for you to teach a 101 course in your selected field.

Keep in mind that thsi literature review is being used as a qualifying exam. You may read literature reviews in other works that don't require the level of elaboration required for this course. Please be sure to follow our guidelines.

The Review Genre

There is a genre of general writing called "the review," and also a scholarly variant of this genre of writing. Reviews are a delicate relationship of giving the authors or scholars you are reviewing a fair representation for readers who do not (necessarily) already know their writing, while weaving in (but also clearly separating) your own interpretative voice.

Review Magazines & Books

There are many marvelous review magazines where you will find masterful examples of the general genre of review. They are also a way to find out the latest thinking across a number of fields. They are a way to keep up to date with the latest thinking across a wide range of areas. We recommend subscribing to one or more of the London Review of Books, the New York Review of Books, or the Los Angeles Review of Books. However, bear in mind that in many ways, the kinds of reviews published here are quite a different genre from a literature review—mostly more opinionated than you can afford to be in a literature review.

The Review Article

There is also a specialized genre of academic journal article called the "review article." One subset of this genre reads like an overview of a thematic area within a discipline. There is another, often highly technical subgenre called meta-analysis, which aims to aggregate quantitative empirical research results across multiple studies. Most journals will publish review articles, however in education there are some journals that are dedicated to review articles, such as the Review of Educational Research.

Review articles are both very useful and also notorious in academe—helpful because they provide an entry point into an area, and also notorious because they become widely read and cited even though they don't involve original research. (They seem like an easy way to garner a lot of citations!) As a genre, review articles are close to literature reviews, but not exactly the same. While review articles in journals may tackle a question or a theme, literature reviews demonstrate your knowledge and mastery of a general or a special field as a coherent body of knowledge.

Your General Field Literature Review

When it comes to your literature review, we want you to both summarize and synthesize the field, but also to make a case. Leveraging the literature, you will foreshadow important questions for the field, the general shape of their answers, alternative perspectives shaping different kinds of answers, and remaining unanswered questions or gaps in the literature. You should remain faithful to the multiple voices of the literature—both its shared assumptions and points of disagreement. Additionally, because you are using this literature review as submission for your general field qualifying exam, you must demonstrate that you have read the literature widely and that you have a deep understanding of your field. It should include very brief information on each of the works being cited—never too long, but enough for a reader of your literature review to understand the thrust of a reference if they have not read it. How does each author provide evidence and offer justification for the claims they make? Under what premise does an author claim or conclude something?

Action Items

Action Item #1: Read and analyze three review articles in your chosen general field.

Action Item #2: Make an Update 1.5 that addresses the following:

1. Briefly summarize each article; include PDFs in the article if they are available
2. What are the main issues arising in each article?
3. Explain the significance of each article to the general field
4. Explain the significance of each article to your research interests
5. Provide at least four examples from each article that demonstrate effective review principles
6. What is the value of each review article? How has it built its case?
7. What are the characteristic features of the genre?

Include "1.5" and a subject-focused title for your review area in the title of your update.  Provide at least 5 specific recommendations to at least three other peers' 1.5 updates, preferably recent ones so your comments are helpful to people at about the same place in the process as you.  Specific feedback at this stage will be critical to assisting your peers in writing an effective annotated bibliography and literature review and also help you reflect on your own projects.

For a start, this all-important idea, “evidence-based” writing and research. In a literature review, evidence-based means that the field is speaking, not you. In the literature review, you marshal the collective intelligence of experts or the general, social intellect that is state-of-the art learning science or the scholarly discipline of education.

In a literature review, evidence is two-layered. Firstly, each item of literature makes claims based on evidence. This evidence may be empirical; or it may be conceptual or theoretical. Don’t just describe an item. Mention and analyze is evidence base.

The second layer is evidence that generalizes across the field itself. The points of general agreement or significant disagreement in the field are high level evidence—evidence collective intelligence among experts, or ongoing disagreements. The literature review should not merely be descriptive—it should be analytical and critical, but all from the voice of the literature. It should be a fair representation of the perspectives and voices of a range of people across the field.

When investigating the literature associated with your selected field, you are relying on what the literature says about the nature of your field, the definitions, the debates, etc. What does the literature say "the field" means? In the literature review, you focus on the two levels of evidence, reporting on these in such a way that your own personal interpretive frame does not intrude. (You can add your own interpretations in other parts of the dissertation, but not the literature review chapter.) You have to find that research, data and interpretive frameworks that that address your research questions, and then focus on what the literature says about this field or its sub fields, not what you think to be true.

You may have some experiential background in your field and are probably very passionate about it. But you must set your prior knowledge and opinions aside and let the literature guide your discovery. This exercise is about what you are learning and not about what you already think you know. Your foundational knowledge can be an asset or a detriment. While you can let it guide you in your literature search, it must not influence your selection of sources in an effort to fulfill your preconceptions. As you seek out the literature, you will be able to defend what you feel may be true, but for the literature review find parts of the literature that do this for you without you having to speak your views in your own voice at this stage. Keep an open mind, as you will undoubtedly find things that you did not know or did not believe to be true. And this is where the importance of context comes in. Something may be true under a certain set of criteria yet proven ineffective against other variables. You must include that context.

Refer to the Literature Review Guidelines for additional information.

Action Item #1: Make an Update (1.6A).  Provide three to four examples of evidence-based sentences that you have found in existing literature that you are currently reading. Be sure to cite the sources. Include two to three of your own sentences that demonstrate evidence-based writing, including the context of the study being cited, all in the voice of the literature. Include relevant citations. You can later apply these to your literature review, where applicable.

We have provided a variety of Literature Review resources within this learning module as well as on our website. We expect students to take the time to understand and master the literature review genre as a part of this course.

For this update, we are asking you to provide a short sample (500 to 750 words) that demonstrates your mastery of the literature review genre. Another objective of this exercise is to ensure that you receive timely feedback on a small work sample prior to beginning work on your General Field literature review.

Action Items

Action Item 1.6B: Create an Update with a one-page (500 to 750 words) sample of your demonstration of the literature genre. It should be the most recent literature review that you have written in your regular coursework that addresses the literature review genre - do not submit it if you know that it does not align with the guidelines. Instead, revise four to five paragraphs, if necessary, to demonstrate the literature review genre and submit only that part. The submission must align with the requirements we have outlined in the previous posts and on our website.

1. Include your tentative research question - even if unrelated to the topic of your submission
2. Include your General Field topic - even if unrelated to the topic of your submission
3. List at least four literature review genre guidelines that you incorporated with a short example of each one from the work that you will include below. You are welcome to share the before (your original work from a previous course) and after (your revisions to align with the genre) versions to demonstrate the transformation.
4. Paste at least two or three paragraphs of your work

Sample Submission Requirements

• Include the title of the original work, original source of your work (i.e. if a re-use from another course and which course, newly created, or a preview of your general field literature review) and the date the work was created
• Your submission should align with the literature review genre to demonstrate your understanding of these principles
• Your submission should address the theory and/or key concepts section of the work so that the genre can be fully assessed
• It should include at least 5 scholarly sources so that you are able to demonstrate how to synthesize a diversity of sources
• Include an APA references section to demonstrate your mastery of proper APA

You can submit it as a Word document attached to this post or as a copy and paste into the update page. Please ensure that all headings are bolded for ease of reading.

This must be approved by the instructor before your full General Field literature review will be reviewed by the instructor or routed for peer review. You will submit a second sample of your General Field literature review in Update 1.7 Part 3.

Include "1.6B" My Literature Review Sample and a subject-focused title for your topic in the title of your update.

Action Item: Comment on your Peers' Submissions: Please also provide feedback on your peers' submissions. Specific feedback at this stage will be critical to assisting your peers in writing an effective literature review and also help you reflect on your own literature review. Comment on peers who have submitted their sample recently (aim for three).

Note: This update is a part of a three-part series.

Ultimate Action Item:  Write a literature review that provides evidence that you have a command of the wider field of scholarly endeavor associated with your tentative research question. The specific content, structure, and process guidelines can be found in Admin Update #1.7 Part 2. This update focuses on the literature review genre.

1. THIS UPDATE: Admin Update 1.7 Part 1, we address some basic details on the literature review genre and your General Field Literature Review.
2. Admin Update 1.7 Part 2 focuses on the outline and overall content and structure.
3. Admin Update 1.7 Part 3 focuses on the writing of the literature review, including submitting a sample.

The literature review should not merely be descriptive—it should be analytical and critical, but all using the voices of the literature rather than your own voice. It should be a fair representation of the perspectives and voices of a range of key players in the principal debates across the field.

This literature review will become a part of the dissertation where your voice is secondary. This should be a place where you let the field speak. Your voice is present, of course, in the selection of texts and the framework you develop to present them—but subtly so. Then, when you get to more clearly-voiced sections, principally the introduction and the conclusions, your setting of the context will make your voice all the more powerful.

The narrow, Special Field Literature Review elaborates specifically on the particular gap in the broader literature review that you uncovered that leads to, and underpins, your own thesis, and thereby allows you to contribute something new to the literature itself.

The Textual Features of the Genre, Literature Review

The literature review is a delicate play between the voices of the field, and the way you bring them together in a synthesis and interpretation. In the literature review chapter of the dissertation, your principal aim is not to say what you think—you will be able to do that in the introduction, the chapters presenting your findings, and the conclusion. Instead, you want to map out the field, fairly representing its varied voices including definitions, theories, presenting the scholarly differences and debates - and data from reports. The open questions, tensions and gaps you find in the field will lead to your topic and research questions.

References

• Boote, D. N. and Beile, P. (2005). Scholars before researchers: On the centrality of the dissertation literature review in research preparation. Educational Researcher 34(6):3–15.
• Galvan, J. L. (2006). Writing a literature review: A guide for students of the social and behavioral sciences. Pyrczak Publishing.
• Machi, L. A. & McEvoy, B.T. (2016). The literature review. Corwin.
• Reardon, S. F. (2011). The widening academic achievement gap between the rich and the poor: New evidence and possible explanations. pp. 91-116 in Whither Opportunity? Rising Inequality, Schools, and Children’s Life Chances. Russell Sage Foundation. (Example of a review article.)

Web Tips

Here are some resources addressing the textual dynamics of a literature review:

• Although a Wikipedia entry is not a literature review, its general guide to creating a text that downplays the authors' voice is a good one for literature reviews. Look at the Literature Review entry for an example of this style.
• Demystifying the Literature Review (UIUC Library)
• Introduction to Literature Reviews
• The Genre of Research Articles: The Literature Review Section
• Genres in Academic Writing: Literature Reviews
• Differences between a Good and a Poor Literature Review
• What is a Lit. Review?
• What is a Literature Review?
• Literature Review Genre Conventions
• Write a Literature Review
• Literature Reviews: An Overview for Graduate Students (video)
• Literature Review Basics (link to more links)
• APA Citations (UIUC Library)
• Write a Killer Literature Review (Udemy course)

References: On Academic Writing

You may also wish to take a moment to reflect on academic writing in general. Much academic writing is (frankly!) poor writing. Here are some readings and source books you may find useful:

• Goodson, P. (2017). Becoming an academic writer. Sage.
• Strunk, W. and White, E.B. (1979). Elements of style. Longman.
• Sword, H. (2012). Stylish academic writing. Harvard University Press.
• The University of Chicago Press Editorial Staff. 2017. The Chicago Manual of Style.  University of Chicago Press. Online edition.
• Coursera Academic Writing Course.

You cannot be too obsessive about style and textual consistency! Two requests:

1. Always proof everything you submit, including first versions for peer review.
2. As a reviewer, always note typos and suggest textual revisions to peers using the annotations tool.

Web Tip: How to Write a Compelling Research Paper Introduction.

Action Items

Action Item #1: Comment: Add a comment that shares one or more excerpts of two stand-out literature reviews of two of your peers in the Exam-Dissertation Sequence and explain why. Be sure to cite the reference/the name of the peer and which work. If you have not yet peer reviewed anyone's work, please reach out to those in this community to connect with peers. Posting within this community and the Group Advising sessions are two ways to make connections. Do not use the same examples your peers have used in their own updates within the community.

FYI: Work Submission and Review Process

• For major milestones, follow the submission instructions found on the Work Submission and Review page. That page addresses all milestones, and instructions will not be repeated directly within this learning module.

Note: This update is a part of a three-part series.

Main Action Item: Write a literature review that provides evidence that you have a command of the wider field of scholarly endeavor associated with your research question that will eventually become the first part of Chapter 2 of your dissertation. The specific content and structure guidelines can be found below while the process guidelines can be found on our website.

1. In the Admin Update 1.7 Part 1, we addressed some basic details on the literature review genre and your General Field Literature Review.  
2. THIS UPDATE Admin Update 1.7 Part 2 focuses on the outline and overall content and structure.
3. Admin Update 1.7 Part 3 focuses on the writing of the literature review, including submitting a sample for feedback.

Content

• Note to Reviewers

In your note to reviewers you can be personal. What motivates you to work in this general field? How does it align with your tentative research question? This is the area where you can incorporate experiential alignment.

• Change Notes

​After each review cycle, be sure to include a detailed summary of your change notes, including the version #, date, and examples of key changes.

• General Field Literature Review

Some questions (not sections) to address in the general field literature review:

• What are the main issues arising in this general field?
• The main challenges to be addressed?
• What is the empirical range of the general field?
• Who are the most influential and most cited thinkers?
• What are the theories, interpretative frameworks, or paradigms which order knowledge in the field?
• What are the main questions being asked by the intellectual and practical leaders in the field?
• As a body of work, what practical questions does the literature set out to address?
• What range of practices does the general field spawn? What are its most exciting and promising areas of innovation?
• What absences or gaps are there in our knowledge? What work needs to be done?

Of course, you need to map the broad shape of the field to make your case, but the focus here should be your argument about work that needs to be done and that also eventually justifies your dissertation focus.

Literature Review Content Reminders

Your General Field literature review sets the context for your tentative dissertation research question/s demonstrating that you have discovered, presented and analyzed the value of the key sources that contain the theories, practices, data, and applications associated with your General Field and your tentative research question.

1. It will provide the context and evidence leading to the claims made by the literature.
2. It will evaluate the strengths, weaknesses, and impact of key scholarly sources, but through the voice of the literature.
3. It is not a summary, explanation, or exposition of the issue that you are interested to address, nor does it contain your unverified opinions.
4. You are building an argument or case for the significance of your area of focus and research question based on your analysis of the general field.

General Field Literature Review Structure

As a reminder, this work is your General Field, and not your full dissertation. Your first purpose is to prepare to eventually submit this as your first qualifying exam (Eventually this will be cleaned up to not refer to your general field, but for now, you must be clear that this is your general field literature review. Do not reference your “study” at this point.)

One possible structure for the general field literature review might be:

Chapter 2: Literature Review

Part 1: General Field: [Insert the title of your general field]

• Introduction: The general domain and how your topic fits within that domain
• Definitions associated with your field (these may be in a stand-alone section or embedded in the main body of the work depending on the topic and the types of terms being defined)
• Theoretical Frameworks Associated with [your topic] used in the field, as revealed by the literature - do not discuss only the theories you are interested in
• Key concepts, debates, challenges, trends, etc. used in the field grouped by themes as revealed by the literature - do not call this section "key concepts" - this should be organized based on the themes)
• Gaps in the Literature
• Conclusion: where the field is heading, the tasks ahead for people (like you!) in this field
• References

In the standard model of a doctoral dissertation (See Admin Update 0.7), the literature review would be Chapter 2. You will be adding to this chapter when we undertake the special field literature review.  And you will eventually streamline this into a single literature review.

Action Item #1: Create an Update: Literature Review Outline After you have completed your personal (not for submission) annotated bibliography and feel you have a good sense of the theories and tentative themes for your general field, make an Update to share a high level outline of your general field literature review based on the theories and themes that were revealed as a result of your examination of the literature. Be very clear that these were revealed by the literature and not your pre-determined themes. Seek feedback from your peers. Include "1.7A: General Field Outline" and a subject-focused title for your general field in the title of your update.

Note: This update is a part of a three-part series.

Main Action Item: Write a literature review that provides evidence that you have a command of the wider field of scholarly endeavor associated with your research question that will eventually become the first part of Chapter 2 of your dissertation. The specific content and structure guidelines can be found below while the process guidelines can be found on our website.

• Admin Update 1.7 Part 1 addressed some basic details on the literature review genre and your General Field Literature Review.
• Admin Update 1.7 Part 2 focuses on the outline and overall content and structure.
• THIS UPDATE: Admin Update 1.7 Part 3 focuses on the writing of the literature review, including submitting a sample for feedback.

This literature review should provide evidence that you have a command of the wider field of scholarly endeavor associated with your General Field research question. Recall our two-layered definition of evidence: 1) the empirical and interpretive evidence in each work you are mentioning in the review; and the evidence in the collective, general, expert intelligence in the field, including not only broad contours of agreement, but important areas of disagreement. This is not about your dissertation research study—the field speaks, and key works in the field speak on the strength of their evidentiary bases.

Process

You will write this work in Creator and also attach a Word document. It should be 6,000-8,000 words in length and align with the Re-use of work policy.

This literature review will become a draft for a chapter in your dissertation (the first half of Chapter 2 in the standard thesis model). You will eventually submit this to three of the four members of your committee for evaluation as the general field examination. You will create another part of this chapter in the "special field examination," coming up as Course 2, so be sure that your literature review covers the broad shape of the field, not the specialized area you will be addressing in your dissertation work.

Action Item #1: Create an Update 1.7C: As you begin writing your literature review, review peers' literature review samples and the feedback they received. Consider that feedback as you begin drafting your own literature review. But before getting too far in your own work, submit two to three paragraphs that demonstrate your mastery of the literature review genre. While you can include your introduction, please also include two to three paragraphs of the main body of the work so that the genre can be properly assessed.

• Include your tentative research question

• Include your General Field topic

• List at least five literature review genre guidelines that you incorporated with a short example of each one from the work that you will include below (or you can refer us to a paragraph in the work).

• Optional, your Introduction (can explain your interest, but this will later move to Chapter 1)

• 2-3 paragraphs from the main body of the work

Sample Submission Requirements

• Include the Title of the original work, original source of your work (i.e. if a re-use from another course and which course, newly created, or a preview of your general field literature review) and the date the work was created
• Your submission should align with the literature review genre to demonstrate your understanding of these principles
• Your submission should address the theory and/or key concepts section of the work so that the genre can be fully assessed
• It should include at least 5 scholarly sources so that you are able to demonstrate how to synthesize a diversity of sources
• Include an APA references section to demonstrate your mastery of proper APA

You can submit it as a Word document attached to this post or as a copy and paste into the update page. Please ensure that all headings are bolded for ease of reading.

You will receive detailed feedback from an instructor on this short excerpt that you can then apply as you write the remainder of your literature review. Peers are also encouraged to provide feedback to one another and/or ask questions.

Include "1.7C: General Field Literature Review Sample" and a subject-focused title for your topic in the title of your update.

This must be approved by the instructor before your full General Field literature review will be reviewed by the instructor or routed for peer review. The submission may require one or more rounds of revision prior to approval.

Action Item #2: Comment on Peers' Sample Submissions: Please also provide feedback on your peers' submissions. Specific feedback at this stage will be critical to assisting your peers in writing an effective literature review and also help you reflect on your own literature review.

Work Submission and Review Process:

 

• Complete the Comment and Update prompts found in the Admin Updates in the community 
• For major milestones, follow the submission instructions found on the Work Submission and Review page. That page addresses all milestones, and instructions will not be repeated directly within this learning module.

In this course, you will narrow your focus to research findings relevant to the particular area you will address in your dissertation. Here you demonstrate that you are aware as an expert in the area of empirical research and/or theoretical work that directly relates to (what might become) the topic of your dissertation. As was the case for your general field examination, you will create two works: another annotated bibliography of 15-20 references and another analytical literature review, focusing not just on the dimensions of the specific field of your interest, but absences and questions that still need to be addressed.

You will peer review approximately three other program participants’ work, and revise your work based on peer feedback. The revised text of the literature review will be reviewed by three of the four members of your dissertation committee for your special field examination. This text may later be revised and incorporated into the literature review chapter of your dissertation.

The main differences from the general field annotated bibliography and literature review will be:

• Now you that are close enough to a specific area, you will be able to identify important empirical results (there would have been too much at the level of the general field).
• How does the special field answer your research questions, and confirm or deny your hypotheses? It will be hard to answer your research questions at the level of the general field, but the scope of the special field should be the scope of your research questions.
• At the level of the special field, you will also be able to identify gaps in knowledge. There will be things that are missing, things that need to be addressed, and this is why you have chosen to work on this particular topic.

Web Tips

• Writing a Good Research Question
• Asking a Research Question

Action Items

Action Item #1: Comment: What is the gap in knowledge that you wish to address? In what ways will your dissertation be innovative and break new intellectual ground?

Action Item #2: Create an Update: Capture a tentative title and research questions, focusing on the special field,

Make an Update that addresses the following

1. How are you expecting the special field will answer these questions?
2. What theories, methodologies and empirical results are you expecting to find?
3. What gaps in knowledge do you anticipate? (You may already have a sense of this, so your response can be a mix of what you already know and what you suspect might be the case.)
4. How do these concerns translate for you into a dissertation title and research questions?

Review and comment on at least three other people's updates before you post yours, preferably recent ones so your comments are helpful to people at about the same place in the process as you. Include "2.1" and a subject-focused title for your review area in the title of your update.

The special field literature review will become the second part of Chapter 2 of your dissertation, if you decide to follow the standard dissertation model (and we suggest you start with the standard model, even if you modify it later). You will also submit this to three of the four members of your committee for evaluation as the special field examination. This is a follow-on section the literature review you undertook for the general field. Be sure this section does not repeat the general field section. Revise the general field section as needed.

Before you start, review Updates 1.3 and 1.4 in the Course 1 to review the distinction between general and special field, the genre of literature review. A note to reviewers: although the focus of your peer reviews will be on the special field section of this review, please look over the general field section as it may have been revised, and check the relationship between the general field and special field sections. Also, consider the connections between the thesis title, abstract and hypotheses, bearing in mind that these are still fluid.

Structure and Process

One possible structure for the special field literature might be:

1. How the special field is located within the general field
2. Challenges addressed by the special field: how these connect with the challenges of the general field
3. How the key concepts and theoretical frameworks of the general field are applied, extended or modified in the special field
4. How the methodologies of the general filed have been applied in the special field.
5. The main findings generated by these methodologies
6. Conclusion: How does the special field answer (or fail to answer adequately) your research question? What are the gaps, the areas where additional work is needed, concepts need to be clarified etc.? Implicitly, these are the reasons you have chosen your special field, topic, and research questions. (Implicitly: because in the literature review, you are expressing this in terms of the needs of the field and the world served by the field, rather than your personal interests.)

In the standard dissertation model, this will be the second part of chapter 2. Recommended next steps:

• You will write this work in Creator. Duplicate then extend your general field literature review with an additional 3,000-5,000 words.
• Create a new subsection in Chapter 2, "Special Field Literature Review (new text)."
• Review and Revise the General Field Literature review section in the light of your new work in the Special Field Literature Review, and amend the title, "General Field Literature Review (revised). Write a change note at the beginning of this section, outlining the changes you have made and the reasons you made these changes.
• Review and revise your title and preliminary Chapter 1 contents (abstract, research questions, hypotheses). Write a change note at the beginning of this section, outlining the changes you have made and the reasons you made these changes.
• When you have completed your new draft, request an admin to connect the work to a project for peer review.

Peer Review Rubric and Annotation Codes: 

Some questions to address in the special field literature review:

• What brings you to this special field?
• What are the main theoretical approaches in your special field?
• What are the most commonly used methodologies?
• What are the principal empirical findings?
• What answers does the literature provide (and fail to provide) to your research questions? Do these answers tend to confirm or deny your hypotheses?
• What are the practical needs for research and intervention in your special field? What potentials are there for extended application and innovation?
• What work needs to be done, in general, in particular in your dissertation?

Action Items

Action Item #1: Comment: How do you expect the genre of literature review might be different at the level of special field from what it was in the general field? Provide specifics of your topics as examples.

Action Item #2: Create an Update: Before you start the literature review in Creator, share a draft of the first paragraph.

Review and comment on at least three other people's opening paragraphs before you post yours, preferably recent ones so your comments are helpful to people at about the same place in the process as you. Include "2.3" and a subject-focused title for your review area in the title of your update.

Action Item #3: Peer Reviewed Project: Create a literature review for the special field

1. Create a copy of your General Exam Literature Review work within Scholar
2. Add a Second Sub Section for the Special Exam Literature Review
3. include an introduction
4. Write a literature review that provides evidence that you have a command of the field of scholarly endeavor no wider than your topic research questions.
5. A literature review sets the context for your dissertation demonstrating that you have discovered, presented and analyzed the value of the key sources that contain the theories, practices, data, methodologies and applications associated with your research question.
6. It will evaluate the strengths, weaknesses, and impact of key works.
7. It is not a summary, explanation or exposition of the issue that you are interested to address, nor does it contain your unverified opinions.
8. You are building an argument or case for the significance of your area of focus and research question based on your analysis of the special field.

As stated throughout the exam-dissertation sequence, each major work is meant to be incremental towards your final dissertation. What we want to clarify is how to help your reviewers (peers, advisor, and committee) know which part of your work is being "examined" while still creating an incremental work..

While we have advised previously to create a streamlined document, we still ask that these works be completely separate until after your special examination is complete. So you should revise your general exam based on committee feedback, but you will then "add" to your existing work, but do not yet integrate the two literature reviews until after the special examination has been submitted. Your methods submission can include the streamlined literature review.  By your preliminary exam, Chapter 1 through 3 should follow the approved dissertation format.

Examination Format for Chapter 2

Title Page
Note to Reviewers
TOC
Draft Abstract
Chapter 1: Introduction (technically still considered a draft; you'll finalize for your prelim)
Chapter 2 Part 1: General Examination

1. General Field Intro
2. General Field Theories
3. General Field Themes/Sections
4. General Field Gaps
5. General Field Conclusions

Chapter 2 Part 2: Special Examination

1. Special Field Intro, including how general field gaps were addressed?
2. Special Field Theories
3. Special Field Themes/Sections
4. Special Field Gaps
5. Special Field Conclusions

References

Dissertation Format for Chapter 2

Title Page
Note to Reviewers
TOC
Abstract
Chapter 1: Introduction (technically still considered a draft; you'll finalize for your prelim)
Chapter 2

1. Intro
2. Theories
3. General Field Themes/Sections
4. Special Field Themes/Sections
5. Gaps in the Literature
6. Conclusions

References

The first part of your Methodology chapter is focused on the theoretical foundation of your research study.  While your Chapter 2 includes a theory section, based on what the literature has revealed, your chapter 3 theory section is about your research study.

 

Dictionary definition of theory:

In our theory of theory, there are two main components:

1. Concepts are the building blocks of theory. The world consists of instances of particular things. Concepts name kinds of things in their generality. This generality can be described in definitions. Scholarly work involves a high degree of specificity in naming and definition. In fact, its peculiar strength is to name things with greater clarity than everyday language, and to name things at a high level of generality. Concepts can be defined in terms of existing scholarly traditions, or they can be redefined in order to make a different or new point. Key questions: how usefully does the concept describe the world at some relevant level of generality, and what, by definition, is the nature of that generality?
2. Theories put concepts together into models of the world, explaining processes and uncovering truths that may not be immediately obvious. Key questions: how do concepts in part define each other, and how do they fit together into a cogent model of reality?

References

• On Concepts: Kalantzis, Mary and Bill Cope. 2019 [forthcoming]. Making Sense: A Grammar of Multimodal Meaning. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press. Section 1.
• On Theorizing: Kalantzis, Mary and Bill Cope. 2014. "‘Education Is the New Philosophy’, to Make a Metadisciplinary Claim for the Learning Sciences." Pp. 101-15 in Companion to Research in Education, edited by A. D. Reid, E. P. Hart and M. A. Peters. Dordrecht: Springer.
• Example of Theory: Kalantzis, Mary and Bill Cope. 2016. "Learner Differences in Theory and Practice." Open Review of Educational Research 3(1):85–132.

Defining the Theory that influences your work

It is time now to draw together your own theory, as emerging from the literature reviews and the methods annotated bibliography. There you were describing and analyzing others' theories. Now are you creating and outlining your own. Or you make a case for choosing a theory that you want to use in some specific and original way.

Theory can be represented in a number of different ways. One way to approach the theory chapter is to define the key concepts, explain how these connect into a model of a world, and outline how you connect the concepts in the domain you are addressing.

Another approach is to represent theory in diagrammatic form. In research and practice dissertation genres, theory is sometimes represented diagrammatically in logic models, with accompanying key and explanatory text. The danger in such models is to oversimplify the world in a mechanistic way, so it is important that your accompanying text qualifies the model with an understanding of its simplifying limitations.

Theory evolves during your project in a dynamic interplay with your research:

• Before you start your research, theory provides a hypothetical way to model the answers to your research questions that you anticipate may be possible.
• After you have completed your research, it should provide you a way to explain your data. At this point, the theory should be reviewed and revised, along with an explanation of how and why the research experience has required adjustment to the initial theory.

References

• Cope, Bill and Mary Kalantzis. 2015. "The Things You Do to Know: An Introduction to the Pedagogy of Multiliteracies." Pp. 1-36 in A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies: Learning by Design, edited by B. Cope and M. Kalantzis. London: Palgrave.
• Iser, Wolfgang. 2006. How to Do Theory. Oxford UK: Blackwell Publishing.

Web Tips

• The Theoretical Framework of a Dissertation: What and How?
• 7 Great Secrets of Writing Grounded Theory

Peer Review Rubric: See Theory and Methodology page on our web site

Action Items

Action Item #1: Write and share your Theoretical Elevator Pitch

Comment: In brief, connect your main concepts into theory. (This should be as short as the proverbial "elevator pitch.") Comment on recent theory pitches by others in this thread.

Action Item #2 Update: Write an overview of your theory or select and explain a theory you want to use for your dissertation.

Your theory is a model of how the world works. It connects concepts together into a framework of testable or verifiable explanation. It could be a matter of testing an available theory, thoroughly referencing its sources, explaining why you have chosen it and how you will apply it. Or it could be a theory you have developed, using your own concepts or redefining others' concepts. But in this case as well, you must thoroughly reference others' concepts and theories by way of comparison and contrast.

Create an Update: Write your initial thoughts about how you will represent your theory.

1. Include your main concepts and how these connect into a framework for understanding the world.
2. How does your theory align with your methodology?
3. How is your theory similar to or different from other theories in the field?

Review and comment on at least three other people's updates before you post yours, preferably recent ones so your comments are helpful to people at about the same place in the process as you. Include "3.1" and a subject-focused title for your review area in the title of your update.

What knowledge focus do you intend to have in your dissertation work? These vary widely according to the three fundamental knowledge creation genres: practice, research and theory. See section 1.1 of this learning module for a description of these three dissertation genres. These very different frames of reference will determine your approach to methods.

In approaching the question of methods, you should not just consider the theory espoused for this work and the mechanics of your proposed approach. You should also develop a critical awareness that all such methods are partial. For every approach, you will find a strident literature addressing the limitations of that approach, the more severe critics sometimes even suggesting that the approach is fatally flawed. You must show that you are adopting a particular methodology with a keen awareness of the arguments of its critics, and its epistemological limitations.

There are three canonical methods approaches: qualitative, quantitative and interpretive. Mixed methods are common—for example, deploying both quantitative and qualitative methods in order to triangulate findings across different methods. Interpretive methods can be stand-alone, though even interpretive works will often refer to secondary qualitative of quantitative research.

High quality qualitative and quantitative work will always have a strong interpretive component. Facts never speak for themselves! They only ever speak to the questions that have been asked, and given that the number of possible questions in the world is endless, the selection of questions is an interpretive choice. Then the categories of quantitative or qualitative data collection and analysis can only be explained in interpretive terms. Finally, of course, the framing the results requires interpretation of data. Interpretation, in other words, is central to all empirical work, and if that is neglected, we may need to accuse the work of “empiricism” or unreflective, uncritical reportage.

 

Following is a mapping of these three main kinds of methodology against our “knowledge process.” This might serve has a checklist for your methodology work. Note: interpretive work (in its generic sense) is appropriate in all methods. All research, except for purely interpretive work, requires mixed methods.

Following is a mapping of these three main kinds of methodology against our “knowledge process.” This might serve has a checklist for your methodology work. Note: interpretive work (in its generic sense) is appropriate in all methods. All research, except for purely interpretive work, requires mixed methods.

REFERENCES - GENERAL

• Booth, W.C., Colomb, G.G. , Williams, J. M., Bizup, J., & FitzGerald, W.T.. (2016). The craft of research. University of Chicago Press.
• Creswell, J/W. &J. Creswell. D. (2018). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Sage.
• Denzin, N. K. (2009). The research act: A theoretical introduction to sociological methods. Aldine Transaction.
• Krathwohl, D.R. (1993). Methods of educational research: An integrated approach. Longman.

QUALITATIVE METHODS

General

• Denzin, N. K. 2001. Interpretive Interactionism. Thousand Oaks CA: Sage.
• Denzin, N. K. & Lincoln, Y.S.. (2007). Collecting and interpreting qualitative materials. Sage.
• Stake, R. E. (2010). Qualitative research: Studying how things work. Guildford.

Ethnography

• Agar, Michael H. 1996. The Professional Stranger: An Informal Introduction to Ethnography. Cambridge MA: Academic Press.
• Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Fontana.
• Hammersley, Martyn and Paul Atkinson. 2007. Ethnography: Principles in Practice. London UK: Routledge.
• Hammersley, Martyn. 2013. What's Wrong with Ethnography? London UK: Routledge.
• Heath, Shirley Brice, Brian V. Street and Molly Mills. 2008. On Ethnography: Approaches to Language and Literacy Research. New York NY: Teachers College Press.

Case Study

• Stake, Robert E. 2005. The Art of Case Study Research. Thousand Oaks CA: Sage.
• Yin, Robert K. 1994. Case Study Research: Design and Methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Interview

• Kvale. 1996. Interviews: An Introduction to Qualitative Research Interviewing. Thousand Oaks CA: Sage.
• Seidman, I.E. 1998. Interviewing as Qualitative Research: A Guide for Researchers in Education and the Social Sciences. New York NY: Teachers College Press.

Design Research

• Lankshear, Colin and Michele Knobel. 2004. A Handbook for Teacher Research: From Design to Implementation. Maidenhead UK: Open University Press.
• Reinking, David and Barbara A. Bradley. 2008. Formative and Design Experiments: Approaches to Language and Literacy Research. New York: Teachers College Press.

Action Research

• Kemmis, Stephen and Robin McTaggart. 1988. The Action Research Planner. Melbourne: Deakin University Press.
• Kemmis, Stephen and Mervyn Wilkinson. 1988. "Participatory Action Research and the Study of Practice " in Action Research in Practice: Partnership for Social Justice in Education, edited by B. Atweh, S. Kemmis and P. Weeks. London: Routledge.
• Stevenson, Robert B. and Susan E. Noffke, eds. 1995. Educational Action Research: Becoming Practically Critical. New York NY: Teachers College Press.

QUANTITATIVE METHODS

Survey

• Andres, Lesley. 2012. Designing and Doing Survey Research. Thousand Oaks CA: Sage.

Controlled Intervention

• Erikson, Frederick and Kris Gutierrez. 2002. "Culture, Rigor and Science in Educational Research." Educational Researcher 31(8):21-24.
• O’Donnell, Carol L. 2008. "Defining, Conceptualizing, and Measuring Fidelity of Implementation and Its Relationship to Outcomes in K–12 Curriculum Intervention Research ". Review of Educational Research 78(1):33-84.
• Torgerson, David J. and Carole J. Torgerson. 2008. Designing Randomised Trials in Health, Education and the Social Sciences: An Introduction. London UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

Computational

• Cope, Bill and Mary Kalantzis. 2015. "Interpreting Evidence-of-Learning: Educational Research in the Era of Big Data." Open Review of Educational Research 2(1):218–39. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/23265507.2015.1074870.
• Cope, Bill and Mary Kalantzis. 2016. "Big Data Comes to School: Implications for Learning, Assessment and Research." AERA Open 2(2):1-19

INTERPRETIVE METHODS

Discourse Analysis

• Fairclough, Norman. 2003. Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. London: Routledge.
• Fairclough, Norman. 2015. Language and Power. London: Longmans.
• Gee, James Paul. 2005. An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method. New York: Routledge.
• Gee, James Paul. 2011. How to Do Discourse Analysis: A Toolkit. New York: Routledge.

Discourse Analysis

• Fairclough, Norman. 2003. Analysing Discourse: Textual Analysis for Social Research. London: Routledge.
• Fairclough, Norman. 2015. Language and Power. London: Longmans.
• Gee, James Paul. 2005. An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method. New York: Routledge.
• Gee, James Paul. 2011. How to Do Discourse Analysis: A Toolkit. New York: Routledge.
• Kalantzis, Mary and Bill Cope. 2019 [forthcoming]. Making Sense: A Grammar of Multimodal Meaning. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press.
• Kress, Gunther and Theo van Leeuwen. 2006. Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London: Routledge.

Semiotics

• Cope, Bill and Mary Kalantzis. 2020. Making Sense: Reference, Agency and Structure in a Grammar of Multimodal Meaning. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press.
• Kalantzis, Mary and Bill Cope. 2020. Adding Sense: Context and Interest in a Grammar of Multimodal Meaning. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press.
• Kress, Gunther and Theo van Leeuwen. 2006. Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design. London: Routledge.

Historical

• Anderson, James D. 1998. The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935. Chapel Hill NC: University of North Carolina Press.
• Carr, E.H. 1967. What Is History? London UK: Vintage.

Educational Theory/Philosophy

• Glaser, Barney G. and Anselm L. Strauss. 1967. The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research. New Brunswick NJ: Aldine Transaction.
• Iser, Wolfgang. 2006. How to Do Theory. Oxford UK: Blackwell Publishing.
• Kalantzis, Mary and Bill Cope. 2012. New Learning: Elements of a Science of Education (Edn 2). Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press.
• Peters, Michael A. and Nicholas C. Burbules. 2004. Poststructuralism and Educational Research. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield.
• Peters, Michael A. 2007. "Kinds of Thinking, Styles of Reasoning." Educational Philosophy and Theory 39.

Web Tips

• Writing your Dissertation: Methodology
• Top 10 tips for Writing a Dissertation Methodology (traditional empirical)
• Understanding Research Methods (Coursera MOOC)

Action Items

Action Item #1: Comment: What is your chosen dissertation genre? What methods are you selecting? Why?

Action Item #2: Read the methods chapter of two or three dissertations that you have not already read, reflect on those, and write a description and justification of your own methods.

Create an Update that addresses the following:

1. What do the dissertation examples that you read get right that you want to emulate?
2. How might you do things differently?
3. Write an outline of your initial thinking about methods.
4. What research methods do you propose to use?
5. How do these align with your title and research questions?
6. What are the limitations of this methodology?
7. How do you plan for your methods to work from a logistical point of view?
8. What kinds of material will they provide you? (evaluation data in the practice genre, research data in the research genre, field metanalysis data in the case of the theory genre).
9. Cite the dissertations that you read and include excerpts that support or demonstrate your responses

Review and comment on at least three other people's updates before you post yours, preferably recent ones so your comments are helpful to people at about the same place in the process as you. Include "3.1" and a subject-focused title for your review area in the title of your update.

Add a chapter to your evolving dissertation draft. In the standard model for a dissertation, this might be Chapter 3. You will submit this work in three works, each for peer review.

These works together will become your full Chapter 3 (along with the previous work you have created).

1. ​EPOL 588 Part 1: Recasting of Theory section of Chapter 2, into Theory (Chapter 3, Part 1), 2,000 to 3,000 words
2. EPOL 588 Part 2: Methodology (Chapter 3, Part 2): selection rationale, the knowledge assumptions underlying this method. 2,000 to 3,000 words
3. EPOL 591 Part 3: Methodology implementation plan (Chapter 3, Part 3); also, for the appendices IRB Materials. 2,000 to 3,000 words, not including the data collection instruments or IRB materials

Refer to Admin Updates 3.3 Parts 1, 2, and 3 specific requirements of each work

The Technical Process

The following applies to each of the three works that make up Chapter 3.

1. Duplicate (using the CGScholar duplicate feature), then extend your Chapters 1 and 2 by adding Chapter 3
2. Create a new section to reflect the current work (Part 1: Theory; Part 2: Methodology; or Part 3: Implementation Plan)
3. Complete the requirements of each work, per the separate Admin Updates
4. Delete previous change notes, and write a new, dated change note at the beginning of the work, outlining the changes you have made and the reasons you made these changes.
5. When you have completed your new draft, request an admin to connect the work to a project for peer review.

Peer Review Rubrics: Each rubric will reflect the specific work requirements.  Refer to the link in the Shares of the community

Advisor Review: After peer review and revision of each work, you will submit that work to your advisor in a Word document with a link to your CGScholar version.  Complete your Self-review prior to sending the Word document to your advisor.

You may continue to the next part of each work while waiting for advisor review.

Chapter 2 Recasting

1. Recast your General and Special Field literature review into a consolidated Chapter 2.
2. ​Recast the Theory section of Chapter 2, into Theory (Chapter 3, Part 1)

Chapter 3 Theory Section (Part 1 of 3)

1. Define your concepts, and in narrative and/or diagram outline your logic model, or the dynamics of process that you intend to explore that ties your concepts into a theory.
2. Outline the theoretical foundations of your research, your research questions, and the hypotheses you want to test and/or extend. You will need to refer to the key literature, without repeating the description and analysis that you have in Chapter 2. If you find that you need to refer to new references for this part of Chapter 3, be sure to incorporate these into Chapter 2.

Additional Questions to Consider

• How does your theory connect with others in the field, as analyzed in the literature review chapter? (Refer back to the theory in the literature review, but don't repeat it here, except in the barest of summary.)
• As a model, how does the theory help to frame your research questions and hypotheses?

Refer to Update 3.3 for an overview of the full Chapter 3 composition and Updates 3.3 Part 1 and 4.1.  Parts 1 and 2 are addressed in EPOL 588 while Part 3 is addressed in EPOL 591.

Chapter 3: Methodology (Part 2 of 3)

Provide a deep description of your chosen methodology, including the epistemological assumptions of this methodological approach, and its limitations. Argue why this methodology is the appropriate one, capable of addressing your key research question/s.

This chapter should be supported by the literature, at least 10-15 sources. This should not only include methods textbook writers, but key thinkers in the development and evolution of this methodology.

Questions to Address

• What are the most appropriate methods to test your hypotheses and develop your theory?
• What is the theory associated with the method you have selected, and who are its main proponents? What are the epistemological assumptions that underly this theory? How will it generate knowledge that is deeper and broader than everyday, casual experience?
• What are the strengths of this methodology?
• Under which circumstances is the methodology the most appropriate?
• ​What do its critics say? What are its intrinsic limitations? What are its weaknesses?
• What is your justification for selecting this theory/method? Why is the methodology you have chosen the best way to conduct your study?

The PhD program requires an early research project, an additional course offered as an independent study. Typically, this will involve a pilot implementation which may in the standard dissertation model become an additional section for Chapter 4. This section will be written at the completion of the pilot study.

Some questions to address in the pilot study write up:

• What was the plan for the pilot study, as distinct from the full study? Was this sufficient to provide useful insights into the viability of the full study?
• What happened in the implementation process? How did it work in practice?
• Analysis: what data were generated, and what conclusions could be drawn from these data?
• What are the strengths and weaknesses of the methodology, as evidenced in the pilot study?
• What revisions to the methodology are required in the light of the experience of the pilot study?
• Are revisions required to the data collection instruments or IRB protocol?

Suggested Structure and Process

Recommended steps:

• Duplicate then extend your Chapters 1-3, with an additional 2,000-4,000 words in chapter 3
• Create a new subsection, in Chapter 3, "Pilot Implementation."
• Review and Revise Chapters 1 - 3 if you think this is required. Delete previous change notes, and write a new, dated change note at the beginning of each chapter, outlining the changes you have made and the reasons you made these changes. Revise data collection instruments and IRB protocol in appendices if necessary.
• When you have completed your new draft, request an admin to connect the work to a project for peer review.

Peer Review Rubric and Annotation Codes

Action Items

Action Item #1: Comment: Describe your initial thoughts about your pilot implementation plan.

Action Item #2: Create an Update: Write an overview of your pilot implementation plan.

1. What will it involve?
2. How will it be an adequate test of your methods?
3. How will you analyze its outcomes?

Review and comment on at least three other people's updates before you post yours, preferably recent ones so your comments are helpful to people at about the same place in the process as you. Include "3.5" and a subject-focused title in the title of your update.

Action Item #3: Peer-Reviewed Project: Develop, implement, and write up a pilot project according to the guidelines outlined above

For the preliminary thesis examination, you will be required to prepare a draft of chapters 1-3 of your dissertation, which serve as your research proposal at this stage in the process.  You will also present your proposal to your committee in an oral examination.

Throughout the exam-dissertation sequence you have created iterative and incremental milestones, enabling you to make progress and receive peer feedback in smaller parts, but Chapter 3 should become a cohesive, interrelated chapter.  Similarly, Chapter 2 should be a single literature review, without referencing "generl and special" fields.

What you have already completed:

• Chapter 2: General and Special Field Literature Reviews
• Chapter 3 Part 1: Theoretical Foundation
• Chapter 3 Part 2: Research Design

What you will complete in this course:

• Chapter 3 Part 3: Research Implementation, including IRB materials
• Streamlined Chapter 2 Literature Review
• Chapter 1 of your Research Proposal and eventually dissertation

Refer to updates 4.1 and 4.2 for specific Chapter 3 part 3 and Preliminary Exam manuscript requirements

Peer Reviews and Peer Presentations

Throughout the exam-dissertation sequence you have been assigned peer reviews for a variety of work types.  By the time you arrive at this stage, you should have completed some or possibly all of the required peer reviews (approximately three per work type).

Prior to your own preliminary examination, you will attend 3 other students’ preliminary examinations.

Committee Presentation

Prior to your committee presentation, you will present to your peers to practice and receive feedback.

Refer to update 4.3 for specific committee presentation requirements

​Web Tools

• ​Theory and Methodology web page
• Preliminary Exam web page

Refer to Update 3.3 for an overview of the full Chapter 3 composition and Updates 3.3 Part 1 and 2.  Parts 1 and 2 are addressed in EPOL 588 while Part 3 is addressed in EPOL 591.

Chapter 3: Methodology Implementation (Part 3 of 3)

1. Revised Chapter 3 Parts 1 and 2 based on peer and advisor feedback
2. Practical application of your dissertation project (See specifics below)
3. Description and justification of your data sources and data collection strategy
4. Data Analysis Plan
5. Implementation plan and Timeline
6. Design of data collection instruments (include in appendix)
7. IRB documentation (include in appendix).

Questions to Address:

• What is your implementation plan? What is your timeline?
• What are your data sources: participants, sample, primary knowledge resources, IRB approvals. What instruments will you use to collect data?
• How are you planning to analyze the research data and other materials you collect? What measures will you apply? How do these connect with your research questions?
• IRB overview (but link to details in the Appendix)

Appendices

• Include ancillary artifacts such as surveys, or interview and observation schedules as appendices.
• Draft, submit and have approved IRB protocols in readiness for the preliminary examination (for your methodology, if necessary). If your study does not require an IRB, please indicate that and the reason that your study is exempt.

The Preliminary Exam encompasses a written manuscript and committee presentation. This update provides guidance on the written manuscript. Refer to Update 4.2 for guidance on the presentation.

Right now your work is focused on serving as a research proposal.  You should not begin collecting data until after you have IRB and Committee approval to proceed.

By this point you should have an approved IRB; attach those materials to the Appendix.

Process

Follow the submission instructions found on the Work Submission and Review page. That page addresses all milestones, and instructions will not be repeated directly within this learning module.

• Preliminary Exam Outline PDF
• Maintain both a CScholar and Word version. The Word version should be in the Graduate College's approved format.
• Refer to the preliminary exam checklist and our Work Submission process for the technical steps

Manuscript Components: Update your Title Page, Table of Contents, and your abstract (leaving in placeholders for your findings and conclusions).

If you are unsure of who is on your committee, refer to your EDS Progress Report.

Chapter 1: Introduction

Your Chapter 1 (IIntroduction) can take a number of forms and may include personal voice to explain your motivation and purpose. However, it should not include all that will follow in the subsequent chapters. Instead, it needs to be a succinct synthesis.  Think of it as an executive summary.

• The significance of this topic and the reasons you selected it;
• Your Research questions
• Your hypotheses, if applicable
• An overview of the theoretical foundation of your study
• Summary of methods and rationale for selection
• High level summary of your research plan.

Reminder:  It should not repeat exactly what you have in Chapter 3. You want to introduce your study in a brief, yet descriptive manner.

​Chapter 2: Literature Review

Review and Revise Chapter 2, as needed to ensure Chapter 2 is a streamlined literature review; removing references to the general and special field examinations, merge your theory and gaps in the literature sections, etc..

Chapter 3: Theory and Methodology

• An overview of your theoretical foundation
• Research Question(s) and hyptheses, if applicable
• Clear description of your selected research methodology
• Rationale of your selected methodology and linkage to your research question(s)
• Implementation Plan, including participants, data sources, data analysis plan, and an implementation timeline 

​References: This should be a single references section in correct APA style.  Be sure to remove any references that are no longer being used in the body of your work.

A​ppendix: IRB materials, including the approval documentation, consent letters, and data collection instruments

Action Items

Action Item #1: Project: Compete your dissertation research proposal per the guidelines above.  This will be submitted to the dissertation supervisor for review prior to committee examination.

Action Item #2: Forms: Once you receive approval to proceed to examination, you may coordiante with the dissertation advisor to schedule your preliminary exam and fill out the necessary forms.  Refer to the Work Submissions page regarding submitting your preliminary exam manuscript and presentation

Note that once you present to your committee, they may have feedback that requires you to revisit your research proposal.

You will need to present to the committee in person or online for no more than 15 minutes in a session that will last 1 hour, with other students in the program attending as observers. Coordinate with the dissertation supervisor to disseminate your final manuscript for committee review a couple of weeks before the examination date.

Oral Presentation Slides

The focus of this presentation should be on your methodology and the significance of your study.

• Research questions: Why are these significant?
• You methodology: Why is this the appropriate methodology and what will it entail??

Considerations

• Your committee will have already read your manuscript; do not repeat too much
• You can include some background on what led to the development of your research questions, such as findings from the literature, but these should be brief
• Include the background of your study - who, what, when, how
• Include the methodology you plan to use to deploy your study and why it is appropriate for this study
• Include your logic model, but ensure that it is readable; include Zoomed-in sections if that might be helpful to make it more legible
• Balance the amount of text and visuals throughout the presentation
• Strive to keep it under 15 minutes to leave time for committee discussion and feedback

Committee Presentation Scheduling

​Coordinate with the Dissertation Advisor to arrange both the peer and committee presentation, typically at least four weeks prior to the desired examination date. You must be registered during the semester of your preliminary exam.

​Commitee Presentation Format

The preliminary exam will be presented online in an academic conference format.

• Welcome
• Committee will confer privately for about 5 minutes
• You will be given 15 minutes to present supported by 6-12 PowerPoint slides
• Each member of the examination committee will ask clarifying questions
• The committee will confer privately again for about 5 minutes, before inviting you to return
• Announcement of your results, including any revision requests

The most common result is a pass with feedback for final revision and submission.

In this course, you will conduct your research study and complete an analysis of its meaning.  You will write Chapters 4 and 5 in preparation for submitting to your advisor for review.

The duration of the data collection phase will vary based on your study design.  In the next admin update, we offer some recommendations of what to work on while you are undergoing data collection to help you be better prepared for what will come next - both the data analysis and drafting your final dissertation.

Data Collection

​Be sure to document your data collection execution - what actually happened.  Keeping a log of when and to whom you administered a survey or recruited for an interview will be important when drafting your Chapter 4.

You may discover during the data collection phase that things are not going as planned.  Too few participants?  Too slow of responses?  Responses are not addressing your research questions, and more.  It is important to regularly assess the effectiveness of your data collection strategy.

Data Analysis: When to Start?

For many kinds of research, the main work of interpretation cannot be undertaken until most of the data has been collected and analyzed. For others, the data already exists (in the form of archival documents or literary texts, for example), and the work of interpreting it begins much earlier in the research process.

Whatever the kind of research you are doing, there comes a moment when your head is full of ideas that have emerged from your analysis. Ideally, you will have written them down as they came to you. Now you have to convert that mass of material and ideas into a written text that will make sense to a reader, and to do justice to your findings. And ultimately, these must be evidence-based and related back to your research question(s).

Once you’ve finished collecting and analyzing your data, you can begin writing up the results section of your dissertation. This is where you report the main findings of your research and briefly observe how they relate to your research questions or hypotheses.  See Admin Update 5.3 for more details.

Action Items

Action Item #1: Comment: What are the challenges you are facing while collecting data?  What suggestions do you have for your peers who may be earlier in the process?

Action Item #2: Comment: Return to this post as you are conducting your data analysis.  What challenges are you experiencing during this stage?  What has been working well?  What advice do you have for your peers?  What has surprised you so far?

Strongly Suggested Actions while you collect your data

During this stage, there are many things you can do to prepare to draft your Chapters 4 and 5.  ​At a high level, you should be doing the following three things:

1. Review your existing manuscript
2. Evaluate your research study, including data collection and data analysis strategies as well as your research questions
3. Familiarize yourself with what is expected in Chapters 4 and 5 (and even practice a little)

At a detailed level...here are some suggestions

Existing Manuscript

• Review Chapter 1-3 to determine what needs to be revised, such as verb tense (to reflect that the research has now happened in the past), any additional literature sources, and/or eliminating sources no longer relevant to the study.
• Insert placeholders in Chapter 1 where you plan to insert your findings.
• Create an outline and/or placeholders within your blank Chapters 4 and 5. What do you plan to say in each section and in what order? Insert a brief description of what will go in each section to remind yourself and keep you focused.
• Consider an outline for your final defense presentation - what might be the slide headers? What parts of Chapters 1-3 belong in your final presentation? (See Admin Update 6.2)

Evaluate your Research Study

• Revisit your research question(s) often to ensure you stay focused on the purpose of the study
• Prepare for your data analysis - what will you do once your data comes in? While you should have considered this as a part of your research proposal/preliminary examination, sometimes things change or become more clear once you begin the data collection process.
• Take a snapshot of your data partway through, even if just one interview or a few survey responses, for example, and integrate that into your data analysis plan. Is it working as you expected? Does it appear to be able to contribute towards answering your research question? Is transcribing and/or coding the interview responses what you expected? Is there anything that you might need to change as a result of this initial review of the data?
• Evaluate how your data collection is going. Do you have enough participants? Do you need to take action to secure additional participants and/or adjust your study approach to accommodate the sample size? Is the data that has come in so far going to help answer your research question(s)?

Look ahead at Resources on writing up your findings

Don't wait until you are done collecting your data and analyzing it before understanding what needs to be done in Chapter 4.

• Reporting and Discussing your Findings
• Dissertation Findings and Discussion Sections
• Discussing Your Findings
• How to Write an APA Results Section

Action Item: While we use the word "suggestion", you are strongly encouraged to consider these, as they may make things go a little smoother when it comes time to sit down and analyze your data and/or draft the rest of your dissertation.

This page deals with the central part of the thesis, where you present the data that forms the basis of your investigation, shaped by the way you have thought about it. In other words, you tell your readers the story that has emerged from your findings. The form of your chapters should be consistent with this story and its components.

Information contained in this section will highlight the finer details of writing up your findings and discussion sections. We will use the model of Description – Analysis – Synthesis, which are typically the three components readers expect to see in these two sections.

Tip: Be sure to allow ample time for the review and revision process.  It is common for final dissertations to require revisions that can take one or more weeks to address.

Resources

There is a lot publicly available information regarding the writing up of findings. By this stage in the process, we encourage you to be proactive and search out examples on your own. However, we want to make sure that you don't get too far without us providing you with feedback on your format and general content plan.

As a reminder, refer to the following:

• Writing your Thesis
• Final Dissertation and Defense

Here are a few sites that may be of value:

• https://www.oxbridgeessays.com/blog/dissertation-findings-discussion-sections
• https://www.scribbr.com/dissertation/results/
• https://www.monash.edu/rlo/graduate-research-writing/write-the-thesis/writing-the-thesis-chapters/reporting-and-discussing-your-findings

Chapter 4: Findings: Outline the results of your dissertation work.

Chapter 5: Conclusions: Discussion, limitations, implications/meanings, recommendations for further research or action and connect back to the research questions and hypotheses, by way of conclusion.

How should you present your findings?

While each research study has its own unique characteristics, everyone needs to interpret the data, not present all of it in raw form. Of course, some raw data might be included in the form of tables or figures or even a descriptive narrative, however, in order to make valid analytical points, other forms of data, like quotes from interviews, can be used to exemplify the patterns that emerged. Chapter 4 is about presenting your data in a clear way that demonstrates evidence of the findings. Don't be repetitive, though.  On the other hand, don't be too thin in your presentation of the findings.  Provide just enough data to make the point convincingly and tie back to your research question(s).

Data Triangulation

As a part of presenting your findings, you must triangulate your data.  Every case has its unique factors, however as general guidance, if you report on your data thematically, you are able to present it in a clear and coherent way. It is also important to consider the existing literature as one of your sources when triangulating your other data sources. 

Guidance for general items to address in Chapter 4:

• A description of your research implementation. What actually occurred and who ended up participating? How did the study implementation align with your theoretical foundation, research questions, and hypotheses?
• A deep narrative and synthesis of your findings, including triangulation. What was discovered, both quantitatively and qualitatively? How are different data types connected to one another?  How does the existing literature align with your findings?
• Visualizations of your data often make your results much clearer for the reader (but a graph of each survey question is not necessary). Be sure to reference every visualization in the body of the text (Fig. 4.n), highlighting their relevance of including how the data aligns with your research questions and hypotheses. Be sure to caption all visualizations.
• Connection to Research Question(s) and Hypotheses: Everything you report in your results and findings should link back to your research question(s).

Chapter 4 should be objective and rely on the evidence from the data you have collected along with existing literature. Avoid speculative statements. Chapter 5, however allows for your voice to return as presenting key findings, recommendations, implications, and areas for future research.

Guidance for general items to address in Chapter 5:

• Overview of the findings. This should be a synopsis of the main findings, presented in an analytical narrative. Do not be repetitive. Strike a balance between demonstrating to the reader that your investigation has been deep and exhaustive, but without boring them with too much detail.
• Implications of the findings.  How do these apply to similar and/or different scenarios, samples, etc.
• Contributions: A report of how these findings contribute to the field. What value does this have for application or knowledge?
• Limitations: Describe limitations of the study, including sample size, inside researcher, and/or other timing or scope-related factors
• Opportunities for further research: How might this study influence the design of future studies?

What belongs in the Appendix?

In addition to your IRB documentation and data collection instruments, you may determine that some of your results belong in the Appendix.But this should only include essential items that might be used to verify findings and demonstrate sound processes. Generally, there is no need to put additional findings in an appendix.

Additional Resources

• http://dissertationedd.usc.edu/presenting-findings-qualitative.html
• https://www.bestcustomwriting.com/blog/write-results-section-dissertation
• https://writingcenter.ashford.edu/sites/default/files/inline-files/Dissertation%20Chapter%204%20Annotated%20Sample_0.pdf

Action Item #1: Create an Update: Before you get too far into your work on Chapter 4, share a draft of one part of your "results" section and receive peer and advisor feedback.  Include "5.3: Chapter 4 Sample: and a subject-focused title" in the title of your update.  It is important to seek feedback early during this stage to ensure that you are demonstrating evidence-based writing as you convey your research results.

By the time you arrive at this stage, you should have already completed the first major draft of your dissertation.  Your major draft should be submitted for advisor approval by the start of the semester you plan to graduate, if not sooner.

In this final course you will submit a final draft of your dissertation to your advisor, engage in the revision cycle, and ultimately submit your approved work for deposit.  This course will also provide you the chance to try out your final ideas with peers before you present to your dissertation committee.

Process: Final Dissertation and Defense page for guidance and a checklist

You must be registered for EPOL 599 during the term in which you participate in your final defense.

Peer Reviews and Peer Presentations

• Throughout the exam-dissertation sequence you have been assigned peer reviews for a variety of work types. By the time you arrive at this stage, you should have completed all of the required peer reviews (approximately three per work type).
• Your work will not be formally peer-reviewed at this stage, but it should have been proofread by a copy editor.
• Prior to your own final examination, you should attend 3 other students’ final examinations.
• Prior to your committee presentation, you will present to your peers to practice and receive feedback. ​The peer presentation is an opportunity to practice your final defense in a safe environment and receive feedback from your peers. Present your final draft presentation slides in a 15-minute presentation. Peers are encouraged to share constructive feedback to help the participant improve their final defense. There is not a specific rubric or anything to submit. (See next update for specific presentation guidance)

 

Action Items

Action Item #1: Comment: Share challenges and solutions with your peers

What are the challenges you are facing at this stage in the dissertation process? What is something that you have learned through the process that you feel may help those who are newer to the process?

This update will focus on preparing for your final oral defense.  It isn't necessary to wait until this point to prepare a draft version of your slides.  Many students find it useful to consider their slides as they draft their manuscript.  It encourages you to think about what is most important and how you might present your findings in a compelling way.  But if you do start drafting your presentation while drafting your manuscript, you'll still have some work to do in order to finalize the presentation once your manuscript is complete.

Focus must be on findings!  The most important part for the oral defense/presentation is to present and defend valid and impactful findings!

Oral Presentation Slides

The focus of this presentation should be on your findings and the significance of your results.  What matters to examiners is your hypothesis and the outcomes of your research journey.

• Research questions: why are these significant?
• Your findings: why are these significant?

Considerations:

• Focus on your journey of discovery. A personal introduction often sets the tone nicely – what has motivated you to undertake this study.
• Your committee will have already read your manuscript; do not repeat too much
• You can include some background on what led to the development of your research questions, such as findings from the literature, but these should be brief
• Include the background of your study - who, what, when, how
• Include the methodology used to deploy your study, but these also should be brief
• Include your logic model, but ensure that it is readable; include Zoomed-in sections if that might be helpful to make it more legible
• 6 to 10 slides should be plenty. Visuals are always clearer than plain words, but if a slide needs plain words, no more than about 30.  Balance the amount of text and visuals throughout the presentation
• Strive to keep it under 15 minutes to leave time for committee discussion and feedback
• Be prepared for your examiners to ask questions about methods, sample, etc.

Committee Presentation Scheduling

​Coordinate with the Dissertation Advisor to arrange both the peer and committee presentation, typically at least four weeks prior to the desired defense date.  You must be registered for EPOL 599 during the term in which you participate in your final defense.  It is suggested that you register for the entire semester you plan to graduate.

​Committee Presentation Format

The final dissertation will be presented online in an academic conference format.  The session will be about 60 minutes.  By keeping your presentation to 15 minutes, you ensure sufficient time for your committee to provide feedback.

1. Welcome
2. Committee will confer privately for about 5 minutes
3. You will be given 15 minutes to present, supported by 6 to 10 PowerPoint slides
4. Each member of the examination committee will ask clarifying questions
5. The committee will confer privately again for about 5 minutes, before inviting you to return
6. Announcement of your results.

The most common result is a pass with feedback for final revision and submission.  No matter how excellent the dissertation and presentation, the committee will always have some things to say that are worth incorporating in the final text.

Reference

• Murray, Rowena. 2009. How to Survive Your Viva: Defending a Thesis in an Oral Examination. Open University Press: Milton Keynes UK.

Web Tips

• How to Prepare for the Oral Defense of Your Thesis/Dissertation
• Presenting your dissertation virtually (presentation by the Graduate College)
• Top Ten Questions for the PhD Oral Exam
• Your Final Dissertation
• Thesis Office Resources

Action Items

Action Item #1: Comment: Share something you learned while watching peers' presentations of their final defense?  

Action Item #2: Comment: In the same or a separate comment, share something that helped you create your final defense presentation and/or how preparing your presentation helped you with your manuscript.

In addition to the requirements of our program, the Graduate College has a series of requirements as you finalize your dissertation for defense and deposit.  This page does not repeat formatting requirements that you have been following throughout your journey.

Final Manuscript Approval Cycle

While you may have been approved to proceed to your final exam, your committee will provide manuscript feedback during your oral exam.  You are expected to consider all feedback and apply anything that was conveyed as mandatory.  You are encouraged to reach out to your advisor and committee members to seek out any clarification and/or additional feedback.

Be mindful of submission timing in order to meet the Graduate College deposit deadline.

1. Once you have revised your final dissertation after your oral exam, send a Word version to your official faculty advisor and copy the dissertation supervisor and dissertation advisor for visibility.
2. Your faculty advisor will respond with their revisions or approval.
3. Once approved by your faculty advisor, send a PDF version of your approved manuscript to the Department contact (see the website for the current name and email address).
4. The department contact will request an approval email from the faculty advisor, with all committee members copied.
5. The department contact will provide you with required revisions, typically associated with formatting.
6. Once approved by the department contact, you can submit your PDF manuscript to the Thesis Office following their process.

Deposit-Specific Resources:

• Thesis Deadlines: https://calendars.illinois.edu/list/3259
• Supporting items required in your Thesis Deposit:  https://grad.illinois.edu/thesis/required-items
• Theses Deposit: https://grad.illinois.edu/thesis/submit

Other Resources

• See the Final Dissertation and Defense web page for specific instructions.
• See also the Dissertation Deposit web page for post-defense instructions.

​Final Deposit Repositories

• IDEALS: UIUC Dissertation Database
• CGScholar LDL Alumni Prelims and Dissertations
• College of Education Dissertation Search Tool