Greetings from Seoul, South Korea! The summer is quickly coming to an end (and so is my summer gallivanting...the school year is almost upon us!) I am writing this post with those who are beginning their doctoral journey in mind.
The beginning is exciting, but can also be angst-inducing as many will ask "so what is your dissertation topic?"
However, that question is perfect at this early stage in your journey; it should motivate you to start to articulate your dissertation topic ideas, and get early feedback from fellow students as well as faculty and even interested non-academics. If the topic is not in perfect shape or form yet, that is to be expected. The two or three years of coursework will provide you sufficient opportunity to refine the topic.
If you do not know what you would like to study for your dissertation, that ought not be a problem either. The first year is a time of discovery and exploration.
In my Introduction to Research Methods course, I ask students to brainstorm three potential dissertation topics and come to class ready to discuss them. Essentially, this exercise allows them to think about their interests, and conceptualize those interests into research-able ideas. Some of the questions asked in class include:
a. What is the problem you seek to investigate?
b. Why is it important to investigate that problem?
c. Why is the problem of interest to you?
d. How long would it take to engage in the study?
e. How passionate are you about the topic/problem?
These initial questions help students to clarify their ideas and choose just one of the three topic areas of interest to focus on for the rest of the semester. In subsequent assignments, they are able to further refine the topic by writing preliminary proposals on how they could potentially investigate the problem using qualitative and quantitative approaches. The final assignment is a literature review on the topic/problem.
By the end of the semester, each student is better able to determine whether the topic and problem they'd chosen to study is actually feasible, worthwhile, and whether there is indeed a sufficient literature base upon which to build the study.
My advise to my Intro to Research Methods students is to use subsequent courses to further refine their topic. Those who follow this advise find that by the end of their coursework, they have a proposal ready to defend, and thus can proceed to the dissertation phase expeditiously.
I want to encourage you all who are beginning your doctoral studies now, or who are in the early stages to think about doing something similar to help you focus your coursework towards defining and refining your dissertation topic. The sooner you determine your dissertation topic, the better as coursework can be more narrowly focused towards developing the research proposal.
What other dissertation related advise would those of you who are over on the other side of the journey offer to the newbies? Comments and questions always welcome.
Showing posts with label thesis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label thesis. Show all posts
Saturday, August 25, 2012
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
Highly Recommended: Writers Retreats
The past four days, I have been sitting and writing furiously at a writers retreat hosted by Mitch Reyes at Lewis and Clark College, Portland, Oregon. I have yearned to participate in a writing retreat for the entire time that I have been on the faculty end of my academic career. I am so glad my yearning became a reality, finally.
So I am taking a break this fourth day of retreat to encourage you to consider a writing retreat in your near future. Whether you take a retreat by yourself, or join a group as I did, it is definitely worthwhile. In fact, my roommate and I have covenanted to find one day a month as a 'writing retreat' day, where we can spend all day working on a project.
Here are the benefits of the writers/writing retreat, as I am experiencing them:
a. Having several others (in my case, 23 others) all focused on writing is the best social pressure to get your own writing juices flowing.
b. Sometimes when you have a large project, having a focused writing time is the best way to get it off the ground, make good progress, and therefore feel encouraged to trudge on towards completion.
c. It provides you with accountability during the retreat, and if you design it intentionally, continued accountability afterwards. You can have one or two writing partners with whom you communicate your writing goals and your completion rates as frequently as you agree upon.
d. Most of us have so much else going on in our lives that though we want to, developing a daily writing habit and sustaining it is difficult. I believe it is easier to develop said habit after a writing retreat, because your juices are flowing and you are more motivated to keep it up.
e. The organized writing retreats include sessions aimed at discussing writing tips and raising questions. The shared wisdom is priceless. Finding out that you are not the only one who struggles with various writing issues helps to come up with solutions that have worked for others.
When all is said and done, I am enjoying this writers retreat because it is also perhaps the first time in many years I have done something that is purely just for me - I do not need to prove anything to anyone, I do not need to engage in impression management (which, whether I am conscious of it or not, always takes place in academic conferences), I can focus on just spending time with myself. Already, I feel refreshed and renewed, ready to tackle whatever lies ahead in the coming academic year.
I therefore highly recommend writers retreats. The communitas, camaraderie, support, and buzz will keep you energized long after the retreat concludes.
So I am taking a break this fourth day of retreat to encourage you to consider a writing retreat in your near future. Whether you take a retreat by yourself, or join a group as I did, it is definitely worthwhile. In fact, my roommate and I have covenanted to find one day a month as a 'writing retreat' day, where we can spend all day working on a project.
Here are the benefits of the writers/writing retreat, as I am experiencing them:
a. Having several others (in my case, 23 others) all focused on writing is the best social pressure to get your own writing juices flowing.
b. Sometimes when you have a large project, having a focused writing time is the best way to get it off the ground, make good progress, and therefore feel encouraged to trudge on towards completion.
c. It provides you with accountability during the retreat, and if you design it intentionally, continued accountability afterwards. You can have one or two writing partners with whom you communicate your writing goals and your completion rates as frequently as you agree upon.
d. Most of us have so much else going on in our lives that though we want to, developing a daily writing habit and sustaining it is difficult. I believe it is easier to develop said habit after a writing retreat, because your juices are flowing and you are more motivated to keep it up.
e. The organized writing retreats include sessions aimed at discussing writing tips and raising questions. The shared wisdom is priceless. Finding out that you are not the only one who struggles with various writing issues helps to come up with solutions that have worked for others.
When all is said and done, I am enjoying this writers retreat because it is also perhaps the first time in many years I have done something that is purely just for me - I do not need to prove anything to anyone, I do not need to engage in impression management (which, whether I am conscious of it or not, always takes place in academic conferences), I can focus on just spending time with myself. Already, I feel refreshed and renewed, ready to tackle whatever lies ahead in the coming academic year.
I therefore highly recommend writers retreats. The communitas, camaraderie, support, and buzz will keep you energized long after the retreat concludes.
Monday, February 13, 2012
What is the Purpose of your Study?
It is not worthwhile to go around the world to count the
cats in Zanzibar (Maxwell 2005, citing Thoreau)
It is important to be clear about the reason why you are
undertaking your study. An unclear purpose will result in a muddied up process,
and therefore, results that may not be either credible or valid. The purpose statement is the central controlling idea in a study (Creswell, 2009, p. 111).
Maxwell (2005) “Qualitative Research Design” recommends that
researchers write regularly and systematically about their research for the
researchers own consumption, as well as for discussion with others. In his very
helpful chapter 2, he discusses goals of research leading with the following
question: Why are you doing this study?
The point is that you need to be clear on the purpose of
your study, and that purpose has to lead to a question/questions whose answers
are worth knowing. Clear goals serve as a guide for your study= goal here
includes desires, motives and purposes, whatever is leading you to want to
engage in your study.
Maxwell reminds us that goals a) help to guide your other
design decisions to ensure that your study is worth doing, and b) they are
essential to justifying your study. It
is likely that you have personal, practical and intellectual goals for you
study. Personal goals motivate you to engage in the study but may not be of much
value to others (e.g. need to advance your career, desire to change a
situation). Often, personal goals influence your choice of dissertation topic,
and are likely to impact your motivation (and persistence) through the
dissertation process. More often than not, personal goals remain unstated –
however, it is helpful to be clear on what your own personal goals are even if
you will not discuss them in your study. Off course if you engage in
qualitative, there is room to indicate the personal goals that are impacting
your choices. For example, one of my mentees chose to study successful African
immigrant faculty in US institutions, one because she is an African immigrant,
and two, because as someone who desires to enter the professorial ranks, she is
interested in learning how they ‘made it’. Another chose to study long term
health care because this was his industry for many years as owner of nursing
homes, and he consults to nursing homes today – thus his study would help to
improve his consulting work. Being clear about your personal goals also enables
you to be reflective of your subjectivities – it helps you beware of
looking only for the answers that fit your presuppositions.
Practical and intellectual/scholarly goals are important to
you as well as to other people. Practical goals focus on accomplishing
something, meeting a need, changing a situation, achieving a particular
objective; intellectual goals focus on understanding something, often filling a
gap that other research has not adequately addressed. The second student
(now a newly minted PhD) mentioned above, aimed at improving his own consulting practice by gaining a
better understanding of leadership praxis within the long term health care
industry. His study was endorsed by one of the industry professional associations
in recognition of its practical utility.
Generally, the intellectual/scholarly goal of your study is framed
in terms of ‘purpose statement’. This begins with a sentence such as:
The purpose of this study is to…(a verb here, such as
evaluate, explore, explain, describe, determine, examine, etc. You then expand on that purpose in several sentences/a paragraph.
Your practical goal is framed in terms of the “Significance
of the Study” where you talk about the relevance or practical utility of your
study to practitioners – teachers, administrators, managers, pastors – the ‘second’
audience of your study. Your significance section also discusses further your
scholarly goal by discussing how your study will expand our understanding of a
particular area of study. In qualitative studies, you would need to discuss
your personal goals, either in chapter 1 or chapter 3 (Introduction, or
Methods) with a sub-heading such as ‘role of the researcher’, ‘researcher
presuppositions’, ‘researchers predilections’, ‘how I came to this study area’…etc.
Maxwell, Joseph A. 2005. Qualitative research design: An interactive approach. 2 ed. Thousand Oaks: Sage. (3rd Edition will be published by June 2012).
Creswell, John W. 2009. Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. 3rd ed. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.
Sunday, February 5, 2012
The Relational Nature of Research
This week I spent several hours working on a manuscript with a colleague, constructing a paper on relationships and communities in research. In the process of writing, I also ended up doing a lot of reading, trying to get clarity on issues such as power differentials between researchers and participants, vulnerability, reflexivity, and other topics related to autoethnography/qualitative research design. I came to the realization that, some of the issues where researchers use their authorial power to represent participants the way they want to, without caring how such participants would feel about how they are represented, is perhaps a failure to recognize the human dignity of 'others', and perhaps not a very good use of researchers power.
Reflecting on this failure - of recognizing the human dignity of others - whether marginalized or not, made me realize that, part of what I enjoyed doing in my own dissertation work, was choosing to keep the confidence of my participants. This was a dialogic process, where I was open to hearing about anything and everything, but also told them that, they were free to tell me what they would rather I kept just between us (Ngunjiri, 2007, 2010). I endeavored to give [most of] them transcripts of our interviews, so they'd add/subtract whatever they saw fit. For a few, it was logistically impossible since I transcribed the interviews after my return to the States.
You see, even though I haven't seen most of those women since I collected my data in the summer of 2005, I believed then (and now) that "brief encounters do not necessarily mean superficial connections...[I] see relationships as more than vehicles for data gathering, more than points of access. [I] see then as central to the empirical, ethical, and humanistic dimensions of research design, as evolving and changing processes of human encounters" (Lawrence-Lightfoot and Davis, 1997, p138, 139). Obviously, this is mostly true of qualitative research designs, where relationships are/ought to be king.
Authentic relationships that engender reciprocity and symmetry, that encourage skepticism and appreciation, and that are built on trust (Lawrence-Lightfoot and Davis) can help us in achieving our research goals, while also building/rebuilding the communities we purport to represent. I may not have seen the participants from my study in the seven years since, I may never meet with them again; however, I hope that when they read what I said about them, how I interpreted their life stories, the way I constructed their narratives, and celebrated their achievement as women, leaders, Africans, and human beings, they will always feel affirmed and will recognize the essence of who they are in my work. They do not have to agree with all my interpretations, but I do hope they see themselves even more clearly through my portraits. That is what it means for me to engage in research, while keeping "relational concerns as high as research" ( Ellis, 2007, p. 25). Think about that as you engage in designing or undertaking your own research. What is your relational responsibility - or, what do the relationships developed through your research require of you?
Ellis, C. (2007). Telling Secrets, Revealing Lives: Relational Ethics in Research With Intimate Others Qualitative Inquiry, 13(1), 3-29. doi: 10.1177/1077800406294947
Lawrence-Lightfoot, S., & Davis, J. H. (1997). The art and science of portraiture. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Ngunjiri, F. W. (2010). Women's spiritual leadership in Africa : Tempered radicals and critical servant leaders. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Ngunjiri, F. W. (2007). Painting a counter-narrative of African womanhood: Reflections on how my research transformed me. Journal of Research Practice, 3(1), article m4. Retrieved from http://jrp.icaap.org/index.php/jrp/article/view/53/76
Reflecting on this failure - of recognizing the human dignity of others - whether marginalized or not, made me realize that, part of what I enjoyed doing in my own dissertation work, was choosing to keep the confidence of my participants. This was a dialogic process, where I was open to hearing about anything and everything, but also told them that, they were free to tell me what they would rather I kept just between us (Ngunjiri, 2007, 2010). I endeavored to give [most of] them transcripts of our interviews, so they'd add/subtract whatever they saw fit. For a few, it was logistically impossible since I transcribed the interviews after my return to the States.
You see, even though I haven't seen most of those women since I collected my data in the summer of 2005, I believed then (and now) that "brief encounters do not necessarily mean superficial connections...[I] see relationships as more than vehicles for data gathering, more than points of access. [I] see then as central to the empirical, ethical, and humanistic dimensions of research design, as evolving and changing processes of human encounters" (Lawrence-Lightfoot and Davis, 1997, p138, 139). Obviously, this is mostly true of qualitative research designs, where relationships are/ought to be king.
Authentic relationships that engender reciprocity and symmetry, that encourage skepticism and appreciation, and that are built on trust (Lawrence-Lightfoot and Davis) can help us in achieving our research goals, while also building/rebuilding the communities we purport to represent. I may not have seen the participants from my study in the seven years since, I may never meet with them again; however, I hope that when they read what I said about them, how I interpreted their life stories, the way I constructed their narratives, and celebrated their achievement as women, leaders, Africans, and human beings, they will always feel affirmed and will recognize the essence of who they are in my work. They do not have to agree with all my interpretations, but I do hope they see themselves even more clearly through my portraits. That is what it means for me to engage in research, while keeping "relational concerns as high as research" ( Ellis, 2007, p. 25). Think about that as you engage in designing or undertaking your own research. What is your relational responsibility - or, what do the relationships developed through your research require of you?
Ellis, C. (2007). Telling Secrets, Revealing Lives: Relational Ethics in Research With Intimate Others Qualitative Inquiry, 13(1), 3-29. doi: 10.1177/1077800406294947
Lawrence-Lightfoot, S., & Davis, J. H. (1997). The art and science of portraiture. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Ngunjiri, F. W. (2010). Women's spiritual leadership in Africa : Tempered radicals and critical servant leaders. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Ngunjiri, F. W. (2007). Painting a counter-narrative of African womanhood: Reflections on how my research transformed me. Journal of Research Practice, 3(1), article m4. Retrieved from http://jrp.icaap.org/index.php/jrp/article/view/53/76
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