Writing Strategies for the Education Dissertation offers a unique take on doctoral writing. It uses composition and rhetoric strategies to identify key activities for generating thought to keep ...students writing. It de-mythologizes the view of writing as a mere skill and promotes the view of writing as thinking.
It uses writing to help students invent, think through, write, rethink, and rewrite as they develop and present their innovations. The book opens with this mindset and with the purposes of the task (adding to knowledge); it helps define a “researchable topic,” and provides advice on invention (“brainstorming”). It then addresses each of the key sections of the dissertation, from Problem Statement, through Literature Review and Methods, to Findings and Conclusions, while underscoring the iterative nature of this writing. For each chapter, the book provides advice on invention, argument, and arrangement (“organization”) – rhetorical elements that are seldom fully addressed in textbooks. Each chapter also looks at possible missteps, offers examples of student writing and revisions, and suggests alternatives, not rules. The text concludes with an inventive approach of its own, addressing style (clarity, economy, and coherence) as persuasion.
This book is suitable for all doctoral students of education and others looking for tips and advice on the best dissertation writing.
Systematic reviews (SRs) are an important source of information about healthcare interventions. A key component of a well-conducted SR is a comprehensive literature search. There is limited evidence ...on the contribution of non-English reports, unpublished studies, and dissertations and their impact on results of meta-analyses.
Our sample included SRs from three Cochrane Review Groups: Acute Respiratory Infections (ARI), Infectious Diseases (ID), Developmental Psychosocial and Learning Problems (DPLP) (n = 129). Outcomes included: 1) proportion of reviews that searched for and included each study type; 2) proportion of relevant studies represented by each study type; and 3) impact on results and conclusions of the primary meta-analysis for each study type.
Most SRs searched for non-English studies; however, these were included in only 12% of reviews and represented less than 5% of included studies. There was a change in results in only four reviews (total sample = 129); in two cases the change did not have an impact on the statistical or clinical significance of results. Most SRs searched for unpublished studies but the majority did not include these (only 6%) and they represented 2% of included studies. In most cases the impact of including unpublished studies was small; a substantial impact was observed in one case that relied solely on unpublished data. Few reviews in ARI (9%) and ID (3%) searched for dissertations compared to 65% in DPLP. Overall, dissertations were included in only nine SRs and represented less than 2% of included studies. In the majority of cases the change in results was negligible or small; in the case where a large change was noted, the estimate was more conservative without dissertations.
The majority of SRs searched for non-English and unpublished studies; however, these represented a small proportion of included studies and rarely impacted the results and conclusions of the review. Inclusion of these study types may have an impact in situations where there are few relevant studies, or where there are questionable vested interests in the published literature. We found substantial variation in whether SRs searched for dissertations; in most reviews that included dissertations, these had little impact on results.
This handbook sets out the processes and products of ‘digital’ research. It is a theoretical and practical guide on how to undertake and navigate advanced research in the arts, humanities and social ...sciences.Topics covered include:The editors focus on advances in arts- and practice-based doctorates, and their application in other fields and disciplines. The contributions chart new territory for universities, research project directors, supervisors and research students regarding the nature and format of graduate and doctoral work, as well as research projects.Written by experienced practitioners, this handbook is an essential reference for researchers, supervisors and administrators on how to conduct and evaluate research projects in a digital and multimodal age.
This is one of three short booklets designed to be given to graduate students as they begin their studies. They explain the purposes of the dissertation and the criteria by which it will be assessed. ...They help students understand the context of their course work; the need to take an active role in shaping their studies; and the importance of thinking ahead about the components of the dissertation and the quality of scholarship they will need to demonstrate. These booklets are intended to support the dissertation research and writing process by providing faculty and advisors with guidelines for setting clear expectations for student performance, and with a model for helping students produce the desired quality of work. They encourage dialogue between faculty and students about the quality of the components of their dissertation project. They include rubrics that students can use to self-assess their work and that can aid faculty in providing focused feedback. Setting explicit targets and benchmarks of excellence of the sort advocated in these booklets will enable departments and universities to respond to demands for accountability with clear criteria for, and evidence of, success; and will raise the overall quality of student performance.
This book is for graduate students--and others--who want to become more productive writers. It's especially written for those who want to: •increase their motivation, focus, and persistence to move a ...project to completion •overcome procrastination and perfectionistic tendencies •reduce (or write in spite of) their anxiety and fear of writing •manage their time, work, energy (and advisor) for greater productivityWhile Jan Allen recognizes that writing is not an innate talent for most of us, she demonstrates that it is a process based on skills which we can identify, learn, practice and refine. She focuses both on the process and habits of writing as well as on helping you uncover what kind of writeryou are, and reflect on your challenges and successes. With a light touch and an engaging sense of humor, she proposes strategies to overcome procrastination and distractions, and build a writing practice to enable you to become a more productive and prolific writer.
Traditional dissertations aiming to illuminate the landscapes of education are often too poorly written to have far-reaching readership. This book examines the inner workings of a doctoral course ...focused on teaching qualitative researchers strong narrative writing. By the time doctoral students finish their dissertation research, bolstered by theoretical grounding and time in the field, they are in a unique position to offer insights about education that should be heard in the public arena, not just during dissertation defenses. For this to happen, doctoral students need to know how to achieve their writerly goals. This book focuses on helping doctoral students and "all" qualitative researchers do just that. It is also an excellent resource for professors teaching narrative writing. Readers will learn how to use narrative writing to "tell the story in the data" so their research will be read and potentially infuse policy decisions with the complexity such considerations deserve. This book: (1) Assists students and qualitative researchers with writing research in an engaging and informative manner; (2) Focuses on the craft and ethics of writing as an essential constituent of good research; and (3) Offers practical guidance appropriate for self-study or for professors of education who teach writing. Foreword written by David T. Hansen.
Jaśkowski's discussive (discursive) logic D2 is historically one of the first para-consistent logics, i.e., logics that 'tolerate' contradictions. Following Jaśkowski's idea to define his discussive ...logic by means of the modal logic S5 via special translation functions between discussive and modal languages and supporting at the same time the tradition of paracomplete logics being the counterpart of paraconsistent ones, we present a paracomplete discussive logic Dp2.