Across many years of teaching Research Methods and assessing many applications for admission into higher degree studies which require an understanding of theories, principles, strategies and skills ...needed to complete a higher degree such as a Masters or a PhD, one of the things I have found problematic for many students is the inability to articulate differences between theory, theoretical framework and a conceptual framework for a proposed research project. This paper uses experiential methodology to draw upon my experience in practice, and systematic literature review methodology to draw upon supporting scholarly literature by leaders in the field, to contribute to existing knowledge on the meaning of each of these concepts, and more importantly to distinguish between them in a study of Research Methods, and in particular as they relate to designing a research proposal and a thesis for a higher degree. The primary aim is to help the reader develop a firm grasp of the meaning of these concepts and how they should be used in academic research discourses. The review answers five questions. 1. What does each of these terms mean? 2. When and how should each be used? 3. What purposes does a theoretical framework serve? 4. How do you develop a theoretical framework for your research proposal or thesis? 5. What does a good theoretical framework look like?
Writing in a second (L2)/foreign language is generally a challenging activity, and writing an MA thesis, as an example of academic enterprise, can be daunting when done in a language in which the ...writer is not fully competent. The challenge such a genre of writing poses for L2 writers has not been properly addressed. To fill in the gap in this area, the present study aimed at comparing Master's theses written by Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) students in three Iranian universities in terms of the challenges such academic writing poses for student-writers. The corpus comprised 60 randomly selected theses from those universities submitted to English as a Foreign Language departments between the years 2010 and 2012. A series of one-way ANOVAs were employed to compare the means of obtained frequencies across the theses. Results revealed that, except for organisational problems, theses varied in terms of language, style, content and methodological problems. It was also found that theses mainly suffer from style and language problems. The study sheds light on the extent to which L2 writers are aware of the structure of MA theses, reveals the challenges common to most students in this particular type of academic writing and offers advice on improving the quality of thesis-writing.
There is a kind of logical theses that can be a cognitive problem. They are theses that are not tautologies and people tend to accept as absolutely correct. This is the case of theses such as those ...of Aristotle and Boethius. This paper tries to give an explanation of the reasons why this happens. The explanation is based on the theory of mental models. However, it also resorts to modal logic and the account of the ideas presented by Lenzen. Thus, relating the general framework of the theory of mental models to basic aspects of modal logic and this last account, a possible solution of the problem is proposed.
Contra counterfactism Hájek, Alan
Synthese (Dordrecht),
12/2021, Letnik:
199, Številka:
1-2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
‘If I were to toss a coin 1000 times, then it would land heads exactly
n
times’. Is there a specific value of
n
that renders this counterfactual true? According to an increasingly influential view, ...there is. A precursor of the view goes back to the Molinists; more recently it has been inspired by Stalnaker, and versions of it have been advocated by Hawthorne, Bradley, Moss, Schulz, and Stefánsson. More generally, I attribute to these authors what I call
Counterfactual Plenitude
:
For any antecedent A, there is a world w
i
such that A
☐→
w
i
is true
.
Moreover, some of these authors are also committed to
Primitive Counterfacts Realism:
There exist primitive modal facts that serve as truth
-
makers for counterfactual claims.
Call the conjunction of these italicized theses
counterfactism
. I clarify it and suggest some of its virtues, while ultimately rejecting it.
Stefánsson’s counterfactism is motivated by and targeted at my “counterfactual skepticism”—I argue that most counterfactuals are false—and counterfactism has various other sources of support. I briefly defend that skepticism, and I seek to undercut those sources of support. I then argue more directly against counterfactism, especially on grounds of its ontological profligacy, and its leading to another kind of skepticism about counterfactuals that I believe is more problematic than my kind. In the process, I discuss how Bradley’s multidimensional semantics bears on counterfactism; I offer some new considerations against some central theses regarding conditionals (Conditional Excluded Middle, Stalnaker’s Thesis, and Skyrms’ Thesis); and I reflect more generally on the epistemology of modality and the choice of primitives in our theorizing.
English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) results in an increasing number of students writing their master’s theses in English as a second language (L2). The thesis process is challenging for many ...students, and academic writing in L2 English could add to these challenges. However, in EMI contexts, little is known about students’ writing and language-related conceptions and their relationship with writing success. Hence, this study investigates variation within and interconnections between master’s thesis writers’ (N = 283, both L1 and L2 writers) self-efficacy for thesis writing, writing conceptions, apprehension about grammar, and thesis grade in a multilingual EMI university context in Finland. Data analyses included various statistical methods such as t-tests, two-step clustering, and ANOVAs. The findings indicate a positive connection between adaptive writing conceptions, thesis grade, and self-efficacy for thesis writing. Three groups of writers were identified, reflecting different combinations of writing conceptions, with significant differences in thesis grade, self-efficacy for thesis writing and apprehension about grammar. No significant differences were found between L1 and L2 writers.
•Maladaptive writing conceptions are related to lower thesis grade and self-efficacy.•Adaptive writing conceptions are related to higher thesis grade and self-efficacy.•Apprehension about grammar is positively related to block and perfectionism.•Three groups of master’s thesis writers identified through a person-oriented analysis.•No significant differences were found between L1 and L2 thesis writers.
O-minimal de Rham Cohomology Figueiredo, Rodrigo
The bulletin of symbolic logic,
12/2022, Letnik:
28, Številka:
4
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
O-minimal geometry generalizes both semialgebraic and subanalytic geometries, and has been very successful in solving special cases of some problems in arithmetic geometry, such as André–Oort ...conjecture. Among the many tools developed in an o-minimal setting are cohomology theories for abstract-definable continuous manifolds such as singular cohomology, sheaf cohomology and Čech cohomology, which have been used for instance to prove Pillay’s conjecture concerning definably compact groups. In the present thesis we elaborate an o-minimal de Rham cohomology theory for abstract-definable
$C^{\infty }$
manifolds in an o-minimal expansion of the real field which admits smooth cell decomposition and defines the exponential function. We can specify the o-minimal cohomology groups and attain some properties such as the existence of Mayer–Vietoris sequence and the invariance under abstract-definable
$C^{\infty }$
diffeomorphisms. However, in order to obtain the invariance of our o-minimal cohomology under abstract-definable homotopy we must work in a tame context that defines sufficiently many primitives and assume the validity of a statement related to Bröcker’s question. Abstract prepared by Rodrigo Figueiredo. E-mail: rodrigo@ime.usp.br URL: https://doi.org/10.11606/T.45.2019.tde-28042019-181150
The supervision of degree theses is one of several institutional practices in higher education that are regulated by various systems of rules. However, the social roles involved in the practices may ...still be largely based on interpretation, negotiation and personal choice. Research on supervision has primarily targeted the doctoral level, but the present study targets the Bachelor level. Existing inventories of roles are based on supervisor roles, but the present study also includes student roles. Existing inventories are not always based on empirical data, but the present study uses focus group discussions with supervisors and responses to open-ended questions from a questionnaire to students as a basis for extracting supervisor and student roles. The supervisor and student participants came from two language departments at a Swedish university. The local guidelines relevant to supervision underspecify roles. The findings show a considerable complexity and a broad repertoire when it comes to roles attributed to supervisors as well as students. Some roles may be plotted along a scale, where stakeholders may have different preferences and needs, such as along transactional and interactional types, or between support and management; or between seeing the thesis primarily as a process or a product.
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