Some misconceptions about Literature Reviews

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literature review, managing your writing energy, reading

By Cally Guerin

We’ve written about literature reviews before: see, for example, Trust yourself, Demonstrating criticality, and Writing while still uncertain. But there is always something more to say about these sections of the thesis that are so challenging for most doctoral writers. I was reminded again recently of just how big a source of anxiety this can be for novice researchers who feel overwhelmed by the amount of information they feel required to absorb. In the following, I debunk some of the main misconceptions that seem to hobble doctoral writers; in the process, I hope to offer reassurance that the task is more manageable than it can feel at times.

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Acknowledgements in a doctoral thesis: Humanising the examination process?

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Researcher identity, Writing as social identity; the reader as significant other

By Dr Vijay Kumar

University of Otago, New Zealand.

Dr Vijay Kumar is a leading figure in the research field of doctoral education, experience and pedagogy. He applies linguistics methodologies to considering doctoral writing and the relationship between candidate-author and supervisor-reviewer as to how feedback on writing works best. He offers his reflection on the acknowledgements, and the results of his research on whether or not acknowledgments influence examiners–do click on the link to his interesting article.

I am beginning to get the notion that acknowledgments humanise the examination process.

One of the first sections I read when I get a thesis to examine is the acknowledgments.  I want to know the person who wrote the thesis and the journey the candidate had to go through to submit this work for examination. At times, I am affected when the candidate writes about their struggles – leaving family behind to pursue their dreams, death of loved ones, hardship while doing the PhD and also the time it took for them to submit as this may reflect financial hardship. I become extremely sympathetic reading about parents who have to balance the PhD and care for children during the journey – these struggles speak to the human side of an examiner and I expect other examiners to be the same.

Why is it so hard to write the methodology section of a PhD thesis?

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Method or methodology?, writing the methodology Chapter

By Claire Aitchison

I have worked with many students, particularly humanities and social science scholars, who have found writing the methodology chapter a hugely agonising experience.

I recall my own experience as a mature-aged student, acutely aware of my ignorance and uncertainty: I read and wrote blind for weeks and weeks before showing anything to my supervisor.

Like me, for many, the task of coming to understand methodology begins with reading. In the main, research methodology textbooks are big and dense, and it isn’t uncommon for students to disappear, like Alice, into Research Methodology Wonderland only to reappear months later, dazed and confused.

Writing the methodology chapter is hard because research methodology is complex; because the territory is littered with terminology that is frequently used differently even within the same disciplines; and because there are significantly different expectations for what this section of a thesis should look like. And also, almost inevitably, coming to understand methodology and its application to a particular study is a transformational step, a threshold concept that is arrived at after considerable intellectual challenge.

Story-telling devices: Connecting chapters

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connective devices, fiction writing to thesis writing, thesis chapter titles and headers

By Claire Aitchison

Over the summer break I pack in as much reading for pleasure as I possibly can. This objective is in no small part a mechanism for disengaging from work and for propelling my brain into other worlds. This summer I read Barbara Kingsolver’s new book ‘Unsheltered’. I really enjoyed it. But here I want to talk about coherence devices she used which I think have relevance for doctoral thesis writing.

Barbara Kingsolver’s story is set in two time periods: 1871 and 2016, with chapters that take it in turns to develop two separate stories with different characters and events. The devices she uses for connecting these different worlds and times are clever and illuminating—and essential for avoiding confusion. At the beginning the reader (or at least this reader) was mildly unsettled; the first chapter is neat and self-contained, but then into chapter two I found myself checking to see if I’d missed anything—what was I reading now? How did this connect to what I’d just read? Were the chapters to remain two parallel tales or would they come together, and how? Such an intriguing way to draw in the leisurely reader. I had many questions, but I had to suspend my curiosity and just keep on reading. I didn’t mind, I had all the time in the world–and I was already hooked in. I knew she was a good writer and my patience would be rewarded.

But would this work for a doctoral thesis?

Questions to get started on refining the research question

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refining the topic, research questions

By Cally Guerin

It’s the start of the new academic year in Australia, and my thoughts have turned to those new PhD candidates who are just starting out on their projects. It’s an exciting and challenging time – for students and supervisors. I’ve put together a few ideas about those early steps related to refining research questions when commencing a new project.

Internal alignment in doctoral writing: questions, methods, theory….

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research writing, thesis structure, thesis writing

By Susan Carter

I’m writing this as I prepare a two-hour workshop for a group of doctoral students who mostly work in Education. Our thinking work together will be premised upon an article that I have just read (Twining, Heller, Nussbaum, and Tsai, 2017). If you are able to access this, you’ll have a good resource for doctoral students, who often have difficulty with how they are expected to write about their study’s epistemology and ontology.

I’ve sent this article in advance to the students who’ll be coming to my class, since it devotes a few paragraph to the need for ‘internal alignment’ in research writing. If you cannot access the article, it would still be possible to run a workshop in which doctoral students talk about how their research design links to their epistemological position, and how the bits of their thesis tie logically together within that framework.