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Outlines key issues re: qualitative doctoral dissertation proposals in the context of research universities. Speaks to issues of content, argument, evidentiary claims and warrants, etc.

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DissertationProposal PhD article

A proposal, then, is a piece of writing that outlines the problem to be addressed, sets the boundaries for the sorts of claims that will be made, and articulates the methods by which those claims will be supported by evidence and argument.
The reference to ‘‘the argument’’ in a dissertation is often a manner of speaking that may, most likely, refer to a network of arguments, some of them sometimes more central than others.
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- essential relationship among concepts
- Warrants are brought to the surface and become visible when interpretations are challenged.
- Challenges to an interpretation are almost always challenges about the quality of the evidence.
- not enough data to support the claim
- warrant is inadequate
- agree with your data
- in the desert—but I don’t see how that leads to a conclusion that
- is inadequate data and inadequate warrant
- fundamental disagreement with the theoretical perspective (backing)
- belief that the quality of our inquiries depend fundamentally on evidential argument.
- Philosophical (analytical, conceptual) inquiries are generally written with empirical phenomena as a backdrop
- Qualitative inquiries normally take pains to make clear that they are not generalizable (to qualify the claims that are made, to use Toulmin’s language) and to argue for the usefulness of the findings;
- I am suggesting, then, that any academic scholarship is guided by the implicit and explicit rules of inquiry (evidential argument), but the degree to which one will actually find the associated terms (claim, evidence, data, support, argument, and so on) depends on the field of study. Regardless of approach, the grounds on which the outcomes of a study can be regarded as ‘‘true’’ (warranted, justified, accurate, revealing, insightful, useful, and so on) is a legitimate question for any dissertation.
- The ‘‘claim’’ is usually implicit, but if made explicit, it would be written something like: (a) the descriptions in this study are accurate, (b) the interpretations in this study are trustworthy, (c) the perspective offered in this study is useful.
- The claims of philosophical/analytical dissertations
- support for the claims is less on empirical data than on the logical tightness of step-by-step argument, often including the careful analysis of central terms in the argument.
- The concept of an argument in a dissertation concerns the need for supporting the conclusions or interpretations in the study, whereas the concept of an argument in a proposal concerns the need to construct an argument for doing the research in the first place.
- a proposal is an academic document
- At any given point in the proposal, a reader should not raise the question, ‘‘Why is this passage here, and where does it fit in the proposal as a whole?’’
- The primary aim of a dissertation is not to advertise and to convince other people of what we already know or believe; there are other vehicles for fulfilling that agenda. Thus, the framing and wording of the proposal should reflect an attitude of genuine inquiry—it involves a spirit of genuinely finding out rather than proving.
- Here is the educational research problem. ->Here’s why it’s significant. ->Here’s what existing research has said about it. ->Here’s what the research has missed. ->Here’s what I intend to do. ->Here’s how it will contribute.
- Statements such as ‘‘I want to explore…’’ and ‘‘This study will examine…’’ do not tell a reader what the problem of the study is; rather, they say what the study will do, and although what the study will do is equally critical, a reader first wants to know the problem that will be the focus of the research.
- Construct or develop are better terms for capturing the process.
- Problems are usually constructed out of a complex interplay among one’s own thinking about an issue, one’s own experience, and one’s understanding of the research literature.
- Only a portion of all the imaginable educational problems merit the attention of two or three years of painstaking systematic inquiry.
- difference in scope
- a research problem is always articulated with reference to the research literature in the field
- An educational problem gets translated into a research problem (1) when it is couched in an argument (an argument, not merely an assertion) that illustrates its educational significance and (2) when it explicitly refers to existing research.
- different senses of problem
- 1) action
  
  2) source
  
  3) primary source
  
  4) context
- he source sense of problem is addressed by the literature review
- Somewhere in a qualitative proposal, it is appropriate to comment on one’s own biography as it relates to the study because this too is an issue of perspective—personal perspective. (I mention it here because it hints at how the researcher understands the theoretical perspective even though a personal statement is not necessarily found in the theoretical perspective section of a proposal or dissertation.)
- Pepper (1942) argued that metaphors, root metaphors to be more exact, were the basis on which we comprehend and give meaning to the world.
- conducting a pilot is a very useful way of determining if a line of thinking will bear fruit.
- Erickson’s (1986)
- structure of occurrences
- meaning-perspectives of the particular actors
- location of naturally occurring points of contrast that can be observed as natural experiments
- The identification of specific causal linkages that were not identified by experimental methods, and the development of new theories about causes and other influences on the patterns that are identified in survey data or experiments. (p. 121)
- happening,
- happenings organized in patterns of social organization and learned cultural principles
- related to happenings at other system levels outside and inside the setting
- compare with other ways of organizing social life in a wide range of settings in other places and at other times
- The lack of research in an area shifts the burden of writing to arguing persuasively why research of a particular type is needed (rather than to reviewing the literature).
- the proposal should indicate what type of search has been done (ERIC, the Internet, and so on) and what descriptors were used.
- show how that research is related to the proposed problem, including how it helps and how it is inadequate.
- fresh (original) perspective on a stale, exhausted line of inquiry.
- lot of relevant literature, but the literature is not research literature;
- existing research contributes fairly directly to the development of the specific questions that the study will address (see above).
- A methods section may have two parts. The first part is a justification for the general approach to the inquiry—a justification for why an experimental, correlational, survey, phenomenological, interpretive, critical, and so on, approach to the inquiry is the appropriate path to follow given the nature of the problem. How much explicit justification is needed is often a function of traditions and expectations of a particular field of inquiry.
- specific methods that will be used for data collection, interpretation, and presentation in the proposed study
- the main question is whether the specific methods are adequate for answering the questions that the inquiry has posed.
- data collection, details should be included about who, what, when, where, how many (participants, observations, interviews), how frequent (observations, interviews), how long, and so on. It is helpful to comment explicitly about how the data collected will be sufficient to address the questions of the study. With regard to analysis and interpretation, the proposal should indicate (1) how the researcher plans to go about data analysis and (2) from what point of view or theoretical perspective the data will be interpreted. Again, the aim of the section on methods is to demonstrate clearly and specifically the nature of the links between the central questions of the inquiry and the methods proposed to research those questions.
- The aim is to have a working document that eventually satisfies the student and the committee that they are ready to get on with the dissertation.
- It is ‘‘final’’ only in the sense that it was the last hard copy and satisfied the committee who then signed in all the right places;
- In these circumstances, there is usually a community of understanding, so to speak, and a proposal can be relatively short because much of what has been said above is implicitly understood.¹²
- Drafts should have a table of contents that lists sections and subsections exactly as they are in the body of the proposal and with page numbers so that a reader can get a sense of the whole and find key parts quickly.
- Logically speaking, a clear statement of the problem would come after a long, carefully developed argument that lays out the general background, including a review of the literature. At the end of such an argument (after, say, 15 pages or so) an author would to say something like, ‘‘Consequently, in light of the argument just made, our understanding of so and so has been inadequately researched. In this proposed study I will address that problem by…
- clear problem statement very early in the document (within the first couple of pages and preferably within the first two paragraphs), followed by an argument that supports that statement. It is as though the author is saying, ‘‘Here’s the problem, now let me take you through the argument supporting it, and at the end I’ll repeat the problem.’’
- moving smoothly through the foreground background terrain sometimes requires ‘‘metawriting’’ or, as some say, ‘‘sign-posts.’’ Metawriting hovers above the text, so to speak, and orients a reader—its distinguishing characteristic is that it is writing about the text rather than of the text itself.
- reminding the reader of where the text has been and where it is going, the metawriting in these sentences does alert a reader that there will be a diversion to a brief discussion about interpretation. The reader is told why there will be a brief diversion (to avoid confusion).
- By saying that it will be brief and will be treated more fully later, the author helps the reader relax and recognize that this is not all that will be said about interpretation.
- reading the text out loud
- a researcher might well have a clearer image of what she or he wants to do than what the problem is, particularly in the early stages.
- developing and narrowing the problem
- specific questions that the study will address
- making sure that the document is internally consistent with respect to form and meaning
- none of its parts lie outside its central focus
- Is it clear?
  
  •
  
  Is it detailed?
  
  •
  
  Does it have integrity?
  
  •
  
  Is the research needed?
- In the early days of qualitative research in education, it was common to see lengthy theoretical discussions justifying a qualitative approach, whereas today it is less common to see such justification unless it is in a field that has not embraced qualitative inquiry.
- proposals and dissertations are products of their time,
- Figure 2. Train of Thought
- ‘‘narrowing’’
- ‘‘directional movement of the argument,’’
- ou are in the domain of the research context, but don’t feel that you have the precision that you suspect is needed. It is at this point where the ‘‘steps of the trail’’ run out and you have to construct the path you want to take.
- you are at the point of working out both the path and the destination. It is an act of construction, not discovery (although one might discover some things while constructing). And it almost never proceeds linearly, even though the reconstructed logic makes it appear that way.
- It is the thoroughness and intensity of the conceptualization at the proposal stage that affords a researcher the confidence to respond appropriately when unanticipated issues do arise.
- The process of writing the proposal itself—the gut-wrenching process of getting the ideas to work—is a training ground for the attention to detail that is required to conduct a solid piece of research and produce a strong dissertation.
- strings of funding can fetter the expression of academic freedom and evidential argument in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.
- what is admissible as data and warrants are ultimately matters of worldview.