My slides from the 2012 doctoral study school

1. Sound Scholarship
What does it look like?
How do you do it?

2. The Story Arc
End
Knowledge Claim
Beginning
Significance Plot
Warrant
• Most works of fiction have multiple arcs.
• Scholarly writing tends to have a single
arc

3. 3 Act structure
• Act 1 – Context and literature. Establishes
the importance of your research questions
• Act 2 – Methodology and data. Develops
your plot. Your “characters” deal with the
phenomenon.
• Act 3 – Dicussion and conclusion. Here
the consequences and implications of your
“characters” are brought home

4. Exercise
• On the index cards write down a topic that
you are interested in researching.
• Pass it to your neighbour.
• The neighbour then explains what the
significance of your topic is to them.

5. Keeping an open mind
• Do you ever buy a newspaper with a
political viewpoint opposed to your own?
• If you did, how would you assess the
content?

6. Judging an argument
A bit of light relief (with a serious point)

7. Argument
• Argument is essential to sound
scholarship
• An argument is a series of premises
leading to a conclusion.
• A conclusion can itself be a premise.
• If the premises do not lead logically to the
conclusion the argument is said to be
invalid

8. Valid and invalid arguments
• My friend told me the moon is made of
cheese. As far as I know the moon is
made of cheese.
• My friend told me the moon is made of
cheese. Actually it’s made of rock.
• Which of the above is a valid argument
and which is invalid?
• And which would be better scholarship?

9. Evidence
• Two types of evidence are essential to
your thesis
– Evidence from the literature
– Evidence from your data collection.
• I’m going to concentrate on the literature,
because reading critically is the first step
to writing critically.

10. Warrant
• Warrant means “justification”. The first of
the arguments about the moon did have
warrant (albeit extremely weak). The
second did not.
• In your work all your arguments must be
clearly warranted.
• Most warrant is supplied by evidence.
• Some warrant can be supplied by logic

11. Collecting evidence

12. Quotation
• Students often ask how much they should
quote other sources.
• As much as necessary, but not a letter
more, even in the literature review.

13. Turnitin

14. Act 1
• The hardest part of your doctorate by a
country mile!
• Significance
• Warrant
• Evidence
• Argument
• Originality

15. Act 2
• Act 1 builds the foundations for your plot
development because it:-
– Informs your paradigm choice.
– Informs your methodology.
– Informs your data collection
• Which is why the defence is your hardest
assignment. If you get act 1 right, Act 2
should write itself. (well, almost!)

16. Act 3
• A repeat of Act 1, but this time, you’re the
reader.
• Go through your work sentence by
sentence. Is everything you say
warranted?
• If it isn’t what is it doing in your thesis?
• But, remember the arc – you’re on the
downhill slope now!

17. Writing Style
• You will be expected to write in an
academic style. (However, don’t try to
mimic authors you have read.)
• Avoid rhetoric, value judgements, and
don’t use an author’s academic pedigree
to warrant their claims.
• Try and take a neutral tone, but use first
person where it feels appropriate.

18. Referencing
CUNY (2011) http://commons.gc.cuny.edu. Accessed 30/3/2011.
Disability Discrimination Act, (1995) London, HMSO
Education For Change Ltd, The Research Partnership and SociaL Informatics
Research Unit, University of Birmingham, 2005. Study of Environments to support
Elearning in UK further and Higher Education: A supporting Study for the Joint
Information Systems Committee (JISC). JISC. London: .
Ford, P.et.al. 1996. Managing change in higher education a learning environment
architecture. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Groom, J. and Lamb, B., 2010. Never mind the Edupunks or, the Great Word Count
Swindle. Educause review, 45(4), 50-58.
Essentially a reference has three parts.
1 Creator 2) Description 3) Location information
You can sometimes include a reference without a creator but the other two parts must
be present.

19. Recap
• You’re telling a story in three acts.
• In the beginning you have to get people to
read it. (Significance)
• In the middle you have to keep people
reading. (This data justifies me (i.e. the
reader) finding out more)
• At the end you have to suggest to the
reader what should be done about it.