Top Tips for Writing Up Your Education Research Project

Top Tips for Writing Up Your Education Research Project First published on the Facebook page of ‘A Beginner’s Guide to Doing Your Education Research Project’: http://on.fb.me/QsLY2Q. ‘A Beginner’s Guide to Doing Your Education Research Project’, by Mike Lambert, is published by SAGE: http://bit.ly/143AhdA Tip 1: Use your data to answer research questions Tip 2: Integrate your data Tip 3: Include direct quotes when presenting qualitative data Tip 4: Link findings back to ideas in the literature Tip 5: Check your text for clarity, accuracy and consistency Tip 6: Strengthen criticality Tip 7: Write in a cautious way Tip 8: Discuss findings Tip 9: Use paragraphs Tip 10: Confusing spellings Tip 1: Use your data to answer research questions Sue’s project is about facilities for outdoor play in a children’s centre. She knows that the main purpose of a research investigation is to answer the project’s research questions – this is what her reader will wish to know most of all. When presenting her findings in the findings section, therefore, Sue decides to use her research questions as subtitles. She can then present relevant data in each sub-section and answer each research question in turn. For instance, her first research question is: ‘What facilities does the Centre have for outdoor play?’ She uses this as a subtitle, then presents data from her environmental audit and interviews with staff to answer the question. See also ‘A Beginner’s Guide…’ pp.173-174 & 183. Tip 2: Integrate your data Dan’s project is about practical methods of including children with disabilities in classroom activity and learning. He has collected data from interviews with staff (including the special needs coordinator), classroom observation of strategies and analysis of the school’s policy documents. His first research question asks about the range of approaches already evident in the school. He uses data from all of his sources to answer this question – interviews tell him what methods the staff say they use, observations show him what happens in practice and the policy documents indicate what the school intends to happen. By combining or ‘integrating’ data in this way, Dan can highlight how perspectives coincide, and also how they differ. He uses this approach to answer his other research questions too and gets a deeper and more intricate answer to each one as a result. See ‘A Beginner’s Guide…’ pp.170, 174 & 183. Tip 3: Include direct quotes when presenting qualitative data Jay has interviewed several teachers and parents for his investigation into homework. He has a great deal of qualitative data as a result. He analyses these data by picking out some key themes (e.g. opinions on benefits and disadvantages; possible improvements to current practice), then presents them to show how perspectives coincide or differ. To illuminate the ideas he presents, he includes some direct quotes from his data – examples of what exactly a teacher or parent said. Sometimes he uses a direct quote to illustrate a commonly held view, sometimes to present an alternative or unusual idea. Some quotes seem particularly evocative – they summarize a particular perspective in a clear, concise and quite vivid way – these he finds can be best of all. For the most part the quotations he chooses are quite short and he sometimes edits what was said to achieve this, using dots (…) to show that words have been omitted. Often too he does not provide a direct quotation, but paraphrases or summarizes what a teacher or parent has said. See ‘A Beginner’s Guide…’ pp.169 & 189. Tip 4: Link findings back to ideas in the literature Asha’s project is about differing perspectives of boys and girls about residential visits. She finds from her data that in general boys felt more enthusiastic about activities on such visits, while girls were usually keener on the social aspects of doing new things with friends. These findings are similar to ideas she found in the literature and wrote about in her literature review. In her findings section, therefore, after presenting her findings, she points out how these match what was found in the literature. Other aspects of her findings do not match what she found in the literature, so she points this out too. Throughout Asha should remember that the most important part of her project is what she discovered from her own data, so she should keep these links to the literature brief and concise, and only refer back to literature she has already mentioned – she should not introduce new material at this stage. See ‘A Beginner’s Guide…’ pp.175 & 183. Tip 5: Check your text for clarity, accuracy and consistency Your project is a substantial piece of work, so it is extra important that language is clear and accurate. Check your text, then check it again, paying particular attention to sentence structure, spelling and punctuation (including use of apostrophes). Ask a friend to check your text as well – s/he will find mistakes you have missed. Make sure too that what you have written is consistent. Do your research questions match what you have tried to find out? Are the methods you described in your methodology section the same as those you drew data from in your findings? Any inconsistencies can be very confusing for your readers – if you are not clear about your project, how can they be clear as well? See ‘A Beginner’s Guide…’ pp.185 & 191-195. Tip 6: Strengthen criticality Criticality is an important part of a research project, but can be difficult to achieve. Here are some ways to strengthen this aspect to your writing: Examine similarities, differences or inconsistencies in ideas examined in your literature review, or between ideas in the literature and the findings of your own research Point out where you feel that an idea in the literature is overstated or not given sufficient weight Indicate where you feel a piece of research you have reviewed is making claims which are not justified, or where you feel there were gaps or weaknesses in the investigation Do the same with your own research – justify what you did, but point out limitations also, or aspects which might have been done better. Include these points in recommendations for strengthening your investigation, if it was done again, and for further research. See ‘A Beginner’s Guide…’ pp.96-98 & 183. Tip 7: Write in a cautious way Researchers tend to be rather careful. They know that although research can increase understanding, it takes many studies to ‘prove’ anything or make findings certain. Because of this, they tend to write in a cautious, restrained way, generally avoiding words and phrases which display over-confidence about was achieved or found out. Here are some examples of how to write in this way: Don’t write: ‘Validity was achieved by using several methods.’ Instead, write: ‘Validity was strengthened by using several methods.’ Don’t write: ‘Piloting the questionnaire eliminated bias in the investigation.’ Instead, write: ‘Piloting the questionnaire data helped to reduce bias in the investigation.’ Don’t write: ‘Findings show that this method is effective’. Instead, write: ‘Findings indicate that there are benefits in using this method’. See ‘A Beginner’s Guide…’ p.190. Tip 8: Discuss findings A query from Maxine: I have presented and analysed my data, answering each research question in turn (see Top Tips 1 & 2). Now I need to ‘discuss’ these findings. What does this involve? Maxine, discussion of findings allows you first of all to evaluate them critically – their value, strengths and weaknesses, in particular the extent which they answer your research questions. This may also involve examining their value in relation to wider aspects of education - to development in the school or centre where you did your research, to educational development generally, to possibilities for further research in the topic you have investigated. You can also compare them to ideas you have already discussed in your literature review (see Top Tip 4) – how do your findings match these ideas, how do they differ? What are the implications of this? This kind of discussion can either be done as a separate section, or integrated within your presentation and analysis of data (consult your project guidance when making this choice). Discussion of findings can lead naturally to the listing of recommendations at the end of your project. See ‘A Beginner’s Guide…’ p.183. Tip 9: Use paragraphs A paragraph is a section of text, usually dealing with a single theme and indicated by a line space above and below, or by indentation of text at the start of the first line (‘A Beginner’s Guide…’ p.194 recommends the spacing method, to make sure paragraphs are totally clear). The use of paragraphs is an important way of structuring writing and making ideas understandable for your reader. Here are some basic rules for using paragraphs in academic writing: A paragraph always has more than one sentence A paragraph is never more than one page long The first or last sentence of a paragraph is often a summary of the paragraph as a whole. Look, for example, at page 1 of ‘A Beginner’s Guide…’, the section entitled: ‘Research: important or just interesting?’. This section has two paragraphs - each is made up of several sentences. The theme of the first paragraph is the importance of research in general, and its last sentence sums up the paragraph as a whole. The theme of the second paragraph is the importance of educational research in particular. Here the first two sentences sum up the paragraph. The first identifies the paragraph’s topic: educational research; the second summarizes the idea examined in the paragraph, which is that perceptions on the importance of educational research are mixed. Look at academic books and research articles to see how others use paragraphs to make the structure of their writing clear. Tip 10: Confusing spellings English has quite a few spellings which cause confusion: affect/effect; principal/principle; practice/practise; its/it’s (see ‘A Beginner’s Guide…’ page 192). Here are three more: Advice/advise: Advice is the noun: ‘Smith (2010) gives useful advice on this issue’. Advise is the verb: ‘Smith (2010) advises that interviews are the best method for examining perceptions in detail’. Compliment/complement: To compliment is to praise or say something good about someone. To complement means to add to something in order to improve it: ‘Findings from interviews complemented findings from the questionnaire’. Foreword/forward: A foreword is an introduction to a book or article (or even to a research project). Forward means onward or ahead. To see and receive more Facebook postings for ‘A Beginner’s Guide…’ click Like at: http://on.fb.me/QsLY2Q ML 04/13 Top Tips for Writing Up Your Education Research Project http://on.fb.me/QsLY2Q 1