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Thirty Tips For Dissertation Writing

Posted on 04 February 2011 by Steve Tjoa - http://stevetjoa.com/492/

Earlier today, I attended an excellent workshop by Dr. Rachna Jain on writing the dissertation. About 150-200 students attended. Here is some of her advice.

Writing Strategies

1. Writing is not revising. When you are writing, just write! Don’t stop, don’t backspace, don’t correct. Keep moving forward. Forward, forward, forward. Revise later. Perfectionism is your worst enemy, particularly at early stages.
2. Write in layers. First, crude main ideas. Then, fill in the gaps. Finally, citations.
3. Start with what you already know. “First drafts come from the heart.” In verbal conversation, you effortlessly tell the other person what you already know. When writing, pretend to tell someone the story. Then write the story. You may actually find it useful to record your own voice as you tell yourself the story so you can play it back as you write.
4. Write at least one page of your dissertation per day. Often more, but at least one page. And it doesn’t have to be in order. Any one page is fine.
5. Allow rough drafts. Launch quickly and iterate rapidly. The rough draft should be very rough. Don’t worry about errors. Just write, baby. But also turn around revisions quickly.
6. Use an outline. It helps keep a coherent flow throughout your dissertation. Try constructing a mindmap — a “tree” of ideas with the core (root) idea in the center and branch ideas around the root, and so on.
7. “Powerpoint” your ideas. Then turn your slides into prose.
8. Seek feedback regularly. Feedback helps turn revisions around quickly, too.
9. At first, ignore your audience. Write for yourself, first. Then, once you have written a fair amount, consider your audience, and revise. Write outward, not inward.
10. Writing out of order is fine, perhaps even preferable. I made the mistake of writing my early research papers in order from introduction to conclusion. However, research is always so unpredictable and amorphous that the important middle sections would always change. Subsequently, so would the introduction and conclusion. Now, I begin the middle sections first, then write the introduction, conclusion, and abstract last.

Goals and Planning

11. Set many small goals. Break writing tasks into small sections. Incorporate transitions later.
12. Use organic goal setting. Only set goals for each week. Believe it or not, do not set rigid goals for a long period, e.g., semester. Shifting the finish line is deadly. Shift it once, and you get comfortable with it.
13. Set specific, measurable goals. “Finish dissertation” is too broad. “Finish chapter 1″ is still too broad. “Write five pages of subsection 2.1 from 1 pm to 1:45 pm” is better. Think in terms of pages per chapter or pages per section.
14. Plan your progress. Keep track, e.g., with a calendar.
15. Time yourself! You can use website timers. I am timing myself right now. I started this article at 8:53 pm and completely ended it at 9:39 pm. (Small typo corrections came after.)
16. The optimal chunk of time for contiguous writing is 45 minutes.
17. Aim for 5-7 hours of writing on a writing day. Do not exceed 7 hours. And not every day should be a dedicated writing day.
18. Take fifteen-minute breaks. Get up and walk around. Observe your surroundings. “To be a good writer, one needs to be a good observer.”

Environment

19. Work in a sparse, uncluttered space. Visual clutter tends to clutter the mind.
20. Write as early in the day as possible. That is when you are freshest. If you must procrastinate, do not, under any circumstances, do it in the morning.
21. Prepare the night before. Set your goals for the next day. That will make the following morning more productive.
22. Change physical environments. I have heard this advice often. Sometimes, after working in the same place for so long, you grow too comfortable and complacent around it. Try the library or the cafe. Be around others who are also working. Of course, avoid areas that are too disruptive. Classical or soft instrumental music is fine. Music with words is naturally distracting to humans, whether we consciously realize it or not.
23. Write with others. Being around others united in the same general goal is energizing. That type of work ethic becomes contagious.
24. But don’t compare with others. Focus on yourself.

Internal Attitudes and Self-Improvement

25. Write something every day, even if it is not on the dissertation. Every skill takes 10,000 hours to master. That includes writing. Writing is like exercising a muscle. You only get good at it through practice. That can include a personal journal, emails, a blog post like this one, etc.
26. Feel good first. Then write. A burdened mind is an unproductive mind. Negative thoughts are blocking. Get everything else in your life in order to the greatest extent possible. Think positive. Then write.
27. If you cannot get started, write about what troubles you. Notice what you keep thinking about.
28. If you still cannot get started, ask yourself, “Why did I care?” What made you start this project in the first place? Writer’s block comes from a lack of emotional engagement with one’s work. As time passes, it is natural to become more emotionally detached from the work. Step back, and remind yourself why you care and what makes your project so awesome.
29. Reward yourself. Reward positive behavior. Reward your accomplishments, but only when you actually reach a milestone. Otherwise, don’t. (I asked, “But when I have momentum, I hate to disrupt my momentum with something frivolous like a reward. Is that okay to skip rewards?” Her answer: “No.” Because if you rely on momentum, then something must be wrong with the system. Therefore, improve the system. Ask yourself why you are so reliant on momentum in the first place. Otherwise, writer’s block will inevitably occur again.)

… and a final reminder

30. Activity is not necessarily productivity. Output is what counts.

I was very honoured to receive the Nursing Faculty E-Health Award 2012 in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada on November 13, 2012 from the Canadian Association of Schools of Nursing and Canada Health Infoway.

The Canadian Association of Schools of Nursing and Canada Health Infoway are pleased to announce the creation of a competition aimed at supporting nursing school faculty who demonstrate exceptional leadership and commitment to e-health in nursing education. This award is a component of Canada Health Infoway’s Clinicians-in-Training Initiative, aimed at improving the preparedness of graduates to work in a technology-enabled environment.

This Youtube video is another official update to the original "Shift Happens" video. This completely new Fall 2009 version includes facts and stats focusing on the changing media landscape, including convergence and technology, and was developed in partnership with The Economist. For more information, or to join the conversation, please visit http://mediaconvergence.economist.com and http://shifthappens.wikispaces.com.

How might a more holistic scientific process broaden our perception of the natural world and inform subsequent understanding, resulting in a deep reconnection with the Earth? This promising and informative film will be based on the book Animate Earth by ecologist Stephan Harding: the story of Earth's functioning as a self-regulating, living being and of our inherent human, spiritual, moral and physical connection to that story. Stephan Harding holds a doctorate in ecology from the University of Oxford and is co-ordinator of the MSc in Holistic Science at Schumacher College, Devon, England.

His book is a brilliant synthesis of Gaian science and forward-looking social theory and argues that we need to establish a right relationship with the planet as a living entity in which we are indissolubly embedded and to which, in the final analysis, we are all accountable. Animate Earth will sensitively explore and convey an emerging new scientific understanding on both an intellectual and an emotional level. Holistic science focuses, amongst other things, on the qualities of organisms, on process and form, which constitutes visual subject matter, often in movement.

The labarynthical, interwoven impression that a film invokes, combining images and sound, is a perfect medium for communicating this. With unrefined enthusiasm, Stephan will integrate rational scientific analysis with intuition, sensing and feeling. He replaces the objectifying language found in some forms of scientific inquiry with a way of speaking about Earth as a sentient and living being rather than as a dead, inert mechanism. He conveys the facts by way of wry wit, uncanny and effective humour, and intellectual passion. In literally bringing science to life, atoms, for example, are described using metaphors of human-to-human relationships such as marriage, attraction and repulsion so as to imbue rocks, water and the atmosphere with personality. The ancient forests, moorlands, and seacoast of England will provide the location for the majority of the filming. Live action footage of Stephan enthusiastically revealing to us the planet's systems as evidenced in the natural world around him will give depth and character to the film. Some of Stephan's factual and engagingly presented lectures will be highlighted with animated sequences.

The film will also include interviews with authorities eminent in their scientific fields, such as James Lovelock, Brian Goodwin, Vandana Shiva, Satish Kumar, Arthur Zajonc, Joanna Macy, Craig Holdredge, and Fritjof Capra. It is our hope that this film will reach out to individuals and groups worldwide. The scope and content of this film can offer a new and much-needed perspective for visualizing positive change in the face of Earth's diminishments. We are marketing the film to public television, high school and college science departments (to offer students and teachers another point of view within the context of scientific inquiry), local community events and as a DVD. A teacher's film content outline, student workbook with questions and projects and a curriculum guide with a resource listing will be provided to schools. Our survival as a species hangs on an interdependence with the earth: there is a need to not only rationally understand the reasons behind global warming but to re-connect with our planet as individuals and as a species. This documentary will encourage and enable the viewer to begin this process by readdressing the way they perceive the earth through the lens of holistic science and Harding's understanding and wisdom.

Due to life's events the final dates have been revised, extensions have been granted.

These are the definitive final process dates for April 30, 2011 completion!

Sunday 03 January 2010

by: Henry A. Giroux, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed


Paulo Freire and Henry A. Giroux, Amherst, Massachusetts, 1981. (Photo: Henry A. Giroux)



Paulo Freire is one of the most important critical educators of the 20th century.[1] Not only is he considered one of the founders of critical pedagogy, but he also played a crucial role in developing a highly successful literacy campaign in Brazil before the onslaught of the junta in 1964. Once the military took over the government, Freire was imprisoned for a short time for his efforts. He eventually was released and went into exile, primarily in Chile and later in Geneva, Switzerland, for a number of years. Once a semblance of democracy returned to Brazil, he went back to his country in 1980 and played a significant role in shaping its educational policies until his untimely death in 1997. His book, "Pedagogy of the Oppressed," is considered one of the classic texts of critical pedagogy, and has sold over a million copies, influencing generations of teachers and intellectuals both in the United States and abroad. Since the 1980s, there has been no intellectual on the North American educational scene who has matched either his theoretical rigor or his moral courage. Most schools and colleges of education are now dominated by conservative ideologies, hooked on methods, slavishly wedded to instrumentalized accountability measures and run by administrators who lack either a broader vision or critical understanding of education as a force for strengthening the imagination and expanding democratic public life.

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An interview with Henry A. Giroux


BY Manuela Guilherme

Centro de Estudos Sociais
Universidade de Coimbra

Henry Giroux became established as a leading figure in radical education theory in the 1980s. Not only did he revive the arguments for civic education proposed by the main educational theorists of the 20th century, namely Dewey, Freire and others such as the reconstructionists Counts, Rugg and Brameld, but he also advanced their theories by expanding them into the idea of a ‘border pedagogy’. His proposal can be viewed as the application of a post-colonial cosmopolitan perspective to the North American notion of democratic civic education. Giroux provides us with a vision for education that addresses the challenges which demographically and politically changing western societies are facing at the beginning of the 21st century. The longer it takes for policy makers in education to take his guidance seriously, the more time and possibilities we will all be wasting and missing. In fact, educators at all levels of the educational system and all over the world are experiencing growing de-motivation and even frustration because they feel they have been forced backwards lately instead of moving forwards in challenging themselves, both as professionals and citizens, to meet the needs of our fast-changing societies. Giroux has urged educators and academics to react against these paralysing pressures and to be critical, creative and hopeful about the potential that both they and their students offer, in order to counter the conservative political tendencies which have been imposing a definition of excellence in education that means submission to market pressures rather than educational excellence in terms of innovative intellectual production. Giroux argues for both critique and possibility in education and advocates independence and responsibility for teachers and students, that is, he claims dignity and respect for educational institutions, teachers and students. Giroux has bravely recovered the political nature of the everyday labor of educational researchers and of educators themselves. Furthermore, Giroux has also eloquently theorized a critical pedagogy of Cultural Studies based on what was proposed by the educationalist Raymond Williams himself. In fact, the field of Cultural Studies has been problematised, and is itself problematic, although very rich and promising, since it has broken down the barriers between disciplines. Therefore, it needs to be fully theorised in order to describe its goals, as well as the bases of its knowledge and processes. Giroux has made important contributions to these processes by mapping the relationships between language, text, society, new technologies and underlying power structures. He has thus responded to its critics and to those academics who have adhered to it in order to follow fashion or find a way out of their now neglected traditional disciplines. In addition, he has indicated new paths that go beyond recuperating Williams’ and Hall’s politically committed and scientifically founded new field of Cultural Studies and move into examining the implications of new technologies in the exchange and re-creation of new knowledge within new power relationships. It is nonetheless worth mentioning that Giroux has also been successful in identifying new modes of representation and learning.

Giroux has indeed advanced a new school of thought and inspired both educational theorists and practitioners into action with his powerful, vibrant and committed voice. By advocating a pedagogy of responsibility, he has himself taken responsibility for his own political and social role as an academic. He has focused his sights on redefining and strengthening the notion of ‘the public’ with regard to knowledge, education and civic life, mainly by incorporating into the construction of those fields the concepts of ‘public time’ and ‘public arena’. While most educational theorists have focussed on the influence of society on the educational context, Giroux, although critically unveiling the political and economic forces that threaten academic and school independence and creativity, is more daring and clearly draws our attention to the transformative potential of the academy and the school within wider a society. In doing so, he recaptures the political in the pedagogical. Finally, even though he focuses his discourse on general education, civic education and cultural studies, Giroux’s proposals for educational theory and practice offer language and intercultural communication theorists and practitioners a basis for renewing their visions and practices. Having made these points, in an attempt to contextualize Giroux’s statements below, it is now time to let his voice emerge.


READ FULL ARTICLE AT: http://www.henryagiroux.com/RoleOfCritPedagogy.htm

Henry Giroux: Rethinking the Promise of Critical Education Under an Obama Regime

Tuesday 02 December 2008

by: Chronis Polychroniou, t r u t h o u t | Interview

In the most general sense, I understand education as a moral and political practice whose purpose is not only to introduce students to the great reservoir of diverse intellectual ideas and traditions, but also to engage those inherited bodies of knowledge thorough critical dialogue, analysis and comprehension. At the same time, education is a set of social experiences and an ethical space through which it becomes possible to rethink what Jacques Derrida once called the concepts of the "possible and the impossible," and to enable what Jacques Rancière calls loosening the coordinates of the sensible through a constant reexamination of the boundaries that distinguish the sensible from the subversive. Both theorists are concerned with how the boundaries of knowledge and everyday life are constructed in ways that seem unquestionable, making it necessary not only to interrogate commonsense assumptions, but also to ask what it means to question such assumptions and see beyond them. As a political and moral practice, education always presupposes a vision of the future in its introduction to, preparation for and legitimization of particular forms of social life, demanding answers to the questions of whose future is affected by these forms. For what ends and to what purposes do they endure?

READ FULL ARTICLE: http://www.truthout.org/article/henry-giroux-rethinking-promise-critical-education

Title: Men & women and tools : reflections on male resistance to women in trades and technology

Author: Braundy, Marcia Ann

Degree Doctor of Philosophy - PhD

Program Curriculum Studies

Copyright Date: 2005

Abstract:

Men & Women and Tools is an exploratory study, where new knowledge is created in the interplay of voices: narratives of lived experience, a data play of participants' voices, research and exposition in the literature, and the space between the audience and the text. Male and female workers, equity consultants and advocates discussed male resistance to women in trades and technology. In one interview with trades workers an explicit clarity emerged, provoking an emotional understanding of the issues. That interview became a fifteen minute data play, creating a mirror where, in a moment of reflection, individual audience members can choose whether to continue the constructions of gender they find. Most of the words, thoughts, and sentiments found in the play are direct quotes from the interview. Reflecting on their experience integrating women on their worksites, those interviewed poignantly demonstrated the struggles facing men and women in a society that constructs and limits their vocational and emotional relationships, while embedding expectations regarding their contributions to society. They exposed their own fears, and concerns. But also interwoven was a construction of women and their place in these men's interpretation of the social order. The notions of patriarchal masculinity were overpoweringly present. The interview resonated with my own experience as a trades worker. It struck cords with equity interventions undertaken with both men and women to change the social construct of gender and work. The voices embodied and echoed hegemonic struggles in contention for the past 250 years. Performed at the Brave New Play Rites Festival at UBC, Men & Women and Tools was digitally videotaped and edited. The artefact, a performative authoethnography, is a personification of a social reality. Interweaving scholarly voices naming the historical, sociological and cultural roots of gendered practices with the voices from the play, this dissertation illustrates the ways that social reality is constructed and reconstituted in the cultures, practices and motivations of society, and how the resistance has emerged. The research findings are embodied: a reflection, a provocation, a pedagogical tool to be used in schools and union halls to interfere in the mechanisms of gender relations in the 21st century.

URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/17488

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Title: Affirming life despite a poisoned fate : a grounded theory of reproductive decision-making among women living with HIV

Author: Hoogbruin, Amandah Lea

Degree Doctor of Philosophy - PhD

Program Nursing

Copyright Date: 1999

Abstract:

The purpose of this qualitative research study was to investigate the cultural, psychological, and social processes of reproductive decision-making among women living with HIV. In using grounded theory method, the primary objective of this study was to generate a substantive theory. Audiotaped interviews were completed with 29 women living with HIV and nine of their primary support persons. Other sources of data included field notes about each interview, non-fictional literature, and articles in the popular press that described the experiences of reproductive decision-making for women living with HIV. Data were analyzed by using techniques of constant comparison for qualitative data. 'Affirming life despite a poisoned fate' was identified as the core process in reproductive decision-making by women living with HIV. This process consisted of two competing elements: 'struggling with vulnerability' and 'striving for longevity.' These elements interacted dialectically so that change in a woman's sense of her own vulnerability affected her capacity to strive to live longer. This interaction depended on the woman's experience of 'wanting to live,' 'managing fears of HIV,' 'awakening personal spirituality,' and 'yearning for connection.' A woman's sense of balance in 'struggling while striving' contributed to decisions about 'risking deadly connections,' i.e., whether she would risk possibly giving others HIV when having sex or giving birth. The women considered a range of practical, romantic, intellectual, and ethical determinants in deciding "how risky is risky?" This personal calculation of risk accounted for the diverse and sometimes contradictory feelings and thoughts described by women as they made these decisions, and allowed each woman consciously or unconsciously to justify their choices. Throughout the overarching process of 'affirming life despite a poisoned fate,' each turning point in the women's decision-making depended on their life context including their own sense of 'mothering capacity' and 'mothering anxiety,' and how they saw themselves in terms of the struggle with vulnerability and the striving for longevity. For these women, reproductive decision-making involved making sexual decisions about whether to protect others from getting HIV and to protect themselves from the potentially traumatic result of getting pregnant. Such decisions were heartbreaking emotionally as each woman confronted deep convictions about spirituality and morality, her many contradictory, changing desires, and the powerful, social forces that shape perceptions about motherhood. These decisions were not always well-informed because of the gaps in knowledge about the most effective treatments and best prevention practices for HIV-seropositive women. This grounded theory provides some insights about the realities of reproductive decision-making of women living with HIV. Health professionals must be sensitive to the effects of HIV stigma and be prepared to set aside their personal values, and encourage women to reflect on "what matters most" when faced with pregnancy decisions. Health professionals have a crucial role in assisting women living with HIV to optimize their health, by knowing available HIV prevention technologies, and informing them about current treatment options. Efforts must also be made to involve the primary support persons or sex partners and to assist couples in talking about sexual issues. Other important implications included new research directions to address the unique concerns of women living with HIV and policies to ensure the provision and accessibility of comprehensive health services for all those who must endure the terrible reality of this disease.

URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/9882

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Title: Restor(y)ing relational identities through (per)formative reflections on nursing education : a textual exhibitionist's tale of living inquiry

Author: Szabo, Joanna

Degree Doctor of Philosophy - PhD

Program Education

Copyright Date: 2009

Subject Keywords Nursing education; Arts-informed inquiry; Living inquiry; Narrative; Reflective

Abstract:

At the outset, I dis-claim any knowledge or understanding what-so-ever, which is a peculiar stance to take for a nurse educator immersed in the language of “expertise,” “best practices,” and “champion” healthcare offerings. I do not dis-claim knowledge to absolve my professional accountability, nor do I absolve myself of being responsible for my text, rather I apprehend this journey of sentience and incarnation as an infant experiencing and learning the world in which it finds itself. It is only through a naïve, furtive play that I am able to proceed, through the difficulties and paradoxical tensions of constructed identities, without complete paralysis. As I play and ponder my way through multiple methodologies, a representational form emerges between repetitious moments of contemplation, remembering lived experiences, and reflecting on philosophical discourses. The difficulty or tension lies in the provocation of identities, as nurse, educator, and mother, among many other stances and formulations. Each identified discourse compels me to challenge the gaps in my knowledge in new ways. As I explore, I unravel the forms of text that are various incarnations of narrative reflection. The choices I make are about inquiring through concept, form and identification, which I both uniquely challenge as an individual and hold in common by being socially and historically situated. Each transition, contemplation and provocation is hopeful and volatile. I am always attuned to how it is that I live the spaces between each, unknowing my “self” as my otherness, letting go the ideal/real and becoming the (/) through a relational pedagogy.

URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/4911

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Title: Enactive teaching in higher education : transforming academic participation and identiy through embodied learning

Author: Hocking, William Brent

Degree Doctor of Philosophy - PhD

Program Education

Copyright Date: 2004

Abstract:

Enactive Teaching in Higher Education is a narrative exploration of embodied teaching in the university classroom based on the enactive view of cognition described by Francisco J. Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch. On the surface, their philosophy is a heavily theoretical critique of epistemological dualism. More profoundly, it is an imaginative proposition for reinventing ourselves as human beings by acknowledging the participatory nature of perception, how reflection-as-experience implicates us in relationships that determine our most fundamental senses of identity. Enactive philosophy is pervasively ecological. It asks us to consider not only how body, mind, and spirit are interconnected, but how subjective senses of self are disrupted and transformed by interactions with other people. It is a view that extends Hannah Arendt's embrace of human togetherness. For this reason, enactive philosophy raises questions about what it means to be and become a dynamic, well-balanced educational participant. My curiosity is how enactive philosophy informs personal and collective senses of participation and identity in adult and higher education specifically. I focus this interest around two teaching-related questions: (a) What do embodied views of cognition reveal about adult learning and self-development? and (b) How do adults' embodied perceptions of themselves and others support holistic understandings of teaching? My inquiry draws on three data sources: (a) a critical literature analysis of embodied pedagogy, (b) a field study that documents perceptions of embodied teaching and learning in a graduate seminar, and (c) reflections on my journey as an elementary teacher preparing to become a university instructor. I present my findings thematically using narratives to bridge theory and practice. The themes offer a framework for enactive teaching. My senses of narrative, like my senses of teaching, are guided by enactive philosophy. The significance of this view is to trouble instrumental and prescriptive views of education while accentuating a connection between embodied knowing and pedagogies of possibility.

URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/16028

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Title: Elders’ teachings on indigenous leadership : leadership is a gift

Author: Young, Alannah Earl

Degree Master of Arts - MA

Program Educational Studies

Copyright Date: 2006

Abstract:

This qualitative study introduces a variety of considerations to help understand ways in which Indigenous Knowledge broadens the existing dominant views of leadership. Indigenous Elders, as a source of Indigenous Knowledge provide intergenerational leadership through the sharing of their teachings, oral histories and experiences. For this study I examined the culturally relevant Indigenous leadership program that is offered within the non-credit Longhouse Leadership Program (LLP) at the First Nations House of Learning (FNHL) at the University of British Columbia (UBC), taught by Elders, cultural leaders and educators. Through the telling of oral histories, nine Elders and cultural educators who work with the FNHL community shared their views on Indigenous leadership presenting historical examples of Indigenous leadership and recommending pedagogy for the current Longhouse leadership program. Their cultural teachings are resources for Indigenous leadership pedagogy that is transformative. The Elders’ teachings on Indigenous leadership are transformational because they identify and deconstruct colonial structures and support the self determined leadership goals of local communities. The teachings are: knowing the history of the land and educating others; reclaiming culture and living the teachings; culture as a support for individuals, families and communities; leadership as a gift-step forward demonstrating community responsibilities; and wholistic pedagogy all which is transformational when delivered within an anti racism education framework. These teachings are consistent with those found more generally in the academic literature, emphasizing leadership grounded in the cultural teachings that supports living Aboriginal communities and coalition building for change.

URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/5600

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