Shifting gaps

Is it me, or do we all experience this?

Depending on how I structure my literature review, I can reveal different gaps. So like a kaleidoscope, with each turn and movement, I see different gaps!

How? It's constantly shifting!

Which structure is best? Which information to privilege, which to leave out?

Re-reading articles used in the literature review

To give you an update of where I'm at doing my thesis. I have collected sufficient data. I have done preliminary analysis, enough to have written two papers that I hope can be published. However, in the process of doing those two papers, I realized that I want to reorganize the way I present my findings, which also means, I want to reanalyze my data. I have been analyzing it thematically, however, recently I realized the strength of using a case study approach is not found in identifying common themes across cases, but finding nuances and complexities within cases. However, owing to the way I have been analyzing data, I have not been able to capture all these nuances within in each. (They were good for finding cool ideas for papers though.)

But also because of this change of emphasis, I will need to change how I did my literature review. It probably means that a lot of what I have read would become less important in significance, but a few key articles would increase in significance. I am thinking of doing it this way in order to be able to rightly position my paper. Writing the papers for publication made me realized that I have been too broad and expansive in review previously and I want to narrow down and be more focused.

So the next step for me is to re-read those key articles that specifically talk about TEACHERS and patriotism. Rather than just PATRIOTISM in general. I will be better able to show the gaps this way... And next step also, to re-organize my findings section. It will be good. Currently there is too much discussion in my findings section. However if I write them case by case, I could more clearly delineate each teacher and later on discuss on findings separately in the discussion section. I believe this would tidy up things quite a lot.

It's already end September... Year ends are usually more busy for me... But my goal is still to complete my thesis within this Semester. But I am not going to kill myself over it. If really cannot, then I will extend by one more Semester, though it's not ideal because I don't need 6 months to write.

The following passage comforts me, at the thought of re-reading my articles to write my literature review...

...remember that in qualitative inquiry reviewing literature is an ongoing process that cannot be completed before data collection and analysis. As you reflect upon the data you collect, you will realize the need to review previously unexamined literature of both substantive and theoretical nature...Regard reviewing literature in interactive terms. You can learn different things from the work of others depending on what you already have learned and what you need to know. You may find yourself both dismayed and pleased to benefit later from material read earlier but overlooked because you lacked the experience to recognize it as beneficial. (p. 32)

Glesne, C. 2011. Becoming qualitative researchers: An introduction. Boston, MA: Pearson.

Thinking in absolutes/Over-reliance on theory

I have been sharing my work with another scholar, a PHD student, who is my writing partner. She sees and thinks differently from me and is very sharp, always identifying incoherence in my work. Recently, she shared her observation that I often think in absolutes, it is either this or that, but I do not realized the nuance and complexity about my cases that my teachers can fall somewhere between the two extremes. This was similarly raised during my confirmation exercise last December. My examiners asked me why I saw "blind patriotism" and "constructive patriotism" as two extremes. Couldn't they be on a continuum?

The more I grapple with this, the more I realized the roots of my dichotomous thinking. When I first read about scholars' theories about the two types of patriotism, I was floored! I was so excited as I found theories that I can adopt into my study. But I forgot that the tradition from which these scholars were were from the positivist tradition and quantitative researchers. Nuances did not captivate them, they wanted a way to pigeon-hole people into two groups such that they can easily explained why some people were one way and other people another way. Subsequently, their theories became popular and replicated and theorized by others, yet... people have rarely questioned the limitations of dichotimizing people into just two groups!

What happened to me was that I was "being in the grip" of an existing theory rather than "having a grip" of this theory (p. 61). Rather than using the theory to help me frame my inquiry in a certain way to reflect my aims, I was trying to support someone else's agenda. Why should I be supporting these theorists' agenda? Shouldn't my research be adding on to knowledge, rather than simply reinforcing existing knowledge, even though reinforcing knowledge is not a bad thing in itself. It is important "to distinguish between ideas that were moving [my] inquiry forward and those that, however intellectually compelling, were causing [me] to spin [my wheels]." (p. 61)

This is how Schram (2006) puts it:

...what you should avoid is the tight embrace of theory as a singular preoccupation in your work. Imposing a well-established theory on your developing inquiry may set you up with a neat and satisfying framework for your study, but it may also prematurely shut down avenues of meaningful questioning or prevent you from seeing events and relationships that don't fit the theory...theory can provide perspective and suggest pattern, but it need not define what you can see.

Schram does not deny "the practical ways in which theory can contribute" to our work though, including:

1. Offering us a way to connect our work to some larger issue or body of knowledge by inviting us to consider classes of events rather than single instances.
2. Giving us a critical perspective to criticize prior work.
3. Enabling us to not study everything by narrowing our decisions down "to attend to some things but not others in the course" of our inquiry (p. 60).

Schram, Thomas H. 2006. Conceptualizing and proposing qualitative research. 2 ed. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey and Columbus, Ohio: Pearson, Merrill Prentice Hall.

What writing a thesis is like...

Putting a book together is interesting and exhilarating. It is sufficiently difficult and complex that it engages all your intelligence. It is life at its most free. Your freedom as a writer is not freedom of expression in the sense of wild blurting; you may not let rip. It is life at its most free, if you are fortunate enough to be able to try it, because you select your materials, invest your task, and pace yourself. In the democracies, you may even write and publish anything you please about any governments or institutions, even if what you write is demonstrably false. The obverse of this freedom, of course, is that your work is so meaningless, so fully for yourself alone, and so worthless to the world, that no one except you cares whether you do it well, or ever. You are free to make several thousand close judgment calls a day. Your freedom is a by-product of your days' triviality. - Annie Dillard, The Writing Life, page 11

 Annie Dillard puts it so well. It is "interesting and exhilarating", "engages all your intelligence" and "life at its most free" yet not that free because we want to produce something for the benefit of not just the writer, but all for his or her audience. :)

An encouragement to write a thesis rather than many unrelated essays

"It makes more sense to write one big book - a novel or nonfiction narrative - than to write many stories or essays. Into a long, ambitious project you can fit or pour all you possess and learn. A project that takes five years will accumulate those years' inventions and richnesses. Much of those years' reading will feed the work." (p. 71)

- The Writing Life, Annie Dillard, pg. 71

Throwing away the beginning of a work

"It is the beginning of a work that the writer throws away... In those early pages and chapters anyone may (p. 5) find bold leaps to nowhere, read the brave beginnings of dropped themes, hear a tone since abandoned, discover blind alleys, track red herrings, and laboriously learn a setting now false... Sometimes the writer leaves his early chapters in place from gratitude; he cannot contemplate them or read them without feeling again the blessed relief that exalted him when the words first appeared - relief that he was writing anything at all. That beginning served to get him where he was going, after all; surely the reader needs it, too, as groundwork. But no.

Every year the aspiring photographer bought a stack of his best prints to an old, honored photographer, seeking his judgment. Every year the old man studied the prints and painstakingly ordered them into two piles, bad and good. Every year the old man moved a certain landscape print into the bad stack. At length he turned to the young man: "You submit this same landscape every year, and every year I put it on the bad stack. Why do you like it so much?" The young photographer said, "Because I had to climb a mountain to get it." (p. 6)
...
How many books do we read from which the writer lacked courage to tie off the umbilical cord? How many gifts do we open from which the writer neglected to remove the price tag? Is it pertinent, is it courteous, for us to learn what it cost the writer personally? (p. 7))"

Annie Dillard, The Writing Life, 1990

The means to the end

One factor hindering research is the overemphasis on the end product rather than the process. This sounds very cliche but I noticed I put less attention and care on the quality of thinking and decisions I make in the research when my concern is merely on completing a task. Because when I focus on completing it, I somehow think within me that the means does not matter, so long I can produce the end product.

But such a way of thinking is so detrimental to the research process, because what readers and scholars will question is often not merely the end product but how you got there. Everything from the sources you referred to the methodological method you chose will be scrutinized, even if your end product is nice, they will ask if it's credible and reliable.

So I'm going back to the basics. I am picking up Glaser and Strauss's book to learn what exactly is "Grounded Theory". I want to use this method to analyze my data and I want to do it rightly so.

Courage in research

"Courage utterly opposes the bold hope that this is such fine stuff the work needs it, or the world. Courage, exhausted, stands on bare reality: this writing weakens the work. You must demolish the work and start over. You can save some of the sentences, like bricks. It will be a miracle if you can save some of the paragraphs, no matter how excellent in themselves or hard-won. You can waste a year worrying about it, or you can get it over with now." - Annie Dillard, The Writing Life, page 4.

Today, I am going back to the classroom. I'm going to test some of the hypothesis that I have. I am willing to allow the teacher to change my mind of how I see him. I am willing to rewrite my thesis to make it more "truthful" and "thorough" upon new evidence. :)

Research is also courage. When you've been thinking about something the whole day but you have no solution and you have to abandon the process for another day or another time and leave it hanging there, because there are other things to do and worry about. It's letting go. Letting go takes courage.

Reflections on academic life

I am one of those you might say is a late bloomer. I am looking at some of the ecological research articles I have printed out and read as an undergraduate student in university. And I must honestly say that back then, I didn't really get what scholarship was about. I did not really know how to use research papers or knew what was primary research. I also did not like reading the textbook, which is a collection and synthesis of much the research done on that topic so far. I did not understand all these back then, what was research about. I think some of my friends got it very quickly. They were doing research at a young age and having fun at it.

But for me... It's only now. I only started understanding what scholarship and academia is about now. And that's 5 years after I obtained my undergraduate degree. I did not know what I was doing. Bombarded by what other scientists have found, I did not know that there is so much out there in the world that we do not yet know. I wish I had got started on this earlier. I could have been a true botanist or biologist have I realized what research was about back then. (I was perhaps too touch and go to delve deep into something. I had one foot in biology, but another in architecture and urban planning. Actually I was very fascinated by human geography too. I liked being in the university because it exposed me to so much knowledge about the things that I love.)

It's only now when I'm doing educational research that I learned this. :)

That's life isn't it.

And I also learned something else that I did not know in my undergraduate days. You become familiar with a set of literature, a group of scholars who are active in your field. I took 3 years to become somewhat familiar with the famous educators in citizenship education. I have left the biology scene for a good 5 years and I really no longer have any idea who is up and coming in that field anymore. (I remembered my professor once commenting that there was this fig researcher who suddenly vanished from the scene and he did not know why. I was fascinated by that. You know biologists' job can be harrowing at times in the wilderness. I imagined  him losing his footing while scaling mountains and plummeting down or kidnapped by cannibals in the jungle. But I soon found out that he changed line from a researcher to a wildlife photographer. Imagine that!) And these people in citizenship education have become my 'friends'. I listen to what they say and I respond to them and they respond back to me. Many of them I have not met, but there's this relationship that has been developed from reading what they write and writing in response to that. It's actually going to be hard for me to start afresh in another field. I like these people. :)

I'm thinking of throwing these set of papers away... It also means there's no turning back symbolically in one sense.

Being an editor

Today, I will change my role from writer to editor. I have a piece of work that I want to see published. As a writer, I write and cannot look at my work objectively. Today, I will distance myself from my work and look at it as an editor. I will make editorial considerations. Will a reader understand what I am saying. Look, they have not done the research I have, they have absolutely no idea of the thoughts behind my words. All they have are my words.

Today, I am an editor.

Writing the thesis

My supervisor and I recently worked on an article for a journal. It was the first time my writing and thinking was scrutinized. My pride was wounded and it hurt. But on hindsight, I am so grateful and thankful. Because those comments helped me to think clearer. It helped me to make certain decisions. It focused my thoughts. It helped situate me amongst my audience, reminding me that people who read what I write, are going to question it and going to dialogue with it. Therefore I must write with this in mind. My love goes out to the editor of the journal and the two reviewers.

It also made me desire to write one more, rather than work on the thesis. But I think they will all have to go hand in hand, together with my work work. Yes, I have to do this multitasking, at least for the next 4 months.

And I need to resume thesis writing! I am planning to wake up early to use my clearest moments to write. I read this in a book by Max Lucado (He still moves stones) yesterday in the acknowledgement section:

"You are about to entrust me with your most valuable asset - your time. I pledge to be a good steward. Though writing a book can be a like desert journey, reading a book shouldn't be. It should be a pause at the oasis. I hope it is.
Drink deeply."

This will be my manifesto. My goal is to do the difficult work of thinking and writing, such that you, my audience, will have many points of enlightenment, many points of joy with ease, when reading what I have wrote. To this end, I will strive towards. I will edit as many times as required and allowed according to my schedule, such that you have the most value for time when you read my thesis and if I do write another article, that too.

Crooked Lines

The advantage of being a slow learner is that I notice when I learn.

When I was a young writer, I struggled a lot more with the basics, such as dos and donts, such as figuring how to do citations, whether a statement required one at all.

Today, I am worried more about what I want to say and whether I can bring it across, rather than am I doing it right.

Another thing I noticed is that because of limitations of the mind, there are times when no matter how much you try to write something, it does not come out. The funny thing, is when leave your work for some time, read more literature, both related and unrelated, and go and experience more things, talk to people, ask experts, or even not touch it for a few months if you have the guts and lack of option, and when you return to your work... Something amazing has happened in your mind. You have reconceputalized that thing you are writing without even knowing it! And you see the flaws of your previous work and you have ideas for your new one.

There have been countless times when I got ideas for my work from unrelated Christian literature or listening to Ravi Zacharias podcasts. I don't know how it works, but when you're seeking something, God has a way of bringing it to you.

Writing is therefore always an act of faith for me. It is something spiritual, because it's inspired.

God has collected my tears and turn them into joy.

Warming Up The Reader

 Keep It Simple Up Front

"Do not give the reader too much complex and/or detailed information too soon. The writer is familiar with the material he or she is presenting and often forgets that the reader is not. Start where the reader is, not where you are. Be simple and direct in the first sections of a manuscript, laying the necessary groundwork for the reader to understand the more complex and detailed arguments and information later. If you want the very sophisticated reader to appreciate your knowledge and understanding of complex matters, reserve such information for later. You also might consider footnotes or appendices for such material. Keep the manuscript moving." (p. 212)

Bogdan, R. C., & Biklen, S. K. (2007), Qualitative research for education: An introduction to theories and methods, Boston: Pearson Education.

A reminder to myself as I read and re-draft the introduction chapter...