1. Dissertation preparation: Reading as research
Community Edcation Dissertation Preparation: Reading as research
Dissertation preparation: Reading as research
BA (Honours) Community Education
Integrated study skills: developed with IAD Study Development

2. Community Edcation Dissertation Preparation: Reading as research
What do you look for?
These notes are from Dr Fotini Hamplová
This represents the ‘simple’ theory of reading: every paper answers a question or speaks to a theme. It makes a point about this theme or gives an answer to a question and some sort of evidence for this answer. These are the 3 parts you need to look for when you are reading a paper – if you can trace these, you have understood the paper.
Dr Fotini Hamplová
Integrated study skills: developed with IAD Study Development

3. What can go wrong with a paper?
Community Edcation Dissertation Preparation: Reading as research
What can go wrong with a paper? ?
The evidence given is not true
The evidence is fine but does not logically support the claim
Give some examples, either general or specific ones that you know of.
Dr Fotini Hamplová
Integrated study skills: developed with IAD Study Development

4. Critical assessment: the steps
Community Edcation Dissertation Preparation: Reading as research
Critical assessment: the steps
to understand the question the paper is addressing
to evaluate the evidence it offers
to respond to the ‘answer’
to justify your response to the answer
Being critical does not mean being negative or judgmental.
Try to be charitable and make sure you understand the other.
Being critical means being conscious and reasonable.
Use this slide to explain /discuss what it means to read critically:
These notes are from Dr Fotini Pantelides
Being critical doesn’t mean to be negative (as we commonly use the term in very day language); rather to be conscious about what you are reading, to deconstruct the paper and understand what it is trying to convince you of & how it is trying to do that. When you read literature, you can sit back and enjoy the ride; when you read academically, you don’t want anyone to take you for a ride: you are aware of what they want you to think and YOU think about whether this is supported. This refers us back to the reading theory: what is the paper saying and how is it supported?
Dr Fotini Pantelides
Integrated study skills: developed with IAD Study Development

5. This applies to your writing..
Community Edcation Dissertation Preparation: Reading as research
This applies to your writing..
You are aiming for the same thing.
You need to know clearly:
What you question is
What your answer is
What the evidence for your answer is
It is worth making the connection for the students that this is what they are expected to do: i.e.
When you write your dissertation, you are aiming to write the same kind of paper – and what you write will be evaluated in the same kind of way.
Dr Fotini Hamplová
Integrated study skills: developed with IAD Study Development

6. Community Edcation Dissertation Preparation: Reading as research
Avoiding this..
Integrated study skills: developed with IAD Study Development

7. Community Edcation Dissertation Preparation: Reading as research
More like this..
Take control:
Read selectively
Read for a purpose
Read efficiently
Use your reading effectively
Click several times for books to disappear / organise themselves; stop when text appears.
Integrated study skills: developed with IAD Study Development

8. Use questions to target your reading
Community Edcation Dissertation Preparation: Reading as research
Use questions to target your reading
What (I think ) I know
Qu. 2:
Why is it important?
What (I think ) I know
What I need to find out ?
Qu. 1:
Why is it important?
What I need to find out
Imposes order; time efficient because targeted; helps to ensure relevance ? ? ?
Integrated study skills: developed with IAD Study Development

9. Use questions to target your reading
Community Edcation Dissertation Preparation: Reading as research
Use questions to target your reading
Work with a partner
Take one question from your dissertation
Talk freely to your partner about
Why the question is important
what you think you already know
what you need to find out
Your partner will make notes on the hand-out as you speak
What (I think ) I know
Qu. 1:
Why is it important?
What I need to find out
Exercise for students to do in pairs: hand-out ‘Focus your reading’ ? ? ?
Integrated study skills: developed with IAD Study Development

10. Community Edcation Dissertation Preparation: Reading as research
When you read a paper
Think about:
How the paper works in itself
How it relates to other papers
How it relates to YOUR paper:
How does it speak to your question?
What answer does it give?
Is it right or wrong?
How does its answer relate to yours?
It is helpful if you can briefly contextualise this - for example with a question and papers that students have read for an assignment in 3rd year
Dr Fotini Hamplová
Integrated study skills: developed with IAD Study Development

11. Tips for time efficiency
Community Edcation Dissertation Preparation: Reading as research
Tips for time efficiency
What’s relevant from the last 3½ years?
Pick what you need
Review articles: overview + things to follow up
References from other sources
Use abstracts: topic, type of article, purpose, findings..
Do you need to read it all?
Top & tail; outline
skim, scan
Don’t get bogged down
You can ask students which reading they’ve done in the past may be relevant to their dissertation.
The hand-out ‘Read efficiently’ gives a suggested approach for being more efficient about reading.
Integrated study skills: developed with IAD Study Development

12. Fitting it all together
Community Edcation Dissertation Preparation: Reading as research
Fitting it all together
Keeping track of the big, important picture
Identifying:
The main aspects of your research questions
e.g. theories/ themes / issues / problems
Relating the literature to them
Who said or did what
Summary of position
Useful definitions, examples, evidence..
Suggestions for doing this
The important point is that what you say in your dissertation is not just a repetition of what other people have said in the literature but the result of the interaction between your reading and your thinking in order to answer your questions (plus your findings / context etc depending on the type of dissertation) This should come across as your own argument in your own voice – more about this in the writing session – for now it’s important that you keep an overview of the literature (as distinct from detailed notes) and how each thing you’ve read relates to the main questions/ themes /issues you are addressing. This helps to put you in charge of the literature and to see where and how you want to USE it in your dissertation.
Integrated study skills: developed with IAD Study Development

13. Overview: reading record frame
Community Edcation Dissertation Preparation: Reading as research
Overview: reading record frame
Author/s
Concept of family
Smith (2017)
Brown (2018)
Jones (2015)
Green (2017)
This is one suggestion: you can do it as a simple Word table or use more complex programmes
Put the literature you have read down the left-most column and the main questions/themes/topics in the other columns. Summarise very briefly what, if anything, each source said that is relevant to your dissertation – with page numbers so you can easily find the relevant part
Of course, you will read a lot more than 4 sources!
If you are addressing more than one question, you may want to have a frame for each
See example on next slide
Integrated study skills: developed with IAD Study Development

14. Sample reading record frame
Author/s
Concept of family
Family effects
Social effects
Economic effects
Smith (2017)
Nuclear no but hard to come up with new definition (p3)
Prejudice v non- nuclear - exclusion, bullying (p5-9)
Brown (2018)
Nuclear still widely accepted & good for children (p4)
Nuclear family = strong moral framework (p5)
non-trad families = threat to society's values (p7)
Welfare costs – drain on public money (p9)
Jones (2015)
Nuclear no – new fluid models evolving (p8)
Depends, can be disruptive / traumatic (p8-10)
Cooperative extended = good but too many 'broken' = bad (p13)
Internally, can cause financial strain (12)
Green (2017)
Nuclear no, families v. varied – groups who consider they are one (p27)
Important thing is sense of belonging to caring unit (p 27-30)
Type = irrelevant, contribution to community = what matters (p31-34)
example for an essay: ‘Discuss the importance of the family in the 21st century’
Integrated study skills: developed with IAD Study Development

15. Community Edcation Dissertation Preparation: Reading as research
Diagram mapping
An alternative is something like this
(An feature of Inspiration that some people like is that you can click a button and it turn your diagram into a set of headings and items)
(This is using the ‘Inspiration’ software available on all university machines.)
Integrated study skills: developed with IAD Study Development

16. Build your argument as you read
Community Edcation Dissertation Preparation: Reading as research
See hand-out
Build your argument as you read
When you have
a general (not detailed) overview of your topic area
your proposed question/s and sub-questions
these can be refined later
Write
a sentence possible conclusion to the whole thing
2-sentence answers to each of your sub-questions
An alternative approach is to build your argument as you read – a sort of ‘working hypothesis’ approach: see the hand-out ‘Using your reading’ to go through this in more detail.
Integrated study skills: developed with IAD Study Development

17. Community Edcation Dissertation Preparation: Reading as research
They are tools to help you:
Target your research
Think critically
Formulate your argument/s as you work..
It doesn’t matter whether or not these are the ‘right’ answers
Integrated study skills: developed with IAD Study Development

18. How will you use your sources?
Community Edcation Dissertation Preparation: Reading as research
How will you use your sources?
Make your message coherent
Develop your own stance and voice
Show how the sources you use fit into your line of thinking
This generally means synthesising the content of what we have read into our own words so that our writing flows smoothly and what we want to say is clear.
Think about what you want to use from your sources, how and why as you work
Emphasises the ‘messages’ from previous slides about students using, not just reporting, their reading
Integrated study skills: developed with IAD Study Development

19. Why are you including each source?
Community Edcation Dissertation Preparation: Reading as research
Why are you including each source?
We incorporate the work of others into our writing because we are using it in some way.
One thing you need to do in a dissertation is to justify your research question:
How might the literature help you to do this?
In what other ways might you use the literature?
Students can discuss in pairs or make suggestions as a whole class
Integrated study skills: developed with IAD Study Development

20. What can you use sources for?
Community Edcation Dissertation Preparation: Reading as research
What can you use sources for?
Justify our question:
To give context, background, overview
To show what has influenced our thinking
To show how our research fits with / builds on / differs from what has gone before
Show where our information has come from
Use a definition, explanation..
Discuss, evaluate, analyse what someone has said/done
To support our own point / stance,
Example or evidence
nb. The list is only indicative. Contextualise with examples for students
Integrated study skills: developed with IAD Study Development