1. Research Methods Session
Developing Conceptual Frameworks

2. conceptual framework
Your conceptual framework is the scaffold, framework of ideas, questions &theories, methodologies, & methods which help you ask your questions, develop your ideas, underpinning your research & dissertation It keeps you focused & on course,
ensures what you find/conclude is underpinned by questions, theories, enabled by methods, arises from them goes some way to addressing them.

3. You problematise your concepts (which might even be in your title ,and certainly in your research questions) –
ask what do you really mean by the ideas/concepts underlying your work?
Eg identity, body, sustainable development

4. You find the right theories to underpin inform and enrich your work- to act as a lens through which to explore ask questions produce knowledge -deepen your questioning ,thought and ability to explore and understand eg
theory of the relationships between identity and place (Baudrillard) , of psychogeography (Debord), of power( and gender, and surveillance ,and control) (Foucault)
Tend to have a name attached-

5. The conceptual framework contains, structures,actions ensures:
Ideas and aims and questions
Are underpinned by, enabled by particular theories & theorists
And your research methodologies and methods can actually act as the vehicle by which you ask these theoretically underpinned questions

6. And how you can analyse and interpret what you find- themes in an author, responses from a focus group, documentary evidence from archives, statistical responses to questionnaire-
So you can draw conclusions, make recommendations (depending on the dissertation) based on these questions and aims, theories and methods and findings.

7. Talking it through
Developing the framework of different chapters
Shape of the dissertation/thesis as it develops
Models

8. A typical plan of a dissertation
title
abstract
preface/acknowledgement
introduction
theoretical perspectives (containing the literature review-in dialogue with your arguments)
methodology and methods (including the design of the study, sample, timings, choices made)
presentation of results/findings/data
discussion of results/findings /data
conclusion containing a summary and possibly recommendations
appendices/statistical tables and illustrations
references