{"id":53913,"date":"2020-09-07T11:18:51","date_gmt":"2020-09-07T18:18:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/world.edu\/?p=53913"},"modified":"2020-09-07T11:18:51","modified_gmt":"2020-09-07T18:18:51","slug":"litreview-getting-to-structure-part-one","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/litreview-getting-to-structure-part-one\/","title":{"rendered":"#LitReview \u2013 Getting to structure, part one"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

If you are about to start reading for your doctorate, or are already in the reading phase, then you know that you are reading in order to:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. refine your research question,<\/li>\n
  2. locate your work in the field,<\/li>\n
  3. identify your potential contribution, and<\/li>\n
  4. find material that helps you to plan your research and analysis.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    You may already know how all that reading will end up \u2013 you may have a chapter in the final text that presents your literature work, or you\u2019ll weave the reading throughout the proposal and final thesis text.<\/p>\n

    You\u2019ll notice that I\u2019ve said\u00a0your work<\/em>\u00a0on the literatures\/reading. What is that work? Well, in addition to closely reading some key texts which are key to your work, you also need to read more widely in order to identity the key themes that relate to your topic (to do the four tasks outlined above). Yes. Themes.<\/p>\n

    And what do you do with reading themes? Here\u2019s one way to deal with the themes you derive from your reading, You will most likely work with three levels of themes. These are:<\/p>\n

    Basic themes<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 these come directly from the literatures that you are reading<\/p>\n

    Organising themes<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 basic themes are clustered together, and they collectively form a higher order idea. You assign a label \u2013 or category \u2013 to each higher order theme, a.k.a. organising idea.<\/p>\n

    Global theme<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 this is an overarching Big Idea which encapsulates an overall grouping of important and complex ideas and themes.<\/p>\n

    Let me give you an idea of how these three theme levels look. Imagine you are studying the doctoral experience. You have read a lot of stuff \u2013 books, blogs, papers. You have identified a number of basic themes. Each of these themes has a number of texts attached to it.<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    Once you have your basic themes, you can order them and then decide what higher order ideas they represent \u2013 organising themes.<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    And then finally, you can establish a global theme which brings together the organising themes, each one with their own set of basic themes.<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    You are likely to create more than one global theme in your literature work and they will either go into different chapters OR they will together form a stand-alone literatures chapter.<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    Once you have this kind of thematic pattern making work done, you are ready to move on to turning your hierarchy of themes into an argument. That\u2019s Part Two of this mini-series.<\/p>\n

    \n
    <\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    If you are about to start reading for your doctorate, or are already in the reading phase, then you know that you are reading in order to: refine your research question, locate your work in the field, identify your potential contribution, and find material that helps you to plan your research and analysis. You may […]\n… learn more→<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":53914,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[357375],"coauthors":[11733],"class_list":["post-53913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-higher-education","tag-thematic-pattern-making"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n#LitReview \u2013 Getting to structure, part one - World leading higher education information and services<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/world.edu\/litreview-getting-to-structure-part-one\/\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"#LitReview \u2013 Getting to structure, part one - World leading higher education information and services\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"If you are about to start reading for your doctorate, or are already in the reading phase, then you know that you are reading in order to: refine your research question, locate your work in the field, identify your potential contribution, and find material that helps you to plan your research and analysis. 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