Preparing A Living Theory Thesis For Submission And Preparing For The Viva

Jack Whitehead 17 May 2008

What distinguishes a living theory thesis is that it is an explanation of the researcher's educational influence in their own learning, in the learning of others and in the learning of the social formations in which the researcher lives and works. Each living theory is unique because of the diverse constellation of values, understandings and contexts that contribute to the meanings and purposes we give to our lives. Living theories are explanations of educational influences in learning that emerge from the creative responses we make to our experiences. They are presented as disciplined narrative enquiries into questions of the kind, 'How do I improve what I am doing?'

In preparing a doctoral thesis for submission it is wise to keep the following criteria in mind and to ensure that you have made explicit your reasons for believing that your thesis can be understood by others as:

a) making an original and significant contribution to knowledge

b) giving evidence of originality of mind and critical judgement in a particular subject

c) containing material worthy of peer-reviewed publication

d) being satisfactory in its literary and/or technical presentation and structure with a full bibliography and references

e) demonstrating an understanding of the context of the research: this must include, as appropriate for the subject of the thesis, the scientific, engineering, commercial and social contexts

The above criteria are used by examiners of doctoral degrees at the University of Bath.

Preparing for the viva

In preparing for the viva it is sometimes helpful to bear in mind that the examiners are permitted to make the following judgments. At the University of Bath the judgments have been separated into two Parts. Part 1 judgments are when the examiners are recommending that the degree of Ph.D. be awarded. This recommendation is often accompanied by a requirement for minor corrections. The minor corrections can be trivial in the sense of typographical errors or more substantial:

Part 1 Judgments

1) No further corrections to the thesis are required and we recommend that the degree of Ph.D. be awarded.

2) Minor corrections to the thesis are required and we recommend that the degree of Ph.D. be awarded when these have been carried out to the satisfaction of at least one member of the Board of Examiners.

Trivial/typographical – Candidates are not normally allowed more than 30 days to complete trivial or typographical corrections.

More substantial but do not alter the substance of the thesis in any significant or fundamental manner and therefore do not require major reworking or reinterpretation of the intellectual content of the thesis. Candidates are not normally allowed more than 12 weeks to complete more substantial minor corrections.

Part 11 Judgments

These are judgements when the degree of Ph.D. is NOT recommended and the following options are open to the examiners:

1) the candidate be required to attend a second viva voce examination

2) the candidate be given the opportunity to subject a revised thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

3) the candidate not be permitted to submit a revised thesis for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy but be awarded the degree of Master of Philosophy

4) the candidate fail and be awarded neither the degree of Doctor of Philosophy nor the degree of Master of Philosophy.

The following notes may help you to submit and defend a thesis that can be placed in the Part 1 judgements, through the exercise of your self-evaluations.

A self-evaluation of your thesis before submission

From my examining of doctoral theses and from listening to examiners' questioning in vivas, where researchers are defending their theses, I feel confident in saying that all examiners have wanted the theses to have a clear 'framing' in an introductory section that outlines the original contribution to knowledge, the methodological approach that distinguishes the thesis and the standards of critical judgment that distinguish the researcher's way of knowing.

o Framing and signposting for the thesis. A framing should explain clearly what you are trying to do within the thesis, both the why and the how. Living theory theses include a representation of a retrospective sense-making process of experiences as well as a 'looking forward' that includes a projection into the future as the implications of the thesis continue to be working out in practice. It is wise to 'signpost' at the beginning of each part/chapter what this contributes to the thesis as an original contribution to knowledge. It is also wise to end each part/chapter with a summary of what that part has contributed to the thesis.

o A clear methodological framework, with appropriate references to methodological literature. This should include a justification for the form of the thesis to say why the chapters/parts have been placed in the order that they have.

o Being explicit about what is meant by your 'way(s) of knowing'

o Being explicit about the different kinds of experience/information/data that the thesis draws on in order to provide an evidential grounding for your 'meaning'. This should include a rationale/justification for the selection of the data being used as evidence.

o (Remember that while there is no restriction on the number of words in Appendices, what examiners look for is the way in which data from Appendices has been integrated as evidence within the main text).

o Making sure that the quality of your critical judgments is explicit. Living theory theses contain two different meanings of critical judgment:

i) The first is from traditional scholarship where insights from propositional theories, methods and methodologies are integrating within the enquiry where appropriate and where limitations are revealed. For example Chapter three on Women's Ways of Knowing: A Review and Critique of Mary Hartog's doctorate at http://people.bath.ac.uk/edsajw/hartogphd/mhch3.pdf is a good illustration of the quality of critical engagement with the ideas of others needed in a doctoral thesis.

ii) The second meaning of critical judgment is from a living theory perspective. From this perspective the meanings of the embodied values you use to give meaning and purpose to your life and work are clarified in the course of their emergence in the practice of your enquiry. As the values are clarified from their embodied expression, into publically communicable meanings, they form the living and critical standards of judgment you use to critically evaluate your explanations of your influence in your own learning. It is important to explain to your readers this distinction between the two forms of critical judgement. The first demonstrates your traditional scholarship, the second communicates your originality in expressing, clarifying and communicating the living standards of judgment you are bringing into the Academy for legitimation, as part of your living theory. Successfully completed living theory theses can be accessed at:

http://actionresearch.net/edsajw/living.shtml

In demonstrating your traditional scholarship it is wise to integrate into your text references to appropriate contemporary research from the refereed journals that relate to your research. Everyone registered for their research degrees at the University of Bath has electronic access to a wide range of these journals. When examining doctoral degrees I always look through the references to see what primary sources have been drawn on from the research journals. In relation to the engaging with the ideas of others examiners can criticise a thesis on the grounds that this engagement is 'unproblematic'. What this means from a perspective of traditional scholarship is that there appears to be a lack of critical engagement with the assumptions in the writing. This is a criticism well worth avoiding.

In communicating your research and engaging with the ideas of others you could bear in mind the following quotation from Michael Bassey (1992) in which he says that we should avoid 'genuflecting', 'sandbagging' and 'kingmaking' in our referencing.

"Communicating the Findings of Educational Research

But the freedom to be able to communicate is only part of the problem of effective communication of research findings. Here I find it necessary to make two straight criticisms of much of the writing done by ourselves as researchers.

First, too many writers try to generalise their findings beyond the confines of their data. Thus the conclusions of, say, the reading abilities of 100 8 year-olds in five schools, or perhaps of all the 8 –year-olds in one LEA, tend to be expressed as though they refer to all 8-year-olds everywhere. The error lies in failing to recognise that there is enormous variation in educational practice – from child to child, from classroom to classroom, from school to school, from LEA to LEA, from region to region, and from year to year. It is folly to extrapolate findings from one population to another. Referring back to my map of educational research, the merit of recognising the distinction between search for generalisation and study of a singularity is that it reduces the likelihood of falling into this error. Of course, the vast majority of researches in education are studies of singularities.

My second criticism is that too many research papers are expressed in clumsy English, overloaded with terminology that is familiar to few people, poorly structured, long-winded, and in general written from the perspective of the writer without concern for the audience.

As one suggestion for reducing the turgidity of much research writing, I suggest that three of the traditional academic games of name-dropping could themselves be dropped. These I call 'genuflecting', 'sandbagging', and 'kingmaking'. Let me illustrate these terms with this piece of invented report writing.

Piaget (1926) showed that children develop in stages and so it is no surprise to find that libraries for children are usually organised according to levels of complexity for readers (Adams, 1980; Brown, 1982; Collins, 1988). In planning this investigation we started with the view stated by Davidson (1981, p.1) that any collection of writings is a library. In designing our questionnaire, we used a modified form of that used by Edwards (1987)

I describe the reference to Piaget as genuflection (meaning ritualistic obeisance to one of the founding parents of educational theory), the references to Adams, Brown and Collins as sandbagging (meaning adding to a statement inert defences to make it look secure), and the reference to Davidson as kingmaking (meaning giving undue authority to somebody by citing their unresearched utterance). On the other hand the reference to Edwards is appropriate and necessary; indeed it would be plagiarism not to cite her. The purpose of references should be to support the claim to knowledge of the paper, not the claim to being well-read of the author!

In terms of the three levels of communication of research findings which I described earlier it seems that too many papers pass directly from level one (the personal level) to level three (the formal dissemination level). The action researchers' use of the critical friend is as pertinent for those who seek to understand as for those who seek to change, and the criticism needs to focus on the style of communication as much as on the construction of ideas.

In addition to the traditional expectation that researchers will communicate their findings through the academic literature to fellow researchers, I submit that an ethic of democratic values leads to the view that researchers should also take responsibility for communicating their findings to the wider public. One of the positive things to take from the Government's Citizen's Charter is that parents are to be given more information about schools. Let us build on that and share the understandings which come from our researches with parents and the general public. "(Bassey, 1992, pp. 10-11)

Bassey, M. (1992) Creating Education through Research. British Educational Research Journal, Vol. 10, No.1, 3-16.