Need Nurse Leader Homework Essay with Evidenced Based Source Regarding Nursing Informatics APA 1-2 Pages

Writing and Presenting Research 00-Thody-Prelims.qxd 5/23/2006 3:39 PM Page i © Angela M. Thody, 2006 First published 2006 Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, or by any means, only with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.SAGE Publications Ltd 1 Oliver’s Yard 55 City Road London EC1Y 1SP SAGE Publications Inc.

2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks, California 91320 SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd B-42, Panchsheel Enclave Post Box 4109 New Delhi 110 017 B B r ri it t i is s h h L L i ib b r ra a r ry y C C a at ta a l lo o g gu u i in n g g i i n n P P u ub bl li ic c a at ti io o n n d d a at ta a A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN-10 1 4129 0292 4 ISBN-13 978 1 4129 0292 2 ISBN-10 1 4129 0293 2 ISBN-13 978 1 4129 0293 9 (pbk) L L i ib b r ra a r ry y o o f f C C o on n g gr re e s ss s C C o on n t tr r o o l l N N u um m b be er r:

:

2 2 0 000 5 59 93 34 47 76 68 8 Typeset by C&M Digitals (P) Ltd, Chennai, India Printed on paper from sustainable resources Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow , Cornwall 00-Thody-Prelims.qxd 5/23/2006 3:39 PM Page ii Writing and Presenting Research A A n ng ge el la a T T h ho od d y y ●● SAGE Publications London Thousand Oaks New Delhi SAGE Study skills 00-Thody-Prelims.qxd 5/23/2006 3:39 PM Page iii Contents Overview 3 Adapting to Audience: Adjusting for their Aims page 34 Your readers and listeners r eally do matter, so find out what is wanted by academics or less specializ ed audiences , national or inter national 6 Primary Data page 79 Collected a mountain of data? Find out how to get it under control 9 Qualitative Data page 129 It’ s pretty crowded with all those v oices to r epor t.Here’ s how to m ake them really e xpressiv e 2 Principles for Selecting Appropriate Writing and Presentation Styles page 18 F ollow this framewo rk from the first day y ou star t researching a topic 5 The Arts and Craft of Writing page 58 From getting started to proofreading, learn how to cope with e very thing from jargon and colloquialisms to tenses and tone 8 Quantified Data page 109 This is how to make y our numbers r eally count.B ut without f orgetting that the words m atter too 1 Conventions or Alternatives? page 3 Want to know what style to go for? This chapter helps you sor t it out 4 Adapting to Audience: Adjusting for your Purposes page 49 Do y ou know y our aims? Will y ou reveal them to your readers and listeners? Is it ethical to let audience aims have pr iority o ver y ours?

7 Literature and Methodology page 89 Find out why y ou need to include them, what’ s the r ight style and how to organiz e them 00-Thody-Prelims.qxd 5/23/2006 3:39 PM Page iv CONTENTS OVERVIEW v 12 Citations:

Bibliographies, Referencing, Quotations, Notes page 185 Getting it correct – the final exciting challenge 15 Copyright page 221 An introduction to copyr ight and intellectual proper ty Bibliography page 241 All the text r eferences and fur ther reading 11 Beginnings and Ends page 159 Impact, guide , review , impress .Disco ver the significance of how y ou star t and f inish 14 Getting into Print page 214 This is what y ou write for so use this q uick ref erence g uide to help 17 Appendix:

Research Method for this Book page 238 Author bio-data Disco ver how I wrote this book and what we re its antecedents 10 Narrative Data page 145 Poetry, history, stories:

are y ou writing a no vel bestseller or a r esearch r eport?

13 Becoming a Presenter page 203 Whether conventional or alter nativ e is y our style , find out how to be effectiv e 16 Epilogue page 235 Who suppor ts my belief about the impor tance of, and choices f or, writing and presentation?

Where do you fit in? 00-Thody-Prelims.qxd 5/23/2006 3:39 PM Page v 00-Thody-Prelims.qxd 5/23/2006 3:39 PM Page vi Contents List of Boxes xi List of Figures xiii List of Tables xiv Hazard Warning xv Appreciation xvi P P A A R RT T I I P PR R E EP PA A R RA A T T I IO O N N 1 1 1 1 C Co on n v ve en n t ti io o n n s s o o r r A A l lt t e e r rn n a at ti iv v e es s?

? 3 3 1.1 Debates to resolve 3 1.2 Context of the debates 6 1.3 Conventional formats 7 1.4 Alternatives 10 1.5 Resolving the debates? 14 1.6 Chapter outlines 16 1.7 Review 17 2 2 P Pr ri in n c ci ip p l le e s s f f o o r r S S e el le e c ct ti in n g g A A p pp pr ro o p p r ri ia a t te e W W r ri it t i in n g g a a n n d d P P r re e s se e n n t ta a t ti io o n n S S t ty y l le e s s 1 18 8 2.1 Framework of principles 18 2.2 Dialogue with the data 18 2.3 Writing and presenting 24 2.4 After writing 31 2.5 Review 33 3 3 A Ad da ap p t ti in n g g t t o o A A u ud di ie e n n c ce e :

:

A A d dj ju u s st ti in n g g f f o o r r t t h h e ei ir r A A i im m s s 3 34 4 3.1 The value of an audience 34 3.2 Attitudes to audience 35 3.3 Assessing readers and listeners 36 3.4 Academic audiences 38 3.5 Audiences outside academia 42 3.6 Academic and less specialist audiences combined 44 3.7 Acknowledging the power of readers and listeners 47 3.8 Review 48 4 4 A Ad da ap p t ti in n g g t t o o A A u ud di ie e n n cc e e :

:

A A d dj ju u s st ti in n g g f f o o r r y y o ou u r r P P u ur rp p o os se e s s 4 49 9 4.1 Contrasting purposes 49 4.2 Defining your purposes 50 4.3 Overt purpose: enhancing knowledge 50 00-Thody-Prelims.qxd 5/23/2006 3:39 PM Page vii WRITING AND PRESENTINGRESEARCH 4.4 Covert purposes: careers and finance 51 4.5 The overt and covert combined: influencing policy 52 4.6 Ethics 55 4.7 Review 57 5 5 T Th he e A A r rt ts s a a n n d d C C r ra a f ft t o o f f W W r ri it t i in n g g 5 58 8 5.1 How easy is writing? 58 5.2 The writing process 59 5.3 Style and tone 66 5.4 Review 76 P P A A R RT T I I I I S SE E L LE E C C T T I IO O N N A A N N D D R R E ED D U UC CT T I IO O N N 7 77 7 6 6 P Pr ri im m a ar ry y D D a at ta a 7 79 9 6.1 Selection and reduction 79 6.2 How little do you need? 79 6.3 Using the guiding principles to select and reduce data 80 6.4 Using categorization to select and reduce data 84 6.5 Review 88 7 7 L Li it t e e r ra a t tu u r ree a a n n d d M M e et th h o od d o ol lo o g gy y 8 89 9 7.1 Literature reviews and methodology surveys: definitions 89 7.2 Literature reviews and methodology surveys: locations and e xtent 90 7.3 Literature reviews 91 7.4 Methodology surveys 99 7.5 Review 105 P P A A R RT T I I I II I P PR R O O D DU UC CT T I IO O N N 1 10 07 7 8 8 Q Qu ua an n t ti if f i ie e d d D D a at ta a 1 10 09 9 8.1 Quantified data presentation: purposes 109 8.2 Quantified data presentation: the challenges 110 8.3 Qualitative and narrative data quantified 111 8.4 Reduction 111 8.5 Influencing readers 114 8.6 Supporting explanations 118 8.7 Language and style 120 8.8 Appearances 121 8.9 Ethics 122 8.10 Review 125 9 9 Q Qu ua al li it t a a t ti iv v e e D D a at ta a 1 12 29 9 9.1 Polyvocality 129 9.2 Qualitative data writing and presentation: purposes 132 viii 00-Thody-Prelims.qxd 5/23/2006 3:39 PM Page viii CONTENTS 9.3 Qualitative data formats 132 9.4 Observation data 133 9.5 Interview data 135 9.6 Focus group data 139 9.7 Historical, literary and legal data 141 9.8 Ethics 143 9.9 Review 144 1 1 0 0 N Na ar rr ra a t ti iv v e e D D a at ta a 1 14 45 5 10.1 Definitions 145 10.2 Narrative’s allure 146 10.3 Narrative’s challenges 146 10.4 Getting started 156 10.5 Ethics 158 10.6 Review 158 1 1 1 1 B Be eg g i in n n ni in n g gs s a a n n d d E E n nd ds s 1 15 59 9 11.1 Why beginnings and ends matter 159 11.2 Abstracts, executive summaries, key points, prefaces 161 11.3 Acknowledgements, appreciation, forewords 164 11.4 Appendices 166 11.5 Author notes or bio-data 167 11.6 Bibliography, endnotes, references 168 11.7 Conclusions, summary, recommendations 168 11.8 Contents listings 171 11.9 Glossaries 172 11.10 Introductions 173 11.11 Keywords or descriptors 175 11.12 Quotations at the beginnings and ends of texts 176 11.13 Titles and title pages 178 11.14 Review 184 1 1 2 2 C Ci it t a a t ti io o n n s s:

:

B B i ib b l li io o g gr ra a p p h h i ie e s s, , R R e ef fe e r re e n n c ci in n g g, , Q Q u uo ot t a a t ti io o n n s s, , N N o ot te e s s 1 18 85 5 12.1 Uses for citations 185 12.2 Major citation systems 186 12.3 End-of-text citations: bibliography, references, works cited, further reading 189 12.4 In-text citations (what to put in those brackets) 190 12.5 Quotations in the text 193 12.6 Notes 194 12.7 Review 200ix 00-Thody-Prelims.qxd 5/23/2006 3:39 PM Page ix WRITING AND PRESENTINGRESEARCH P PA A R RT T I I V V P PU U B BL LI IC C A A T T I IO O N N :

:

R R E EF FE E R R E EN N C CE E G G U UI ID D E ES S 2 20 01 1 1 1 3 3 B Be ec co o m m i in n g g a a P P r re e s se e n n t te e r r 2 20 03 3 13.1 Challenges and opportunities 203 13.2 Conventions and alternatives 204 13.3 What’s effective for both conventional and alternative presentations? 205 13.4 Review 213 1 1 4 4 G Ge et tt ti in n g g i i n n t to o P P r ri in n t t 2 21 14 4 14.1 Start-up 214 14.2 Journals 215 14.3 Chapters in edited books 218 14.4 Books 219 14.5 Success and rejection 219 14.6 Extending the audience for your research and publications: using the web 219 14.7 Ten top tips: publish or perish 220 1 1 5 5 S St ta a n n d di in n g g o o n n t t h h e e S S h ho ou u l ld d e er rs s o o f f G G i ia a n n t ts s – – W W i it t h h o ou u t t V V i io o l la a t ti in n g g t t h h e ei ir r C C o op p y y r ri ig g h h t t 2 22 21 1 Lora Siegler Thody and Serena Thody 15.1 General 222 15.2 Violation of copyright 224 15.3 Your own copyright 227 15.4 Libel and slander 230 15.5 Websites for reference 230 15.6 Authors’ bio-data 231 P P A A R RT T V V V VA AL LE E D D I IC C T T I IO O N N 2 23 33 3 1 1 6 6 E Ep pi il lo o g gu u e e 2 23 35 5 16.1 The debate 235 16.2 How the protagonists line up 235 16.3 Where you and I fit in 236 1 1 7 7 A Ap pp pe en n d di ix x :

:

R R e es se e a ar rc c h h M M e et th h o od d f f o o r r t t h h i is s B B o oo ok k 2 23 38 8 17.1 Inception of the project 238 17.2 Sources 238 17.3 Data analysis 240 17.4 Data presentation 240 Bibliography 241 Index 252 x 00-Thody-Prelims.qxd 5/23/2006 3:39 PM Page x Boxes 1.1 Differentiating conventional and alternative researchwriting styles: poetic format 4 1.2 Differentiating conventional and alternative research writing styles: textbook format 5 2.1 Example of the same research data in both a primary (journal article) and a secondary (crime novel) format by the same author 21 2.2 Template for the basics of a research report 22 2.3 Template for the basics of a university thesis 23 2.4 Research writing and presentation: dealing with the practicalities 30 2.5 After publication: marketing your research 33 3.1 Writing appropriately for less specialist audiences 43 4.1 Ways of reporting to research respondents 57 5.1 How to stop writers’ block 62 5.2 Proofreading 65 5.3 Using jargon 70 6.1 Reducing drafts 83 6.2 Data categories in tabular form 85 6.3 Selecting categories for your data 86 7.1 Purposes of literature reviews 91 7.2 Criticism in literature reviews 98 7.3 Template for methodology reviews 99 8.1 Criteria for evaluating quantitative formatting 125 9.1 Qualitative data writing and presentation: purposes 132 9.2 Writing and presenting individual interview data: requirements 135 10.1 Challenges to be met in the writing and presentation of narrative 147 11.1 Design criteria for beginnings and ends 160 11.2 Objectives for abstracts, executive summaries, key points, prefaces 162 00-Thody-Prelims.qxd 5/23/2006 3:39 PM Page xi WRITING AND PRESENTINGRESEARCH 12.1 Uses for citations 186 12.2 Citation and style systems: examples 186 12.3 In-text citations: what, where and how 192 12.4 Comparisons of citations in the text and citations in notes 195 xii 00-Thody-Prelims.qxd 5/23/2006 3:39 PM Page xii Figures 2.1 Framework of principles to guide your selection of writingand presentation styles 19 2.2 Contrasting formats for the title page of a conference paper 26 5.1 Starting writing 60 5.2 How to procrastinate 62 5.3 Do you need print versions of work-in-progress? 63 5.4 Techniques for drafting and redrafting 64 6.1 Illustration of data reduction: extracts from an advertisement for a commercial product developed from research 80 7.1 Literature and methodology reviews for different audiences and purposes 91 8.1 The effect of repositioning table titles and explanatory information 115 8.2 Four figures collated from one article, showing variety of formats, sanserif font within the figures, column alignment and differing title fonts and formats 123 11.1 Contrasting styles of title pages 182 00-Thody-Prelims.qxd 5/23/2006 3:39 PM Page xiii Tables 4.1 Extract from a research report: tabulated data from whichvarying priorities were selected by different users 54 8.1 Purposes of quantified data writing and presentation (version 1) 109 8.2 Extract to illustrate quantified reduction of historical and literary data: the incidence of terminological categorizations of women 112 8.3 Extract to illustrate quantified reduction of observational data: time spent alone by CEOs 113 8.4 Extract to demonstrate the presentation of a table without accompanying text 116 8.5 Extract to demonstrate the presentation of a table with accompanying repetitive text 117 8.6 Extract to demonstrate the presentation of a table with accompanying non-repetitive text 117 8.7 Extract to demonstrate the presentation of a table with accompanying explanatory text 118 8.8 Purposes of quantified data writing and presentation (version 2) 121 8.9 Descriptive Analysis of Schools Backgrounds and Teachers Backgrounds (Ho, 2003: Table 2) 126 8.10 Descriptive Analyses of Schools’ and Teachers’ Backgrounds (revised version) 127 9.1 Conventions and alternatives for qualitative data polyvocality 131 11.1 Effective introductions 174 12.1 Bibliographical aims 189 12.2 Types of bibliographies 191 13.1 Comparisons between conventional and alternative presentations 206 00-Thody-Prelims.qxd 5/23/2006 3:39 PM Page xiv Hazard Warning Read in chapter order, this book presents a wide-ranging, introductory guide to the choices to be made in deciding how to communicate research findings in documents and presentations. Once you have familiarized yourself with the contents, the book becomes a valuable reference.

The book is necessary because although pluralism in research methodologies has become accepted, pluralism in the ways in which research can be reported is much less accepted; nor are there many sources of information on the possible varieties of report- ing research.

New researchers may find this book destabilizing if they have not previously con- fronted many choices of how to write up, or present, their research. Experienced researchers may find this book causes arguments about cherished ideas concerning what is, or is not, conventional for reporting research.

If you want to discuss the destabilizing or the arguments with me, do make contact:

Emerita Professor Angela Thody, [email protected] International Institute for Educational Leadership, University of Lincoln, Brayford Campus, Lincoln LN6 7RS, England 00-Thody-Prelims.qxd 5/23/2006 3:39 PM Page xv Appreciation Many thanks to generations of my students whose questions drove me to write this book; those who have listened to my presentations, who read my publications and whose comments drove me to envisage this book; my family who were driven to distraction by this book and to Lora and Serena who wrote one of its chapters; my helpful publishers who steered my driving with their experience, particularly Patrick Brindle, Brian Goodale, Vanessa Harwood and Rebecca De Luca Wilson; the driving verve of the many writers and presenters whose examples are included in this book, particularly Professors N.B. Jones and Esther Sui-Chu Ho, The Athena Institute and Beth Bownes Johnson for permissions to use their excellent works, my postgraduate students, Dr. Anat Oster, Hilda Mugglestone, Simon Testa and Gillian Horsley for extracts from their theses in preparation and after completion, and Professors Martin Barstow, Mike Cook, Michael Hough, Olof Johansson, Zoi Papanaoum, Petros Pashiardis and Dr John Baker whose presentations inspired me; Commonwealth Council for Educational Administration and Management for per- mission to reprint extracts from Ho Sui-Chu, E. (2003), Roberts, V. (2003), Stewart, J.M. and Hodges, D. (2003), and Thody, A.M. and Nkata, J.L. (1997).

Professors Mike Cook, Betty Marchant and Mark Brundrett whose helpful reviews drove me to improve the book; my daughters, Amber and Serena, who assiduously hunted references for me when my drive failed and to the author, Steve Coonts, who responded so promptly to my queries; my grandson, Sean, whose early arrival left me time to finish this book. 00-Thody-Prelims.qxd 5/23/2006 3:39 PM Page xvi Part IPreparation 01-Thody-3390-Ch-01.qxd 5/23/2006 3:40 PM Page 1 01-Thody-3390-Ch-01.qxd 5/23/2006 3:40 PM Page 2 CONTENTS 1.1 Debates to resolve3 1.2 Context of the debates 6 1.3 Conventional formats 7 1.3.1 Definitions 7 1.3.2 Advantages 8 1.3.2.1 A training ground 8 1.3.2.2 Simplicity and comparability 8 1.3.2.3 Political, professional and academic acceptance 9 1.3.2.4 Globalization 9 1.4 Alternatives 10 1.4.1 Gaining acceptance? 10 1.4.2 Definitions 12 1.4.3 Reasons for emergence of alternatives 13 1.4.3.1 Postmodernism 13 1.4.3.2 Changing attitudes to the natural and social sciences 13 1.4.3.3 New research and technical methodologies 13 1.5 Resolving the debates? 14 1.5.1 The middle ground 14 1.5.2 The guiding principles 16 1.6 Chapter outlines 16 1.7 Review 17 1.1 Debates to resolve This book is a guide through the choices to be made when deciding how to report research, principally in social sciences (including health), arts and humanities but also with relevance to, and examples from, natural and applied sciences and law. It covers research written as theses and dissertations, chapters, books, reports and articles in academic, professional or general media such as newspapers. It reviews the options for presenting research orally as lectures, keynotes, conference papers and even TV game shows.

All of these forms of reporting research have well established conventions for their formats. All of them also have growing numbers of alternative possibilities. These have generated debate about what is or is not acceptable. My aim is to make this debate more Conventions or Alternatives? 1 01-Thody-3390-Ch-01.qxd 5/23/2006 3:40 PM Page 3 manageable for those wanting to assess which of the conventional formats (1.3) or alter- native possibilities (1.4) on offer is most appropriate for reporting their current research.This debate, polarizing conventions and alternatives, was encapsulated for me in a conversation with fellow conference delegates following an academic’s word-for-word reading aloud of his conventional research paper. The listeners’ views on the presenter differed radically. I report this ‘mini’ research into their opinions as a poem in Box 1.1. Box 1.1 Differentiating conventional and alternative research writing styles: poetic format C C o on n f fe e r r e en n c ce e D D e eb b a at te e It’s like listening to poetry, He said.

I go to a conference to hear the poetry of the paper; The paper is like poetry read by the real, actual writer, Word for word, Like all papers, He said.

I learn later from reading the paper, But not at the conference.

There you only go to hear researchers as poets.

You hear them interpreting their own poetry of words, Their nuances, their cadences, their enthusiasm.

They do not need to explain them to YOU.

It is enough to be close to academic celebrities, He said.

It should be teaching, She said.

I go to a conference to learn from the presentation of the paper, It is research, explained by the originator,Just the main issues,Different styles, She said. (Continued) WRITING AND PRESENTING RESEARCH 4 01-Thody-3390-Ch-01.qxd 5/23/2006 3:40 PM Page 4 Box 1.1 (Continued) You should comprehend from hearing a clear summary of the paperThere, atthe conference.

You see researchers illuminating with PowerPoint, Duplicated notes, pictures, sound, enthusiasm; They feel the need to share with US.

So you are close to great teachers, She said.Angela Thody, 2005 Did my poem appeal to you, annoy you or intrigue you, as an ‘alternative’ way of reporting research data? Is it appropriate for the opening of a textbook on research writ- ing and presentation? Did the visual differences in the layout of the two verses add to, or detract from, the message? Should the personal forms of ‘I’, ‘my’ and ‘you’ in this chapter so far have been mixed with the impersonal (it, one)? These exemplify the types of questions which this book explores.To illustrate the opposite pole in this debate, the poem’s information in conventional, ‘textbook’ form is in Box 1.2. What is your reaction to this? Box 1.2 Differentiating conventional and alternative research writing styles: textbook format Two styles are suggested to which research reporting should conform:

either Accepted academic conventions, as summed up by an academic journal editor, ‘make life easier for our referees by writing a clear, concise paper; that is, structured in a tradi- tional manner’ (Murray, 2004: 1). Natural and social scientists therefore report their research in strictly uniform scientific experiment format; humanities’ authors follow chronological, or logical, formats. Both indicate objectivity, neutrality, researcher distance and impersonality.

or (Continued) CONVENTIONS OR ALTERNATIVES ? 5 01-Thody-3390-Ch-01.qxd 5/23/2006 3:40 PM Page 5 WRITING AND PRESENTING RESEARCH Box 1.2 (Continued) ‘Innovative, user-friendly formats’ (Gomm and Davies, 2000: 141) associated with postmod- ernism and its doubt that there is any one right method. All methods are deemed subjective; they represent particular viewpoints of which the researcher’s is one. Research reporting for- mats embrace widely differing approaches such as poetry, photography or novelistic style.

Subjectivity is unavoidable, bias is openly stated, researchers reveal themselves overtly, and personality is more than welcome. A. Thody, 2005 1.2 Context of the debates Unusual modes for academic writing are nothing new. Cobbett’s 1818 guide to alterna- tives for the conventions of English grammar, for example, written as letters to his son, was described as ‘more entertaining than many novels … his Grammar is unlike any other’ (O’London, 1924: 48). A 2003 example of the same unconventionality in the grammar textbook genre is Eats Shoots and Leavesby Lynne Truss (2003) which leavens language rules with humour and idiosyncratic proselytizing. Nor have the ways which I have termed ‘conventional’ always been thus. An American 1955 study by Butts of assumptions underlying Australian education, for example, consisted of chatty personal reflections from random encounters. It was regarded as conventional and good research, yet there was no rigorous sample selec- tion, literature review or methodology (Thody, 1994a). Butts was simply a travel writer of his day doing what we might now dismiss as ‘educational tourism’, but the social sciences had little opportunity to do anything else for some time. As recently as 1979, for example, Parsons and Lyons pleaded that university researchers should be able to get into real schools and risk interviewing real administrators, something we now see as normal and vital. Until then, surveys through questionnaires had dominated subjects such as education management research, for example. Utilizing conventional scientific formats for this type of research fitted the data well and also accorded with the desire of the social sciences to be accepted as being as rigorous as the natural sciences. This desire to be like the natural sciences can be accounted for by the dominance of positivism for the first half of the twentieth century. Positivism gave credibility to many disciplines and dictated their forms (Hughes, 1990: 36). The scientific formats of writing that emerged from this positivism were adopted by the academic social science writers of the 1960s onwards. In doing so, however, they: broke with their own inherited traditions … They showed little of the nostalgia toward lost practices … They worked new devices … to support greater ease of access and better serve the interests of scholarship. (Willinski, 2000: 62) 6 01-Thody-3390-Ch-01.qxd 5/23/2006 3:40 PM Page 6 CONVENTIONS OR ALTERNATIVES ? These are the same objectives that helped to propel a new debate about research writing and presenting from the 1990s, since by then there had been a huge diaspora in research methods, not matched by variety in the academic formats of reporting research. It had also been realized that all research, from any discipline and in any for- mat, has an endemic ‘literary dimension … yet concealed by realist metaphysics’ (Scott and Usher, 1999: 19–20). The concealment lies in applying conventional, scientific for- mats for writing and presenting research without considering their suitability for a particular topic or research method. Any research report should tell a story of discov- ery from its inception to its conclusion – a story that so captures the reader’s imagina- tion that they will act upon the outcomes.Conventional style is not, however, inherently bad. Arguments for and against conventional and alternative styles are considered next in this chapter, together with an outline of the features of each.

1.3 Conventional formats 1.3.1 Definitions The conventional (or traditional, or scientific) format begins with a statement of the problem to be solved and the setting of this in its context of previous research on the same topic (including the literature review). This is part of the rationale for the problem which stresses the importance of studying it. Next, the research methodology is recounted. From this the findings emerge, ending with the conclusions drawn from the material presented. The order will sometimes vary but the elements remain unchanged, whether the research reported is from the natural sciences, the applied sciences of engineering and medicine, or the social sciences. In the humanities and law, the traditional conventions would be either the production of a chronological account in numbered order, or an argument presenting first one and then the other side of the account. These major formats all have codified conventions for style and language (5.3, 12.2) such as the American Psychological Association (APA, 2001; 2005), the Modern Languages Association (MLA, 2003), the Modern Humanities Research Association (MHRA, 2002) and for American law, The Bluebook (Bluebook, 2000).

This style works best where:

• significant amounts of quantitative and/or factual data have to be transformed into easily under- standable text (in any discipline); • the work was following through an experiment (in natural or applied sciences) or a quasi- experiment (in social or health sciences); • there is a logical chronological or debate sequence (in law and the humanities); • the research subjects are inanimate (such as literature texts) or dead (as in history); • results have to be compared, where data are cumulative, and where results have to be replicated.

The aim is to produce an objective, distant report in which the views and activities of the phenomena or respondents are reproduced exactly as they happened. It is assumed 7 01-Thody-3390-Ch-01.qxd 5/23/2006 3:40 PM Page 7 WRITING AND PRESENTING RESEARCH that the researcher has not influenced how the natural phenomena or the people have performed, behaved or commented. The researcher speaks only in the conclusions to the report and these conclusions are confined to whatever is obvious from the data. It is assumed that readers do not influence the interpretation; it is important that they interpret it exactly as has the writer. Reader and writer influence on the data is to be, and can be, avoided. The understandings on which this style is based are that the research has produced general, unassailable truths which have been proved from irrefutable evidence and which must be presented to the readers with exactitude.The current debate about the applicability of alternative formats in place of the tradi- tional must not obscure the value of conventional, scientific reporting. The logical sequencing of writing up research as an experiment possesses an elegant simplicity and the near-certainty of acceptance by peers, policy makers and publishers. It is common for reporting quantitative, qualitative and narrative data. Its advantages are discussed below.

1.3.2 Advantages 1.3.2.1 A training ground Mastery of conventional formats has become almost an admission ticket to academia with ‘tremendous material and symbolic power … [which will] increase the probability of one’s work being accepted into “core” … journals’ (Richardson, 1998: 353). To gain this acceptance, establishment mores must be followed, the establishment being editors, refer- ees, thesis examiners, professorial promotion committees and research funders (Chapter 3).

For new researchers, success with conventional formats is a compulsory rite of passage. Those who argue in its favour point out that it helps students to learn to write and to think like everyone else, in the accepted forms of their disciplines (Zeller and Farmer, 1999: 5). This is much more than just a ritual game, performed for the sake of ritual. It can be seen as marking the end of an apprenticeship. The thesis, or early articles, in con- ventional formats show that the writer knows the ground rules for the making of the test piece. Once that is perfectly completed, the apprentice can then proceed as a master of the craft and is entitled and enabled to embellish, with the skills of literary and artis- tic formats, any type of data, quantitative, qualitative or narrative.

1.3.2.2 Simplicity and comparability The scientific style has seemingly unassailable logic and clarity which demonstrate analytical, synthetic and critical thinking, the hallmarks of a good academic. Alternatives from the postmodernist genre are criticized for their rejection of scientific approaches, rational economics or social justice, and for their incomprehensible language (Stevenson, 2003). The option of alternatives is seen to complicate issues of ‘authorship, authority, truth, validity and reliability … [and] the greater freedom to experiment with textual form … does not guarantee a better product’ (Richardson, 1998: 359). The challenge with admitting plurality to the options for presentation and writing is that the possible approaches are like the many new methodologies themselves, lacking ‘the confident clarity’ of positivist approaches (Hughes, 1990: 138). Alternative formats can produce:

8 01-Thody-3390-Ch-01.qxd 5/23/2006 3:40 PM Page 8 CONVENTIONS OR ALTERNATIVES ? sprawling and self-indulgent descriptions that are free of meanings or claims … lazy writing in the sense that authors only reproduce what they have collected and … readers have to work hard to make sense of the reportage and to deduce the claims. (Knight, 2002: 194) In contrast, conventional formatting does generally avoid such excesses and facilitates comparisons amongst research outputs presented in the same styles, and often in the same places, in reports. Relationships amongst findings can easily be displayed when the data appear in similar ways even in different reporting formats. The presentation of data in tables, graphs and diagrams provides visuals which make assimilation easier.

1.3.2.3 Political, professional and academic acceptance Conventional formats proclaim the respectability that policy makers need. They have to demonstrate simply, to large and often sceptical audiences, that there is enough evidence for proposed changes. Conventional formatting provides this readily since research findings always appear as unarguable, neutral facts. This provides the necessary persuasiveness to encourage professionals to put research findings into prac- tice (Silva, 1990). In academia, where careers depend on research recognition, writing theses and arti- cles, and preparing presentations, are much quicker if the most generally accepted for- mat is adopted; alternatives are harder work. Work in conventional formats is more likely to be accepted than alternatives (Chapter 14) since examiners, editors and research assessors work to the standards of conventional formats (3.4.6). The findings of a research project can be sufficiently controversial in themselves without adding con- tention over an innovative writing style. The ‘harsh realities of becoming new members of [the academic] discourse community’ (Gosden, 1995: 39) crown convention with success because academic writing is a major means of social communication amongst academic peers (Holliday, 2002: 124; Jakobs and Knorr, 1996). Such successful com- munication matters, not only to individual careers, but also to university research rat- ings which determine university research income. Formal and informal ratings systems are world-wide. The United Kingdom’s Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) commenced in 1992. New Zealand adopted a similar system in the early 2000s (Lord, Robb and Shanahan, 1998). The USA’s Carnegie ratings, introduced in 1973, operate somewhat similarly though with less force than the RAE (Middaugh, 2001). Japan is investigating the possibility of such a system, and countries such as Israel consider closing colleges that are insufficiently research productive. Hong Kong and Australia also monitor university outputs (Mok and Lee, 2002; Taylor, 2001a; Mok, 2000). This is not a climate in which to take risks.

1.3.2.4 Globalization The ‘market’ for research findings is now global; a standardized format helps interna- tional acceptance since conventions create meanings readily understood across cultures.

Conventions for research writing and presentation are the equivalent of the McDonald’s logo, Marriott Hotel bedrooms, shopping malls or aircraft emergency instructions. With all of these, as with the conventional, scientifically oriented format of 9 01-Thody-3390-Ch-01.qxd 5/23/2006 3:40 PM Page 9 WRITING AND PRESENTING RESEARCH research reporting, consumers know that they will get the same everywhere; they get what they see and they know the format has been honed to international standards of efficiency and effectiveness. It is unlikely to be exciting but it will be safe. But is safety the context within which academic research should always operate? What are the alternatives? REFLECTIONS Section 1.3 above has been written in the impersonal, third person, passive voice. This is the generally accepted style in conventional formatting. In 1.4 below, about alternatives, I employ mainly the personal, first person, active voice since this is more often found in alternative approaches to reporting research (5.3.3.6). 1.4 Alternatives 1.4.1 Gaining acceptance?

I remember my surprise, when first attending North American academic conferences, on noticing that virtually all the papers were identical in their text appearance. Even the font style and size were uniform. Bryman (2001) evinced similar astonishment on dis- covering how little difference there is between the styles and formats of articles whether the author is presenting qualitative or quantitative data. I soon discovered the reason for the standardization; the American Psychological Association’s style manual (APA) has been adopted by other disciplines, particularly in the social sciences. The handbook of the Modern Languages Association (MLA) performs the same standardiz- ing functions for humanities disciplines. Why, I mused, in the USA and Canada, so often depicted as lands of freedom, is so little discretion allowed to, or taken by, highly intelligent academics on how to present their work? Why have APA guidelines for writing up psychology experiments been adopted so wholeheartedly by other disciplines? These rules are designed for such topics as ‘Referential communication by chimpanzees’, an experiment which concluded that ‘the deployment and gestures and gaze alternation between a banana and an observer were manifested as integrated patterns of nonverbal reference’ (Leavens, Hopkins and Thomas, 2004: 55). Can such rules be equally suitable for the behaviours of district super- intendents (Griffin and Chance, 1994) or teaching ethics to nurses (Krawczyk, 1997)? Even where there are no strictures, such as when academics present their research orally, why do many academics still elect to ‘read’ their papers and to eschew the livelier arts of demonstration and teaching? I have found that these conventions, which 10 01-Thody-3390-Ch-01.qxd 5/23/2006 3:40 PM Page 10 result in almost identical written and oral presentations of conference papers, have appertained at many conferences I have attended world wide in the last thirty years and in every set of contributors’ instructions for journals. Even the Review of Religious Research came up with nothing more than the conventional requirements. ‘Oh, for a thousand tongues to sing’ a research report as a hymn or a medieval illuminated manuscript! Outside of North America, I have not found quite such tight adherence to APA and MLA, but the requirements of journals, thesis assessments and conference presentations still veer strongly towards the conventional. I have been relieved to find that I am not alone in questioning APA’s domination (Zeller and Farmer, 1999; Vipond, 1996; Bazerman, 1987) or the universal appropriate- ness of conventional forms: We have been encouraged to take on the omniscient voice of science, the view from every- where … Nurturing our own voices releases the censorious hold of ‘science writing’ … as well as the arrogance it fosters in our psyche … [and] homogenization through profes- sional socialisation. (Richardson, 1998: 347) I’ve also encountered a few brave, alternative presenters, mainly at North American conferences. Their ideas included:

• readers’ theatre (where researchers acted their research respondents’ views); • dance interpreting the emotions arising from findings; • town meetings (researchers reported their findings briefly as political speeches and then invited audience participation, assisted by mobile microphones); • debates (six researchers had exactly three minutes each to put their cases).

I added myself to these experiments. I assumed the persona and costume of a nineteenth century Tasmanian teacher to deliver a lecture on colonial education with language and props appropriate to the time (though a twentieth century overhead projector had to substitute for a magic lantern). Audio and video recordings made for me of Zimbabwean school pupils in uniform, singing their school song, launched a lecture on girls’ educa- tion in Africa. I concluded this with leading community singing of the same school song with the audience. When delivering historical lectures, I often wear several changes of clothing or hats, gradually stripping off as we pass through each period. When illus- trating the strengths and weaknesses of systems of governance, I pull out members of the audience to represent the stereotypes. A group of us (including two Greeks) ran a Romano-Grecian seminar to report our research on European integration, since the Romans and Greeks had been the first European integrationists. The seating was rearranged into a square, wine and grapes were served throughout, and we all wore matching T-shirts summarizing our main finding. I frequently devise concluding songs that summarize the principal features of research reported in my lectures. While this is meant to be entertaining, it is not gratuitous. Each format is designed to convey the research findings appropriately and better than can words alone, to reinforce learning, and even to transmit ideas that are hard to put into words.

I noticed, however, that mine and others’ alternatives tended to come from groups not strongly represented in the academic establishment – women, ethnic minorities and CONVENTIONS OR ALTERNATIVES ? 11 01-Thody-3390-Ch-01.qxd 5/23/2006 3:40 PM Page 11 WRITING AND PRESENTING RESEARCH the physically differentially abled. The alternatives thus appear to be ‘fringe’ events, on the edges of a sea of convention.As a ‘fringe’ we could just dismiss them, but we face a conundrum: Successful research is that which proves some- thing new, original, innovative and at the cutting edge of ideas; our most generally acceptable forms of research writing and presentation usually shun all of these. What then are the alternatives, and what are the arguments that favour extending the options for writing and presenting research?

1.4.2 Definitions I cannot encapsulate alternatives so easily as the conventional formats since alternatives can be as varied as word-for-word transcribed interviews (Rice, 2004), photographs with minimal text (Staub, 2002), narrative poetry (Woodley, 2004) (this book’s examples are in Chapters 9 and 10) or tabulated quantitative data presented without commentary (Chapter 8). I can, however, formulate their distinguishing characteristics: We celebrate and acknowledge the subjectivities of writers, research respondents and readers as positive contributions to enhanced understanding; all will affect research writing and presentation.

We accept that there are multiple perspectives on any research problem and we must present all of these in order to give as fully rounded a view as possible.

We can be adventurous, entertaining and emotional, drawing from fiction, poetry, painting, photog- raphy, performances, sculpture, posters, music and other creative work.

We ‘expect to be reflexive … to write in the first person … and to write with passion’ (Knight, 2002: 194).

We can question the suitability of any format; we can take this even to the extremes of deconstruc- tion and anarchy where meaning is whatever you and the readers want it to be, and accept that these various meanings may not be the same.

We will often incorporate most or all of the basic elements of the conventional format (the state- ment of the problem, its context, literature, methodology, findings and conclusions) but not necessarily in that order, nor will they always be immediately obvious.

We can apply alternative formats for quantitative, qualitative or narrative data.

Our aim is to be intentionally focused on language as a persuasive tool (Chapters 3, 4, 5) for who ever is the principal audience for the research. This may be a solitary PhD student who has bor- rowed your thesis on inter-library loan, a TV game show audience, fellow professionals at a public conference interested in changing practice or experienced, specialist academics examin- ing a thesis (3.4, 3.5, 3.6). 12 01-Thody-3390-Ch-01.qxd 5/23/2006 3:40 PM Page 12 CONVENTIONS OR ALTERNATIVES ? 1.4.3 Reasons for emergence of alternatives 1.4.3.1 Postmodernism Postmodernism from the 1970s has led us to understand that research, and its writing and presentation, are always partial and context bound. We can no longer claim that things are exactly right or wrong; our data cannot irrefutably prove anything; we our- selves are irretrievably intertwined in the methodology and the writing. We now accept that our personal judgement, interpretations and subjectivities (and those of other researchers) not only are inextricably involved in all decisions from inception to presen- tation of a research project, but also have a rightful place that must be publicly acknow- ledged. Postmodernism also gives us licence to doubt and to suspect; researchers are as much likely to peddle research as propaganda as are politicians. The previously clear lines between subjective and objective or between fact and fiction have become hazy and we should reflect this in how we write and present research. We should flout convention.

1.4.3.2 Changing attitudes to the natural and social sciences As a 1960s’ student, the first university lecture I attended discussed how social sciences might, and must, become more like natural sciences. The debate still rages (To, 2000) but there is growing scepticism about the rightness of the natural sciences as scientists con- tradict each other daily (each contradiction based on irrefutable experimental research) and the natural sciences are themselves finding that their own research reporting is as much open to linguistic questions as is that of the humanities and social sciences. These ferments blur the lines between social and natural sciences and the humanities, particu- larly in how they reach the public consciousness (Willinsky, 2000: 233). There is a huge debate about whether the conventional formats of ‘scientific’ writing do or do not aid clar- ity, and even about the meaning of clarity itself (Zeller and Farmer, 1999: 12–14). This leads us to question the appropriateness of applying scientific norms to areas which are not sciences. Qualitative and narrative research have had to hide behind structures that depersonalize our outputs (even requiring us, for example, to report participant observation in the third person). We can, however, now begin to quit the paranoia that limits our research writing to the conventional pseudo-scientific style.

1.4.3.3 New research and technical methodologies Qualitative ethnographic and narrative methods have much developed since 1975. We now use focus groups, photography, life history, email interviewing, observation, diaries, critical incidents and more. These do not always fit comfortably with conventional reporting formats. In trying to make them do so, I find that I can lose the excitement, per- sonality and immediacy of the original research. Hence we experiment with alternative ways of writing and presenting research, so widening ‘the schism between those who adhere to the scientific model of writing and those who choose to supplement that model with tools from the literary world’ (Lewis-Beck, Bryman and Liao, 2004: 1197). Experiments arising from this methodological pluralism have become more evident and more realizable with developments in computer-based systems for composing 13 01-Thody-3390-Ch-01.qxd 5/23/2006 3:40 PM Page 13 WRITING AND PRESENTING RESEARCH documents. From the late 1980s word processors developed, first simply as super- typewriters,getting words down more efficiently and correctly than handwriting. The linear view of writing remained initially unchanged, leaving unrecognized the ‘inter- connectedness of and alternation within the writing sub-processes’ (Sharples and van der Geest, 1996: 8). By 2006, computer progress had made writing a different experi- ence, one that significantly influences what appears in a research report. We take varia- tions in font (typeface) size and colour for granted. We now incorporate them b b o ol ld d l ly y to enhance conventional and alternative styles, reporting with, for example, variegated pie charts, graphs and diagrams (though I wait to see a PhD thesis with its title in rain- bow hues). Photographs and drawings can be inserted cheaply and quickly. Text blocks can be formatted at the commencement of a project report and remain unchanged with- out the further intervention of the writer. We can enliven with animated pictures, the thousand and one PowerPoint slides that raise our professionalism in any presentation.

Utilizing analysis software, tables of categorized data appear as if by magic. I write the- ses, books, articles and reports directly on screen, mail and mark, read, annotate and question without ever downloading to paper. Text can be data in itself; it can be moved outside the flat space of a computer screen through hypertext and three dimensions, becoming ‘geometrical forms, objects and structures … [which] may hang on the wall, rotate on hinges or unfold’ (Tonfoni and Richardson, 1994: 32). So far, I think we have been playing with these developments as with a new toy, but they have democratized hitherto restricted print techniques. From the 2000s, we are all now sufficiently computer literate that our computer techniques are not just embellishment but an essential part of reporting that can affect meaning itself.

Computers have given us the power to be alternative. 1.5 Resolving the debates?

1.5.1 The middle ground The conventional versus alternatives debate has the disadvantage of problematizing what is often regarded as non-contentious (Cresswell, 1994: 193). Postmodernism gen- erates this contention since ‘there are no universal methods to be applied invariantly’ (Scott and Usher, 1999: 10) but it does have the advantage of offering many options and alternatives are increasingly accepted (Holliday, 2002). Fortunately, postmodernism also presents us with a way of resolving the conventional/alternatives debate because it does not automatically reject the conventional but asks instead, ‘What is appropriate?’ The conventional and the alternatives are best seen as ideal types at either end of a continuum. In any one piece of writing or presentation, a researcher will lean towards one ideal or the other, but it is possible to incorporate elements of both. Ways of report- ing research can combine the rigour and precision of conventional scientific formats, as the spine of a research report, with the flesh of alternative humanity. The latter will reveal all the voices which have contributed to the research (including your own as the researcher). The whole combines the literary, narrative arts of arrangement, accentua- tion and artistry. The following extracts show combined conventional and alternative styles from refereed journal articles. 1 14 01-Thody-3390-Ch-01.qxd 5/23/2006 3:40 PM Page 14 CONVENTIONS OR ALTERNATIVES ? Extract 1 Fail, Thompson and Walker’s (2004) study, on identity and Third Culture Kids, admirably combines the conventional and the alternative. The first half is an extensive, and tradi- tionally expressed, literature review, all written in the impersonal passive voice and in past tenses (5.3.3.5, 5.3.3.6): ‘Reverse culture shock has been well documented in the research on Third Culture Kids … Downie (1976) drew certain conclusions from his study of TCKs returning to college in the United States’ (Fail et al., 2004: 321, 322). 2 The data are then presented as substantial verbatim extracts from life history interviews, in the first person present tense, without commentary or linking text, such as:

‘Anna: (My) friends in Geneva are all international … I see myself as a vagabond, based in nothing. I could die in any country in the world … I am FREE like a bird.’ After the verbatim data, the article reverts to the original impersonal, passive past as the author summarizes the collective views of the respondents in relation to each of the themes extracted from the literature.

Extract 2 My report, on nineteenth century school management, is an invented account of a nineteenth century headteacher’s fictional day, created from original sources, but pre- sented as imaginary non-participant observation by myself as the fantasy researcher (Thody, 1994b). This semi-fictional record shows, for example: 6.45 a.m. Equipment orders: [the principal] selects the order book for equipment. He is listing the number of slate pencils required. He pauses to consult a supplier’s catalogue for guidance on the appropriate length of pencils for different ages of children.

This fiction is firmly embedded within conventional elements of an introduction (11.10) with the research questions followed by a rationale for education history, a justification for its disparate sources and a literature review. The fiction is justified in the text, by its con- ventional origins in real sources, by advice from postmodernist experts requiring readable history, and by its uses of imaginative literature and its portrayal of multiple voices. You must also be aware that attitudes to ‘convention’ are changing. Those who devel- oped the 1960s’ scientific, traditional modes are now retiring from academic life; thus the tentative questioners of the 1990s could take the opportunity to engage in more trenchant debate in the 2000s towards a new break with tradition. Your careers have ten–fifty years to completion, time to see the alternatives themselves become the ‘new conventions’ and time to become the new conveyors of alternative styles to those whom you are, or will be, teaching. You can be the generation that rewrites the thesis regula- tions to offer freedom to candidates.It is also possible that we may just be witnessing a time lag while academics adjust to, and start to employ, alternative possibilities regularly. It is nothing new for changes in presentation and writing up requirements to lag behind new opportunities for change, as a 1990 author noted: Since 1984, when the first edition of this Green Guide [to publishing in scholarly jour- nals] was published, dramatic changes have occurred in the technologies for processing 15 01-Thody-3390-Ch-01.qxd 5/23/2006 3:40 PM Page 15 WRITING AND PRESENTING RESEARCH text and graphics. There has been considerably less development in the general principles and procedures for publishing. (Sadler, 1990: Foreword) 1.5.2 The guiding principles To find a way to meet the challenges from this ferment, you have to make choices. Your choices should be determined by: your own dialogue with your data generated as you write from the start of your project and as you plan all its stages, including its final written or spoken formats (2.2); the precedents for reporting the type of research you have done and whether or not you want to break these (2.3.1); your personality and what appeals to you (2.3.2); the practicalities of time and money that constrain your formats (2.3.3); the people reading, or listening to, your research (Chapter 3); the purposes for which you are reporting your research (Chapter 4); the arts and craft of writing (Chapter 5). 1.6 Chapter outlines In the rest of Part One, ‘Preparation’, I discuss the above guiding principles. In Part Two, ‘Selection and Reduction’, I apply these principles. Chapters 6 and 7 consider how to reduce, to manageable quantities, your primary research data and your secondary data for literature and methodology reviews. Part Three, ‘Production’, offers quantitative, qualitative and narrative styles for the findings from your research. Each of them is most usually associated with a particular form of data but is found with the other types of data. They are:

1 the conventional (scientific) style, mainly reporting quantitative data, experiments and quasi- experiments (Chapter 8); 2 the alternative of artistic reporting, largely associated with qualitative data (Chapter 9); 3 the alternative of literary styles, often restricted to narrative data (Chapter 10).

It is important to remember that ‘most of the ideas [for writing] apply equally well to qualitative and quantitative approaches’ (Cresswell, 1994: 193). Just because your data are qualitative does not mean that you should confine your options to the artistic; look also into scientific and literary forms. Likewise, the scientifically inclined can include literary or artistic approaches, and the literati should consider more than just the narrative. Common to all three styles is the need to make an impact with your reporting, since you want to ensure that someone will be persuaded to take action as a result of your work. The rest of Part Three offers guidance on the beginnings and ends of research writing – those all-important titles, introductions, abstracts and conclusions through which to ‘hook’ your readers (Chapter 11). Having made an opening impact, you need to ensure this is maintained through the demonstrated rigour of your work. Chapter 12 therefore reviews citation requirements. 16 01-Thody-3390-Ch-01.qxd 5/23/2006 3:40 PM Page 16 CONVENTIONS OR ALTERNATIVES ? Part Four, ‘Publication: Reference Guides’, concerns the end products of your research – presentations (Chapter 13) and publications (Chapter 14) – and raises awareness of the legal issues associated with writing and presenting, such as copyright and intellectual property (Chapter 15). Part Five, ‘Valediction’, farewells you with an Epilogue (Chapter 16) reviewing the literature about writing and presentation; reveals the research methodology for the book and the author’s biography in the Appendix (Chapter 17); and lists the references and further reading in a bibliography.

1.7 Review Deciding how to write and present research needs to be as central to research project planning as are all other elements of methodology. Postmodernism has extended the possibilities for formatting and style options, referred to above as ‘alternative’.

Modernist structuralism continues to support conventional styling. The dichotomy between the two is not as great as these apparently opposing terms indicate. There is middle ground between them. To help you to negotiate this, the first stage is the guid- ing principles discussed in Chapters 2–4.

REFLECTIONS Postmodernists believe that researchers must share power with their read- ers by making transparent the researcher’s own attitudes since these will subconsciously affect what is written. Readers are thus better able to judge the validity of the research. From reading this chapter, what do you think are my underlying assumptions? Turn to the Appendix on research methods (Chapter 17) to find out if you were right about me and assess the extent to which this chapter has been affected by my attitudes.

Notes 1 ‘Refereed’ journals are those for which articles are subjected to review by specialist academic experts before editorial acceptance. They are also known as ‘peer reviewed’, ‘core’ or ‘academic’ journals. They are regarded as more prestigious than ‘professional’ journals, for which only the editor, or a small editor- ial panel, decides whether or not to accept articles. Academic careers depend upon your research being published in refereed journals.

2 Sources cited solely within quotations are not included in the bibliography. 17 01-Thody-3390-Ch-01.qxd 5/23/2006 3:40 PM Page 17 CONTENTS 2.1 Framework of principles18 2.2 Dialogue with the data 18 2.2.1 Write from the start 18 2.2.2 Plan 20 2.2.3 Plan for the primary formats, consider the secondaries 20 2.2.4 Setting up templates 22 2.3 Writing and presenting 24 2.3.1 Precedents – to follow or not to follow? 24 2.3.2 Personality – how much of it to admit? 25 2.3.2.1 Conventional approaches 25 2.3.2.2 Alternative attitudes 27 2.3.3 Practicalities 29 2.4 After writing 31 2.4.1 Publication and sales 31 2.4.2 After-sales service 32 2.5 Review 33 2.1 Framework of principles Chapter 1 discussed the choices between conventions and alternatives. Chapters 2, 3 and 4 help to you to make those choices by providing guiding principles. A summary of these is outlined in Figure 2.1.

2.2 Dialogue with the data 2.2.1 Write from the start The conventional archetype is to write when everything from which you will draw your data and conclusions has been done and the whole planned. Writing is viewed as a static, concluding exercise. Dismissive of this model, Piantanida and Garman note that: novices seem to believe that it is a waste of time and effort to start writing before they have figured out the meaning of the data/text. In our experience, it is often through the act of writing that researchers find their way out of the conceptual morass. (1999: 172) Principles for Selecting Appropriate Writing and Presentation Styles 2 02-Thody-3390-Ch-02.qxd 5/23/2006 3:40 PM Page 18 WRITING AND PRESENTATION STYLES 19 Lewis-Beck et al. (2004: 1197–8) are similarly critical of qualitative researchers who use the conventional ‘end-on’ model derived from the natural sciences. The conventional does, however, cohere well with data that have a logical progres- sion. It’s good for team projects; ideas develop as the team interacts during the process of the research. These will be recorded for later progression but may very well be dis- carded before a final version emerges. The conventional advice to write up only after all data have been collected was the standard before 1990 and the advent of PCs. My advice to thesis students then was to gather notes in sets (usually from items written individually on filing cards, stored in shoe-boxes) ready for each chapter or section. Flashes of inspiration occur- ring as data were being gathered were to be put into a notebook for later incorpora- tion as each chapter was written by hand. The text was then transcribed by a typist to a first draft to which only minor amendments could be made because of the cost of retyping the whole. The coming of mass computer literacy and PC accessibility made the model obsolete, although Wolcott’s (1990) seminal book on writing up qualitative research had already recognized the value of writing from the beginning of one’s research. Researchers can now begin to ‘write up’ as soon as a project commences and can con- tinue throughout it, altering, adding and amending their PC notes continuously.

Writing up becomes a non-linear, constant process of producing and revising with the possibility of ideas emerging at all stages, ‘an interative or cyclical activity’ (Blaxter, Hughes and Tight, 2001: 228). It’s a continuing interrogation between yourself and the data collected, producing a ‘working interpretive document’ (Denzin, 1998: 317) which helps you to make sense of what you have discovered while regularly seeing your work anew (Griffith, 2002). Writing thus becomes dynamic creativity, a means of discovery DIALOGUE WITH THE DATA WRITE FROM THE START PLAN WRITING and PRESENTING PRECEDENT PERSONALITY To follow or not to follow? OF THE WRITER/PRESENTER How much should be admitted?

PRACTICALITIES PEOPLE Costs, time, word limitsValuing and assessing readers and audiences PURPOSES PRODUCTION Overt, covert and ethics Arts and craft of writing AFTER WRITING PUBLICATION AND SALES AFTER-SALES SERVICE Figure 2.1 Framework of principles to guide your selection of writing and presentation styles 02-Thody-3390-Ch-02.qxd 5/23/2006 3:40 PM Page 19 WRITING AND PRESENTING RESEARCH and a research method itself, proceeding concurrently with other forms of data collection. It is vital to the sense-making of the research itself.More prosaically, the process of continuous writing from the start makes more obvious where there are gaps in your thinking since you are trying to communicate with an audience from the start (Chapter 3). Writing from the beginning also gives you a considerable amount of text written before the final draft is formally begun, a great morale booster en routeto finishing.

2.2.2 Plan The writing and presentation plan must be made at the beginning of a research project since it will affect all other elements of the research design. Planning is usually deemed to be complete once the research question is settled, the dominant philosophy is selected, sources for literature are identified, the methodology, samples and research instruments are designed and ideas for data analysis are investigated, but the dissemination campaign must also be included in this planning. This dissemination campaign consists of deciding on the primary and secondary formats through which you will spread your research and of setting up a template for the primary one at least (with experience, it is possible to have the templates for secondary formats concurrently in place).

2.2.3 Plan for the primary formats, consider the secondaries Primary formats are the intended, or required, outcomes of a project and its most sub- stantive, and substantial, output, such as reports to sponsors, theses, teaching materials, books, refereed journal articles or conference keynote speeches and papers. These need planning for in advance of a project since they will influence the writing shell, or tem- plate, that you set up (2.4) and the choice of data to present (Chapters 6 and 7). For your chosen primary format, you will be able to find out its precedents (2.3.1), the practical- ities that determine timing and costs (2.3.3) and the people and purposes for which you are writing (Chapters 3 and 4). You then write with these in mind. Never write in a vacuum. You also need to be aware of secondary formats, the ‘spin-offs’. These are optional outcomes, such as newspaper items, conference papers or journal articles, TV and radio programmes, books or book chapters, which usually deal with only part of a pro- ject or look at it from another angle. A secondary format will usually differ substan- tially in appearance from the primary format. It should not influence the choices in a research design but you need to allocate adequate time and money to enable you to prepare secondary outputs. These usually reach larger audiences than those for pri- mary formats and can provide additional income, both of which are important to your career. A dramatic illustration of using research in both primary and secondary formats is from those who are successful academic and fiction writers, such as Kathy Reichs, professor of forensic anthropology, practising forensic scientist and successful crime novelist (2003; 1990; 1989), as Box 2.1 illustrates.

20 02-Thody-3390-Ch-02.qxd 5/23/2006 3:40 PM Page 20 Box 2.1 Example of the same research data inboth a primary (journal article) and a secondary (crime novel) format by the same author In Reichs’ bestseller novel Bare Bones, fictional forensic anthropologist Dr Tempe Brennan is assessing bones from a potential crime scene:

The rear seat passenger had definitely been male. Not that useful. Larrabee would nail that during his post… On to age… I returned to the cranial wreckage.

As with dentistry, skulls come with some assembly required. At birth, the twenty-two bones are in place, but unglued. They meet along squiggly lines called sutures. In adult- hood, the squiggles fill in, until the vault forms a rigid sphere… Generally, the more birthday candles, the smoother the squiggles… By stripping blackened scalp from the cranial fragments, I was able to view portions of suture from the crown, back and base of the head… Though the vault closure is notoriously variable, this pattern suggested a young adult...

On to ancestry.

Race is a tough call at any time. With a shattered skull, it’s a bitch. (2003: 64–5) The same material originally appeared in one of Reichs’ academic papers on cranial structure eccentricities: First the human remains, designated n86–336, were cleaned, sorted and examined …The skull was exceptionally narrow, with a maximum cranial breadth of 116 mm (length 182 mm), and exhibited complete ectocranial and endocranial closure of the sagitall suture (Fig. 4). The cranial index was 63.7, considerably below the threshold of 70 suggested by Brothwell [3] as demarcating scarphcrania. Although of unusual shape, the skull looked male …The low nasal bridge suggested negroid ancestry. A small portion of preserved pubic symphysis showed a smooth, inactive face with some definition of its lower extremity, but lacking distinct rim formation or lipping. This suggested an age of 22–43 years. (1989: 264–5) Set up an additional file for possible secondary formats at the beginning of your research. In this, store:

• ideas for placements; • material that seems inappropriate for the primary format; • material for which you do not have room in the primary format; • the templates of any other formats into which you can add materials as you are already doing for the primary format shell. WRITING AND PRESENTATION STYLES 21 02-Thody-3390-Ch-02.qxd 5/23/2006 3:40 PM Page 21 You can then be writing more than one output simultaneously or, at least, you will be ready to prepare the spin-offs as soon as the primary output is finished. REFLECTIONS Enjoy a few minutes planning the title of the novel that could emerge from your current research. Devise a few characters to carry the plot. Read a novel by Malcolm Bradbury, Kathy Reichs or Alexander McCall Smith – all acade- mics who have successfully published both fiction and non-fiction.

2.2.4 Setting up templates Planning for writing and presenting has to be visible from day one of a research project.

Prepare a template, the empty shell, of the principal written output of the research, to be gradually filled in as you write throughout the research. Place your data, as they are collected, into their appropriate chapter from the start (though possible locations in other chapters should also be noted). Insert bibliographical references in their correct formats from the very first source you use (12.2 and Bibliography). This writing into the template can be ‘proper, joined-up and grammatical’ (Knight, 2002: 3) from the start, though I find that notes are preferable, with the polished version emerging at a later stage. Thus on day one of a sponsored research project for a commercial corporation, immediately after the first team meeting and while arguments still rage about the best ways to collect the data, you set up the template on empty files, with the headings from Box 2.2 (PCs usually have suitable templates). Box 2.2 Template for the basics of a research report Title page Title, who it is from and whom it is for, date.

Executive summary or key points summary.

1 Introduction 1.1 Outline, 1.2 rationale, 1.3 company needs’ context.

2 Summary of preceding research.

3 Collected data demonstrating the findings.

4 Recommendations.

Appendices 1 Methodology, 2 brief bibliography, 3 acknowledgements, 4 researcher’s brief biodata; 5 others as appropriate to topic.

WRITING AND PRESENTING RESEARCH 22 02-Thody-3390-Ch-02.qxd 5/23/2006 3:40 PM Page 22 Complete the title page immediately. Then add the material from your application for research funding from the company, and from their contract with you. Now start the research. Similarly, a university thesis outline would be as in Box 2.3. Box 2.3 Template for the basics of a university thesis Titling pages Title page (title, author, degree, date); acknowledgements; abstract; contents; list of tables and figures Chapter One Introduction (11.10) Chapter Two Literature survey (7.3) Chapter Three Methodology (7.4) Chapter Four Findings; this may need to be divided into more than one chapter Chapter Five Discussion/conclusions/recommendations (11.7); for doctorates, these will usually be separated into three chapters; for other postgraduates, into two chapters; for undergraduates combine all in one chapter Bibliography Appendices Complete the title page immediately. Then add the material from your thesis proposal, dispersed into the appropriate files. After that, you add new material as your research continues. Books, articles, conference papers, all follow the same routine. For each section of your template, record the minimum and maximum word allocations, such as 4000–5000 words per chapter. Use these initially, as a rough guide only. Do not enlarge or reduce until the final draft. Template advantages are:

• The morale boost on opening your files to see the title pages; it now looks like a serious and real- istic project.

• The niceties of titling and referencing are done during the project; leave them until the end when you’re tired and they are less likely to be correct and you will be frustrated at the delays caused by seemingly unimportant details.

• Minimizing the panic that afflicts researchers as the ‘writing-up’ stage looms; you will already have some material written and there is no longer a cut-off point when data stop and writing starts.

• You can make regular word counts so you will have a rough idea of how much material you have gathered for each section/chapter; stop when you have twice the number of words for each poten- tial chapter (and it is surprisingly easy to collect at least three or four times as much as you need).

• Material that you don’t use in the final version is still in ‘ready to use’ paragraphs for transfer to other publications. WRITING AND PRESENTATION STYLES 23 02-Thody-3390-Ch-02.qxd 5/23/2006 3:40 PM Page 23 WRITING AND PRESENTING RESEARCH Having a template helps you to recognize more easily when the data collection phase of a research project is nearing its natural end and you are ready to start putting each chapter/section into its final form. This stage is reached when you find yourself:

•repeating information already entered (to test for this, just use the ‘Find’ command on the PC to discover if you have already covered a topic); • becoming bored with just taking notes and entering data; when this boredom starts is when you should start creating the full draft of a chapter; • automatically writing your own comments, ideas, explanations or discussion as well as the primary or secondary data you are entering; • staring out of the window reflecting on the data for longer periods than you spend entering it; • with almost double the number of words you can have in the final version.

2.3 Writing and presenting 2.3.1 Precede nts – to follow or not to follow?

Being conventional would appear to imply compliance with whatever are the prece- dents for the form of writing you are attempting, while adopting alternative forms would seem to indicate being experimental with formats not sanctioned by previous experience. Both conventional and alternative research formats, however, have their own precedents, rules and customs which you are expected to follow. If these are only advisory expectations, then you have the choice whether or not to follow them. For example, if invited to contribute a chapter to an edited book, the editors will usually provide a template so that each chapter will be comparable. For example, Foreman and Gillett, in their book on animals’ spatial awareness, reported that ‘The contributing authors … have been asked to concentrate specifically on paradigms and test methodologies … There is less emphasis than is usual in scientific publications on the theoretical models that provoked the research’ (1998: 2). Any book editor will tell you, however, how difficult it is to ensure that contributors stick to the brief, as will be confirmed when you read edited books. If there is a required format (be that for conventional or alternative styles) for any research writing or presentation, then you must stick to it unless:

1 You get agreement in advance that you can make changes.

2 Your career is so well established that you can afford to have the occasional publication/ paper/thesis rejected.

3 Your career is so well established that the publishers/conference organizers cannot afford to reject you.

4 You like taking risks and ‘want to give yourself an extra challenge … don’t take the risk unless you really have the freedom to know what you are doing’ (Blaxter, Hughes and Tight, 2001: 244).

Depressing but true.

5 You have been invited to contribute to a book or journal, or to give a keynote at a conference. The editor/conference organizer will be so glad that your work (or you) arrive as planned that there are unlikely to be arguments over formats.

6 You are aiming to stir up controversy and/or your research is already controversial in itself. 24 02-Thody-3390-Ch-02.qxd 5/23/2006 3:40 PM Page 24 WRITING AND PRESENTATION STYLES 7 Your presentation/writing makes a point in itself related to the topic you have researched.

8 You personally know the journal editors, publishers, review committees and they know andaccept your different style.

9 You write very good begging letters.

10 Your experience can match that of your advisers. For example, if you are new to TV or radio pre- senting, then your director and editor will turn you into a puppet and determine when and how you face camera and microphone, the length of your inputs, what you wear, how you move. Only when you reach the dizzy heights of your own series will you feel able to make some slight con- tribution to determining what will make a good televisual moment. In comparison, by the time you get to making your inaugural professorial lecture, you will have more experience than almost anyone else in the room, and if you don’t want a lectern, PowerPoint or costume drama, then you won’t have to have them.

11 You can see no other way of doing it and you write a strongly justified rationale for altering the required format.

12 You are entering work for a journal, or a special issue, that expressly encourages variety.

13 Your publication/presentation is very different from the norm. I found that when I just altered a few minor points in a presentation (such as leaving the literature review to the end), some well meaning savant would come to tell me how to improve. Stunned congratulations came when I was the first person to sing in my conference paper presentation at the American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting and when I introduced a presentation in Australia on being a risk taker by performing English folk dancing. Moral of the tale: if you are going to break precedent, then break it big. The result will be invitations to speak and publish but it will take longer for academics to accept you as a serious researcher since:

Something just ahead of its time is called original, but something that breaks entirely new ground and is a long way ahead of its time may be seen as a threat to, or personal attack on leaders in the field … especially when reviewers [of journal articles for publication] per- ceive their role as gatekeepers for the discipline. (Sadler, 1990: 16–17) 14 Your publication/presentation provides just a small deviation in an aspect that is not central to your research, such as the title page. This may be a small step for academics but it can be a contribu- tion to a later giant leap. For example, compare the two title pages in Figure 2.2. They were for a paper to be presented at a USA conference. The left column follows 2004 APA guidelines; the right braves a slight variation. Which would most encourage you to attend the paper session?

2.3.2 Personality – how much of it to admit?

Your personality will influence how you write since you will choose the style, format and tone with which you feel comfortable and capable so it reflects ‘your intention and your point of view’ (Tonfoni and Richardson, 1994: 33).This is the ethos of the research and your aim is to produce a persuasive one. A current debate in research writing is how much of yourself should be overtly revealed, and in what ways, in order to be persuasive.

2.3.2.1 Conventional approaches Conventionally, an author description is given either at the beginning or at the end of a document or when introducing a speaker (11.5 and Appendix, Chapter 17). This 25 02-Thody-3390-Ch-02.qxd 5/23/2006 3:40 PM Page 25 WRITING AND PRESENTING RESEARCH invariably centres on the writer’s academic credentials such as degrees, books written or international stature, in order to establish the status of the writer/speaker. .

This helps to guarantee the integrity of the research being reported and the competence of the researcher. Once past the introduction, the writer/speaker is not evident. This estab- lishes that the research stands or falls on its own merits and those who attack it must do so on substantive grounds, not on those of personality. This suits well the modernist perspective in which authoritative proof of a single viewpoint is the sine qua non of research. It well suits team research in which the authors have melded to produce one viewpoint. It well suits current understanding of the objec- tivity that is regarded as so important to conventional research writing, that of personal decentring (1.3).

26 Running head: European school leadership SCHOOL PRINCIPAL PREPARATION IN EUROPE: multicultural approaches Come and discuss with professors from around Europe at our ROUND TABLE coffee session. We welcome your views on principal preparation in other coun- tries, to add to our experiences.

Annual Conference USA Educational Administration Society November 3–6, 2006 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Angela Thody, Lincoln University, England Zoi Papanaoum, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece Petros Pashiardis, University of Cyprus, Cyprus Olof Johansson, Umea University, Sweden Address for correspondence: Emerita Professor A.

Thody, IIEL, Lincoln University, Lincoln LN6 7TS, England Running head: European school leadership School Principal Preparation in Europe: multicultural approaches Angela Thody, Emerita Professor Educational LeadershipUniversity of Lincoln Brayford Pool, Lincoln LN6 7TS England [email protected] With Petros Pashiardis, Associate Professor Educational Administration(Project Leader) Faculty of Education University of Cyprus Republic of Cyprus [email protected] Zoi Papanaoum, Professor Education, School of Education Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Thessaloniki, Greece Olof Johansson, Professor Director of Centre for Principalship Studies University of Umea, Sweden Roundtable Presentation at the 2006 Annual Conference USA Educational Administration Society November 3–6, 2006 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Figure 2.2 Contrasting formats for the title page of a conference paper 02-Thody-3390-Ch-02.qxd 5/23/2006 3:40 PM Page 26 WRITING AND PRESENTATION STYLES To some extent, however, this overt exclusion of the author is fictional, ‘masks that are hidden behind, put on, and taken off as writers write their particular stories and self- versions’ (Denzin, 1998: 317). The researcher is dominant whether or not this is shown by the language chosen. The researcher has already selected the direction of the research and the methodology, will have chosen which data to include and which to ignore, what to include in the final reports and what to omit.

2.3.2.2 Alternative attitudes Postmodernist alternatives need to convey a rounded proof, combining as many differ- ent perspectives as possible, all of which are deemed to have partial authority. Amongst these perspectives are your views as the researcher and you have to make these ‘evident for the meaning to become clear’ (Holliday, 2002: 131). You may report your own views and actions directly in the document, making the researcher just one more of the researched (as in participant observation or action research), but even where you are not also a respondent, your views will influence what is written and how it is written. You should make yourself obvious in the research because, like it or not, you are intertwined in it since this is ‘in the age of inscription [when] writers create their own situated, inscribed versions of the realities they describe’ (Denzin, 1998: 323). In making yourself obvious in the research report, you are overtly accepting personal responsibility for what you have produced. You therefore need to decide how much autobiography to reveal and in what ways, as the following examples demonstrate. An immediate impression of an author and her personal commitment to her research topic emerges in an article by Bergerson (2003) on ‘Critical race theory and white racism: is there room for white scholars in fighting racism in education?’ (and note how that title combines the conventional and the alternative). The first paragraph begins:

Today I received an email from an aunt interested in knowing if I had been offered a faculty job for which I recently applied … She asked if I think one of the reasons the university is taking so long to notify me is that … [the university might be] involved in a federal affirmative action court case. (2003: 51) I don’t know if the aunt is fictional or real but she provided a means of introducing the research question, the status of the author, and the researcher’s personal involvement in the issue. You know immediately what is the personal polemic of the researcher and can, therefore, filter the data she presents to you, through that sieve. The aunt reappears in the conclusions to the research. Today I composed the following message to my aunt:

Dear Tante, Thanks for your interest in my job news. I just found out this week that another candidate was selected … I think he will be a great addition to the faculty there. He is African- American. Before now, they have had no people of colour on their faculty. I know there is a tendency for us, as white people, to wonder how affirmative action … might have played into their decision, but I urge you not to jump to those conclusions. This professor 27 02-Thody-3390-Ch-02.qxd 5/23/2006 3:40 PM Page 27 WRITING AND PRESENTING RESEARCH should not have to answer for his qualifications because of his race … I hope you and Uncle are well, and look forward to seeing you this summer. (2003: 61) It sounds a little stilted to me – I don’t write to my aunts like this – but it made the conclusions more lively, gave us major clues to the personality and attitudes of the researcher, added the researcher’s perspectives to the data and breathed emotion. All this is essential to demonstrate the required postmodernist reflexivity (the implications for the findings of the researcher’s life, education, social class, professional background, prejudices, expectations, values and place in the research) but you still have to establish academic respectability in the same way as in the conventional mode.This combination can be achieved by including personal information in the researcher’s professional biography (11.5 and Appendix, Chapter 17) or by building in personal information in the course of the written or spoken text. Limerick, Burgess- Limerick and Grace choose to do this in their article, largely the outcome of a triangu- lar conversation amongst the article’s authors, about power relations in interviewing: Treating the researcher’s experiences as central to the research makes space for a new kind of knowledge … A legitimate and important question to ask when appraising interview- based research is ‘Who are the interviewers?’ … [because] The meaning of communication is inescapably situated and contextual … Consequently we begin with an encapsulated history of each interviewer. (1996: 450) Likewise, Brandon wove her painfully diffident stance into the second page of a 2003 refereed academic journal article on cultural politics in multicultural teaching: I am a white, middle class, female teacher educator, and my only experience teaching diverse students occurred in 1970 in rural Georgia. I am culturally disadvantaged, expe- rientially limited, and often linguistically deficient in both preparing and teaching … children of colour. (2003: 32) Such personal history becomes even more significant to readers’ understanding of a research project, if the researcher belongs to the same group as the researched and if the research has arisen because of who and what you are. Kelly (2001), a Roman Catholic single mother, interviewed others in Ireland in the same category (including her own mother). All were breaking deeply embedded conventions. They were asked how their roles had been influenced by Church, state and society. At least one from each mother–daughter group was a personal friend of mine, making for interviews of great emotional and experiential depth … My experiences are aligned with those of the women I interviewed … my analysis of the larger social movements in Irish society is paralleled with my personal experiences. (2001: 21) At its simplest level, you can demonstrate researcher involvement by substituting ‘I do’ for ‘It was done’ (5.3.3.6), but you need also to reveal emotions in the written or presented record. Readers should know your feelings at the time of collecting data since this could have affected what you selected to record. For example, this researcher’s atti- tude to convention is only too apparent in his justification for avoiding the ‘mincing 28 02-Thody-3390-Ch-02.qxd 5/23/2006 3:40 PM Page 28 steps of academic debate [because] I would never get it right … seeking to do so was a futile waste of energy … I should proceed with this “truth” in mind and allow myself to be more playful’ (Marshall, 1995: 29).Playfulness includes admitting personal emotions. Reporting a study of chief execu- tives, for example, for which I used non-participant observation over thirty-six days, each of twelve hours, I introduced my emotional reactions in my methodology record, with the words of an old song. When making presentations on the topic, I either sang it or used a recording: I’ll walk beside you through the passing years Through days of rain and sunshine, joy and tears.

Walking beside CEOs over the passing years to record and report their daily activities, was fascinating, time-consuming, tiring, analytically complex, challenging and emotion- ally involving. (Thody, 1997a: 197) Autobiography, emotions, reflexivity, your own opinions – include all these and you ‘run the risk of researcher dominance, making commentaries which place you as the researcher in the superior role of one whose analysis of other people’s words shows that you under- stand what took place, while they do not’ (Winter, 1989; cited in Coghlan and Brannick, 2001: 115). In one extreme case, this led to ‘The research [being] in danger of becoming more about me than about a social phenomenon of which I am part’ (Kelly, 2001: 23, 25). Becoming thus ‘part’ of the written account adds to the conventional power researchers already have in choosing subject, methods, language, format and conclusions. To mitigate this, Darlington and Scott (2002: 161) recommend keeping the researcher in but not to the extent that other participants’ voices become overshadowed. Kelly (2001), for example, achieved this by dedicating one chapter to her voice alone with the other respondents’ views in other chapters. Hytten and Warren, in their article on whiteness in racism, found their way out by stating that their ‘research began out of shared concerns about engaging our own privilege … As co-authors, we encountered … whiteness at different times and in different ways … Before sharing these discourses, it is important to note that we do not position ourselves as researchers outside of the discourses we describe’ (2003: 69).

REFLECTIONS What information about yourself would you include in the final document from your current research and where will you put this biographical informa- tion? (In this book, information about myself is in the Appendix, Chapter 17.) 2.3.3 Practicalities There are sensible conventions that govern the practicalities of research but sometimes these have to be tempered with reality, as Box 2.4 makes clear. WRITING AND PRESENTATION STYLES 29 02-Thody-3390-Ch-02.qxd 5/23/2006 3:40 PM Page 29 WRITING AND PRESENTING RESEARCH 30 Realistic alternatives There is never an ideal time to write.

Just get on with it anytime.

Due dates, sponsors’ demands, staff availability and family needs will halve the time you have allocated. You simply have to remove, or decrease, other elements of your life to fit in the research and writing.

As the due date for the finished product draws near, you will start to link paragraphs into chapters, send part polished chapters to colleagues for comment, continue collecting and analysing data, write through the night, negotiate a new due date ( but this latter option is not for university theses or for funding sponsors), write through the night, write through the night, day, weekends, holidays and finish triumphantly.

Reflection time is never enough.

Looking back at her research, three years later, Liz Kelly (1999) said, ‘I don't think I was as clear … when I wrote it, as I am now, and I don’t think that it is stated there as strongly as I would now’ (cited in Darlington and Scott, 2002: 168).

• Labour costs are usually underestimated and most researchers write in their personal and leisure time.

Sensible conventions Set aside time to write when you know you will be at your best.

Allocate the time you think you will need for the research and double it.

At the halfway point between the inception of the research and the due date for the complete written product, you should have commenced the joining up of the paragraphs you have been storing for each chapter.

At the three-quarter point, a whole, fairly polished version should be out for comment from colleagues, supervisors, publishers for return within one month.

At the designated end point, the whole will have been handed in and you will be on with the next project.

You leave ample time for revisions. This reflection time is vital to being able to express yourself effectively.

Ensure you have costed your project realistically. For the writing stages, this must include: Box 2.4 Research writing and presentation: dealing with the practicalities (Continued) 02-Thody-3390-Ch-02.qxd 5/23/2006 3:40 PM Page 30 WRITING AND PRESENTATION STYLES 2.4 After writing 2.4.1 Publication and sales Conventionally, research writing is for personal satisfaction and to add to the world’s knowledge. That applies to whatever format of writing you adopt, but the additional 31 Realistic alternatives • Most people beg, borrow or steal paper.

• Most people happily spend on binding costs; it’s what makes the finished product look so good.

• Other costs are unavoidable but it’s possible to be creative in finding money from various sources, scholarships, charity funds, commercial sponsors.

There is a set word limit (or a time limit for a presentation). You stick to it. You can negotiate a minimal increase if the editor/publisher/ conference organizer desperately wants your work. Word allocations for theses are almost immovable.

Your plane is late. There is no microphone, PowerPoint or furniture. You cope brilliantly.

Sensible conventions • The cost of the time for writing. It’s easy to forget that both principal and assistant researchers need to remain with the project until the writing up is complete. It’s easy for an undergraduate to forget to allow for wages forgone from the part-time job that has to be abandoned as the due date looms.

• Paper for printing.

• Binding for theses.

• Technical help with graphical exuberances if you are not fully PC literate.

• Payments to journals which charge for publication.

• Conference fees if you are making an uninvited presentation.

• Costs of making or buying extra copies to send as ‘thanks’ to respondents, supervisors and mentors.

There is a set word limit (or a time limit for a presentation). You stick to it.

Arrive in advance of a presentation so you can test the microphone, ensure that the PowerPoint works and see that the room furnishings are arranged for your style. Box 2.4 (Continued) 02-Thody-3390-Ch-02.qxd 5/23/2006 3:40 PM Page 31 alternative perspectives are that publishing is fun (Sadler, 1990: 2) and if you want your work to be read/heard by more than yourself, your family or your students then you have to work at extending dissemination through publication (Part Four).In order to sell that book, you must make clear to browsers that they need to buy your work. Use devices that attract attention in the opening pages (Chapter 11) and make clear for whom the book is intended in the Preface. For example: These volumes will be of interest to new and old students alike; the student new to spatial research can be brought up to speed with a particular range of techniques … For seasoned researchers, these volumes provide a rapid scan of the currently available tools.

(Foreman and Gillett, 1998: 2–3) To help you to reach, and extend beyond, publication, you need to network:

• At conferences, trawl the delegates’ list for publishers, editors and the well known in your disci- pline. Ask their advice, leave your business card and collect theirs.

• Send thanks and copies (or a brief summary) of completed work to everyone who has helped you:

respondents, librarians, supervisors, proofreading assistants, mentors, family, editors, colleagues who recommended you for a research grant. Any thanks are rare in academia; yours will be a memorable beacon.

• Offer to edit a journal’s special edition. You will please the editor (who can take a rest) and the contributors you ask.

Take every opportunity that is offered. For example:

•Be enthusiastic about your research in your first conference paper even if the audience is one or two (as it was for my first paper, but from those two came an offer of an external examinership and an article placement – and I concluded my conference career twenty years later with the audience queuing to get in).

• If an article or conference paper is turned down but you are offered a colloquium/ symposium mini- slot instead, swallow your pride and take it.

• If an unpretentious professional association newsletter wants a few hundred words from you, write it. You can use the opportunity to practise unorthodox alternatives; other academics and editors will be alerted to your work and it can result in invitations to fee-paying presentations.

• Volunteer as an associate editor for a journal.

2.4.2 After-sales service Once publication is achieved, the report presented to the sponsors or the thesis com- pleted to the examiners’ satisfaction, there is still work to do. Some will come to you:

queries from other academics, requests to republish your work as book chapters. For others, you need to be proactive. Suggestions for this can be found in Box 2.5.

WRITING AND PRESENTING RESEARCH 32 02-Thody-3390-Ch-02.qxd 5/23/2006 3:40 PM Page 32 Box 2.5 After publication: marketing your research •Invite the research respondents to a launch party.

• Ensure that copyright fees come to you for photocopying of your articles or other publications. For example, in the UK, register with the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society (www.alcs.co.uk).

• Send copies (or summaries) to colleagues who might cite your work and make sure you cite your own work in subsequent publications (known as product placement in commercial terms, but just as vital in academic cultures where citations are counted to assess the value of your work).

• Cultivate ‘ways of influencing policy … [make] links with the power groups who decide policy’ (Cohen, Manion and Morrison, 2000: 43). Work out at what point in the policy process to intervene with the findings from your research.

• Find other ways to publish material from the research project that were not used in the original document – web publishing, different journals, professional rather than academic journals, distance learning materials.

• Visit bookshops to see if they stock your book. If not, ask for it. It will at least alert the bookseller to something that might be stocked. Ask your publisher why it’s not at that bookshop.

• Inform the publisher when you are attending conferences at which your book might be displayed. Do not assume that the conference organizers will do this for you.

All this may sound a little too alternative for you but remember: if you don’t want to ‘sell’ your work, then why should anyone want to read it?

2.5 Review The principles to apply when deciding which of the conventional or alternative styles to use for writing and presenting research are: Begin a dialogue with your data by writing from the start of your project and within its template (2.2).

Check precedents for reporting your type of research and decide whether or not you want to try alternatives (2.3.1).

Assess your personality and what appeals to you (2.3.2).

Consider the practicalities of time and money (2.3.3).

Adapt to the people reading, or listening to, your research (Chapter 3).

Adjust for the purposes for which you are reporting your research (Chapter 4).

Post-publication, networking and further dissemination are important. WRITING AND PRESENTATION STYLES 33 02-Thody-3390-Ch-02.qxd 5/23/2006 3:40 PM Page 33 CONTENTS 3.1 The value of an audience34 3.2 Attitudes to audience 35 3.2.1 Conventional 35 3.2.2 Alternative 35 3.2.3 Resolving the differences 35 3.3 Assessing readers and listeners 36 3.3.1 Assessment principles 36 3.4 Academic audiences 38 3.4.1 Collective academics 38 3.4.2 Thesis examiners 39 3.4.3 Conference audiences 39 3.4.4 Journal editors (and their corollaries, conference committees) 39 3.4.5 Article reviewers 40 3.4.6 Research assessors 41 3.4.7 Supporters’ club 42 3.5 Audiences outside academia 42 3.5.1 Appropriate style for less specialist readers and listeners 42 3.6 Academic and less specialist audiences combined 44 3.6.1 Book purchasers 44 3.6.2 Research funding agencies: government and charitable 44 3.6.3 Research respondents 45 3.6.4 International audiences 45 3.6.4.1 International readers 46 3.6.4.2 International listeners 47 3.7 Acknowledging the power of readers and listeners 47 3.7.1 Flattering the readers and listeners 48 3.8 Review 48 3.1 The value of an audience An essential question for participants was ‘Who am I writing for?’ Certainly, this issue is consistent with what most authors experience … One participant aptly summed up this concern, ‘I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to write about until I could picture my audience.’ (Ackerman and Maslin-Ostrowski, 1996: 6) Adapting to Audience: Adjusting for their Aims 3 03-Thody-3390-Ch-03.qxd 5/23/2006 3:40 PM Page 34 ADJUSTING FOR AUDIENCE 35 This quotation is from research into the value of trainee leaders writing up their personal experiences. No audience was designated for them but they quickly discov- ered that knowing the people for whom they were writing was essential – an expected development since research writers show ‘growing awareness of audience and writing as social action’ (Gosden, 1995: 52). The aim of this chapter is to help readers grow more aware of what their specific audiences can be expected to know about particular research topics, what styles are most likely to appeal to different audiences, what formats they will be expecting and what are their purposes in reading the research. The chapter begins with a discussion of conventional and alternative attitudes to readers and listeners, and continues with guidance on how to analyse audiences in general. Specific groups of people who are likely to be research users, both inside and outside academia, are then examined. 3.2 Attitudes to audience 3.2.1 Conventional The extreme conventional view is that you are not writing for an audience at all. You are writing about your research; your interpretations are dominant. The central rela- tionship is between the researcher and the data. Conventionalists view audience as a ‘constraint’ (Cohen et al., 2000: 89) and the desire to persuade others of our views as unethical manipulation. Such views can be criticized as ‘naïve realism … the doctrine that language and the texts created from it directly represent in an unproblematic way the world as it is’ (Scott and Usher, 1999: 150).

3.2.2 Alternative The extreme alternative view is that audience is as integral to your research as you are.

Research is as much about the relationship between an audience and the researcher as about that between the researcher and the data, since the audience has the power of interpretation. Postmodernism gives us the opportunity to experiment with different formats for different audiences, arising from the understanding that language is not a simple given but is created by a writer’s subjectivities (Richardson, 1998: 349). This is nothing new. Cicero (first century BC) insisted that good style ‘be understood as a relationship with an audience, rather than a … linguistic or positivistic achievement’ (Zeller and Farmer, 1999: 13). Such views can be criticized for allowing anarchy.

3.2.3 Resolving the differences In practice, the two sides of the debate are not very far apart. Conventional format- ting is as it is because the intended audience expects conventionality. This expectation does not have to be acknowledged overtly, as it can be in alternative formats, but it is there nonetheless. The two are ‘more similar than you would imagine at times because it’s the same stories, just told with a different level in mind’ (Darlington and Scott, 2002: 171). 03-Thody-3390-Ch-03.qxd 5/23/2006 3:40 PM Page 35 WRITING AND PRESENTING RESEARCH 36Hence you should adapt your language and style to those most likely to be appreciated by the intended audience. What you write will affect the readers but it cannot dictate a particular reaction from them. Readers will deconstruct and reconstruct your writing (Barone, 1995: 64). I would not go so far as to suggest that the power relations in research have shifted so much that the researcher’s adaptations to audience are more important to credibility than the research; but in centring on audience, you hand over some power to them. As a writer, you try to direct that power towards your chosen interpretation. To do this, you begin by assessing the primary audience’s characteristics. 3.3 Assessing readers and listeners All readers of research are potential users of your findings, not readers seeking entertain- ment only, but it is from the entertainment industry that researchers can acquire lessons about targeting audience (Shroder, Drotner, Kline and Murray, 2003). TV programme makers, for example, have been enjoined to know the values and moral codes of all parts of society so that their messages can be delivered in a way that fits in with prevailing values (Belson, 1967). Without this ‘there is a very real risk that people in the audience will reject or distort or select from [a programme] in accordance with what they feel or believe’ (1967:

10). This should not mean that you pander to readers and give them only what they might want to hear, but knowing your audience is a guide to good decision making and one of the determinants for the format and language of any report or presentation.

3.3.1 Assessment principles To help determine the format, language and style of your research writing and presen- tations, you need to ‘guesstimate’ the primary readers’/listeners’:

• subject knowledge; • subject interest; • relationship to you; • needs; • wants; • likely mood when they receive your documents or presentation.

Each of these is discussed in the succeeding paragraphs which relate to all research readers/listeners. These are followed by evaluations of the characteristics of specific audiences (3.4, 3.5, 3.6).

•Subject knowledge. At the polar opposites of academic and ‘lay’ public audiences, the academic can be deemed to be likely to know more about the subject of your research than can the lay audi- ence. However, any audience, even of highly specialist academics, is unlikely to have as much knowledge as you do about the particular research you are reporting. If they did, then there would have been no point in doing your research since research is meant to break new ground. Hence, the more specialized and academic your audience, the less you will have to explain of the subject groundwork, but for all audiences you will need to provide significant detail. 03-Thody-3390-Ch-03.qxd 5/23/2006 3:40 PM Page 36 ADJUSTING FOR AUDIENCE 37 •Subject interest. It is depressing to realize that ‘no more than a fraction of [the] intended audience is interested primarily in the specific program and setting that was the object of the study’ (Hammersley, 1993: 203). They want the conclusions only so they can quickly assess how your work relates to theirs or if, and how, your ideas can be put into practice.

• Relationship to you. The greater the power of the readers over you, the more carefully you need to adapt your writing to their characteristics. The most powerful audiences are usually small and homogeneous which assists your assessment (thesis examiners, professorial promotion commit- tees, journal editors and reviewers, research assessors).

• Needs. Above all, readers/listeners need to be convinced that your research matters to them.

Hence the importance of what you write/speak in the first few lines (11.1). Some still need to be educated in alternative ways of writing and presentation; so enjoy doing so if you’ve selected one of these.

• Wants. They want to understand you quickly, ‘to learn from you economically … with as little trou- ble as possible’ (Griffith, 1994: 236), but they do wantto learn. Research readers and listeners are, therefore, generally kindly and well disposed towards you. They will forgive most things except excessive length, pomposity or being patronized.

• Likely mood. Most academics have to fit in reading other people’s research late at night when tired- ness impairs concentration or when they are trying to write their own. Hence comes the impor- tance of clarity and brevity. Policy makers and full-time students can usually fit you in during their daylight hours. You face strong competition, however, from other distractions so your work needs to stand out even if it is only through having a coloured cover that can be easily located on a full desktop.

These assessments should be made of the intended audiences for each different written or spoken product from your research. You then vary what you write for each specific group discussed below. Hence, for example, you would need to respond to your fun- ders first for the report from a sponsored research project. Assuming you had their per- mission to publish the results elsewhere, you might then rewrite part of the report for the academic audience at a subject specific conference. At the conference, the editor of a generalist magazine is interested in your theme so you need to rewrite again with a lay, but interested, audience in mind. Finally, the local newspaper picks up on your suc- cess and you have five lines in which to attract the attention of a disinterested public to your discoveries.

The following two extracts, concerning the same research, demonstrate how adjust- ments are made to suit different audiences.

Extract 1: Wolf Predators From National Geographic , an international circulation science magazine.

•Audience. What might be termed ‘educated hobby-professionals’, wanting to be entertained while gaining knowledge; the magazine’s editors want to encourage readers to continue purchasing a journal that is not required reading.

• Topic. The effect on the ecosystem of the reintroduction of wolves. The piece is written by one of the senior editors of National Geographic (Holland, 2004). 03-Thody-3390-Ch-03.qxd 5/23/2006 3:40 PM Page 37 WRITING AND PRESENTING RESEARCH 38The article hooked the readers with 75 per cent of its opening double page as a photo- graph of a snowbound elk skeleton. The titling similarly electrified: ‘Where the elk fear predation, an ecosystem returns’. Following this was: It seemed obvious. Because wolves prey on elk, and elk feed on plants, the wolves’ reintroduction to Yellowstone National Park in 1995 should have led to a decline in elk numbers … That would then explain why some plants elk eat are suddenly thriving. This opening short sentence made dramatic impact. The conjunction ‘because’ that starts the second sentence breaches grammatical correctness but draws the readers in by its conversational nature. The rationale for the topic then feeds the curiosity. The literature review comes next: But when Robert Beschta and William Ripple of Oregon State University began to study plant recovery in the park, they found a different twist. ‘What we’re actually seeing is that the size of the elk population hasn’t changed significantly,’ Beschta says … it seems that fear of predation, not elk numbers, is driving floral recovery – by changing the ungulates’ behavior. In some areas where wolves now prowl, ‘elk no longer hang out … [so] river loving woody plants … once overbrowsed by elk … are going gangbusters. (my emphases) Holland thus managed to cite the work of the researchers while dragging the readers into the mystery story. The colloquialisms (my emphases) make the non-specialist read- ers feel comfortable (5.3.3.3) while still flattering their scientific knowledge by assum- ing that the readers understand ‘ungulate’ as the correct terminology (5.3.3.4).

Extract 2 From Forest Ecology and Management, an international refereed academic journal contain- ing the article about the research from which the above originated.

• Audience. Likely to be international academic experts, wanting to gain knowledge for either professional or academic developments.

• Topic. The effect on the ecosystem of the reintroduction of wolves, written by those who researched it (Ripple and Beschta, 2003).

The format is conventional and without photographs. The article begins at an apparent tangent but respects its specialist audience with its language: Deciduous woody species, such as aspen (Populus tremuloides ) in terrestrial systems … have been unable to successfully regenerate … in various forest and range landscapes … Wolves cause mortality and can influence the distribution and behavior of herbivores. Thus when a top trophic level predator interacts with the next lower level herbivore and this interaction in turn alters or influences vegetation, a ‘tropic cascade’ occurs. 3.4 Academic audiences 3.4.1 Collective academics Academics are the prime audience for all of us as researchers. They are ‘usually intelligent, literate and serious … They don’t mind some levity, some lightheartedness’ (Griffith, 1994: 03-Thody-3390-Ch-03.qxd 5/23/2006 3:40 PM Page 38 ADJUSTING FOR AUDIENCE 39 236) but the latter must not dominate. They are ‘a community of writers who greatly value scrupulous scholarship and the careful documentation, or recording, of research’ (MLA, 2003: xv). Writing and presenting must, therefore, be ‘acceptable to the “expert” readers who function as gatekeepers of the academic community’ (Gosden, 1995: 53) by providing: systematic, transparent and rigorous work to produce evidence which proves your conclusions; extensive methodology; lengthy and comprehensive literature review that includes accurate citations (Chapter 12); contributions to theory and debate. You then need to adapt for the specific academic subspecies described below.

3.4.2 Thesis examiners There is a choice about the way to write for thesis examiners:

• either conventionally, following all the university’s regulations; • orwith an exceedingly, extremely, magnificently well argued alternative with which your super- visors are in 100 per cent agreement and only then if you are at doctoral level.

If adopting the more common first option, you can risk alternatives within the chapter(s) reporting your findings, especially if the data are from qualitative or narra- tive sources, but the overall, conventional format remains sacrosanct. Nor is there choice about the rigour of the language to be adopted in a thesis, be it conventional or alternative. You have to be absolutely correct in vocabulary, punctuation and grammar.

Even the typing errors will be noted. This nicety is not because examiners are pedan- tic traditionalists who actually prefer the ‘double spaced drabness’ (Knight, 2002: 198) that afflicts theses but because of the importance of theses as training pieces (1.3.2.1).

3.4.3 Conference audiences See 12.6.3 and 13.3.5.

3.4.4 Journal editors (and their corollaries, conference committees) These powerful people determine whether or not your articles/papers will be passed on to reviewers. Editors and conference committees tend to be dedicated to their discipline.

They need to be since their editorial work (often unremunerated or extremely poorly paid) has to be done in their personal time after all their other administrative, teaching and research commitments. Editors are dominated by deadlines: the date of despatch to read- ers of the just completed issue, the date the next issue must reach the printers, the date by which all articles for inclusion in the subsequent issue must be returned to the editor by reviewers, the date by which writers must submit articles for inclusion in an issue later in 03-Thody-3390-Ch-03.qxd 5/23/2006 3:40 PM Page 39 WRITING AND PRESENTING RESEARCH 40the year or the conference date. In between, editors will be writing tactful letters of rejection, joyful letters of acceptance rephrasing unkind reviewers’ comments so they do not destroy the confidence of writers, and correcting the grammar of a generation who never learnt it at school. They sit amidst the whirlpools of easily bruised egos, who will articulately complain of editorial neglect of their talents, and readers who want their spe- cialist needs accommodated and their minds stimulated and entertained in the shortest possible time if they are to continue paying the high costs of journal subscriptions. I was a journal editor, so obviously my description above is sympathetic. You may feel you agree more with an Australian view that ‘a small proportion of editors are pos- sessive of their academic territory, or are given to prejudice and favour and operate as part of an invisible college of scholars in a cosy club atmosphere’ (Sadler, 1990: 10). Whichever perspective you have of editors, there are ways to please them. They are most likely to send your articles to reviewers if your writing passes the test of clarity, your research appears to offer something new and relevant to that journal or confer- ence, your article arrives on time and you followed the contributors’ instructions or … REFLECTIONS Read this extract to detect what else attract s editors. It’s an editor’s thoughts about an article submitted for the journal she edits.

The rule utilitarianism article was weighty, but largely unreadable … It appeared to be written in English, but it was a variety of English which Isabel felt occurred only in certain corners of academia where faux weightiness was a virtue … everything sounded so heavy, so utterly earnest. It was tempting to exclude the unintelligible paper on the grounds of grammatical obfuscation, and then to write to the author – in simple terms – and explain to him why this was being done. But she had seen his name, and his institution and the title page of his article, and she knew there would be repercussions if she did this. Harvard!

(McCall Smith, 2004: 92) This extract is from a novel, but one written by a Professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh who will therefore have experience of writing for many different audiences and editors.

3.4.5 Article reviewers This group of your peers usually receives your articles without any identifying author details, so your name or institution will not affect reviewers’ views (unless you are in a very specialized area of your discipline in which everyone knows everyone else and estab- lished or new writers are instantly recognizable). You can guess who some of the review- ers might be since many journals list their associate editors who are usually an editor’s first choice for reviewers. You could check that you have cited the books and articles written by those in this group who are germane to your research; maybe try to read some 03-Thody-3390-Ch-03.qxd 5/23/2006 3:40 PM Page 40 ADJUSTING FOR AUDIENCE 41 of their work to see which style they prefer. However, you cannot be sure to which reviewer(s) your article will be sent, so the value of reading work by the board member lies in being better able to judge the general tenor of what will be accepted or not. For example, the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 1995 advisory board came from the oldest established universities in Australia, Canada, England, India, The Netherlands and the USA. The 2003 editorial board of Auto/Biography (from the British Sociological Association) were all from late twentieth century English universities.

International Studies in Educational Administration (2003) had advisers from fifteen different countries, including a rare sighting of one practitioner from outside the academic world. Article reviewers mainly incline towards the attitudes of thesis examiners (3.4.2) and established academics (1.3). They will also be reviewing your articles late at night, in their own time, and unpaid. So try to avoid annoying them by, for example, ignoring the latest APA guidelines if the journal specifies these, or omitting a methodology report or authorizations from the literature or forgetting to include theoretical significances.

Such annoyances are compounded by reviewers struggling with poor bedside lighting and a preference for other distractions at this time. But many reviewers are partial to, and very accepting of, alternative styles if they are suited to your data and justified. They can remember their own struggles to break into print and mostly write very helpful revision comments. They like their post-midnight slumbers to be prevented by the arrival of new ideas. Well, most do, but at some time all of us will have found ourselves subject to less than kind and tactful reviewers (Chapter 13).

3.4.6 Research assessors These combine the characteristics of article reviewers and thesis examiners but with the added job of grading your work on a scale that takes in more than just pass or fail (1.3.2.3). To do this, they have to assess all the various outputs you, and everyone else, have available for rating (a minimum of four must be submitted from each person for the UK’s RAE for example). Assessors’ judgements in the UK’s RAE are rumoured to be influenced by the status of journals which have accepted your publications, as I assume happens in other countries operating similar assessment systems. There are equal claims that decisions are taken only after the reviewers have read articles for themselves since good journals can accept poor articles and vice versa. There are anecdotes that books count for less than articles and chapters in edited books count for even less and editing a book counts even less … and so on. The UK’s RAE understandings of what counts as ‘good’ has expanded since its incep- tion in the early 1990s so more unusual types of publication are now acceptable. This all sounds reasonable assuming that assessors really could read everything sub- mitted to them, but the UK’s RAE assessors do not spend two or three months in total seclusion with only research publications for company. It seems highly unlikely, there- fore, that they can read more than a quarter of them fully (just one for each academic).

The majority must be skimmed so first impressions will affect decisions greatly. Hence, write your titles carefully (always include the word ‘research’ in the title) and polish your abstracts and conclusions so the reflections of your method, emergent theories and findings immediately shine forth (11.1, 11.2). 03-Thody-3390-Ch-03.qxd 5/23/2006 3:40 PM Page 41 WRITING AND PRESENTING RESEARCH 423.4.7 Supporters’ clubs Those who guided your writing are the most easily overlooked, and kindest, of audi- ences. If you’ve published an article, or a book, thesis or report, from work with which they helped you, send them a copy, if you can afford it. In all cases, at least send a thank you letter. Old fashioned courtesy, academic networking or showing off? All of these, but necessary in case you need help again, to keep yourself in your supporters’ minds as potential research collaborator or conference speaker, and to give your supporters the satisfaction of knowing that good teaching is effective and valued. 3.5 Audiences outside academia This heterogeneous group divides into those whom you want to:

arouse to action as a result of your research, such as professionals in your discipline, corporate,party political and government funders and policy makers; entertain so much that they will want to publish, read, listen to or watch more of your work, suchas professional and house journal editors and readers, general circulation magazine editors, staff writers and readers, newspaper and broadcast media reporters and programme makers (editors will decide if they want to publish your work, staff writers and reporters will decide if they want to extract from it, rewrite it or summarize it). Assume all of these to be widely educated readers but with less specialist knowledge than academics. A less charitable view, from the health services, is that they: lack the time and the skill to sift out the relevant and useful information from the rest … do not have the skills to critically appraise the papers they read – i.e. to assess their qual- ity and relevance to practice … are threatened by the challenges to their practice, partic- ularly by researchers … [especially as] Research findings may conflict with long-held beliefs … Researchers and practitioners inhabit ‘different worlds’ and speak different languages. (Gomm and Davies, 2000: 135, 136) Whichever view you adopt, the interests of this group lie in your ‘core story’ only (Coghlan and Brannick, 2001: 117) and they require unequivocal conclusions.

3.5.1 Appropriate style for less specialist readers and listeners Box 3.1 outlines the elements of style most generally appropriate for less specialist audi- ences. The way you write the whole document, or make a presentation, should direct the readers to where you want them to go, be that policy making, relaxing entertain- ment or making changes in their professional practices. These purposes may entail making some changes in the general style. Adopt more formal language to influence policy, a more informal tone with illustrations if entertainment is intended. 03-Thody-3390-Ch-03.qxd 5/23/2006 3:40 PM Page 42 ADJUSTING FOR AUDIENCE 43 Box 3.1 Writing appropriately for less specialist audiences Writing appropriately for less specialist audiences requires:

Non-esoteric language without pompous verbosity and jargon (5.3.1, 5.3.2). Specialized academic language, since it compliments readers’ abilities, but with overt or covert explanation (5.3.3.1). The particular language of the group for whom you are writing to show that you have related to their world (5.3.3.2, 5.3.3.4). Chatty colloquialisms (5.3.3.3). Eschewing slanging matches with other academics. Few in-text references and only a short bibliography just to add a little authority (Knight, 2002: 198) rather than to prove your points ad nauseam. Literature reviews, methodology and theorizing to be absent or minimal (Figure 7.1). Plentiful visual aids whether you are writing or presenting. Tables, graphs, arrows, flow charts, colours, pictures, graphics – and remember, these are what will be the most reproduced part of your work. Margin width, paragraph spacing and length, white space around and within your work can all help to promote the story line. Putting the conclusions in the introduction; that way, readers don’t need to peruse the whole document (11.7.1). This is not recommended for spoken presentations; it adds to the audience’s reasons to leave early. Emphasizing what is new about your research. Comprehensible and extensive statistics. The better they are, the better will your research be rated, since policy makers prefer figures which are easy to remember, have straight- forward meanings and are not subject to frequent revision (Hammersley, 1993: 160). Note that practitioner conference audiences will need the same treatment as the acade- mics but they are likely to be less sceptical; they will take notes copiously, ask fewer questions and, above all, will want to come away with something they can implement. REFLECTIONS Professional and house journal editors are the ones who have to search hard- est for material for their publications because they lack the academic ratings of research journals and the finance of the general circulation magazines. They can, however, provide valuable publicity for research, influence professional practice quickly and get researchers launched onto the professional, and paid, conference circuit. They also need shorter articles than do other outlets. 03-Thody-3390-Ch-03.qxd 5/23/2006 3:40 PM Page 43 WRITING AND PRESENTING RESEARCH 44 3.6 Academic and less specialist audiences combined 3.6.1 Book purchasers In order to get published commercially (Chapter 14), research books need a wider audience than just the academic community from which you emanate. Catching the interest of disparate groups leads to variations in language within the same publication, well illustrated in this extract from Dubin’s (1999) book on controversies in museum studies. Note how he writes the first two questions in ‘academic style’ while the remaining questions are much more aimed at the hearts and minds of more generalist audiences: questions that generally surface in discussions around contemporary museums … [are] ‘Shouldthe community be involved in exhibitions?’ ‘Do people have a right to offer input or to exercise oversight, especially when the subject relates to them?’ ‘Why do exhibits rouse such passion?’ ‘Why do groups feel that so much is at stake in what is depicted in museums?’ (1999: 11) 3.6.2 Research funding agencies: government and charitable Both types of agencies will need an executive summary or key findings (11.2) at the commencement of your report and this is its most important element. This will circu- late to potential direct users of the outcomes of your research and it is certainly the part that will be read most often (since most readers are too busy for the whole document).

Each brief paragraph of this summary concludes with a list of the numbered paragraphs in the main report in which can be found the data that give all the details on that ele- ment. Figure 2.1 is an example of a diagrammatic executive summary but text is more usual, as in the following exemplar. This is from the executive summary of the report to Industry in Education (a charitable research funding agency in the UK) on the ways in which business people operate as school governors. 1 KEY FINDINGS OF THE SURVEY • A relatively small number of employees from the business community are school governors … (1.1).

• Most school governors are male, middle/senior managers (2.1, 2.2).

• Half the sample of school governors have only served for two years or less (3.3).

(Thody and Punter, 1994: 1) Governmental grant awarding agencies are staffed by academics and send your grant requests and project reports to academics for assessment. They must, therefore, have the full academic treatment in terms of the content, sections and language of a docu- ment but in the format of a formal report rather than that of the more ‘essay’ like academic article or thesis. The scaffolding of such reports is their many subheadings and every paragraph with its number, as signposts for busy readers who need to know quickly how each bone of the skeleton connects to the next. The conclusions need to show awareness of policy and political implications. Full literature and methodology reviews are required but may be relegated to appendices. Often, the agencies will specify the form of the report to be made and, if so, you follow this determinedly. 03-Thody-3390-Ch-03.qxd 5/23/2006 3:40 PM Page 44 ADJUSTING FOR AUDIENCE 45 Charitable agencies (often endowment funds from present or past corporate sponsors) will likewise want the full academic information in report form though you can afford to employ rather less specialized language in some cases. They are less likely to specify the final format. Photographs are welcome additions; charities need to continue to attract funds, and transferring academic research to the public mindset to encourage donations is infinitely easier with photographs.

3.6.3 Research respondents In the human sciences, respondents and/or subjects are a possible audience from quali- tative or narrative research or from very small surveys. It may have been a condition of your research access that they are allowed to see the raw data collating their views and/or your finished writing or presentation. You may have placed a moral obligation on yourself to let them see what you have developed from their contributions. You may want to check if they have anything they want to add. Additionally you will have decided whether or not to allow them to alter what they see in advance of publication because much trust resides in you to report their views accurately and sensitively. If you are presenting raw data, then you only show respondents their own. This must be clearly transcribed, put into a cover so it shows the respondents that you value their work sufficiently to protect it, and prominently labelled with their name and yours and instructions on how to annotate it and return it (and of course, the cost of postage). If it is a finished draft of the whole work you are sending, then again, make clear what you expect respondents to do with it (and remember they have a right to refuse to read it, as did one respondent in one of my research projects; he said it reminded him that he had failed in his career). I discovered an unexpected benefit of requesting views when I sent the draft of my book on chief executives to the nine whom I had researched.

The comments were so extensive and interesting that I was able to add a complete chapter (Chapter 11 in Thody, 1997a).

REFLECTIONS Never send the same written document to different audiences. Even docu- ments intended for similar audiences will need variations. If, for example, one journal rejects your article you will need to alter it before sending it to another.

Journals have differing expectations of how headings, bibliographies and foot- notes are presented and can have different audience perspectives which will require you to recast the focus of the article. I even encountered one that eschewed capital letters so all my proper nouns had to be recast in lower case.

3.6.4 International audiences I have assumed so far in this chapter that all the readers and listeners discussed were either native speakers of your language or very competent as second language users and knowledgeable about the country settings of your research. Most journals will have their majority readers in their country of origin but increasingly journals have global 03-Thody-3390-Ch-03.qxd 5/23/2006 3:40 PM Page 45 WRITING AND PRESENTING RESEARCH 46circulation; conference audiences are invariably polyglot, international funding agencies make grants for transnational research and commercial corporate sponsors are multinational companies. For all such audiences, language may need some explanation, grammar and punctuation must be absolutely correct (Lindle, 2004: 2) (5.3.2), context will need elaborating, and formatting is much more likely to be acceptable in largely conventional modes (though alternatives for data presentation can be tolerated within these). Other adaptations are suggested below.

3.6.4.1 International readers The following extract demonstrates good contextual explanation for an international audience. It is from a journal with markets in at least twenty countries and is expressly aimed at a mixed readership of professionals from all parts of the education system (pri- mary, secondary and tertiary) and academics from universities. Very few of these can be expected to know much about the countries which are the focus of the article. The extract also provides a good example of how to incorporate the research question and an outline of the article in its introduction (11.10).

Extract 1 From ‘Overcoming barriers to access and success in tertiary education in the Commonwealth Caribbean’ (Roberts, 2003: 2). ENROLMENT IN TERTIARY education in the Commonwealth Caribbean has remained comparatively and consistently low over the years. Not surprisingly, the actual numbers of tertiary education graduates have also been well below the optimal level. On the other hand, indications are that there is a increasing demand by potential students and private sector employers as well as by governments for tertiary education graduates.

Additionally, educational leaders and policy makers continually express a need for, and a desire, to expand tertiary education opportunities to a wider range and greater number of its citizens in an attempt to promote national and regional development.

In spite of concerted effort by many stakeholders, the goal of increased access to tertiary education has been elusive to date. It seems reasonable to infer therefore that there are resistant barriers to the expansion of tertiary education access and that these may be related to persistent challenges which also place limits on the success of learners in the tertiary education system.

This paper attempts to identify some of those barriers to access and success and to high- light some of the initiatives which have been taken in an attempt to overcome these bar- riers. Before proceeding to a discussion of the barriers themselves, it may be useful to define the terms tertiary education, access and success and to examine also what constitutes the Commonwealth Caribbean tertiary education context and to locate within this context some inherent barriers to access and success. Extract 2 To demonstrate how this might change if written for a specific audience in its country of origin, I have invented a Caribbean Secondary School Principals’ Bulletin in which the above would become: 03-Thody-3390-Ch-03.qxd 5/23/2006 3:40 PM Page 46 ADJUSTING FOR AUDIENCE 47 Helping your students to access and success in our tertiary institutions The CSSP Annual Conference reminded us that we’re becoming increasingly successful at persuading students to progress to our colleges and universities. This is beginning to alter the low enrolment rates they’ve had until now and that fits with the government’s drive to increase post-16 enrolments. So what has been holding them back and what can we in schools do to encourage staying on to higher education? 3.6.4.2 International listeners •Ye s, you do need to speak more slowly and with greater articulation for international audiences than when in conversation with speakers of your own language (and no, you don’t need to shout, spell words or speak in slow motion).

• Ye s, you have to reduce the length of your presentation if there is no simultaneous translation and you are reliant on translations following each of your sentences. With simultaneous translation, you usually need occasional pauses to allow the translator to catch up with you should your own language be more linguistically sparse than the one into which you are being converted. Try to talk with the translator before your session to discuss how best you can help each other.

• Ye s, always expect to have your allocated time foreshortened by opening ceremonies and intro- ductions: the longest introduction I received lasted the whole two hours scheduled for my pre- sentation as Maoris spoke and sang a welcome, but I was happily given another two hours to speak and sing back.

• Ye s, utilize as many and as varied visual aids as possible (and yes, expect there will be no, or the wrong or broken, facilities for technological pyrotechnics, so have back-ups; this applies in your home country too).

• Ye s, have your visual aids, and at least a summary of your lecture, translated in advance if possible – though, as I discovered when mine were translated into Greek, I had the amusing challenge of working out where each slide fitted into my presentation as I could not understand them. I had to follow the clues of pictures that were on the originals (and yes, it’s very popular if you can manage hello and goodbye in the language of your hosts; I’ve had the fun of learning a range including sign language).

• Ye s, if you are presenting in a language other than your native one, then read your paper unless you are supremely confident of your linguistic abilities (and yes, still use visual aids as well).

• Ye s, unless you have a protocol adviser, you are likely to transgress some cultural norms (so yes, apologize at the beginning for the likelihood of this, explain that you are operating within the meaning of ‘polite’ in your own culture, and ask for your contraventions to be pointed out to you at the end of the presentation so you can learn).

3.7 Acknowledging the power of readers and listeners Since audience matters so much it’s worthwhile making clear, in the documents and speeches you produce, who you anticipate should be reading your research. For articles in any type of publication, theses or broadcasts, the location of the item is usually enough to provide clues to its intended audience. A research report will have those to whom it is addressed named at its commencement. Books have potentially much wider audiences than these so their authors usually describe their target audi- ence, and the audience’s likely purposes, in their prefaces or opening chapters. 03-Thody-3390-Ch-03.qxd 5/23/2006 3:40 PM Page 47 WRITING AND PRESENTING RESEARCH 48Delineating the audience ensures damage limitation; anyone not in the designated groups of readers can hardly criticize if the book does not meet their needs.For example, a book on girls’ education in Africa offers itself to ‘those principals, teach- ers, school councillors, inspectors and local, regional and national government administra- tors who view themselves as reflective practitioners and who, therefore, require information on which they can base their own theory and justify their actions’ (Thody and Kaabwe, 2000: 3). Similarly, a book on the broadcast media extensively defines its audience: For students and teachers of mass communication … [to] provide information about the efficiency and impact of television … for program directors and producers whose diffi- cult task it is to provide broadcasting services which are entertaining and interesting and … social and government administrators, interested in the efficiency and standards of broadcasting services, educationalists who want to teach the many and be understood by them, teachers who want to know what television is doing to people. (Belson, 1967: vi) 3.7.1 Flattering the readers and listeners In the above extracts is another useful device to encourage audience acceptance: flattery.

Thody and Kaabwe (2000) refer to their readers as ‘reflective practitioners’; Belson (1967) directs his work at readers concerned with the ‘welfare’ of the viewers. Another such device flatters readers by assuming they are as well read as the researcher, as in ‘Central to [Headrick’s] … well-known The Tools of Empire … is the assertion that European imperi- alism resulted from … new technological means’ (Bossenbroek, 1995: 27, my emphasis). Such linguistic strategies acknowledge the power and capabilities of the audience and aim at integrating the audience into the sense-making of the research. A charming example of this comes from a philosophy article. After the abstract and before the intro- duction is inserted: Health Warning Reading this may damage your epistemological health. Kant said that we have no know- ledge of things as they are in themselves. Perhaps he was wrong. Perhaps you, gentle reader, do have knowledge, right now, of things as they are in themselves. But look out.

In the half hour it takes you to read this, you may lose it. Proceed at your own risk.

(Langton, 2004: 129) This example compliments readers by acknowledging how busy academics usually are by slipping in the information that only thirty minutes are needed to read the article, thus also adding a challenge that is hard to resist.

3.8 Review Audiences’ aims matter. Adjust accordingly. But take account also of your own purposes and how these can ethically balance with those of the people reading your research (Chapter 4).

Note 1 Each school in England has an advisory body of elected and appointed volunteers, the school governors. 03-Thody-3390-Ch-03.qxd 5/23/2006 3:40 PM Page 48 CONTENTS 4.1 Contrasting purposes49 4.2 Defining your purposes 50 4.3 Overt purpose: enhancing knowledge 50 4.4 Covert purposes: careers and finance 51 4.5 The overt and covert combined: influencing policy 52 4.6 Ethics 55 4.7 Review 57 4.1 Contrasting purposes The following three extracts describe exactly the same elements of the lives of chief executives but each researcher had different purposes. The language in each is clear and direct but differs according to readers’ needs (Chapter 3). These needs have had to be balanced with those of the researchers, the subject of this chapter.

Extract 1 From an English novel using research from the author’s personal experiences as a local government administrator.

•Researcher’s purposes. Entertaining readers; encouraging sales of this and future books by the same author. Aspirate-dropping politicians, educational psychologists, parents hot under the collar, lunatic school teachers, had all added to the tally of ludicrous error but then so had he. His whole career was shot through with misjudgement, mismanagement, support of wrong causes, fail- ure to assist decent men and women, yet he was still praised as one of the most successful directors of education in the whole country since the war. He could not see why he had made such a name, except that the favourable publicity or circumstances had helped him and his pleasant but utterly serious committed manner and approach had led people, political masters or paid subordinates alike to act more sensibly. (Middleton, 1986: 70–1) Extract 2 From a USA refereed journal using research from surveys and interviews. Adapting to Audience: Adjusting for your Purposes 4 04-Thody-3390-Ch-04.qxd 5/23/2006 3:41 PM Page 49 •Researchers’ purposes. Enhancing readers’ knowledge; gaining acceptance and progress in academia; building on to past research; providing guidance to superintendents. The superintendent moves between the nomothetic and idiographic dimensions to trans- actionally and transformationally interact with board members, principals, parents … to persuade these individuals to accept the goals of the organization as defined and visual- ized by the superintendent. The superintendent acts to persuade these individuals to par- ticipate in the formulation of goals additional to his own. (Griffin and Chance, 1994: 81) Extract 3 From an English academic book using research from non-participant observation.

• Researcher’s purposes. Entertaining readers; encouraging sales of this and future books by the same author; enhancing readers’ knowledge; gaining acceptance and progress in academia; building on to past research; possibly providing guidance to chief executives. [Chief executives are] hubs of wheels endlessly transmitting and receiving information along different spokes … linking joint initiatives from different points in the system … CEOs are both the effective centre, as the organizers, and the affective centre since their symbolic role in representing the unity of the service must be acknowledged. (Thody, 1997a: 182) 4.2 Defining your purposes An overarching purpose of all these examples is the same – to enhance readers’ knowledge and so persuade them to ‘do something’ (Raimond, 1993: 167). What a researcher then wants readers to do specifically will differ for each of the different products of any research. These rationales divide into overt(conscious or deliberate) and covert(conscious or subconscious), and are discussed below in 4.3–4.5. Each of the rationales should be decided at the beginning of the research planning process (Cohen et al., 2000: 89) and a balance struck between the aims of the researcher, the researched and the readers/listeners (Hammersley, 2002: 126). The resulting ethical dilemmas are discussed in 4.6.

4.3 Overt purpose: enhancing knowledge A researcher’s overt, overall purpose of any research is to make a difference to under- standing so that policy, practice, theoretical or conceptual problems will be solved. It is therefore most important to state how your research has enhanced the knowledge in ways that justify new solutions to problems. This is almost always stated in the introduction to all research documents (11.10). For example, here is the first paragraph of a legal academic journal paper: Surprisingly little attention has been given to the public domain in the statutes establish- ing and regulating intellectual property, in the case law interpreting these statutes or con- cerning the common law of intellectual property, or in the scholarly literature … In this article, the concept of the public domain will be addressed as generally as possible … The modifications to the basic model necessitated by the introduction of an intellectual prop- erty system will be addressed. (Oddi, 2002: 1–5, 8, 10) WRITING AND PRESENTING RESEARCH 50 04-Thody-3390-Ch-04.qxd 5/23/2006 3:41 PM Page 50 A book on Hollywood film settings defines its purpose negatively in its opening line, an arresting mechanism: ‘This is not a “how to” book as if reading films were a mechanical process that could be achieved by following a set of preconceived rules’ (Thomas, 2001: 1).

Sadly, the writer then undermines this clarity with the half-hearted aspiration of the next sentence: ‘In this book I hopeto suggest a number of useful questions we can ask’ (2001: 2, my emphasis). Warning: never be half-hearted about what you have contributed to knowledge. There are usually enough detractors without becoming one yourself. An alternative is to state the purposes in the conclusions when researchers inform readers what has been discovered and/or what the readers are expected to do next (11.7.1). The Epilogue to this book is an example of this (Chapter 16). The example below is from a local newspaper. This reported research into the different types of sup- porters of Leicester Tigers rugby team and Leicester City soccer team. The research was done in order to find out if the two teams could share one ground. The newspaper article ended with: An older, more affluent, more county focussed, but lower-spending rugby crowd for Tigers, and a younger, more diverse, and rather higher-spending football crowd at City … Old certainties are being carved up in the debate over a common ground. Right now, what really matters is not the colour of your shirt, but where you will be wearing it this season. (Wakerlin, 2004: 10) REFLECTIONS In between the opening and closing points of a document, the purposes become the theme of the document or speech, reiterated as each part of the reported research adds to one of the purposes. The overt purposes thus struc- ture the entire document or presentation. For example, Chapter 4 of a book on Hollywood films states that the ‘aim of this book so far has been to provide a few ideas about some of the ways Hollywood films create and present signifi- cant spaces…it is now necessary to say a bit more about certain potential ambiguities in our understanding of offscreen space’ (Thomas, 2001: 95). 4.4 Covert purposes: careers and finance These two are additional to the production and utilization of the knowledge that the research was overtly designed to find. They will not usually be stated in the public documents arising from the research but they will influence their framing. Research writing and presenting matter to researchers’ careers, so much so that a journal editor felt driven to note that, ‘the only one message that seems to emanate from some manuscripts is that the author is desperate to publish something’ (Lindle, 2004: 1).

Getting published marks your professional identification (your signature), showing that you work in a particular field and how you work in that field. It establishes and enhances your reputation and that of your employer, department or university.

Becoming an effective presenter can help your career financially. Keynote speakers ADJUSTING FOR YOUR PURPOSES 51 04-Thody-3390-Ch-04.qxd 5/23/2006 3:41 PM Page 51 WRITING AND PRESENTING RESEARCH receive a minimum of conference fees and expenses and usually fees as well. The career purposes behind writing may make you veer to the conventional if you need rapid acceptance from the establishment, or towards alternatives if standing out from the crowd is the right thing at this stage of your career. Whichever it is, your overriding aim must be to achieve publication (14.7).Researchers producing books, and their publishers, obviously have sales in mind.

Publishers are aware of markets much more than are researchers; hence publishers’ advice on titles, formats and language is to be followed. Any research report or article is a plea for further research for which money is needed. Hence researchers need to demonstrate the value of what has been achieved so far in order to strengthen the plea, especially as research funding is not easy to obtain.

4.5 The overt and covert combined: influencing policy Research aims to influence action (3.5). This may be micro, encouraging others to undertake further research to test your results; it may be macro, encouraging policy developments by governments, commercial enterprises and agencies. It can be overtly stated because policy making is the concern of the funders, or it may be a covert pur- pose of the researcher if one accepts that all research is to some degree ‘political’ in its relation to concerns about what is needed in one’s discipline (Mason, 1996: 160) .

Achieving the purpose of influencing policy is not easy and ‘immediate and direct linkages between study results and policy decisions are relatively rare’ (Bradley and Schaefer, 1998; Tooley with Darby, 1998; Weiss, 1983: 219). Policy makers and practi- tioners appear to expect too much of research, which needs to show unequivocal findings to be of value to them, while researchers appear to be overly optimistic in expect- ing immediate and direct implementation of their every conclusion (Hammersley, 2002: 148). From all three of the following extracts, the writers intended to influence policy. All three extracts arise from research by Professors Macbeath and Galton, A Life in Secondary Teaching (2004). The first two are reports on the research by other people, and this not only illustrates contrasting purposes but also shows how little influence researchers can have over how their own conclusions are used for others’ purposes.

Extract 1 From a national, right of centre, British newspaper, front page headlined story. Ministers and unruly pupils ‘causing collapse of schools’ After questioning a nationally representative sample of teachers…[it was] concluded that behaviour was their main concern. They had a constant battle to be allowed to teach, a struggle compounded by confrontational parents … Less experienced teachers welcomed the prescriptiveness of the Government’s Key Stage 3 strategy, which dictates how English, maths and science are to be taught to pupils aged 12–14 … they used it as a com- fort blanket. (Clare, 2004a: 1) 52 04-Thody-3390-Ch-04.qxd 5/23/2006 3:41 PM Page 52 ADJUSTING FOR YOUR PURPOSES Extract 2 From the website of the teachers’ professional association which commissioned the research. Secondary education – the battle to teach Teachers are fighting a constant battle to be allowed to teach as a result of deteriorating pupil behaviour, says an independent study for the National Union of Teachers published today, Thursday 27 May, 2004. The problem is compounded by lack of support from parents, says the report by Professors John MacBeath and Maurice Galton of Cambridge University. Extract 3 The following are my comments based on comparison of the newspaper story and the website text with the report itself. (Macbeath and Galton, 2004) 1 The newspaper stated that the report used a ‘nationally representative sample of teachers’. The actual sample in the research was 1.89 per cent of Britain’s schools and 0.11 per cent of Britain’s teachers. The tables in the report which describe the sample do not give this cumulative figure, though they do show that the sample did indeed represent a cross-section of the UK’s types of schools and types of teachers according to the variable of years of experience. So representative? Yes, of some variables.

National? Not in the sense a general readership would assume such a word implied.

2 Both the newspaper and the teachers’ website cited bad behaviour by pupils and lack of parental support as major factors inhibiting good teaching. Data extracted from a table in the report itself, shown here as Table 4.1, does confirm the primacy of poor pupil behaviour, but the researchers found seven other factors more important than parental influence. A wary reader must also ask what the outcome would have been if a national union of school students had commissioned the research. Would inadequate teachers be cited as a factor inhibiting good teaching? It’s also noteworthy that most of the factors amongst which teachers had to choose are critiques of government policy. Would government funded research have presented the same factors? It would be reassuring to be able to report that improved writing and presenting would greatly improve the chances of public and private action arising from research. I have to report honestly though that the consensus is that effective writ- ing and presenting domatter in this arena but the effect may be less than hoped for.

A small part of the reason for this failure of influence is deemed to be that when ‘research findings reach and are read by practitioners they are not sufficiently acces- sible to be understood and valued’ (Gomm and Davies, 2000: 135). This quotation is from a report on research in the health services but it appears to be appropriate else- where. Willinsky (2000), for example, questions how we ensure that research, other than from natural or applied sciences, has credibility. The answer lies, it seems, in being more persuasive, to ‘engage the public [by] rethinking every phase of a research project from how a study is conceived … and into the writing-up and pub- lication of the results’ (2000: 5). Disseminating findings in as many different forms as possible also helps. The most common forms of publication (journal articles, academic books, research reports) 53 04-Thody-3390-Ch-04.qxd 5/23/2006 3:41 PM Page 53 Table 4.1 Extract from a research report: tabulated data from which varying priorities were selected by different users Teachers’ ranking of obstacles to teaching Rank Poor pupil behaviour 1 Lack of time for discussion and reflection 2 Large class sizes 3 Too many national initiatives 4 Overloaded curriculum content in own subject 5 Pressure to meet assessment targets 5 Poor resources, materials and equipment 7 Inclusion 8 Lack of parental support 9 Inadequate pay 10 Preparation for appraisal/inspection 11 Poorly maintained buildings 12 Prescribed methods of teaching 13 Limited professional opportunities 14 Insufficient pastoral support15 WRITING AND PRESENTING RESEARCH were rated as only ‘passive dissemination’ in a 2000 study and the least effective for influencing practice. This same research also classified conference presentations as passive dissemination unless in ‘innovative, user-friendly formats’. Turning research findings into direct teaching fared a little better as a means by which research can influ- ence practice. Studies reported in the 1990s showed that health practitioners’ behaviour was modified, and patient outcomes improved, after doctors attended educational con- ferences but ‘the effects are small’. The greatest impact on practice (and this was still small) was informing practitioners of research outcomes in meetings at individual health practices, through peer meetings at performance management sessions and through mass media campaigns (Gomm and Davies, 2000: 141).

This may sound depressing but remember that your research is at least one of many factors influencing policy makers who must respond to parties, elections, stake- holder groups, economics and social pressures. The policy makers who do read your research still have to convince other groups of its worth and over these you have no influence. What you must aim to do is build up relationships with policy makers over time as you do more research, network and present your ideas publicly. Write your research appropriately for policy makers (3.5). Your research will then at least be kept on file; you could be called in for other research and your work can be seen as one step along a long road. There are some signs of hope. Natural and applied sciences research does not appear to face the same credibility gap in gaining public and political influence as do the social sciences and humanities, but the growth of transdisciplinary research is pulling social scientists into the same arena. Social scientists are involved in natural science research teams as increasingly government policy needs input on the social impact of possible policies (Gibbons, Limoges, Nowotny, Schwartzman, Scott and Trow, 1994: 147).

54 04-Thody-3390-Ch-04.qxd 5/23/2006 3:41 PM Page 54 ADJUSTING FOR YOUR PURPOSES 4.6 Ethics The two opposing views on the ethical dilemmas posed by conflicts that may arise between the purposes of the researcher and those of the readers are ably displayed in the following quotations: The fact that all manner of motives may underlie … research … does not in itself mean that the accounts of research findings are distorted … [but] both writers and readers … need to pay attention to the effects of authorship and sponsorship, of intended and anti- cipated audiences and of the different purposes. (Hammersley, 2002: 133) Inconvenient findings [from clinical trials] were often not disclosed to the public. In several cases, the stated purpose of the trial was altered … so that acceptable findings, rather than inconvenient results, could be published … almost 90 per cent of the research teams denied that they had failed to report everything, despite evidence to the contrary … [it was] claimed that it was because of pressure from journals … to publish positive findings and to keep the length of papers down which can lead to negative results being omitted. (Matthews, 2004: 6) For those in the social sciences, literature and humanities, it is easy to dismiss this debate over purposes as one that afflicts mainly the natural and applied sciences in which potentially large amounts of money and commercial sensitivities are involved.

The debate is, however, just as prominent for all subjects, whether the intended out- comes will impact social justice or scholarly argument. The publication of statistics relating to racial issues, for example, ‘has not been a neutral exercise in pursuit of knowledge … These statistics became part of the “numbers game” used to justify racist immigration laws … More recently arguments about the use of statistics in favour of black populations … have been put forward’ (Ahmad and Sheldon, 1993: 124).To enable readers to assess research fairly, researchers should ideally admit to both their overt and their covert purposes. The latter seems unlikely since researchers them- selves may not even be aware of their subconscious aims or, if they are, may be deter- mined to mask them. Kinsey, for example, who produced the first major research on human sexuality in 1948 (Sexual Behaviour of the Human Male), promoted the image of himself as a white coated, neutral, detached, scientific observer. Would his findings on the extent of sexual practices outside of the then norms have been greeted with such acclaim and belief had current assessments of his purposes as a very sexually active deviant been known at the time (Sutherland, 2004)? Readers usually have to infer from author descriptions, from comments in the text or from acknowledgements to the funders, how any covert purposes of the writer(s) might have affected the findings. You have to decide how much of yourself to reveal in order to assist these inferences (2.3.2, 11.5); this book’s Appendix on research methodology (Chapter 17) shows how much I chose to reveal to help you assess my purposes. Your caution as an academic may well conflict with those who want to use your research to justify policy changes. They will want unequivocal conclusions from your research but this presents you with an ethical dilemma. Your education as a researcher will make you want to explain the limitations to everything you have discovered, but if 55 04-Thody-3390-Ch-04.qxd 5/23/2006 3:41 PM Page 55 WRITING AND PRESENTING RESEARCH you insist on doing this you will find that others who make use of your research will remove the restrictions you have so carefully delineated. Consumers of your research need unequivocal findings – newspaper and magazine editors or staff writers who are summarizing your research, politicians who need one clear route along which to per- suade their followers to go, corporate sponsors who will have to justify decisions to shareholders. So your choices are to leave it to them to decide what to extract from your research, or to decide yourself to what you most want to direct their attention. You can make your directions obvious by only offering one conclusion or recommendation.

More subtly and effectively, offer a selection of recommendations, any one of which you would be happy to see in place, or offer evidence that mainly leads to option A while offering the readers a choice also of B. Intelligent readers, you will thereby imply, will choose A.A further ethical issue arises when the researcher has to decide whether to write up, or present, what he/she feels that the funders want to hear since the ‘impact of research on policy-making depends on its degree of consonance with the political agendas of gov- ernments [or of any funders] … and policy-makers anxious for their own political survival’ (Cohen et al., 2000: 44). Such financial purposes can pose ethical dilemmas. It is tempting to exaggerate the implications of your research findings and to minimize methodological or access problems. On the other hand, such congratulatory writing can be seen simply as good marketing. In either case, you have to decide whether to do it or not. Hopefully, and usually, your research findings will not set you on a course diametri- cally opposed to that of your sponsors. If they do, then the sponsors will select what appears in the public report and you will have to decide on how far your disagreements should be made public. You can:

• State your views but also make clear that you accept that policy makers have to take many views into account in order to survive in a democracy, or to keep their firms in profit or their charitable foundations solvent. Yours is just one of many views with no greater claim to priority than those of others.

• Give priority space to areas where you do agree with the funders; make the other areas less obvi- ous visually but still include them.

• Obfuscate your findings by hiding behind all the specialized and abstruse language you can muster.

• Present your findings in as neutral a language and a format as possible (this is where the conven- tional is vital). The discoveries will be there but you will appear distant from the values. Leave the readers to make their own deductions from the conclusions. They have the power of decision any- way so don’t fight them.

All the above dilemmas concern potential conflicts of interest between researchers and the users of research but there is a further purpose to consider, that of those used by the research. Viewing respondents (subjects) as audience can lead to ethical dilemmas for researchers. You may feel you have to include data from all of your respondents even if what emerged from their views is not precisely what you wanted. You may feel obligated to include lots of quotations so respondents will feel valued, can enjoy seeing 56 04-Thody-3390-Ch-04.qxd 5/23/2006 3:41 PM Page 56 ADJUSTING FOR YOUR PURPOSES themselves in print and can compare their views with those of others. You may feel you must exclude publishing data that will be painful for your subjects to read. I advise against any of these, but you should at least try to express yourself diplomatically and follow the suggestions in Box 4.1 for tactful and ethical ways to report to respondents. Box 4.1 Ways of reporting to research respondents ☺ Produce an expanded version of your report/article specifically for the respondents so you can include more of their actual words. ☺ Send a thank you letter, stating the degree or publication you achieved, and attaching transcripts of original data in full. ☺ Invite them to a presentation you are making on the research and publicly thank them. ☺ Refer to their contributions in the written acknowledgements (and give their names if they have not requested, or been promised, anonymity) (11.3). 4.7 Review All research aims to influence its audiences. These intentions can be overt or covert.

Overt purposes will be used as a frame for the whole research document and will usually be stated in the introduction. Covert intentions can sometimes be inferred from a document or presentation. Writers and presenters should adapt their research reports to satisfy their purposes but, in doing this, ethical issues have to be resolved. REFLECTIONS Adapting for precedents, practicalities, your personality, the people for whom you are writing and your purposes, all sound very time consuming. You’ll be pleased to know that they only take a few minutes of mental activity for ‘guesstimates’. Then confirm and compare these by reading similar docu- ments to the one you have to produce such as back issues of journals, research reports and previous conference papers (usually web accessible), books by authors in the same field and with the same publisher, and theses from your own university library. 57 04-Thody-3390-Ch-04.qxd 5/23/2006 3:41 PM Page 57 CONTENTS 5.1 How easy is writing?58 5.2 The writing process 59 5.2.1 Telling the story 59 5.2.2 Getting started 59 5.2.3 Maintaining momentum 60 5.2.3.1 PC assistance 63 5.2.4 Reaching the end 64 5.2.4.1 Revisions 64 5.2.4.2 Proofreading 65 5.2.4.3 Deciding when to finish 66 5.3 Style and tone 66 5.3.1 Conventional and alternative views 66 5.3.2 Default elements for both conventional and alternative styles 67 5.3.3 Style choices 67 5.3.3.1 Cautious language 67 5.3.3.2 Appropriate language 68 5.3.3.3 Colloquialisms 69 5.3.3.4 Jargon 70 5.3.3.5 Tenses 73 5.3.3.6 Personal or impersonal? 74 5.4 Review 76 Note To illustrate different styles, 5.1 and 5.2 are designed for a generalist magazine, 5.3 and 5.4 for a textbook. Paragraph numbering and academic referencing have been retained throughout for the book’s consistency.

5.1 How easy is writing? ‘Suddenly I was just writing … my writing took off … the words were flowing … it was wonderful’ … ‘There was a moment when I knew I had it … the story was just coming … bubbling up … I was writing away.’ (Ackerman and Maslin-Ostrowski, 1996: 8–9) The Arts and Craft of Writing 5 05-Thody-3390-Ch-05.qxd 5/23/2006 3:41 PM Page 58 ARTS AND CRAFT OF WRITING 59 And that’s how we all want to feel – just like these USA school principals whose feelings when writing up stories about their personal experiences were recorded in the above quotations. But reaching this stage is enormously difficult (Darlington and Scott, 2002: 167). It’s even harder if you’re beginning research writing, this ‘new, strange discourse’ (Holliday, 2002: 1). Even experienced writers can’t always make the grade. The editor of Educational Administration Quarterly reported that after ‘slogging through 812 manuscripts that range the gamut from the pretty intriguing to the pretty awful, I have substantial evidence that writing does not come easily to most authors’ (Lindle, 2004: 1). Fortunately, most agree that writing is enormously exhilarating and exciting. Each day’s writing brings nearer the day when your discoveries are unleashed on the world. 5.2 The writing process 5.2.1 Telling the story ‘Telling a story’ is what writing research is all about. You should produce a ‘vital text [which] invites readers to engage the author’s subject matter’ (Denzin, 1998: 321).

Follow the detective novel formula, outlined below, and you can’t go wrong.

• The mystery your research is to solve is your purpose (Chapter 4), your research question, hypoth- esis or debate.

• How others tried to solve the same mystery is your literature review.

• How you tried to solve it is your methodology report.

• What you discovered from your investigations are your findings.

• Your solution to the mystery is the conclusions.

• How this improves on previous investigations and what mysteries it leaves to be solved is your final discussion.

• The ‘research participants and sources may be seen as the characters in this story, and will need to be introduced and developed as they would in a novel’ (Blaxter et al., 2001: 242, my italics).

The ‘story line’ must sing clearly throughout every chapter or section, with each part uncovering some of the solution but not revealing the whole until the last chapter.

5.2.2 Getting started The question most frequently asked by novice researchers is ‘How do I get started?’ on writing up the final version. Now you will have eased the challenge of this by follow- ing my advice in Chapter 2 and you’ll have been writing from the beginning of your research, following a template. But now, the final draft looms. You have to leave the cosy world of shouting ‘Eureka!’ in your shower and go out, feeling naked, putting your writing into the world of public debate with critical academic equals, examiners, pub- lishers or buyers. Experienced writers know there’s no magic formula and no choices about starting to write. Don’t wait for inspiration, or for an ideal time to write. Neither is frequent. 05-Thody-3390-Ch-05.qxd 5/23/2006 3:41 PM Page 59 Your options are:

1 If panic prevents even the simplest sentences emerging, do other writing tasks as ‘warming up exercises’. Rigorously check the bibliography, design the title, do a spell check on a section or set up the format templates for sub-headings and footnotes.

2 Take the first topic that emerges in your notes, whether or not you are sure that it will eventually be the first topic in a chapter. Use your PC’s ‘Find’ command to locate material that deals with the same topic. Once grouped, turn that material into paragraphs. Repeat the process as you come to the next topic in your notes. When all is in paragraphs, put them into the order you want and finally produce the links between the paragraphs and sections.

3 Read through all the notes you have for a chapter or section, plan the outline, then go back and gather all the material to match that outline.

When you have it all in its intended order, then commence writing the joined up paragraphs.

4 Don’t expect that what you write initially will remain unchanged. When you read it later, you may want to revise or even abandon it so don’t waste time agonizing over creating unchangeable perfection. Expect to relinquish anything up to two-thirds of a first draft. My most challenging reduction was to create a 5000 word article from a 14,000 word research report, all of which seemed vital to me. I did the deed, however, and reading that article now I see that it is not missing anything (Thody, 1989). Figure 5.1 Starting writing WRITING AND PRESENTING RESEARCH Reading just one more book, arranging for just one more interview, checking the statis- tical analysis just one more time, won’t help you to write. Writing is work, just like any other, and the only way to get started on writing up or preparing a presentation is to write anything, from somewhere in the intended document, not necessarily at the beginning. Go look at Figure 5.1 to help you get started.

5.2.3 Maintaining momentum Sure – you have other activities in your life besides writing and presenting research.

You’ve got to fit in work, study, leisure, family and home. Tick the best option on the following list. Should you write:

60 05-Thody-3390-Ch-05.qxd 5/23/2006 3:41 PM Page 60 ARTS AND CRAFT OF WRITING 61 Something every day, however little? A set number of words or paragraphs each day? That way ensures a satisfying growth rate from which you will not be distracted and you will have an agreed end to each day’s work. Daily at predetermined times? That way, you can claim an undisturbed period as yourwriting time. Daily at every possible time, however short? It’s amazing how much your document growsfrom writing in the five minutes between phone calls, the twenty minutes while waiting to pick up your child from swimming lessons, the massive thirty minutes in between putting loads into the washing machine, or even a whole hour on the train en route to your moun- taineering weekend. To use these interstices of time, it helps to have a laptop PC but it’s not vital. Substitute real paper and pen. Several projects at once? Avoid boredom by simultaneously planning one book, writing two journal articles, collecting new research data.

In binges? Spend days doing nothing but writing, followed by about the same number of days on other activities. This way you remember the flow of your ‘story’ and you enjoy seeing large swaths of print emerge. In vacations? Write only in the week-or-longer breaks from other work; it ruins your vaca-tion but can mean completing the whole at one time. On sabbatical study breaks? A luxury for only a few but one that has its own disciplines. Ifyou’re not used to writing without distractions, it can be a mental and physical challenge to do a full day’s writing. In combinations of any of the above? Variety lends enchantment to the process. Score yourself ten for whichever you selected. All of these work; I know, I’ve tried them all and seen colleagues adopt them all effectively. Your choice depends on those guiding principles in Chapters 2–4. For example: the practicalities of the completion deadline may enforce vacation performance; your PhD thesis will benefit from a binge approach; while the satirical column in a professional magazine can be done in a one-off set time. Your personality may dictate that you work best in uninterrupted blocks or that you find working in the little breaks dictated by other activities is the way to go for you; precedents in your organization dictate whether study leave is likely or not. Whichever way you choose to write, however, most people seem to find ways of delaying the actual starting moment, as Figure 5.2 demonstrates. Used any of these yourself? Yes – just a few types of procrastination symptoms common to experienced and neophyte writers alike, all ‘extremely reluctant or fearful of committing their ideas to paper’ (Blaxter et al., 2001: 227). Overcome your fear, confront it and write.

Procrastination reduces your writing time and dissipates your creative energy. Waste time on planning your next expedition, commenting on students’ assignments, writing the annual family letter or completing the intricacies of a patchwork quilt, and you’ll have significantly diminished mental powers for writing the research. Other activities, in small doses, can be valuable mental relaxation – but that’s all. So, if procrastination activities aren’t the way to get you over your writer’s block, what is? All is revealed in Box 5.1. 05-Thody-3390-Ch-05.qxd 5/23/2006 3:41 PM Page 61 Delaying tactics:

a few examples from my students and colleagues responding to emails, playing PC solitaire, undertaking VITAL household jobs you would rarely normally do (cleaning windows, ironing towels, clearing the basement), time-out to sit on the sofa drinking that vital coffee, taking the dog for a walk, making that long-delayed visit to a family member, photographing yourself studying to transmit to another mobile phone user down the corridor, or ... now add your own ideas – this sofa has space for additions Figure 5.2 How to procrastinate WRITING AND PRESENTING RESEARCH 62 Box 5.1 How to stop writers’ block 1 Don’t panic more than once weekly.

2 Reward yourself for completing your daily writing goals. Just small rewards will do. True,they mainly involve non-PC drink, chocolate or rubbish TV viewing but remember – you’re burning calories even as you write.

3 Change to another of your writing projects if one is proving intractable.

4 Set a time limit for relaxation activities, just as you do for writing.

5 Don’t expect perfection – give in occasionally.

6 Reflect on your writing while taking breaks.

7 When you stop writing, make notes of your plans for the next sentences; recommencing is then less daunting. TAKE-A-BREAK The work is writing.

Writing is work (and it takes precedence over other activities). 05-Thody-3390-Ch-05.qxd 5/23/2006 3:41 PM Page 62 ARTS AND CRAFT OF WRITING 63 5.2.3.1 PC assistance Those of you born after the universal application of PCs will never have had the luxury of simply sending off a handwritten text, held together with sticky tape and string, for someone else to type, knowing that even having to write a second version was unlikely. With PCs, we all have to do our own typing and clever formatting, expect to run through several drafts before completion, and happily insert the final tweaking of a little underlining on the night before the thesis is due in. Such easy revision is both an advantage and a disadvantage of the PC age. It certainly adds to our personal workload but the screen view, which looks so perfect, is a definite morale booster for maintaining writing momentum, and even the simplest graphical touches can help immensely in explaining your ideas. A document map (6.3.6) shows you how your work is growing and helps you keep track of what you have written. The screen view, however, can be overly seductive. Bet you don’t want to delete that impressive flow chart that took hours to devise, even though it doesn’t help to prove your hypothesis. That PC screen is also only a limited view; you can’t see how your whole page will appear in hard copy. So should you keep printing out your work at intervals as you progress? Let Figure 5.3 help you to make up your mind. Regular printing out does mean that you are never without the security of a paper copy should your PC files somehow become deleted or mangled. To protect your work- in-progress, always keep two copies of your files on removable media in addition to the YES, when you feel you have a reasonable first draft of the whole (or at least a whole chapter) but NO before then. It’s just a time and paper waster. Learn to write, read and revise direct to screen. Save yourself some leisure time and save the world a few forests YES, if the finished document is to appear in hard copy but NO if it’s intended for electronic use only (websites, CDs, electronic journals) YES, if it’s your first lengthy piece of research writing but NO once you are in the postgraduate years So should you keep printing out your work as you progress? Figure 5.3 Do you need print versions of work-in-progress? 05-Thody-3390-Ch-05.qxd 5/23/2006 3:41 PM Page 63 WRITING AND PRESENTING RESEARCH 64ones on the hard drive. If you are using a networked PC, don’t assume server reliabil- ity or continuous availability, especially during university vacations.

5.2.4 Reaching the end Revise and polish, revise and polish, revise and polish, revise and polish, revise … But what is meant by revision, what needs polishing, and at what point should you stop doing either and decide that the work’s finished?

5.2.4.1 Revisions Here’s a great summary of what revision means from a study of modifications made to the introductions to scientific papers, though it’s just as applicable in other disciplines.

Revision is: (a) the deletion of particular statements, either obvious arguments which essentially rein- forced a certain point or assertions considered ‘weak’ or ‘dangerous’, (b) the reshuffling of original statements … and (c) changes in the modality of certain assertions, from the necessary to the possible and generally from the strongly asserted to the more weakly asserted. (Knorr-Cetina, 1981; cited in Gosden, 1995: 42) You need to make alterations like these throughout your finished document. Such redrafting is not a sign of your failure to write well, it’s simply part of the incremental process that constitutes writing. Figure 5.4 explains more about the redrafting process. • Insert new material (data, ideas) • Reduce or increase the length (usually the former) • Alter existing sections as you gradually select the appropriate language and structure for your audience • Incorporate suggestions from others who read the drafts (including yourself) • Delete repetitions • Read and reread to check that the ‘story line’ is evident Figure 5.4 Techniques for drafting and redrafting 05-Thody-3390-Ch-05.qxd 5/23/2006 3:41 PM Page 64 ARTS AND CRAFT OF WRITING 65 Keep making revisions like these until you feel strong enough to unleash a full first draft on colleagues or supervisors. You can let them have part, or the whole, of the intended document – but whatever it is, it should be a complete text, all in paragraphs, properly linked and with any intended tables, diagrams and appearance details. Once you have comments back, then you commence rewriting. Whether or not you submit it to friendly fire again will depend usually on how much time you have left to com- pletion and, more importantly, the willingness of friends to critique your work.

5.2.4.2 Proofreading Polishing is done after you’ve completed all your redrafting and you’re into your sub- stantive final draft. Now polish it so your brilliance shines, by rigorous, and time con- suming, proofreading. For this you need to check the items listed in Box 5.2. Box 5.2 Proofreading Check, check and check again Text references are fully cited in either the text, the footnotes or the bibliography according to the precedents for the type of document you are producing (Chapter 12). Spelling is consistent and correct. Grammar and language are appropriate to the audience and purposes of the document (Chapters 3 and 4). Requirements for format have been obeyed (2.3.1; 14.2.2). The visual appearance of the text enhances the likelihood of readers’ understanding. Sentences, paragraphs and chapters flow out of their predecessors and lead into their successors. Figures, tables, graphs and appendices are referred to in the text and it is clear where they should be placed. Any subheadings used in the text match those in the contents listings. Headings and subheadings are in the same style throughout the document. Ethical considerations have been met: your subjects are anonymized, if this has been requested; their locations are not easily recognizable; your references to them are tactful. By the time you reach the polishing stage, you are likely to be tired and bored. If you can set the work aside for a few days between final revisions and polishing, you’re more likely to be alert to errors. Additionally, and ideally, find a colleague to review it and always adopt their suggestions for changes. If they can’t understand it, then no-one else will. Polishing applies even to those publishing books who will have editorial assistants to check their final texts. They will discover corrections needed that you have not spotted 05-Thody-3390-Ch-05.qxd 5/23/2006 3:41 PM Page 65 despite your own meticulous scrutiny. Nonetheless, you are responsible for the understanding that the book is meant to convey, so don’t just rely on the publisher’s cor- rections. I found this out when the proofs of a book were returned to me with all our planned visual arrangements removed and all paragraphs lengthened to accord with ‘correct’ syntax. The original’s short paragraphs and specific visuals were designed to meet the needs of the expected readership. Much repolishing was needed yet again to reinstate all our formatting (Thody, Bowden and Grey, 2004).

5.2.4.3 Deciding when to finish Closure to all this is usually dictated by practicalities (2.3.3) decided by others such as the submission date for conference papers, the closing date for article receipt by jour- nals, publishers’ completion times or thesis oral examinations – the viva voce. 1Yo u would go on forever making revisions in the hopes of perfection but external forces thankfully provide the deadlines when all the adjustments have to stop. If your final deadline cannot be met, then be sure to negotiate an alternative well in advance so your recipients are inconvenienced as little as possible. Publishers will have reserved time slots for printers and editors, examiners will have arranged vivas, conference organizers will want to get proceedings printed or to find alternative speakers.

Note Chapter 5 now changes from populist magazine style to textbook style. 5.3 Style and tone Style is the way writers/speakers put words together in units of thought (sentences) and then blend them together in the larger units of paragraphs. Tone is a writer’s attitude toward the material and the readers. You convey tone through style.

5.3.1 Conventional and alternative views An extreme conventionalist’s view could be that the style and tone of academic writing and presenting require not creativity but discipline, organization and conformity to scientific precedents (Berry, 1994: 2–3). This is viewed as the antithesis of creative writing and has such rules as avoiding chatty anecdotes, pomposity and blandness (Blaxter et al., 2001: 228). The style is used for both qualitative and quantitative research in order to reinforce research findings as authoritative, objective reality. It is the language of management control. The extreme alternativist might look only for the creativity such as might be found in an article composed entirely of photographs, with minimal text, in which the reader is left almost alone to form her/his own impressions of the data (Soth with Weiland, 2005; Staub, 2002). This emerges from the idea of research as an internal voyage of discovery that is a continuum across the researched, the researcher and the readers. Its WRITING AND PRESENTING RESEARCH 66 05-Thody-3390-Ch-05.qxd 5/23/2006 3:41 PM Page 66 ARTS AND CRAFT OF WRITING language is ‘vibrant, suggestive, engaged and passionate’ (Harper, 1998: 144). It is the language of emotional control.

5.3.2 Default elements for both conventional and alternative styles Whether you view yourself as conventional or alternative, there are some common requirements:

Keep sentences as short and simple as possible. ‘Discipline yourself to write less than you want’ (Literati website, 2003). Whatever style you adopt, apply it throughout your document otherwise readers can be confused. Err on the side of semantic and grammatical correctness and rigorous punctuation. This is par- ticular advice for the natives of England who are apparently less punctilious about correct usage than are other nations, especially Americans (Truss, 2003: 33, 189). US advice is that the ‘mechanics of writing for a diverse audience make choice of words, correct grammar, well placed punctuation, and accurate citations far from trivial matters’ (Lindle, 2004: 2). Thus there’s no substitute for having good dictionary, grammar and punctuation reference books by your side. Use them andthe tools on your PC. ☺ Select non-prejudicial language which does not discriminate for, or against, any category of people. Check abbreviations. They do not usually have full points; hence USA not U.S.A. (the points are assumed to be there). On first applying an abbreviation, explain it in full with its abbreviation in brackets afterwards; thereafter, the abbreviation alone appears. # In academic text that rarely needs numbers, spell out numbers that can be written in one or two words and thereafter use numerals. In more quantitative subjects, employ numerals, and always when they precede a unit of measurement. In more populist media, use numerals. Where your numeric needs fall between these two extremes, numbers up to ninety-nine are usually written as text and numbers over 100 as numerals but this is only one convention. Sage prefers numer- als from 10 onwards. Never start a sentence with a numeral. Always state precise dates rather than ‘currently’, ‘recently’, ‘in the last fifteen years’ or ‘two decades ago’. Your book/article/thesis could be read manyyears from now, but who then will know when ‘now’ is, and who wants to have to riffle through the title pages to find a date? So in this book, for example, ‘currently’ becomes ‘in the 2000s’; ‘recently’ becomes ‘from 2000 to 2005’; ‘in the last fifteen years’ becomes 1990–2005; two decades ago becomes ‘1985’. People’s names appear in their fullest forms at their first entry. This usually means including both first and second names and sometimes a prefix too, such as Reverend, Dame, Professor, Doctor.

After that, revert to surnames only and always without the prefixes. If you decide to shorten a pre- fix, then use punctuation to show an abbreviation, for example, Prof. (for Professor). Contractions do not need punctuation; hence Mr (for Mister), Ms (for Mrs or Miss), Dr (for Doctor). 5.3.3 Style choices 5.3.3.1 Cautious language One of the hallmarks of the academic is deemed to be caution. Our lexicon includes the verbs suggest, appear, indicate, intimate, imply, hint. Prudent phrases are used, such as: ‘It 67 05-Thody-3390-Ch-05.qxd 5/23/2006 3:41 PM Page 67 WRITING AND PRESENTING RESEARCH could be said that … ’; ‘The data indicate the possibility that …’; ‘On the one hand there is majority agreement that … but on the other hand there is a strong minority view that …’; ‘One might think that … but it is necessary to be aware of a probable alternative’; ‘Of the 1300 sample of those using product X, 1000 contracted virus Y, which strongly indicates a causal connection. Further research is needed to see if this finding can be replicated in larger populations.’Such phrases symbolize academic humility. Sources, data collection and conclusions can never be 100 per cent complete. Limitations to research must be openly admitted and generalizations without qualifications must be avoided. Such caution is appropri- ately termed ‘hedging’ (Holliday, 2002: 179) and it is particularly necessary in all quali- tative and literary research which relies on interpretations. I think it is similarly vital in scientific researches; in medical research, for example, findings often have to be based on small samples. The mass media may jump to the conclusion that dietary studies on forty people can be generalized to whole populations but you, the academic researcher, will not do so. An excellent example of hedging is in Middleton’s (1995) article on feminist educa- tional theory in the refereed journal Gender and Education. She sets out the article in two columns with the conventional format on the left and an alternative format on the right.

The researcher includes a justification for thus breaking the mould. The conventional left column formally introduces the topic and discusses the argument in the impersonal and often passive tone. The right column contains a description of the researcher’s office written in the first person active, so making the reader aware of the character of the researcher. She introduces the debates on feminist theory in a personal way by writ- ing about her ‘daughter’s generation’s attitudes’ in contrast to ‘post modernists [who] have rejected the monolithic categories upon which previous feminist research has rested’ (1995: 89; cited in Blaxter et al., 2001: 241). Caution must be abandoned for audiences from outside academia (3.5) when, for example, being interviewed by radio, TV or newspaper reporters, advising on broad- casts or writing in professional and general magazines. Such audiences want answers, not endless qualified responses. When tackling these, therefore, researchers need to select what can be stated unequivocally but truthfully. If the findings need qualifying, then the reservations must be clearly stated and repeated assertively. The example below demonstrates how definition gives way to caution. It’s from a news- paper article about research on the respective characteristics of fans of Leicester Tigers rugby and of Leicester City football (mentioned earlier, p. 51). Professor John Williams of Leicester University was reported in the Leicester Mercury as having found that: Tigers’ season ticket holders are noticeably older – 55 per cent of them are over 50, com- pared to 24 per cent at City … ‘Perhaps,’ he suggests, ‘older male City fans attend matches to escape from home, while Tigers couples retire together to the rugby.’ (Wakerlin, 2004: 10) 5.3.3.2 Appropriate language Writing style should be direct, clear, organized, cohesive, strong and convincing. Oh how simple it sounds! All one has to do is consider how each of the elements of that homily can be achieved:

68 05-Thody-3390-Ch-05.qxd 5/23/2006 3:41 PM Page 68 ARTS AND CRAFT OF WRITING 69 •Directness is achieved by avoiding jargon, pomposity and verbosity, ‘Latinate words … orotund phrases’ (Knight, 2002: 199).

• Clarity comes from a clear, interesting and readable style which avoids complex sentences but varies sentence length and structure (Griffith, 1994: 236). It comes from a time when writing for research was assumed to be for information, not for enticement or entertainment (Charles, 1988), and therefore needed plain language. By the 1990s, the meaning of ‘plain’ was generating debate and many were the ways suggested of writing in plain English (Zeller and Farmer, 1999). Some equated it with neutral language and held that such was impossible in the human sciences (1999:

15). In natural and applied science writing, plain language is still the required norm, its meaning being to get to the point unemotionally and simply. Emotional language is however almost a sine qua non of qualitative and narrative research. Brevity is valued for all disciplines and by science researchers trying to place articles in journals that charge for publication. An analogous style is suggested by Knight (2002: 199) who proposes English broadsheet newspaper language as the most fitting for academic writing since these newspapers are in the business of communicating with those who are most likely to read academic publications. 2 • Organization and coherence arise from planning (2.2).

• Strength and conviction emerge from using language which your primary audience is most likely to understand and which accomplishes the purposes of the research (Chapters 2–4).

Within these parameters, add to the interest of your style with differing sentence and paragraph lengths, and varying vocabulary. The latter can be easily achieved with the help of your PC’s thesaurus tool or, even better, an old fashioned book thesaurus which carries an even wider range of word options.

5.3.3.3 Colloquialisms These informal or conversational idioms are generally considered insufficiently precise for written academic language. It is even advisable to avoid them in spoken presenta- tions unless you can be sure that all the audience has the same linguistic understand- ings as your own. Where used in academic publications, they are often put in inverted commas. Even here, however, they can be useful as chatty ‘hooks’ in an introduction, as in this example. This helps to make readers feel comfortable and inclined to read on:

‘As a nineteenth-century colonial power, the Netherlands put up quite a performance’ (Bossenbroek, 1995: 26, my emphasis).

REFLECTIONS Decide what you think is meant by the following quotation which uses two colloquialisms: Nearly eighty per cent of heads of independent schools in the central states are fired. Board chairs are voluntary, thus perhaps firing them is a moot point. (ISACS, 2003) 05-Thody-3390-Ch-05.qxd 5/23/2006 3:41 PM Page 69 WRITING AND PRESENTING RESEARCH ‘Fired’ is a colloquialism that has gained general acceptance as a replace- ment for dismissal from a job. It could be used in academic English unless the document is intended for an international audience.A ‘moot point’ suggests a doubtful or an unsettled question, but did the author mean ‘It is doubtful if the concept of dismissal can be applied to voluntary jobs’ or ‘The numbers of chairs who are dismissed is an unsettled question’?

On the other hand, at the end of the day, it’s a nice touch to make your audience feel at home through your colloquialisms. In presentations, the body language accompany- ing colloquialisms usually gets the message across even if you’re in foreign parts.

Colloquialisms make a break in written academic language and can get you the prize of your articles accepted in generalist magazines. Buta little goes a long way and your stream of explanation has got to run crystal clear. Now count the colloquialisms used in this paragraph. Enough is enough!

5.3.3.4 Jargon With 100 million words of English at a writer’s disposal, the specialized terminology for a particular subject is ‘a natural and proper way of engaging in complex and sophisti- cated debates’ (Knight, 2002: 199). The precision of correct words enables thinking to be expressed more succinctly than it could be in layperson’s English even if the words are complex and technical. Such language is, however, sometimes referred to deroga- torily as jargon. To be avoided is the pretentious gibberish of words such as ‘non- foundational epistemology’, ‘pantisocratic’, ‘halation’, ‘heterarchy’, ‘limitarian’, ‘rigid designator’. 3The Literati website (2003) on publishing advises: ‘When you use a word of three syllables or more, check yourself. Is there really a good reason to use that longer word?’ The answer to that question depends on the intended audience for a research doc- ument or presentation and its purpose. Neither the simple nor the long and abstruse word is invariably right or wrong. Box 5.3 outlines the varying options for employing jargon. Box 5.3 Using jargon 1 The default position is adopting the simplest word possible from everyday English. This applies to all research writing and especially if, for example, you are writing an article for a popular magazine such as Reader’s Digest or for a newspaper.

2 Popular journals such as National Geographic will err on the side of simplicity but will also include the required vocabulary, sometimes with a glossary. 70 05-Thody-3390-Ch-05.qxd 5/23/2006 3:41 PM Page 70 ARTS AND CRAFT OF WRITING Box 5.3 (Continued) 3 Academic journals and books will mainly apply the exact wording associated with theirdisciplines. One assumes that the audience for these will either know the correct termi- nology or want to learn it. A glossary can be provided for frequently used technical terms in the text. Replacing precise language with lay English also has the disadvantage of adding to already restrictive word counts.

4 Theses should have only the precise words required by the discipline.

5 Particular types of methodology will lend themselves to particular vocabularies. Par- ticipant research can present very localized jargon, emerging from the actual situations studied. Its reproduction may be important to the understanding of the respondents’ views. Non-participant research establishes distance by applying abstract words.

Jargon can be used to great advantage. Conference papers, for example, desperately need intriguing titles to attract audiences. Hence ‘Towards a prolegomenon for under- standing what radical educational reform means for school principals’ was presented by an English professor at an Australian conference (Ribbins, 1993). Who could miss the opportunity to solve the mystery of a prolegomenon? Would the paper have attracted so many had it appeared in the conference programme as ‘Towards a preliminary dis- cussion or a formal critical introduction for understanding what radical educational reform means for school principals’? The translation loses the impact of the original.

The choice of the word ‘prolegomenon’ also flatters the audience (3.7.1) who will either know, or can pretend to know, what it means.Learning is encouraged by correct, if esoteric, jargon and learning is a central aim of the academic community. On first encounter with a new word, one needs to look it up.

Thereafter, it is yours for life. Hence ‘Looking two ways: identity, research and praxis in the Caribbean Community’ (Henry, 1997) as a chapter title offers one such word.

‘Praxis’ would be well known to educational experts from the seminal writer on adult education, Freire. The chapter would therefore call to the ‘in crowd’ and maybe attract others by its mystery. If the author had tried to attempt simpler terms, the title would have had to be about ‘Identity, research and practical wisdom from particular examples of actions from which general guidance to others might be produced since where the ends of one’s actions can be anticipated from previous evidence then you can gain moral guidance on what you yourself should do’. Much easier to just write ‘praxis’ and make us all extend our vocabulary (and if you do, then graduate to Gadotti’s Pedagogy of Praxis, 1996, for some fascinating discoveries). The middle way for jargon lies in having the correct, technical terminology but melding explanations for it into the text. This can be direct (where the writer or pre- senter informs the audience that a definition is being given) or indirect (where the defi- nition is woven into the text). 71 05-Thody-3390-Ch-05.qxd 5/23/2006 3:41 PM Page 71 WRITING AND PRESENTING RESEARCH 72Examples of the direct: An example or two before we launch ourselves into the discussion proper may be useful to clarify some of the things I mean by ‘meaning’. For instance … two cases of mounted butterflies … on the wall … in the background … enhance the homeliness of the setting.

(Thomas, 2001: 3 – from a book about Hollywood film settings) The term ‘reinforcement’ was adopted to describe the likely outcome of the … mentor- ing [of one school principal by another] … [reinforcement is] the rapid learning of effec- tive established practices or of the repetition of possibly outdated systems and ideas.

(Thody and Crystal, 1996: 178 – from a chapter in an edited book on education) Indirect definition is demonstrated in the next two examples. Compare the two extracts, both concerning the same technical word. Do the extracts contain enough to make its meaning clear? The researcher as a writer is a bricoleur. He or she fashions meaning and interpretation out of ongoing experience. As a bricoleur, the researcher uses any tool or method that is readily to hand. (Denzin, 1998: 315 – from a chapter in his own book on interpretive research) The bricoleur [in an industrial society] could aspire to gathering … a number of small but relatively heavy steel tools … about him. (Dent, 2001: 18 – from an article on the biogra- phy of a toolbox) Jargon can be used to impress an audience, though it may not always be effective. A 2003–4 lively web dispute amongst scholars highlighted this. Falco (2004) criticized Stork’s attacks (on Falco’s and Hockney’s theories about how the Old Masters achieved such accuracy in their paintings) as ‘filled with technical-sounding language that pro- vides … a veneer of scholarly credibility [words such as] ( lichtkroon … sfumato … Poggendorff illusion)’. Stork’s (2004) rejoinder illustrates the establishment’s preference for the conventional (1.3.2.3) as he responded that the theory had been refuted by ‘slow, careful analysis of experts who follow the accepted protocol of expert peer journal arti- cles rather than the broad popular presentations in the popular media’.

REFLECTIONS This extract appears in a journal article intended for those researching bio- graphical data: The polysemousness of these accounts draws upon ambiguity in their provenance. (Skultans, 2001: 5) The average concise dictionary ( c. 215,000 words) does not yield ‘polysemous- ness’. Would it have been better to replace ‘polysemousness [of]’ with, ‘many meanings that might emerge [from]’, thus utilizing five words instead of one? 05-Thody-3390-Ch-05.qxd 5/23/2006 3:41 PM Page 72 ARTS AND CRAFT OF WRITING 73 Could the following be written more effectively? The deontological perspective of IT ethics can equip students with the knowledge and skills to apply professional codes … in solving ethical problems. (from an article about teaching business ethics by Taylor, Moynihan, McWilliam and Gresty, 2004: 52–3) This would need to become: ‘Teaching students that they are required to per- form certain IT duties because there is rational cause for them, or because the requirements are expected, or listed, in the rules of conduct for a group, can equip students with the knowledge …’. The second version is simpler but it requires more than double the original word count. In what circumstances would you deliberately use jargon to obfuscate your findings? (Clues in 4.6) 5.3.3.5 Tenses The vanguards of the conventional and alternative armies meet on the battleground of verb tenses. The big guns fire off passively and abstractly, the snipers nip about actively and concretely. The computer grammar checkers, which now control the weaponry, will refuse to allow the passive voice. Hence, ‘the charge was led by Thody’ will be put in the firing line and be reborn as ‘Thody led the charge’. Heat- seeking missiles will target all but the present tense. The rules of engagement will show that: 1 The past tense is required because the research happened in the past; the passive voice and abstract verbs lend distance from the personal and seriousness to the account.

2 The present tense is required because the research is being reported now and its outcomes will, hopefully, be applied in the future; it lends currency, immediacy and involvement to the account.

By this point in this book, you will know that the choice you make will depend on those guiding principles of:

•Precedent. I have yet to read a PhD thesis written in the present tense.

• Audience. Those from outside academia would expect the past tense for the research that justi- fies your recommendations but they will want present or future tenses for guidance on which actions to take.

• Purpose. This book, for example, has to combine textbook style guidance with more abstract dis- cussion of the reasons for the guidance, and tenses can vary accordingly.

• Your personality. With which tenses are you most comfortable?

• Practicalities. The present, active tense uses fewer words than the past, passive. If quoting inter- view or focus group data verbatim, use the tenses of the original speakers but report speeches in past tenses (Darlington and Scott, 2002: 163). 05-Thody-3390-Ch-05.qxd 5/23/2006 3:41 PM Page 73 WRITING AND PRESENTING RESEARCH REFLECTIONS A noteworthy example of the ‘tense’ dilemma came in a series of articles that filled a special edition of the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education (2002, vol. 15, no. 1). The articles were written by university students after a term’s full participative, reflexive, ethnographic research with inhabitants of the US/Mexico borders, an intensely emotional experience for the students.

They wrote the articles at the poignant time of leaving the worlds in which they had spent the term, to return home. They received no instructions on what tense to utilize; all chose to write in the present tense. The editor – the students’ professor – reflected that perhaps ‘this choice was each student’s response to the urge within that the experience … not be relegated to the past, but carried forth always. Perhaps it was each student’s insistence and vow that learning con- tinue’ (Swanger, 2002: 9). Nonetheless, the professor-editor ‘made the decision to change most of their language into the past tense; after all, they were describ- ing a specific moment in time, one that had definitely passed’ (2002: 9). Was the editor’s decision right?

5.3.3.6 Personal or impersonal?

If tenses are one of the battlegrounds, the real heat of war focuses on that issue of whether one should or should not employ the personal, first person voice (I, we, you, mine, our, yours) or the impersonal third person voice (it, one). We, the troops who want you to adopt the impersonal conventions, advise that you will thereby avoid the impression that you are ‘subjective and egotistical’ (Griffith, 1994: 237).

If you are an ethnographer, you will be aware that researchers introduced the impersonal to distinguish your rigorous studies from those of merely observant missionaries and trav- ellers (Richardson, 1998: 353), a distinction you will be happy to continue. You will not want readers to think that any evidence presented is just from your solo, and invalid, personal experiences. In the personal formats, our writing can sound like an elementary school textbook. The impersonal voice was given us by the non-human sciences; transfer- ring it in other disciplines will give our findings strength and certainty. The alternative army insist that the personal is vital where individual judgement is being expressed or where personal participation in any research is being described, dis- cussed or reported. The revelation of self within the data recognizes that the researcher makes data as well as collecting and selecting them and that the views and experiences of the researcher are as important as the views collected from others. Hence ‘the use of the first person has for some time been acceptable and is becoming more so’ (Holliday, 2002: 129). The inclusive ‘we’, ‘you’ and ‘our’ acknowledges that the readers’ percep- tions are an integral part of the sense-making from research outcomes and makes them complicit and supportive of the conclusions. To negotiate your own peace between the two camps, reflect on the two preceding paragraphs. Did you prefer the one advocating the impersonal (but written in the per- sonal) or the one supporting the personal (but written in the impersonal)? If you are still uncertain, then combine both – the impersonal for generally agreed facts and the personal where you are expressing opinions. In the 2000s it is sensibly 74 05-Thody-3390-Ch-05.qxd 5/23/2006 3:41 PM Page 74 ARTS AND CRAFT OF WRITING 75 accepted that the two can even appear in the same paragraph, as these two extracts demonstrate: Thus, the research proposal is a document which is a product – the end result of a process of planning and designing. As I will stress throughout this book, it is also an argument which needs to have a coherent line of reasoning and internal consistency. (Punch, 2000: 11) Museums are important venues in which a society can define itself and present itself pub- licly. Museums solidify culture … The stories I will be telling are stories about power … I will not atte