Page 59 - Igor Ž. Žagar in Ana Mlekuž, ur. ▪︎ Raziskovanje v vzgoji in izobraževanju. Ljubljana: Pedagoški inštitut, 2019. Digitalna knjižnica, Dissertationes 37
P. 59
the challenge of positioning one’s research question in the state of the art ...
Figure 3: Graph to illustrate positioning with regard to three theories as it may be sketched
in class as to illustrate the complementarity of research question (dot) in relation to the
“research space” it resides in (further explanation in the text)
tion is represented by a dot situated in a three-dimensional space. Each axis
represents the agreement with a theory or particular findings (crudely ex-
pressed in %), so the position of dot represents this positioning of the re-
search question in this particular theoretical field. I.e., in this example the
author is very much building on “theory x”, drawing somewhat from “the-
ory y”, and strongly opposing “theory z”.
In order to avoid being misunderstood: we certainly do not suggest to
propose to the students that agreement with theories is a quantitative mat-
ter, we use the percentages to make them realize that they should think
about – in order to then make explicit in their texts – how much they “buy
into” others’ research, i.e., to work on making explicit where they agree and
what they criticize.
This visual metaphor allows novice academic writers to understand
that there is no pre-defined research-landscape (which students simply do
not know enough yet) instead it is their task to actively build a space. In the
process of going through the iterations of pinning down their research ques-
tion, part of the task is to define – or co-construct - the space it resides in.
This space is not arbitrary in the sense that it depends on the research ques-
tion as well as the discourse(s) it is based on and will contribute to. Under-
standing this provides novice academic writers and researchers with a gross
heuristic for deciding what needs to go into the state-of-the-art section.
Explanation of the complementarity of research question and state-of-
the-art section including illustrating the point with the graph embed it ac-
59
Figure 3: Graph to illustrate positioning with regard to three theories as it may be sketched
in class as to illustrate the complementarity of research question (dot) in relation to the
“research space” it resides in (further explanation in the text)
tion is represented by a dot situated in a three-dimensional space. Each axis
represents the agreement with a theory or particular findings (crudely ex-
pressed in %), so the position of dot represents this positioning of the re-
search question in this particular theoretical field. I.e., in this example the
author is very much building on “theory x”, drawing somewhat from “the-
ory y”, and strongly opposing “theory z”.
In order to avoid being misunderstood: we certainly do not suggest to
propose to the students that agreement with theories is a quantitative mat-
ter, we use the percentages to make them realize that they should think
about – in order to then make explicit in their texts – how much they “buy
into” others’ research, i.e., to work on making explicit where they agree and
what they criticize.
This visual metaphor allows novice academic writers to understand
that there is no pre-defined research-landscape (which students simply do
not know enough yet) instead it is their task to actively build a space. In the
process of going through the iterations of pinning down their research ques-
tion, part of the task is to define – or co-construct - the space it resides in.
This space is not arbitrary in the sense that it depends on the research ques-
tion as well as the discourse(s) it is based on and will contribute to. Under-
standing this provides novice academic writers and researchers with a gross
heuristic for deciding what needs to go into the state-of-the-art section.
Explanation of the complementarity of research question and state-of-
the-art section including illustrating the point with the graph embed it ac-
59
