Handbook for Doctoral Students in Education/Guiding questions

Guiding questions
Once you can answer all questions, you should be ready to defend your dissertation. However, you need to start somewhere!
 * 1) What is your area of interest? Why do you care about THAT? Why do YOU care about that?
 * 2) What is the practical problem you want to address?
 * 3) What is the theoretical problem you want to address? In other words, what knowledge we are lacking?
 * 4) What is you hunch about a possible theoretical solution?
 * 5) What are the two-three key concepts you are planning to use to think about this problem?
 * 6) Why do you need each of them? What is each concept’s purpose? How all of them fit with each other, and why do you need all three?
 * 7) What do you think is already known about your topic?
 * 8) Which fields or subfields, which “schools” or research traditions crated this knowledge? Do you know any big shots?
 * 9) What can you add to what people have already found?
 * 10) What is your impression of the state of the field(s) with which you’re working?
 * 11) What is the title of your dissertation?
 * 12) What are your empirical methods? What’s the project?
 * 13) What is the hypothesis?
 * 14) What is your conceptual framework? Please use narrative, not a picture.
 * 15) What is the foundational literature for your topic?
 * 16) How do you evaluate the state of foundational literature?
 * 17) What are the core research findings you will be using?
 * 18) What is new in your project?
 * 19) Divide literature in groups in a logical way; explain how these different groups of lit have a job to do in your dissertation.
 * 20) Tell a short narrative about the research literature you will be using.