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Responding to PhD Criticism and Review: What does it Mean?

What You Need to Hear Vs. What They Say #DocNet

You: 1. Am I doing alright? 2. Am I mostly done? 3. Will I finish on time? 4. Does my work meet Doctoral Standards?

They: 1. How far off the mark is this? 2. What are the key things that need updating

(or are wrong) 3. Is this work the university/ examiners will

pass?

You are not in their appraisals

What is Acceptable?

• Is workmanlike

• Demonstrates technical competence

• Shows the ability to do research

• Is not very original or significant

• Is not interesting, exciting, or surprising

• Displays little creativity, imagination, or insight

• Writing is pedestrian and plodding

• Has a weak structure and organization

• Is narrow in scope

• Has a question or problem that is not exciting--is often highly derivative or an extension of the adviser's work

• Displays a narrow understanding of the field

• Reviews the literature adequately--knows the literature but is not critical of it or does not discuss what is important

• Can sustain an argument, but the argument is not imaginative complex, or convincing

• Demonstrates understanding of theory at a simple level, and theory is minimally to competently applied to the problem

• Uses standard methods

• Has an unsophisticated analysis--does not explore all possibilities and misses connections

• Has predictable results that are not exciting

• Makes a small contribution

1. General quality – pass

at the outstanding, very

good or acceptable

level.

2. Has internal

consistency

3. Meet the benchmarks

What Makes for Outstanding?

• Original and significant, ambitious, brilliant, clear, clever, coherent, compelling, concise, creative, elegant, engaging, exciting, interesting, insightful, persuasive, sophisticated, surprising, and thoughtful

• Very well written and organized

• Synthetic and interdisciplinary

• Connects components in a seamless way

• Exhibits mature, independent thinking

• Has a point of view and a strong, confident, independent, and authoritative voice

• Asks new questions or addresses an important question or problem

• Clearly states the problem and why it is important

• Displays a deep understanding of a massive amount of complicated literature

• Exhibits command and authority over the material

• Argument is focused, logical, rigorous, and sustained

• Is theoretically sophisticated and shows a deep understanding of theory

• Has a brilliant research design

• Uses or develops new tools, methods, approaches, or types of analyses

• Is thoroughly researched

• Has rich data from multiple sources

• Analysis is comprehensive, complete, sophisticated, and convincing

• Results are significant

• Conclusion ties the whole thing together

• Is publishable in top-tier journals

• Is of interest to a larger community and changes the way people think

• Pushes the discipline's boundaries and opens new areas for research

Relationship Between Your Ideas, the Way You Use Words and Your Study

1. 100% of your questions are on teacher attitudes - how is this section on student learning relevant to those questions? It may be if your results show it to be otherwise it is extraneous

2. I always recommend that the first sentence be punchy and draw us into the topic – then the end of this section can give us the overview of where you are taking us.

3. In each chapter good idea to give overview of the chapter, and at end of chapter summarize what you told them. Do this in your own style, this is an example.

4. May want to move this section earlier, as it gives overview of different contexts of the leader coaching. If you are not doing all of these sorts of coaching, no need to introduce them in dissertation. Focus reader’s attention on where you will focus your study

5. You can't say it - it has to be cited from literature

6. Not sure how you are going to get here from the

research questions

Questioning the Choice of Literature

1. I don't see where this has any application to the logic of your study - I would take it out if I were you as it only slows your reader down

2. pages and pages of stuff that has only tangential importance to this study

3. this is only relevant IF and to the extent that teaching to/for the test is an outcome of your data

4. As you introduce these alternative models, do some critique so as to situate why this one is your preferred chose

5. No where in this paragraph does teacher efficacy correlate in the research to high levels of achievement – do you have such lit? If so it needs to be here, if not you may want to set your problem statement on something other than years of low achievement.

Writing Out of Order: Not Discussing Under a Heading What Belongs in that Heading

1. in the conclusion you should discuss the

assumptions you made at the beginning and how

you have grown = were these shown to be true or

not? What do you understand now that you did

not when you wrote this?

2. this paragraph is out of order - it needs to be in

significance because this is s a gap in the

literature that your study begins to fill. This is also

a good lead in when you shorten your study to get

it published in a peer review journal.

3. This needs to be defined in terms - and who

defines it this way? I thought efficacy was the

ability to get things done - NOT the belief I can

get things done.

Formatting Grammar and Spelling

1. In your TOC Headings 2, are indented and same with level 3 if you have them

2. Spelling errors are self explanatory but grammar, alliteration, anthropomorphism and redundancy are more subtle

3. Future tense in proposal, except for authors in the lit are always past tense. Past tense for all but findings in the last draft.

4. these two sentences don't make sense - despite that what?

5. Data ARE plural – these data, data are, data were etc or you lack plural noun/verb consistency

6. In APA style, you’ll need to add a comma after the second-to-last item in any list of three or more items.

7. To avoid ambiguity that could confuse your readers, you could use the active voice here rather than the passive.

8. APA prefers that you avoid using the words “we,”

“us,” and “our” (also known as first-person plural

pronouns) unless you’re referring to yourself and

your coauthors.

Questioning the Validity of Your Analysis

1. Did you use external examiners, inter-rater checks, etc to test your thematic results?

2. How did you arrive at that? 3. Too much data, not enough analysis 4. “the use of inferential statistics”… which ones? 5. You can discuss here how data was transformed

so you can run a 2X2 (2 responses: positive versus negative by 2 groups) contingency table with a chi square test statistic. I assume you ran a 6X2 contingency table (6 responses by 2 groups).

6. This response rate is very low and is a significant limitation that should be discussed.

7. I thought you had 21 teachers in this population yet I only see data from 13 – explain why

Lack of Specificity

1. how many? and how many took the survey? This whole section now needs to move to specificity –

2. How many? did anyone decline?

3. What is your theoretical basis for the work? What

educational theory is provoked by your ideas or

what other theory supports your choice of

qualitative study?

4. As shown in which data? Achievement is a

multifaceted variable – pin it down here.

5. What do you consider adequate and what will you

do if they don’t agree to participate?

6. N=????

Lack of Internal Consistency

1. this should be in a section on the gaps in the literature 2. Can teacher efficacy be measured by test scores?Are

you assuming that teacher efficacy IS adequately measured by student achievement scores. Do you believe that? I hope so because the logic of your study depends on it – and that belief will need to be apparent in two or three places. – It’s a good place to start to mention it here – then again in definitions of teacher efficacy and achievement and again the limitations of the study – because if in fact teacher efficacy is not exactly = to achievement then it will limit your measurement of results, depending on how much you are relying on test scores. If you are not relying on test scores, then using them to point out the problem becomes… well problematic – see how they all have to stack up?

Misinterpreting the Role of Research

1. how does the study increase efficacy? It

measures it but I don't see how it increases

it - therefore your logic is based on

quicksand here.

2. unlikely - don't spin it out so far - keep it

closer to home - what does your study do?

It tells us if teachers perceive their work in

plc's as improving their expectations and

efficacy - if data show it does then what?

How does that help?

3. I don't disagree with your logic or its

significance but it needs to be written in a

matter of fact manner that outlines a clear

logic from a - d without a lot of places that

only could happen.

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