How many of us graduate students have felt like the PhD comic above at more than one point of our careers? Graduate school is certainly not easy. There are a lot of things students have to deal with for the first time when they come to graduate school. Research, for example, could be something intimidating for many graduate students. I remember when I took my very first research class at the beginning of the master's program in Arts Administration at FSU. There were a lot of unfamiliar terms to learn. I remember thinking that it was all kind of overwhelming, especially when trying to get an idea of how I would apply all of it to my own research projects.
I was recently invited to present at a research survey class that included masters and doctoral students from my department. The FSU Department of Art Education offers concentrations in Art Education, Arts Administration
and Art Therapy, so I knew I would be speaking in front of a very diverse group
of graduate students. My presentation was going to be about my dissertation
study, for which I recently collected data. There was no doubt about what the content of my presentation was going to be, but when
I started to brainstorm on how I was going to approach it, I thought I had to
take myself back to when I was a student taking that very first research class.
What was it that I would have liked to hear from a guest research presenter
back then? What did I want to know more about when I was actually trying to learn
for the very first time all of those different research methodologies and
approaches, having the pressure of knowing that I had to put together my very first
attempt to a research proposal?
I realized that there was actually
nothing that I’d have wanted more than knowing what happens “backstage” and
what a researcher actually goes through from the beginning to the end of a
research project such as a dissertation. I feel that graduate students,
especially at the Ph.D. level, get to read a lot of research studies in the
form of book chapters, journal articles and even dissertations. However, too
many times they lack the “knowing HOW” those researchers and scholars actually
came all the way to the end of the process: the “nuts and bolts” of a research
study. In my opinion, we are so used to focusing on outcomes that we have made
it more difficult and stressful to figure out the process we have to go through
to get to them. This is how I came to realize that my presentation
had to focus on process. I wanted to help students understand my own experience
so that it could help them with theirs, but how did I do that?
First of all, I felt that I had to start
my presentation by clarifying the most important aspects that made my study
different from other types of research studies that they would be learning
about as part of their class and also from other guest presenters. These
are some of the aspects that I thought were important to discuss up front,
before I got into details about my research process and here they are:
- My research study has been conducted in an informal learning setting: an art gallery - I felt it was important for students to learn the advantages and disadvantages this implies for a study such as the one I am conducting. I thought knowing some of the implications of conducting research in a free-choice environment such as a gallery or museum would help them better understand how I approached my research study, and could possibly help them make more informed decisions as well when the time comes for them to design their own study.
- My dissertation study aims to encompass an evaluation as part of it - Therefore, making sure that students were familiar with the similarities and differences between research and evaluation was key in order for them to be able to understand the process.
- A dissertation implies that there is only one researcher conducting the study - It’s very common that both research and evaluation studies are conducted by teams of people, often with diverse backgrounds and expertise so that they can complement each other and also divide the work to be done. However, when it comes to a dissertation study, the researcher is just one person: the student, who has the support of a dissertation committee, and the guidance and advice of his/her major professor. Therefore, in cases such as this one, you inevitably have to impose limitations to the scope of your research. In short: You have to realize that you can’t do it all! Making sure you will generate new knowledge and contribute to the literature that advances your field is extremely important but you also have to realize that this is probably not the last (and sometimes not even the first) research study you will conduct in your entire life. Knowing how far you can and should go is extremely important. In the case of a dissertation, it really helps to have an experienced committee chair who can help you realize what is actually doable and what is just “enough” (even when you might feel so enthusiastic about your topic that you might feel compelled to try to do it all).
After talking about these three
aspects, I was ready to start articulating my research process from the beginning
stages of conceptualization to the data collection stage that I am in at the
moment. Some highlights of my presentation? Well, all I can say to summarize it
is that I tried to take students through the development of my prospectus,
which means I took them through the first three chapters of my dissertation and explained how I
approached the process chronologically. This implied discussing a variety of
things that included how I started with my dissertation topic, how I conducted and structured my literature
review, how I came to develop my problem statement and research questions, and
my rationale behind the theoretical foundation, methodology and paradigm of
research that guides my dissertation study, among other things.
As passionate as I am about research,
I think (or hope) that I didn’t make the process look overwhelming. When you are in the middle of it, it can actually feel that way at
times, but when you have a dissertation topic that you feel passionate about, you will also have the energy and the drive to go through the entire process in ways you
actually get to enjoy the ride tremendously! This was the ultimate fact that I wanted to share with the students that attended my presentation, and I sure hope I accomplished my goal.
However, if you still feel overwhelmed about research or graduate school, check out Jorge Cham's PhD Comics
anytime you need a break. You may even want to
subscribe. I guarantee that they will make you laugh exactly when you need to!
