![]() ![]() (You owe them this if they are going to plough through 80-100,000 words for you.)Īll this can be viewed as an increasingly narrowing triangle moving from the general topic to the specific issue, thence to The Gap, as illustrated in the diagram below:Ī common question might be how “The Gap” relates to the Literature Review of the thesis. To this we can add a Thesis Outline: a courtesy statement or statements to the reader of where your thesis is going and the shape and structure it is going to take.The thesis statement is your proposed answer to this question posed to address The Gap in the conversation (or tentativeanswer if you are at Research Proposal stage).The research question/hypothesis/aim asks something to address The Gap in the conversation.The Gap is what you notice needs to be said in the conversation that has not been said before or that needs addressing in more detail.The specific area is your focus on a particular part of the bigger conversation (a sub-set of the larger conversation).The general area is a particular conversation among academics in the field of study.You can get to The Gap by thinking of the process as a series of narrowing “conversations”: And this is never enough for a PhD.īut how does The Gap fit into your overall thesis? What is its job? How does it relate to the thesis outline, the introduction, body and other key thesis components? Importantly, how do you find one? These questions are seldom answered to the satisfaction of newbie PhD students.įinding, articulating and filling “The Gap” is critical to thesis writing and marks it as a distinct writing genre. Without this, the purported thesis is a mere collection of words discussing a topic. What distinguishes a PhD from an airport novel, a corporate annual report, a parliamentary submission, a comic, or a racy Mills and Boon romance novel? They are all writing genres, but they are all very different. The defining requirement of a PhD is finding, articulating, and filling a research gap (hereafter, The Gap). You can read a review of one of Martin’s books hereor read a previous post on doing a second PhD He completed double doctorates in Philosophy in 20. You can find out more about Martin on his website. He has written six books, including Study Skills for International Postgraduate Students(2011) and (with Ronald Barnett) Palgrave Handbook of Critical Thinking in Higher Education(2015). Confused about this ‘gap’ in the literature that you are meant to find? This post is by Associate Professor Martin Davies Principal Fellow in Higher Education in the Melbourne Graduate School of Education and a Senior Learning Advisor working with HDRs and staff at Federation University. ![]()
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