Friday, July 20, 2012

How I Spent My Summer

Although summer is not over yet, it seems that meetings with members of my (future) dissertation committee are until the fall semester begins.  This leaves me about a month to polish up Chapter 1 and to structure Chapter 2 of my proposal.  I can also spend the time reading more in my research area, which was being discouraged earlier this summer since the readings can detract me.  So what have I done?

1) I now have 2 co-chairs on my dissertation committee, one being my advisor, who is an expert in teacher education.  The other is a professor, who is an expert in my field of ESL education.  My research area draws from literature in ESL teacher education, and I hope my research can help improve it.

2) I have written 3 drafts of Chapter 1 and have submitted the third draft to my co-chairs.  It is unfinished in that I am uncertain of the delimitations as the research methodology may change.

3) I have come across 2 influential researchers in my readings, and have contacted one of them.  Both have published numerous articles within the last decade that promote my position.

4) I have collected a substantial amount of literature and read through a handful or so of the ones that seemed important enough to include in my Chapter 1.  After reading them, I would estimate that half of what I read was indeed useful.

5) Next week, I will finish up my graduate assistantship with the Education Technology Center, where I worked for the past 3 years.

6) I have formally invited a third member to my dissertation committee.

To me, this list doesn't seem like a lot.  Of the last ten weeks, I would say I have spent a total of 5-7 days writing and about twice as many days reading.  Half of that reading was influential in my establishing my position.  Perhaps I'm being unfair in that I just completed the busiest semester in my life, so anything following that would feel relatively free.  In fact, I'm not getting credit for doing this work.  I'm doing this work to get this dissertation done.

Perhaps I had high expectations for the summer.  By this time, I had hoped to be done rewriting both Chapters 1 and 2, so I only met my expectations halfway there.  I also wanted to make some progress on my IRB application, and this did not happen at all.

I am pushing myself because my ultimate goal for the next academic year is to be completed with data collection.  After next May, I will have no more financial support from the College of Education, so I will have to find a job somewhere.  Right now, I have the luxury of putting my dissertation at the top of my list of priorities.  Soon that will give way to trying to secure a job and trying to sell our house, both of which will intensify as the academic year comes to a close.

With a month left before the academic year begins, I plan to spend about 2 weeks at my in-laws' in Maryland.  That gives me a week before the trip and a week after the trip to dedicate most attention to my research proposal.  But like I mentioned earlier, there is little reading and writing to do.
I hope to invite a fourth member to my dissertation committee before the semester begins.


Perhaps what adds to the frustration of the summer was the sequence of job rejections, although none of those jobs were vitally important to my way of life.  Two of these job rejections were for summer employment, one paying 10 times as much as I am making at this assistantship.  The third was for a job starting in the fall, but I had lost interest in it before they rejected me.  Although I could take or leave any of those jobs, rejection still hurts my confidence.

Aside from my research and jobs, I was able to enjoy plenty of time with my family with some excursions around the area.  I also had plenty of time to read books that are not related to ESL education at all, and I had time to update my professional website/portfolio.  But, from time to time, I have experienced boredom, which I had not had to deal with for the past 6 years, and that has unsettled me.

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

Chapter 1

I initially wrote the first chapter of my research proposal/dissertation in February this year.  Of the three chapters that I wrote, it was the most difficult because I had no idea who my audience was.  In reality, the audience was my professor in the research proposal writing class and my classmates.  However, none of them are members of my dissertation committee, who I tried to imagine as my audience.  The problem with that was I could not really consult them yet because I had not completed my comprehensive exams yet.  So it felt like I was writing Chapter 1 for a simulated audience, one that doesn't really exist. 

Chapter 1 should be the most engaging of the chapters to write because it is my opportunity to make my case.  Because I didn't know who I'm making my case to, I struggled.  Although I tried to imagine my future dissertation committee as my audience, I also had to write it for someone outside the field.  In fact, I do have someone outside the field sitting on my committee, but she is very familiar with the context of my initially proposed data collection.  I felt like I was making my case to people who were already half on board with me.  I didn't feel the need to make a stronger case, and perhaps that is what made my first chapter 1 weak.

Now that I have passed my comprehensive exams, my advisor and co-chair recommended that my audience be to someone in education, but not in foreign language or ESL education, and to someone who has the authority of issuing grant money.  This advice has helped tremendously, but I basically had to scrap most of the original draft.  I had to scrap it because I have decided, through the advice of several committee members, that I should broaden my scope beyond sojourning EFL teachers in Japan to EFL teachers in East Asia sojourning from the United States (and maybe Canada?).  My advisor also recommended that framing chapter 1 as a call for intercultural communication training in ESL education would help.

The first steps were the easiest as I already had most of the literature.  I made a spreadsheet and categorized my literature in terms of domain: education, language education, teacher education, intercultural communication, and sojourner studies.  After I completed this spreadsheet, I revisited all the literature that stressed both teacher education and intercultural communication to find the best arguments.  Then I looked at literature about intercultural communication to better sell the idea as the business/corporate world finds intercultural communication to be quite important. 

Actually...writing this blog is helping because I haven't made my point clear enough about the connection between the international business/corporate need for intercultural communication and the reason why many people learn English as an international language.  Put simply: globalization.  I've heard this pitch so many times that I forget that not everybody knows this connection.  I wonder if I should make that my biggest catch rather than the poor standards for teachers in terms of intercultural communication.  It seems as if it precludes the standards.

Anyway, although I seemed to have avoided analysis paralysis when writing chapter 1 for class.  I now seem to be going into it a bit.  I seem to have about 2 good hours of progress a day before I get second thoughts that send me into this analysis paralysis.  The simplest example is when I realize that many of my studies for demographics are over a decade old.  So when I search for more up to date demographic information, I find little to none, but that search helps me find other literature that may help.  But I already have enough convincing literature.  This sidestepping literature search usually takes up an hour, and then I lose track and second guess my arguments, primarily, and my writing ability, secondarily. 

This blog is helping me refocus in terms of bullet points.  I seem to have a few bullet point-type ideas, but I feel the urge to elaborate on them even though that's the point of chapter 2.  I believe my biggest struggle is when to elaborate and when to keep it succinct.  This struggle comes out of explaining my ideas to someone who is not in my field.  How much explanation or background information should this person need, so it is clear enough? 

So I will revisit my literature and make more bullet points to sell the need for my study under the premise that it will improve intercultural communication training in second language teacher education.  It's back to outlining, but without scrapping again.