Tutorial with Jill - Tuesday 28 November 2017

I had a trip to Coventry for a tutorial yesterday.  This went well.  Jill had hammered into my draft literature review.  Overall, it hung together quite well, but I had messed up the referencing (again!).  It turns out I write quite well when I believe in the theory I'm discussing, but when I think the theory is inaccurate or substandard and indicates a gap in the literature, I'm less articulate.

I need to sort out my note taking.  We had a discussion about getting the full pages of an article listed in the bibliography, but also the need to specify the exact page number in my text.  Drat!  I've been manually note taking and sometimes have missed the exact page number for every quote.  But when I take notes and quotes in typescript,  I'm so much quicker and get more of the details right.  Now I've taken my blog off my website, I'll probably keep my notes on the blog, and have all the details to hand.

We had a debate about the section where I describe the principles of Schwartz's Theory of Basic Values, because it is a long section of description, but is required to make the reader familiar with the theory.  As I want to apply this theory in my research in the NPG, I think it's essential to be a bit descriptive.

I showed Jill the book I was using for instructions on my research project - How to do your Research Project, by Gary Thomas.  This is specifically for educational and applied social sciences, and she validated it as a good choice.

I explained my difficulties with Writing Week - good high level overview, but somewhat short on specific advice on how to write, and short on examples of good practice from well written essays.  Neither could I get 1-1 advice on writing until 13 December - a week after the essay deadline.

I said the most useful part of writing week was when we had a session with 3 highly experienced PhD assessors who said they were still getting PhD theses handed in at what appeared to be the second draft stage.  It was normal and acceptable to be at the 6-8th draft before finalising.  So my literature review having major amendments at 2nd draft seems to be ok.

Jill gave me the go-ahead to start data gathering at the NPG to see what values, according to Schwartz's table of basic values, are in the newly rehung 20th Century Gallery.  (I forgot to ask about the ethics form, for the second stage of research. I know this needs to be done before I start data gathering).