I’m very excited to announce that my latest book will be published by Routledge next week! Coauthored with my friend and colleague, Karri Holley, the book will provide a guide for Ed.D. students pursuing a qualitative research dissertation. The Qualitative Dissertation in Education: A Guide for Integrating Research and Practice walks readers through every step of the process from deciding on a topic to preparing for the final defense. We wrote the book to serve as a manual for students working on their own or as a textbook in a qualitative research class. In today’s post, I will share the preface from the book to give you a better sense of what we attempted to accomplish. I can’t wait to see how this will help Ed.D. students!

Preface

For many decades, the dissertation represented the culmination of study for doctoral students in higher education. The status of the dissertation prompts hand-wringing from students and faculty. Students often arrive at the dissertation stage exhausted from the completion of required coursework. They also are likely balancing numerous areas of their personal and professional lives with the dissertation, such as full-time employment outside of the university, care of children or aging parents, or their own health issues. Faculty advisors probably chair dissertations in the same way they experienced the process some years ago as they went through their own doctoral programs. Faculty may be overwhelmed by a high number of students; they likely also balance competing demands for their professional time and energy. 

Faculty members who have worked with doctoral students tell many stories of students who excelled in coursework only to struggle with the dissertation. Other students barely survive coursework but thrive under the freedom and autonomy of the dissertation. Between the two of us, we have a combined 26 years of working with doctoral students, including chairing dissertations. We are among the first to acknowledge that the dissertation is a complex, difficult endeavor, and that students may not proceed through the dissertation in the same manner that they proceeded through required coursework. This simple fact cuts both ways: students’ past academic performance does not predict their performance during the dissertation process. 

As we wrote this book, we were consistently reminded of the unique and highly personal nature of the dissertation. No student experiences the dissertation process in the same way as another. The dissertation game is played by a set of unique rules, which you must learn and adjust to in order to complete your degree. While coursework should develop and refine the writing and research skills necessary to complete the dissertation, the classroom environment differs from the one you will experience with the dissertation. Some of the challenges we see come from the relative lack of structure inherent to the dissertation process when compared to classroom-based learning. The dissertation process typically lacks built-in deadlines such as a syllabus, due dates, and regular engagement with classmates and the instructor. When students are unfamiliar with the steps of the dissertation, they may find themselves wandering aimlessly. Even knowing the steps does not guarantee the ability to seamlessly complete the process—or to negate the feelings of “one step forward, two steps back.” 

The book is written for doctoral students in education, but also may be useful in other professional or applied disciplines, who are pursuing a qualitative approach to the dissertation. We seek to not only distill the elements of the dissertation process, but also to emphasize the unique characteristics of qualitative research and offer the steps necessary to complete a rigorous, high-quality qualitative dissertation. The term “qualitative research” spans across different types, methods, and philosophies, but a shared emphasis on documenting and understanding the human experience exists. Using this approach successfully means aligning the research design with the research purpose and questions; defining the scope and boundaries of the study; developing skills in interviewing, observing, coding, and data analysis; and keeping track of multiple transcripts, documents, and the like. Each of these elements should be taught as part of the doctoral curriculum. The dissertation offers students the platform to put all of these elements into practice. 

We reflected on the doctoral students with whom we have worked as we outlined this book. Many of them were students in professional Doctor of Education (EdD) programs including an accelerated executive-style EdD designed to help mid- to senior-level professionals complete the doctorate in a way that aligned with their professional careers and personal lives. The program moves quickly, and each step of the curriculum is designed to prepare students with the necessary skills needed to complete the dissertation. Other students progressed through a more traditional-paced program, reaching the dissertation stage after two or three years of coursework. Regardless of program, a few students—highly capable, highly motivated, many at or near the top of their professional careers—would struggle to complete the dissertation. What is it about the dissertation process, we wondered, that might cause these issues, and indeed, cause some students not to finish their degree?

This question (and our inherent belief that students are capable of finishing the degree) motivated this book. Below, we provide an outline of the book to help navigate the dissertation journey. The structure of this book follows a road map and will guide you through the steps of the dissertation from idea to final defense.  Of course, each dissertation experience is unique to not only the student but also the degree program and university. In some situations, you may be asked to complete required steps other than those outlined here. For readers outside of the United States, you may experience country-specific requirements and steps. Nevertheless, we review the common stages and steps of the process to help explain and plan for the dissertation—and we do so in a way that assumes every student’s potential to write a rigorous dissertation that is well-conceptualized and well-executed. Be sure to discuss the particular requirements of your program with the faculty and dissertation chair. Ask questions and gather information from all available, reliable resources.

About This Book

This book is written to be responsive to the needs of the unique reader. Some readers might find it helpful to read the book starting at the beginning, while others may find that the table of contents provides a helpful roadmap to their specific situations. The book is broadly structured chronologically, taking the reader from the start of the dissertation process (pre-proposal) through the successful defense of the final dissertation. Part I covers the pre-proposal stage. We encourage students to understand the characteristics of qualitative research, especially related to an applied academic discipline such as education and the work required of students pursuing a professional doctorate. In Chapter 1, we review the dissertation structure and format; walk readers through ways to select a dissertation topic; and discuss how you might leverage your professional experiences when writing a dissertation. Chapter 2 reviews the most common obstacles we see doctoral students encounter as they work on the dissertation. In this chapter, we acknowledge that many of these obstacles are shared among students (a reminder that you are not the only one experiencing the issue), and we also offer specific strategies for confronting these issues in a productive way that helps you move forward. 

Part II examines the dissertation proposal. The proposal is one of the most crucial elements of the dissertation process; a strong proposal sets up the student with the tools, knowledge, and timeline necessary to complete and defend the dissertation. In Chapter 3, we reflect on the structure of the proposal with a focus on Chapter I, including the problem statement, purpose of study, research questions, and significance. Chapter 4 examines the dissertation’s literature review. The literature review not only demonstrates to the dissertation committee that the student has examined in depth the relevant literature to the study and considered its implications, but the review also allows the student to determine what is known about the topic and where the dissertation might fill a gap. In Chapter 5, we briefly review the most common qualitative approaches used by doctoral students in education, summarizing not only the history and details of the approach, but also the advantages and disadvantages to each. This chapter includes suggestions for future reading related to each approach, which should give students the chance to understand more details about the methodology. The last chapter in this section, Chapter 6, presents ideas on designing the dissertation, including connecting research questions to method and data; understanding the importance of units of analysis; selecting the best approach; and inherent limitations of research design.

Part III emphasizes the active dissertation stage which involves data collection and analysis. This section builds upon the previous by emphasizing connections between choice of research method with the intricacies of data collection, as one example, as well as how decisions about research design (such as the research site) will shape data analysis. Chapter 7 outlines the components of data collection. We emphasize how these components vary among the different qualitative approaches, including individual interviews, focus groups, observation, and document analysis. Regardless of the approach, students must make decisions about sampling strategies and site selection. Again, these decisions are inherently connected to ones made previously in regards to research design. This chapter concludes with a discussion of transcription, which leads in Chapter 8, analyzing your data. Effective data analysis requires understanding not only the steps involved in the process, but also issues of organization, data management, validity, and research software.

The final section, Part IV, covers the development and writing of dissertation chapters IV and V as well as the final defense and next steps. We discuss organizing and writing findings in Chapter 9 with a special consideration on deciding what data to present and how. Chapter 10 gives insight into Chapter V of the dissertation, which requires you to answer the research questions, make recommendations for scholars and practitioners, and consider the implications of the work. In Chapter 11, we offer an overview as to what can be expected during the final dissertation defense as well as what it means to join the ranks of the scholar practitioner. To avoid confusion, we use Roman numerals when referring to chapters of the dissertation and Arabic numerals for reference to the chapters in this book. 

As we outlined chapters, brainstormed ideas, and discussed conflicting approaches to key dissertation elements, the book’s primary purpose remained ever present, which is to empower students with the actionable knowledge that is necessary to understand how the process should work. Indeed, one of our main goals was to make the often unwritten and implied rules of the process, more explicit and transparent for doctoral students. We hope that will find the discussions in the following pages helpful both for understanding the dissertation process as well as qualitative research. Bringing together your professional expertise, an understanding of the dissertation, and a strong qualitative research design background will enable you to meet the requirements of your doctoral program and prepare you to assume the mantle of scholar-practitioner. 

I’ve been seeing a number of assistant professors posting online recently about their successful tenure applications. It is wonderful seeing good scholars being rewarded with tenure and promotion. In today’s post, I want to share some advice I always give to recently tenured professors about paying it forward.

Throughout the tenure process, you received help from many individuals. You may have received advice and guidance from trusted mentors, senior colleagues, or administrators.

In addition, your colleagues may have taken on obligations to help relieve your burden during your pre-tenure years. They may have taken on a committee role so you did not have to, for example, or they may have taught a different class so you would not have too many new class preparations.

Writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education, Cal Newport asks a simple, yet important question: Is Email Making Professors Stupid? Newport’s essay challenges both faculty and the academic administrators who support them to carefully consider the potential damage of distraction generally and email specifically. In my book, How to Get Tenure: Strategies for Successfully Navigating the Process, I raised some of these same questions in the context of pre-tenure faculty. In today’s post, I want to share an excerpt from the book that addresses the problem with email.

NExternal calls for accountability, political attacks on faculty members, the decline of tenure-track positions — the reality for faculty today is as challenging as at any time in recent memory. Add to these factors the ratcheting up of research expectations, teaching loads, service obligations and administrative requests, and how can we possible expect faculty to get everything done?

Reflecting on the current state of higher education, Nobel laureate Peter Higgs said, “It’s difficult to imagine how I would ever have enough peace and quiet in the present sort of climate to do what I did in 1964.” The time pressures on faculty members — and particularly pretenure faculty members — are much higher than previous generations faced.

As a result, faculty members have to manage daily demands as well as long-term priorities in order to succeed. While we need a system for managing our calendar and to-do list, we also need a renewed focus by both senior faculty members and administrators on the work that matters most. In the absence of a larger institutional focus, each of us has to take charge of our careers and make sure we are doing that work.

Indeed, we should focus less on how to improve efficiency and more about what faculty members are actually doing. Productivity tips and tricks can be helpful, and I often encourage my colleagues to try new approaches or software solutions to save time. But efficiency for efficiency’s sake or to free up time for administrivia is pointless.

Greg McKeown, the author and business consultant, suggests that productivity is often about doing less, not more. McKeown argues that by doing less, we can spend time on work that really makes a difference. When I think about faculty work today, this idea, which can admittedly seem like a self-help trope, actually holds power to both reduce the constant feeling of busyness while also improving the quality of our work.

For example, what if you spent more time creating an interactive activity for class than revising the look of your lecture slides? What if you created an answer sheet with clear explanations to distribute to class rather than writing brief notes in the margin on each individual student exam? What if you checked your email three times a day instead of three times an hour? Think of the progress you could make on your highest-priority projects. There are countless examples, within our control, where we could decide to focus on creating value for our students or in our research endeavors rather than letting busywork take over our day, week and semester.

After his return to Apple, Steve Jobs significantly reduced the number of product lines sold by the company. Reflecting on his strategy in 1997, he said, “People think focus is just saying yes to the thing you got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things I have done.”

So, how do you do this? First, you have to view time, at least to some degree, as a zero-sum game. You only have a fixed amount of it, which means when you say yes to something, you are also saying no to something else. If you agree to meet with a student group for an hour on Wednesday afternoon, that means saying no to an hour for research and writing. Saying yes to staying late for a committee meeting means saying no to your son’s baseball game.

One of the joys of faculty work is that we can find many intellectually stimulating and engaging opportunities to get involved on campus. A few people enjoy committee meetings, but advising students, leading research labs or writing an article or book are all aspects of our roles that brought us to the academy in the first place. Thus, you are rarely deciding between good and bad requests for your time, but good and better options.

We have to consider how the decisions regarding our time each day, week and semester shape our careers. For faculty members on the tenure clock, the ever-present anxiety to achieve tenure can be derailed by daily decisions to focus on things that do not help advance your tenure case. Of course, that does not mean you should never do something if it does not help your pursuit of tenure. But you will struggle if you do not prioritize the work that your institution and tenure committee value.

In the end, time is a zero-sum game that requires trade-offs. We all make these trade-offs every day, but often without thinking about it. Trade-offs exist in balancing professional work in teaching, research and service — as well as between our professional and personal lives.

The best way to tackle the zero-sum game and better prioritize our time is to make explicit the trade-offs that exist in faculty work. When a new request or opportunity presents itself, ask if it is something you want to pursue and what you would have to say no to or stop doing in order to say yes to the request.

For early-career faculty members, discuss with senior colleagues and mentors the trade-offs you face, and seek help in making these decisions. Administrators should consider the requests being made of faculty members and think about the trade-offs required to satisfy a new reporting requirement or change of software.

One of the worst things that can happen is that we justify the increased demands. “I have to work all the time, but only while I am on the tenure clock.” “I have to prioritize my research for this deadline, but then I will give attention to my teaching.” Such temporary justifications have a sneaky way of becoming permanent reality.

This essay first appeared in InsideHigherEd on February 7, 2019.

It has been a rough few weeks for college presidents. I recently spoke to Adam Harris from The Atlantic about the recent controversies surrounding college presidents and want to share his insightful article for today’s post.

Who Wants to be a College President? Probably not many qualified candidates.

By Adam Harris, The Atlantic

Carol Folt had to make a decision, and none of the options was great. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill chancellor was caught between a conservative Board of Governors that seemed to favor returning a monument of a Confederate soldier, known as Silent Sam, to the pedestal from which it had been yanked last fall and a student body that heavily favored its permanent removal. The stakes—her job, but also the security of UNC’s campus—were high.

In a letter to the campus community on January 14, Folt announced that she’d made up her mind. She’d be stepping down at the end of the semester, and she’d be taking down what was left of Silent Sam, immediately. “The presence of the remaining parts of the monument on campus poses a continuing threat both to the personal safety and well-being of our community and to our ability to provide a stable, productive educational environment,” she wrote. “No one learns at their best when they feel unsafe.”R

Folt’s choice highlights the tightrope that university leaders walk between ideologically driven boards and their campus constituencies. “When you get right down to it, the relationship with the board—and the extent to which the board is separate from campus, and doesn’t necessarily have a full appreciation for the different views that may exist on campus—that disconnect puts presidents in an incredibly difficult position,” Michael Harris, a professor at Southern Methodist University who has studied the turnover of college presidents, told me. That difficult position may be one that fewer qualified candidates for college leadership are choosing to take. One survey noted that in the past decade, more current college presidents have been sidestepping the traditional pathways to leadership and, anecdotally, even some of those nontraditional candidates have turned down potentially tumultuous positions. But if leaders with higher-education experience won’t do the job, who will?

The Board of Governors was, predictably, furious with Folt’s decision. “We are incredibly disappointed at this intentional action,” Harry Smith, the board’s chair, said in a statement. “It lacks transparency and it undermines and insults the Board’s goal to operate with class and dignity.” The board met the next day and accepted Folt’s resignation, but not effective at the end of the semester. Instead they gave her two weeks.

The accelerated ouster was the culmination of years-long tension at the university between the ideologically conservative board and university leaders. Margaret Spellings, the president of the UNC system, who announced she’d be resigning this year as well, had her own tensions with the board, including over her decision to ask the state governor for help in deciding Silent Sam’s fate. She had been hired after Tom Ross, the former system president, was himself forced out by the board in 2016. The rapid cycle of hiring, resignation, and removal creates a problem for the university. “I don’t know who would want that job right now, given the board and its ideology. And I worry about who they would find palatable enough to put in the position,” Harris told me. “One of the great university systems, and one of the great universities, is going to be damaged by this process.”

That tension between a college’s board and its president isn’t one exclusive to the UNC system. A few years ago, following a string of athletic scandals, Harris wanted to know whether more college presidents had been fired in recent years—or whether they had their resignation accepted on an accelerated schedule. Two years ago, he and Molly Ellis, a graduate student, published what they had found. Yes, the study said, over the past two decades presidents had been getting fired more often. But the why was perhaps more interesting: Boards have always had the responsibility of “hiring and firing” a president, but “there’s a sense of activism among boards now,” Harris said. “Historically there has been a little more deference than boards are willing to give now.”

Of course, it isn’t just board oversight that could make the job of college president seem unappealing. Provosts, or even deans, who may have been groomed for the position might balk at the fundraising and politics associated with it. And these days, many open college presidencies come ready-made with crises. John Engler recently became the second president to leave Michigan State University in one year. The University of Oklahoma’s president, Jim Gallogly, is trying to navigate instances of racism at the institution, notably, a Snapchat video of students wearing blackface and saying the N word that went viral this month, which follows another racist viral video at the institution in 2015. There’s also an ongoing crisis at Baylor University, which is dealing with the fallout from a sexual-assault scandal.

“The number of qualified candidates is probably on the decline due to the job being less attractive, and I think we have boards trying to look for outside-the-box hires that more often than not don’t tend to work out,” Harris said. Those outside-the-box hires could look like Rex Tillerson, the former secretary of state, who was courted to be the next chancellor of the University of Texas system; or like Mick Mulvaney, Donald Trump’s acting chief of staff, who met with the University of South Carolina’s board before ultimately deciding that he was not interested in the position of president.

A board has a responsibility to a university, one that can be corrupted when political ideologies are introduced, Harris said. “That fundamentally damages a university, and that can take generations to recover from,” he said. He pointed to the damage that politics have done to the University of Wisconsin system as an example. It’s a public higher-education system that was admiredby the world, but it’s been hampered by controversy after budget cut after controversy over the past decade, and, in short, it’s suffering. It’s the kind of situation that UNC is hoping to avoid, but one that it, and other institutions, may be on a collision course toward as boards become more ideologically driven—and if qualified candidates continue to shy away from university leadership.