Structuring your Discussion

Dr Cheryl Lange

Common thesis structure

Evans, D & Gruba, P 2002 (2nd ed.) How to write a better thesis, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, pp. 13-15

Stepping into the void

Once youve gathered quite a lot of information and even though you have been writing about your research from the beginning, at some stage you will need to begin to write the discussion sections. Writing these chapters may, at first, feel like stepping into the void because you will be trying ot make sense of your results/research data. The following techniques might help get you started on how to structure your chapters.

Tension between the creative and rational brain

Our rational brain might tell us we dont know what our research is telling us i.e. what our conclusions are but our brain has been working on the project from the beginning trying out ideas, accepting and rejecting them The key to starting to write about our research is to bring these unconscious conclusions to our conscious brain.

creative

Keep your eyes on the stars and your feet on the ground

Moving unconscious ideas to the conscious creating a chapter

framework
1. Write down things you now know which you didnt at the beginning of your research (dont worry if they dont correspond to your aim). 2. Sort these 20-30 conclusions into groups of associated ideas (aim for 3-4 groups). 3. Ask yourself, Does this conclusion correspond with the aim in my Introduction? 4. Give a heading to each group. 5. Determine their order. These can be section headings.

6. Organise the separate points in each section into sub-headings which follow a logical order.
Ideas in following slides taken from Evans, D & Gruba, P 2002 (2nd ed.) How to write a better thesis, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, pp. 112-118

A tug of war
When you begin to write you will experience tension between what your creative brain wants to write and what your rational brain thinks is best.

You will have to make decisions so keep mindful of

your aim and the scope which you set out in your opening chapter

Checking the logic of your structure

two methods
Paste the Introduction into a document. Follow by pasting the introductions and conclusions of every chapter into same document. Check if they follow each other logically Are there repetitions, gaps, etc in the structural flow? Write a one page summary of every chapter. Check if they hang together logically Are there repetitions, gaps, etc in the structural flow?

Do you need to rewrite your introduction and aim?

Do any chapters need adjusting?

Writing

When writing your discussion chapters, discuss your research within:

1. Current theory (Discuss your work within the theoretical context of your discipline). What can you add to it?
2. Current practice (Discuss your work within the methodological context of your discipline). What methods or procedures worked, what didnt? Can you suggest improvements? 3. Your own research (Discuss what you see as the limitations in your research) Explain any difficulties you had and what could have been done better in different circumstances. If you discuss the limitations, the examiners know you are aware of them.