Research into Practice: a model for
sustainable development
Suganthi John & Els Van Geyte
The University of Birmingham
Purpose
 To share our experience of how we brought research and
practice together on a project to redevelop thesis writing
materials for international students.
Outline
 Two sections to our paper:
 The background, aims and description of our project
 Looking at some examples from our project of how we brought
research and practice together
Background
 The needs of current students & their research areas
 Increased numbers and larger number of research areas
 Interdisciplinary nature of research
 Empirical vs non-empirical research writing
Our task
 To redevelop our materials to cover a wider range of
disciplines
 To ensure that both empirical and non-empirical research
types were covered in our course
What research we did:
 Looking at e-theses in a number of fields in the
humanities and social sciences
 Books on academic writing
 Hamp-Lyons & Heasley (2006)
 Paltridge and Starfield (2007)
 Swales & Feak (2008)
 Bitchener (2010)
 Research on academic discourse and the teaching of
academic writing
 Flowerdew (2002)
 Hyland (2009)
 Journal articles
Research into Practice:
a model for sustainable writing.
Practical examples
empirical
Introduction Literature review  Methodology  Results  Discussion  Conclusion
non-empirical
sections less distinguishable
Reasoning for adding a task:
 signposting for course
 awareness of types of research
 reflection:
type of thesis / suitable organisation
Research:
 http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/
Abstracts
 NER examples on hand-out
1.Social Sciences/ Centre for Russian and East
European Studies
2.Arts and Law/ Music
New task
Recognising empirical and non-empirical research
The table below provides you with examples of empirical
(ER) and non-empirical research (NER).
Can you identify which is which?
See hand-out for example:
Author and Title
Content
1.
Focusing on the reform trajectory in the fields of judiciary reforms,
anti-corruption and external border policies between 1989 and
2007, this study assesses the interaction between EU politics and
domestic politics and the role of domestic factors in slowing down
internal reforms.
Scarpitta, Lara
(2009)
‘ Justice and home
affairs and
Romania’s
accession to the
European Union’
(PhD)
2. Furse, Edward Niel
(2010)
‘Perspectives on the
reception of
Haydn’s Cello
Concerto in C,
with particular
reference to
musicological
writings in English
on Haydn’s
Concertos and
the classical
Concerto.’
(Master of Music)
This thesis illustrates the extraordinary quality of Haydn’s Cello
Concerto in C, Hob. VIIb: 1, and addresses the musicological
literature in English that relates to it. Chapter 1 introduces the
concerto. Chapter 2 illustrates the scarcity of literature in English
pertaining to Haydn’s concertos. Chapter 3 widens its scope to
include literature on the Classical concerto. Haydn’s Cello
Concerto in C is presented as an aesthetic alternative to Mozart’s
later and more complex works. This chapter also touches upon the
Classical-concerto literature’s unhelpful emphasis upon first
movements.
Methods Section
Before:
Auditory comprehension of English by monolingual
and bilingual preschool children
Method
1…2…
Task: Why do you think the author chose to
order the elements in this way?
Issues:
 Education/ English
 Task does not engage students enough
Task is not interactive enough
Research:
 Sociology Journal:
http://www.socresonline.org.uk/15/1/1.html
Methods Section
After:
Parenting in Post-Divorce Estonian Families:
A Qualitative Study
Task 1
The following sections are not in the order that
they appeared in the methods section in an article
from a sociology journal. Can you order them?
Results Section
Before:
Explanation:
Reporting/Stating results
[Move 2] Thirdly, but as an adversative conjunction was
also used in the Japanese students’ texts. The frequency of
the adversative conjunctions ‘but’ was 33.08%.
Commenting on the results/generalising/conclusions
[Move 4] As mentioned above, the frequency of additive
conjunctions was 27.76%, therefore, the frequency of
adversative conjunctions in the texts is almost equivalent to
that of the additive conjunction.
Issues:
 Education
Another ER example
 ‘move’: technical term
Research:
ER example replaced with NER (Arts/English)
http://etheses.nottingham.ac.uk/568/1/Thesis_EF.pdf
 ‘moves’ and ‘steps’ replaced with ‘stages’ and
‘steps’
Swales, J., and Feak, B., AcademicWriting for Graduate Students,
University of Michigan Press, 2004
Results Section
After: Explanation
(NER example)
Reporting/Stating results
(step b) Stanschil forlong 1334 (NRO, Furtho X/16),
Stamhill furlong 1505 (NRO,
YZ7809) (stān, hyll, furlang) ‘furlong on or near the
stony hill’;
Commenting on the results/generalising/conclusions
(step e) this name seems to display a corrupt form of the
element stān (stam-) and probably refers to land near a
quarry, cf. Stanthills, close to an old quarry in Weedon Lois.
Conclusions
1. Our definition of ‘sustainability’:
 Ensuring that the current state of knowledge is reflected in our
materials
 Ensuring that our students are able to use this knowledge to
sustain the development of their own writing
Independence => Sustainability
2. Some conflict:
‘old’ theory vs. thesis examples
Need new theory? Based on examples/academic
literature/ both?
Need to check more examples?
-----  Revision