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DON’TS OF DISSERTATIONS
1. Don’t delay with sending your paper to the discussant. Check with your discussants when they would like to receive your paper and if you think that you cannot meet the deadline, send them a draft and indicate the date when you will send the complete paper.
2. Don’t not rely excessively on technology for your presentation. Make handouts and/or transparencies as a back up for your PowerPoint slides. If the computer connection unexpectedly fails before or during your talk, you should be able to switch gears, distribute the handouts and/or use an overhead projector and continue with your presentation.
3. Don’t not exceed the time limit given to you by your session chair: by staying within the time limits, you show courtesy to your fellow presenters and to your Dissertation Service audience.
4. Don’t not forget to bring your business cards: you will be meeting a lot of new people with whom you will probably want to stay in contact.
5. Don’t not spend the entire conference indoors. Go out, explore the city, socialize and have fun!
Division J AERA Events:
Divsion J GSC Fireside Chat
International Perspectives on
Higher Education:
A Fireside Chat with Burton Clark
Wednesday, April 14
12:25-1:55 PM- Hyatt- Randal A
Division J Graduate Student Reception:
Wednesday, April 14, 6:00pm
Vice-President's Suite
Division J Vice Presidential Address: Thursday, April 15,
10:35-12:05,
Manchester Ballroom D
Division K:
Teaching & Teacher Education
Peter Williamson
Stanford University
Danielle Igra
Stanford University
The Stats Soliloquy of the “English Major”
By Danielle Igra
Four years as an English major, nine years as an English teacher, three years in English education, and I’m spending the new year sitting in Dissertation Service a statistics class. I tried to get out of it. My own work will be purely qualitative; I plan to conduct interviews not experiments, to sit in on classrooms not in front of a computer. But here I am in “Regression Analysis.” The title sounds like psychotherapy - and sometimes it feels like that: “Close your eyes and let yourself go back in time, back to the 7th grade math class where the Tyrannical pre-algebra teacher smacked you down and let you know you were never meant to do numbers.” Witness the birth of a math-phobe. Never mind that after not getting out of the Algebra gate, my scores in math classes usually outshined the ones I earned in English. It did not matter; nothing could raise my Dissertation Service confidence.
The first day of regression class, when the professor pointed and clicked through graph after graph, I wondered if I would spend the quarter just letting the information waft over me, checking e-mail at my computer station. After the first week, the flight of several qualitative companions had cut our N in half. I decided if I were to stick it out, I would have to be a thorn in the professor’s side. I moved myself to the front row and started asking annoying “English Major” questions. I cannot manage all those hats and primes; I need sentences, with semicolons, independent and dependent clauses (not variables). I would have said that “it’s all Greek to me,” but it actually is - all those alphas and betas Dissertation Service and yet not a single word created. Stats people talk about “goodness” of fit. Goodness! English majors talk about how well something fits - you know, like a black turtleneck and a beret.
When I first began stats, I worked the problems long hand, on paper, even though the computer could spit out the numbers in a fraction of the time. I derived each equation, thinking somehow if I knew where it came from, we would understand each other better. Is that not how “regression analysis” works? I wrote my answers in paragraphs, made up stories about predictors and responses, talked my way through the numbers. I wonder if my English students felt as alienated by lines of iambic pentameter as I do with linear equations. Perhaps this Dissertation Service is the lesson I am supposed to be learning in Ed School, the real reason I’m supposed to take this course: maybe it’s an exercise in empathy with struggling students who are out of field and unable to speak the language.
Most of the time I work ploddingly, methodically through stats, resenting the time I’m spending on artificial problems that go nowhere. But then each week, I find, I’m done -done with the homework. There’s something so gratifying, so comforting about the finitude of the “correct answer,” the solution to the problem. How often in this doctoral process, have I ever found a solution - to anything? When have I ever felt “done” in English or in English Education; there is always more to read, more to write Dissertation Service and revise. I’m sure the advanced quant-jocks feel this way about their work too; still, there is an elegance to interlocking equations that is so rarely replicated in the “real” world. So I am slowly learning about learning slowly, trying to appreciate the way it all fits together, trying to find a good fit.
Division L:
Educational Policy & Politics
Sue Mutchler
University of Texas, Austin
Bill Black
University of Texas, Austin
Keep your Eye on the Prize
By Sue E. Mutchler
I am one of those graduate students who waited until, shall we say, “later in life” to begin a doctoral program. There are many of you out there who might identify with my experience and take heart from knowing you are not alone. Those whose situations differ might still find my Dissertation Service perspective useful, as it may explain the behavior of some of your peers who are rowing this boat.
I entered the doctoral program at UT-Austin with 20+ years in public schools and in an education research and development laboratory, a Masters degree, and a burning desire to embark on what I think of as the “final” stage of my career as an educator. My goal in this professional corner of my life is to conduct research, write, and teach at a university where I can contribute to the preparation of educators and policy development for another 15-20 years.
My personal life, deeply intertwined with the first, is inhabited by a full time job (now at a state department of education), two children (one in his first year of Dissertation Service middle school and the other in her senior year of high school), a husband with a work life and goals of his own, a house payment (among others), and two sets of parents in their seventies and eighties (both 700 miles away).
I know am lucky to have such a full life. And I know my reliance on antidepressants and lots of coffee is only temporary. And I assure myself—and you—there will be a happy ending to this life story, because I am working hard to keep my eye on the prize. It is not easy, but I find it helpful to follow a few basic principles.
1. Schedules are best-case scenarios. Make lots of them—for work, for school, for family. Be willing to move target dates, even those Dissertation Service really important ones in your degree program, when something (or someone) needs more of you. It really matters in the long run.
2. It is true; dissertation is the point of greatest challenge. Once courses are done and you have advanced to candidacy, you are not suddenly liberated. To now be faced “only” with research and writing “on your own schedule” is, potentially, to be free without focus. Unless you are highly disciplined, and continue to tell your family you have two night courses per week (during which you will stay at work or hide in a coffee shop to read, analyze data, and write), you will flounder. Let yourself do that for a while until you feel the panic of becoming still another career-ABD. Then …
3. Find multiple Dissertation Service ways to stay current with the profession you plan to enter. For me, this means: monitor a couple AERA or other professional listservs and make myself participate every once in a while. Submit a couple conference proposals each year. Volunteer to review for a favorite journal.
4. Find multiple ways to keep moving. I listen to my interview tapes in the car as I commute to and from work. I always carry in my bag at least one article or book I need to read. When waiting to pick up a child or finding myself with an unexpected hour between here and there, I have something productive to do. Or I at least know the opportunity is there, feel guilty if I do not take advantage of those precious Dissertation Service moments, and work all the harder the next time.
5. Finally, remember why you want that degree. Visualize yourself in the place you want to go. Whether that is in a university classroom; in the field learning more about how education happens when children, teachers, administrators, parents, policymakers, and all the perfect strangers in society do their parts; or pounding out truth and possibilities on your computer for publication in a peer reviewed journal.
There are many other tips, tricks for your mind, and sources of solid advice out there. Seek them out. Find ways to let them help you. And be sure to share with others.
We invite you to highlight two sessions on your AERA conference agenda this year. The first, sponsored by the GSC, is Dissertation Service designed particularly for students who plan to pursue careers in the area of education policy and politics. The Transition between Graduate Studies and the Policy Professions will be an informal discussion of the professional journeys taken by four individuals whose career choices reflect the diversity of work environments available to graduates of education policy programs. Join us on Thursday, April 15 from12:25 - 1:55 p.m. Panelists and audience members will delve into a number of different work environments, learn how policy research is conducted in each, and discuss how results are communicated to intended audiences.
The topic of our second session, Qualitative and Critical Approaches to Educational Policy Analysis: Room Under, Around, or Through the "Scientifically-based" Research Tent” invites the participation of graduate students and practicing researchers Dissertation Service alike. This session will focus on the positioning and role of qualitative approaches to educational policy research in the current U.S. educational policy context. Four established policy researchers will discuss their views of varied qualitative approaches, paradigmatic orientations, values, and philosophies, which are often not made explicit in policy discussions.
AERA Graduate Student Council Sessions for Annual Meeting 2004
Monday, April 12, 2004
Hospitality Suite / Graduate Student Conference Centre
Monday, April 12, 2004; 1:00 – 4:00pm Marriott – Marriott Hall 4
Division A Fireside Chat: Preparing graduate students to bridge the knowledge gap between education administration researchers
and practitioners
Gary Sykes, Jennifer Husbands.
Chairs: Mark Salinas, Matthew Militello
Monday, April 12, 2004; 4:05 - 6:05pm
Hyatt – Del Mar A
Graduate Student Orientation to AERA
Monday, April 12, 2004; 4:05 – 6:05pm; Marriott - Dissertation Service Marriott Hall 4
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