Some things to consider while I’m reengaging with the research methods literature (aided by matcha green tea and the No55 bus):
- What is driving me to do the research. What is driving my desire to know? (is it my sense of social responsibility?)
- What is my particular take on ideas like curiosity, etc.? (I have a blog post drafted on this that I’ll post presently)
- What’s my take on epistemology – the way we acquire knowledge? How am I going to accumulate and make a contribution to knowledge? Consider:
- Rationalism (reason) versus empiricism (perception) – Wellington 2000
- How can knowledge be acquired and how can it be communicated to other human beings? Manion & Cohen & Morrison 2011
- What distinguishes different kinds of knowledge claims? Scott & Usher
- What’s my take on ontology (what ‘is‘)? Consider:
- Differing beliefs in the nature of reality – Wellington 2000
- The very nature or essence of the social phenomena being investigated – Cohen Manion & Morrison 2011
- What exists, what is the nature of the worlds, what is reality? Scott & Usher
I could probably do with revisiting my first year assignment on this to see what I thought back then and how my thinking has developed, particularly given my thesis topic (how educators can contribute to an imagination of the University).
I’m struggling to maintain excitement about my thesis… to be honest I’m not sure how excited I was about it from the start. Do I need to be excited about it? Maybe not. Maybe I just need to believe in it. At the moment I just want to carry on reading about it but I suppose that’s not the point of doing a doctorate. *sulks*