The what, the how, and the why

Sometimes I have had students who have obviously put loads of time into their research. They have worked really hard at assembling the right components. They send a draft, and it is full of gems and links that they have gathered from multiple, good quality sources. They have PILES of evidence. However, they get stuck. And I wonder if they might be getting stuck because they have got mired in the search, and are not yet bending all the components to answer the issues that they are gathering the evidence for.

To me, gathering the facts and evidence is like inventorying the first aid kit. We have all the bits, but we haven't yet decided how we are best to treat the injury at hand. We still need to determine our strategy. We have the 'what' - all our evidence, our first aid bits - Now we need to work out our 'how': how will we treat this thing, what strategy do we need.

The how is what happens next, the next logical thing based on the evidence. Our strategy. My advice to students is to re-skim the 'what' (the gathered evidence). Then, we take a deep breath, and - drawing on the literature - take an evidenced stand, deciding on our likely best path through, and write that up showing our evidence. We use our 'what', bending it into the 'how' while explaining our 'why'. 

Our Why? This is explaining all the choices, the options, that we have made. We explain the 'best' whys at each decision point. Our 'why' is a key element: it gives us confidence that we are answering the question, and helps us to determine a 'best' choice... or at least, an optimal choice.

Writing around our topic, not around each author, helps us to write in a more synthesised way, so we are able to better develop argument. So we read, we take notes, and we sort all the fragments from the research papers we have gathered into topics, then write about the topics, and cite all our authors. The way I picture this is to think of Lego. From all the other houses built by individual authors, we take apart their work, and we group all the wall blocks; all the ceiling tiles; all the windows; all the doors. That gives us all the individual topics to write about. Then we rebuild our OWN construction around the grouped pieces - the topics - from the other author buildings, while noting what has come from where. That is how we synthesise and cite. When we write this up, it is so much easier to focus on the topic, not the writer when citing.

There is another reason why we write with the author last: so we don't give our power away, and don't write in a laundry list fashion. Read about those two traps here.

Sam

References:

Young, S. (17 November 2017). Giving our Power away. http://www.samyoung.co.nz/2021/01/giving-our-power-away.html

Young, S. (18 January 2021). The Laundry List Lit Review. http://www.samyoung.co.nz/2017/11/the-laundry-list-lit-review.html