ABSTRACT
In this chapter we explore the question, ‘What does writing research mean in relation to writing a doctoral dissertation?’1 The views expressed in the chapter have evolved over more than 25 years as we have worked with doctoral students, primarily in the field of education. During that time, the paradigms of educational research (as well as research in other fields) proliferated (Donmoyer 1996), affording doctoral students great latitude in the rhetorical form and style of the dissertation. With this freedom came a responsibility to understand the epistemological and ontological assumptions that were guiding one’s research (Kilbourn 1999; Piantanida and Garman 2009; Schwandt 2007), and, in turn, the representation of that research (Tierney and Lincoln 1997). Thus, the task of authoring a dissertation became more complicated, as did the task of guiding students’ writing. What may be relevant for one student in one context could be completely misleading for other students in other contexts. Therefore, to avoid the risks associated with offering categorical advice, we have chosen to explicate a series of premises that underpin our thinking about writing research in the form of a dissertation. Hopefully, calling attention to these premises will help doctoral students think more carefully about themselves as writers, about advice they may encounter, and about ‘writerly decisions’ they must make.
