Author Description

This short book, updated for 2016, is helpful for anyone who wants to create a good structure for their doctoral thesis; one in which they can be confident that they have covered all the bases. It is part of Paul Trowler's series, originally written for the Kindle, Doctoral Research into Higher Education. The book is not designed to create a template for thesis structure to be followed slavishly, rather it offers suggestions and advice as well as indications of where some options are low risk and others high risk when it comes to examination of the thesis. The book is concise, while still being comprehensive and useful, at around 12,000 words (about 40 printed pages). It gives guidance on the contents of thesis chapters and subsections of those chapters, indicating what needs to be covered and how to prepare the content in the best way. An appendix points to sections in the book that are useful for those who are at the beginning of the doctoral journey and need to construct a research proposal. There are sections indicating the "deadly sins" that experienced examiners and supervisors frequently see in doctoral theses, and which can seriously damage their quality. But this is balanced this with a discussion of "valuable virtues," giving a description of what qualities characterise a good thesis based on higher education research. The book's audience is doctoral students doing research into higher education, including those who are just starting out, as well as people further along in the process. Each section covers one of the chapters that an Education doctorate which uses primary data normally contains, but also points out those areas where a non-standard approach might be better, and why.