Completing doctoral dissertations is difficult work and may be harder for distance students physically separated from institutional and collegial supports. Inability to complete independent research contributes to doctoral student attrition. Factors impacting completion include institutional factors, student characteristics, and supervisory arrangements (Manathunga, 2005). This paper shares proactive strategies used by a Midwestern university in the United States to support distance doctoral students. Strategies and technology tools are described that (a) cultivate a shared culture of responsibility and commitment, (b) increase effective communication between researchers, and (c) grow departmental and institutional services and technologies for faculty and students. This paper suggests the use of a specific framework to help students develop a shared culture of responsibility. This framework encourages students to discuss their social network, as well as teaches students how to manage their split life by using a tool which evaluates a student's readiness for the dissertation process and maps out where dissertation skills and knowledge are developed throughout the program. Strategies for effective communication include availability, effective feedback, trust, and humor. Services and technologies provided to build capacity include the use of online and library resources, campus-wide use of research software, writing and research services, and department supports and processes to promote student research. These mechanisms for accountability, mentoring, training, and trust increase the likelihood of success.
Consistency in the title, problem, purpose, and research question improve the logic and transparency of research. When these components of research are aligned research design and planning are more coherent and research reports are more readable. This article reviews the process for checking for and improving consistency. Numerous examples of consistency among these four components of research are provided and ways to remove inconsistency are outlined. A graphic, rubric and worksheet are provided to help researchers evaluate their own work or give feedback to the research work of others. KeywordsResearch, consistency, logic, writing up research 1 Florida International University, 2 Andrews UniversityCorresponding Author: Isadore Newman, Florida International University, College of Education, Miami, FL, 33199 E-mail: newmani@fiu.edu A good research plan or report, including a dissertation, has three basic characteristics or qualities, regardless of the topic or research methods. These common characteristics are: consistency between the components of the research plan or report, a logical trail of evidence, and transparency in reporting.Consistency, logic, and transparency are crucial to research reports and researchers, who tend to focus on content and methodological concerns, need to look at the work through these three qualities. They can conceptualize, organize and report their findings in a way that convinces readers. Working on these three qualities in research helps to clarify how data was selected, collected, coded, analyzed and interpreted in a way to answer the research questions. Researchers must focus on these three qualities throughout the research process and in their reports but it is most crucial these are present from the start. First steps are very important, both for designing a plan and for reporting it to readers. If the research starts out attending to these three from the very beginning their process improves the final product. Then when the report is being written, getting consistency, logic, and transparency in the first several pages of a report helps the reader trust the research more. As such, systematic and obvious consistency, logical evidence and flow of ideas and arguments, honest statements and interpretations that show transparency, all strengthen research.We focus here on one of these three qualities, consistency. We also only focus on it in the first four stages of research:1) title, 2) problem (the WHY), 3) purpose (the WHAT), and 4) research questions. By establishing, polishing and hammering out consistency in the first steps or stages of a research plan we believe logic and transparency are easier to create and the rest of the research and its resulting report will be of higher quality. Consistency saves a lot of side-tracking into areas not aligned with the topic, back-tracking when wrong directions force someone to go back to clarify an inconsistency, wasted reading, and even the need to re-collect data that does not address the title and purpose of the study.We al...
This paper reviews literature on ethics, ethical decision making and moral leadership in order to frame moral leadership in the organizational context of administration. Both organizational contexts and administrative decisions are characterized as having routines, challenges and dilemmas. Moral leadership in administration attempts to use these types of decisions to lead the organization through the four stages of moral decision—making—moral awareness and sensitivity, judgment, intent and action. Guiding institutionalization and nurturing conflict are both viewed as useful in moral leadership within organizations.
Some fear that the added demands of the Affordable Care Act may worsen already high attrition rates among nurses. One potential solution is that graduate nursing programs must do a better job of selecting and retaining those who can persist in training to gain the clinical and leadership skills necessary to fill these new roles. Some believe emotional intelligence (EI) may help with the selection and retention of graduate nursing students. This study examined EI in 216 nurse anesthesia (NA) students. Q-factor analysis was used to create EI profiles of first-semester, 1-year, and last-semester NA students. It showed one EI type was consistent at each point in the program: High Facial Reader/Low EI Manager.
This case explores one principal's struggle to justify her course of action to "get rid" of an ineffective teacher. It focuses on her justifications as she contemplates her moral actions and some of her tactics. This case touches on many themes: ethical decision making, professionalism, supervision, personnel law, teacher unions and tenure. The teaching notes summarize several uses for this case but focus primarily on the organizational and interpersonal context of professional accountability in educational administration. The Context and the CaseHill Middle School is a newly constructed school in a growing suburban district near a large Western U.S. metropolitan area. The district serves families in the middle and lower socioeconomic levels and has a high transience rate. More than half the students are bilingual.While the school and its district are classified as suburban, they are surrounded by both rural and urban images. There are many acres of open fields around the school with abandon tractors and farm equipment. In between these fields are new subdivisions of stucco homes. The district also contains several large (1000+ acre) tracts of arid uncultivated land. However, near the school there are also abandoned buildings with graffiti and gang symbols. The blaring noises of two major freeways can be heard throughout the district giving it an urban feel. Most parents in the district commute to larger cities in the region to work as blue-collar or lower paying white-collar employees. There are some upper middle class families interspersed throughout the district and these families are represented at Hill Middle School.
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