Problem of Practice & Purpose
This distinguishes a real-time school issue a practitioner can address from a broad research topic.
What is a problem of practice?
This is the primary function of a literature review in an action research dissertation.
What is to establish what is already known and justify the need for the study?
This type of framework includes established theories like transformational or culturally responsive leadership.
What is a theoretical framework?
Action research is most often aligned with this type of research design.
What is qualitative research?
A well-written problem of practice must be grounded in this.
What is the practitioner's local context or setting?
Unlike summarizing, this technique connects sources to demonstrate patterns and gaps.
What is synthesizing the literature?
This is the reason why your framework must align with your problem of practice.
What is to ensure conceptual coherence and guide inquiry?
These are two reasons why action research is appropriate for practitioner-based studies.
What is its context-specific and allows for real-time improvement?
These two elements are essential to a strong purpose statement: specificity and connection to school improvement (i.e., student outcomes, teacher professional learning, growth in leadership).
What are clarity and relevance?
These two types of literature should be included to balance foundational theory and real-world research.
What are theoretical and empirical sources?
This is how your framework influences what you choose to study and how you interpret the results.
What is shaping your lens and defining key constructs?
An interview transcript and student attendance records are examples of this and this.
What are data sources and data collection methods?
This is how equity should be addressed when describing the problem of practice.
What is by identifying who is most affected and what disparities exist?
A well-organized literature review is typically structured by themes instead of this.
What is individual articles or authors?
An example of this type of theory might help frame school change, leadership, or social justice.
What is a leadership theory or social justice theory?
This technique strengthens credibility by using multiple data sources.
What is triangulation?
When this section is vague, it weakens alignment with research questions and methodology.
What is the purpose statement?
This ensures that what you’ve learned from the literature directly shapes your intervention.
What is aligning the review with the research purpose and intervention?
This can happen if your framework does not align with your research questions or context.
What is misalignment that weakens your study's credibility and coherence?
This ensures your methodology is logically connected to your research purpose and questions.
What is alignment between problem, questions, and data collection?