01 A good start, making the whole process I’m embarking upon seem manageable as a result of being a) highly structured and incremental, and b) rooted in practice rather than abstract academic speculation. Plenty of academic rigour nevertheless, with a requirement to understand early whether my proposed approach is going to be phenomenological, psychological, Marxist, grounded theory, constructivist, positivist, etc – all of which I’ll need to read about first in order to be able to explain why I’ve adopted one methodology (is that the word?) rather than another. Must I confine myself to one (perhaps not, if two alternative ‘conceptual frameworks’ are to be explored in the interests of triangulation with my initial literature review)? And might I try to develop ‘object-oriented ontology’ as an alternative to phenomenology, in fulfilment of previous research interests (a ‘speculative materialist’ methodology)? I must make this the agenda of a meeting with my research supervisor in due course (when I begin to understand some of what I’m talking about), to discuss whether the methodology should come first and determine the research techniques I adopt, or whether I should identify what research techniques would be practical and frame my methodology accordingly. The first port of call for this would seem to be the ‘wiki’ associated with the programme.
02 A sequence of actions has been suggested for immediate implementation, with some techniques for efficient working:
a) complete the enrolment form, in order to acquire a student number which will give me access to the Learning Room.
b) in Outlook, click on ‘Options’ and select “create new rule” in order to divert any course-related e-mails from my student e-mail address to my customary staff address chris.heuvel@ntu.ac.uk.
c) in the NOW Learning Room, click top right for ‘Notifications’ and select any contents I wish to hear about whenever additional or updated information is provided.
d) I really ought to set up this journal as a blog (enabling my supervisor to see what I’m up to at any time – and also available to all my Linked-In associates perhaps: yes, I must also revise my Linked-In profile, to publicise my new field of interest in the hope of generating some helpful suggestions).
e) all these IT-related skills I will need to develop: I note that guidance is available via https://support.ntu.ac.uk/. Above all, I appreciate how essential it will be to back-up the material I start saving/producing – in a systematic way from the outset.
f) the suggestion is that I begin with Google.Scholar (which I’ve never used before) as a means of identifying the key terms associated with my proposed field of study. These may then be used as ‘tags’ to be attached to any material I encounter, sorting it into headings (perhaps associated with different colours – related to highlighting pens or post-it notes).
g) I then need to set up some RefWorks folders – corresponding to the selected headings: this will make referencing simple and fast.
h) I should also consider developing, from the outset, a ‘glossary’ – to include acronyms (a good way of keeping the word count down, as the limit really is very strict).
03 The Learning Room contains an ‘Outline for Document 1’ template in which the required content is identified. It has been suggested that it is good to complete the ‘ethics issues’ section first (to get it out of the way). The BERA ‘Ethical Guidelines for Educational Research’ document contains a comprehensive list of the headings that ought to be addressed. I have also been given a copy of the SLSA’s ‘Principles of Ethical Research Practice.’
04 Before deliberately seeking ‘existing literature in the field’ the suggested reading is Machi and McEvoy: ‘The Literature Review – Six Steps to Success’ (2nd edition, 2012). Other recommended preliminary reading is on NOW, but note in particular Nancy Lee: ‘Achieving your Professional Doctorate’ and several books by a man called Wellington. I have also been provided with print-outs of Trzeciak and Mackay: ‘Study Skills for Academic Writing (Student’s book)’ and Britton: ‘Learning to Write / Writing to Learn.’ Neither of the latter two (read later) seemed to offer any insights of the slightest value, however – I found them both rather superficial and simplistic.
05 When trying to draft a potential opening sentence (the ‘purpose statement’), I discover that perhaps my research question (23.01.15/02 above) is not so clear after all:
a) what kind of inquiry is this? (report / review / study etc – do I need some other models? I don’t want it to be merely descriptive: for validity, perhaps of a vaguely Marxist nature, I want it to make a change to the situation. Perhaps it will be what in the legal field would be called ‘reform-oriented research’ – interrogating and evaluating current practices, and offering recommendations for their improvement.
b) what will I be trying to do? (understand / develop / discover etc). At this stage, where I hear candidates always seek to bite off more than they can chew, I feel I want to do all these things.
c) what is to be the focus of my study? Am I looking at community development projects (and perhaps how to run them differently)? Or am I looking at architectural practices (and what kinds of activity might help them grow in terms of the size of project they are appointed to undertake)? Again, the temptation is to say both.
d) for whose benefit is this study being undertaken? A little easier to answer perhaps – primarily, it’s for small architectural practices who wish to grow, but there will also be social benefits for the people who find themselves living in the vicinity of new architectural projects.
e) in what context is the study being undertaken? Easier again – I’m confining my study to England/Wales/Northern Ireland, where architects may operate as members of RIBA.
06 When I start writing Document 1 (the Research Proposal), I should take care to use ‘styles’ to set up chapter headings first ( a Word function I’ve never used before – seems particularly efficient, as it will automatically generate ‘contents’ list , ‘tables’ list, etc): see 03 above for reference to guidance on headings. As for references to page numbers within the text, use ♯ so that they can be quickly picked up and edited upon completion of the document (rather than needing to revise them frequently through its development). I must confirm with my supervisor the preferred font, spacing, layout etc – the initial suggestion is that we use Verdana 11 with 1.5 line spacing.