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A Handy Guide To Planning Prospectuses
Keep in mind that the prospectus serves two broad purposes. As a document
aimed primarily at coordinating your work with your dissertation committee,
a relatively sketchy prospectus might serve you well–as long
as you establish and maintain reliable lines of communication with your
committee. (With a sketchy prospectus, of course, you increase the likelihood
of having a committee member–or you– exclaim at some later date,
"But that’s not what I meant at all!") As evidence presented
to a larger academic community of important work in progress, however,
the text of your prospectus will inevitably find its way into several
more formal documents–applications for fellowships and jobs, proposals
for conference talks, requests for summer or extended support–documents
that must stand alone. Of course you should not let your prospectus usurp
time and energy that ought to be devoted to the dissertation proper, but
don’t settle for a document that can’t rise to both kinds of
occasions I note above.
What follows is not all that sophisticated; as a teacher of writing,
you have at one time or another probably said much of this to your own
students. In any case, my comments are organized around four research
topoi (printed in bold type below) and related clusters of heuristic
questions. I also suggest some strategies for organizing the prospectus,
but I offer those suggestions not as a fixed outline but as an agenda
for the candidate and her committee’s collaborative planning. Please
ignore all of this if it seems constraining and you can design something
more suited to your thinking, your research, and your committee.
Problem-Posing: What interpretive, pedagogical,
and/or theoretical problem are you trying to bring to your audience’s
attention? Do they already see the situation as a problem, or must they
be convinced? What is the source, extent, and structure of the problem?
Is its history significant? How have others construed the problem? How
have they studied it? What findings have they offered? What do we need
to know that we cannot find out from their work? What is your research
question? Here are some traditional–but nevertheless useful–ways
of organizing this material (but don’t feel obliged to use these
boring headings):
- Introduction: Here you need to make the problem that interests
you intelligible and compelling to your audience. Consider
various ways to engage your audience–tell a representative anecdote,
cite telling statistics, review key research findings. Whatever you
do, make your audience care about the project and give them
a framework for constructing meaning from what follows.
- Literature Review: This section need not be an exercise in
tedium–for you or your readers. Imagine your audience asking,
"Why should I value this writer’s ideas or findings?"
Now if we believe that knowledge is constructed collaboratively and
dialogically, we value research at least in part because authors have
taken stock of the critical dialogue concerning the problem at hand
and have an informed sense of what might usefully be contributed.
What do readers want to know about the research literature?–How
has the problem been constructed and investigated, and what major
claims have been offered concerning the issue at hand? What theoretical
and methodological assumptions underlie others’ construction
and investigation of the problem?
- Research Question: Introductions and literature reviews may
benefit from copia, but this section typically works best if
you strive for brevitas. Indicate the theoretical assumptions
that underlie your construction of the problem, then state
your research question(s) as a question, qualifying it in such
a way as to suggest how you will investigate it (i.e., turn
it into a research project).
Problem-Probing: What methodological assumptions underlie your
investigation of the problem. What specific artifacts and/or processes
will you work with? How will you gain access to the artifacts you plan
to work with? What resources have you identified and arranged access to
already? How will you investigate your research question? Are you borrowing,
adapting, or inventing your critical method? Have you tried to anticipate
roadblocks that might force you to redefine your project? Do you have
a plan for dealing with such problems (shifts in focus, alternative approaches)?
Whether you call this section Research Design, Methods,
or something more evocative, consider these sub-problems:
- Collection of Data: Data (a.k.a. "evidence") is
a construct, a function of a researcher’s theoretical and methodological
assumptions and the constraints of a particular problem. Explain why
you are looking at this data and not some other stuff. Explain
how you are collecting your data and why you are collecting
it in that manner. If you are doing a naturalistic study of reading/writing
in situ, you will need to comment on the particular opportunities
and problems presented by the situation as given to you or constructed
by you.
- Analysis of Data: Ditto for interpretive claims about
your data. Try to give as clear an account as possible of how you
will analyze your data (or, in Toulmin’s terms, how you will
warrant claims based on your data).
- Research Ethics: If your work involves observing, testing,
or gathering data about living human subjects, you should contact
the Office of Research Risks Protection (or whatever it's called at
your institution) to assure that you comply with rules governing research
on human subjects. Often, researchers in rhetoric and composition
can apply for an exemption from formal review by an institutional
review board (IRB) simply by certifying that their research meets
a few simple criteria--but you still need to apply for the exemption.
Keep in mind, too, that exemption from review does not release you
from your ethical obligation to secure informed consent from all participants
(review boards usually require you to submit an the informed consent
form that you must ask each participant to sign); to protect participants'
privacy; to extend some benefit from the research to your participants
(perhaps something as simple as a separate report or set of recommendations),
and to allow participants an opportunity to respond to your representation
of them in your work. For more information about research ethics,
talk to your committee and consult published work such as Ethics
and Representation in Qualitative Studies of Literacy (Ed. Peter
Mortensen and Gesa E. Kirsch, NCTE, 1996).
Support for your choice of data and method of analysis might come from
theoretical models of research methods (e.g., Krupat’s Ethnocriticism
or Lauer and Asher’s Composition Research) or from your critical
reading of others’ research.
Communication: How will I communicate my work to my audience?
What should they expect to find in the dissertation and how should they
expect me to arrange and present that material? Most prospectuses include
a
- Tentative Chapter Outline: Keep this short–there is
no need to repeat what you have said in earlier parts of the prospectus.
Instead, think rhetorically about the presentation of your argument
and begin to engage your committee in helping you to design an organizational
rationale for your dissertation.
Contribution: What will your dissertation enable your audience
to understand, value, or do? What difference will that change in their
knowledge, values, or actions make in the world?
Bibliography: Most dissertation committees will want at least
a list of works cited in your prospectus. If appropriate, consider including
a bibliography of primary materials (annotated, if you are ambitious and
sufficiently far along).
Other Apparatus: Consider including the following if they seem
appropriate.
- Sample Texts or Data: Examples of these sorts of materials,
perhaps gathered in preliminary or pilot studies, would be samples
of primary texts, transcriptions from interviews, field notes from
observations, timelines, maps and illustrations, etc.
- Sample Research Instruments: If you have developed a survey,
taxonomic scheme for coding transcripts or texts, or other research
instrument, include a sample in an appendix. If you aren’t that
far along, consider including a sample of the kind of instrument you
would like to develop.
- Timetable: It is often helpful for your committee to know
about particular constraints on your work plan. They may be able to
help you shape more realistic expectation of the time you will need
to complete various stages of your dissertation.
- Budget and Funding Plan: If you know that you will need outside
financial support to complete your dissertation, why not take advantage
early on of your committee’s connections and experience? Let
them know what resources you will need and how you plan to secure
those resources. The committee then can help you refine your game
plan.
- Glossary: For particularly problematic or contested terms,
you might locate your own usage in the "semantic space"
created by others’ use of such terms.
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