Completing a Masters of Education is a huge achievement – if you’ve done that, congratulations! What tends to happen though, is that PhD and EdD theses are archived, searchable and accessible via University online repositories – whereas Masters’ theses are not. This means there’s a huge gap between what’s explored and learned by education practitioner researchers, and what is represented and accessible to others in the available body of knowledge. Publication through Camtree offers a way to bridge this gap.
We spoke to a recent Masters’ of Education graduate – who distilled the key messages from his academic thesis and created a 5000-word practitioner-oriented report, that has been peer-reviewed and is now published in the Camtree digital library. Jamie told us why engaging in this process and sharing his work in this way is of value, what it involved, and what advice he would give to others.
‘I would hope that maybe my report would be of use to someone and that might become a feature of their practice, and it might help them, and help their students. And so yes, I would encourage people as much as possible that if you think you've got something worth sharing to definitely put in the effort, so it can benefit all of us really.’
Drawing on and including reflections and insights that Jamie shared, we’ve created a resource and template for others wishing to write a practitioner-oriented report for Camtree from their Masters research, which you can access via the link below. As a summary and snapshot from this resource, the following points identify what makes a great report and a few things to avoid.
The most publishable reports include the following.
- A clear statement of the reason, stimulus or starting point for the inquiry.
- Briefly ‘positioning’ the research in relation to prior research or a theoretical framework. State those theoretical frameworks or research approaches that you used and what they provided in framing and guiding your inquiry.
- Rather than a full literature review, present selected sources that have really informed your choices of topic, methodology, or the framework you have used for analysis or interpretation.
- Brief quotations or summaries of sources, rather than extended excerpts or paraphrases.
- An outline of the ethical framework that informed your inquiry.
- A summary of ethical practices that ensured the success of the inquiry, and which should be considered by others carrying out the same kind of inquiry.
- Clear links between evidence collected, the interpretation or analysis you offer, and any claims or recommendations that you make. For the research report, you may find that four presenting findings in summary form allows you to focus on those with clear implications for practice.
- A summary of what you believe to be important or novel about your research.
- A statement as to how your findings can be translated into something tangible from which others can learn and even try themselves.
- Reflections on your approach: focus on practical advice which will guide and support other educators (your readers) in undertaking similar inquiries.
Jamie found revisiting his research both a personally and professionally beneficial exercise
‘Going back to look at my research again, it reminded me, actually, I quite like this! I think this could work in my classroom. I think this is useful and it gives you that bit of motivation to actually say, with a little bit of effort, I can...I did classroom practice, I did classroom activities, and I can actually use this in my actual classroom’
For more guidance and how to implement these points, please see the full resource and template below. A full transcript of Jamie’s interview is found at the end of the guidance resource.
- Guide for turning your Masters dissertation into a Camtree research report – with advice and Jamie’s interview
- Dissertation-to-report Template
- Read Jamie’s report in the Camtree Library here: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14069/33
