Be flexible: Research will face you with the constant challenge of making decisions. However, the more stubborn you are about your initial decisions, the more frustration you will experiment. Therefore, it is important for you to be flexible and to be open to change. Try not to fixate on anything! Everything from the research question to the resources you find might be subjected to change. So, don’t fall in love with questions, articles, concepts, or constructs…at least not to get married!
Read: Some people want to do their entire research based only on intuition, conversations with colleagues or by simply watching YouTube videos. And even though those are good initial resources, the core of your study will be found on books, journal articles, national documents, organizational reports and other texts. Thus, even if it seems daunting, make sure you have at least one hour for reading every day while you do your research. Oh, and don’t forget to read about your topic, but also about research! Reading about research methodology can help you feel at ease and recognize the following steps in your work!
Write constantly: Writing up your research wouldn’t be such a daunting task if you wrote during the entire process. The problem for some researchers is to cram up the writing of your thesis paper to the two nights before the deadline. Write to learn, not only to show you have learned. Write to think. Write to organize your thinking. Writing should be an active process during the entire research. So probably, the real tip in here should be keep a research journal. Be it an online journal on Penzu, an offline journal in a folder on your computer or the cloud, or a paper journal you write by hand. Regardless the means, writing can help you generate more ideas and make your thinking visible by making it clearer and more accessible at the time of elaborating a longer narrative (i.e. your chapters).
Be organized: Use all the tools you have at hand to make your life easier! Technological tools can be quite helpful and can help you include your thesis seamlessly in your daily life. For example, sites/apps like Google Calendar and Evernote can make your life easier by helping you with reminders about tasks and by curating and annotating your favorite pages and creating your digital notebook. Also, reference management software programs like Mendeley, Zotero and RefWorks are great options to help you store and organize your references. All of them have plug-ins directely built into Microsoft Word so that you can insert your references as you write. Anyway, if you are not the tech savvy type, you might as well have a notebook, a calendar, a planner, and a box with index cards for your references and things will work just the same. The key is to have a system to organize yourself and your information while doing the research process.
Don’t be afraid to be lost: Research is about questions, and not only answering them, most of the time is mostly about unsolved queries and even mysteries. At moments, you might feel lost but that’s okay! Just don’t lose yourself in a pit. Try to find the way of the maze you’re in and get out soon. As with any fear, face it straightforwardly. If you feel lost, don’t let the feeling of restlessness confuse you and take over your work. Acknowledge the fact that getting lost can happen at any point during your research process, so from the beginning, devise a plan to use when it happens. Are you going to call your advisor or mentor? Are you going to read in X or Y book? Do you have a favorite research blog to help you find quick and easy answers? Always have a contingency plan and the feeling of disorientation will not last much.
Don’t complain: Oh, and this one is a tip for life, not just for research. Let us spell it out loud and clear D-O-N-’T C-O-M-P-L-A-I-N-! Complaining usually just makes things worse. As you usually complain with other people experiencing your same level of frustration, a complaint from one person turns into a pity party where everybody just feeds on the fear and sadness of one another. Really, how is this a positive practice? Try to find a positive way out, find ways to cope with stress like listening to music, having a glass of wine (just one!) or ice cream if you don’t drink, going to the movies, or simply sitting down for coffee with a friend and talking about cute cat videos!
Think about your students: Remember that if you embark on research, it is because you want to understand an issue in education and fix it. So, think about the final beneficiaries of your hard work and power through. Sometimes, a research project is the culmination of a series of failed lessons, a huge amount of unsolved problems and a tired teacher who is willing to go the extra mile for your students. Thus, once again, when you feel the process is bigger than you and that your energy is diminishing, remember the initial motivation that put you in this situation in the first place and keep on.
Fit your thesis in your daily routine: Don’t intend to do your thesis in your free time. Research takes time and discipline. So, make sure you schedule some daily time to devote to your thesis and stick to it. It is important for you to decide what you will sacrifice while doing your thesis, because let face it, you have to sacrifice something. Is it going to be your soccer matches? Or maybe that soap opera you like so much? Or is it shopping time? Just make sure you make some arrangements in your daily routine so that you have time to devote to the myriad of tasks that lay ahead.
Wear your researcher’s hat all the time. Teachers (pre-service and in-service) are usually too invested in lesson planning, teaching and the daily hassles of the classroom that they constantly forget about research. As Dr. Cuesta said in her plenary for the ASOCOPI conference in 2016, wearing the researchers’ hat makes us more aware of the process and enriches the process. Thus, try to always think as a researcher! Problematize. Think about data and how to analyze it and organize it!
Embrace the mess: Education is messy. Research is messy. Don’t try to fight those facts and embrace them. Get ready to make mistakes, to lose, to correct, to delete, to re-write, to delete again and start over. Don’t be afraid! Just enjoy the process! However, make sure to not procrastinate! Because if you do, you won’t have time to make so many mistakes and you will be doing your research racing against time.
Research is a journey, not a destination! So, enjoy the ride…
Bonus tip: Oh, and do listen to your advisor!
Infography: https://drive.google.com/file/d/11WPbAzgjy7As7nH6s_GQFHutvfvxVy1H/view
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