Outline of the Dissertation Proposal

I.                   Introduction:

A.    Background of the topic and the problem (effectively lead the audience from a place of no awareness of the topic toward the a basis for your question)

B.     Research Question: one simple interrogative sentence

II.                Contribution of the study to the literature:

A.    How will your work contribute to the field? (From what research does it follow or what gap does it fulfill?)

B.     Why is this topic worth studying?

III.             Methodology:

A.    What method will you use?

B.     Why? (Why is that method the right choice for this particular topic/study?)

C.     What are the strengths of that method?

D.    What are the potential weaknesses?

E.     How will you safeguard against those weaknesses?

NOTE: Demonstrate competency: show working knowledge of terms, application, strengths and weaknesses in the way in which you write about the method (rather than a lit review of the method)

IV.             Review of the literature

A.    Start the reading based on the “problem”

B.     What has already been written on this topic?

C.     How did this literature contribute to your logical reasoning about the topic?

D.    How did the literature contribute to the construction of your Research Question

V.                Importance of the study (This differs from the “contribution” section which is based on literary/scholarly contribution and not application/societal contribution)

A.    What needs in society (or the field of education) make this research worth doing?

B.     What future situations or populations will the aims of this study serve?