Sample Dissertation Outline

The following outline is for guidance purposes only. The length of each section and any headings, subheadings, or other concerns are to be developed at the discretion of you, as author, and your dissertation committee members, as advisers. The format of all headings, subheadings, citations in the text, tables and figures must conform to the current edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association and also meet the formatting requirements of ASU Graduate Education.

Preliminary Materials

- Title Page
- Abstract
- Other Preliminary Matter (See Format Manual from the ASU Graduate College)

Chapter 1: Leadership Context and Purpose of the Action

Provide information on how your study was situated in a setting in which you had responsibility, authority and intimate contextual knowledge. What was the context of your action? What were your leadership role(s), your connections to the problem? What was your position as an insider in your work setting?

Make a case that improvement was needed in your topic area and in your organization. Why did you select your particular change effort? Cite data, where possible, that supports your claim that the need was real and urgent in this setting. Include the perspectives of others in your situation that supports the need for your change effort. Summarize the purpose of the action that you designed to meet the need for improvement; state your research question(s).

Chapter 2: Review of Supporting Scholarship

Show how your action design was informed by published scholarship. What theoretical lens(es) did you use to shape your overall action research. What disciplinary knowledge did you use to shape the specifics of your change effort; how did the published research and professional literature in your discipline (or across disciplines) support the prospects for your action’s success?

State how the ideas and procedures in your action design had been tested and refined through previous action research cycles. How did your previous research in action studies inform your dissertation?

Chapter 3: Research Design

Describe the setting of your action, detailing the site and the participants.

Describe your action plan. Present a timeline for your action’s implementation steps. Exactly who participated in each action step? What was done? What was your role as participant-leader and participant-researcher?

Describe your research plan. First present your methodology, your rationale for your research methods. Then tell what data sources you used – and how you collected them -- to richly portray the consequences of your action. Justify the use of each data source (e.g., trustworthiness, credibility, reliability, validity). Also explain how your data sources fit with one another (e.g., complementarity, development), how they contributed to a sensible overall view of the consequences of your change effort. (Note: In your proposal, your research design is proposed; in your dissertation, your design is what actually happened.)

Chapter 4: Analysis and Results

Describe how you made sense of the data you generated. First inventory the data sources you collected, telling the amounts of records and time involved in your study. Then present the step-by-step methods you used to understand the data you gathered from each source. For instance, tell how you coded any qualitative data and statistically analyzed any quantitative data.

Present the immediate results of your analyses. For instance, report the codes you constructed for the qualitative data and the descriptive statistics you calculated for the quantitative data. When possible, present your results in tables, then interpret them in the text.

Chapter 5: Findings

Present the assertions you can make that respond to your research question(s). What data-based, triangulated, and member-checked claims can you make in response to each question?

Support your assertions with results from Chapter 4 as well as from your raw data. When supporting your assertions, present the convergence and consonance as well as divergence and dissonance among your data sources. Include disconfirming results when appropriate to represent the complexities of your action research.

Chapter 6: Conclusion

Present a discussion of the lessons you learned:

(a) Explain how conducting this study has contributed to answering your research question(s), or meeting your research purpose(s), set up earlier.

Describe what you learned about your research in action topic that goes beyond what you knew before and what you read in the professional literature.

Describe your study’s implications for practice:

(a) Explain how your research can be of future benefit to you and your educational organization

(b) Explain what you learned about yourself as an educational leader.

Describe your study’s implications for research:

(a) Describe what (if anything) you would do differently if you were to redo your research in action study.

(b) Describe your possible next step(s) as a professional educator involved with action research; specify at least one new question that follows from your study and is worthy of a follow-up research in action study.

Offer a closing word. (optional)

Present a final thought you have about your action research.

References

List references for all of your proposal’s citations in APA format.

Appendices

Appendix A. IRB/Human Subjects Approval

Appendix B. Instruments