Part 3: My First Class: Methods and Materials of Research
After years of teaching primary, secondary and college you have decided to enroll in a doctoral program majoring in English. Your expectations should include meeting new people from varying careers and reading literature contrary to your ideologies and beliefs. There will be men, women, monotheist and perhaps polytheistic students seeking what you are seeking: enlightenment. To know is to grow so learning how to modify your writing style to meet the academic expectations at the doctoral level as well as navigate the university library are necessary skills.
What to Expect When You are Expecting
The first course may be problematic and cause considerable angst and anxiety about the ability to draft assignments meeting doctoral level expectations. For example, apparently, I tend to overcite apparently as opposed to paraphrasing.
The paraphrase requirement has caused heartburn and stomach burning. I do not like to rewrite what a researcher has written because I consider this to be plagiarizing. However, in graduate school, my incessant habit of hyper-inserting direct quotes is problematic. I prefer to quote from the source with quotation marks. However, apparently, at the doctoral level paraphrasing is expected and points will be deducted. To make the writing requirements even more complex, in another class, an article by Muhlestein (1998) used in-text citations so excessively I had to print the article and read two pages a day to complete the reading assignment. The hyper in-text citation style was cumbersome and exasperating. At some point with the excessive in text reference, I questioned was any part of the article original? Changing my writing style to decrease the number of direct quotes and increasing in-text citations took me sixteen hours. The longest I have ever spent writing a paper. The writing style requirement to paraphrase was very uncomfortable. Your preferred writing style may have to be modified to meet the expectations.
How do I know what I need to research? How do I incorporate sources into my writing?
The American Psychological Association style (APA) is the citation style used in the sciences and the social sciences. Modern Language Association (MLA) is the style used in the humanities. There are many differences even as simplistic as the cover page format.
After much fanfare, my original topic was changed to be an extension of a previous blog post. Avoiding self-plagiarizing was challenging. I burrowed down a rabbit hole to determine a way to narrow the project beyond discussing the games played and integration in the classroom. I started with intrinsic motivation, but the topic was too broad. After multiple frustrating rewrites– I narrowed the topic to student apathy in the English Language Arts classroom and wrote the concept paper as a future study recommendation for integrating teacher-student competitions in the classroom.
When considering a topic, I suggest beginning with a broad topic, reading the research and determining what terms are relevant to the research interest. I had to make an unpleasant decision not to include varying subheading topics. The decision making is a time-consuming process and though I fell in love with some of my writing and research—a lot of what I wrote did not contribute logically to the paper and had to be deleted as I am striving diligently to write without using Critical Race Theory as a framework. As you narrow your topic you will have to make uncomfortable decisions about deleting what you might consider to be your best writing. The process is painful, gut-wrenching actually but remember, there are page limits so deletions must be made.
Finding Sources: Determining if a Source is Credible and Appropriate?
Liberty University has an exceptional library, learning portal and the course plan is interactive! I have a graduate degree in library science, and the library resources were probably the best I have experienced far above state level databases including full text peer-reviewed access. The Language and Literature, Literary Encyclopedia, Philosopher’s Index with Full Text and ProQuest One Literature were useful for targeted research in the subject of English and literature. Additionally, the university dissertation repository is available and there are multiple exceptionally packaged instructional videos about research and writing at the online writing center.
It is important the courses you are enrolled are well organized, and assignments easy to navigate. Seamless course identical design meaning all classes use the same format font, and color scheme will increase understanding and decrease time spent trying to decide what task to complete first. To this end, the course readings are extremely beneficial in providing a launching point to find supplemental resource readings found in the library databases.
Regarding artificial intelligence, Google Scholar, ChatGPT and Google AI provide broad overviews and sometimes can help with locating a directly on point journal article or book. However, using artificial intelligence can be addictive and some research advises overuse of artificial intelligence causes a decline in the ability to find words “on your own.” I strongly suggest using artificial intelligence sparingly as most universities have an AI Policy about usage and integrate an originality checker (Turnitin.com or Copyleaks).
Additionally, the credibility of a source should be determined by relevancy and currency. I noted many of the resources I used cited early twentieth century research. It is best to navigate to the source of the sources.
Finding More Information: Use the Course Readings!
The writing of Muhelstein, though complex and winding, were useful if while enrolled in a religious university there are struggles with reading controversial texts that are contradictory to personal beliefs. I did not have the said struggles and found the discussion perplexing at first. Read what you want. Think what you want. Right? Self-censorship is a real phenomenon so tread carefully when deciding not to read specific articles because the theoretical frameworks contradict personal beliefs. For example, I am not a communist, but a recent chapter in the text by Tyson (2011) discussed exceptionally Marxist theory and competition in American schools. The research path is torturously meandering because much of the research is complex. Researching news articles for trends can be beneficial and heavily dilute the pain. So can a 
Take notes! Again, understand the authors are citing to research and theories you are unfamiliar so hunker down to spend hours “looking up” names, theories and writings.
Finally, as mentioned in the previous blog post, reading autoethnographic and phenomenological articles can provide increased insight and perhaps comfort while navigating doctoral programs.
Overall, prepare for your brain to be stretched and to learn more than possible–expectations will be exceeded if the program is rigorous.
Henry, A. (2015). ‘We especially welcome applications from members of visible minority groups’:
reflections on race, gender and life at three universities. Race Ethnicity and Education, 18(5), 589–610.
https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2015.1023787
Muhlestein, D. K. (1998). Teaching Contemporary Literary Theory at a Church-
Sponsored University. Christianity and Literature, 48(1), 79–93. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44314196
Tyson, L. (2011). Using Critical Theory: How to Read and Write About Literature. Taylor & Francis.
https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203805091
