Making the implicit explicit : creating performance expectations for the dissertation / Barbara E. Lovitts.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lovitts, Barbara E., 1960- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Dissertations, Academic.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (434 pages)

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Sterling, Virginia : Stylus, 2007.

Summary:

Despite their and other stakeholders' consistent demand for excellence, doctoral programs have rarely, if ever, been assessed in terms of the quality of the dissertations departments produce. Yet dissertations provide the most powerful, objective measure of the success of a department's doctoral program. Indeed, assessment, when done properly, can help departments achieve excellence by providing insight into a program's strengths and weaknesses.This book and the groundbreaking study on which it is based is about making explicit to doctoral students the tacit "rules" for the assessment of the final of all final educational products-the dissertation. The purpose of defining performance expectations is to make them more transparent to graduate students while they are in the researching and writing phases, and thus to help them achieve to higher levels of accomplishment. Lovitts proposes the use of rubrics to clarify performance expectations-not to rate dissertations or individual components of dissertations to provide a summary score, but to facilitate formative assessment to support, not substitute for, the advising process. She provides the results of a study in which over 270 faculty from ten major disciplines-spanning the sciences, social sciences, and humanities-were asked to make explicit their implicit standards or criteria for evaluating dissertations. The book concludes with a summary of the practical and research implications for different stakeholders: faculty, departments, universities, disciplinary associations, accrediting organizations, and doctoral students themselves.The methods described can easily be adapted for the formative assessment of capstone courses, senior and master's theses, comprehensive exams, papers, and journal articles.

Contents:

Cover

Half Title

Title Page

Copyright Page

Table of Contents

List of Tables

Preface

Acknowledgments

Part One: The Dissertation and Its Assessment

1: Judging Dissertations

2: Achieving Excellence

3: Universal Qualities of a Dissertation

4: Disciplinary Approaches to Doctoral Training and the Development of a Dissertation

5: Converting Performance Expectations into Rubrics

6: Conclusions, Implications, and Recommendations

Part Two: The Disciplines

7: The Biology Dissertation

8: The Physics Dissertation

9: The Electrical and Computer Engineering Dissertation

10: The Mathematics Dissertation

11: The Economics Dissertation

12: The Psychology Dissertation

13: The Sociology Dissertation

14: The English Dissertation

15: The History Dissertation

16: The Philosophy Dissertation

Appendix A: List of Participating Universities, Deans, Coordinators, and Facilitators

Appendix B: Details on the Study's Methodology

References

Index.

Notes:

Description based on print version record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781579229344

1579229344

OCLC:

945135790