Dissertation help!! I'm in the brown stuff, please help!

[Jaquelinehyde]

So I had it all worked out, my dissertation was going to be about poverty and its effect on education (I'm doing a joint hons Education and English literature degree). Then I did a research project on it last semester and realised it wasn't something I could cover in 9000words and needed to change dissertation.

So I have some how gravitated (or been pushed by my supervisor) towards Academies and whether they are working. Over the last week I have started looking at the data available and have realised it would be a nightmare to research due to all the variables between schools that would have to be taken into account.

So I have hit a brick wall, I do like the academy idea but I also like the poverty idea and I need to be realistic in what I can do. My supervisor advises that you should always ask 'well so what' when you have a dissertation/research title, ie who cares, why is answering this/researching this important.

However, my problem now is that I have no title, no solid subject and no frickin idea what to do. I NEED HELP! I am desperate to nail this so I can start my literature review and plan my fieldwork. I will have a tutorial in the next 3-4 weeks and need to have read a huge chunk of literature and begun my review.

So basically I would like you lot to give me ideas for my education based dissertation. Pleeeeease I'm floundering and everything I want to do is more suited to a longer more indepth project?

PLEASE?

Is there any way you can limit the scope of the poverty idea? Its not my area so I'm just giving amateur advice but can you narrow it down to something along the lines of the effect of poverty: on early years education, on transfer to secondary school, on choices at 14 or 16 or any other area that stood out in the research project - it certainly sounds like an interesting topic.

My problem with poverty as a subject area is that I would have to define poverty which would take a while, then I would have to address how we measure poverty for educational reasons (free school meal statistics) and all the issues that this throws up. I could cover my word count covering just these two areas and not have done any real research.

I work in education - not a sociologist in any way though. Wondering about the idea of comparing a few schools thus limiting your research overload and amount of data you'd be handling. Thinking along the lines of looking at a school's attainment/results at key points (eg end of ks1 and ks2, sats data, so easy to get hold of) and compare it with the educational opportunities available, such as after school clubs, sports clubs, breakfast club, sure start centre or nursery etc. If you can do this in a more wealthy area and compare it with one in a less well off neighbourhood then it could be a track to look down?

why not just use the existing 'free school dinners' definition of poverty and use that basis for your comparisons in a specific setting or context.

this would set you up nicely for going onto a phd, where you could v neatly explore 'poverty' in a wider definition... of course you would already have written this up in your undergrad dissertation as a potential area for future research.

I agree with mad woman... You need to really limit thf scope of your undergrad dissertation and it's ok to use a pre-existing measure of poverty and briefly explain why this is used. Being able to be concise and explain things in a succinct manner is a key skill in academia... Often you will see academic papers that cover more than a dissertation but in less words! It's easy to write alot of words, harder to condense and when you get to phd like me you'll be happy to know you'll have about 100,000 words to play with! Good luck!

Phd hahahahaha don't make me laugh

Why am I having such trouble nailing this...my supervisor is going to think I am mad if I try and go back to poverty. So far I have had three tutorials discussing this, I'm sure she would kill me!

I've started thinking I should do something very current, like the changes Gove announced this week or something on linking teachers pay to performance.

As you can see making a decision is my problem!!

madwomanintheattic is a total guru! I'd listen to her :)