EDU705 Official Handouts

Lesson No. 1 · Purpose and Main Components of a Thesis · Topic 1: Purpose of the Thesis

To enable students to develop:

•  deeper knowledge
•  understanding
•  capabilities

Overall goal is for student to display knowledge and capacity to:

•  contribute to research and development work
•  deal with complex theoretical issues
•  to plan and use adequate methods and evaluate

Thesis at the end of the programme offers the opportunity to:

•  delve deeply into
•  and synthesize acquired knowledge

Topic 2: Writing Style and Audience

•  Audience and Purpose Context of writing Range of audience Authority readers or ‘critics’
•  Primary Audience Scholarly community Real and imagined Internalize audience o Supportive o Hostile o Adversarial
•  Secondary Audience External examiners Representative of scholarly community
•  Immediate Audience Supervisor Highly influential ‘Ideal Reader’

Topic 3: Order and Component of Thesis

1. Title page
2. Statement of originality/ copyright page

Q3. a) Dedication

1. Acknowledgements
2. Abstract
3. Table of Contents
4. List of :

• Tables
• Figures/ illustrations

7. List of Abbreviations
8. Chapters

•  Introduction
•  Literature Review
•  Methodology
•  Results
•  Discussion
•  Conclusion

9. References
10. Appendices

Topic 4: Title

Title should SUMMARIZE the main idea:

•  be concise
•  highlight key variables
•  full explanatory

Title should not have abbreviations.

Function:

•  inform
•  statement of content (data based)