Skip to content

A few strategies to “stay on top of the literature” (more like, “catching up with the literature”

“You need to stay on top of the literature”

This is such a common trope in academic life (just look at this Twitter search I did). I have uttered more times than I want to admit. It’s important to note that just about everyone who does scholarly work feels the same. It’s absurdly difficult to stay on top of the literature. Thousands of papers are published EVERY DAY, and no, nobody is actually reading them (just look at the absurdly high number of articles published on the COVID19 global pandemic!).

Highlighting, scribbling marginalia, reading, writing

My approach to catching up with the literature: on paper, with highlighters and coloured fineliners

Let’s start with stating the obvious:
– There is an absolutely unmanageable influx of published work that would necessitate that we devote our lives to reading to even barely make it to “stay on top of the literature”
– There are too many competing demands for our time.
– Increased care work has meant that women have been disproportionately (NEGATIVELY) affected by this global pandemic.
– For some bizarre reason, some people seem to be operating on the assumption that life is normal when it’s not, so workloads have increased, support has not.
– TIME IS NOT MALLEABLE. There are 24 hours in the day of which at least 7 woudl need to be dedicated to sleep (and for mothers, particularly of young children, this is absolutely impossible to do, sleep well). Parenting is very hard, single-parenting is super hard. + Academia!
– Being healthy is extremely important. At the same time, academia is ableist from its design. For those of us who have dealt with chronic pain, chronic fatigue, and other illnesses (including mental), it’s challenging to juggle everything and maintain a semblance of a life.
We don’t just “do stuff”. We need to think, reflect, connect ideas, read AND write. To do that, you need to have some semblance of healthy body and mind, and it is VERY challenging to manage illnesses, life AND deal with the increasingly overwhelming multiple demands.

Reviewing the literature and mapping scholarship

I love doing literature reviews, as you can tell!

Ok, all of the above stated, I do believe that there are a couple of strategies that we can use to “catching up with the literature”. Again, I’m going to state the obvious: THERE IS NO HUMANLY POSSIBLE WAY TO STAY ON TOP OF THE LITERATURE. There are ways, to “catch up” with it. remember loving my doctoral comprehensive exams because I was going to be able to READ and annotate, and take notes, and synthesize, etc. I was given a TASK (survey and master the literature) and a TIME ALLOCATION (1-2 years in most Canadian doctoral programmes).

Ok, so given that time is not malleable, and competing tasks are demanding our time, what can we do to catch up with the literature? Here are a few that I’ve used, even at my most ill. The key issue to remember here for me is: your (my) well being should be top priority.

CHANGING OUR MINDSET: DON’T TRY STAY ON TOP OF THE LITERATURE. INSTEAD, CATCH UP WITH THE LITERATURE.

Thinking of it as “catching up” instead of staying on top is crucial for me. I no longer aspire to be THE GO-TO-GUY FOR LITERATURE ON X (I used to be This Guy when I was in graduate school, by the way). I’ve lowered my expectations of myself, and the demands I impose on myself. Now, on to the strategies.

1. The “One Paper a Day” #AICCSED Strategy

I thrive on routine, and there’s something magical for me about having a printed paper and highlighting it and annotating it. But I know I have a metric tonne of things to do, so I try to JUST read ONE paper per day, and even then…

Obviously, the #AICCSED acronym stems from combining both techniques’ acronyms: AIC from the reading strategy and CSED from the systematizing strategy). Doing a daily #AICCSED helps me add notes and absorb material regularly without stressing about being “on top of the literature” (I will never be, I’ve accepted this).

2. The “Reading Fridays” Batch Processing #AICCSED strategy.

This was hard to do, and I know I’m privileged in being able to do this. Last semester, while teaching 4 courses, my Fridays were absolutely exhausting. So this semester I have turned Fridays into READING DAYS. It is definitely stressful because I know I NEED to do A LOT of things at the same time. But if I am going to try to catch up with the literature, I put all my reading on one day: theses drafts, papers to grade, journal article reviews, etc. ALL THE READING GETS DONE ON A FRIDAY.

You are going to ask this question, so it’s better if we get it out of the way:

How do I decide what I can get away with? (that is, when do I know a paper should be read more in depth and therefore I need to allocate more time to read it?

The answer to this question necessitates that you develop a HEURISTICS OF TRIAGE.

Concept saturation

Catching up with the literature can also be done in batches, as I explain later in this blog post

In a way, we are all triaging every day. With competing demands on our time, and trying to juggle way too many tasks, we need to tend to issues that need our attention more (or, as the medical origing of triaging means, the patients that need the most help at the moment).

3. The “Per-Project” Batch #AICCSED Processing.

In addition to A-Day-A-Week-For-Reading Batch #AICCSED Processing and Daily #AICCSED Processing, I sometimes apply this strategy, but on a per-project basis. Usually when I am doing something new, or when I am meeting with a coauthor. I process readings the day before our meeting, so I can be prepared.

Doing Per-Project Batch #AICCSED Processing makes something easier for me: I don’t jump across literatures that often. For example, this week I am collaborating with a colleague on a grant proposal. I’m reading on subnational politics, that’s going to be my batch for this week.

Editing by hand

IN CONCLUSION…

I think “staying on top of the literature” is unrealistic and damaging to our soul. I believe in a more humane, focused, realistic, health-minding approach to absorbing scholarly materials, a strategy where we “catch up with the literature” instead of trying, unsuccessfully and frustratingly, seeing how the pile of “To-Be-Read-Whenever-I-Find-A-Minute” materials grows. Hopefully these strategies will make sense to you all, and more importantly, I hope they’re helpful!

Posted in academia, reading strategies.

Tagged with , .

No comments

By Raul Pacheco-Vega – February 25, 2021

Tackling an R&R (Revise-And-Resubmit) – a full-fledged process

On the full-fledged process of responding to a Revise-And-Resubmit (R&R): I have written pieces that tackle specific components of the process, but I hadn’t actually written a thread or a blog post showcasing how all my blog posts fit with one another. I teach this process when I give workshops. So I figured I could post it here on my blog, based on a Twitter thread I created for this purpose.

Drafts Review Matrix on paper and digital

So here’s what I do (now), and let me share a lesson from my past lives:

DO NOT SIT ON R&Rs.

I know, they’re painful and scary and sometimes we don’t know if our paper will get rejected in the end. But remember, an R&R means an OPPORTUNITY to get your paper published.

Sitting on R&Rs, leaving them for later, and not prioritizing them has gotten me fewer publications. I know this for a fact. I am not ashamed of admitting that I have sometimes felt that I will not be capable of responding to multiple (often conflicting) comments.

HOWEVER…

Sustained, frequent advice from professors who are senior to me (though I am senior myself now too) is always the same and on-point:

The goal is the R&R.

You’re not getting a desk rejection. Take that as a bit of good news!

You are getting your work read, reviewed carefully, thought about, responded to. This is a win. Take it as such.

What do I do now (and have been doing for the past few years, with success) is as follows:

1. When I get the R&R (the “decision letter”), I make sure to calm down, because I am always afraid I’m going to get nasty comments. These have been (luckily) very rarely present in my latest submissions. Some people ask dear friends or collaborators to read the comments and deliver a kinder, gentler critique. I think this is great to soften the blow, but in the end, we are going to have to read the Letter of Response from Editors, so we might as well soldier on.

(I ask my Mom)

My Mom has a PhD in political science, is a full professor, and has been a Dean of Social Sciences, and she loves me, so it’s easier for her to see the good comments in the reviewers’ responses and just tell me “the tone on X comment might grate you but it’s a good one”.

2. Once I read the Editor’s Decision Letter, which include the comments, I pay a lot of attention to what the editor is telling me in the letter. Which reviewers’ comments do they recommend I pay particular attention to? In my experience (and as an Editor, I do this), editors will chart you a path forward: “we believe this paper holds promise, we suggest you might want to go down this path. Alternatively, there’s this other path. Or this other one”

Editors have been incredible generous to me.

3. Here is where all my processes articulate with one another:

Most editorial teams will already have a process for how they want the response to look like (redlined version, clean version, point-by-point letter). Some may accept my DRM as is, but I do recommend writing the letter.

DRM

An example of an R&R

4. You probably are thinking “but how I do I plan the R&R” – well, yes, I do have a blog post for that and here it is.

After all is said and done, and you resend the R&R revision, you probably want to take a couple of days off, and reward yourself in some way.

Hope this articulation of my blog posts and my processes are helpful to those of you in the throes of R&R revisions!

Posted in academia, writing.

Tagged with , .

No comments

By Raul Pacheco-Vega – February 13, 2021

On student workload, cognitive load, number of hours per credit hour and the future of online teaching

I have written A LOT about various ways in which we can be kinder and gentler to our students, but I keep seeing op-eds and write ups on Those Higher Education outlets, and I am still thinking that there are things that need to be said. What I am writing about reflects MY experience and may not translate into others’ views.

The Twitter thread that I wrote speaks to the global perception that having a lot of reading material was acceptable in The Before Times and that somehow More Readings + A Lot of Time Devoted to Studying = Better Learning Outcomes. This is not the exact statement circulating, but it’s a common perception and one that I hope the global COVID19 pandemic puts to rest, because I don’t think it is actually true.

The issue of “credit hours” and “contact hours” and “study hours per hour of contact/in classroom time” really bugs me, as you can tell.

On 1) There’s an assumption that students should spend 1-3 hours per credit hour per course. A 3 hour/week class would require 3-9 hours worth of studying. If a student takes 4, 3-credit courses you are talking about 4x[3,9] hours worth of studying ON TOP of IN-CLASS hours.

If my math doesn’t fail me, that means that a student during regular times would need anything between 12 and 36 hours of their time to STUDY (wait until I add the 12 hours of in-class time). So that’s anywhere between 24 and 48 hours of school-related work.

That’s… INSANE.

Yesterday I only had 2 online meetings that required my brain to be functional and I could not wake up at 4am as I normally do – I have 4 meetings scheduled for today and that means I’m going to end up absolutely destroyed by tonight (even with a nap).

We need to reconsider how we approach distance teaching and learning under pandemic conditions.

My cognitive ability to THINK, let alone PRODUCE anything is vastly reduced by *gestures broadly* everything happening around me. I am a senior professor with a permanent job, a very decent salary, who is healthy and whose care responsibilities are significantly low. *I* struggle.

I don’t have much data (only 4 courses, plus one in the summer), but in my evaluations, students clearly marked that they appreciated and value empathy. I DO know for a fact that doing all this online work is taking a toll on my students. My thesis students tell me this, too.

And on the other side of the equation, these conditions take a toll on everyone else in higher education – faculty, families of students AND faculty, staff, etc.

Personally, I think we need to lower expectations, workload AND levels of stress, and just Chill The Fuck Out.

Posted in academia.

Tagged with , .

1 comment

By Raul Pacheco-Vega – February 5, 2021

Skimming articles using the AIC (Abstract, Introduction, Conclusion) Method, plus an AIC-> Synthetic Note Template for undergraduates (and graduates!)

Two of my favourite scholars, Dr. Heather Smith and Dr. Eugene McCann (whom I have admired independently for a very long time, even before I became friends with both of them) recently asked me if I had some sort of easy-to-read-and-implement guide and/or template for undergraduate (pre-graduate school, post-grade 9, basically, baccaleaurate candidates) students. Because I am someone who loves helping dear friends (and I need more content for undergraduate students!), I decided to write a Twitter thread and a blog post and develop a template to put my AIC Content Extraction Method to good use and help undergraduate students ask the right questions and create a Synthetic Note based on their AIC skim read.

Highlighting, scribbling marginalia, reading, writing

This blog post walks readers through my own process of skim reading focusing solely on the Abstract, Introduction and Conclusion (AIC), asking questions and looking for answers in these sections of the paper, and then drafting a summary (what I call a Synthetic Note), based off my notes from applying the AIC method. I have also included a template in PDF format that should open in a different window and that should be easily downloadable (click on the pop-out window and then from there, download from my Google Drive).

Below you will find my Twitter thread, interspersed with some commentary by me.

IMPORTANT NOTE — NOT ALL READING MATERIALS ARE EQUAL

There’s another element that needs to be discussed that I’ve been mulling for months now. We need different strategies to read, annotate, take notes, and synthesize different materials. We assign very different types of reading materials (books, articles and book chapters), according to our set learning objectives, and the level that we are teaching (undergraduate, Masters, PhD).

As I went through my template and Rich’s abstract, I realized that there are elements in the abstract that give the reader much more information about the context of the research, why she studied those social movements, etc.

This has two implications that I want to draw here:

As Dr. Hoover- Green indicates in her guide, we need to teach students to look at “signposts” – words that give them a clue about what they are reading. In the sentence: “I show how X phenomenon occurs”, the phrase “I show” does the work of signposting what the author is doing.

… we STILL need to teach HOW TO READ (and how to absorb what we read and make sense of it). From the Abstract, I can make sense of a lot about Rich’s article: it’s on hybrid social movements, looks at Brazil’s AIDS movements and develops a third way of looking at social movements: as federated, distributed, multilevel organizational networks.

HOWEVER… so far, from reading Rich’s abstract I know nothing about her methods, approach to how she conducted this study of federative coalitions, etc. THIS is precisely the reason why I always tell my students to do a quick AIC skim: there are details that escape the abstract, but that you can find elsewhere in the article, usually the Introduction and the Conclusion.

This pair of tweets put together the entire decomposition framework.

Based on this exercise, I created a full template for creating a Synthetic Note based on an AIC quick skim. Includes:

1) Guidance on readings that students should do beforehand so they understand what AIC is all about.
2) A series of questions for each one of the components of AIC
3) A template for students (or any reader) to follow and use to write their Synthetic Note. This template has specific wording that helps them create a narrative when developing their literature reviews.

… included in the example and template. I created the Synthetic Note after running my reading through each element but that is not fully reflected in the Twitter thread, but it is in the final version of the template (that is, there is an intermediate step where I should show each one of the tables with my own notes).

Hope this is helpful! Here is a rundown of my notes and answers to the questions posited in the template.

Now, for a completed example of the Conceptual Synthesis Excel Dump (CSED) row for Rich 2020’s article, derived from my AIC content extraction notes/Synthetic Note:

On the note-taking process:

Could I have taken notes in a series of Index Cards, or in my Everything Notebook, or in a Cornell Note? Sure thing. But since I am doing several threads on reading techniques for undergraduates (that can be adapted for graduates), I’m choosing to JUST do one.

HOWEVER… if you need more material on note-taking, in this tweet I link to a lot of my writing on the topic.

Please DO test drive this AIC->Synthetic Note template and let me know if it is helpful to you and/or your students!

Posted in academia, research, research methods, writing.

Tagged with , , , , , .

1 comment

By Raul Pacheco-Vega – January 28, 2021

Using ethnographic field notes in the actual writing of a paper

A scholar from the global south asked me recently for references or some help on how to use ethnographic field notes in the actual writing of a paper, and how they should be reported (that is, how we can use the material we write in a fieldwork notebook in the actual writing of a manuscript). Interestingly, most of the work I’ve read on field notes is on “how to craft them” and “how to analyze them”, not on “how to report them” or how to use them to write a readable output. A couple of years ago, I published an editorial in the International Journal of Qualitative Methods (IJQM) that focused on how we as researchers can use field notes to prompt writing when we feel stuck. But still, that wasn’t what this researcher needed. So I promised I would write a Twitter thread, and afterwards, based on it, a blog post (this one).

Fieldwork in Paris (Oct 2018)

Me doing ethnographic fieldwork in Paris in 2018.

On developing an ethnographic sensibility and learning how to write field notes, I’ve found books most useful. What I want to make clear is that using excerpts from your interviews and ethnographic field notes is common in the actual writing of the ethnography. There are obviously different styles, and mine is not exactly like the anthropologists’, or some sociologists, but it is one approach in social science that might be of interest and use to researchers.

Including extensive quotations or fragments of field notes in a manuscript is quite common in qualitative research. Much like in quantitative work you present tables, graphs, equations, etc., qualitative (textual, visual) material is presented as evidence in qualitative papers.

These are obviously just a few examples of how you can use “in-line” textual excerpt insertions to provide qualitative material to the reader that functions as supportive evidence. I hope this post is useful to those of you engaging in, and writing fieldwork results.

Posted in academia, qualitative methods, research, research methods, writing.

Tagged with , , , , .

No comments

By Raul Pacheco-Vega – January 19, 2021

Planning for Survival with a Cherry on Top

It’s been a rough year (2020) and 2021 promises to be just as difficult. I started the year exhausted and needed to ramp up to actually work normal hours. I strongly believe that we need kindness to others and to ourselves more than ever. The COVID19 global pandemic has created an extremely difficult situation for everyone.

January (or end of December of the previous year) is usually when people plan their year or their activities. To be quite frank, I normally plan with much more rigor for an academic year rather than a calendar year, but I also have a process for organizing my calendar year using my Everything Notebook and a set of printed calendars, integrating everything I plan as well with both my Google Calendar and my iPhone’s iCal.

Much as I love being ambitious, I think that for 2021 we really need to consider Planning for Survival with a Cherry on Top. I describe my approach below.

A Pair of Cherries

Photo credit: Amanda Slater on Flickr Creative Commons License: Attribution-Share Alike

You survived – RIGHT FUCKING ON.

Your family survived – GLORY!

Your friends, students, colleagues are doing as well as they can be? -EXCELLENT

Anything else is the Cherry on Top.

Did you Write For 10 Minutes – CHERRY ON TOP

Did you do an AIC summary of one article? – CHERRY ON TOP.

Did you teach that one first class of the semester? – CHERRY ON TOP

Did you manage to have the readings ready for the first couple weeks of classes? – CHERRY ON TOP.

Did you manage to answer 5 emails? – CHERRY ON TOP.

Right now, the goal is to survive this pandemic. Anything else that gets done, is The Cherry on Top. Actively de-programming ourselves from planning for life Almost As If We Were Back to Normal takes a long time. I’m struggling with it. I had to dial down my hopes for 2021. Right now, all I want is to survive and a few cherries.

(Immense thanks to Dr. Mirya Holman who always inspires me to think about these issues and I just want to heavily promote Dr. Holman’s #MHAWS newsletter AND Fridays writing group).

Posted in academia, planning.

Tagged with .

No comments

By Raul Pacheco-Vega – January 16, 2021

Developing an entire course around a specific research project

Those of you who know me well will remember that there are very few things I love more than developing syllabi. Despite the fact that I once thought writing up a syllabus was an inappropriate activity for a doctoral comprehensive exam (I have changed my mind over the last decade), I love syllabusing. I adore having to choose between various reading materials, reading broadly and deeply and selecting themes, topics and questions I want to address during the class.

Syllabusing

One thing I pride about and do very well: develop printed reading packets out of my syllabi.
Not to worry: I also create a digital version

I always design my syllabi with an ulterior motive, and I am not ashamed to admit it. If there is a topic that I am particularly vested in, I make sure to somehow insert it into my syllabi. Coincidentally, yesterday (December 27th), I came across this tweet, which also summarizes my own approach to new course syllabus design:

In response to Dr. Perry’s question, I shared my approach to new course preparations and how I develop an entire course around my own research interests. If you participate in my writing groups, you will know that I already thought about this and made a suggestion to participants in my writing group. I jokingly said that “I was mercenary about new course preparation – if I am going to prepare an entirely new course, I am going to at least get a publication out of it”.

I did it, with one of my doctoral seminars, this Fall 2020.

Before designing the course syllabus, I surveyed what my students knew about research design, qualitative methods and comparative methods. I realized that I had to develop a syllabus that included everything from case selection to explanation to comparison to qualitative methods. While I was lucky that a lot of scholars helped me with guest lectures, I designed the entire syllabus, and obviously I also led seminar discussions. Re-reading so much about comparative research design really made writing these two book chapters extremely easy and seamless.

Had I not been asked to teach this doctoral seminar on Comparative Methods, I probably would have had to spend at least a month re-reading, thinking through, mulling over and pondering the literature on comparison as a method, and THEN write these chapters. Way more complicated.

Did I teach EXACTLY what my students needed? Of course I did. Sure thing I did. BUT in preparing the syllabus, doing the readings alongside my students, leading the discussion, conversing with the guest speakers, my own thinking about comparative methods got much more refined. Am I going to get a publication out of teaching Mixed Methods next year? You bet I am.

Will I write a paper on policy analysis? Possibly. But my Public Policy Analysis class is undergraduate, so I have less flexibility on what I can include and exclude. I need to give basics. It’s much easier to create a new syllabus that will provide you with an opportunity to read the literature you need to produce a new paper with graduate (Masters, PhD) or advanced undergraduate seminars. Much less flexibility when you need to teach a survey course.

Federalism scholarship by women

To summarize: I design courses based on several criteria:
– what my students need in terms of content, competencies, core skills and “lay of the land”,
– what *I* want to learn better (or refresh my knowledge of),
– what my students are interested in,
– what my current writing schedule and program looks like.

I hope that by sharing this approach, you might find some good ideas on how you can craft a syllabus for a new course in a way that might give you an additional product (beyond the wonderful learning that you and your students will achieve).

Posted in academia.

Tagged with , , .

No comments

By Raul Pacheco-Vega – December 28, 2020

How to prepare for a reading-intensive undergrad or graduate seminar (for students) and how to design a syllabus that offers reading guidance to students (for faculty)

The Spring 2021 term is coming upon us quite fast, and I have wanted to write a thread on how to prepare for a graduate-level seminar. I know the range of difficulty of readings, amount/volume/number of pages assigned is going to vary, but I’ve been thinking about this issue for a very long time. Personally, I reduced the number of readings that I assigned in my courses, but not everyone is doing this, and I strongly believe that we need to prepare students for whatever comes their way (including a reading-heavy course/seminar).

I am going to assume a course workload of 4-5 courses per week (exactly what I took when I did my PhD at The University of British Columbia), regardless of whether it is Masters’ or PhD. When I was a doctoral student, I took several courses across disciplines and faculties. I prepared each class the day before, over the course of a morning or an afternoon (I am terrible at night, and work better earlier in the day.

Reading highlighting scribbling

I am particularly worried/concerned for/thinking about my students who may take reading-heavy courses over the next few months, so I decided to write a thread showcasing how I prepared when I was a graduate student. In the process of writing the Twitter thread that this blog post draws from, I also provide some guidance on how to craft syllabi that while reading-intensive, can also be helpful to students by providing guidance on how to approach the reading material.

I remember very distinctly taking a class with Dr. Terre Satterfield on Science, Values and Policy and thinking “oh wow, each week has a theme!” (remember, although I have two brothers with PhDs and my Mom has a PhD, there’s a lot I didn’t know about the #HiddenCurriculum). I want to share my approach to syllabus design, because to help students discern strategies for how to read their assigned materials, I also need to read other professors’ syllabi, and deconstruct them so I can understand their choice of reading materials.

Below is my approach to designing syllabi.

I remember very distinctly that Dr. Satterfield always told me to look at the readings as a whole: “what do these readings, in their entirety, tell you? what’s the coherent story/narrative?”

This key question has helped me both prepare for seminars (as a doctoral student), and refine my syllabi (as a professor). Usually faculty write their syllabi offering suggestions on how to approach the readings. But in case they don’t, I always recommend that students look at the entire week’s block of reading materials and search for the key theme/narrative/story.

So how does this “searching for the key narrative/story/themes” approach work in practice? Below, I explain it in detail using examples from my own syllabi and those of other scholars I found useful for my purposes.

As you can see, I assign 4 readings per week (30 pages per, about). What would I do, if I were a grad student taking my seminar? I would devote an entire day/morning (depending on how fast you read) to reading, taking notes and systematizing my notes. When I was doing my PhD I prepared for seminars the day before (hard to do if you take 2 seminars same day, but advisable!)

For a second round, I suggest looking to see how each reading connects with one another. For example, for the week on extractivism, urban political ecology, these are the themes I would be looking for:
– accumulation by disposession (David Harvey)
– primitive accumulation (Marx)
– urban political ecology: scale, power differentials, cross-scalar dynamics, urban contexts
– how water is extracted, implications that this extractivism approach has (denial of the human right to water, etc.)

Asking questions off assigned readings helps make sense of them.

Other examples:

Having read a few of these previously (I studied Science and Technology Policy for my Masters), I can see what are the major themes of Dr. Rhode’s first week:
– artifacts are political (Winner)
– technology has associated risks and responsibilities (Wetmore, GHSA)
– S&T consumers

When I was a grad student, I found that if I asked myself Guiding Questions that helped me make sense of a coherent narrative helped me learn better. I also looked for themes, keywords, patterns, logics and debates (point-counter point). What do this week’s readings tell me? What’s the professor’s intent in assigning these readings? What do they want me to learn? Which are the key ideas, concepts?

To summarize, and clarify:

My Twitter thread and post were originally NOT about syllabus design (though I do provide detailed suggestions on how to design a syllabus, in a way that helps your students prepare), BUT about how to prepare for a graduate seminar – or an advanced undergraduate), as a student.

Here are the insights that faculty members can probably draw from this thread:
a) Design your syllabi creating discrete units that have Guiding Questions to help students make sense of the readings, and
b) Develop your syllabus using storytelling methods to create narratives.

And here are the insights I wanted students to absorb:

a) I recommend dedicating an entire morning/afternoon (or full day) to reading, taking notes, systematizing them and then writing a memorandum (a day before the seminar)
b) If you have 2 seminars on the same day, split time.

(Dr. Neff’s syllabus is here)

Now, how do *I* as a professor prepare to teach graduate seminars?

I do it the same way I prepared for seminars when I was a doctoral student. I dedicate time the day before I teach (since it’s a seminar, I lead the discussion more than “lecture”). I build a set of Guiding Questions and when I start the week, I provide an overall description of the narrative and the key concepts I want my students to draw from the readings. I then lead the discussion and engage with students asking them Prompting Questions based on the Guiding Questions.

Anyways, I converted my Twitter thread into a blog post, because I know my undergrad and graduate students will be taking seminars next semester and I want them to be well prepared. I do hope faculty and students both may get some good insights out of these tweets.

Posted in academia, reading strategies.

Tagged with , , .

No comments

By Raul Pacheco-Vega – December 26, 2020

On the importance of the Reading, Note-Taking, Synthesizing and Writing sequence in developing an academic research and writing practice

This Fall 2020, despite having to teach online and facing the challenges of a pandemic, I have had amazing experiences teaching research methods, research design and the mechanics of research. This past summer and fall, I taught these courses online and I realized something that I had been thinking about for a very long while but had not been able to really pinpoint until this week.

Writing

Because of the way I like teaching these interrelated topics (research design, research methods and mechanics of research), I quickly realized that teaching Note-Taking Techniques, Reading Strategies, and Synthesis Methods was complicated (along with helping my students learn research design and research methods).

Trying to teach reading, note-taking, synthesizing and writing altogether is kind of a chicken and egg problem. What do students need to learn first, reading or taking notes? Teaching strategies for both simultaneously is hard to do, and I struggled all year to do this.

Nevertheless, over the summer and fall I tried the following sequence:
– Reading Strategies
– Note-Taking Techniques
– Synthesis Methods
– Writing Processes and Practices

Obviously, my course wasn’t the only one they were taking. Turns out that students are thrust into the “you need to read a lot to understand what I am teaching” model quite early during their programmes. This poses challenges for someone like me who is trying to provide foundational skills as well as to provide substantive content/material.

… they can then move to more advanced reading, note-taking, systematizing routines/techniques/strategies. Once they’ve developed these routines and systems, THEN they can get into the habit of writing (and developing a writing practice).

You can teach writing earlier, surely. But from experience, I can tell you that what my students have developed, a reading-note-taking-systematizing-writing practice, is driven by my pushing them to READ FIRST, and then TAKE NOTES, use those notes and SYSTEMATIZE them and only after having read broadly and deeply, then WRITE.

Reading should be a priority. Before you even send them on the field, or ask them to choose a model and download a dataset and run regressions, you (or your program, somehow) need to teach them this Reading-Taking Notes-Systematizing sequence first and foremost.

I hope this blog post and these considerations will be useful, not only for my own students, but for others as well as they develop their own research and writing practices.

Posted in academia.

No comments

By Raul Pacheco-Vega – December 26, 2020

Linking theory with research, choosing a theoretical framework and developing alternative explanations

I taught Research Design this past fall and one of the key challenges I see in teaching how to properly design research projects is the chasm that exists between theory development and empirical testing. For some reason, it is hard for some students (and more than one scholar!) to link theory with research. This discussion is one I have had for a very long while with my colleagues, Dr. Rodrigo Salazar Elena and Dr. Gloria del Castillo Aleman.

How do we link all the theories we read into what we see in the empirical work?

I believe that there are three elements at play.

1) There are various types and levels of theory (grand theory, meso-level theory, micro-level theory), etc.

2) We (scholars, students, practitioners) need to read very broadly to be able to discern across theories.

3) We need to learn how to establish THEORETICAL EXPECTATIONS and ALTERNATIVE EXPLANATIONS.

Holland establishes two theoretical expectations:

1) if there is poor state capacity to monitor and enforce, we may expect that there will be limited enforcement activity. Holland cites Levitsky and Vicky Murillo on this)

2) if there’s inadequate bureaucratic control here’s a higher likelihood that there will be limited enforcement activity.

These are two observations that Holland makes from absorbing, summarizing, integrating and presenting the various theories surrounding poor regulatory enforcement.

She then introduces her own conceptualization of forbearance. Holland makes it clear how her framework borrows from other theories (including price theory) and in doing so, these borrowed theoretical concepts help her explain how states choose not to enforce regulation.

This is an excellent example of how to apply theory to explain things. Theories help establish an expectation of how the world should work. We need theory to establish exactly what we expect to see

Empirical research then tests those theories and asserts whether the theories being used actually do help explain the phenomenon we are observing.

If we reverse-engineer Holland’s paper, we can see the empirical phenomenon she is looking to understand (limited, constrained regulatory non-compliance). She then establishes the various theories that could potentially help her explain this non-compliance/non-enforcement.

We choose the theory depending on the empirical phenomenon we are examining and the research question we are trying to understand, and our prior experience (and reading/understanding) of how the phenomenon will operate. hus selecting a theoretical framework does not happen “a priori”.

I never decided that “oh I am going to study the governance of river basin councils using the Ostroms’ frameworks”. I examined the phenomenon, and reviewed the literature to see how others have looked at it. For example, in my work on water conflicts, I look at the different theories on which factors could combine to make a water dispute happen. There are theories that indicate that under resource scarcity conditions, actors will want to hoard resources and thus engage in conflict.

Below another example.

Snow et al find empirical support for resource mobilization theory (one of the most popular among scholars of social movements). Thus, instead of arriving with a theoretical framework in hand, we need to establish which phenomenon we want to study/explain and the theories that have been previously used to explain this phenomenon.

Thus, in closing:

a) selecting a theoretical framework for a study usually happens after reading and synthesizing a lot of literature on how the phenomenon has been analyzed before. I wouldn’t do it “a priori”.

b) linking theory with research is particularly important because it helps us establish theoretical expectations (and develop alternative explanations, something that apparently has been forgotten when teaching research design).

3) Alternative explanations are based on theory. I strongly believe it is fundamental that we teach our students both elements, how to link research with theory and how to select a theoretical framework, and if I were to add a third element, how to establish alternative explanations for the same phenomenon and discern which elements/theories/evidence best explain what we are trying to understand.

I hope this blog post clarifies my approach to selecting a theoretical framework, linking theory with research and developing alternative explanations as well as theoretical expectations.

Posted in academia, research.

Tagged with , , , , .

2 comments

By Raul Pacheco-Vega – December 22, 2020