Expectations in Your First two Chapters of the Dissertation: A Guide for Doctoral Students

This workshop will focus on expectations and strategies for writing the first two chapters of the dissertation. It will begin by identifying and outlining the expectations of the essential components of the introduction. Next, we will outline the components of the literature review through a discussion of the genres of scholarly writing and choosing a theoretical framework(s). We will follow with providing a systematic tool, the literature crosswalk (Matteson & Warren, 2020), for organizing and synthesizing research. We will conclude our presentation with how the literature review can help researchers identify novel gaps in the literature, which inform the methodology, purpose, and research questions.