findings are very rich and require a lot of after-analysis. Note
that if you schedule three chapters of lead-in material then you
must either erode your core to half or less of your thesis (which
is dangerous in meeting the doctoral level); or leave yourself
no space for a proper lead-out chapter; or begin inflating the
number of your chapters beyond what is ideal. Bear in mind
the adverse impacts on professional readers of having to page
through three whole chapters of secondary guff before they
reach any worthwhile value-added elements. If you find that
your initial thesis plan has four or more chapters of lead-in
material, my advice would be scrap this schema at once and to
rethink your approach from scratch.
Clearly identifying what is core in your thesis and what is not
can be a psychologically taxing decision. You may tend to dis-
guise from yourself that some chapters are not actually part of
the core. Or you may enlarge your core inauthentically so as to
include low value-added materials and get yourself up to hav-
ing four or five apparently qualifying chapters. You need to
guard against these tendencies, because being honest with
yourself can be crucial for your research planning. For instance,
what happens if you can only identify three chapters out of
eight in your thesis plan that genuinely seem to be value-added
material? You need to go back to the fundamental design of
your project here, and see how you can produce one or two
more core chapters. For instance, if you previously planned to
undertake two case study or detailed analysis chapters, can you
instead aim to undertake three or four case studies? Or if you
previously were using just one method for generating results,
should you think about employing another confirmatory
method as well?
Being honest about your core is also vital to organizing your
thesis effectively. Once you have the core firmly in focus you
need to cue it and brand it heavily for readers. Your thesis title,
your abstract, your chapter headings and the contents page, your
preface and the introductory chapter – all these key organizers
need to be mobilized so as to highlight, set up and frame the core
materials in your thesis. The ‘need to know’ criterion should
apply strongly here too. Ask of your lead-in chapter(s): ‘What do
readersneed to knowin order to appreciate the value-added ele-
ments to come in the core chapters?’ At the start of your PhD
52 ◆AUTHORING A PHD