Brighten the light that is shining in our professional disciplines.
Friday, October 20th, 2006I was uplifted and motivated to action by Dave Whetten’s presentation earlier this week in my scholarly publication class. Dave Whetten is the Director of the Faculty Center at Brigham Young University.
Dr. Whetton talked about academic success in scholarship and said that we have to really understand the literature to which we are contributing, so we can add our contribution. He continued this thought by saying that many doctoral dissertations are not published because they are not written systematically, or framed well. They need to constitute a new conversation. Scholarship does not support scholarly soliloquies.
When I heard him say these words, I was encouraged to understand the “conversation” better in the area that I am researching, so that I may be able to add an extension of something that is new. Dr. Whetten said, “We validate and reinforce 80 percent of something and then add 20 percent to it.” This idea sounds much more manageable then trying to validate and reinforce 20 percent of something, and then add 80 percent to it. The idea of making 3-7 copies of articles to which I would like to contribute to the conversation was also very helpful.