Reflection of theme 3

This week I learned more about how other people define theory and how lack of proper theory can make or break a paper. While discussing papers in seminar one, we decided to focus on one that gave light to problems, or rather lack of problem definitions.  By doing this, I think people in our seminar group (including myself) learned more about how important it is to properly narrow down the scientific issue and properly define the problem in order to produce a paper of good scientific value.

At the same time, Stefan Hrastinski also discussed with us how a paper not always have to come up with a perfect solution or follow the initial hypothesis or prediction. In fact, we discussed how the failure itself is also a valuable knowledge, many times more interesting than the success story that many researchers strive for.

Thinking back on my bachelor thesis, I at least want to believe I had this with me in the back of my head. And so I took the opportunity this week to revisit my old thesis and read it with a new mindset. I came to the conclusion that while many students look for a positive outcome of their experiment or investigation, thankfully we didn't fully fall in the same category. While we could definitely have benefitted from narrowing down our problem area, we acknowledged how (some of) the data we had didn't automatically lead to an easy explanation. In fact, we proposed new outlines for future research in our area based on our experiences and conclusions. At the time, I don't quite believe we would have achieved a very high impact rating...

In keeping with this mindset, I also read a lot of blog posts regarding theory this week. Many seem to agree that theory is something very wide and hard to grasp, while at the same time acknowledging how theory is formed by different, all crucial, parts. These parts are often about the type of data that strengthen the hypothesis or predictions, but also more specifically how data gathering can differ and impact the perception of an entire paper. For instance, when discussing this among my peers we established how studies with low participation counts automatically seem to be viewed with less credibility, but when actually looking at how they conducted the study it may change the perception once again.