Learning to Research and Researching to Learn An Educator's Guide

This chapter deals with the synthesis and discussion of findings with a view to answering the research questions. In the previous chapters we focused on designing and conducting the research project, so at this stage, we are assuming you have collected and analysed your data, and are ready to write about them. At the heart of many practitioner research projects is the goal of gathering data to promote or support evidence-based decision-making in classrooms or schools. Whatever your purpose, formulating the different aspects of the discussion is an important step in the research process. It is not a simple task to provide instructions on how to write a discussion – we believe this is best achieved by providing examples to illustrate the ideas and through your own writing practice. As this chapter proceeds, we will focus on the different aspects of the discussion, using case studies to illustrate each of them.