Research as a Creative and Strategic Thinking Process

1
Research as a Creative and Strategic Thinking
Process

• How do creativity and strategy fit into analytic
  research?

2
Exploring Research

• Research is a thinking persons game and a
  whole brain endeavour that uses both the
• Creative Right Brain
• and the Logical Left

3
Left and Right Brain Attributes

• The Logical Left
• Analytic
• Logical
• Temporal
• Sequential
• Orderly
• Systematic
• Formal
• Linear
• Verbal
• Factual
• Concrete

• The Creative Right
• Intuitive
• Spontaneous
• A temporal
• Random
• Diffuse
• Causal
• Informal
• Holistic
• Non-verbal
• Imaginative
• Metaphoric

4
The thinking processes of the creative often
involve

• Fluency and flexibility
• Originality
• Remote associations
• Redefinitions
• Sensitivity to problems
• Acceptance of ambiguity
• Divergence

5
The Construct of Research

• Scientific research was born of positivism
  adopted the assumptions of that paradigm
  including
• a knowable and predictable world
• empirical and reductionist research
• objective and expert researcher
• hypothesis driven methods
• and statistically significant, quantitative
  findings

6
The Construct of Research

• Over the past decades, the assumptions of
  positivism have been brought into question.
  Post-positivists researchers acknowledge
• a world that is ambiguous and variable
• research that can be intuitive and holistic
• researchers that can be subjective and
  collaborative
• methods that can be inductive and exploratory
• and findings that can be idiographic and
  qualitative

7
The Assumptions

•  

8
Putting it all together

• Getting your head around the pieces of the
  research jigsaw can be confusing
• The major pieces of the puzzle include

9
Laying the Groundwork

• Understanding the need for creative and strategic
  thinking in research
• Appreciating research as a construct
• Being able to wade through complexity
• Developing strategies for staying on top of the
  process
• (see Chs 1 and 2)

10
Defining the Question

• The art and science of knowing what you want to
  know
• Developing researchable questions that can direct
  methods
• (see Ch 3)

11
Researching Reflexively

• Negotiating power, politics and ethical
  responsibilities (Ch 4)
• Getting a handle on the criteria and indicators
  of good research (Ch 5)

12
Exploring the literature

• Knowing what to read
• How to find it
• How to put boundaries on it
• How to organize it
• How to annotate it
• How to construct arguments with it
• How to write a literature review
• (See Ch 6)

13
Exploring design, methodologies, and methods

• Being able to think your way through the
  logistics and practicalities of methodological
  design (Ch 7)
• Being able to
• explore populations (Ch 8)
• delve deeper (Ch 9)
• facilitate change (Ch 10)
• Working through the nitty gritty of data
  collection
• (Ch 11)

14
Communicating through research

• Crafting a compelling and credible storyline
  through reflexive analysis (Ch 12)
• Writing up and disseminating your work (Ch 13)