This week I approached my paper from the bottom up. I have three versions of a rough outline, and though I haven't gotten to chopping my paper up, I imagine by the end of this week My intro, methods and framework will be completely different then the first draft. I realize that I have too much going on, and though my overarching question is broad, the paper lacks focus and there is too much information to cover in an effective way.

 

I read a paper called "Asking the Community: A Case Study of Community Partner Perspectives." The structure of this paper was refreshingly clear, not unlike the "Banners for Books" article. I am realizing more than ever that I'm not only reading articles with the intention of gleaning information, but I'm analyzing and critiquing article's construction and style. The article featured a table that outlined the theme and coding scheme, and though the author also writes out theme and coding, the table makes the information much more clear. 

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I revisited my overarching question, and my subquestions. I looked at my themes, and my coding and went through the process of zooming out, zooming in, and zooming out again to reorganize my codes into more general and meaningful themes. I believe these themes would be meaningful ways to break up my findings, and the coding points are good ways to organize my data.

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The amazing thing about the article about community partners that I read this week was that the similarity of the service learning program at DePaul University and the program at Iowa BIG was the closest I have seen. The amazing thing about this article is that it says what it needs to in a short article, and I have decided to really work on focusing my paper on essential points, and pair down the length of the paper to focus my research.