Instructions Week 5 Writing Assignment: Scholarly Perspectives Paper OVERVIEW Th

Instructions
Week 5 Writing Assignment: Scholarly Perspectives Paper
OVERVIEW
The Scholarly Perspectives Paper will be an informational writing paper in which you will formulate a research question and then explore a variety of different sources to answer your question. You will broach a topic in the introduction that you seek to learn more about. While it will likely be related to your own identity and values that you wrote about in the first paper, it should expand upon a particular value, topic or theme (however, it does not necessarily have to be a topic or theme addressed in the weekly lesson modules in this course). You will formulate a research question related to the value, topic or theme and then use scholarly and library resources presented in Week 2 to find reliable sources to answer this question and to use as evidence in this informational paper. The organization and format will be very similar to the Personal Perspectives Paper, with the main difference being the genre. That paper was narrative writing and this paper is informational writing. Whereas before you used your own experiences, anecdotes, and for lack of a better term – “stories” – as evidence to explain and elaborate upon your points, in this paper you will use expert and reliable testimony as found in scholarly research to support your thesis, points, thoughts and reasoning.
When choosing a research question, you may find inspiration from course themes, readings, and videos. You can also think about pressing issues in your current or future career field. Looking ahead, you will see how the first paper and this paper will work together to synthesize your final paper, which is due in Week 7.
Here are some sample research questions:
How does a child develop knowledge of right versus wrong?
How can leaders best motivate their employees?
Is it ethical to be a billionaire?
Are learning styles real?
You are not required to choose one of these questions. Instead, think about the ideas you have grappled with through your experiences, whether those ideas relate to your field or to important themes, such as social or environmental justice and ethics. Spend some time brainstorming to come up with a list of possible questions. The questions may be related to your own experiences or troubling and common scenarios as experienced in your current or future career.
THE PURPOSE
The purpose of the Scholarly Perspectives Paper is to help you critically think about and reflect upon your experiences and how scholarly sources and scholarly experiences can help to answer enduring questions. It might help to think of this paper as an extension of your identities and values where as an educated human, you are continually questioning, reflecting and evolving based on learning from experiences, which includes academic experiences, like researching, for example. Being that this is informational writing, you will begin by introducing an interesting question and then go about answering it through the presentation of scholarly information that you will explain, expand and elaborate upon using your own reflection on the different resources you consulted in order to form an answer. For your research, start with the resources you normally use. For example, you may find it easier to start with a Google search to see what’s out there. (There is also a variation of Google, called Google Scholar, that provides the same internet search service only with a specific focus on scholarly and peer-reviewed journals and articles.)
In Week 3’s activities, you will critically think about the credibility of your sources and the differences between popular and scholarly resources. You may discover through research that your question is too narrow, too broad, or too complex. As you are building up toward the final paper in this course and reflecting on your past, current and future experiences in life and your academic journey, consider the following: What has this research journey taught you about the importance of formulating a research question, consulting credible sources, and the evolution of a topic as you make new discoveries?
THE STRUCTURE
Begin your essay with an introduction of the topic to which your research question will attend. After developing a context for your research, introduce your question and discuss why the question is important to you. What do you already know about your topic and what do you want to find out about your topic? What value does the answer to this question have and/or what caused you to seek this answer in the first place? (Hopefully you can see the connective tissue between your first paper on Identities and Values.)
Your body paragraphs should contain the answer to your question, but broken down however you see fit. Perhaps there is more than one answer. Maybe there are a few distinct themes that emerge through the various answers to the question. Or, even still, there could be a few reasons why X answer is correct and/or if your question relates to solving a problem or behavior, perhaps there are a few ways to go about solving it? Depending on how you go about sharing the answering to your question, the order in which you present information in the body of the paper will vary. In some cases a very chronological order may make most sense and other times a cause and effect explanation might work better. Be thoughtful about how you present the findings from your research so that your reader can follow your thought process, share in what you’ve learned from the research, and arrive at the same conclusions that you have in answering the question. In a final body paragraph, you may want to share why you made specific decisions about which sources to consult and the benefits and negatives associated with a particular source. How do you decide if a source is reliable or even relevant to your search? How might new information lead to additional questions or even a revision of your initial question? Feel free to share any frustrations, roadblocks, or “aha” moments.
In your conclusion, you can provide an answer to your question and whether or not you think your question requires revision or additional research. When do you know that you have found enough information to provide an answer? Consider ending with any final discoveries, thoughts, or reflection on this research process. It is okay to have not arrived at a definitive answer. If you look closely at scholarly research journals and articles, you will find that many times the conclusion is that additional research or studies need to be performed and often times these include revisions of the previous research process(es). If that’s the case for you, you could reflect and share how you might tackle this research question differently in the future if given the opportunity. Be sure to identify any implications of your research findings in your personal or professional life or other communities in which you interact. How might this new knowledge better yourself or others? Be sure to leave your readers with a clear understanding of what they should do with the information you’ve provided them. Readers should not finish the paper asking themselves, ‘So what?’, ‘Who cares?’, ‘Why does this matter?’, those rhetorical questions should have been answered in the readers’ consciousness as they read through your well-organized and logical paper.
Simply stated, you will share what you want to discover, what you uncover on the scholarly quest to answer your question, and ultimately what you discover.
RESEARCH
Research in this essay may involve popular sources (Wikipedia, blogs, newspaper or magazine articles, etc.) and scholarly sources (academic journal articles, books). When searching the Internet, do you have a specific search engine you like to use? Do you get different results from different search engines? How do you choose from a large number of search results? For this assignment, at least two (2) of your sources must be scholarly, such as academic journal articles. Think about the transition to academic research. Is the library the first place you go to search? Why or why not? Consider searching library databases, such as Academic Search Complete or the Electronic Journal Center, for scholarly articles. How do you know if you’re searching in the right database? What is it like to conduct a search in a database compared to a Google search? What challenges do you encounter when searching the Internet or when searching a database? In addition to reflection on and evaluation of your sources, be sure to include any information found from your sources that you can use to answer your research question.
REQUIREMENTS
An interesting and informative title
An introductory paragraph that includes your research question and background information on why you have this question.
An awareness of audience, context, and purpose
Appropriate voice and tone for your target audience
Effective use of reflection, evaluation, and description
Three (3) to four (4) sources, at least two (2) of which are scholarly
Specific information from your consulted sources with proper in-text citations
An identifiable structure, including introduction, coherent paragraphs, and conclusion
Effective use of grammar, language, and punctuation
Appropriate APA format
References page with all of the sources you consulted
A minimum of 1000 words (not including quotes) – This is a general guideline, however. It is far more important that paper be complete in terms of having responded to all parts of the prompt, including a clear introduction, body and conclusion.
Your document can be submitted in .doc or .docx format (this file type can be produced by Word, Pages, Open Office, or Google Docs), or via a Google doc link.
Due: Sunday 11:59 PM
MINIMUM LENGTH: 1000 words (4 pages + references) This is a general guideline, however. It is far more important that paper be complete in terms of having responded to all parts of the prompt, including a clear introduction, body and conclusion.
FORMAT: APA
Value: 100 points
Due: Sunday at 11:59 PM, Week 5
SCHOLAR DOCS: https://my.hrw.com/la_2010/na_lit/student/ebook_gr9/osp/data/u4_scarlet_lbis_se.pdf
https://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/—ed_norm/—declaration/documents/publication/wcms_536630.pdf
https://www.diversitybestpractices.com/sites/diversitybestpractices.com/files/import/embedded/anchors/files/diversity_primer_chapter_01.pdf

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