How To Choose A Proper Education Dissertation Format
Education is an important field of study, and if you're pursuing a Master's degree or a PhD in education, you'll be required to complete a dissertation. Your dissertation is an important task, and it's a huge project that can take over a year to complete. You will be conducting original research or providing original analyses, making a unique contribution to your field and exploring something that hasn't been studied in detail before. Thesis papers generally follow a particular set of formatting guidelines, and contain numerous components beyond just the body of the paper itself. Here are some general tips for how to format your education thesis paper.
- Title page. The text of your dissertation will generally begin with a title page. It will sometimes also include your name, the date, and other relevant information.
- Abstract. The abstract provides a concise, relatively detailed summary of your research, findings, and analysis. It should be a few hundred words long, and should essentially capture the essence of your paper. Your audience should be able to understand what you were researching and what your conclusions were by reading through the abstract.
- Table of Contents. This is generally arranged into chapters, although there are sometimes alternative ways of organizing it. Chapters or sections should be listed along with the page numbers they begin on, to make it easy to navigate your thesis paper.
- Dedication and Acknowledgements. This section is usually optional, but in some cases, it may be appropriate to include it in your paper.
- The body of the paper. This is your actual paper, which should generally include an introduction, body, and conclusion. A dissertation paper is similar to other research papers, but in an expanded form. It's usually at least ten thousand words long, if not longer, and details the goals, methods, and findings of your own original research.
- Tables and Figures. Research papers often include tables of data, graphs, and other visual depictions of relevant information. These tables and figures are generally numbered and included at the back of the paper. When you reference them in the text, you can refer the reader to the table number for further information.
- References. Citing your references is incredibly important for your dissertation. For thesis papers, you'll probably have several pages of meticulously detailed references. You should also cite your sources in the body of the paper, using footnotes or parentheticals.
- Appendices. You may have at least one appendix to your paper, which should be included in the back, behind the references section.