Application: Critical Thinking, Academic Writing, and APA Form and Style

Critical thinking and academic writing are two of the most important skills required to complete your Dissertation.

Critical thinking. Your use of critical thinking throughout the Dissertation process will help you select a theoretical framework for your study, make arguments about why your study is important, analyze your data, and assess the implications of your results.

From previous work, you may be familiar with Bloom’s Taxonomy of critical thinking. The revised version is described in three links in this week’s Learning Resources.  Each of the three links provides a different slant, visual, and list of resources. In everything you write in this course, as well as your other Ph.D. courses and, of course, your Premise, Prospectus, Proposal, and Dissertation, you are required to demonstrate higher levels of thinking. The levels of thinking in the revised version are:  Remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating. It is at the highest three levels—analyzing, evaluating, and creating—that scholarly thinking and writing take place, including the development of your Prospectus.

Academic writing. Your use of academic writing will ensure that you communicate effectively in all sections of your Dissertation, both to your committee and the academic community at large. Being able to demonstrate academic writing generally means that you can convey your ideas, thoughts, and findings clearly, succinctly, and coherently.

APA format and style. Part of academic writing is being able to write in correct APA style and format, and this is a requirement in this course and all others, for each document you write.  Academic, scholarly writing and the correct APA style and format extend far beyond citing in the text correctly and writing a reference list in correct APA style and format.

Academic writing is a skill you will continue to hone throughout the rest of your academic and professional career. The APA Manual contains a wealth and depth of information on writing. It is recommended that you read the entire manual.

To prepare for this Assignment, review the Writing Resources in this week’s Learning Resources.

Write 2–3 pages on the topic you are considering for your Dissertation. How did you come to select the topic? What is your interest in studying it? What is the problem that makes it worth studying? What is its significance?

Then, in another half page, briefly explain how you demonstrated academic writing using APA style and format in what you wrote. Be specific and use examples from your writing to illustrate your explanation. In other words, rather than writing, for example, “I used correct citations,” explain the APA guidelines that guided your use of specific citation style in the reference list vs. the text.

Support your Application Assignment with specific references to all resources used in its preparation. You are asked to provide a reference list for all resources, including those in the Learning Resources for this course.

Submit your Assignment by Day 7.