Do they teach you how to come up with a research question? The way most people do it is they have some interest in the field (whatever brought you to multicultural education—perhaps discrimination). Then you read everything you can consume about that area and related areas. You are looking to find out what has already been done.
Along the way, some questions should come into your mind. “I wonder if….” So you research that, to see if anyone has already done that topic. Eventually you’ll find a topic that hasn’t already been done and that might be useful for people to understand.
Another factor that should enter into your decision is what analytical method do you want to use: qualitative or quantitative analysis. What kind of data will you use? Do you need to collect it yourself, or can you use secondary data?
The analytical method and data source should be driven by the research question, but a lot of times people settle on a method they are comfortable with and find a question that requires that method of analysis. So, are you comfortable with statistics? If so, a quantitative research project will be easy. If not, you probably need a qualitative research project.
It’s not that qualitative analysis is easy. Rather, most people have been doing it all their lives. Because they’ve been doing it all their lives, they tend to disrespect it. Statistical analysis seems much sexier because people believe that it’s so hard to understand statistics (it isn’t, but that’s what people believe). Because of that prejudice about qualitative analysis, people think it is much easier than it is. To do it well requires skills that not a lot of people have.
To do your lit review, I would consider using qualitative data analysis software, like Atlas.ti. This will enable you to code your literature and retrieve references to topics of interest more easily. It has the added advantage that if you do decide to do a qualitative research project, you’ve already learned the software.
Think about how you’re going to get the data. Collecting it yourself takes a significant amount of time. You have to design a data collection instrument—qualitative or quantitative, then gather the data (which has lots of problems on its own), and clean it and prep it before you can analyze it. It is far easier to use data that someone else has already collected.
As to getting it done—you’re writing your lit review section as you do the lit review. You’re thinking about data sources, data collection and data analysis methods as you go along, and as you hone in on what you are going to do, you seriously document your thinking on the subject. You may have to do a lit review on methodology, if you are going to put the method to use in a novel way.
As you analyze your data, your analysis and conclusion sections should be coming into focus. And once you’ve got your story pretty much in line, you can think about the limitations and future research sections.
If there is a course in writing a thesis, you should take it. A lot of this stuff will be covered. Or take a data analysis course, if there is one available. Similarly, a methods course would be useful. Do you take these things, or is that only for PhD students?
The closer your topic is to your personal interests, the easier it will be to stay motivated. You’ll really want to know the answer to the question. Hopefully, it will be an important question. That motivates you even more.
To organize yourself you could use project management software. However, unless you’re some kind of geek, that might be biting off more than you can chew. You could use excel to keep track of things, or a calendar program or even a diary of some kind.
That’s enough to get you started, I think. Go forth and prosper! Or something.
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