Synthesis

synthesis

NOUN
1. the combination of components or elements to form a connected whole. Often contrasted with analysis.

Today I attended a Skype discussion with a Module Three focus, led by Adesola Akinleye. It was great to share discussion with others within the same Module as me and to hear about all the variations of discourses and topics being researched within everyone's inquiry.

Adesola led the discussion by asking us to explain to others on the call where we were within our inquiry and the processes that we had been through on the inquiry. I found this exercise challenging to condense all that I had been looking at into a short 3 minute or so description, but also found it beneficial to think about how to contextualise and articulate my topic of inquiry to others that hadn't heard about any of the research material I had been looking at. 

From hearing others discuss their inquiry topics along with my own, it was highlighted that there was an importance to look at if we had encountered a shift within our inquiry, had the questions we had gone into the inquiry within changed or developed as the inquiry itself developed? For me, this is something that I have noticed during my inquiry and today's Skype discussion confirmed that this is a part of the process and the importance is that it is recognised, documented and discussed as to why I think that there has been a shift in questioning. For me, I feel it is due to the vast nature of the inquiry topic of gender that I have chosen.

This led over to our second highlighted thought, on how we synthesise and present the data that we have collated, discussing it in relation to where I stand within my opinions. We discussed the idea of editing our findings to ensure that it included all the research that we had found, but didn't discuss it all. This is a thought that I am thinking further about as I feel that my analysis process has highlighted a lot of thought and variation of opinion over my inquiry, but I can and will push further with the connecting all this together and looking at it in relation to what I see the data presents.

Looking further into where the inquiry has taken me and my own thoughts, as a pose to the focus being too centered around what other's have said.

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