Issue
29(1)
Making the
implicit explicit: Creating performance expectations for the dissertation.
(2007). Barbara E. Lovitts. Herndon,
VA: Stylus Publishing, LLC. 428pp., $29.95, (paperback), ISBN
1-57922-181-2
Review
by: Patricia Thatcher
Assistant Dean, Academic
Affairs
Philadelphia University
Lovitts’ important book seeks nothing
less than to reform the graduate education process. Focusing on
the dissertation, the capstone Ph.D. project which demands that
graduate students make an original contribution to their disciplines,
Lovitts convincingly states that graduate advisors, faculties,
deans, and administrators must develop explicit objective standards
and criteria for evaluating dissertations. She argues that explicit
objective standards for the dissertation enable graduate advisors
and administrators to assess the quality of doctoral education
on an individual level as well as programmatically. Objective
standards also provide graduate students with the transparent
knowledge and explicit learning goals that enable them to achieve
success at higher levels. Making the Implicit Explicit is
a complex and highly focused work that should be essential reading
for all graduate student advisors, faculty, and program administrators.
In “Dissertation and Its Assessment,”
Lovitts provides a practical primer for faculty and administrators
on defining and using rubrics for assessment. Using faculty focus
groups as well as previously collected survey data, she reveals
how to define the “universal qualities” (p. 27) of the dissertation.
While most would agree that the purpose of the dissertation is
to make a significant and original contribution to the discipline,
these two terms remain vague across most disciplines. Faculty
can, however, define four categories of dissertation quality that
are consistent across disciplines. In the strongest and most explicit
section of the book, Lovitts uses these four quality categories
to demonstrate how to define and develop a rubric, and how to
use the rubric to formatively assess students and graduate programs
alike. This section encapsulates her thesis that dissertation
quality assessment will ultimately lead to the improvement of
the dissertation process, graduate programs, and the quality of
graduate education itself.
In part two, Lovitts furthers her
analysis and provides more help to graduate administrators wishing
to act on her suggestions, by demonstrating the process
through which group consensus about the general characteristics
of the dissertation’s purpose, quality, and content might be achieved,
no matter the discipline. Despite her continued inability to bring
faculty to explicitly define what a significant
and original contribution might be in any discipline,
this section clearly identifies a model practice for all faculties
willing to establish objective dissertation criteria.
There is no doubt that Lovitts’ book
is important, innovative, and crucial to current discussions about
the direction of the Ph.D. and the role of assessment in improving
the quality of graduate education. However, she fails to delineate
the exact characteristics of significant and
original work in any discipline and thus allows
too much about these important terms to remain implicit
. It is also disturbing to note that even though the
author views this book as a work of student advocacy (p.xi), there
are almost no student voices or perspectives represented in this
book. The author focuses almost exclusively on the voices of graduate
faculty advisors and administrators. This book would have been
stronger if it included student perspectives on dissertation evaluation,
and the voices of graduate faculty in all aspects of their roles
as teachers and advisors, not just as judges of dissertations.
While readers might expect student silence in a work directed
to establishing rubrics for formative and summative assessment,
there are graduate advisors and administrators who view student
participation in all aspects of graduate education as crucial
to the process of educational reform that Lovitts embraces.
