Professional practice research integrates both a practice challenge or opportunity, and professional development, usually an articulation of a professional framework of practice. These two sides need to play nicely.

This integrated approach can make it challenging to describe and summarise, especially when all the exemplars are for more traditional research. This template is adapted from Steve Easterbrook’s much-loved “How to write an abstract in six easy steps”. It extends Steve’s exemplar and explanation to directly integrate the practice challenge and the questions of professional practice.  For some, the relationship is tighter than the template suggests, or there is a different relationship, so adapt to suit.  It’s also quite “sciency” – feel free to use this as a starting point for more creative endeavours. 

While it is designed for writing an actual academic abstract, you may find it useful in developing the “thesis” – here meaning the defensible argument – in a Practitioner Thesis.  This abstract, with a little rewording, can be both the first and last paragraph of your Practitioner Thesis. It provides a succinct version of your argument – the job of the rest of the Thesis is to provide evidence for that claim. 

This abstract generator can also be used as a research planning exercise.  I find it useful to write an imaginary version of this abstract as early as possible (for example in developing the Learning Agreement), and then design research to deliver this claim.  It *will* change, as the project unfurls and you respond to unexpected twists, but that’s OK too, rewriting the abstract is a good way to solidify any change in approach or outcome. 

(Note: the abstract in a scientific paper/thesis is not the introduction, it is an ‘abstraction’ of the complete work.  A good abstract should be enough to let me know if I need to read the work or not. It should be read independently from the body, and the body independently from the abstract). 

As always, this is a work in progress. Any comments much appreciated.

Example sentences are followed by an explanation. The complete abstract is at the bottom. 

The field of widgetology emerged ten years ago filling the professional area between the fields of Wid and Geto, incorporating aspects of Logy. I am practicing in the role of a widgetologist in enterprise X in Arcadia, drawn to the field by the potential to contribute to the world through the squiffling of widgets. 

 1 Define the field. It is also useful to position yourself in that field.  It may be an issue that straddles fields, a classic societal dilemma. It may be that the area of practice is Widgets while the issue is one of culture and impact of widget-worship on community cohesion. Say that.

Note the use of first person “I” rather than “the researcher is”. 

In widgetology, it’s long been understood that you have to glomp the widgets before you can squiffle them.   

2. Introduction. In one sentence, what’s the topic? Phrase it in a way that your reader will understand. Your readers are the assessors – assume they are familiar with the general field of research, so you need to tell them specifically what topic your thesis addresses. Same advice works for scientific papers – the readers are the peer reviewers, and eventually others in your field interested in your research, so again they know the background work, but want to know specifically what topic your paper covers.

But there is still no known general method to determine when they’ve been sufficiently glomped.

3. State the problem you tackle. What’s the key research question? Again, in one sentence.  Remember, your first sentence introduced the overall topic, so now you can build on that, and focus on one key question within that topic. If you can’t summarize your thesis/paper/essay in one key question, then you don’t yet understand what you’re trying to write about. Keep working at this step until you have a single, concise (and understandable) question.

The literature describes several specialist techniques that measure how wizzled or how whomped the widgets have become during glomping, but in practice, all of these involve slowing down the glomping, and thus risking a fracturing of the widgets.

4. Summarize (in one sentence) why nobody else has adequately answered the research question yet. Relate to practice.  Here you have to boil that down to one sentence. But remember, the trick is not to try and cover all the various ways in which people have tried and failed; the trick is to explain that there’s this one particular approach that nobody else tried yet (hint: it’s the thing that your research does). But here you’re phrasing it in such a way that it’s clear it’s a gap in practice, and/or literature. So use a phrase such as “previous work has failed to address…”.   The example above has literature first, but it would be equally valid to describe the practice first (and/or a gap between literature and practice). 

The relationship between theory and practice in widgetology indicates that questions of application and leadership are critical to improving outcomes but the professional framework of widgetology is poorly described. 

5. Restate the problem as it relates to a professional framework of practice. 

In this Practitioner Thesis, I take an autoethnographic approach to my development as a thought and practice leader in whiffle-based widgetology. In this necessarily-insider research, I describe an action-based research approach to the development and implementation of a new glomping technique .  

6. Explain, in one sentence how you tackled the dual research question – integrating the technical question and the articulation of professional practice.  This is your big idea. 

I describe the iterative development of a new approach which we call googa-glomping, that allows direct measurement of whifflization, a superior metric for assessing squiffle-readiness.  In a series of experiments on each of the five major types of widget, I show that in each case, googa-glomping runs faster than competing techniques, and produces glomped widgets that are perfect for squiffling. I report on these experiments through a quantitative approach, around which I wrap my qualitative reflections on the journey.

7. In one or two sentences, how did you go about doing the research that follows from your big idea. Did you run experiments? Build a piece of software? How did you integrate the narrative of the journey of leadership development?  (here the example is of a quantitative inside-cog connected to a qualitative outer-cog, but there are many other ways to describe this interaction). 

This new approach has dramatically reduced the cost of squiffled widgets without any loss of quality, and hence making mass production viable which has reduced costs for Enterprise x by 17%.  The articulation of a professional framework of practice for Whiffle-based Widgetology provides a sound basis for the professionalisation of this emergent area. 

8. In two sentences, what’s the key impact of your research? (again, cover both the technical and the professional). Here we’re not looking for the outcome of an experiment. We’re looking for a summary of the implications – and in professional practice this means the ones that have already happened, and potential.  What does it all mean? Why should other people care? What can they do with your research?  Remember that often your contribution is fourfold: the change in practice you’ve made, the impact that has had (both on practice and profession), how you researched it (a methodological contribution), and how you have communicated it. 

Complete Professional Practice abstract

The field of widgetology emerged ten years ago filling the professional area between the fields of Wid and Geto, incorporating aspects of Logy. I am a widgetologist, drawn to the field by the potential to contribute to the world through the squiffling of widgets.  In widgetology, it’s long been understood that you have to glomp the widgets before you can squiffle them.   But there is still no known general method to determine when they’ve been sufficiently glomped.  The literature describes several specialist techniques that measure how wizzled or how whomped the widgets have become during glomping, but in practice, all of these involve slowing down the glomping, and thus risking a fracturing of the widgets.  The relationship between theory and practice in widgetology indicates that questions of application and leadership are critical to improving outcomes but the professional framework of widgetology is poorly described.  In this Practitioner Thesis, I take an autoethnographic approach to my development as a thought and practice leader in whiffle-based widgetology. In this necessarily-insider research, I describe an action-based research approach to the development and implementation of a new glomping technique.  I describe the iterative development of a new approach which we call googa-glomping, that allows direct measurement of whifflization, a superior metric for assessing squiffle-readiness.  In a series of experiments on each of the five major types of widget, I show that in each case, googa-glomping runs faster than competing techniques, and produces glomped widgets that are perfect for squiffling. I report on these experiments through a quantitative approach, around which I wrap my qualitative reflections on the journey.  This new approach has dramatically reduced the cost of squiffled widgets without any loss of quality, and hence making mass production viable.  The articulation of a professional framework of practice for Whiffle-based Widgetology provides a sound basis for the professionalisation of this emergent area.