The problem with academic focus is that it leads you where you plan to go. This is a problem because when you get there you may find your destination isn’t that interesting. In fact, scholarships are not about executing plans effectively, but about exploring the terrain and developing the plans guaranteed by the plans you find in that terrain.
The issue of scholarship behavior in particular is really just an extension of our understanding of writing behavior. That is, writing is not a process of explaining an argument embedded in the outline, but rather a process of discovering what that argument should be. If your paper follows your outline from beginning to end, it’s obvious that you haven’t learned anything yet in the process of writing the paper. You find what you want, not what you actually wait to find.
This reminds me of a question, my friend David Angus once asked candidates for faculty at the University of Michigan School of Education: “Tell me that your research forced you to give up an idea of really caring.” If you find some disturbing thoughts, it means you are really learning something while you are doing your learning process. This, in turn, suggests that readers may learn something from reading papers on the topic, rather than just confirming previous opinions.
Scholars need an intellectual starting point for research, an established conceptual framework that provides us with a promising approach to entering the space for complex intellectual problems. However, the danger is trapped within the scope of the conceptual framework in order to determine the way we draw conclusions. Instead, we need to open up the possibilities that we like to adapt to the data needs we encounter. Maybe we need to add other perspectives to this framework, or adjust or even discard parts that seem to be not verified by the data at hand. After all, making mistakes and then correcting them based on the evidence is at the heart of what we call science.
The need to be open to perspectives beyond the scope of the conceptual framework we have established is what requires us to deploy a peripheral vision. As I once told my students, the book you are looking for may not be the one you need to read, and this may be a few books on the bookshelf. In this way, as each study pushes you in a new direction, scholarships become a process of constantly evolving conceptual frameworks. This can make academic pursuits so exciting because you have problems, your current perspective cannot be solved and construct a new perspective that allows you to move forward to develop the argument. You can’t predict where it ends up, but you’ll know it’s going to be fun – it’s fun for you and for the reader.
