Some changes in thought regarding the themes I anticipated revealing through my study on Honors Scholars: Challenge is a great motivator to these students and will be explored through the literature in the final writeup, while Hope Theory seems to be unrelated to the ways in which these students move through the world and articulate their thoughts about success and achieving. I am beginning to see that in order to need hope, a student must at some point either lack hope or experience the kind of setbacks that require the instilling of hopefullness. I will have to throw that part of my theorizing out and continue to mine the themes for other ties to literature.
I find this part of the study really difficult, as I feel I don't know enough to know even what it is that I don't know! This also helps me to understand the type of silo-ed expertise that tends to develop as good thinkers follow only one line of discovery - Carol Dweck looking at mindsets or Barbara Fredrickson examining the elements that undergird her Broaden and Buiild theory. Unless one becomes expert in one specific area there is just too much literature to grasp and synthesize in relation to new areas of exploration.
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Thanks for this post. Remind me again, are you conducting grounded theory? In times like this, I see why GT purists talk about not having any literature review before their data are collected. It sounds like these scholars would in fact maintain a growth mindset as Dweck talks about, given that they rise to challenges. Strengths scholars might vies these scholars as having competition, or achiever in their top five (I am unfamiliar with the strengths literature, but it might be the way some of my colleagues might think). I appreciate your honesty in sharing what you find difficult. You are right in that you are aleady recognizing a key aspect of academia, that scholars with a particular epistemology tend to view the world consustently from their own lens.
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