Changing your master's thesis topic midway through writing - what to do with a chapter you've drafted

You have finished a chapter, but the school has withdrawn access to the data. Or a meeting with your supervisor has made it clear that the thesis needs to focus on one group and one problem. Your chapter may still be useful. Keep passages that explain concepts or support arguments you need to answer the new question. Rewrite the passages that need a different perspective. Set the rest aside in a separate file.

Start by making a copy of your draft. At the top of the copy, write down your original question, the proposed new question and the materials you have confirmed you can access. Then pick a few paragraphs from the finished chapter and make a note beside each one about how it could serve the new thesis. This gives you something concrete to discuss with your supervisor when you decide what needs rewriting and whether your proposal requires a formal change to an approved topic.

Has the title changed, or has the research question changed too?

Put the two versions of the project side by side. In each one, write down what you want to find out, which materials will help you and how you intend to study them. Then look at how much the new title changes. A small wording correction might leave all three answers intact. Replacing surveys with documents, or switching from the parents' perspective to the teachers' perspective, changes the basis for your answer even if much of the title sounds familiar.

How can you tell when you are clarifying a topic?

Imagine a working title such as “Communication between schools and parents.” From the start, you have planned to interview parents of pupils in years 1 to 3 at one primary school about their contact with their child's class teacher. You have confirmed that you can interview the parents. Adding the year groups, the parents' perspective and the focus on one school makes explicit a scope already set out in your outline. Your main task with the finished chapter is to check passages that go beyond that group and bring the wording into line with what you are studying.

If you originally planned to interview both parents and teachers and now have access only to parents, review the subsidiary questions. To compare how each group rates the contact, you need material from both groups. You can still investigate how parents describe the teachers' responses if you identify the source of those accounts in your discussion and conclusions. That change alone may affect the literature you need and the way you organise the analysis.

How can you tell when the project itself has changed?

“How do parents rate their contact with the class teacher?” asks about what parents experience and think. “How do schools set out the rules for contacting class teachers in their statutes?” asks about what the documents say. The first project needs parents' accounts. The second needs the relevant versions of the statutes and a way to compare their provisions. Communication remains the shared subject, but a paragraph about parents' satisfaction can no longer set up what your analysis will show.

You can see the difference in two everyday sentences. “I want to find out how parents experience the rules on contact” requires reaching parents. “I want to find out where and how schools set out the rules on contact” requires identifying the documents. If you still use the word “impact,” ask what evidence would let you link an observed change to a particular factor. For “effectiveness,” specify the aim or criterion and how you will measure whether it has been met. If you write about an “assessment,” say who is making it and what criteria they use. Marian Nowak (2025) links the choice of method to the subject and aim of a study. In practical terms, start by checking what kind of answer your material can support.

What if your supervisor suggests narrowing the scope?

Ask which boundary they want you to move. “Too broad” may refer to the number of schools, the range of year groups, the time period, the number of issues or what the thesis promises to explain. Bring two concrete options. In one, keep the group and focus on a single form of contact. In the other, keep several forms of contact and focus on one school. For each option, note what would come out of the finished chapter and what data you would still need. You can then agree on the boundary before you start removing subsections.

If you are narrowing the topic after collecting some material, record why you made the change and when it happened. Using a previously justified group or type of document, or limiting the scope because of access, is a different decision from keeping cases because the answers support a claim. Tell your supervisor what you have already gathered and what you have reviewed. You can then agree how to report the change and which parts of the material and analysis you can still use.

What can you do when a source of data falls through?

Identify exactly what you have lost. The school may be unable to share its electronic school register archive, while you already have permission to interview people. You may have lost contact with potential interviewees, while public documents remain available. Next to each source, write down which question it was meant to help answer. This will show whether you can narrow the project or need a different question that another source can answer.

Separate the material you have from the material you hope to get

For each set of notes or files, check whether you can open it, what it contains and whether you can use it in this project. Mark which material is already available for the agreed purpose, which is waiting for confirmation and which is unavailable. Put “it should be possible” in the second group. That way, your plan will not depend on a source whose content and terms of use you have yet to confirm.

Consider what the missing source was supposed to do. If its role was to provide background on the school, see whether you can answer your question with the remaining data and use another source for context. If you needed it to compare two groups or trace a change over time, the loss affects the main question. Before naming a substitute in your methods section, compare the scope, dates, how the material was produced and whose perspective it represents. A document issued in the same year by the same school may address a different issue.

If you have some data from an earlier stage, discuss with your supervisor why you collected it, what participants were told and what use you agreed with the school. If the research question or site changes, check whether you need further approval or arrangements with the university or the institution involved. Having notes, recordings or a working copy of correspondence does not in itself settle whether you can use them for the revised thesis. Start the conversation by describing the kind of material and what was agreed. Until you have a decision, you can mark its use in the plan as pending.

Consider three ways forward before rewriting the chapter

Keep the question and look for comparable material. This makes sense if you can obtain material that answers the same question. If one school drops out, check whether another does comparable work, serves the group named in the question and can give you the relevant data. Check whether your original project was about a particular school or a type of school. Changing sites in a study of a particular case may mean rebuilding the whole description of its context.

Narrow the question to the material you still have. If you planned to interview parents and class teachers and can confirm access only to class teachers, you could ask about the teachers' experiences. The perspective changes. Questions about what parents say and how the groups' answers differ have to come out. The literature on cooperation can still provide context. In the analysis, pay attention to your verbs. “Class teachers described difficulties agreeing on a time” reports what they said. “Parents made it difficult to agree on a time” makes a claim about a group whose own accounts you did not collect for this project.

Change the question and match it to material you can obtain. If you lose access to interviews or correspondence, you could examine official provisions if they matter to the problem and you can assemble a set of sufficiently comparable documents. Look at some examples while planning. Check whether they discuss contact, who published them and whether you can identify the version. If you have only brief notices announcing individual meetings, they may be enough to study how schools announce meetings. They give you little basis for describing the rules schools formally adopt for communicating with parents. Choose a question that matches the content you can see.

Mariola Pytlak (2024, pp. 129-130) identifies access to material and the time needed to complete the research as matters to discuss when changing a topic. For each option, write a sentence about the work it would involve. Sometimes a closely related topic means making new arrangements and doing more work than a project using a different kind of material. In other cases, narrowing the study to one group is enough and you can adapt the interview guide after discussing it. Compare feasibility, fit with your programme and the time needed to prepare a new analysis. The number of pages you have already written tells you how much you need to review.

How do you agree on a change with your supervisor and university?

Start by checking whether you have a working title or an approved topic. Check its status through the process used on your programme. At your meeting, ask about approval of the new question on academic grounds and find out who would update the university's records. If the topic is already registered in a university system, ask whether refining it requires an update to the title or a formal change of topic. Find out how you will know that the procedure is complete.

Prepare a comparison you can look through together

On one page, put down the original title and question, the reason for the change, the proposed title and question, the material you can access and the method. Add one example of something you would keep, something you would rewrite and something you would set aside. Attach a short passage from the original chapter if it helps show the scale of the revision. If the type of project is changing, say so clearly. For instance, “I propose analysing the content of documents because I have lost access to the correspondence” gives your supervisor more to work with than “I want to use sources.”

You could write to your supervisor like this:

Dear [Supervisor's name], the school has informed me that it cannot share the messages from its electronic register. For my current topic, I have drafted a chapter on cooperation between schools and parents and made notes on the method, but I did not receive any messages from the system. I would like to discuss analysing the rules on contact in the statutes of selected primary schools. In the attachment, I have outlined both questions, the available documents and the changes I would make to the chapter. Would this project meet the requirements of our thesis seminar? If so, could you tell me how to request a change to the approved topic on our programme and when I would receive confirmation?

Adapt the message to your case. If you are narrowing the scope after a meeting, describe the boundary you agreed on. If you have already collected some data, say so in one sentence and ask about using it. You can describe the material and how far you have got without attaching data about pupils, parents or school staff.

Where can you check the formal requirements?

Start with the current rules for completing your degree, the resolution applicable to your programme and any information for your cohort. Find out who submits the request, who approves it, the required format and deadline, and which details must match in the university system and in your thesis file. If the guidance does not cover changes to the wording of the title, ask the student office or the team named on your programme's website. Give both titles and say whether the question or method is changing. This lets the office advise you on your case.

The University of Warsaw's Faculty of Education publishes Resolution No. 20 of 20 May 2025, which covers several programmes including second-cycle Pedagogy. Its appendix explains how a topic is submitted for approval. It also allows changes to an approved topic in exceptional cases and requires the Teaching Council to approve the new topic. This example shows that discussing a proposal and obtaining approval may be separate steps. At your university, check the document that applies to your programme and the relevant period.

If your submission date is close, ask about the formal deadline in your first message. After the conversation, note which version you agreed on and what confirmation to expect. While a decision is pending, you can organise your references, compare public documents or identify paragraphs that would be useful in both versions. Finalise the title page and abstract once the scope is confirmed.

How can you review a finished chapter before rewriting it?

Read the chapter paragraph by paragraph with the new question beside you. In one sentence per paragraph, write down what it does. “Defines cooperation between the school and the family” identifies a function. “Is about cooperation” gives the subject. A paragraph might introduce a distinction, explain context, compare the findings of two studies or justify a category you will use in the analysis.

You make this outline from a draft you have already written. Cornell University's guide to reverse outlining suggests briefly summarising each paragraph and seeing how the paragraphs fit together. When changing a topic, add two columns to your notes: “What I can use it for” and “Decision.” After a few paragraphs, you might see that you still need a definition, while the next three paragraphs lead into a method you have dropped.

Keep a passage that still does the same job

Keep the paragraph if its content is accurate within the new scope, its reference supports the claim and the reader needs the information. This might be a definition of school-family cooperation or a distinction between sharing information and consulting parents. Check the first and last sentences. They often still refer to “the parents in this study” or introduce the analysis of a particular school. You may be able to keep the core and rewrite the sentence connecting it to the next part.

Try adding a note that starts “After reading this, the reader will be able to distinguish …”. If your answer is “individual consultations from group meetings” and both ideas matter to your analysis of the statutes, the passage has a clear purpose. If your answer is “learn more about education,” you may need to pin down what the paragraph does or move it to your notes. Sharing keywords with the title is only a starting point.

Rewrite a passage when the concept stays but its use changes

A passage on electronic school registers may still help if the revised research is about provisions describing channels for contact. Keep what helps the reader recognise a digital channel in a document and put it alongside the other forms of contact. Remove the lead-in to counting messages if you no longer have the correspondence. Add a sentence explaining how you will handle a statute that mentions only “electronic means of communication” without naming a platform. The paragraph then supports the new question.

Also check whether the earlier source supports the revised claim. A paper about teachers' experiences can help explain different understandings of cooperation. If you now write that “the statutes provide for” a specific form of contact, you need the relevant statute or another document that establishes the claim. Keep the earlier citation where it supports a statement about the literature. Then use the next sentence to move from the researchers' findings to what you plan to analyse.

Set aside a passage that answers the original question

Move the discussion of response-time measures into the archived copy if you will have no data on responses in the electronic register. Do the same with material about the effectiveness of digital channels if the new thesis only describes formal provisions and has no use for that context. Briefly record your reason. If your supervisor asks what happened to a section, you will be able to show why it no longer serves the question.

You may set aside a whole subsection and keep a definition and two references. In that case, make a note about what each retained item does. Check each claim and reference before moving a block of text into the revised chapter. The opening sentence may fit the title while the rest of the passage carries over an old promise or adds references that none of the new text uses.

Split a paragraph that is doing two jobs

Sometimes the first two sentences define a consultation and the rest discuss parents' perceptions of how available class teachers are, based on interviews reported in someone else's study. For a thesis about statutes, the first part may help you define a category. The second might serve as a sentence in the discussion of limitations if you want to show how an observation about a document differs from a conclusion about experience. If that distinction adds nothing to your discussion, set the second part aside altogether.

There is no target percentage for how much of the original chapter you need to keep. A short definition can save you work if it comes from a verified source and supports the method. Ten pages on the previous way of collecting data may all have to go into the archived draft. Track progress by completed decisions: which concepts are explained, which references still support the text and which missing passages you need to write.

An example from pedagogy. How can you reuse a chapter after losing access to an electronic school register?

In this fictional example, Lena is writing a master's thesis in pedagogy. The titles, notes, sample provision and decisions were created for this guide. They show how she could plan the thesis before analysing any data. The example involves no actual school or research participant.

What had Lena already prepared?

Her original title was “Contact between class teachers in years 1 to 3 and parents through the electronic register at one primary school.” Her question was what issues the teachers and parents raised in messages about pupils' day-to-day school life in those years. Lena planned to describe the exchanges using messages from an agreed period. She needed access to threads that included both sides of the conversation.

She already had a theory chapter on cooperation between schools and families. It started with a definition, went on to discuss sharing information and consultations, and then focused on the electronic register. The last few pages led into the proposed analysis of the messages. Lena also had a draft methods section with topics to look for, such as the kind of issue, who initiated contact and how the other person responded. She had notes from the literature and references to the official statutes of several schools. The statutes were initially there to help her describe the institutional context.

She had written notes such as these:

• “Cooperation takes several forms. One is sharing information about a pupil's situation.”
• “In the messages, check who starts the exchange, what they raise and how the other person responds.”
• “When reading a provision in a statute, check whether it names a specific channel or leaves the decision to a separate arrangement.”

Before releasing any messages, the school informed Lena that it would not share its electronic register archive for this project. She had downloaded no messages. She still had proposed categories for the analysis and a chapter explaining why she wanted to examine the exchanges.

How did she choose the new question?

Lena first checked whether she had a realistic chance of obtaining comparable material from another school. She had no confirmed way to access it at the planning stage. She considered asking class teachers about their experiences. That would have meant recruiting participants and making separate arrangements. It would also have given her the teachers' accounts of the exchanges. In the original project, she had intended to analyse the exchanges themselves. Public school statutes were among the materials she could review. They gave her a way to study another aspect of communication: the rules schools set out in their documents.

She put together the following proposal for her supervisor:

• Topic: “Rules for contact between schools and parents in the statutes of selected public primary schools.”
• Main question: “How do the statutes of selected public primary schools describe the channels, circumstances and people involved in contact between schools and parents?”
• Aim: To describe and compare how the selected documents set out these rules.
• Material: Publicly available versions of primary school statutes from one area. The analysis will cover specific documents whose origin and version can be established using a defined selection rule.
• Method: Qualitative content analysis of the statutes. Lena will describe the types of provision that appear and how they are worded. For each observation, she will be able to point to the document and passage that support it.

The original focus on years 1 to 3 suited a question about messages from the class teachers of those year groups. When Lena looked through a few statutes, she noticed a possible problem: the rules might apply across the whole school, without distinguishing between year groups. In her proposal, she therefore studies rules at school level. If a statute contains a provision specifically for years 1 to 3, she can note its narrower scope. She will describe provisions of general application at the level of detail the document provides. That decision changes the theory chapter too. The discussion of communication in early primary education can stay in the notes or appear only where it helps explain the scope of a particular document.

How does Lena select the documents and literature?

First she defines the area, for example one municipality, and checks which public schools fall within the scope. She then looks for the statutes on school websites or in Poland's Public Information Bulletin, known as BIP. She records the date of access, the name of the school, where the statute was published, its title and the details she needs to identify the version. If the statute and its amendments have been published separately, she checks whether she can establish the full wording under her selection rule. When she cannot identify the relevant version, she records why she left it out. She applies the same selection rule regardless of how many relevant provisions a school has.

Before settling on the final set of documents, Lena wants to check with her supervisor that it is accessible and sufficiently comparable. A statute may describe contact differently from a separate policy or a notice for parents. Her proposal focuses on statutes, so she will record wording such as “the details are set out in a separate policy” as a cross-reference. If her supervisor suggests that the question should cover those policies too, they will need a new selection rule. Including one policy because it is easy to find while leaving out equivalent documents from other schools could distort the comparison.

Lena also distinguishes three ways she will use sources:

• Research on school-family cooperation. Małgorzata Zalewska-Bujak's article (2020) helps Lena name different forms of cooperation and see how a study's account of the relationship depends on whose perspective it includes. Zalewska-Bujak based her analysis on interviews with women teachers. Lena can use the article for background and to discuss the scope of that kind of study.
• Research on method. Karolina Szczepaniak (2012) uses newspaper articles to show how to justify selecting texts, define categories and connect interpretations to specific passages. Lena applies those steps to a different type of material and explains her own inclusion criteria and approach to reading the statutes.
• Documents Lena will analyse. The set consists of statutes that meet the agreed criteria. Each claim about the contents of a statute can be traced to the version Lena used and the relevant provision, for example a numbered section and paragraph.

The distinction helps her handle references when rewriting. If a paragraph discusses forms of cooperation described in the research literature, the reference goes to the research paper. If a paragraph shows how a particular statute describes consultations, the reference goes to that statute. To explain how she created her categories, Lena needs both sources on method and an account of her own decisions.

What does she take from the original chapter?

Lena works through her outline and makes one decision for each part:

1. She keeps the definition of school-family cooperation. The concept still helps organise the thesis. She adds that her project focuses on how particular forms of contact are described in formal documents.
2. She keeps the distinction between sharing information and consulting parents. It will help her define categories. If a document only gives the date of a meeting, Lena will describe the provision as written. If it also provides for discussion and agreement, she can record consultation as well.
3. She rewrites the section on the electronic register. In the revised thesis, a digital channel is one form of contact alongside an in-person meeting or a telephone call. She needs concepts that help her identify what the statutes say. Comparing the effectiveness of the channels falls outside that task.
4. She sets aside the description of message exchanges and the measures of response. Questions about who actually starts a conversation and how quickly the other person replies depended on having the messages. A short note about this limit can stay in the chapter on documents.
5. She moves her notes on reading statutes into the new methods section. They were a brief note about context in the original project. In the revised project, she will turn them into rules for identifying channels and participants and for recording differences in how much detail the documents provide.

Lena can now draft the revised chapter from her own work. She has the concepts she needs and has sorted out the references. She knows where to look for new sources and which earlier passages will stay in the archived copy.

What might the same paragraph look like before and after revision?

Before the topic change, from the fictional draft:

Individual contact is one form of cooperation between class teachers and parents. It can involve sharing information about a pupil or agreeing on what to do next. This thesis focuses on individual contact through the electronic school register. Analysing message threads will help me describe who starts the exchange, what issues are raised and how the other person responds.

After the topic change, from the fictional draft:

Individual contact can help parents and school staff share information about a pupil or agree on what to do next. In this study, the distinction will help me describe provisions on contact in school statutes. If a statute names a means of communication, I will record the channel. If it also specifies who can raise an issue and under what circumstances, I will record those details too. The analysis will show how much information each document provides.

The first version makes a case for looking at actual exchanges. The revised version leads into features Lena can identify in a statute. The distinction between sharing information and agreeing on action stays. The promise to reconstruct a person's response is gone because the statute only tells her how the rules are described. In a real thesis, the sentence defining forms of cooperation would need a reference to the literature the writer drew on. The methods section would also need to explain the rules for classifying the text and give examples.

What does Lena put in the research plan?

Before discussing the full set of documents, Lena tries out a short analysis. Her initial categories cover the channel of contact, the person or role identified in the document and the circumstances in which contact is provided for. One possible unit of analysis is a numbered paragraph of a statute that describes a way to make contact. If the wording depends on neighbouring provisions or a cross-reference, she reads them together and notes their exact locations. If a provision mentions two channels, she can mark both. If it names one, she records the one the text identifies.

Here is a fictional provision for the exercise: “Parents may arrange a consultation with the class teacher through the school office.” In her notes, Lena would record a consultation as the type of contact, a parent as the person entitled to arrange it, the class teacher as the person they would speak to and the school office as the route for booking. The wording gives no indication of whether the consultation happens by phone, in person or online. She would mark the form of the consultation as unspecified in that provision. This lets her distinguish between a document that explains how to arrange an appointment and a document that also specifies the form of the appointment.

If the initial reading turns up wording such as “parents contact the school using the established channels,” Lena can add a separate category for general references to channels. She then goes back over the documents she has already reviewed and applies the same rule. If a passage is ambiguous, she records the reason she assigned it to a category or flags it for review. The notes give her a way to trace her conclusions back to the text.

Lena uses these decisions to draw up her thesis plan:

1. Introduction. Explain what the revised thesis aims to find out, which schools and documents it covers and why formal rules on contact matter in pedagogy.
2. Cooperation between schools and families. Define cooperation and discuss the forms of contact relevant to the analysis. Explain how formal rules and school documents help set a framework for communication.
3. Material and method. Describe the rule for selecting schools, how versions of statutes will be established, the unit of analysis, the categories and how to handle general provisions or cross-references.
4. Analysis and discussion. Describe how the statutes set out channels, circumstances and the people involved. Support each comparison with specific passages from the documents.
5. Conclusions. Answer the question about how the selected statutes describe the rules and discuss the limits of the material. Establishing how people actually use the channels would require a different source.

When Lena talks to her supervisor, she brings both questions, the proposed set of documents and the revised paragraph. She explains that her original topic was already approved and checks what procedure applies. Once she receives confirmation, she updates the title, aim and method in a single version of the outline. If it turns out she cannot establish which versions of the statutes apply in the selected area, she discusses the limits of the material again. The plan depends on whether the documents can be assembled and whether the proposed method meets the requirements of her seminar.

What if the project changes at a later stage than Lena's?

The further along you are, the more it helps to record the order in which you made decisions. You can review the theory chapter at any stage and decide what to keep, rewrite or set aside. Data, preliminary analysis and material from participants need their own review.

You have data from a pilot or from part of the study

Start by describing why you collected the material. A pilot is a trial before the main study. It can show that a question is unclear, that an important response option is missing or that participants understand a concept differently from the way you expected. If the instrument or question changes after the pilot, discuss with your supervisor what you can use the earlier material for. It may help you describe how the study was prepared while still leaving you in need of new material for the main question. Check whether comparing the two sets of data would still make sense if the results turned out differently from what you expected.

If you have conducted some interviews and are unsure about reaching the remaining participants, describe the scope of what you have. Record who it covers and which perspectives are missing. If you want to narrow your question based on the available material, explain why and how that affects your interpretation. In the submitted version, readers should be able to understand the order in which you made decisions and what the final analysis rests on.

You have already calculated results for the original scope

Open the description of your analysis and compare the revised questions with what you actually calculated. If the change involves including or excluding a particular group, the results refer to a different set of data. Check the sample size, which observations were included and how you handled missing values. If you drop a comparison between two groups, set that result aside and see what the data can tell you about the remaining group on its own. Your conclusions, abstract and figures all need to refer to the same population or sample as the results.

If the new question emerged after you saw the results, keep the earlier analysis plan and identify what changed. You can discuss a new observation as the result of exploring further relationships if your approach and data support that. State when you came up with the question so the reader can understand how the analysis developed.

You are changing an empirical thesis into a theoretical thesis

First check whether your programme allows this change and what kind of contribution your seminar requires. For instance, the Institute of Pedagogy at the University of Wrocław describes theoretical and empirical master's theses separately. It gives examples of how students can bring an original approach to organising knowledge in a theoretical thesis. For empirical theses, it includes choosing a method to fit the research design. An empirical thesis analyses research material. Depending on the project, you might collect it yourself or analyse existing material. A theoretical thesis develops a reasoned account of a problem using the literature or other sources appropriate to that kind of thesis. The change calls for a revised question, a way to select sources and a plan for comparing them. Tell your supervisor what you intend to contribute. For instance, you could organise different positions on one problem and assess the evidence behind each argument.

The original theory chapter can give you a starting point. Review the literature with the revised question in mind. If you previously explained a concept in two paragraphs so you could justify a survey, a theoretical thesis may require comparing several definitions or uses of that concept. Identify where a change to the introduction will do and where you need to build an argument and find sources to support it.

In what order should you revise the draft after approval?

Start with the decisions the rest of the work depends on. Put the approved topic, main question, material and method in one outline. Then decide what each subsection will do and identify what you are taking from the earlier version. After that, work through the sentences, style and final formatting. If time is short, discuss the revised requirements and deadlines before spending hours editing the original file.

It can help to give each stage a concrete result:

• After reviewing the material, you have a list of sources you can use and a decision about what to do if some material is unavailable.
• After agreeing on the topic, you have a written question and plan and know what confirmation your programme requires.
• After revising the theory, you can say which concept, question or part of the method each subsection supports. You also have a list of sources to find, in place of a vague note to “add more theory.”
• After revising the method, you can explain where the material comes from, how you selected it and how you will use it to answer the question.
• After the analysis, you check whether your conclusions are supported by the material and whether they stay within the scope of the title and introduction.

Where is the old topic most likely to linger?

Go through the thesis in the order a reader would. Start with the title page, contents, introduction and aim. Then check the headings, figure captions, names of the groups in the study, subsidiary questions and explanation of how you selected the material. Near the end, read the conclusions and abstract, including any other language version your university requires. Finally, match the references in the text to the bibliography and review the appendices. You may find an old questionnaire that the current project no longer uses.

Search the draft for distinctive words from the earlier version. Lena might search for “messages,” “response” and “years 1 to 3.” Read the sentences around each match. “Electronic school register” may still be the correct name of a channel if a statute mentions it. “Response time in the electronic school register” still points to an analysis that would require the messages. Searching helps you locate passages that need a decision. What the sentence does determines whether you keep it.

How do you check that the revised plan fits together?

Read three sentences of your own in order: “My question is about …”, “I am looking for the answer in …”, and “On that basis, I can establish …”. For Lena, those are a question about how the rules for contact are written, a selected set of statutes and a comparison of their provisions. If the third sentence turns into an assessment of parents' satisfaction, she would need information about parents' experiences. At that point, she can narrow the conclusion to the documents or discuss using a different kind of material.

Check whether everything you have kept from the original chapter still belongs in one chapter. Several definitions may stay in the theory, a distinction may move into the methods section, and a longer description of the context may fit in the discussion or your notes. Choose the chapter title once you know what the chapter contains. Finally, compare the file you will submit with the approved title and most recently agreed plan. If you can say what the material will let you find out and why you need each passage you have kept, you can carry on with the revised draft.

Sources

• Institute of Pedagogy, University of Wrocław. (n.d.). Dyplomowanie [Degree completion]. Section “Prace magisterskie” [Master's theses].
• John S. Knight Institute for Writing in the Disciplines, Cornell University. (n.d.). Reverse Outlining. Writing guide.
• Nowak, M. (2025). Metodologia i metodologie w badaniach pedagogicznych dla uzyskania danych obiektywnych/prawdziwych/ważnych. In A. Korzeniecka-Bondar, B. Kunat and K. Szorc (Eds.), Od ogólnej metodologii nauk do praktyk badawczych w pedagogice (pp. 25-40). University of Białystok Press. DOI: 10.15290/omnpbp.2025.04.
• Pytlak, M. (2024). Jak (na)pisać pracę dyplomową. Odpowiedzi na pytania zawsze zadawane w procesie tworzenia pracy dyplomowej (pp. 129-130). Wydawnictwo Naukowe Akademii Nauk Stosowanych im. Haliny Konopackiej.
• Teaching Council responsible for Pedagogy and related programmes, Faculty of Education, University of Warsaw. (2025). Uchwała nr 20 z dnia 20.05.2025 r. w sprawie procesu dyplomowania [Resolution No. 20 of 20 May 2025 on degree completion] for specified second-cycle programmes, Appendix 1, Part I, points 7-10 and 14.
• Szczepaniak, K. (2012). Zastosowanie analizy treści w badaniach artykułów prasowych – refleksje metodologiczne. Acta Universitatis Lodziensis. Folia Sociologica, 42, 83-112.
• Zalewska-Bujak, M. (2020). Współpraca nauczycieli z rodzicami uczniów – przez pryzmat nauczycielskich narracji. Kwartalnik Pedagogiczny, 65(2), 154-176. DOI: 10.31338/2657-6007.kp.2020-2.9.