How to Write for Positive Social Change

We may bandy around the term positive social change so much that it may start to feel like another requirement, another box to check on the long list of goals to reach before finishing a degree. Sometimes, in the thick of course work or individual research, you can start to lose sight of the forest among the trees. It is important, and even energizing, to step back and reflect on the ways that the work you do can have a real impact on the world around you, from the most personal all the way to the global level.

Putting things into words is the first step before turning those words into action. The writing you do at Walden is a way for consolidating and refining your vision for the change you want to see. That’s the powerful thing about writing: It gives us the chance to articulate not just what is, but what could be. In order to make a better world, we have to first imagine one.

If you are pursuing a degree at Walden University that requires you to complete a thesis, dissertation, or doctoral or project study, one essential element you are required to explain is how the whole undertaking contributes to positive social change. But what does that mean, exactly? “Making the world a better place” can seem like a vast and overly vague enterprise. You may feel overwhelmed by being asked to explain how what you’ve been doing at your desk, alone in the library, or on your computer in your precious free moments could amount to something that could change the course of other people’s lives—but that is exactly what you are meant to do.

image (c) http://www.besocialchange.com

Social Change Implications: Challenges and Approaches

One trap that writers can fall into is overstating the implications of their work to the point beyond what a generally informed reader would find logical. Be sure that the claims you make about your research fit the scope of what you can accomplish in a single study. If you are studying the relationship between effective management strategies and better client outcomes at a nonprofit organization for runaway adolescents, you will have a hard time convincingly arguing that your study will directly result in the eradication of teen homelessness worldwide—that’s a problem that is just too big for you to tackle alone. Remember that your study is one drop working together with many, many other drops all flowing in the same direction. Add up all those drops, and pretty soon you have a wave starting to carry things along.

The other mistake writers make is to understate or even diminish the study’s potential for positive impact for the very reason that the problem is too big for one person to take on; it’s just one little study, so how could it have any effect on how things get done in the rest of the world?

At a recent residency, a woman was describing to me her research proposal. She wanted to investigate strategies for helping kindergarten students in her school district who were underprepared at the beginning of the school year so that they would be better able to learn to read alongside their peers. “I’m really passionate about this issue,” she told me, “but I don’t know what it has to do with positive social change.”

Here’s the key to explaining your study’s implications for social change without over- or understating them—start with the tangible impact this new knowledge will bring and with the one individual or group of individuals you know will specifically benefit, and then see how far the wave crashes.

“Well,” I said to this student, “it might be helpful to start thinking about who would specifically benefit from your study and in what way.”

“You mean, why is it important for children to learn to read?” she said, sort of laughing.

Stopping to think through how her work was going to help the teachers and students in her study helped her see right away how those benefits could ripple out to the rest of the community. Strategies to improve literacy at an earlier age would help students achieve more success as they progressed through school, giving them more educational opportunities. Investigating the effective strategies could help educators bring the benefits to other schools and communities as well. No, she wasn’t going to solve the problems with literacy preparation in the education system in one study, but she was going to add an important drop to the wave moving things in that direction.

Creating a Wave of Positive Social Change, One Drop at a Time

I am proud of Walden’s commitment to promoting positive change in the world. Whether it is in discussions with colleagues or interactions with students, the feeling is utterly palpable that everyone is genuinely interested in leaving whatever they touch a little better than they found it. As students, you commit your time and resources and dedicate months—often, years—of your lives pursuing degrees and researching topics that you will then use to help those around you and others in your field to progress and improve.

If it starts to get hard to see how the research you’re doing could realistically change the course of human events, or how one letter to the editor or discussion post could realistically change another person’s mind, just remember that your voice is one voice among many. One little drop may not seem as if it can do much on its own, but the resulting waves can carve and re-carve the very surface of the globe.

Other posts you might like:

Global Days of Service Week is Coming! #IAmSocialChange
Writing for Change on Earth Day (and Every Day)

Seeing the variety of social change projects Walden students pursue is one of Dissertation Editor Lydia Lunning’s favorite parts of reading dissertations.