Controlling the temporal structure of the Introduction
Within the Introduction:
The historical context of the research and your initial motivations to do it will require past reference, e.g.
- Prior to this research, educational policy had required that...;
- I found that this particular group of students were unable to .....'
Whereas the description of the theoretical approach and how it is appropriate for the analysis might be in the recent past (present perfect) tense, e.g.
- A Postmodernist perspective has been adopted in this thesis.
- This theoretical framework has been chosen because...'
But the overview of following chapters is often in the present or future tense, e.g.
- Chapter Two contains a review of the literature relevant to this study...
In Chapter Two a review of the literature relevant to this study will be presented....