Writing a rationale

This resource provides a model for a way to present a rationale in writing and the linguistic communication that can exist used to signal yous are rationalising or justifying.

What is a rationale?

A rationale is when y'all are asked to give the reasoning or justification for an activeness or a choice yous make.

At that place is a focus on the 'why' in a rationale: why you lot chose to do something, study or focus on something. Information technology is a fix of statements of purpose and significance and oft addresses a gap or a need.

A rationale in Australian academic writing is rarely a whole chore by itself.  It is often a part of a bigger task. For example, a role of a lesson plan might be to provide a rationale for why y'all chose to teach item content or employ a certain resource or activity, or you may be asked to provide a rationale equally to why you chose a particular theory to apply or a concept to back up.

Y'all may be called upon to provide a rationale:

  • prior to an action or decision; why you program to do something and how, or

  • after you have acted or decided something; reflecting, looking dorsum, why you did something and how information technology worked or non.

You can employ linguistic communication to signal you are clearly providing a rationale in your writing. You can link your rationale to learning outcomes or aims for a lesson, activity or cess task.

A model: problem-solution-rationale

A rationale tin exist provided by offering longer essay-based support for why information technology is important to do something in a certain way – in that sense, a whole paper can exist a rationale.

Withal, a more specific or focused fashion of thinking about a rationale is how we can overtly evidence we are justifying our choices with the language we use.

One fashion of doing this is to consider the trouble or issue requiring attending, the solution and then the rationale or justification for the solution (the 'why'). This sets the rationale (the reason) within a context.

A diagnostic cess adamant that the students required more attention to addition and subtraction of mixed fractions. This activity intends to accost this problem past having the children engage with the chore with blocks earlier information technology is done with figures. The reason I chose to do this is because students have higher comprehension levels when presented with visual or tangible representations of abstract problems (Benson, 2016). I as well did this as I wanted to allow the children to 'play' with maths, to see that it can be a fun activity and in doing and so, to breakdown some of the 'anti-mathematics prejudices' that Gaines (2017, p. 4) talks about.

The important thing here is the language used to signal the rationale, in this case:

The reason I chose to do this is considering … and I also did this as …

Some other problem / solution / rationale instance:

Scaffolding is the support provided by the teacher or a significant other, such as a classmate, which helps students in learning (Gibbons, 2015). Some students were having difficulty with the linguistic communication at entry while others, especially those who had completed the pre-tasks, had few bug. Therefore, in club to address this disparity in level and understanding, mixed-ability pairs were created where the more competent pupil helped the other. On reflection, this was an effective style to run the activeness for two reasons: it allowed peer-to-peer teaching which solidified both students' understanding; and it scaffolded the support in a way that allowed me to roam the room lending advice to pairs every bit needed.

The linguistic communication used to signal our rationale in this case:

in order to and for 2 reasons …

Linguistic communication to indicate rationale

because

in social club to

equally

so that

therefore

the reason this was done/chosen …

for the following reason(s) …

for two/three reasons …

Language for further justification - showing importance

This was important / pregnant considering …

This meant that I could…

This enabled me to …

… which enabled / allowed me to…

… which pointed to / highlighted that / showed me that …

Final tip

The key thing to think most rationale writing is to stand up back from the writing, look at it in a big picture sense and ask yourself, 'Have I explained why?' If that is conspicuously articulated, you have provided a rationale.

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