Rhetorical organization of the Peruvian thesis summary section of Master's in Education

Abstract

The abstract is a section of the thesis in which the investigative process followed is synthesized in a structured way. Its inclusion helps the reader to know briefly the content of the study, to motivate its reading and to the dissemination of its contributions. The objective of the present study is to describe the content and structure of the traditional abstract, as well as the textual and discursive elements of it. The study is basic, non-experimental descriptive design. Documentary analysis was used as a technique, which focused on the structural units of the abstracts according to their rhetorical organization. The sample is made up of 252 abstracts of Master thesis in Education from 11 Peruvian universities, digitized in the National Registry of Research Works (RENATI). The study is based on the proposal of analysis of the traditional abstracts made by Piqué-Nogueras and Camaño-Puig from the Weissberg & Buker; and Hyland models. Among the most significant results, there is a high variability in the structure and content of the abstracts analyzed. Based on these results, it is recommended that universities unify their editorial criteria in these sections.