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Posts Tagged ‘PhD’

  1. Step by step, animal by animal: The first year of my PhD

    18 December 2019 by shartley

    Andy, the kitten

    A dog chasing its tail

    My PhD topic is about investigating enterprise education via three case study schools. I thought coming up with a topic and presenting it in a formal proposal process was going to be the great significant start to my PhD with everything ready to rock and roll from there. I was wrong.

    In February, I presented my supervisors with my research concept and then they suggested trying a different angle. I spent a couple of weeks pulling that idea together and then at the next meeting, it was decided a slightly different approach would be better, so again, I spent two weeks twisting the words and concepts around. This pattern continued for over two months when finally we landed back to where we started. I sat in that meeting, feeling like my jaw was on the floor. I’m not sure they were aware just how much we were back at the original idea I presented. Yes, it was a little annoying. However, there were many benefits from taking this circuitous journey. It meant other options could be discounted; it meant my supervisors knew I had thought long and hard about what I was doing; and it helped to clarify and hone the concept. I then had just a few weeks to put together my written proposal and then my presentation.

    Sharks

    In early May I pitched my PhD proposal to a boardroom of academics and supportive fellow PhD students. I normally make presentations with just some sketched out notes in my hand but this time I had the whole speech written out and I read it almost to the letter. I needed to do it this way to make sure I didn’t miss anything. I think I still kept a reasonable amount of eye contact and I strangely felt the comfort of knowing I was doing a much better job than I had a year earlier with my Master of Research (MRES) proposal. This time I understood more academic theory and addressed theoretical frameworks in detail. During the Q&A session at the end, an academic commented how different I was this time and asked if I could explain. At the MRES proposal I employed a tactic to overcome nerves by being an exuberant presenter, I suppose to compensate for the weaknesses I felt academically. I basically replied to this effect and a sage nod was returned by the academic.

    When the general Q&A was over, five people remained with me: the coordinator of PhD students in Education, my supervisors and my two official reviewers (academics) who had gone through the written version in detail before the presentation. By this time I was exhausted but had to concentrate hard to absorb the feedback being given. The funniest moment was when one of the reviewers said there were a lot of fins in my proposal. My brain did a word association of fins to sharks but couldn’t understand what he meant about sharks circling around my work. He repeated the statement. I was still bamboozled. The third time he changed his wording slightly and I suddenly realised he meant I referenced a lot of Finns, academics from Finland!

    Overall the advice was very helpful and the PhD coordinator (who I hardly knew at this point but have come to deeply appreciate) was probably the most practical help. Again my befuddled brain had trouble comprehending what was being said. Eventually I understood she had a brilliant idea for my budget timing. You see, at my university, we PhD candidates have up to $3000 each year to fund our research and my research was going to involve a lot of travel. She suggested that I book as much as I can in 2019 for travel in 2020, otherwise I’d be considerably out of pocket in 2020. This was great advice but is my current headache. More on that later.

    A kitten

    There are four levels of feedback classifications for a PhD proposal. The first is an all clear, full steam ahead with what you proposed. The second is that the proposal is accepted with some minor changes that the supervisors oversee and the reviewers sign-off. The third level requires major changes that the reviewers must examine in detail. And the last brings into question whether you should be doing your PhD at all. My proposal received the second level. My supervisors tried to comfort me about not reaching the top level but I didn’t need comforting. Actually, I was very happy. I knew that my study was always going to be too complicated for an easy approval and also, my reviewers had been chosen specifically to provide thorough feedback. When I looked back at my reaction, I realised the MRES journey had prepared me well for ego bruising in the quest for perfection. My supervisors want what’s best for my PhD, not what’s going to soothe my ego in the short term. I adopted a kitten on the way home as a reward and a comfort. And indeed he has become an amazing companion.

    I took less than a fortnight to make the required changes to my proposal and thought, right, I’m on my way. But no, ethics approval hurdle was next.

    Humans

    When your research involves contact with other humans, approval from a university ethics committee is required. It took some time to put the ethics application together. Almost all students and staff who have been through the process complain bitterly about it. However, I didn’t mind it so much (and no, I haven’t been drinking). Having to spell everything out for ethics approval makes you think in more practical terms the very act of going around, actually doing your research. It was tedious putting together the numerous participant information and consent forms for everyone who is going to be involved in my research but a necessary evil. I had been warned to complete the application form in a Word document because the new online system was shaky and rumour told of people who kept losing their work in the process. The only online issue I had was not receiving the supposed automated email when they had completed the review. I deeply felt the loss of two weeks in which I could have been moving forward. I was able to reasonably quickly address the 20 items brought to my attention and thankfully, the committee then gave their approval within a day or so.

    Right, I thought, the hardest part is over, I can move onto recruiting my three case study schools.

    Kelpie

    Sending emails, reminder emails, playing phone tag, seeking more ethics approval and employing other communication methods to recruit three case study schools made me feel like an online sheepdog. I know from experience how busy teaching can be but when you are the one being overlooked, it is hard to be patient. One school, where my contact was the principal, was great. He agreed to the study almost from the first instance but first I had to go through their school system’s ethics process. After doing the ethics application for uni, this one wasn’t so hard and they were quite prompt at approving too. One down, two to go.

    I had to send a few reminder emails to my contact at another school but eventually I received the go ahead to go through their school system’s ethics process. This was even quicker than the one before and after more patient waiting, the principal signed up. Two down, one to go.

    The school I wanted most of all was very slow at returning email, although better than the school who didn’t reply at all to my two attempts. As I waited for this school I managed to contact another and talked over the phone to the enterprise coordinator. Their program wasn’t as big as I hoped and wondered if I was doing the wrong thing when I said they weren’t appropriate as a case study school. I did say I’d like to stay in contact though. I might end up interviewing the coordinator as an additional voice in the enterprise education story. At last, right at the end of the school year, the principal of the school I wanted, signed on the dotted line with the university’s ethics approval being sufficient.

    Right, the tough part, recruitment, was over. Now I could really begin.

    A flying kangaroo

    By the time the third school had signed up I had already sat down with the first school for a planning meeting and had scheduled a day with the second school. The first planning meeting was another moment where I felt, finally, the PhD had really commenced. Despite all my nerves beforehand, I had a really enjoyable and productive chat with the principal and we put some plans in place. Phew!

    The day booked with the second school was interstate so I flew there and back. Unfortunately I travelled not by the flying kangaroo, Qantas, but by Jetstar. I’m a bit of a snob when it comes to airlines and I have lounge access with Qantas so I was disappointed to be flying out of the wrong terminal, not that I had time anyway, due to the awfully long queues. For the return trip, the queues were even worse because Jetstar’s IT system was down, resulting in a two hour delay and only 10 minutes to scoff breakfast in the lounge. I’m lucky that I have a brother to provide free accommodation reasonably near this school but have to keep the visit short so I don’t have too much personal time reduce the university funding. This visit was not only for a planning meeting but to conduct my first three interviews too. My primary, hands-on, practical research was actually commencing; ten months after my PhD officially started, seven months after the proposal. This was also nerve wracking. As I sat in the school’s boardroom, interviewing and planning next year with the three key people involved in the enterprise education of the school, at times I felt spaced out and overwhelmed but also excited. The PhD was actually happening!

    I now have to transcribe the interviews which I recorded on three different devices to determine which would be best for future interviews. Of course it had nothing to do with my phone running out of juice, or the Handy Recorder not working without being plugged into power (turns out, through poor communication between my husband and myself, it had no batteries in it at all).

    A budgie

    The most difficult time I’m having right now is budgie, I mean budget, related. Since it took so long to recruit schools and have initial meetings with them (not that I’ve met with the third school yet), I haven’t been able to book any travel for next year. The first school that was so quick to become a part of my study is local, so no expense against my budget there. The other two schools are interstate. The planning meeting last week allowed me to schedule dates for the observation phase of my research. All my schools conduct enterprise education on a weekly basis which is good in terms of a consistent approach by the schools but bad for my budget because I will need to be a bird, flying in and out of two other states. I tried to book five trips (10 flights) through the arduous bureaucratic process that is administration at university as soon as I could. First they said bookings made for next year counted against next year’s budget, not the current year. I told them how the PhD Coordinator had informed me otherwise. Then they said they were too busy to arrange all the travel I’d requested. Then when I asked for just one or two trips to be booked before the end of the year, I was just told no, I had to wait until next year.

    Well, over the weekend I stewed about it and did my sums, calculating at least $6000 in travel next year, so if I could move $2500 to this year’s budget instead of being out of my own pocket, I was damn well going to fight for it. I sent an email to my supervisor and admin, begging for the trips to be pushed through. An automatic reply informed me the head of admin for the department had left the university. Forever. No wonder she had squashed the idea! I am now waiting for her assistant and my supervisor to respond, hoping against all hope these flights will be booked.

    Ding! My email alert. Just as I was writing that last paragraph. Good news? I see the words “We are pleased to advise…” and I am joyous. And then my heart sinks. It is only to declare that I have been deemed to have made satisfactory progress in my Annual Progress Review (APR), on the basis of a form my supervisor and I submitted months ago.

    The APR report mentions something about the confusion with my scholarship. Last year I had a scholarship. Word was that if you achieved at least 85 marks for your MRES thesis you kept the scholarship. I received an 89. Woohoo! But no, I found out a month after receiving my result, that it wasn’t the case. I should have read the fine print of the scholarship rules and regulations more closely. These days the government scholarship is worked out on a competitive basis across the university and I was informed it was a particularly competitive year. Doom and gloom took hold! I worked more in casual teaching to pull in some extra money but it was far short of what we thought we were going to have to help pay the mortgage on our new house.

    Then, in July, I received a call to say I was going to have the scholarship again but just for Semester 2, funded by the university. It took two months for payments to actually start, with backpay, and then I was told it was now approved for the duration of my PhD, assuming I submit according to the scheduled due date (February 2022). Then, just this week, I was told I had now moved from a department university funded scholarship to a government funded scholarship, the same as I was on in the first place. Now hasn’t that been a fun ride!

    Slug

    The key moments of my PhD this year have been significant but otherwise I feel I have been rather sluggish in approach, particularly compared to the intensity of my MRES. For instance, I have been periodically working on a systematic literature review but with no looming deadline, I have done a rather poor job of it. Particularly now I have written this piece, I know I have accomplished a lot but I feel I’ve let myself down when it comes to keeping up with this literature review and reading in general. I am going to turn this sluggish approach to slugging it out as soon as I can in the new year. See what I did there! Haha.

    Wish me luck!

    I wonder what animals will link to my PhD next year.


  2. Education – my thinking

    12 November 2018 by shartley

    I was recently challenged by someone to add more of my own thinking to this blog, given that recently it has been more about other people’s voices. So sitting in my gorgeous hotel in Bath, occasionally looking out the window (view in image above) for moments of contemplation, I have bashed out where my head is currently at re education and my PhD. By the way, for my more general thoughts, less education related, I have a writing blog too. Often the lines blur so the decision as to where to post can be quite the quandary.

    So here goes.

    I am passionate and quite emotionally tied up with:

    1. Students’ gaining agency through education so they feel empowered to make choices and decisions about their own lives and believe they can have an impact on the people, communities and societies around them.
    2. Creating a broad curriculum that students value and engage in.
    3. Implementing pedagogy that enables students to value and engage with the curriculum.
    4. This generally means the curriculum needs to be relevant to real life in terms of what is being learnt, how it is learnt and how it is assessed.
    5. Also means that there is a need to not only focus on students’ attainment on knowledge but also their development of skills, attributes, competencies, capabilities, and other closely related terms.
    6. Breaking down the restrictions, barriers and the risk levels teachers feel, to enable students to learn and acquire the knowledge, skills and attributes they need now and into the future.

     

    Thus, there are several areas in education that really make me angry and frustrated.

    1. Teachers who just want to deliver information to compliant students.
    2. People outside the profession who think education is merely about delivering information to compliant students.
    3. The lack of recognition that to do more than deliver information takes time and energy.
    4. The teachers who think their innovative teaching method is the one and only way. Teaching needs to be fit for purpose.
    5. Schools that promote themselves as being a “PBL school” or some other particular method of learning annoys the hell out of me. Teaching needs to be fit for purpose.
    6. Students and their families who focus on the final grade at the end of over a decade of education and not appreciating learning for its own sake. This is exemplified by students who say “just tell me what I need to know”.
    7. Schools and teachers who cater to students and families’ single-minded focus on grades and/or want to maintain an outdated image of compliant students sitting in rows, working in silence.
    8. The confines of prescribed curriculum reducing teaching to a tick-box approach to covering material.
    9. Curriculum that claims in overarching statements at the front of documents that they are achieving a range of knowledge, skills and attributes through that curriculum and then in the back end, reduce teaching to be mainly about the mere delivery of knowledge.
    10. Dichotomies in education that reduce concepts to either/or concepts. I am sometimes guilty of buying into some of them in my research and writing. I am particular against the ideas of traditional versus progressive teaching and knowledge versus skills and attributes. Again, it’s about teaching that is fit for purpose. Fit for the knowledge, skills and attributes being sought, fit for the students undertaking the learning and fit for the context and available resources.
    11. The terms “non-cognitive skills” and “soft skills”, as if leadership, creativity, interpersonal skills and so on, do not require thinking and hard work to develop and improve.
    12. The term “21st century skills”, as if these skills have only been needed for the last 18 years and not before. How ridiculous!
    13. Socio-economic inequities in education. I have worked in four private schools with various level of fees and funds to expend. My own children went to private schools for the most part. Despite my own actions and behaviour, I desperately want public schools to be better resourced. Technology adds to the socio-economic gap in education and yet I am still an advocate for technology in teaching because it is such an integral part of our lives. I worry how much education adds to income inequality in our society.
    14. Other inequities in education that occur on the basis of gender, race, learning difficulties and much more.
    15. STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) currently being valued so much more than the Humanities. Is it really to cater for a job market (and thereby treating education as the mere creation of human capital)? Or is it about reducing the amount of critical thinking about societies, communities and the people within them?
    16. The treatment of education as if it is about producing human capital. I will acknowledge there is an element of that occurring because it is inescapable in a capitalist society but there is so much more to education than this!

     

    This thinking informs the research I want to undertake for my PhD.  It has led me to Enterprise Education which has the potential to encompass all that I desire in education. I also resist the wholesale embracing of capitalism and therefore would prefer if Enterprise Education did not overly feature entrepreneurship and financial gains. To me, Enterprise Education is about developing students’ enterprising skills and attributes in the broadest sense, allowing all students to flourish. I want to discover the best objectives, curriculum, pedagogies and assessment processes in Enterprise Education that is conducted at a scale beyond the classroom, at a whole grade level, preferably more than a one-off experience but a whole year program. I would love to just submerge myself in a few of these programs and analyse what works best.

    Attending the ISBE Conference last week was a fantastic immersive experience in the thinking of a whole bunch of amazing people working in this area but it also added to the imposter syndrome monster within me. My struggle is the more academic aspect of doing what I want to do. I need to work out theoretical approaches/lenses and frameworks. This is what keeps me awake at night and occasionally drives me to tears. Am I ever going to get my head around this stuff? Am I ever going to be able to produce good quality academic work that can make a difference in education by influencing curriculum and helping teachers to happily do the best for their students? Well, that’s my dream. I’m sure once I have a grip on the academic theories I will be able to analyse and write and have a voice in the arena but right now there’s a huge wall in front of me. I have ten days to write a decent PhD proposal, including a literature review, while I also enjoy the pleasures of being a tourist as I finish up in Bath, go to Prague, and then head home. I know, tough life and all. I will submit a proposal at the end of this time but it won’t be anywhere near the quality I desire unless an epiphany occurs.

    Soon this initial hurdle will be behind me and I won’t have to think on it until the PhD truly commences in 2019. In the meantime, back home, I’ll be preparing for Christmas and finding somewhere new to live (long story). I am looking forward to hosting a party for my fellow post-grad education researchers, visiting family in Adelaide, going to the cricket and tennis, reading for pleasure and experiencing the glorious heat and sun of summer in Sydney, Australia.

    PS My playlist (shuffled) as I wrote this post.


  3. A PIECE of ISBE 2018

    11 November 2018 by shartley

    7-8 November ISBE Conference

    My first communication outside the Twitterverse with Dr Colin Jones was an hour long phone conversation back in March or April about my MRES topic. When I mentioned I was presenting on Enterprise Education (EE) in Cologne, he suggested I also attend the ISBE conference in Birmingham the following week, since I was in the area. At the conference, Colin introduced me to his friends/contacts which led to many interesting conversations. We also had time to continue our discussions about EE and my possible research focus, which were extremely valuable and enjoyable.

    Anyway, here’s A PIECE of what I appreciated most from the conference.

     

    ACTIVITY

    I enjoyed the idea Dr David Higgins presented about the need for EE to be researched as an activity (verb) and our own involvement, as opposed to the clinical scientific arms-length approach that describes human activity in concrete terms (nouns) instead of their actions/emotions/motivations/thinking/etc .

     

    PEOPLE

    People I knew via Twitter came to life at the conference:

    Dr Kelly Smith – I love how passionate she is about EE  and she introduced me to the term Pracademic.

    Andrea Lane – a knowledgable and thoughtful person who makes me think deeper.

    Matt Rogers-Draycott – Matt first came to my attention just a few months ago when I read an older article he co-authored. I did a series of tweets about it because I just love his thinking and approach to EE.   

    Catherine Brentnall – I had a few but brief chats with Catherine at the conference. She didn’t have much luck while she was there. For instance, a taxi driver took her to McDonalds for the Gala Dinner instead of the Macdonald Burlington Hotel and she had a tummy bug on the last day resulting in her having to leave as soon as she presented her paper. However, I’m sure this friendship will continue to grow over Twitter.

    Prof Nigel Adams – In discussion on the walk to and during the gala dinner, Nigel reminded me of ‘Doc’ in Back to the Future due to his intelligence, passion and eccentric mannerisms. He even showed me video of him riding an electronic skateboard owned by one of his students.

    Will Hogan and Peter Harrington of SimVenture – I met these two at the gala dinner. We then continued talking to after midnight at the hotel bar.

     

    INTERSECTIONS

    Unfortunately I missed Lucy Hatt’s presentation, mainly because it wasn’t in the Enterprise Education stream. We follow each other on Twitter and had chatted briefly at the conference. At lunch on the second day, Lucy and Colin talked intensely and deeply about her concept of intersections in the student’s entrepreneurial journey, while I listened in. Colin was adding to it by saying the role of the teacher is to be at some of those intersections and work out what the student needs to help the student choose the path from that point. I also recommend following Lucy’s excellent reflection blog about her PhD process and progress.

     

    ECHO-CHAMBER

    During one of breaks, Andrea and I talked about a range of EE topics, including the echo chamber of EE, particularly that it often echoes theoretical papers more than empirical research. Lo and behold, the very next talk by Catherine and David was about the need to break out of the echo chamber and include more philosophy in the EE field.

     

    ECOSYSTEM

    I have been considering some sort of organisational theory/ies for my PhD. I was reminded by Dr Su-Hyun Berg and Prof Jay Mitra’s presentation of an ecosystem approach. I’m a little wary though, because sometimes ecosystem is a bit of a buzzword in EE literature. On the last night Su-Hyun, Jay, Colin and I went for a drink. Jay and Colin regaled us with conference stories and I learned how Su-Hyun moved from Korea to Germany 14 years ago and after two years of resisting the German language, gave in and now speaks it fluently.

     

    This is just A PIECE of what the two days of conference gave me. Now, as I enter the solo holiday part of my trip, I need to write my PhD EOI/proposal which has been informed and confused by the ever-increasing number of EE concepts that have been brought to my attention.


  4. Naive Idealist

    8 April 2015 by shartley

    I’m starting to realise I’m a naïve idealist.  I want to teach in a way that benefits every single one of my students.  I want all my students to learn and achieve as well as they possibly can.  I want all my students to enjoy learning, embrace their positive passions and have a fulfilling life.  That’s all.

    I started studying my Masters of Education just for the piece of paper at the end but fell in love with the course with the very first two subjects, Curriculum and Pedagogy.  I was lucky enough to be well versed in the language of current thinking in these areas.  However, what kept biting me was the amount of rhetoric I was inclined to use without evidence.  Now, I’m so into what I have been learning for the last year and a half I want to just keep on going.

    It felt like I started my PhD this year but technically that’s a long way off yet.  When I finish my M.Ed., I enter the second year of a Masters of Research and then commence my PhD at the end of that.  These last two subjects of my M.Ed. are proving a bit of a stumbling block though.  One, a Literature Review, is meant to help me gain some background knowledge on the area I’m going to cover in my PhD but my grand ideas of writing about some of the big concepts in education keeps being narrowed down and down to a manageable size.  Of course I want my studies to be manageable but I also want to make a big difference.  I don’t think it’s an ego thing but instead I am driven by trying to find what’s the best we, as teachers, can do to help our students.  My other subject is the one I wrote about in my last two posts, an Introduction to Educational Research (EDCN800).

    Only three of the usual crowd of twelve or so turned up for EDCN800 last night, yet I came away more confused than when I arrived and wondered if it had been worth it.  Before arriving, I had a clear idea of what I was going to do for the next task (design a qualitative research study) and had received 3/3 for my proposal (my only 3/3 for our first task) but alas, no more.  You see, I made the mistake of making it an authentic task, something I could see myself doing in real life but really, all we have to do is go through the motions.  My idealism protested somewhat.  I want my learning to be meaningful and practical during the process of doing it.  I’m not just after the marks or even learning this now for some research I might do in the future; as I learn about how to design qualitative research, I want to be actually, in reality, authentically, designing qualitative research.

    However, a piece I have to write within three weeks for a uni assignment is not reality, particularly when talking about designing qualitative research; it normally takes much longer than that.  The literature review I am writing within one semester cannot contain every single article that I need to read to produce a doctorate thesis.  I am struggling with these limitations!!!

    How much more then, are we struggling in high schools to make learning authentic?  How can we help our students think they have something to contribute to the world when we have such short times on any one task, any one topic?  Some say school isn’t real life, that it is a false, socially constructed institution and that we should just accept that it is a mere addendum on real life.  How can we make secondary school learning authentic and meaningful if we can’t make it about the real world?  Do I ask too much?

    PS

    Perhaps my next post will need to be about the benefits of learning for the accumulation of knowledge rather than for practical application because of course, I see a place for that too in our curriculum.  For instance, I know many teachers and students who love learning about Ancient History for the sake of mere interest.  I love novels for what they say about the human condition.

    PPS

    My literature review has morphed into the question:

    What do we know about the connection between ‘assessment for learning’ and the self-regulation of students in secondary social sciences?

    My qualitative research design will be probably based on the question:

    How have teachers responded to change?


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