PhD work

Want to do a PhD now? Here’s what you should know

Research in schools is messy. Things change fast and decisions need to be made on the fly. As PhD students doing research in schools, we (Kate and Matt) learned that challenges quickly arise and that tough decisions need to be made.

Our PhD research took place in vastly different contexts. Kate went to Zimbabwe to research the proliferation of philanthropic edu-tourism, and Matt explored differences in the teaching of drama and maths at a school in a regional town in NSW. Despite these “worlds-away” classrooms, we experienced similar challenges and discovered a gap in the literature on education fieldwork for postgrad students.  

That’s what our new paper explores,and from that we have four key lessons for PhD students. 

Four key lessons

We started our PhDs by ‘going with the flow’ of doctoral study. This meant we designed our research with the support of our supervisors. We presented our research plans to a panel of academics. We gained ethics approvals to conduct our studies. We undertook recruitment procedures. We went into ‘the field’ to collect data at schools. Then the flow changed. 

Our paper explains how this early ‘flow’ became more like ‘rapids’ (Lonergan & Cumming, 2017) as we undertook classroom-based research in Australia and Zimbabwe.  

In our research, we faced challenges and had to act in the moment. One such moment was when the classroom teacher left the classroom Kate was observing. What do you do? If you leave the room, where do you go? If you choose to stay, how long do you wait for them to return? If the class begins to misbehave, do you step into a teacher role or do you stay silent? If, and how, do you have a discussion with the teacher and ask them not to do this in the future?  

Someone’s missing

In another example, the teachers participating in Matt’s study were both absent from school but failed to tell him beforehand. This encounter resulted in wasted time travelling to and from the school. It also highlighted that research involves adaptive responses and planning on-the-go.  

Together, our reflections throughout the paper shed light on some of the emotional challenges during fieldwork. Even though one of us was geographically close and the other was far away from our supervisors, we were both unable to access their knowledge in the moments of shifting plans.  

Four key lessons

Here are four key lessons we wish we knew before starting fieldwork: 

  1. Communication is key. Having clear expectations and conversations about the research with the school community is integral to the success of the research. Do not assume that everyone in the school community will understand the intricacies of your study – the reality is this is an ongoing part of the process.  
  2. Developing rapport with research participants is crucial. While it is important to ‘give back’ in research and avoid disruptions to schools, it is equally important to be on the same page with participants about your role/s within the research. 
  3. Plan for a range of different scenarios, be open to how you might negotiate them as they unfold. Anticipating changes to your research plan may help you cope when these changes happen and allow you to know which components of your research plan you are willing to change or remove.  
  4. Keep a diary. Your field notes are hugely valuable when it comes to writing up and reflecting on your research. And a daily diary reminds you of all the things you’ve achieved (big and little) when the going gets tough. 

Continued conversation

We hope that others find these key lessons useful in thinking more broadly about their data collection plans. We are also mindful doctoral students have a range of resources at their fingertips when preparing for fieldwork that should not be overlooked. PhD supervisors are vital in the learning and development of doctoral students. Methods textbooks abound. And, there is a range of very insightful blogs, such as The Thesis Whisperer and Patter. Our research brings attention to these resources and the need for continued conversations about fieldwork.  

Kathleen Smithers is a lecturer in the School of Education at Charles Sturt University, Australia. Kathleen has worked across a number of projects with a focus on the sociology of education and higher education. Her doctoral thesis investigated developmentourism in schools in Zimbabwe.

Matthew Harper is a PhD candidate and research assistant across a range of projects at the Teachers and Teaching Research Centre, School of Education, University of Newcastle, Australia. His doctoral thesis compares teaching practice and the student experience in high school mathematics and drama.

How it feels to slay the dragon: handing in my PhD thesis

As I come to the end of my doctoral journey, having recently submitted my thesis, I have been asked a number of times by well-meaning friends and family about how it feels. I must confess that I have often wondered what it would feel like to finally ‘slay the dragon’ as my supervisor euphemistically put it. When I was finishing my Masters degree just a few years prior, it certainly felt a little like such a finality, much like the end of a relationship minus the tears and anguish. The conclusion of my Masters degree, for me at least, meant that the joy of writing, the creative thinking and the discussions that I had so valued had seemingly come to an end.

It is perhaps no surprise that it would only take a little prodding by one of my course coordinators that led me to abandon my sensible and permanent teaching position to pursue a doctorate. In retrospect, this reminds me of Steve Jobs salutary advice during a commencement speech at Stanford University, when he was reputed to have said, “stay hungry, stay foolish”. In Jobs’ reckoning, it was crucial to follow one’s heart and intuition if one desired to be truly successful. It was perhaps not so much pursuit of success that drove me, but an itch I couldn’t quite scratch. I am driven by the need to deeply understand my world and my place in it.

I was simply hungry to know more.

Almost four years have passed since that beginning. It has been a time to savour in many ways, not the least because of the manifold joys of intellectual pursuit just for the sake of it. It has been a luxury in this sense, but it has also been a time full of challenge and struggle. A time of personal growth and also a time of foolish abandon. Foolish because no sane person at the age of 43 with family-in-tow should ever reasonably contemplate fulltime study to satisfy their intellectual curiosity. Even early on this foolishness was clear to me. I distinctly recall listening to a colleague who was also contemplating a PhD, but was pointedly pragmatic in wanting his work to be of ‘strategic’ value to his career. I am the type of person that likes to think they could eschew such pragmatisms. However, there is perhaps little profit in being otherwise, as conversations with seemingly vulnerable early-career and even more experienced academics have reminded me along the way. Even now, facing the job market again, perhaps I should have been more tactical at each and every turn, or at the very least more tactful.

I have perhaps been too provocative and even a little foolish.

When I first began this mischief of scholarly work, I stumbled across Lincoln and Denzin’s powerful argument that truly revolutionary work involved being brave enough to write ‘messy’ and ‘vulnerable’ texts that remained open to usurpation and openly conscious of its immanent contradictions. But as any well-seasoned academic would know, that’s simply not the point of the PhD. The discipline of the doctoral thesis necessarily effaces these slippages and ambivalences, which squeezes out the passionate voice of the neophyte idealist, insinuating instead the authorial voice of a freshly disciplined academic-in-waiting as sole conduit to the truths of our social reality. However, all is not so gloomy or final. It stands to reason that the disciplines of academic work cannot achieve full closure over all reckonings, or as Foucault suggests, a permanent provocation always remains.

Now that I have almost arrived at this so-called pinnacle of the academic journey (handing in my PhD thesis), it doesn’t feel much like an ending or even a pause. Nor does it feel like an achievement, where one simply needs to plant the flag atop the pile of rewrites, edits and the fragments of text that seemed to have swirled around in my head endlessly over these last years. Instead, the text that I wrote seems to have instead written me. I have not so much written a thesis, but become its product. In the end I did not so much write that messy and vulnerable text, but instead became myself what I intended for my work. I became that messy and vulnerable text. I can no longer leave behind this experience any more than I can leave behind my self. It is simply under my skin.

So where to now? And what have I learned, or what advice would I give? I have come to understand that one does not simply ‘pursue a doctorate’. I have learned that the task was not to slay some proverbial dragon or climb some lofty pinnacle. The task instead was to become; to become that messy and vulnerable thing I had hoped would carry my ideas. The task is to remain reflexively aware of one’s own contradictions and qualifiers, yet to also stay hopeful, hungry and foolishly curious about the world. This is a gift and a challenge in equal measures. Something I hope I can live up to in the years to come.

 

George Variyan is a doctoral student with Charles Sturt University working in the sociology of teaching, looking at teachers in elite private schools in Australia. George is also a Maths and Science teacher himself, and has worked in diverse school settings such as independent schools dealing with students at-risk, the elite private school sector as well as further afield in international schools. George currently lives in Perth with his young family, enjoying the warm climate and extended family nearby.