End of 2020 – thank goodness!

Tags

COVID 19, End-of-year greetings

by Claire, Susan and Cally

Looks like we’ve made it through to the end of 2020 – the strangest year many of us have ever experienced.

In this apocalyptic year, most people we know have been in lockdown at various times; some liked it and many hated it. Most supervisors and doctoral writers have found themselves working from home this year much more than they had planned. For some, this has been a bonus, making it easier to manage the complex matrix of family, work and study. They’ve saved time from not travelling to campus and the proliferation of online workshops has meant more ready access to community and professional development than they would usually enjoy.

For many others, especially for doctoral writers living on modest budgets, this has been hugely challenging: the routines of moving between work and other parts of life have dissolved; the loneliness of doctoral study has been exacerbated with even fewer opportunities to meet with peers; and the restrictions of living spaces and internet connection have been unavoidably confronting.

International Doctoral Education Research Network (IDERN) Online Meeting, 26 Aug 2020

Tags

COVID 19, IDERN, online conference, online writing group, Supervising online, writing online

By Cally Guerin

One activity of the DoctoralWriting blog is to report on conferences and events we’ve attended. Of course, this year that has been hugely disrupted: most of us have seen our favourite meetings cancelled and have consequently missed out on the interactions with our research community that are usually a source of inspiration and encouragement. Luckily, online alternatives are appearing to fill that gap.

On 26 August, the first online meeting was convened for IDERN, the International Doctoral Education Research Network (this group had previously planned to meet in Denmark in June 2020). The topic was “Distance supervision and its discontents: what do we need to understand?”, facilitated by Gina Wisker (University of Bath), Swapna Kumar (University of Florida) and me (Australian National University). We had about 60 attendees from 17 different countries around the world.

Any discussion of supervision inevitably touches upon issues around doctoral writing, and this meeting was the same, even though writing wasn’t our specific focus. The sudden shift to online supervision in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic has meant that many supervisors have been forced into developing different practices for working on writing with doctoral candidates.

Best 8 of 8 years of thoughts about doctoral writing

Tags

Doctoral writing, literature review, Researcher identity, Writing as social identity; the reader as significant other, writing skills development

by Susan Carter, Cally Guerin and Claire Aitchison

It’s now the 8^th anniversary of the first DoctoralWriting SIG post. To celebrate this with a quietness that befits doctoral writing in the time of Covid 19, we’ve chosen what could be regarded as the eight top posts, with links to these posts so that you can view them if you haven’t already. That slyly evasive passive verb ‘could be regarded’ of the last sentence is deliberate: it was a tough job choosing 8 bests from 344 posts, and other options would be equally defensible. So, although we have numbered these to ensure there really are 8, the order has no significance whatsoever.

First criteria for our choice was most viewed. Views give an inkling of what people in the doctoral writing community are looking for. We think that this signals more than just how cunningly baited the click bait was, and points instead to topics that are troublesome or that matter to doctoral writers and those who support them. We began the best eight with the three most viewed posts. The most viewed by far and away (209, 377 views) was, surprisingly … [DRUMROLL]

A new year and a new book for the Doctoral Writing blog

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a book on doctoral writing, Doctoral Writing book

It seems incredible that the DoctoralWriting blog is moving into its 8^th year. Academic blogging and the scholarship of doctoral education has blossomed during this time—so too, has our reach and readership (Guerin, Aitchison & Carter 2019).  Cally, Susan and I have been blessed to have been working together as editors, authors and reviewers engaging with our readership and the numerous guest contributors over these years.

We have noticed both continuity and change in the themes and concerns regarding doctoral writing. Of long-standing interest for supervisors and students is the nature of new and traditional doctoral texts, and the resultant implications for creativity and voice. Secondly, and unsurprisingly, the craft of writing—from grammar and structure to argumentation—is an enduring theme.

That’s a wrap! The end of 2019 and the start of a new decade

Photo by Bench Accounting on Unsplash

2019 has been another busy year for DoctoralWriting, just as it has been for our readers around the world. Recently we passed the 15,000 followers mark. We’ve published another 35 posts this year, with the following guest bloggers based in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa contributing to the conversation – thank you all!

International Conference on Developments in Doctoral Education and Training (ICDDET), Malahide, Ireland, April 8-9, 2019

Tags

doctoral programs, ICDDET, structured training programs

By Cally Guerin

This post reports on the Fourth International Conference on Developments in Doctoral Education and Training (ICDDET) held in Malahide, Ireland on 8-9 April 2019. The theme for two days of intensive conversations was ‘Examining the impact of structured training programs’. While the conference was not specifically focused on doctoral writing as such, there was much that is of interest to any of us supporting doctoral writers. As motivations for undertaking a doctorate, the form of doctoral programs and the outcomes expected on completion continue to shift, there are accompanying changes required of doctoral writing.