Wrapping up doctoral writing for 2018

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Best doctoral writing posts, Farewell 2018

It seems hard to believe we are coming to the end of our 6^th year of the Doctoral Writing blog.  From a small idea sparked at the Quality in Post Graduate Research (QPR) Conference in Adelaide, Australia, in April 2012, the blog has grown to having over 13,000 followers. We know many people who began reading the blog as doctoral students who now, as graduates and supervisors, recommend the blog to colleagues and new doctoral students. How time flies!

The blog represents an amazing community of doctoral writers and their supporters: supervisors, academic developers, academic language and writing developers, and increasingly we are being supported and connected to other communities via university library and graduate research websites.

5 myths about doctoral writing

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academic writing misconceptions, literature review, writing conclusions, writing style

By Cally Guerin

Over the years I’ve noticed that doctoral writers sometimes come to their work with unhelpful ideas about what makes for good academic writing. Today I’d like to bust a few of those myths so that researchers can produce the kind of writing that is required, without going down the paths that waste time or obscure the central messages of the writing.

1. Nothing new in the Conclusion

One of the misconceptions that disrupts good thesis writing is the idea that there must be nothing new in the Conclusion.

A stimulating collegial event: the 2018 meeting of IDERN (International Doctoral Education Research Network)

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Hiroshima University, IDERN

By Susan Carter, Claire Aitchison and Cally Guerin

We three editors of the DoctoralWriting SIG had the re-energising experience of attending IDERN at Hiroshima University in Japan, 15-17 September, 2018.  IDERN is a loose group of people who come together every two to three years to discuss trends in doctoral research. The business of meetings is steered by a committee that organises key sessions including an introduction from the hosting country and followed thereafter by a series of provocations to stimulate discussion groups. This year the meeting was beautifully hosted by Machi Sato (Hiroshima University) and her team.

We learned about doctoral education in Japan from Professors Yohsuke Yamamoto and Shinichi Kobayashi, who described successful Japanese doctoral programs but nonetheless identified a need for reform, and for international collaboration.

Reverse engineering of writing: Reading to see how ‘good, interesting writing’ works

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argumentation, English language writing skills, Precision, writing skills development

By Susan Carter

This post draws heftily on Gina Wisker’s website, the Good Supervisor, and directs readers to it: read to the bottom of this post for the password! Meanwhile, the post gives an example of one of Gina’s exercises that doctoral writers could undertake to improve their writerly skills. It’s a series of reverse-engineering prompts designed to help doctoral students learn how to ‘notice’ (Kumar & Kumar, 2009) the strategies that good research writers use. I noticed that Gina Wisker says to pick ‘good interesting’ exemplars—that is exactly the kind of writing that early career researchers should be encouraged to notice and aspire to produce.

Here’s Gina’s exercise.

Writing and time-scheduling: How long does it take to write that thesis?

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planning and managing writing, Scheduling thesis writing

By Claire Aitchison

This question comes up frequently for students and their supervisors as they try to plan for timely completion of the PhD. And we’ve written about it before.

We all acknowledge that writing productivity is more complex than any formula. But it is possible to make a reasonably accurate ‘guess-timate’ by adopting practices that increase productivity in combination with output calculations that are based on project targets, writing tasks, and real, personal circumstances.

‘Impact’ is important for published researchers, but what does it mean for doctoral writers?

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Impact and thesis writing, Significance of research

By Claire Aitchison

These days there is an increasing expectation that research has ‘impact’. There is more to this than government policy (such as Australia’s Engagement and Impact Assessment). The impact agenda has particular resonance in a world where research funding is increasingly constrained and universities compete for influence and reputation in order to attract funding. ‘Impact’ also connects to quality, and accountability.

Impact is sometimes narrowly conceived of as countable measures of the uptake of research (ie publications, citations and grants) but it also includes less easily quantifiable things like influence on practice, resultant applications, the generation of new ideas and outcomes, and longer-term subtle change. This perspective relates to ideas about the public good and the public intellectual – in other words, it is about being connected to, and giving back to, society.

But how does this impact agenda affect doctoral research and writing?

I think there might be a number of ways. Firstly, considerations of ‘impact’ can constrain or influence the choice of doctoral research topic. For example, an aspiring doctoral candidate may have a personal passion or interest in floral art – but is this alone worthy of 4 years of public funding? If, however, their research concerns the re-imagination of the cultural aesthetic, an exploration of commercial value, or the preservation of endangered flora for floristry, the potential impact becomes clear because the benefit of the research is clear.