World-wide kindness towards doctoral writing during Covid 19 lockdown: shared resources

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Doctoral writing, Writing motivation, writing skills development

This post comes from Lyn Lavery, director of Academic Consulting in Auckland New Zealand. Lyn established Academic Consulting in 1999 following a successful career in the tertiary sector. Her 20+ years background in education, combined with a PhD which examined self-regulated learning at a tertiary level, and her extensive consultancy practice have equipped her with fingers on the pulse. She shares some valuable resources.

These times of uncertainty and disruption bring significant challenges for all of us. In addition to the more obvious issues of adjusting to life in self-isolation, there are several unique challenges for researchers. Access to software, resources and equipment has become more difficult, regular support networks (such as thesis supervisors) may have limited availability, and there are many researchers whose data collection plans will require a considerable rethink.

Given these challenges, I’ve been increasingly impressed and heartened by the generosity of many businesses and individuals in responding to the needs of researchers and doctoral students at this time. Before sharing these resources with you, however, I do want to make a point – please don’t feel that you should be upskilling, rescheduling data collection plans, adjusting ethics approvals or engaging in any of the other (probably numerous) tasks that the present situation demands. Take the time you need to catch your breath, look after yourself and your family, and do what you need to adjust to the unexpected circumstances we all find ourselves in (you’ve probably read lots of resources on this theme already, but if not, my favourite is Why you should ignore all that coronavirus-inspired productivity pressure).

Having said that, if you’d like to use the next few months as a chance to upskill, there are plenty of opportunities for research-related training.

Doctoral writing: the incentive of space

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Doctoral writing, Emotion & writing, Researcher identity, Writing motivation

By Susan Carter

I’ve just met with a Pacific Island doctoral candidate, let’s call her Vai after the beautiful Pasifika movie that you should try to see. Vai moved me almost to tears by recounting that she does her doctoral writing in the cemetery next to her grandmother’s grave.

Responding to supervisor feedback: do doctoral students have to agree?

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Doctoral writing, Emotion & writing, feedback on writing, Feedback practices, Researcher identity

By Susan Carter

My eight years of being a consultant for doctoral students taught me what supervisors sometimes do not see: that candidates can struggle over whether or not to take supervisory advice. Here, I want to defend two suppositions.

1) It is always wise to pick your battles, and on that assumption, students do well to defer to supervisors when the issues are relatively minor.

2) When writing decisions are important, students need to learn how to refuse advice that they disagree with and demonstrate why.

Because students transition towards independent researcher status when they are able to make decisions and then make them work, academics who support them could initiate talk about how to manage disagreement with supervisors.

Often it is tricky responding to supervisor feedback on writing for candidates who don’t really agree with it. Learning how to negotiate diplomatically is a very useful skill that is not gained lightly. The power differential between student and supervisor can make it quite hard for students to hold on to their own choices. Those who come from a culture where it is inappropriate to contradict a teacher could be advised about Western expectations that there are intellectual benefits to arguing. It’s tricky, though, for many candidates, to disagree.

Designing a new doctoral research project and factoring in writing

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Desire to write, Doctoral writing, Precision, Researcher identity

By Susan Carter

This afternoon I am meeting a new doctoral candidate I’ll be supervising, and I’ve already sent her a set of questions in advance of meeting. Before we begin working as a team with the other supervisor to design the doctoral project and start writing seriously, I want the candidate to do some thinking. Mostly, it’s she who must ensure that we do not get side-tracked by talk of methods, methodology, and theory from focussing on what is central: the candidate as someone already with a life that we want this doctorate to improve.

I’ve drawn these questions up, and filed them away knowing that this will be another useful document for sharing with other academics and using again myself.

Christmas reading; doctoral writing in 2019

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Doctoral writing, Researcher identity, talking about writing

By Susan Carter

It’s customary for DoctoralWriting to begin a new year with a post based around that theme: new year’s resolutions for better doctoral writing practice. A new year offers a turning point, an invitation to audit how the previous year played out, and to plan for a productive writing year ahead with renewed energy. Here’s 2017’s new year’s post, 2015’s and 2014’s. In 2016, our new year’s post celebrated and acknowledged guest contributors. These previous year’s reflections are inspiring posts, worth looking at again. Maybe it is reasonable to approach each new year ritualistically: it is not the particularity of each new year that matters, just that each turning point offers again the chance to review and plan ahead.

I’m wondering too whether it is common that when we academics return to work after Christmas, we have spent time reading fiction over the break. In our family, a good book is a common Christmas gift, and the Christmas break is one time of the year when there may be time to read. I find that stories often give me ideas for doctoral writing workshops.

Ahoy! what is so interesting about doctoral writing?

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Doctoral writing, Emotion & writing

By Susan Carter

At the Quality in Postgraduate Research conference (April 17-19, 2018), a group of scholars came to a doctoral writing special interest group (SIG). Why, you might wonder, when writing in and of itself might seem to not be a topic with an argument to make. Most were academics who support doctoral writing, and a few were those writers themselves. I asked them to jot down what they find so interesting about doctoral writing, explaining that I would construct a blogpost from these.

Their individual responses splatter around the complexity of the process and product, and led me to the metaphor of sailing.