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Tag Archives: Emotion & writing

Doctoral writing and supervisor feedback: What’s the game plan?

05 Wednesday Jul 2017

Posted by doctoralwriting in 3. Writing Practices, 5. Identity & Emotion

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Emotion & writing, supervisor feedback, talking about writing, Writing as social identity; the reader as significant other

By Susan Carter

Last week’s post and its comments provide an entry point to this one. Last week I drew on Peter Arthur’s thoughts on how to teach metacognition, which takes the teacher further than just teaching material, to teaching students how to manage their own learning. Reflection on this topic took me to the fact that, in practice, supervisors are learners too when it comes to the cycles of feedback and revision in doctoral writing. Continue reading →

Doctoral writing: developing metacognitive awareness

28 Wednesday Jun 2017

Posted by doctoralwriting in 5. Identity & Emotion

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Emotion & writing, Writing motivation

By Susan Carter, with thanks to Peter Arthur, UBC

One of the most important things learned when writing a doctoral thesis is the kind of self-knowledge that enables self-management. That skill alone makes the doctoral experience worthwhile, even when the journey is arduous and frustrating. A recent seminar by Peter Arthur on undergraduate metacognitive skills development prompted me to write this post on how metacognitive awareness can be applied to doctoral writing.

Peter had a series of questions for undergraduate students to prompt them to see the metacognitive expectations of a set assignment or in examination preparation. It seemed to me that his line of enquiry, which included drawing on Carol Dweck’s (2008) growth versus fixed mindsets, could be adapted for the purposes of doctoral writing. Continue reading →

Doctoral writing: Why bother?

20 Tuesday Jun 2017

Posted by doctoralwriting in 5. Identity & Emotion

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Desire to write, Emotion & writing, Staying realistic with writing

By Susan Carter

Recently a colleague posed this question to academics: ‘your research and publication–why bother?’ Now that sounds sullen and disenchanted, but it is a great question for drawing out what really matters about research. This post considers why we bother doing doctoral writing as students and carefully supporting it as academics.

It’s based on a workshop for doctoral candidates with a twofold purpose. The first was about emotion, to vent about the tribulations of doctoral writing for catharsis (and bonding, according to Mewburn, 2011) and then turn to listing positive reasons for doing this work as a motivational exercise. The other is to emphasise that throughout the thesis the reasons why the research matters should be overtly stated in writing, specifically in the introduction and the conclusion.

In a two hour workshop with doctoral students from several disciplines we first worked through the disenchantment inherent in ‘oh, why bother?’, making space for shared griping about what is bothersome about doctoral research and writing. People talked about what seemed hard to them at the time.

Then candidates moved to individually answer that question. The answers to ‘why bother?’ had to be accurate, not exaggerated or understated. There was a tendency for understatement, which is common, given that often it seems socially inept to tell people how important your own work is, and that allowed us to talk about the way that defending the doctorate required stating its significance. Group peer review ensured perfect iteration so that the right wording for inclusion in the thesis was sharp and persuasive.

My own belief is that we are hugely privileged to spend time on a research project and acquiring the advanced literacy skills that enable communicating what it means to others who are likely to be interested. I think of the very bright people I know trapped in boring jobs, perhaps with family responsibilities that mean they haven’t got the possibility to do a doctorate. I know many doctoral students have similar pressures in their lives, but somehow within their own resources they find a way to keep their career moving forward and their minds keen as they learn. Not everyone can.

Here is a list of reminders about what doctoral writing can do for you:

  • Finding an academic voice helps define who you are and what matters to you; it is an act of self creation;
  • Gaining a sophisticated level of literacy that will be useful in the future;
  • Finally figuring rules about grammar and even appreciating their logic;
  • Writing passages that are really satisfying in their clarity and cleanness;
  • Realising that writing is often flowing more easily;
  • Joining a distinct discourse community;
  • Gaining an ability to mentor others;
  • Widening future career opportunities; and
  • Becoming a stronger person who can manage their own emotions and the large writing project.

Many doctoral students are the first in their family to venture so far into education, and as they write, they write possible further success for future generations into their family’s history and repertoire. For some, passion about making the world a better place drives them as doctoral writers; they may be tackling big challenges or smaller ones, but know that they join the legions of humans who work in different ways to make things better.

This blog often acknowledges the challenges of doctoral writing, the way that feedback can be demoralising, that outside pressures can really squeeze, and that the pedantry and perfectionism of academic writing can baffle and irritate. We comment on these kinds of things because we know they can be bothersome. ‘Why bother?’ may often rise out of irritation, or self-doubt or self-pity from doctoral students or the academics who support their writing.

I’d like to gently suggest that most routes through life are harder than doing a doctorate, harder because they are more limited, smaller, and less full of potential. But it can be productive to take a moment to take this question to heart and to formulate a response that reminds one of the joys and benefits of the challenge. It is good to take ‘why bother’ literally, too, and articulate in the thesis so that there is no doubt that the project was worth doing, worth a doctorate, and that the original contribution is significant.

In the introduction and conclusion of the doctorate students could be encouraged to answer further questions with careful detail.

  • Why did you take up this research?
  • What was the problem that motivated you to seek a solution, or partial solution?
  • Who were hurt by that problem?
  • What was hard for you in this research project and what gave you the impetus to keep going?
  • How does your research mitigate the problem or fill in a gap in knowledge or understanding?
  • Who will benefit from your research findings?
  • Might benefits be wider, in that your methods would work with other problems, or for practitioners in other disciplines?
  • What gaps in knowledge or understanding still exist?

Supervisors probably need a different set of prompts, but might remember that whenever we work supportively with someone else’s writing, we learn more about what works and what doesn’t, and how we can mentor as part of making the world a better place through research and its writing. I’m always at risk of arriving at a happy ending, and am doing it again here, but would ask for contributions to share ways that we can help each other to know why we bother, and that it does matter. What is your response to ‘doctoral writing; why bother’?

Mewburn, I. (2011). Troubling talk: Assembling the PhD candidate. Studies in Continuing Education. Available at http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0158037X.2011.585151?src=recsys

 

 

 

Developing doctoral writing in four dimensions: Helen Sword’s baseline

12 Monday Jun 2017

Posted by doctoralwriting in 3. Writing Practices

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Desire to write, Doctoral writing, Emotion & writing, Researcher identity, Writing as social identity; the reader as significant other

By Susan Carter

This post is premised squarely on the base line of Helen Sword’s latest book on academic writing. She begins by asking the reader to self-audit their own strengths and weaknesses as writers. This task orients them into the book, one rich with data from interviews with successful academic writers as to how they work. Sword has recommendations for each of the dimensions in this exercise. Yet she begins not with good advice, but with an affective approach, reaching into the core of each reader by asking us to reflect on who we are as writers. To self-analyse, we are given an exercise evaluating the different aspects of academic writing that influence development. Continue reading →

Doctoral writing and feedback: Moving on from negative emotion

20 Tuesday Sep 2016

Posted by doctoralwriting in 5. Identity & Emotion

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

Emotion & writing, feedback on writing, supervisor feedback

By Susan Carter

I’ve just had the amazing experience of getting to know Professor Rowena Murray from the University of the West of Scotland. We spent a pleasant few hours weeding a graveled area around a church hall with the community gardeners in the village of Lochwinnoch.

img_2212Talking about our research topics while weeding was a great way for one thought to lead to another, almost like the bramble rhizomes we were pulling out. I’ve walked a supervision meeting, but suspect that there might be other physical activities that both student and supervisor enjoy doing that would allow for the same organic thinking together process.

Weeding allowed time to talk about academic writing and doctoral students.

This post covers one topic that we sifted through and agreed upon: the potential for emotional disturbance in relationship to writing and feedback (see to Sara Cotterall’s earlier post and my own on emotion.) Then we also thought about how students might learn to manage their emotions, and resolve differences between themselves and their supervisors—and then be aware of their own personal development from handling something well recognized as challenging. Continue reading →

Olympic endurance and doctoral writing: on motivation

31 Wednesday Aug 2016

Posted by doctoralwriting in 5. Identity & Emotion

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Emotion & writing, talking about writing

By Susan Carter

What I have loved about watching Olympic events on TV is the athletes’ demonstration of determination, self-possession and focus. At the same time, I have been reading a couple of books that deal with writer’s block, bringing the intensity of emotion around writing to the fore. The books are Alice Weaver Flaherty’s (2015) The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer’s Block, and the Creative Brain and Peter Elbow’s (1998) Writing without Teachers. This post was prompted by a combination of the Olympic games backdrop to my current reading about writing. Both things are inspiring. They converge.

I keep seeing connections between Olympic effort and doctoral writing. OK, so those writing PhDs are not striving to be the best in the world, but they are labouring to become a world expert in their niche. Over the course of a PhD you need to acquire some of those strengths that world athletes take to the limit.

And the limbic system seems to have a lot to do with this. Continue reading →

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