Category Archives: Research progress

A PhD is more than a thesis

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Inspired by a Tweet I read recently about the distinction between a thesis and a PhD, I have been thinking about the difference between the two.

The university really focuses on the thesis, which must :

  • be of good presentation and style
  • be a significant contribution to knowledge and/or to understanding
  • demonstrate capacity to pursue further research without supervision
  • contain a significant amount of material worthy of publication or public presentation.

What else? Well, our university specifies you must be a registered student, you must live in the UK, you must pass your probationary period, you must spend a minimum amount of time as a registered student, you must make satisfactory progress, you must have a viva, you must make any specified corrections and you must present your thesis according to the guidelines.

All very thesis focused.

Vitae has a Researcher Development Framework that covers knowledge and intellectual abilities;  personal effectiveness;  research governance and organisation; engagement, influence and impact. The university encourages students to engage with this but, apart from reporting satisfactory progress at probationary review, it isn’t enforced or assessed.

Typically, students are assessment focused. They learn what they will be assessed on. It’s not surprising, then, that many doctoral students focus their entire attention on the thesis. That is the centre of their activity – everything else that takes place at the university is a distraction and has lower priority. In extreme cases, they only visit the university for supervision sessions, talk to nobody but their supervisors about their research, and focus totally on putting their thesis together and passing their viva.

But what then? A PhD is one line in a CV – perhaps five or six if you bulk it out with a description of your research. Permanent academic jobs in the UK and in many other countries may not be as rare as hens’ teeth, but they come pretty close. Even fixed-term contracts are difficult to get.

For employers, the PhD is not just one line in a CV, it’s also one line in a long job specification.

Academic employers want to know that you can publish papers, put together grant proposals, attract funding, increase impact via social media, create course materials, teach, mentor, work as part of a team, initiate projects, provide connections to a wider academic community and work on several projects at the same time.

The people getting the academic jobs are the people who can produce evidence that they can do all those things, and that they have already done those things. The people who treated their PhD as a period of academic apprenticeship, when the thesis is just one activity among many. The people struggling to get a toehold in the academic sector are the ones who have simply written a thesis.

The End

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My husband and I at my graduation ceremony in Milton Keynes: 22 June 2010.

You can download my thesis  ‘The Construction of Shared Knowledge through Asynchronous Dialogue’ at http://oro.open.ac.uk/19908/

Or just read the abstract…

This thesis investigates how groups of learners use asynchronous dialogue to build shared knowledge together over time. To do this, it takes a sociocultural approach, with a situated focus on learners’ social and temporal settings as well as on the tools they employ. It utilises concepts developed to support understanding of knowledge co-construction in face- to-face environments, particularly the social modes of thinking identified by Mercer and his colleagues (Mercer, 1995, 2000, 2002; Mercer & Littleton, 2007; Mercer & Wegerif, 1999) and the improvable objects described by Wells (1999).

Analysis shows that, over short periods of time, groups of learners construct shared vocabulary, history and understanding slowly through the use of a series of discursive devices including those identified here as ‘constructive synthesis’, the ‘proposal pattern’ and ‘powerful synthesis’. Over longer periods they may engage in ‘attached dialogue’, a form of asynchronous dialogue that is mediated by improvable objects. The development of these improvable objects involves learners engaging in exploratory dialogue that builds into progressive discourse, a coordinated form of co-reasoning in language. While doing this, they actively work to avoid unproductive interaction by consistently shifting responsibility from the individual to the group.

Previous studies have suggested that asynchronous dialogue may act to limit learners to cumulative exchanges (Littleton & Whitelock, 2005; Wegerif, 1998). The analysis over time presented here shows that asynchronous exchanges are enriched by the use of textual affordances that are not available in speech. In the case of attached dialogue, groups of learners are prompted to share knowledge, challenge ideas, justify opinions, evaluate evidence and consider options in a reasoned and equitable way. They do this more successfully when their co-construction of knowledge is not solely task-focused but also focuses on tool use and on the development of social knowledge about the group.

The endgame

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Sometimes it seems there is no endpoint to a doctorate, it just slowly runs into the sand.

Now that the university has approved the award of my degree, I have to wait until next month to have the degree and title conferred, and then another couple of months until the ceremony…

PhD student qualification rates

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Information from a recent course on being a PhD supervisor, run by John Wakeford.

Of the 1996-7 cohort of full-time PhD students (excluding those not upgraded from MPhil and those not continuing into the second year):

  • 30-36% had a doctorate after four years
  • 50-70% had a doctorate after five years
  • 72% had a doctorate after seven years

So about one in four of the students who initially register has a doctorate within one year of their funding running out.

These figures vary dramatically by university. The latest figures are that in 2007, seven years after starting their doctoral studies,

  • 92% of those at Kings College, London, who had been upgraded had a doctorate
  • 62% of those at The Open University who had been upgraded had a doctorate
  • 26% at John Moore University, Liverpool, who had been upgraded had a doctorate

Success rates also depend on other factors: the best success rates are amongst international students, research council funded, over 30 at registration, with a first-class degree from other university, studying medicine or veterinary science. The worst success rates are amongst those who are UK industry sponsored, under 25 at registration, with a 2nd class degree from same institution, studying computing, architecture or languages.

Journal impact

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I’ve spent the day looking at the impact factor of various journals.

The ISI Web of Knowledge lists 1985 social science journals (according to a workshop I attended recently, only about 15% of education journals are in ISI). The ‘Annual Review of Psychology’ comes in top for 2008, with an annual impact factor of 16.217.

The impact factor is obtained by looking at all articles in the journal over the last two years (2006-7), and all citations of those articles in 2008. Divide the citations by the article and you get the impact factor. So if, on average, every article was cited once in 2008, you get an impact factor of 1. If every article was cited twice, you get an impact factor of 2. If only half your articles were cited, you get 0.5.

Of the social science journals that are listed (and many of them are not), 1685 have impact scores of less than two. On the bright side, there are 300 journals out there where your article will, on average, be cited twice a year. I’m assuming that this means it will be cited in one of the 1985 journals listed in the social science section of the ISI web of science – but I can’t find that information on the site.

Social science, though, is a broad field. Educational technology journals in which I am likely to publish tend to attract fewer than two citations per article. ‘Computers & Education’ is the honourable exception, It comes in at 244 on the list, with an impact factor of 2.19. I’d be better off becoming an expert in psychology, psychology or marketing. Education doesn’t really make it into the list until no 75, with the US Journal ‘Educational Psychologist’.

Does it matter? It does in two ways. First, the REF will be looking at impact – so we are increasingly being encouraged to go for quality, not quantity. Don’t just publish; publish in the top-rated journals. Second, I like to think that my work could/will have impact. I’m not convinced that the best way to achieve that impact is through journals (two citations a year may not be as good as five links in a blog or ten retweets on an education list). However, given that my career prospects rest, in part, on my publication record, it makes sense to prioritise the journals with the most impact.

So, I’ve sketched out some potential articles and where I might publish them. The list is significantly different from the one I had this morning when I started looking at impact factors. I may not end up writing these articles – I may not end up publishing what I write in these journals – but their impact rating is definitely affecting my thinking about what and where to publish.

Applied Linguistics (2.22)
Building knowledge in the short term
Computers and Ed (2.19)
Methodology paper
JCMC (1.9)
Building knowledge in the long term
Discourse Studies (1.16)
Avoiding disputational talk
JCAL (1.06)
Interaction on distance-learning courses
BJET (1.04)
SL paper
Improving Schools
School Visions
Learning, Media and Technology
Young users of Web 2.0
JIME
Epistolary interviews – research ethics

Writing for publication

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Researchers write all the time, writing is the means through which we work on and work out our ideas. We don’t just write up – we have not found a transparent truth which we then just put into words. Writing is a representation – we make choices and what we choose to write is a situated approximation.

In writing an article we are advancing what we know and also producing a representation of it. We are not just producing a text, we are producing ourselves as scholars — we are doing identity work.

Rhetorically, we are producing persuasive texts that persuade the reader that what we have done is a contribution to knowledge. The genre of the journal article is an argument. Research writing is dialogic. There are internal conversations which invite readers to make meaning. Don’t make it like a laundry list. Invite the reader in to make meaning. Encourage readers to make associations with other conversations (mainly through references).

When looking at a journal, consider the editorial board. Would you like to meet them and have a conversation with them? Look at recent issues. Which conversations are going on? Do you want to engage with them? Why do people need to know about what you are writing about – this gives a method of selecting a journal. What is the readership and what do they already know? This helps to create a space for your article. Significance is so what and now what? What’s new? What’s different? What does this add to the conversation? Don’t let other scholars do all the talking in your article. Refer to them, but don’t be overpowered by them.

The strongest papers usually have one point to make. They make that point powerfully, with evidence, and they locate that point within the orevious literature.

Can you do an elevator pitch on your article?

Pitching your thesis

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Just watched a Ted Talk by David S Rose on producing a business pitch. Thought I could apply it to writing my thesis introduction.

So the intro should start like a rocket, grabbing readers’ attention, and then it should take a solid, steady upward path.

Start with a title, and then an attention-grabbing introduction. Give a quick overview of the thesis. Like the picture on a jigsaw box, this should help people make sense of the elements to come.

Explain how this is interesting to lots of people – in my case that is how is this interesting to educational researchers and educational practitioners. Give an example. Show how this work can be taken forward and who would be interested in taking it forward.

Then validate it in terms of others, so fit it into the literature and what others have done. Reference things that the audience can relate to. This provides validation becuase the audience sees that things they have already accepted as reliable tie in with what you are saying. Explain what the competition is and why your work is special.

Then move to the conclusion, which is interesting and exciting.

Along the way: don’t include anything that isn’t true, don’t interrupt your audience’s flow by including anything they don’t understand, don’t have any internal inconsistencies and don’t include typos, error or stupid mistakes.

Research overview

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I’m thinking about the conclusion to my PhD, so I’ve returned to the literature on what examiners are looking for. Stephen Potter’s book ‘Doing Postgraduate Research’ contains a list of potential viva questions, so I’m going to think about how I could answer those, and then see which elements of my answers will fit comfortably within my conclusion. I’ve included the questions below, ordered according to the section of the thesis I feel they are focused on.

Some of the questions are easy to answer, but some are tricky. I’ll have to give some thought to the issue of how I have evaluated my research. Hmm.

Abstract

What have you done that merits a PhD?

In one sentence, what is your thesis?

What is your original contribution to knowledge in your subject area?

What are the main achievements of your research?

Intro

Why were you interested in this research topic?

Literature review

What are the main issues and debates in this subject area? How does your research relate to these?

Which are the three most important papers which relate to your thesis?

Who has had the strongest influence in the development of your subject area in theory and practice?

What published work is closest to what you have done? How is your work different?

What are the most recent major developments in your area?

Methodology

What were the crucial research decisions you made?

Why did you use the particular research methodology in your thesis?

What are the alternatives to the approach or method you used?

What did you gain by the approach or method you used?

What would you have gained by using another approach?

Were there any ethical implications relating to your research? How did you deal with them?

What would you do differently if you could do your thesis again?

How have you evaluated your work?

How do you know that your findings are correct?

Analysis

Summarise your key findings. What was the most interesting to you?

How do your findings relate to the literature on the subject?

Conclusion

Whom do you think would be most interested in your work?

Have you thought about publications? Which journals are appropriate?

How long-term is your contribution?

What do you see as the next steps in this research?

If you were given money tomorrow to continue your research, what would you do?

Personal summary

What advice would you give to a new research student entering this topic area?

Has your view of your research topic changed during the course of the research?

What have you learnt from your research experience?

Potter, S., & Swift, J. (2006). The examination process and the viva. In S. Potter (Ed.), Doing Postgraduate Research (Second ed., pp. 251-275): The Open University / Sage Publications Ltd