Thinking%20about%20the%20PhD:

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Thinking about the PhD

• What is it?
• Why do we do it?
• What does it mean?

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Project
reading the literature
doing the research
PhD!!!!!
writing up
Product (thesis)
marking
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Project
Process
PhD!!!!!
Product (thesis)
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Whose business?

• Commonwealth government (Neumann)
• Hence, universities (funding)
• Faculties/departments (funding, continuance of
  the discipline)
• And, the community (taxpayers, citizens, study
  participants, consumers of news/current affairs)
• Supervisors
• Candidates (and their families, friends, etc!)

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How does the literature conceptualise the degree?

• Various How to get your PhD books, eg
  Doctorates Downunder
• Institutional aspects Neumann, McWilliam, Taylor
  et al
• Training of researchers (QPRA)
• Process, performance and making meaning Lee et
  al (Green, Johnson, Williams, Boud), Vilkinas,
  Macauley, Peseta

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How-to books

• Great majority stay with the practical skills
  development and acquisition
• Focus on the product
• Give lots of tips on getting and maintaining
  support networks
• Recently, seem to be moving into a more
  managerial mode - learning plans, generic
  attributes

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Institutional perspective

• Concern at lack of completions
• Risk for universities McWilliam
• Supervisor training Brew Peseta
• Neumann interviewed candidates and supervisors
  across disciplines
• Took account of variations in disciplines
• Looked at some specific problems (eg
  industry-linked projects)

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Training for research

• Parallels government moves on research quality
• Concern over vocational issues
• US model - more coursework
• UK - generic attributes and formalising
  teaching/testing of these
• Aus Proposed generic attributes (chapters in
  Doctorates Downunder)

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Process

• Rite of passage - emotional as well as
  intellectual
• Distress as both necessary part and effect of
  process (Lee Green Forged in Fire)
• PhD experience as predictor of supervision
  attitudes (Brew Peseta)
• P/g pedagogy How do we learn to be researchers?
  What part do peers play? (Johnson, Lee Green,
  Boud Lee)
• Performance (Peseta)

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Where is the PhD performed?
In candidates homes and lives
In The University
In workplaces
In Government reports
In University faculties
On the internet (searches, blogs, support groups,
emails between candidates and supervisors)
In fiction
In hospitals
In the media
In learned journals, as the process discussed
In University libraries
In postgraduate student groups
In learned journals, as research reported
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Over to you

• What is the PhD?
• Why do we do it?
• What does it mean?