“There are more questions than answers
Pictures in my mind that will not show
There are more questions than answers
And the more I find out the less I know”

(Nash, 1972)

Those of you of a certain age (and/or able to Google those lyrics) will know that they are from a 1970s Johnny Nash single with the name of the first line, and also an eponymously named album track from a 1972 album titled “I Can See Clearly Now”.  The verse above is certainly resonating with me at the moment.  I have now finished collecting data from both staff and students.  That ought to be a significant land mark, but it doesn’t feel like that at the moment, and there are three reasons for this.

The first is because I’m not sure whether or not I’m going to need to “go again” with another cohort of own institution students because the 15/16 cohorts yielded insufficient participants; or to gather data from students at another institution.  But that’s fine because I have other institution arrangements in place as a fall-back position for mid-October.

The second is because the reason for the verse from the song above is that I went to a BSA seminar on Subjectivity and Research practice within Qualitative Research at Coventry University earlier this week.  It was great.  Before I went to the seminar, I had an outline plan about how I was going to deal with reflexivity, and I went along half hoping for a framework.  The speakers (Dr Gurnam Singh and Professor Gayle Letherby) were great  They were so good, that I left with more questions than answers; and there are now ideas in my head about dealing differently with reflexivity differently to the way in which I had initially planned.

As I drove home after the seminar, the words of another song were whizzing round in my head.

“I don’t know what to feel,

I only know what I’m feelin’.

I don’t know what is real,

Only know my head’s reelin'”

The dodgy homophonal rhyme tells you (almost) all you need to know about that song.  Suffice to say that it was punctuated at the end of each line by as much-punk like strumming as you could get out of an acoustic guitar, the body of which was slapped twice at the end of every other line……  My head was reeling in 1976, and it is still reeling now, but for rather different reasons.  And I suspect that it will go on reeling until after my thesis is finished, the viva survived and any amendments made.

The third reason that I’m not celebrating the end of a phase of data collection as a milestone is that I am actually appalled at how little I’ve accomplished in the last three weeks.  With the advent of the new academic year, the day job has consumed me completely.  If there are any of my MA students reading this; don’t do as I do, do as I say!  If anyone who is reading this knows me, please take note that I need to be interrogated about and held to account for my progress on a weekly basis!  Unless you are my son; in which  case, you need to get on with your A-level coursework……..

Those of you who are of a certain age might remember the acronym GIGO originating from the  less sophisticated than they are now early days of ICT.  It stands for “garbage-in-garbage-out”, and it’s message is quite clearly that the quality of any output data is heavily dependent on the quality of the input data.

In order to translate that into something meaningful in EdD terms, we need to focus on what inputs might look like.  Well, there’s reading time, and writing time, interview time,  transcription time (oh, so much transcription time) and analysis time.  If I don’t do any of those, then I won’t have much to write about.  And in thesis terms there does need to be both the appropriate quantity of words at doctoral quality.  A mere twenty thousand words of pure genius just won’t do.  But there’s also the a planning time that I reflected on in my last post.  And then there’s the thinking time.  Remembering to take a step backwards to survey the bigger picture and remind myself where I think I’m going, before I hurtle head long into the week, thinking about setting myself specific tasks.  I’ve written before about learning to sweat the small stuff, and making the most of small tranches of time.  But I’ve been doing that at the expense of the content of the bigger picture.

The revelation came when I was reflecting this week with a colleague about why I have not become  more productive in an EdD context since my dad and MIL died, and my youngest passed his driving test.  Because all the hours that I used to spend cooking and cleaning, visiting and providing a taxi service are now theoretically available.  All of the responsibilities that I had in those areas are gone (not, I hasten to add in the parenting department – just in the provision of a taxi service).  Rolling around in my head were all of the usual excuses about being buffeted off course by the cross winds that are the vicissitudes of work and life, and then my colleague (who may or may not have known what I was thinking) said “Of course, the one thing that you have complete control over is your EdD research”.  Well, to paraphrase a (reasonably) well known idiom, you could have knocked me down with a feather and called me a duck-billed platypus.  As I was replying that actually I didn’t, because my data collection can only take place at particular times of the academic year, and that if the window is missed it doesn’t return for another year; I heard my inner voice telling me to shut up.  Whilst I was correct in my assertion that data collection is dependent on a small window of opportunity; what I was conveniently ignoring was that that dependency exists because of decisions that I have taken.  I’ve justified those research design decisions to myself and my supervisors; but I am still the person who took them, and I (not the vicissitudes of work and life) am responsible and accountable for them.  And if that’s not quite working as I’d envisaged, then I need to do something about it.  Consequently, I’ve spent quite a bit of time in the last week putting in the groundwork to make sure that the window of opportunity for data collection is as full of potential opportunities as I can make it at this stage.

The sort of quid pro quo is that in EdD terms, both the quality (and the quantity) of my EdD outputs will depend on the quality and quantity of my inputs.  I just need to keep reminding myself about what inputs actually are, and how broad the concept of an input can be.  It’s a bit like reminding my own students about the many faces and facets of feedback, really.  It’s not just about producing agreed deliverables for the next supervision to deflect a telling off, it’s about getting small (but significant) steps closer to Viva Day.     And it’s about the realisation that when things go wrong, to paraphrase Dr. Helen Kara, I need to “Shut-Up-and-Sort It” or just shut up (which would mean giving up).  For those who don’t know Helen and her work, she is an ebullient and vociferous advocate of “Shut Up and Write” time.  Not inclined to shut up, yet (except to write, of course).  Too many PTPG students to think about, a significant section of my methodology chapter to write on reflexivity; and not to mention the interview transcription that I’ve put on hold to write this post………

As I move forward with the next phase of my data collection, I’ve been reflecting on areas where my planning and implementation need to become SMARTER.  Looking back over the last 9 months or so, I’ve identified 3 areas on which I need to focus moving forwards.

First of all I have not followed up conference and seminar activity as contemporaneously systematically as I might.  Last December, I had an excuse, because my conference follow- up was interrupted by the supervening last illness and death of my MIL .  But it took me until June to realise that going forwards, as soon as I book attendance at an event, I need to book out some time (preferably the day after, but if life and work don’t permit certainly within a week) to blog about what I heard and learned, send all the email that I meant to send, and follow up the contacts that I had made.  Simple, you’d think, wouldn’t you?  But unless I make the time to do it, it doesn’t happen because the vicissitudes of life and work intervene.

Secondly, I have not been as ruthless with my time as I need to be.  I have let the demands of the job and my life responsibilities permeate the tranches of time that I’d set aside for study, and not taken the time back.  As I was typing, I hesitated over the phrase “set-aside”, because what I really meant was “ear-marked”.  The indiscipline of the PT doctoral student (specifically me) is a subject for a separate post and another day.  Suffice to say for now, I need to get to the bottom of why I’ve been insufficiently ruthless in defending my research and study time, and set SMART targets to sort that out.

Thirdly, until very recently, I have not had (or perhaps had and not stuck to – the net result if the same, but the distinction is quite important) a plan to develop my academic identity.  Whilst this is related to study, and supervisions, and decisions; it’s a path that needs to run in parallel with research progress.  It’s not the same path.  So, I’ve included time for this as part of my EdD time on a weekly basis.  I’m going to review what I have done, what this has achieved and where it’s taken me.  I expect to be held to account for this, and challenged if I don’t make progress.  Please.

There are three elements to data collection for student participants in my research into transitions into PTPG studies.  The first is a questionnaire, collecting mainly quantitative data about students who are new to PG studies, their course (and their reasons for selecting it), and their expectations of their course at the very beginning (either during induction or shortly afterwards).  The main purpose of this questionnaire is to facilitate the selection of an interview sample.  It takes 10-15 minutes to complete.

Participants who are selected for interview then take part in two further interviews.  The first interview takes place after completion and submission of the first taught module, but before a grade and feedback have been issued.  The exact timing of this interview will depend on when assessments are submitted, but it is envisaged that these interviews will take place between December 2016 and February 2017.  The second interview takes place after feedback has been received on the second module.  Again, the precise timing of this interview will depend on assignment submission, but it is anticipated that this will be between March and May 2017.  Experience of the pilot programme  and initial interviews suggests that each interview takes approximately 45 minutes.

So, those people who take part are committing a maximum of two hours in total of their lives spread across period of up to nine months.  Because the EdD is a professional doctorate, it will need to deliver both a contribution to knowledge, and a contribution to practice.  As I mentioned in a previous post, the contribution to practice will be to identify ways and interventions to better support new students into and through PTPG studies.  This will help to optimise successful outcomes and minimise stress for future PTPGstudents.

In the immortal words of Eddie Reader (question for self: should I own up to knowing the words of a Fairground Attraction hit?), “it’s got to be worth it”………

I’ve just re-read my previous post in preparation for this one, and it occurs to me that unless you know me or have been following my travails, it’s unlikely that you will have gleaned a clear idea of the rationale underpinning my EdD thesis.

The main reason that I’m researching the impact of expectations on student transitions into part-time postgraduate (PTPG studies) is because of my students.  I work in a MillionPlus University, and it’s fair to say that most of the students that I teach are what Leese (2010) would describe as non-traditional PG students, because they are not all progressing straight from their undergraduate degrees.  It’s also fair to say (until next month) that they are currently all part-time with what Tobbell et al. (2008) would describe as “complicated lives”.  Apart from answers to my research questions, what I really want to find out is how I, and the School of Education in which I teach, can support new PTPG students more effectively.

I first became interested in the topic of transitions into undergraduate HE studies when I was teaching on and managing HE in FE business provision at an FE College in the Midlands.  It was my anecdotal observation that the type of (L3) entry qualification that HND Business in FE students had impacted on their transition into, retention during and achievement on the programme.  Transition into UG studies was a hot topic at the time, because of the perceived need to measure and evaluate the impact of Widening Participation.  But there was very little on transition into HE in FE (Schofield and Dismore (2010) excepted – and even that was in a different discipline).So when I needed a topic for my MA Education dissertation I needed to look no further.  Both my qualitative and quantitative data blew my anecdotal observation out of the water, and that changed my life (and the lives of my then current and future students) for ever.

So when I moved from HE in FE to teach PTPG students in an HEI, it seemed logical to scope my EdD studies accordingly.  Whilst there is a small but growing body of research into transition into PG studies, much of it focuses on full time students (Morgan, 2015; inter alia).  Some studies (Scott et al., 2014) focus on types of transition; but there is little specifically relating to PT students.

So now you know both what and why……..

I started my original Blog about my doctoral studies some time ago.  I was appalled to find this morning, that it has been two years since I last posted.  Since then, I’ve lost my dad and my mother-in-law, carried out a pilot study, written a 10,000 word literature review , gained ethical & research degree committee approval for my study, and generally made excuses for myself.  So, as I collect my data, I’ve decided that it’s time for a fresh start in the public accountability stakes.

I’m researching the impact of expectation on experiences of transition into part-time postgraduate studies.  For a variety of personal & professional reasons, I have recently been revisiting my rationale for selecting this topic; and have been energised by reminding myself that it’s so that these students can be better supported.  Part-time postgraduate students tend to have complicated lives with often conflicting responsibilities of work, study and caring.  The loneliness of the part-time student should not be underestimated – even if they spend their working hours immersed in an educational environment.  It’s all to easy to allow the requirements of the day job to subsume study at any level.

I shall not Blog on a daily basis, as it’s one of my mantras that I don’t speak when I have nothing to say; but I will update on my progress; and invite censure rather than sympathy when I don’t make any.