Living in Liminal Space

Meeting with Peter

Our discussion was wide-ranging, but I have a writing plan for the next month or so. I will also think about epistemic fluency (he's sent me his paper) and work out how that can be applied to thinking about the kinds of skills needed to supervise and more importantly to do a PhD.

Facilities for students

I attended a meeting yesterday which was the result of a group of fifteen students, mostly enrolled for less than a year, writing a letter to the Dean in frustration at the lack of student facilities (desk, lockable cabinet, phone access) that they have. Only three of them came to the meeting, along with a co-president of SUPRA (PG student rep organisation), four staff, and three other students who were interested but not involved with the letter. It wasn't clear why the other interested students hadn't turned up, but explanations could be that they were anxious not to appear as they felt their progress might have been affected by their complaints, or that they weren't really committed to the complaint but had only signed it because of a group dynamic that made it difficult not to sign. It was the lack of agency exhibited by the students who did turn up, and one in particular. that was the chief theme of the meeting. Acted upon, and acting herself only out of resentment and a certain amount of spite toward one staff member. Not bothering to find out what structures existed for student support in the faculty, just interested in airing grievances.

The whole of Sydney Uni has a space problem, and our team is living evidence of that - we are still, after five years and despite the best efforts of our Director, in three separate places across the huge campus. The Education Faculty has a worse-than-usual accommodation crisis this year. Their building, less than 20 years old, did not have air-conditioning included in its construction, so this year the whole faculty has been serially displaced as this has been put in, floor by painful floor. Once this has been done there is a plan for more student space to be allocated, all in one area. All of this could have been ascertained by the students by making simple enquiries.

The meeting was interesting chiefly for the dynamic. The Dean and the Director of Doctoral Studies were sympathetic, and glad to have the chance to learn that a couple of the facts they had were incorrect - eg they thought students each had their own locker, but found some students are sharing locker space. The hot-desking arrangements do need to be made more explicit, and some arrangements made for students needing to reserve desks in a private room with phone access for conducting interviews. The meeting, which should have been around 30 mins, dragged on for more than an hour because of one person's need to, well, complain about how hard her life is, basically. It was a hot day, and remember that issue with the aircon that I mentioned earlier? Plus I had ducked out from an important work training session to be there as a student rep on the Doctoral Studies Committee  - and, I might add, neither I nor the other rep had been approached by any of the students concerned.

The man from SUPRA did explain that there has been an explosion in the number of PhD students in the last five years, and that the Uni is really trying to solve this issue of student facilities, and that the situation must improve soon. However, the room went quiet when I pointed out that one way to lessen the problem would be to take on fewer students - only to enroll someone when someone completes, thus making enrolment much more competitive. I got the impression that none of the other students present thought that this was a good idea.

Another question

What do the various people involved in PhD process understand about the pedagogy of the process?
This ties in to the question I've asked all participants so far: "What metaphor, or word, or phrase, comes into your mind when you think about supervision?

Also relevant is Barbara Grant's thesis on the pedagogy of graduate supervision.

Another interview and a reflection

An interesting interview with A/Prof Tony Masters in Chemistry. He is the first pure scientist I have interviewed, and I really valued his reflective and reflexive opinions. Really good stuff.

Thinking about interviewing Prof Michael Jacobsen after his defence of the US PhD.

And still have to line up interviews with Derek and Jill Trewhalla. Nearly ready to make a list of questions for them.

Have also critiqued the PhD WP draft report, which was a pedagogical black hole and very poor on evidence.

I'm not sure that there's that much more I can usefully learn about the way the PhD is understood at Sydney at the moment. One thing that's clear is the tension between the rationalists (ie those who are interested in improving the mangement of the process, because they believe (generally without any evidence) that that will somehow (magically?) improve the experience for the students, and those who are more reflective and want to improve the student experience by trying to find out more about what that experience actually is and what is presently lacking in it.

Interview with Steve Dinham

Generous interviwe with Steve Dinham on his views of the PhD in Aus (see this entry), especially on recent developments. I will add it to the sidebar once I've written up my notes and cleared them with him.

Tama Leaver's post on the QUT student affair

http://www.tamaleaver.net/2007/05/28/academic-ethics-privacy-and-transparency-all-coming-soon-to-youtube/#comments

Alll I wanted

A workmate who has a PhD that took a long time said to me today "All I ever wanted from my supervisors was intelligent (that is, educated) feedback." At the beginning he got vague suggestions for reading; once he began writing all he got was grammar and spelling corrections. He got better feedback from other PhD studnets, some far removed from his own field.

I wonder if anyone conceptualises supervision as a meeting of minds? (Which is what it should be, ideally).

The aftermath

Yesterday was really not what I expected. My seminar on blogging for PhD students somehow morphed into a full defence of my methodology - for which I wasn't prepared. And the attack came mostly from someone very senior who clearly had no clue about ethnographic method. It was a fascinating demonstration of how power operates around PhD students. It may have been my imagination, but I thought that he went rather quiet (and he certainly pulled a funny face) when he heard who my supervisor was. There was another academic there who also asked some hard questions about my methodology, which I wasn't very happy about - it wasn't the subject of the seminar, and some of the information I wanted to share didn't get shared. But at least his were constructive questions, intended to help me. I'm sure that some questions about the real subject of the seminar didn't get asked - of course that was the responsibilty of the other academics present, not mine.

I held my own, and managed to resist making up answers where I didn't know how to respond. But it was draining and I was cross that the intention of the seminar got lost. I talked to the chair this morning, and she apologised. I do take some responsibility - I suppose I could have stopped it and moved it back to what I wanted to talk about. But I wanted to be a good little girl and answer all the hard questions to prove I can be as good as they are.

Well, that's given me something to think/write about power. But is there any glory in picking on an unprepared student? (Especially when, by doing so, you reveal your own ignorance of their methodology.) And it didn't seem to occur to my questioners that the experience might end up being part of a discussion about power plays around PhD candidature in my thesis.

From an experienced supervisor

"Half the time I'm expected to be a headmistress and most of the rest of the time I'm being cast as a rescuer!"