Reshaping Doctoral Education: International Approaches and Pedagogies 2011027562, 9780415618120, 9780415618137, 9780203142783

Table of contents :
Front Cover
Reshaping Doctoral Education
Copyright Page
Contents
List of figures and tables
Notes on contributors
Foreword
Preface
Part I: Old basics/new basics?
1. Framing doctoral pedagogy as design and action: Susan Danby and Alison Lee
2. Writing as craft and practice in the doctoral curriculum: Claire Aitchison and Anthony Paré
3. Learning from the literature: some pedagogies: David N. Boote
4. ‘Team’ supervision: new positionings in doctoral education pedagogies: Catherine Manathunga
5. The seminar as enacted doctoral pedagogy: Madeleine Abrandt Dahlgren and Anna Bjuremark
6. Taking a break: Doctoral Summer Schools as transformative pedagogies: Miriam Zukas and Linda Lundgaard Andersen
7. ‘What’s going on here?’ The pedagogy of a data analysis session: Jessica Harris, Maryanne Theobald, Susan Danby, Edward Reynolds, E. Sean Rintel and Members of the Transcript Analysis Group (Tag)
Part II: Disciplinary and transdisciplinary pedagogies
8. Designing (in) the PhD in architecture: knowledge, discipline, pedagogy: Charles Rice and Linda Matthews
9. Pedagogies for creativity in science doctorates: Liezel Frick
10. Creative tensions: negotiating the multiple dimensions of a transdisciplinary doctorate: Juliet Willetts, Cynthia Mitchell, Kumi Abeysuriya and Dena Fam
11. Cognitive apprenticeship: the making of a scientist: Barbara J. Gabrys and Alina Beltechi
12. Pedagogies of industry partnership: Barbara Adkins, Jennifer Summerville, Susan Danby and Judy Matthews
Part III: International and intercultural pedagogical spaces
13. The graduate school in the sky: emerging pedagogies for an international network for doctoral education and research: Madeleine Abrandt Dahlgren, Garnet Grosjean, Alison Lee and Sofia Nyström
14. Ignorance and pedagogies of intellectual equality: internationalising Australian doctoral education programs and pedagogies through engaging Chinese theoretical tools: Michael Singh with Xiafang Chen
15. Expanding pedagogical boundaries: Indigenous students: undertaking doctoral education: Liz Mckinley and Barbara Grant
Index

Citation preview

Reshaping Doctoral Education

The number of doctorates being awarded around the world has almost doubled over the last ten years, propelling it from a small elite enterprise into a large and ever growing international market. Within the context of increasing numbers of doctoral students, this book examines the new doctorate environment and the challenges it is facing. Drawing on research from around the world, the individual authors contribute to a previously under-represented focus of theorising the emerging practices of doctoral education and the shape of change in this arena. Key aspects, expertly discussed by contributors from the UK, USA, Australia, New Zealand, China, South Africa, Sweden and Denmark, include: • • • • •

the changing nature of doctoral education the need for systematic and principled accounts of doctoral pedagogies the importance of disciplinary specificity the relationship between pedagogy and knowledge generation issues of transdisciplinarity.

Reshaping Doctoral Education provides rich accounts of traditional and more innovative pedagogical practices within a range of doctoral systems in different disciplines, professional fields and geographical locations, providing the reader with a trustworthy and scholarly platform from which to design the doctoral experience. It will prove an essential resource for anyone involved in doctorate studies, whether as students, supervisors, researchers, administrators, teachers or mentors. Alison Lee is Professor of Education and Director of the Centre for Research in Learning and Change at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia. Susan Danby is a Professor of Education in the Faculty of Education, Queensland University of Technology, Australia.

We thank Linda Matthews, who has provided the image on the front cover. It is an urban colour profile of New York generated from webcam images produced using non-proprietary medical imaging software. Linda is currently undertaking her PhD at the University of Technology Sydney, and she and her supervisor Charles Rice have a chapter in this book.

Reshaping Doctoral Education

International approaches and pedagogies

Edited by Alison Lee and Susan Danby

First published 2012 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2012 selection and editorial material, Alison Lee and Susan Danby; individual chapters, the contributors The right of the editors to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Reshaping doctoral education : changing approaches and pedagogies / edited by Alison Lee and Susan Danby. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Doctor of philosophy degree--United States. 2. Universities and colleges--United States--Graduate work. I. Lee, Alison, 1952- II. Danby, Susan. LB2386.R47 2012 378.20973--dc23 2011027562 ISBN 978 0 415 61812 0 (hbk) ISBN 978 0 415 61813 7 (pbk) ISBN 978 0 203 14278 3 (ebk) Typeset in Galliard by GreenGate Publishing Services

Contents

List of figures and tables Notes on contributors Foreword Preface

viii ix xvii xxiii

PART I

Old basics/new basics? 1 Framing doctoral pedagogy as design and action

1 3

SUSAN DANBY AND ALISON LEE

2 Writing as craft and practice in the doctoral curriculum

12

CLAIRE AITCHISON AND ANTHONY PARÉ

3 Learning from the literature: some pedagogies

26

DAVID N. BOOTE

4 ‘Team’ supervision: new positionings in doctoral education pedagogies

42

CATHERINE MANATHUNGA

5 The seminar as enacted doctoral pedagogy

56

MADELEINE ABRANDT DAHLGREN AND ANNA BJUREMARK

6 Taking a break: Doctoral Summer Schools as transformative pedagogies MIRIAM ZUKAS AND LINDA LUNDGAARD ANDERSEN

69

vi

Contents

7 ‘What’s going on here?’ The pedagogy of a data analysis session

83

JESSICA HARRIS, MARYANNE THEOBALD, SUSAN DANBY, EDWARD REYNOLDS, E. SEAN RINTEL AND MEMBERS OF THE TRANSCRIPT ANALYSIS GROUP (TAG)

PART II

Disciplinary and transdisciplinary pedagogies 8 Designing (in) the PhD in architecture: knowledge, discipline, pedagogy

97 99

CHARLES RICE AND LINDA MATTHEWS

9 Pedagogies for creativity in science doctorates

113

LIEZEL FRICK

10 Creative tensions: negotiating the multiple dimensions of a transdisciplinary doctorate

128

JULIET WILLETTS, CYNTHIA MITCHELL, KUMI ABEYSURIYA AND DENA FAM

11 Cognitive apprenticeship: the making of a scientist

144

BARBARA J. GABRYS AND ALINA BELTECHI

12 Pedagogies of industry partnership

156

BARBARA ADKINS, JENNIFER SUMMERVILLE, SUSAN DANBY AND JUDY MATTHEWS

PART III

International and intercultural pedagogical spaces

171

13 The graduate school in the sky: emerging pedagogies for an international network for doctoral education and research

173

MADELEINE ABRANDT DAHLGREN, GARNET GROSJEAN, ALISON LEE AND SOFIA NYSTRÖM

14 Ignorance and pedagogies of intellectual equality: internationalising Australian doctoral education programs and pedagogies through engaging Chinese theoretical tools MICHAEL SINGH WITH XIAFANG CHEN

187

Contents vii

15 Expanding pedagogical boundaries: Indigenous students undertaking doctoral education

204

LIZ MCKINLEY AND BARBARA GRANT

Index

218

Figures and tables

Figures 3.1 8.1

Venn diagram Webcam view (left) and street view (right) of proposed building at Circular Quay 8.2 Freemind map of doctoral research path 8.3 Possible façade patterns derived from diffraction grating tests 8.4 Diagram of Bayer pattern showing how the addition of its complementary colours produces white 14.1 Lì tıˇ leadership in Queensland’s reforms to Senior Secondary school

35 101 107 109 110 198

Tables 3.1 3.2 6.1 9.1 9.2

Cooper’s (1988) taxonomy of literature reviews An example of a t-chart Contrasting features of supervision and the Summer School The possible manifestation of creativity within a doctoral project Pedagogical principles for stimulating doctoral creativity

30 36 77 115 121

Contributors

Kumudini (Kumi) Abeysuriya is a Senior Research Consultant at the Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology, Sydney. She completed her PhD at the Institute, using transdisciplinarity as a research approach to investigate how the sustainability discourse can inform urban sanitation for developing Asian countries. Kumi also assists with running the Institute’s transdisciplinary postgraduate program. Barbara Adkins is a Research Leader in the Creative Industries Faculty at the Queensland University of Technology. Her research development role builds on previous experience as Education Manager at the Australasian Cooperative Research Centre for Interaction Design where she oversaw development programs for researchers and research students. A long standing interest in these roles is the changing knowledge relationships between disciplines and sectors that are now involved in applied research; and questions of the pedagogical relationships required to support scholarship conducted in these contexts. Previous publications include a paper on ‘PhD pedagogy and the changing knowledge landscapes of universities’, published in Higher Education Research and Development, and research on ‘Ecologies of innovation’, published in American Behavioral Scientist. Claire Aitchison is a Senior Lecturer with special responsibilities for graduate student literacies at the University of Western Sydney. She has over 20 years’ experience developing innovative practical pedagogies for supporting academic writing across a broad range of disciplines and research areas. In recent years she has developed, researched and taught writing programs for doctoral students, early career researchers and academic staff. Claire’s teaching and curriculum design is noted for its incorporation of peer learning through the pedagogy of peer review. She has written widely on the efficacy of writing groups for doctoral education. Linda Lundgaard Andersen, PhD, is a Professor at Roskilde University, Denmark. She is the Director of the Graduate School of Lifelong Learning and the Director of the Centre for Social Entrepreneurship. She has been the principal investigator of more than 15 national research grants and her research includes

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Contributors

empirical inquiries and theoretical and conceptual work in education, learning and social innovation in welfare services. For ten years she has headed and developed a major doctoral program in lifelong learning. She has been one of the key persons in developing an interactive doctoral learning environment, performing writing and supervising methods for junior researchers, PhD supervisors and their collaborative partners; she has also co-developed and headed ten international Summer Schools. Her latest initiative has been developing an intensive research supervision seminar for PhD students performing intensive field work or qualitative methods. Alina Beltechi is currently employed as a Lecturer in Pharmacology and Therapeutics at the School of Pharmacy, University of Reading, and she teaches across several modules of the MPharm undergraduate program. She trained as a medical doctor and completed her PhD in Pharmacology/Medical Sciences. She has extensive international experience in teaching and mentoring both undergraduate medical, physiology and pharmacy students and PhD students. Her teaching is mostly focused on the wide use of audio-visual and virtual learning environment (VLE) methods as well as peer-to-peer interactions and critical thinking. Anna Bjuremark is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning and the Centre for Teaching and Learning, Linköping University, Sweden. Her research interests involve governing academic processes from so-called ‘post-perspectives’. At the Centre she is involved in the pedagogical development of academic staff and, since the late 1980s, she has focused in particular on the training of PhD supervisors. David N. Boote is Associate Professor of Curriculum Studies and Educational Research (joint appointment) in the College of Education at the University of Central Florida, USA. He recently completed five years as coordinator of the College’s EdD in Education program, leading a re-design of the program to focus on the needs of advanced practitioners. He has focused on methods of teaching advanced graduate students to read, analyze, and synthesize research and scholarship. In addition, he continues to publish on topics related to mathematics and science education, especially issues related to curriculum and sociocultural analyses of teaching and curricular practice. Xiafang (Shar-fong) Chen has recently completed her second doctoral thesis at the University of Western Sydney (UWS). Her current thesis focuses on educational leadership in vocational educational training in senior secondary schools. Before she came to UWS in 2008, she was an Associate Professor in English Education in the School of Foreign Languages, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics (SHUFE), China. Her key areas of knowledge and academic experience in teaching and research are in English education, educational leadership, vocational education and training in senior secondary. However, she also has knowledge and experience in early childhood education, education studies/ society and culture, distance education and international education.

Contributors xi

Madeleine Abrandt Dahlgren is a Professor at Linköping University, Sweden, within the Faculty of Educational Sciences and the Faculty of Health Sciences. Her main research interest concerns student learning in higher education, with a particular view to professional learning in different fields, as well as the relationship between higher education and working life and the study of pedagogical processes within health care and medical education. She has long experience of research supervision and is the Director of Postgraduate Studies at the Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning. She initiated Doctoralnet, an international network for research and pedagogy and learning in adult life. Susan Danby is a Professor of Education in the Faculty of Education, Queensland University of Technology. She coordinated one of the largest professional doctorates in education in Australia for six years (2001–2007), and taught intensively in the program. As well, she has extensive experience in developing practical pedagogies for doctoral contexts. She has a long-term involvement in the Transcript Analysis Group, a cross-university group of interested researchers and postgraduate students who engage in fine-grained data analysis. Her interests are in examining interactional practices across institutional, educational and social contexts using Ethnomethodology, Conversation Analysis and Membership Categorisation Analysis. She has Australian Research Council funding for cross-disciplinary projects in Education, Linguistics and Psychology, with current projects investigating helpline interactions on a national children and young people’s helpline, and young children’s information searching online. She has guest edited special issues of Twin Studies and Human Genetics, Child Indicators Research and Children and Society. Dena Fam is a doctoral candidate and Research Consultant at the Institute of Sustainable Futures, University of Technology, Sydney. Dena’s research focuses on potential pathways to sustainable sanitation futures, taking into consideration the complex relationship between material infrastructures, resources, social actors and rules and regulations that determine their operation, with the view of understanding how these systems should be designed (in the broadest sense) to contribute to sustainability in wastewater management. Drawing on concepts of transition management, organisation learning and complexity theory, Dena’s aim during her candidature is to produce practice-based, industry-relevant research to facilitate greater understanding of how to transition toward more sustainable systems of sanitation through collaborative input from transdisciplinary partners. Liezel Frick is currently employed as a Senior Lecturer in Higher and Adult Education (Department of Curriculum Studies) at Stellenbosch University, where her research currently focuses on creativity in doctoral education. She has written various scholarly articles and book chapters related to this topic, as well as contributions on continuous professional development, assessment and recognition of prior learning, and improving students’ learning outcomes. She is involved in various projects in the academic community related to student learning, continuous ministry development, leadership development, and building research networks.

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Contributors

Barbara Gabrys is Divisional Academic Advisor in the Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences Division and Academic Visitor in the Department of Materials, University of Oxford. She has substantial experience in exploring different science disciplines via teaching, learning and research activities. Her current teaching duties comprise developing courses for postgraduates and early career academics across the Division, and teaching polymer science to undergraduates at the Department of Materials. She delivers annually a series of seminars on ‘Building a successful career in the sciences’, accompanied by a book, How to Succeed as a Scientist: From Postdoc to Professor, co-authored with Professor Jane Langdale. She is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics (FInstP) and Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA). Barbara Grant is an Associate Professor of Higher Education in the Faculty of Education at the University of Auckland. She publishes post-critical accounts of higher education with a particular focus on the supervision of graduate research students, academic identities, academic development and research methodologies. Barbara is also the regional Co-Editor (Oceania) for the International Journal for Academic Development and the Executive Editor for Higher Education Research and Development. In her previous life as an academic developer, she taught courses on graduate research supervision and thesis writing and facilitated many writing retreats, mainly for academic women, for institutions in Aotearoa/ New Zealand and overseas. Garnet Grosjean is a Lecturer in the Department of Educational Studies and Academic Coordinator for the Doctor of Leadership and Policy program at the University of British Columbia, where he teaches postgraduate courses and supervises students. He is also the International Coordinator of an online Intercontinental Master of Education program on Adult Learning and Global Change. He is a strong proponent of peer learning. His research and writing focus on higher education and the changing economy; accountability and performance models; the social organisation of learning; and policy and practice implications of experiential learning programs. He is currently editing a book with two colleagues (Schuetze and Bruneau) on University Governance and Reform Policy (Palgrave Macmillan). Jessica Harris is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of Education at the University of Queensland. Her research interests include Ethnomethodology, Conversation Analysis, crying, medical and counselling interactions, comparative education, education policy and social capital. Her most recent book, with coauthor Brian Caldwell, is Why not the Best Schools? (ACER Press, 2008). Alison Lee is a Professor of Education and Director of the Centre for Research in Learning and Change at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS). She has researched and published extensively in higher and professional education, with a particular focus on doctoral education, including doctoral writing, doctoral supervision, professional doctorates, and the changing relations between the university and the professions. Her co-edited collections with David Boud, Changing Practice of Doctoral Education (Routledge, 2009), and with Claire Aitchison and Barbara

Contributors xiii

Kamler, Publishing Pedagogies for the Doctorate and Beyond (Routledge, 2010), address the globalisation of the doctorate, including implications for doctoral writing and publication. Catherine Manathunga is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at Victoria University, Wellington. Her research interests include doctoral education, postgraduate supervision, interdisciplinary research education, the history of teaching and learning in universities, and the professional development of supervisors and researchers. Catherine is an historian and draws together expertise in historical, sociological and cultural studies research to bring an interdisciplinary perspective to higher education research. She has published a co-authored monograph on educational history, A Class of Its Own: A History of Queensland University of Technology, and a co-edited oral history monograph, Making a Place: An Oral History of Academic Development in Australia; she has also published in international journals in the fields of international relations, research education and academic development. Her research has been funded by the Australian Research Council, HERDSA, industry partners and UQ. She has jointly won a number of UQ and Australian awards for programs that enhance research students’ learning. She has acted as an educational consultant to many other universities in Australia and internationally. Judy Matthews is a Senior Lecturer in the QUT Business School at the Queensland University of Technology engaged in supervising higher education students from industry. She has more than ten years experience in investigating knowledge sharing, learning and innovation in workplaces and has expertise in executive education in Australia and China in fields of managing innovation, creative and entrepreneurial thinking, problem solving in complex environments and knowledge management. Her research interests include innovation, problem finding and problem solving with publications in Public Administration, Journal of Business Research, Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources. She was a joint recipient of the Global Forum Best Symposium Award for Transfer of Learning Success: The benefits of collaborative academic/industry engagement, at the 2010 US Academy of Management Conference in Montreal. Linda Matthews is undertaking a design-orientated PhD concerned with the development of architectural and urban design methodologies that utilize the optical logics of digital surveillance systems. The aim of the research is to understand how these systems frame and re-present the city and to use digital information extracted from these virtual urban spaces to generate architectural form. Linda has recently completed her Bachelor of Architecture Degree at the University of Technology Sydney where she was awarded the University Medal. She has won several significant academic awards including the prestigious Design Medal from NSW Chapter of the Australian Institute of Architects. Liz McKinley (NgatiKahungunuki Wairarapa/NgaiTahu) is a Professor in Ma¯ori Education at the Faculty of Education, the University of Auckland, New Zealand.

xiv

Contributors

Liz’s work addresses the capability of the New Zealand education system to meet the complex challenges of transforming the educational outcomes for Ma¯ori students. Since 2007 she has been the full-time Director of the Starpath Project, a large research project that investigates issues of achievement and equity in secondary schools and universities. In addition to the work on Ma¯ori doctoral students and supervision, she has also written extensively on Ma¯ori and science education. Erica McWilliam is an Adjunct Professor in the Creative Workforce Program in the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation, based at the Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane. She has also performed professorial duties as an educational researcher at the National Institute of Education in Singapore. Erica’s research and scholarship continues to be well known for its focus on ‘over the horizon’ work futures in the context of the new knowledge economy across the entire spectrum of formal learning environments, from early years to doctoral education. Her latest sole-authored book, The Creative Workforce: How to Launch Young People into High Flying Futures, is published by UNSW Press. Cynthia Mitchell is a Professor of Sustainability at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS). She has had the pleasure of leading the development and delivery of the transdisciplinary postgraduate program at the UTS Institute for Sustainable Futures for ten years. In that role, Cynthia has developed a particular interest in and guidance materials for how notions of quality and outcomes manifest in transdisciplinary research. Sofia Nyström is a Postdoctoral Fellow in Education in the Department of Behavioural Sciences and Learning, Linköping University, Sweden. Her research explores the transition from education to working life concerning professional identity and development, in particular drawing on socio-cultural theory of learning and gender. She has studied learning trajectories of different professional groups such as psychologists, political scientists, vocational teachers, police officers and forensic experts. Anthony Paré is a Professor in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education at McGill University, editor of the McGill Journal of Education, and former Director of the Centre for the Study and Teaching of Writing. His research examines academic and non-academic writing, workplace learning, school-to-work transitions, and the development of professional literacies. He teaches courses in literacy, language across the curriculum, and writing theory, research and practice. His publications include books, chapters and articles on topics related to the study and practice of professional communication. Edward Reynolds is a PhD student in Journalism and Communications at the University of Queensland. He is currently undertaking his PhD investigating practice-leading questions that occur in arguments between strangers. Edward has authored work on this practice and is also a reviewer for The British Journal

Contributors xv

of Social Psychology and Qualitative Psychology. His prior work involved the investigation of lying, using Conversation Analysis to investigate the sequential organisation of ‘cues to deception’ in naturalistic contexts. Edward obtained his Masters in Applied Linguistics from the Australian National University. He also maintains the website for the Australian Institute of Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis at http://aiemca.net and has produced numerous interviews with notable scholars in the field hosted through the site. Charles Rice is a Professor of Architectural History and Theory and Head of the School of Art and Design History at Kingston University, London. Prior to this he was an Associate Professor and Director of Research Programs in the Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building at the University of Technology, Sydney, where he is currently engaged as a Visiting Professor of Architecture. His research considers questions of the interior in domestic and urban culture. He is the author of The Emergence of the Interior: Architecture, Modernity, Domesticity (Routledge, 2007), and recent essays have appeared in anthologies including Space Reader: Heterogeneous Space in Architecture (Wiley, 2009), Intimate Metropolis: Urban Subjects in the Modern City (Routledge, 2009) and Designing the Modern Interior: From the Victorians to Today (Berg, 2009). E. Sean Rintel is an Associate Lecturer in Communication at the University of Queensland. His primary research interests are in how the affordances and constraints of communication technologies affect language, social action and culture. He completed his PhD in 2010 at the University at Albany, SUNY, advised by Professor Anita Pomerantz, entitled ‘Novice Couples Coping with Network Trouble in Personal Videoconferencing: Managing the Intersection of Interaction and Technology in the Collaborative Achievement of Conversational Continuity’. Michael Singh, Professor of Education in the Centre for Education Research, University of Western Sydney, leads the Knowledge Work Democracy Team and directs the Research-Oriented School Engaged Teacher Education Program for the teaching of Chinese to non-background speakers. He authored Performance Indicators in Education, Appropriating English (with Kell and Pandian), coedited Globalizing Education (with Apple and Kenway) and Adult Education @ 21st Century (with Kell and Shore), and co-edits the Asia Pacific Journal of Teacher Education. He is a member of the Australian Association for Research in Education’s Committee for the Award for Doctoral Research in Education. His research examines Asia literacy through Australia/China intellectual dialogues, bilingual research literacy, pedagogies of intellectual equality, team-based research education programs and pedagogies, and the uses of non-Western theoretical tools in Western educational research. Jennifer Summerville is a social research and evaluation consultant and visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Queensland University of Technology. Her work lies at the intersection of academia and industry, drawing upon a variety of methods designed to build research capacity in the health and community services

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industries in Australia and to assist postgraduate students from a variety of disciplines to develop sustainable careers in research. Jennifer’s PhD thesis included an examination of informal pedagogies in public policy discourse, leading to an ongoing interest in how pedagogy is ‘enacted’ in different contexts of practice. Maryanne Theobald is a Lecturer in the School of Early Childhood at Queensland University of Technology (QUT). Maryanne’s research interests include children’s social and moral orders, children’s disputes, children’s rights, and children’s talk and interaction. Her methodological expertise includes ethnomethodology, conversation analysis and video-stimulated accounts. Maryanne’s current research, funded by QUT, investigates the teacher’s management of children’s social interactions and disputes in the school playground. Maryanne’s PhD research focused on child participation and social order in the playground. Her in-press publications include ‘Video-stimulated accounts: young children accounting for interactional matters in front of peers’ (Journal of Early Childhood Research) and ‘Well now I’m upset: moral and social order in the playground’ (in Cromdal and Tholander (eds) Morality and Interaction). Juliet Willetts is a Research Director at the Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology, Sydney. She specialises in transdisciplinary research to influence policy and practice and has a keen interest in research methodology and what it means to conduct transdisciplinary research. She has led many developmental activities within the Institute’s transdisciplinary postgraduate program to support and evolve both theory and practice. She has contributed to practical, applied, collaborative research in the fields of international development aid, particularly monitoring and evaluation, gender equality and water, sanitation and hygiene, and is well published across these fields. Miriam Zukas is a Professor of Adult Education and Executive Dean of the School of Social Science, History and Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London. Miriam was previously the Director of the Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Leeds. She has worked with a wide range of adults across her career – women returning to study and work, adults studying for interest, further education teachers, higher education professionals, clinical experts, and other educational professionals from a wide range of backgrounds. Her current research interests include: professional learning in transition generally and doctors’ learning in transition specifically; workplace pedagogies; and academic and pedagogic identities. In 2008, she won a National Teaching Fellowship from the UK’s Higher Education Academy. Until 2010, she was the Editor of the journal Studies in the Education of Adults. She has taught on doctoral programs in the UK and Denmark, acted as supervisor and co-supervisor on more than twenty doctorates, and has examined PhDs and EdDs from a number of countries.

Foreword Erica McWilliam

For doctoral education, it is the best of times, it is the worst of times. It is the best of times, because a doctoral qualification is never more desirable than in an uncertain socio-economic climate, such as we are currently experiencing worldwide, when competition for well-paid, professional employment is fierce inside and outside academe, and when the habits of deep and sustained engagement in learning (and unlearning) are so crucial to full participation in a complex and fast-changing social world. Yet it is also the worst of times for doctoral education, with many higher and further education courses and programs now suspect for over-promising and under-delivering on quality, rigour and relevance. Because doctoral education promises so much and yet remains so vulnerable, the forensic work done in the chapters of this book is very timely indeed, engaged as it is with the pragmatics of bringing into being a next generation of robust and rigorous doctoral pedagogies. What the various authors have produced, through this collection, is a trustworthy, scholarly platform from which to design the doctoral experience, speaking as they do from a wealth of experience of traditional and innovative pedagogies and a breadth of disciplinary and geographical locations. I want to underline, by way of this Foreword, the conditions of possibility – encouraging and problematic – for doctoral education in the second decade of this century and, in so doing, to press home the timeliness of this collection for all those who are engaged with the many forms of doctoral study, whether as students, supervisors, researchers, administrators, teachers or mentors. In so doing, I am hopeful that the reader will be moved to read the chapters that follow as both refusals to ‘dumb down’ the doctorate, and invitations to deliver what it promises at its best. It is a strength of this collection that the authors reject the widespread trend in education to prioritise the most ‘efficient’ programmatic options in terms of cost and time, notwithstanding the constraints of cash-strapped universities and the burgeoning market for ‘quick fix’, high-status credentials. Even a cursory reading of this collection makes it evident that the authors explicitly refuse to skirt epistemological and methodological complexity, and this runs against any imperative to keep the doctoral ‘market’ serviced by lowering programmatic expectations and retreating from theoretical rigour. Michael Foley’s recent book The Age of

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Erica McWilliam

Absurdity (2010) draws attention to the retreat from rigour as a widespread and disturbing tendency of our times. In his chapter, ‘The Rejection of Difficulty and Understanding’, he sums up the trend to ‘low challenge’ living, learning and earning thus: Difficulty has become repugnant because it denies entitlement, disenchants potential, limits mobility and flexibility, delays gratification, distracts from distraction and demands responsibility, commitment, attention and thought. (Foley, 2010: 113) While it might well be thought that the rejection of difficulty would be an unlikely threat to the doctoral domain (in other words, that easy doctorate is an oxymoron), there is always a powerful press on the most valued credentials to be made available quickly, cheaply and without the pain of effort, editing and error. This is a particular problem if and when the notion of ‘servicing the client’ becomes equated with ‘keeping the customer happy’. In the context of resource shrinkage, the imperative to formula-driven pedagogical design is as compelling as it is problematic. This is equally true when it comes to issues of research methodology. ‘Quick fixes’ can too easily reduce systematic inquiry to various forms of data vacuum cleaning, using simplistic (and thus seductive) templates for collecting and analysing and reporting what is presumed to be neatly lying out there waiting to be found. The imperative to stick to short-term programs and simple methodological and pedagogical options is made more compelling by the speed with which activity options can and do get picked up and dropped in a digital environment. Moreover, digital technologies make it possible to choose ‘alternatives’ to the educational mainstream that previous generations never had, and this can be seen as both a threat and an opportunity for doctoral design. It is a threat to formal programs of learning if, as argued by ‘gamer’ researchers John Beck and Mitchell Wade, many in the present generation of young people are now ‘grow[ing] up playing games of chance … [and] are twice as likely as boomers to believe that success in life is due to luck’ rather than intellectual engagement and civic participation (Beck and Wade, 2006: xiv). However, digital times also herald new pedagogical opportunities, as many of these authors demonstrate. While a new generation of learners is much more likely than their baby boomer predecessors to jump over preambles and introductions and much less anxious in the absence of top-down rules, they nevertheless bring a freshness to learning in more formal environments, with ‘systematically different ways of working … systematically different skills to learn, and different ways to learn them’ (Beck and Wade, 2006: 2). Digital tools make it possible to use meta-maps or to operate without one, and this means that the present generation of candidates can be better equipped than former generations to engage deeply in learning without intensive instruction ‘from above’. We do know that long-term continuous engagement in study or work is becoming a thing of the past for many young people, and this has implications

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for pedagogical design at all levels of educational provision, from daycare to the doctorate. The trend to ‘early departure’ has been noted as a feature of much of undergraduate education, with many more students opting out or delaying entry than in previous times. This is evidenced by the fact that 75 per cent of American undergraduates are categorised by the US National Centre for Educational Statistics as ‘non-traditional’. To be categorised as non-traditional, undergraduates have delayed enrolment, or attend part time, or work full time while enrolled, or are financially independent, or have dependants, or are single parents, or lack a high school diploma (Oblinger and Oblinger, 2005: 2.8). In other words, being non-traditional – taking multiple pathways and opting out of linear continuity – is becoming the norm. Once again, this is a threat and an opportunity for doctoral design, as the imperative to engage ‘just in time, just enough and just down the hall’ comes together with a less certain future and a more powerful sense of why one might choose to engage in doctoral study rather than simply seeing it as the end of a predictable linear-cumulative life pathway for ‘bright’ students. Just as non-traditional life choices offer threats and opportunities for the design of doctorates, so too do the investigative affordances of the Internet. The Net, according to Nicholas Carr in his recent book The Shallows (2010), offers much to the ruthlessly curious, while at the same time working as an ecology of disruption and distraction, changing what counts as intellectual work and, indeed, what is coming to count as cognitive capacity. Carr sees the sort of deep and sustained thinking that we have associated with intellectual achievement as being problematically undermined by the Net’s invitation to ‘the permanent state of distraction that defines the on-line life’ (p. 112). His concern is that the ‘buzzing mind’ is an effect of the Net’s capacity to ‘seize our attention only to scatter it’ (p. 118). While Carr acknowledges the unique contribution of digital tools to an expanding social universe, he worries about the emergent character of a Netbased social and intellectual world: The Net’s interactivity gives us powerful new tools for finding information, expressing ourselves, and conversing with others. It also turns us into lab rats constantly pressing levers to get tiny pellets of social or intellectual nourishment. (Carr, 2010: 117) Of course, there are those who would dismiss both Carr and the aforementioned Michael Foley as curmudgeons generating moral panic out of their own personal discomfort with the digital age. Whether or not we agree with Foley’s thesis that the retreat from difficulty is a problematic symptom of an increasingly narcissistic society, or Carr’s thesis that thinking itself is being re-shaped by a digital environment of ‘cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking and superficial learning’ (Carr, 2010: 116), there is little doubt that twenty-first-century living, learning and earning is replete with complexity and becoming more so. Earning a living in a highly competitive global marketplace demands engagement with more

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technology-enhanced processes, more complex design problems, more speedy non-routine transactions, more scrutiny of individual, team and organisational performance, and less certainty of tenure and less career linearity, particularly in high-tech industries and those most exposed to frequent market fluctuations. So too, civic participation in debates about global futures demands higher levels of scientific and systems literacy. Put another way, while there is no doubting the boon that the Internet has been to all higher degree students and researchers as a ‘go anywhere, find anything’ archive and social hub, the idea that scholarly investigation begins and ends with a Google search is one that ill-serves rigorous knowledge work. The call to transdisciplinarity represents a further set of possibilities and problems for the doctoral landscape, inviting new forms of knowledge production and new ways of dissolving discipline boundaries within the humanities and social sciences, and across these, to engage the natural and physical sciences. At the same time, institutional organisation within most universities makes it very difficult to connect these knowledge domains both within academia and across university/ government and public/private sectors. As is evidenced in contemporary policy debates, higher education in general has a major role to play in preparing the sort of highly educated and flexible workforce necessary to economic, social and cultural endeavour in this century. This work cannot be done solely through the transmission of traditional disciplinary knowledge and the requirement that it be reproduced in traditional forms of evaluation and assessment, including the ‘thesis-as-tome’. The advent of the ‘creative industries’ as a new node for re-organising knowledge is one of a number of examples of transdisciplinary re-shaping within the university sector, with the creative industries exploiting symbolic knowledge and skills by combining commercial knowledge and application with aesthetic modes of knowing and doing. Yet for the student genuinely seeking to work across disciplinary domains, it can still be a daunting task, given the fact that administrative and disciplinary inflexibility is still the norm. Put bluntly, faculty/disciplinary boundaries are still proving to be relatively impenetrable in many universities, and so the invitation to transdisciplinary knowledge building is not as easy to take up as it is to make as a rhetorical flourish in marketing materials. In summary, a ‘higher’ education is more important and less relevant than ever. It is more important because of the weight of evidence that the highest qualification means more opportunities to live, learn and earn well. Yet the risky learning challenges in the twenty-first century demand more than traditional disciplinary knowledge and high levels of literacy and numeracy. This century asks of graduates that they demonstrate an ability to select, re-shuffle, combine or synthesise already existing facts, ideas, faculties and skills in original ways. Meanwhile, the hegemony of Western knowledge systems is being challenged on many fronts through the increasing influence of Asia in world affairs, the resurgent interest in Indigenous and community knowledges and through the competing perspectives of multiple modernities. No educational project, and certainly not the doctorate,

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can claim exemption from this set of new learning challenges, given the explosion of knowledge being incorporated from such a diverse set of sources into our increasingly complex systems of economic and social management. The good news is that, enabled by carefully crafted pedagogical designs, a new cross-generational cohort of candidates can come to see the world otherwise, with all the fascination and surprise that this brings to the labour of knowledge building. To insist on ‘giving access’ by way of theoretical and methodological rigour, as these authors do, is to enable present and future doctoral candidates to engage with the world, in Donna Haraway’s (1991) terms, not as ripe for formulaic coding, but as a coding trickster with whom we must constantly learn to converse. Such a disposition to scepticism about the very tools we use to understand all phenomena, including the human condition, makes it possible to welcome the instructive complications of unfamiliar and/or transdisciplinary thinking and doing. In methodological terms, it makes for a doctoral experience that surpasses the translation of our social world into a mere problem of coding ‘in which all resistance to instrumental control disappears and all heterogeneity can be submitted to disassembly, re-assembly, investment and exchange’ (Haraway, 1991: 164). In short, it allows us to think about thinking about our knowledge projects in ways that make for more explanatory power than simple formulae or routine thinking can do. Proposed as ‘a series of situated, practice-led conversations’, the editors of this collection set out to challenge much of the traditional literature that informs and reflects on the doctoral experience. They understand that it is one thing to speak of ‘conversations’ in some flabby romantic way, but quite another to optimise the usefulness of conversation in terms of contemporary knowledge production. When the rubber of cultural nuance meets the road of doctoral engagement, the journey can be much more demanding than any starry-eyed rendering of an East-meets-West, quant-meets-qual, young-meets-old, pedagogical narrative might suggest. The potential riches of cross-cultural endeavours can too easily collapse into a push and pull around research trajectory and methodology (with traditional winners and losers) or, conversely, they can build capacity for greater epistemological agility. The latter is exemplified in a cross-cultural conversation documented in a paper by John Elliott and Ching-tien Tsai (2008), which explores and exploits concepts of education and learning emanating from Confucian scholarship and from recent Western thinking such as that of Lawrence Stenhouse. In line with the cultural and methodological breadth of this collection, Elliott and Ching argue the importance of ‘more dialogue with east Asian educators who are engaged with versions of educational action research that have been shaped by Confucian culture’ (p. 569) in the development of new paradigms of educational inquiry, the sort of conversational activity that is more fully aligned with the challenge of producing new knowledge for new times. What all this means for doctoral education is that it is ripe for re-shaping. The overwhelming trajectory of the chapters that make up this collection is to design pedagogies that give genuine access to complex ways of thinking and doing to all

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who seek to engage with doctoral demands, especially to those who have been historically marginalised in the academy and outside it, as well as to those with non-linear educational histories. In other words, the imperative is to introduce new generations to the pleasure of the rigour of twenty-first-century doctoral engagement.

References Beck, J. C. and Wade, M. (2006) The Kids are Alright: How the gamer generation is changing the workplace. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. Carr, N. (2010) The Shallows: How the Internet is changing the way we think, read and remember. London: Atlantic Books. Elliott, J. and Tsai, C-T. (2008) ‘What might Confucius have to say about educational research?’, Educational Action Research, 16 (4): 569–578. Foley, M. (2010) The Age of Absurdity: Why modern life makes it hard to be happy. London: Simon and Schuster. Haraway, D. (1991) Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The re-invention of nature. London: Free Association Books. Oblinger, D. and Oblinger, J. (2005) Understanding the Net Generation. An Educause e-book. http://www.educause.edu/educatingthenetgen.

Preface Alison Lee and Susan Danby

This collection has arisen out of many years of collaborative work on designing doctoral programs. Each of us, in our respective universities, has been involved with developing and coordinating programs for doctoral education, in an environment where individualised supervision was still the norm and policies for research training were just beginning to dawn over the horizon. In the 1990s, particularly in Australia and the UK, new kinds of doctorate were being developed: professional and practice-based doctorates, joining a somewhat longer tradition of creative arts doctorates. These new doctorates introduced practical imperatives for considering a range of different kinds of purposes for doctoral research education and different kinds of ‘knowledge objects’ (Green, 2009) as outcomes of the doctorate. Chris Park’s (2007) report to the Higher Education Academy in the UK, titled Redefining the Doctorate, can be seen as a watershed in bringing these different developments together into a persuasive account of change. Professional doctorates in particular, during the past two decades, have challenged the pre-eminence of the ‘solo journey’ modes of humanities doctoral work, and the ‘extra pair of hands’ practices that marked the more laissez-faire modes of on-the-job training through participation in the laboratory sciences. While extreme images, perhaps caricatures, these metaphors articulate the cultural norms against which explicit attention to skill and knowledge development, increasingly required by governments and universities, were positioned. Once understood as only needed for ‘under-prepared’ students from non-traditional academic backgrounds, the emergence of explicit pedagogical work over the past decade and a half has involved a borrowing from the ‘different’ doctorates – particularly professional doctorates – together with a kind of envious, albeit ambivalent, look over the shoulder at the so-called ‘American model’ of doctorate by advanced coursework and dissertation. What we often found, in our own practices, was that students from more traditional PhD supervision environments asked to participate in the more systematic and explicit forms of educational work characterising the cohort models of professional doctorates. The resulting changes have continued to raise important issues of knowledge, pedagogy and research practice that, until recently, remained hidden and implicit.

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Our work in designing, coordinating and teaching in professional doctorate programs prepared us well to participate in what began to emerge during the first decade of this century: a generalised requirement to grow numbers of enrolments and completions, enrol increasing numbers of students from other cultural and linguistic environments, build flexibility into enrolment patterns and, above all, to address an increasing range of ‘generic’ skills and knowledges into mainstream doctoral programs. In line with human capital conceptions of the doctorate, which harnessed it increasingly strongly to rhetorics of a globalising knowledge economy, forms of education were required that could make explicit what doctoral graduates knew and could do, as well as what they could produce by way of original research after an increasingly tightly regulated period of candidature. Such forms also opened up spaces, though there were no guarantees, for debating the forms of identity being imagined and projected by these changing dynamics of candidature, and how these impacted on older, more traditional forms of disciplinary–academic identity. Collaborating during this time involved us persuading our respective universities to support us to undergo what we called a ‘process benchmarking’ (Achtemeier and Simpson, 2005) of our programs. This entailed travelling to Sydney, or Brisbane, to teach in each other’s programs and to become involved in articulating what often remained local, implicit and largely undocumented practices. Early collaborations also involved conference presentations (e.g. the 2006 Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) conference) as we continued our discussions on how to construct ‘conversation-rich, information-rich and structurerich’ (McWilliam and Taylor, 2001) doctoral learning environments. Our shared practice – in teaching, working with students and articulating and debating questions of program design – formed a ground where we realised the need to draw on particular forms of theorising to consider matters of pedagogy within the current policy environment that had intensified to attend to industry-relevance and to build sustainable research partnerships beyond the university. Out of these experiences has grown the conceptual work on design and pedagogy-in-action that provide the framing and conceptual underpinning to this book.

The focus of this book Debates about the diversification of doctoral provision to include more structured forms of activity often remain at high levels of abstraction within universities, or as very local developments, not well theorised or connected to broader questions of what these new practices might produce. We argue, following Green (2009), that an examination of the practices and relationships of doctoral provision is the next challenge for doctoral education. This point relates to the broader argument that pedagogical practices in higher education remain ‘extraordinarily – even “shockingly” – undocumented’ (Lee and Green, 1997). In this book, we take up the challenge of contributing to a documentation of practices and dynamics of doctoral pedagogies, understood and framed as forms of

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social practice. The chapters are a series of situated, practice-led conversations that challenge the traditional reductionist approaches typically offered in guidebooks, as Kamler and Thomson (2008) have argued. As such, the chapters contribute to an emerging body of work that presents principled, coherent accounts of doctoral programs and pedagogies beyond the supervision relationship (Danby and McWilliam, 2005; Kamler and Thomson, 2006; Boud and Lee, 2009; Aitchison et al., 2010, Thomson and Walker, 2010a and b). The chapters in this book offer up challenges for new ways of conceptualising doctoral pedagogy in a variety of national and international contexts. They provide rich accounts of pedagogical practices within a range of forms of doctoral programs in different disciplines, professional fields, technological platforms and geographical locations. Reshaping Doctoral Education is a closely edited volume, with chapters written by internationally known and respected educators in different disciplines and fields of doctoral study, together with descriptions of the doctoral activities of students and graduates of the programs. An important feature of the book is that many chapters are co-authored, produced from dialogue among research supervisors and current (e.g. Rice and Matthews) or past (e.g. Abrandt Dahlgren, Grosjean, Lee and Nyström) doctoral students, or among members of research teams involving students and early career researchers (e.g. Harris, Theobald, Danby, Reynolds, Rintel, and members of TAG), or international peers (e.g. Aitchison and Paré). These chapters reflect on the design and enactment of the pedagogical work being undertaken in situ within different disciplinary and institutional settings. Each chapter has been reviewed by two other authors, and revised; this process has contributed to building a coherence within the collection, across the accounts, from diverse disciplines and programs. There is, moreover, a distinctly ‘southern’ flavour to much of this work, by which we mean that the initial conceptualisation for the book arose within an Australian context rich in debates about the future of doctoral education. Further, the book draws on leading doctoral practices, research and scholarship from Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, including the phenomena of Indigenous doctoral education in New Zealand (McKinley and Grant) and pedagogical provocations of ‘ignorance’ in relation to working with Chinese doctoral students in Western Sydney (Singh and Chen). This point is important in a context where the globalisation of the doctorate appears to draw most heavily from the cultural norms of the North, particularly the USA and, more recently, Europe, through the reach of the Bologna Process. A re-balancing of the narrative of globalisation construes the ‘south’ as creating knowledge about doctoral education, rather than being merely derivative of ‘northern’ ideas, models and pedagogies (Pearson, 2005). At the same time, contributions from Canada, the USA, the UK, Denmark and Sweden ensure the international (bi-hemispheric) relevance of the pedagogical issues and practices discussed. The book has three substantive parts, each addressing a particular issue or domain of pedagogical practice. Part I, ‘Old basics/new basics?’, re-examines well-established doctoral practices through exploring some recent and innovative

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developments within doctoral pedagogy. The chapters in this section canvass traditional elements of a doctoral curriculum that often remain unstructured, under-theorised and undocumented, in a field where there is still a dominant focus on supervision as the primary pedagogical site. Chapter 1 outlines a conceptual framework for doctoral pedagogy understood as design and action. The remaining chapters focus on engagement in doctoral seminars and intensive study schools (Abrandt Dahlgren and Bjuremark; Zukas and Andersen), reviewing the literature (Boote), undertaking data analysis (Harris et al.), participating in supervision activities (Manathunga), and writing the thesis and publishing doctoral work (Aitchison and Paré). Each chapter presents, in explicitly pedagogical ways, a rich account of what might be termed the ‘basics’ of a doctoral curriculum. Part II, ‘Disciplinary and transdisciplinary pedagogies’, presents a series of case studies to highlight methodologies of participation and processes of transformation within doctoral programs in different fields. These chapters focus on redesigning doctoral projects through changing local and global imperatives and conditions afforded by new and emerging technologies; by transforming doctoral programs to engage more fully with the concept and practices of creativity, through expanding programs to work towards designing; and through facilitating and evaluating transdisciplinary research. A particularly important contribution to the field of discipline-specific studies of doctoral pedagogy is the set of chapters on science-based doctoral education (Frick; Gabrys and Beltechi), professional and industry-relevant doctoral education (Rice and Matthews; Adkins et al.) and transdisciplinary pedagogies (Willetts et al.). An important common feature of the chapters in this part is the focus on students’ career trajectories as elements to be considered when designing doctoral programs, as shown by orienting pedagogic practices to build transdisciplinary knowledge and to lead and manage large research teams as early career researchers, post-graduation. Part III, ‘International and intercultural pedagogic spaces’, explores the expanding field of internationalised research education, from perspectives that recognise and investigate contests and challenges to doctoral identity and pedagogical relationships. New pedagogies are being made visible that show how they were designed and used to construct new ways of bringing together and creating new models of collaborative engagement through communities of research. Within this part, the chapters each explore different aspects of community, including international and local doctoral communities (Abrandt Dahlgren et al.), and contestations and negotiations around dominant and emerging pedagogical principles for doctoral education (Singh and Chen; McKinley and Grant). Together, the chapters in this book offer an explication of doctoral pedagogy in local settings. They present a collection of local practices of doctoral pedagogy and, as a collection, become a resource for opening up discussion and legitimation of a set of doctoral pedagogy practices. To borrow from Lusted (1986), this book moves from a discussion of doctoral pedagogy in an abstract or ‘in general’ way to a focus on ‘pedagogy in particular’ – with chapters addressing local conditions of pedagogy. The focus is a concern for how doctoral pedagogy is recognisable as such.

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References Achtemeier, S. and Simpson, R. (2005) ‘Practical considerations when using benchmarking for accountability in higher education’, Innovative Higher Education, Vol. 30, No. 2: 117–128. Aitchison, C., Lee, A. and Kamler, B. (2010) Publishing Pedagogies for the Doctorate and Beyond, London, Routledge. Boud, D. and Lee, A. (eds, 2009) Changing Practices of Doctoral Education, London, Routledge. Danby, S. and McWilliam, E. (2005) ‘Respecting and challenging the candidate: some developments in program design’, in Tom W. Maxwell, Chris Hickey and Terry Evans (eds) Proceedings of the Fifth International Professional Doctorates Conference: ‘Working doctorates: the impact of professional doctorates in the professions’, pp. 1–46, Deakin University, Geelong, Victoria, Australia. Green, B. (2009) ‘Changing perspectives, changing practices: doctoral education in transition’, in D. Boud and A. Lee (eds) Changing Practices of Doctoral Education, pp. 239–248, London, Routledge. Kamler, B. and Thomson, P. (2006) Helping Doctoral Students Write: Pedagogies for supervision, London, Routledge. Kamler, B. and Thomson, P. (2008) ‘The failure of dissertation advice books: toward alternative pedagogies for doctoral writing’, Educational Researcher, Vol. 37, No. 8: 507. Lee, A. and Green, B. (1997) ‘Pedagogy and disciplinarity in the “new” university’, UTS Review, Vol. 3, No. 1: 1–25. Lusted, D. (1986) ‘Why pedagogy?’, Screen, Vol. 27, No. 5: 2–14. McWilliam, E. and Taylor, P. (2001) ‘Rigorous, rapid and relevant: doctoral training in new times’, in B. Green, T. W. Maxwell and P. J. Shanahan (eds) Doctoral Education and Professional Practice: The next generation?, pp. 229–246, Armdale (NSW): Kardoorair Press. Park, C. (2007) Redefining the Doctorate, London, Higher Education Academy, http://www.heacademy.ac.uk. Pearson, M. (2005) ‘Framing research on doctoral education in Australia in a global context’, Higher Education Research and Development, Vol. 24, No. 2, May: 119–134. Thomson, P. and Walker, M. (eds, 2010a) The Routledge Doctoral Student’s Companion: Getting to grips with research in education and the social sciences, London, Routledge. Thomson, P. and Walker, M. (eds, 2010b) The Routledge Doctoral Supervisor’s Companion (Companions for PhD and DPhil Research), London, Routledge.

Part I

Old basics/new basics?

Chapter 1

Framing doctoral pedagogy as design and action Susan Danby and Alison Lee

Introduction In the last forty years or so, the doctorate has moved from a small, elite endeavour, designed primarily to replenish an academic-disciplinary workforce, to a strong and growing international enterprise and market. There is a growing momentum of international debate about the future and shape of the doctorate, which is rapidly expanding and diversifying. In Australia, as in many European countries and in the UK, numbers almost doubled in a ten-year period. In the USA, there are more than 40,000 doctoral graduates each year. China, India, South East Asia and countries in South America and Africa are developing doctoral education programs at a rapid pace as part of plans for economic growth (Cyranoski et al., 2011). This expansion is associated with the doctorate’s strong connection to policy rationalities associated with a globalised ‘knowledge economy’, where doctoral education is understood as producing knowledge workers to replenish national or regional innovation systems and develop human capital in knowledge industries (Callejo Pérez et al., 2011). Along with the increasing numbers of doctoral students have come policies and regulations designed to maintain and improve the quality of doctoral programs, to increase efficiency in completions, reduce attrition and enhance the relevance of doctoral education to the needs of industry and the professions, as well as to the university sector. Furthermore, developments in bringing doctoral qualifications into ‘harmony’ across the boundaries of national systems, such as the Bologna Process in Europe, have engendered the need for greater visibility, explicitness and comparability of forms of provision. These developments have, in general, shifted the nature and status of doctoral work from largely private and implicit forms of one-to-one practice to more public and debatable ones. Alongside the interest in explicitness and structure has been expansion and diversification of the demands of the doctorate to deliver an expanded range of outcomes (Bitusikova, 2009). A key element of these developments is the move, across national systems, to describe and to develop ‘generic capabilities’ in doctoral graduates, in addition to disciplinary knowledge and expertise. These pressures create tensions within disciplinary communities in relation to

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the specific knowledge and expertise required and gained through undertaking a doctorate in a particular discipline or specialist field, and impact on the capacity to engage in inter- and transdisciplinary research work.

A burgeoning of doctoral programs and pedagogies In this environment of doctoral expansion and reshaping of the doctoral policy and practice context, there is increasing pressure and a growing demand for the development of doctoral programs and a move towards pedagogy. The term ‘program’ encompasses, and goes beyond the idea of, ‘coursework’, understood in the North American sense as programs of advanced study in specialist knowledge fields that shape engagement with research education. Doctoral programs can encompass structured sets of activity designed and delivered to produce the required research capabilities and outcomes, both specific and generic. The focus on doctoral programs implies organised sequences of activity with groups of doctoral students designed to engage systematically with key elements of research training. These can include induction to doctoral study, methods courses, information literacy training, proposal development workshops, research work-in-progress seminars, writing groups and workshops and career preparation and advancement seminars. Other emerging factors in designing doctoral programs are increasing international mobility in doctoral candidature, the expansion of scholarly fields beyond the traditional disciplines (for example in the professions, such as teaching, architecture and nursing), and linking doctoral work to the knowledge economy. The term ‘pedagogy’ refers to the sets of relations among learners and teachers and the knowledge generated through these relations (Lusted, 1986; Green and Lee, 1995). The conceptual importance of this term goes well beyond its often common-sense application as a description of programs, or courses. The concept of pedagogy draws attention to ‘the process through which knowledge is produced … asking under what conditions and through what means we “come to know”’ (Lusted, 1986: 2–3). As Lusted (1986) points out, ‘pedagogy addresses the “how” questions involved’ (pp. 2–3) in teaching and learning. Gaining insight into how individuals ‘come to know’ is crucial if those of us involved in doctoral education are to enhance the specific kinds of learning required for successful doctoral study. Doctoral learning involves not only coming to know, but also coming to be, in that the doctoral student gradually acquires an identity as researcher and scholar (Green and Lee, 1995: 41). This idea of knowledge construction as transformation is also central to Lusted’s understanding of pedagogy: ‘What pedagogy addresses is the … transformation of consciousness that takes place in the interaction of three agencies – the teacher, the learner and the knowledge they together produce’ (1986: 3). But Lusted’s definition must be modified if it is to account for the complex relations at the heart of doctoral learning. In particular, the learner, teacher and their co-produced knowledge are not the only ‘agencies’ that contribute to pedagogy; they also interact with the

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academic discipline. Evans and Green argue that the disciplinary character of doctoral pedagogy distinguishes it from teaching at other levels: ‘it is not so much what the supervisor literally “transmits”, pedagogically, as what (s)he enables by … setting up a critical exchange … between the student and the discipline’ (Evans and Green, 1995: 4). In other words, the discipline is an invisible presence in the pedagogical relationship. The supervisor, as Green (2005) notes, ‘represents, or stands in for, the Discipline itself, and also the Academy’ (p. 162). The relationship is made even more complex when interdisciplinarity comes into play, or when hybrid ‘mode 2’ knowledges are generated at the interface between university and industry, as with contemporary forms of industry-linked doctoral programs, or when the Internet presents potentially infinite access to information such that the supervisor no longer controls or even knows what the student finds through online search technologies. This relationship is made more complex and rendered visible in the design of programs of education or training in which the nature of what is to be learned and developed must be made explicit and accountable. As Green (2005) notes, doctoral pedagogy is best understood ‘eco-socially’ in terms of a total environment in which knowledges and identities are co-produced. Perhaps due in part to the urgent imperatives of rapid expansion and the dearth of conceptual resources for grappling with the changes required, there has not been a sustained reflexive engagement with what might be termed the cultural politics of doctoral pedagogy. Questions of what is being produced through the dynamics of supervision and other modes of doctoral pedagogy remain substantially under-theorised, as Green and Lee (1995) noted more than fifteen years ago. Green and Lee’s project has been to ask questions of what the pedagogical practices entailed in doing doctoral work are seeking to produce, by way of knowledges and forms of subjectivity (Green and Lee, 1995; Green, 2005; Lee and Green, 2009). In the following sections of this chapter, we consider ways of framing the moves towards building pedagogies that address a wide range of the skills, knowledges and trainings required of doctoral students. We present a conceptual frame for engaging with pedagogical work that goes beyond the traditional focus on supervision, understood as an individual relationship between a qualified researcher and a doctoral candidate. Our focus is on the diverse array of activities associated with doctoral programs and we draw on the twin concepts of design and action in relation to the pedagogies inscribed in, or implied by, these programs. We draw our ideas of design and action from rhetorical (e.g. Miller, 1984; Aitchison and Paré, Chapter 2 of this volume) and ethnomethodological (Garfinkel, 1967; Llewellyn and Hindmarsh, 2010) understandings of social action. We conceptualise these in relation to doctoral pedagogies, while taking into account the necessary inter-relationship between principles of pedagogy and pedagogic practice. We believe that the inter-related ideas of design and action can supplement what is available within the literature on doctoral pedagogy, offering visual and dynamic resources for representing doctoral work. We start

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from the position that working from a design model supports systematic and rigorous documentation and development of pedagogy.

Elements of pedagogy as design There are three key elements of the metaphor of design that we have found to be particularly salient for our conceptualisation of doctoral pedagogy. First, those elements that are concerned with arrangement of form and appearance make visible the pedagogical work of setting up the circumstances and conditions under which students may engage in activities conducive to advanced doctoral research learning. Following Evans and Green (1995: 4), we suggest that what is important in a consideration of such doctoral pedagogy is not so much what an educator ‘transmits’ but what they ‘enable’ by ‘setting up a critical exchange’ between the student and the discipline, field or domain of research. This is, above all, an effect of pedagogical design, or perhaps ‘choreography’ (Johnson et al., 2000). Design in this sense has a great deal to do with the idea of a doctoral curriculum (e.g. Gilbert, 2004), the selection and sequencing of elements within a domain of knowledge and research practice. As Kamler and Thomson (2006: 18) note: ‘Pedagogy is a question of design … The pedagogue deliberately designs experiences, tasks, events, conversations which create the opportunity for the student to … move both identity and knowledge simultaneously.’ A second salience in the concept of design is its insistence on the collective nature of the endeavour of doing doctoral work. As an antidote to the individualising of the experience of the doctoral student dominant in much of the literature, the concept of design draws attention to regularities, patterns, freedoms and constraints that are socially produced, and produced as the accomplishment of ongoing actions, rather than as a predetermined and fixed design. What this means is that attention is given to the ordinary work practices or ‘doings’ of doctoral work, as accomplished within social domains. Third, and of particular interest to us, what is salient in the concept of design is the related concept of enactment, which is the translation of designs into the practices and products of doctoral work. These enactments occur within particular disciplinary and organisational contexts; they are never purely a translation of a pre-designed program but are always shaped by and shape the research and knowledge domains of which they are a part. When viewed in this way, commitment to ‘knowing’ is undertaken through practices in use (Gherardi, 2001; Llewellyn and Hindmarsh, 2010); that is, as a socially constructed activity. We describe this interest here as a focus on pedagogy-in-action, a concern in closely observing how pedagogy is enacted. For example, this interest is sometimes achieved through observing ‘live performance’, such as the talk and interaction of a research group meeting, and sometimes this is achieved through glossing or seeking themes derived from ethnographic studies of practice. It is this third interest where we will focus our attention for the remainder of this chapter.

Framing doctoral pedagogy 7

Design as enactment So what are the core principles and assumptions that represent and guide the design practices of doctoral education? We can begin by asking: where does pedagogic design begin and end within the doctoral process, and how does design function within the doctoral practices and settings? In Llewellyn and Hindmarsh’s (2010) ethnomethodological considerations of organisations and work practices, they ask if the term ‘organisation’ is a ‘neat lexical gloss’, ‘an entirety’ or ‘a set of practices’ (p. xi). They use the analogy of being in a shop to argue that, while analysts might have issues to do with theorising the constraints and possibilities of behaviour in the shop, members daily go about shaping their everyday behaviours within the shop, and routinely play out their parts within the social orders of that interactional space. The members know how to ‘do shopping’, and the task of the analyst is to find out how these practices happen (Llewellyn and Hindmarsh, 2010). Similarly, we can draw on this same analogy to consider the concept of design within the practices of doctoral pedagogy. Design supposes an orientation to shaping what follows in guided ways. Members (those involved in the doctoral education) have methodic, everyday ways of organising (designing) doctoral conduct. At the same time, while members orient to such conduct, their actual everyday practices may differ through the unfolding of the scenes and settings of organised everyday activities. Practices can be shaped depending on how the members construct those practices and orient (or not) to existing elements of the organisation (design). Such practices often go unnoticed and therefore unexamined. An examination of doctoral pedagogy by observing the practices of pedagogy draws on the conception of pedagogy-in-action (elaborated from Danby, 2005). We can attend to this concept by investigating how the pedagogy of doctoral work is made explicit through the very doing of that work, and by working from an assumption that doctoral pedagogy is interactive and mutually achieved. Pedagogy-in-action is interested in the actions of the participants themselves as they go about their everyday activities of doctoral work. The idea of pedagogy-inaction is tied closely to Baker’s (2000) conceptualisation of culture in action. This focus is on everyday practices as they unfold moment by moment, to show the embedded local work of social actions to produce identities (Hester and Eglin, 1997), such as that of being a doctoral supervisor, doctoral program coordinator or doctoral student. A focus on pedagogy-in-action allows an examination of how doctoral pedagogy is undertaken through the practical actions of ‘doing’, making connections and engaging in social actions (Baker, 2000). A framing of pedagogy-in-action thus requires attending closely to the settings and activities constituting doctoral pedagogies as they occur. The focus is close up. In particular, within ethnographic or ethnomethodological frames, the investigative focus is on participants’ practices: the actions, talk and interactions that construct social practices and relationships. By asking, for example, ‘how

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does talk produce communities of research practice?’ – or, in Silvia Gherardi’s (2009) refreshing reversal of this, ‘what are the practices of these communities?’ – it is possible to present accounts of pedagogical practices and relationships in diverse sites. We propose a set of three core ideas that represent and guide the design practices of enacting doctoral education. First, when doctoral pedagogy is viewed as a social activity, occurring within social, cultural and institutional structures, relationships and actions, then every process and context, every interaction and relationship with every stakeholder, every artefact and every decision and justification comes about through the management and accomplishment of social actions (Garfinkel, 1967). Doctoral work has at its core an orientation to ensuring that its organisation of activities are accountable and accomplished through socially organised practices. The social nature of pedagogy makes it an observable and witnessable activity and, thus, publically accountable. Much of the work to date on doctoral pedagogy, with some exceptions discussed below, has glossed over the features of how social production occurs, leaving invisible the actual practices of cultural production and socialisation (e.g. Parry et al., 1997; Austin, 2011), or ‘subjectification’ (Green, 2005). Examining ‘how’ pedagogy is enacted through the actions of the participants means a making and remaking of the pedagogic order through engagement and participation. It is never static, constantly ‘in flux’, and an always ‘in progress’ project (Danby and Baker, 2000). With an explicit focus on practices, consideration can be given to how the pedagogic decisions are informed, and what they look like as they unfold. In this way, attention is not just on what doctoral students are preparing for, some future-oriented interest, but rather the relations of the practices, and what they mean in the here-and-now. The second idea is that pedagogical work is understood in terms of designing learning opportunities within that environment. The design practices noted by Kamler and Thomson (2006), cited above, can be described as ‘artful practices’ (Garfinkel, 1967: 32) because choices among alternatives are made by the members, with each choice resulting in a range of possible practical actions, some made possible by that choice, and some constrained by that choice. As Garfinkel (1967) points out, procedures ‘are acquired and assured only through particular, located organization of artful practices’ (p. 32). Evans and Green (1995: 7) construe doctoral pedagogy in terms of ‘artfully arranging the educational environment for the novice researcher’, where the term ‘environment’ includes resources, information, accommodation, different perspectives, expertise, networks, ‘direct instruction’, and so on. These arrangings involve a ‘choreographing of the possibilities and sequences of knowledge construction’ – arranging in terms of institutional affordances that encounter or offer boundaries, and new knowledge construction. In particular, the enactment of design is shown through talking ‘within’ a practice or talking ‘about’ a practice. In this conceptualisation, design works to both afford and constrain practice – while proposing opportunities for agency and action, it also limits what might be possible.

Framing doctoral pedagogy 9

Within this understanding, the design specifics cannot be fully determined or fully pre-shaped prior to the unfolding of the practice. Members are constantly having to ‘decide, recognise, persuade, or make relevant the rational’ (Garfinkel, 1967: 32), the local, mundane conditions of practice. So, while there is an orientation to the design, there is also the dynamic of how the design process becomes enacted within the social activities and everyday practices of doing doctoral work as an investigation in its own right. To illustrate how design is enacted within everyday, mundane practices, we present two brief examples that use the online communication resources of email and Skype. In the first example, Danby (2005) shows how a doctoral supervisor and doctoral student communicated over the course of the doctoral studies using email. In examining the email chains, both participants oriented to a specific process of undertaking a doctorate. How that process was managed interactionally showed how both the doctoral student’s and doctoral supervisor’s identities were constantly being formed and reformed. These identities were made observable through the moves of the supervisor and student, and how they were taken up or not by each other within the contexts and possibilities available to them at those moments. So, while there was a clear orientation by both parties to ‘doing’ doctoral work, how that became enacted was a dynamic and moment-by-moment accomplishment co-constructed by both supervisor and student. In the second example, Lee (2010) discusses a Skype conversation with a Swedish PhD student, ‘Anna’, who is commenting on her experience of what is involved in undertaking a PhD by publication. Anna remembers how, in one incident when she was presenting some preliminary findings in a seminar in Sydney, her feelings of insecurity about these findings made her realise that her presentation was ‘almost a bit too early’. She reflects on that fact that this was an international presentation in English, in front of people whose work she had been reading and citing. This realisation becomes part of Anna’s growing understanding of what is involved in ‘going public’ with doctoral research. Here, the orientation of both parties was to talk ‘about’ a doctoral experience; at the same time, this article has been taken up and used in a doctoral program and in a professional development program for supervisors in the Swedish university in which this student had studied. In this sense, Anna’s talk with Lee formed a pedagogical frame utilised in their talk about and within doctoral work. The third core idea is that any conceptualisation of design requires understanding that the process of design itself is a precondition for change. In Rice and Matthews’ chapter (Chapter 8 of this volume), design is constructed to be a visualised, but ‘not yet’, project; a ‘brief ’, a forward projecting plan. For any change to occur that is planned, theorised and envisioned, the elements of design must be at the forefront. Rice and Matthews write about how Matthews’ PhD in Architecture enacts a design process, thus contributing to the emergence of a scholarly field of research in architectural design. They suggest: ‘If architectural knowledge is understood to be generated through the doing of architecture, then a PhD should be available as a structure to validate this formation of knowledge’

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(p. 99). In this account, design itself is conceived as pedagogy, and thus also the building block for doctoral pedagogical change.

Where does this take us? The overarching aim of this book is to bring an explicit exploration of pedagogical doctoral work in terms of designing learning opportunities within research and doctoral education spaces. In proposing a conceptual framework for engaging with doctoral pedagogies that move beyond the traditional supervisor–student relationship, it is our intention to bring about a change to the field, by opening it up through discussion of existing practices of doctoral pedagogy being enacted in multiple institutions, education systems and countries. With a focus on local settings of doctoral work, empirical practices are put up for examination and for theorising what it means to be engaged in doing doctoral pedagogy. Drawing these descriptions of a range of doctoral pedagogic practices illuminates the diversity of the practices that take into account the local conditions and settings as well as global agendas and issues to do with the production of knowledge.

References Austin, A. E. (2011) ‘Preparing doctoral students for promising careers in a changing context: Implications for supervision, institutional planning, and cross-institutional opportunities’. In V. Kumar and A. Lee (eds), Doctoral education in international context: Connecting local, regional and international perspectives (pp. 1–18). Serdang, Malaysia: Universiti Putra Malaysia Press. Baker, C. D. (2000) ‘Locating culture in action: Membership categorisation in texts and talk’. In A. Lee and C. Poynton (eds), Culture and text: Discourse and methodology in social research and cultural studies (pp. 99–113). St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin. Bitusikova, S. (2009) ‘New challenges in doctoral education in Europe’. In D. Boud and A. Lee (eds), Changing practices of doctoral education (pp. 200–210). London: Routledge. Callejo Pérez, D. M., Fain, S. M. and Slater, J. J. (2011) Higher education and human capital: Re/thinking the doctorate. Netherlands: Sense Publishers. Cyranoski, D., Gilbert, N., Ledford, H., Nayar, A. and Yahia, M. (2011) ‘Education: The PhD factory, news feature’, Nature, 472: 276–279. Danby, S. (2005) ‘The supervisory experience: Culture in action’. In J. Yamanashi and I. Milojevic (eds), Researching identity, diversity and education: Surpassing the norm (pp. 1–16). Queensland: Post Pressed. Danby, S. and Baker, C. D. (2000) ‘Unravelling the fabric of social order in block area’. In S. Hester and D. Francis (eds), Local educational order: Ethnomethodological studies of knowledge in action (pp. 91–140). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Evans, T. and Green, B. (1995) Dancing at a distance? Postgraduate studies, ‘supervision’, and distance education. Paper presented at the Australian Association for Research in Education Conference, Hobart, November.

Framing doctoral pedagogy 11 Garfinkel, H. (1967) Studies in Ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Gherardi, S. (2001) ‘From organizational learning to practice-based knowing’, Human Relations, 54 (1): 131–139. Gherardi, S. (2009) ‘Community of practice or practices of a community?’ In S. Armstrong and C. Fukami (eds), Handbook of management learning, education and development (pp. 514–530). London: Sage. Gilbert, R. (2004) ‘A framework for evaluating the doctoral curriculum’, Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 29 (3): 299–310. Green, B. (2005) ‘Unfinished business: Subjectivity and supervision’, Higher Education Research and Development, 24 (2): 151–163. Green, B. and Lee, A. (1995) ‘Theorising postgraduate pedagogy’, The Australian Universities Review, 38 (2): 40–45. Hester, S. and Eglin, P. (1997) ‘Membership categorization analysis: An introduction’. In S. Hester and P. Eglin (eds), Culture in action: Studies in Membership Categorization Analysis (pp. 1–23). Washington, DC: International Institute for Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis and University Press of America. Johnson, L., Lee, A. and Green, B. (2000) ‘The PhD and the autonomous self: Gender, rationality and postgraduate pedagogy’, Studies in Higher Education, 25 (2): 135–147. Kamler, B. and Thomson, P. (2006) Helping doctoral students write: Pedagogies for supervision. Oxon: Routledge. Lee, A. (2010) ‘When the article is the dissertation: Pedagogies for a PhD by publication’. In C. Aitchison, B. Kamler and A. Lee (eds), Publishing pedagogies for the doctorate and beyond (pp. 12–29). London and New York: Routledge. Lee, A. and Green, B. (2009) ‘Supervision as metaphor’, Studies in Higher Education, 34 (6): 615–630. Llewellyn, N. and Hindmarsh, J. (2010) ‘Preface’. In N. Llewellyn and J. Hindmarsh (eds), Organisation, interaction and practice: Studies in Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis (pp. xi–xiv). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lusted, D. (1986) ‘Why pedagogy?’, Screen, 27 (5): 2–14. Miller, C. (1984) ‘Genre as social action’, Quarterly Journal of Speech, 70: 151–167. Parry, O., Atkinson, P. and Delamont, S. (1997) ‘The structure of PhD research’, Sociology, 31 (1): 121–129.

Chapter 2

Writing as craft and practice in the doctoral curriculum Claire Aitchison and Anthony Paré

Abstract In this chapter, writing teachers from two different countries and settings reflect on how writing might be brought from the periphery to the centre of doctoral education. Both imagine a rich and nuanced pedagogy that develops a sense of scholarship as rhetorical, dialogic, participatory and collaborative, but one works within a curriculum steeped in the traditions of North American writing studies, and the other helps students create a world of writing beyond the classroom. In one context, students analyse, reflect on and experiment with, the strategies of academic discourse; in the other, students are immersed in that discourse through voluntary participation in writing groups where peer review drives learning. While the discussion here details two pedagogical approaches, the broader aim is to promote wider discussion of possibilities for how institutions might respond to new and evolving requirements of doctoral writing.

Introduction: the need for research writing support Doctoral education is in a state of flux: it is the site of great enthusiasm and innovation on one hand, and frustration and disquiet on the other. The need for highly specialised workers in what has been dubbed the ‘knowledge society’ has forced governments, think tanks, universities and educators to turn a critical eye on the process of educating an intellectual elite (e.g. Boud and Lee, 2009; Canadian Association for Graduate Studies, 2005; Council of Graduate Schools, 2007; Crosier et al., 2007; Golde and Walker, 2006; Starke-Meyerring et al., in press). Practical considerations – such as attrition rates, time-to-completion and funding – represent one aspect of this new, international apprehension, but another important set of concerns has to do with the quality of preparation that doctoral students receive. This book, along with a handful of others (e.g. Aitchison et al., 2010; McAlpine and Amundsen, 2011; Thomson and Walker, 2010a, 2010b), addresses those concerns.

Writing as craft and practice 13

Within this context, teachers of writing are uniquely placed to contribute to emerging discussions on doctoral programs and pedagogies. As this chapter explains, support for doctoral-level writing is still relatively uncommon, existing in various forms on a continuum from stand-alone generic writing courses to one-on-one writing assistance. Albeit differently, the authors of this chapter are both charged with the task of supporting doctoral students’ writing. We do this from outside the direct student–supervisor relationship, working from discrete units or centres set apart from specific disciplines but working across the whole-of-institution. Within our institutions we are positioned as writing teachers (Anthony) and academic literacies experts (Claire) whose status within doctoral education programs and relationship to disciplinary supervisors is often fluid, even unclear. But whether writing is developed through compulsory course-based components in doctoral education or via a support service, writing teachers often proceed from a belief that a key aspect of doctoral education – perhaps the most critical aspect – is the development of writing abilities. As Hyland (2004) has noted, researchers rely on their writing ‘as a means of funding, constructing, evaluating, displaying and negotiating knowledge’ (p. 5), and a failure to engage effectively in those activities spells doom for individual scholars and, more coldly, a waste of human and financial resources for the institutions and governments who support doctoral education. In the face of this mounting pressure, the environment of doctoral study has become more writing-rich than ever before (Aitchison et al., 2010). Students are expected to write more during their candidature – from complex ethics applications and reports to stakeholders, to journal articles and the dissertation itself. At the same time, students themselves know that they need to publish in order to compete in the job market. While the literacy practices and capacities of undergraduate students have been the focus of attention in higher education for some decades now, it is only relatively recently that similar attention has been paid to research student writing (Kamler and Thomson, 2006; Paltridge and Starfield, 2007). In our work as teachers and researchers of writing, we are aware of a new but not always positive attention to doctoral student writing. We regularly witness the impact on students who are not necessarily well prepared for the writing demands of doctoral study. At the same time we also hear hushed discussions in corridors and laboratories where supervisors lament the writing skills of their students, and we see others, anxious about the university’s reputation, attempt to smother such talk. Too often, the ‘problem’ is defined as a universal decline in literacy or attributed to the increase in international students; neither claim is ever supported by evidence. Without doubt, however, doctoral writing deserves to be in the spotlight. In this chapter we re-frame the writing challenge as one of social and rhetorical practice, rather than purely linguistic know-how. We argue that students need opportunities to engage in the authentic discourse of their disciplinary conversations in order to make a successful transition from student to working scholar, no matter what career they pursue. While acknowledging the debates around World Englishes and the hegemony of ‘standard English’ as the lingua franca of knowledge production, here we give priority to participation, believing that it naturally

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precedes proficiency. We enter this discussion with an interest in how institutions can respond, and in the mechanisms and structures by which doctoral student writing can be supported. That is, we are interested in exploring more thoughtfully the current practices and future possibilities for bringing doctoral writing to the centre of research education. We come to this project from entirely different institutional contexts and intellectual traditions, but with a common set of concerns and an identical belief in the centrality of writing for both individual and collective knowledge-making. Anthony has worked for three decades as a writing researcher and teacher influenced mostly by North American writing studies, or what is often called composition and rhetoric. He served as a director of a university writing centre for almost half that time, and has taught both undergraduate and graduate writing courses. His research has focused in large part on academic and workplace writing, and the transition between the two (e.g. Dias et al., 1999). As a senior lecturer in a student learning unit, Claire has responsibility for academic literacy support for doctoral students. In the absence of ‘taught doctorates’ or writing courses, Claire’s work over the last 20 years has typically involved her in designing and teaching writing-related workshops, courses and programs which run adjunct to or embedded within disciplinary subjects. Despite the unique national, institutional and historic biographies of our institutions, both our universities face similar challenges and, unfortunately, often respond in slow and inadequate ways. As Aitchison and Lee (2006) have noted, there is an ‘absence of a systematic pedagogy for writing in most research degree programs’ (p. 266), an observation supported by Kamler and Thomson’s (2006) suggestion that ‘doctoral writing [is] a kind of present absence in the landscape of doctoral education’ (p. x). In our work, we have both sought to create authentic spaces where writing and learning about writing is synonymous. In the main, Claire works outside formal degree programs, operating from a stand-alone unit whose mandate is, among other tasks, to provide writing support for the students of the institution. The class that Anthony teaches is located within an academic unit in a faculty of education and is taken by some graduate students as part of their degree programs, but students from other disciplines stumble upon the class while searching (often desperately) for help with their writing. Like others involved in writing pedagogy, our practices and approaches have been shaped over the decades by changing theories of writing development and shifting national, international and institutional policies and priorities. In the next section we each detail our own attempts to provide support for doctoral student writing using the notion of ‘craft’ and ‘practice’ to describe the primary underlying philosophies of the two approaches. We offer our approaches as separate cases, aware that each national and institutional environment necessarily represents a case unto itself, depending on the resources available, the training of those involved, the prevailing educational philosophies and policies, and so on. Further, we recognise we are best placed to speak about possibilities and practices for writing teachers, leaving others in this book to explore larger structural, systemic possibilities.

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We have represented our approaches as moving in opposite directions – Anthony’s from craft to practice, and Claire’s from practice to craft – a movement that describes initial emphases rather than overall philosophy. That is, we both see effective academic writing as skilled participation in a complex social activity, but we seek to help students engage in that activity by employing different pedagogical strategies. Finally, we are both keenly aware of how our work – constrained as it is by institutional realities – falls short of the ideal. As a result, following the next section, we imagine a situation in which doctoral students would benefit from the strengths of our separate approaches, but in some more coherent and organic way: an institutional environment in which writing is prized and employed as both craft and practice.

Writing as craft and practice Case one: from craft to practice In his writing class, Anthony approaches the academic text as a deliberate and crafted object and assumes that the skilled writer is, in part, an artisan capable of shaping a well-made, relevant utterance. From this angle, he sees design at work in writing – both in the material object, through the deployment of such features as layout, font, white space and other graphic elements, and in rhetorical strategy, through the deliberate arrangement and calibration of claims and warrants. This conception of writing draws on a tradition of rhetoric that stretches back to Plato and Aristotle, but is more recently addressed in the theory, research and practice of North American writing studies. The instructional or pedagogic response to this perspective – usually in classroom settings – includes the analysis of texts, the study of theories of discourse and genre, writing workshops and assignments that mimic or, if possible, fulfil typical academic writing tasks (e.g. proposals, applications, articles). Anthony’s pedagogical work in writing exists within a mid-Atlantic conundrum that is common in many facets of Canadian life: higher education follows neither an American nor an English model, but takes shape somewhere in between. As a result, a few Canadian universities offer relatively extensive writing support, including compulsory first-year composition classes for some students, writing tutorial centres and writing across the curriculum programs – much like many American universities – whereas in other institutions writing support is still too often marginalised and writing itself is pathologised: what scant support exists can be found in basement corridors, next to medical clinics, mental health services and the chaplaincy. The writer in need is treated as broken, deficient and poorly prepared for university life. At McGill University, where Anthony works, there is no university-wide writing class or tutorial support for undergraduate or graduate students, although there are undergraduate communication (writing and public speaking) classes in some departments. In addition, there are a few regularly offered graduate

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writing classes designed primarily for students for whom English is an additional language. These classes are external to degree programs.1 As noted above, the graduate writing class described in this chapter is taught in a faculty of education by Anthony or his colleague Doreen Starke-Meyerring and approaches writing as discipline-specific rhetorical practice. The texts used are Giltrow’s Academic Writing: Writing and Reading in the Disciplines (2002) and Hyland’s Disciplinary Discourses: Social Interactions in Academic Writing (2004).2 Both texts offer examples and analysis of academic texts, drawing attention to the characteristic elements of scholarly discourse (abstracts, literature reviews, direct and indirect speech, citations, etc.), typical rhetorical moves (definition, summary, comparison, claims and warrants, hedges and boosts, etc.) and the distinctive rhetorical features of sub-groups within the academy. The analytic framework for the class comes from rhetorical genre theory (Coe et al., 2002; Freedman and Medway, 1994; Miller, 1984), which assumes that repetitions in the material text can only be understood by reference to the social context within which the text is produced, distributed and employed, and that durable repetitions such as the research article and the doctoral dissertation have achieved longevity because they perform work that is considered valuable by the community they serve. Moreover, this theoretical perspective encourages students to consider the implications of rhetorical participation for their own identity and agency. A constant concern in the class is how engagement in particular discourse practices positions one in knowledge-making processes and relations of power. As a result of this rhetorical focus on genre, students in the class are encouraged, not only to identify typical features of various scholarly texts, but also to determine what function those features perform and how they locate writers and readers in social relations. Disciplinary debates in academic texts are viewed as collaborative but contested terrain, where members of the discipline position themselves with and against others. So, for example, students examine literature reviews to see how they are constructed, what differences of opinion and perspective they offer, and what purpose they serve within the context of the community’s work. What does the review do? What effect does it have on readers? How does it help advance the goals or intentions of the author and the community? Ideally, such questioning leads to an understanding of the profoundly situated and contested nature of rhetorical practice: literature reviews vary across disciplines and, within disciplines, across genres; the literature review in the research article is doing different work from the literature review in the dissertation. The first class assignment is often a scholarship application, which begins with analysis of funding agency guidelines and a review of successful applications from previous years. Another regular assignment involves a study of a scholarly genre – journal article, book chapter, conference paper, dissertation – again as a means of identifying and explaining the elements that go into standard academic documents. One major class assignment must come to publication, broadly conceived: it must appear in public as a dissertation chapter, a conference paper, a journal article or some other substantial piece of work.

Writing as craft and practice 17

Many class sessions run as workshops, and introduce students to a range of writing practices and strategies that have become standard fare in North American writing instruction: brainstorming, freewriting, concept mapping, drafting and revision, and editing techniques. Multiple drafts are required, and each receives feedback within small writing groups set up in the classroom. Students develop their own feedback rubrics, based on the type of text they are reviewing. A major goal in all of this work is to help students achieve greater control in their analysis and performance of the scholarly genres that form the centre of academic life.

Case two: from practice to craft Although Claire sees the value in the analytic gaze that a craft approach encourages, she treats academic writing first and foremost as a context-specific social act of meaning-making – that is, as a practice. Thus, writing is regarded as a form of literacy bound explicitly to its particular individual and social context, purpose, time and place. Within higher education, and doctoral education specifically, writing is the currency by which students learn – and are judged – as particular kinds of disciplinary researchers. From this angle, academic texts are seen as social practice resulting from dynamic interactions of competing regimes of power and identity, at the heart of which is the student-becoming-scholar. This ‘academic literacies’ view of writing (Lea and Stierer, 2000) resonates with the early work of Lave and Wenger (1991) on situated learning and Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) (1986), both of which stress social interaction and the socially negotiated character of meaning. Claire uses an academic literacies framework for theorising how students individually, and as communities of practitioners, negotiate competing issues of epistemology and knowledge-making in the process of learning to be different kinds of scholars. Claire’s workplace, the University of Western Sydney (UWS), began operation as a federated network in 1989 at a time of great expansion in Australian higher education. It was then, and remains, a university with a special mission to service non-traditional students such as first-in-family-to-attend-university, non-native speakers of English and Indigenous Australians. Like elsewhere in Australia, writing support at UWS grew out of study skills units which were mostly established for the support of specific groups such as international students (Skillen, 2006). Since then policy and structural adjustments have changed the focus from a pragmatic one aimed at improving student grades, to a broader understanding of the role of language and writing for learning. Key theoretical influences in this transition have been discourse studies associated with Australian systemic-functional linguistics (Halliday, 1994) and genre analysis (e.g. Martin, 1984). More recently the perspectives of academic literacies, especially when combined with communities of practice perspectives (see, for example, Lea, 2005), have highlighted how students acquire the literacy practices of their discourse communities. From 2001 the University moved away from supporting individual students to an embedded model of writing support. This resulted in the academic language

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and learning unit working with disciplinary academics to develop initiatives such as literacy-focused curriculum, learning guides, adjunct tutorials and facilitated peer tutoring within subjects. At the doctoral level there was also a move away from generic workshops and individual one-to-one writing assistance, in favour of ongoing programs that were flexible, multidisciplinary and built around peer review; improved, but still not perfect. Currently few doctoral programs in Australia have formal course requirements (although there is some re-thinking on this score). Claire’s unit offers a program of writing groups for doctoral students throughout and beyond the period of doctoral research. All groups are facilitated by a writing teacher from the unit and are multidisciplinary; participation is voluntary and in no formal sense counts towards the degree. The program has three components: 1 An eight-week Thesis Writing Circle for students in the early stages of doctoral study. This series has a negotiated curriculum, draws on genre approaches to thesis analysis and incorporates moderated peer review of participants’ writing. 2 Ongoing writing groups targeting doctoral students beyond the first year of candidature. There is no formal curriculum as such and learning occurs in direct relationship to the text volunteered for peer review. Groups are facilitated by a writing teacher, but members take primary responsibility for deciding when and which bits of their writing they wish to share. 3 The Writing for Publication Circle for post-docs and early career researchers and academics meets monthly to discuss and review members’ writing, including writing from the thesis, work for publication, grant writing and so on. The largest part of the program are the ongoing groups which meet fortnightly and typically have a core of 6–8 doctoral students at different stages of candidature, drawn from different disciplines and working on their own research using a range of methodologies. As new forms of the doctorate proliferate, participants are increasingly likely to be experimenting with different forms of the thesis and an extended set of related texts. In this program writing is generally done, shared and reviewed before the meeting so that when participants come together they are free to engage in lively debate and discussion about the text. In these groups, peer learning is driven by diversity, since student writers are regularly challenged by their peers to explain something that is unclear in the writing or that they may have taken for granted. For example, a science student, unfamiliar with qualitative approaches, may challenge an autoethnographer about their methodology or their use of the personal voice. Such critical enquiry necessitates the submitting author to think again more deeply about their work, and challenges them to defend and articulate their practice. When writing groups are safe and supportive environments set apart from disciplinary experts and assessors, student writers can take risks as authors and reviewers, experimenting and honing their writerly identities. In writing groups participants do the practice of

Writing as craft and practice 19

scholarship: coming to know through a process of engaging in conversations over text; thinking, writing, talking, reviewing, experimenting, arguing – and having fun. A considerable amount of learning occurs spontaneously but good facilitation makes a big difference. A skilful facilitator will oversee administrative arrangements for the smooth running of the group, manage group dynamics and, most importantly, have access to a large repertoire of pedagogical practices to extend and reinforce learning. For example, powerful teaching interventions include just-in-time teaching moments such as the use of process writing techniques, mini grammar/punctuation lessons, comparative textual analysis, joint texting, directing attention to the linguistic and rhetorical features of argument development, cohesion, voice and so on. Research shows the popularity and effectiveness of these writing groups; however, currently the program is underutilised, servicing only a fraction of the university’s doctoral student cohort (Aitchison, 2009a, 2009b).

Craft as practice, practice as craft: new possibilities for doctoral writing So, within a landscape of inadequate and uneven provision and attention to doctoral writing, we offer these two cases as examples of relatively writing-rich doctoral curriculum practice. But where does that leave us? How can writing teachers and the teaching of writing become more central to the experience of doctoral study? How can supervisors and their institutions operationalise ‘writing as research’ (Kamler and Thomson, 2006; Richardson, 2000)? Of course, neither of us sees writing solely as either craft or practice, and both of us see little value in lessons about writing. Instead, our instruction is usually indirect, experiential and serendipitous; we seize the teachable moment. Though different, both our approaches are strongly supported by such theories of situated learning as Vygotsky’s ZPD (1986) and Lave and Wenger’s communities of practice (1991; Wenger, 1998). Students are immersed in the production of their own texts but within a supportive environment, with multiple opportunities to learn through social interactions with more experienced peers and facilitators. Students read each other’s work, provide feedback, revise, re-submit for review and otherwise engage in the type of document cycling that academics do, both informally, with colleagues, and formally, with anonymous reviewers and journal editors. In fact, we see an over-dependence on one or the other approach as extremely detrimental. The focus on writing-as-craft evokes centuries of debate about rhetoric as mere technique, or techne – often dismissed as the smooth and persuasive deployment of language to manipulate or mislead (see Johnson, 2010). In addition, writing-as-craft perspectives feed into deficit discourses which position writers as ‘as-yet-acculturated’ learners, and writing as a decontextualised transferable skill. Decoupling writing instruction from authentic rhetorical engagement runs the risk of supporting superficial notions of mastery. In addition, this attention

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to writing-as-craft has also supported formal – or product-centred – approaches to the teaching of writing, which have led to narrowly focused instruction in grammar, format and convention. However, a purely immersion approach to writing support – in which students learn to sink or swim by engagement in writing without benefit of analysis or critical reflection – may favour those whose cultural capital predisposes them to success in academic work in the Western, Anglophone tradition, but be of little help to those whose linguistic, social and/ or cultural backgrounds differ. To counter these limited (and limiting) approaches to writing development, we believe that students must be positioned within a community of scholars, where they experience the profoundly social process of knowledge creation and textual production, while also developing a metadiscursive awareness of how texts are shaped as rhetorical and cultural artefacts. However, it takes more than one-off courses or intensive writing retreats to create the sort of nurturing and challenging environment that develops writing abilities. If academic units hope to graduate successful, productive scholars, they need to recognize the centrality of writing in the production of knowledge and provide multiple and varied opportunities for students to write, to publish and to talk about writing. Rather than withholding writing support or isolating it in service units or single courses, universities need to suffuse the doctoral curriculum with writing. Although we feel certain that our own efforts have been beneficial for some students, we also believe that occasional, local and unsupported attempts to help doctoral students with their writing – ‘guerrilla rhetoric’, as we call it – are unsustainable. We are acutely aware of an unmet need among students seeking ongoing, appropriate support for their writing and similarly an unmet need among supervisors seeking resources and support to address the writing needs of the students. As we have proposed, while there is increasing institutional and government-level recognition of the need to develop student writing, there is also suspicion, avoidance and even hostility in some parts of our institutions towards the notion of writing as integral to research education. So how do we as writing teachers respond? What kind of work can we do that is effective for individual students and also has a broader impact within our institutions, particularly in discussions around new formulations of the doctorate and expectations of doctoral research output? Within our own institutions and beyond, we have attempted to create a broader consciousness about writing. We have undertaken research with students exploring their experiences as doctoral writers and we have also investigated the pedagogical practices, views and experiences of doctoral supervisors (e.g. Aitchison et al., forthcoming; Paré et al., 2009; Paré, 2010, 2011). Claire’s research into the writing experiences of science, health and technology students and supervisors highlighted significant concerns around doctoral writing. Data collected via online surveys, interviews and focus groups from 103 participants (45 students and 58 supervisors) in 2007/8 showed unequivocal recognition of the importance of writing for successful candidature – but it also showed significant dissatisfaction with current practices and provisions. While the research

Writing as craft and practice 21

uncovered small pockets of exciting writing-rich pedagogies, mostly driven by dedicated individuals or located in isolated enclaves, for many, doctoral writing was the site of significant frustration, self-doubt and struggle. Many supervisors indicated they often felt they lacked the skills, confidence and time to adequately address students’ writing needs. Students frequently related unsatisfactory and even demeaning experiences of interactions about their writing. Along with colleagues at McGill and the University of Alberta, Anthony has also conducted research into doctoral writing practices, including a Canadawide survey of students and faculty members at research-intensive universities. Of the nearly 500 doctoral supervisors surveyed, 87.5 per cent said that the quality of doctoral writing was very important to them, and 12.3 per cent said it was important, but 75.3 per cent said that the quality of doctoral student writing had never been discussed in their units and 95.7 per cent said they had received no formal training in supervising writing. Moreover, although 99.4 per cent of respondents said it was very important or important to be an effective supervisor, 96.1 per cent said that there was no required faculty development on the topic at their institutions. In a different research project, Anthony recorded conversations about the dissertation between students and supervisors and held focus group discussions with supervisors. Despite clear concern for the students, and laudable efforts to provide feedback, that research suggests that even well-published supervisors are not necessarily able to articulate their criticisms of student writing (Paré, 2011). Based on that research, and on his experience teaching writing, Anthony has conducted workshops for supervisors at universities in Canada, Australia and Malaysia. Both of us have reported on our research to policy and administrative stakeholders and supervisors in our respective institutions, and the profile of doctoral writing has been slowly growing. For example, at Claire’s university, supervisor training forums now schedule a minimum of two writing-focused supervisor sessions per year and all research centres and schools offer significantly more writing support for students. In addition, at the time of writing, UWS was conducting a whole-of-institution audit on academic literacy development with a view to identifying gaps and shortcomings, promoting best practice and improving provision. At McGill, the Dean of Graduate Studies and the Director of Teaching and Learning Services have supported workshops and other support for both students and supervisors. Nevertheless, it is slow work and vulnerable to budget cuts; support for research writing must be shown to be equitable, pedagogically sound and sustainable in the contemporary, cash-strapped university. Although supervisors remain the first port of call for most things for most doctoral students in Canada, Australia and elsewhere, they cannot do everything. Writing demands are increasing and so we need a multi-pronged approach. Writing teachers and researchers can play a crucial role – undertaking research to identify and describe student needs and best practice pedagogies. Writing centres and other units can play a key role in supporting supervisors to create writingrich practices that are theoretically sound, based on empirical research and locally

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relevant. In order to do this they will need to continue to engage with policy makers, program designers and supervisors to promote writing-focused curriculum and pedagogy in doctoral study. There is a role for writing teachers beyond the student–supervisor relationship – again in designing and promoting writing pedagogies that bridge the practice/craft divide, where students engage with each other and practising academics as small communities working together on written texts. We have briefly outlined two such avenues for engagement – Anthony’s course which sits inside the formal curriculum, and Claire’s program of voluntary writing groups. As we have suggested, though, no single approach is sufficient; rather, something like a cultural shift is required if academic units are to provide effective support for doctoral students. Such a shift would recognise that writing – the central practice of knowledge-making – is a social activity that is best developed in collaborative practice with others. Indeed, since discursive methods of producing knowledge are a characteristic difference across fields of study, we believe that true fluency can only occur through participation in specialised communities of practice.

Conclusion: writing as doctoral practice Doctoral study is unlike undergraduate study, where students progress more or less as a group, and where the body of knowledge is defined and assessed along a predetermined route. A doctoral student is more likely to pursue a unique study and experience a very different, more personalised teaching and learning environment. At the same time, the types and forms of the doctorate are changing rapidly, with greater and more diverse expectations of the writing capabilities of scholars who are required to make their work public. In this competitive global context, and particularly as academic writing in English retains its hegemony in the scientific and academic communities (Lillis and Curry, 2010), writing is set to become even more critical to the success of research studies. Furthermore, the task of a doctoral student, unlike that of an undergraduate, is not to learn and describe what is known – but rather to speculate, explore and create knowledge. Writing serves as a heuristic for coming to know and also as a means for disseminating this contribution to knowledge. When writing is acknowledged for its capacity to do both these things, then it is imperative that doctoral students are given every opportunity to learn through writing which is embedded throughout, and integral to, the curriculum. So, doctoral education and changing requirements for research outputs call for new writing capabilities from doctoral scholars which in turn necessitate different pedagogical and curricular responses. Our argument is that writing must be in discussions about doctoral education and that writing must be at the centre of the curriculum and the pedagogy of doctoral education. We have argued for a particular pedagogy for writing, whereby writing must not be treated independently, uncoupled from its communities of authors and readers. That is, writing must

Writing as craft and practice 23

not be taught simply as craft – but it must be the practice of doctoral education. By this we mean that researchers must be given regular authentic opportunities to learn about the kinds of writing they need to master, through the everyday practice of engaging in writing as part of a community that values and develops writing both as craft and practice. From our own teaching and research on doctoral students’ and supervisors’ writing experiences, and from empirical and theoretical work on language development, we have become even more convinced that effective support for doctoral writing must be a socially situated pedagogical practice. In this chapter, we have argued that doctoral students need both a rich rhetorical environment – in which they participate as active, authentic members – and the ability to critically consider discourse as social action. While Claire’s approach places primacy on context, and Anthony’s begins with craft, our mutual hope is that students carry the lessons they have learned with us into the broader context of their studies and careers. As long as academic institutions, publishers, disciplines and students themselves require (certain kinds of) writing to help them to develop as knowing scholars, to graduate and/or to disseminate their research, then those institutions who take in doctoral students have a moral and ethical obligation to ensure that students learn these literacies. A successful doctoral candidate needs to make a contribution to knowledge; and that means more than simply knowing something – it means being able to communicate that knowledge in a way that meets the student’s own needs and the needs of the discipline/institution.

Notes 1 At the time of writing, there is discussion in the university about charging students extra fees for these classes, since they are viewed as remedial and not integral to a disciplinary education. 2 Supplementary reading includes Kamler and Thomson (2006) and Prior and Bazerman (2004).

References Aitchison, C. (2009a). Research writing groups and successful thesis writing, in J. Higgs, D. Horsfall and S. Grace (eds.), Writing qualitative research on practice. The Netherlands: Sense Publishers. Aitchison, C. (2009b). Writing groups for doctoral education. Studies in higher education, 34 (8): 905–916. Aitchison, C. and Lee, A. (2006). Research writing: Problems and pedagogies. Teaching in Higher Education, 11 (3): 265–278. Aitchison, C., Kamler, B. and Lee, A. (eds.). (2010). Publishing pedagogies for the doctorate and beyond. London: Routledge. Aitchison, C., Catterall, J., Ross, P. and Burgin, S. (forthcoming). ‘Tough love and tears’: Learning doctoral writing in the sciences. Higher education research and development journal.

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Boud, D. and Lee, A. (eds.). (2009). Changing practices of doctoral education. London: Routledge. Canadian Association for Graduate Studies. (2005). Doctoral education in Canada. Ottawa: CAGS. [Electronic Version]. Retrieved 9 September 2007 from http:// www.cags.ca/Portals/34/pdf/doctoral_education_canada_1900-2005.pdf. Coe, R., Lingard, L. and Teslenko, T. (eds.). (2002). The rhetoric and ideology of genre. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. Council of Graduate Schools. (2007). Graduate education: The backbone of American competitiveness and innovation: A report from the Council of Graduate Schools Advisory Committee on Graduate Education and American Competitiveness. Washington: CGS. [Electronic Version]. Retrieved 9 September 2007 from http://www.cgsnet.org/portals/0/pdf/GR_GradEdAmComp_0407.pdf. Crosier, D., Purser, L. and Smidt, H. (2007). Trends V: Universities shaping the European higher education area. A report from the European University Association, Brussels, Belgium. [Electronic Version]. Retrieved 2 November 2010 from http://www.eua.be/Publications.aspx. Dias, P., Freedman, A., Medway, P. and Paré, A. (1999). Worlds apart: Acting and writing in academic and workplace contexts. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Freedman, A. and Medway, P. (eds.). (1994). Genre and the new rhetoric. London: Taylor & Francis. Giltrow, J. (2002). Academic writing: Writing and reading in the disciplines. Peterborough, ON: Broadview Press. Golde, C. M. and Walker, G. E. (eds.). (2006). Envisioning the future of doctoral education: Preparing stewards of the discipline. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Halliday, K. (1994). An Introduction to Functional Grammar (2nd ed.). London: Edward Arnold. Hyland, K. (2004). Disciplinary discourses: Social interactions in academic writing. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press. Johnson, R. R. (2010). Craft knowledge: Of disciplinarity in writing studies. College Composition and Communication, 61 (4): 673–690. Kamler, B. and Thomson, P. (2006). Helping doctoral students write: Pedagogies for supervision. London: Routledge. Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991). Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lea, M. and Stierer, B. (2000). Student writing in higher education: New contexts. Buckingham: Open University Press. Lea, M. R. (2005). ‘Communities of practice’ in higher education: Useful heuristic or educational model?, in D. Barton and K. Tusting (eds.), Beyond communities of practice: Language, power, and social context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lillis, T. and Curry, M. J. (2010). Academic writing in a global context: The politics and practices of publishing in English. Oxon: Routledge. Martin, J. R. (1984). Language, register and genre, in F. Christie (ed.), Language studies: Children’s writing. Reader. Geelong, Australia: Deakin University Press. McAlpine, L. and Amundsen, C. (eds.). (2011). Supporting the doctoral process: Research-based strategies. New York: Springer. Miller, C. (1984). Genre as social action. Quarterly Journal of Speech, 70: 151–167.

Writing as craft and practice 25 Paltridge, B. and Starfield, S. (2007). Thesis and dissertation writing in a second language: A handbook for supervisors. Oxon: Routledge. Paré, A. (2010). Making sense of supervision: Deciphering feedback, in P. Thomson and M. Walker (eds.), The Routledge doctoral student’s companion: Getting to grips with research in education and the social sciences. London: Routledge. Paré, A. (2011). Speaking of writing: Supervisory feedback and the dissertation, in L. McAlpine and C. Amundsen (eds.), Supporting the doctoral process: Research-based strategies, pp. 59–74. New York: Springer. Paré, A., Starke-Meyerring, D. and McAlpine, L. (2009). The dissertation as multigenre: Many readers, many readings, in C. Bazerman, A. Bonini and D. Figueiredo (eds.), Genre in a changing world (pp. 59–74). Fort Collins, CO: The WAC Clearinghouse and Parlor Press. Available at http://wac.colostate.edu/books/ genre. Prior, P. and Bazerman, C. (eds.). (2004).What writing does and how it does it, with Paul Prior. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum and Associates. Richardson, L. (2000). Writing: A method of inquiry, in N. K. Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln (eds.), Handbook of qualitative research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Skillen, J. (2006). Teaching academic writing from the ‘centre’ in Australian universities, in L. Ganobcsik-Williams (ed.), Teaching academic writing in UK higher education: Theories, practices and models. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Starke-Meyerring, D., Paré, A., Horne, M., Artemeva, N. and Yousoubova, L. (eds.). (in press).Writing (in) the knowledge society. West Lafayette, IN: Parlor Press and WAC Clearinghouse. Available at http://wac.colostate.edu. Thomson, P. and Walker, M. (eds.). (2010a). The Routledge Doctoral Supervisor’s companion: Supporting effective research in Education and the Social Sciences. London: Routledge. Thomson, P. and Walker, M. (eds.). (2010b). The Routledge doctoral student’s companion: Getting to grips with research in education and the social sciences. London: Routledge. Vygotsky, L. (1986). Thought and language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of practice: Learning, meaning, and identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Chapter 3

Learning from the literature Some pedagogies David N. Boote

Learning directly from the literature—moving beyond readings prescribed by the instructor—is one of the key pedagogies of higher education. Starting in late secondary education, and with increasing expectations as they move through undergraduate and graduate school, students are expected to find, understand, analyze, and synthesize primary and secondary research and scholarship. We expect students to demonstrate a great variety of learning outcomes, from (notso-) simply demonstrating that they understand major ideas in the field through to suggesting and defending original insights. Yet, strangely, considering the importance of this pedagogy, students are often given little guidance to learn the skills and knowledge they need to be successful. In doctoral education, the concern about literature reviews is focused on the dissertation, a very public presentation of a student’s abilities that is closely associated with a specific institution and program. However, the problems with the dissertation literature review are likely not peculiar to the dissertation. Instead, the problems seen in dissertation writing are symptoms of most students receiving little systematic instruction in writing beyond their secondary education, let alone instruction in the specific skills and knowledge needed for advanced graduate writing. Students who struggle during candidacy were struggling long before candidacy. I first heard about this problem from my doctoral advisor, who often complained about the literature review chapters of the dissertations he read. I saw the problem for myself when I started supervising doctoral candidates. My colleagues agreed that there was a problem, yet we disagreed about its nature or cause. Some saw it primarily as a writing problem and focused on correcting students’ grammar, usage, and citations. I was vaguely aware that the problem was bigger—even the chapters that used correct grammar and style still seemed inadequate—but I could not see how to help my students. It was only when Penny Beile, one of my former doctoral students, invited me to participate on a project that the problems came into focus. Penny led a bibliometric analysis of citation quality in dissertations across multiple universities, hypothesizing that students from less prestigious doctoral programs may use lower-quality and easily accessed references. She was correct (Beile et al., 2004). While assessing the quality of each citation in 30 dissertation literature reviews, we

Learning from the literature 27

noticed other problems and decided to assess the overall quality of each literature review. A review of the literature only yielded assessment rubrics that focused on the surface features (e.g., Galvan, 2004), but Hart’s Doing a Literature Review (1999) suggested criteria that addressed more substantive problems. We significantly reworked his criteria into an assessment rubric that we could use reliably. One of the articles from that project (Boote and Beile, 2005) expressed some of the deep anxiety about this issue in the field of education and beyond, and suggested a reassessment of the role of the literature review in the dissertation process. That piece tried to synthesize some of the existing work spread over numerous fields and disciplines, and it may have encouraged increased attention to the more vexing problem of helping students meet those expectations. Around the same time, I agreed to coordinate our Ed.D. program and proposed a new course to help students write a better literature review chapter. It was quickly apparent that a single course could not by itself address the problem, but students felt that what they learned in the course was helpful in other classes and I saw some improvements in their dissertations. When we re-designed the program to better meet the needs of practising educators, we saw the need to integrate these skills throughout the program. In the re-designed program, the core first-year classes teach students to complete a thorough, systematic review of the literature on an important problem of practice. Core courses in the second and third years, respectively, focus on program evaluation and re-designing practices and tools; ongoing assessment insists that students continue to practise and demonstrate those skills. The remainder of this chapter briefly describes some of the approaches that we have developed, and describes some of the successes and continuing challenges.

A solitary enterprise with unclear expectations? Unarticulated assumptions rarely help our students. The assumption that students can learn to do high-quality literature reviews without guidance from program faculty is surely unhelpful. And our failure to articulate our performance expectations further deprives students of guidance. With most doctoral programs unwilling or unable to teach students to write high-quality literature reviews, students have turned to other sources. Unfortunately, those other sources often misdirect students and inculcate unproductive habits. Academic librarians have specialized knowledge and skills that are invaluable for our students. However, my experience is that they tend to focus on searching library databases, which is rarely a productive way to start. Similarly, most of the published research methodology textbooks and literature review reference books tend to focus on database searching (Onwuegbuzie and Leech, 2005). Taken together, it would be easy for students to conclude that “the review of literature is a preliminary, cursory exercise that must be endured prior to the start of the ‘real’ study” (Dellinger, 2005: 52).

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By contrast, Combs et al. (2010: 162) describe an Interactive Literature Review Process which engages students in a dynamic, collaborative, iterative pedagogy in nine stages: a b c d e f g h i

exploring belief systems initiating the literature review process selecting a topic exploring the literature: identifying themes formulating a focus: selecting/deselecting themes analyzing/interpreting/integrating literature closing the literature search: reaching saturation writing the review of literature evaluating the process and product.

Their process has important details that cannot be adequately elaborated here, but a few deserve to be highlighted. First, the whole process is punctuated by several “consultations” with an advisor. The specific purposes of these consultations change throughout the process, but the main idea is to provide students with the guidance and direction they usually do not get. Second, the process acknowledges the emotions of fear and anxiety that so often hamper students when they are asked to learn new, unfamiliar skills. Third, the process is iterative and dynamic, acknowledging that students will have to adjust what they are doing as they learn about the literature, in contrast to the linear models presumed in most of the available texts. And, finally, the process requires students to undertake a number of exploratory and guided activities before they start exploring the library databases, while most librarians and texts direct them to start immediately with searching the databases. The pedagogical model developed by Combs et al. provides a constructive model to lead students through the process, though I suspect that many will find the model too prescriptive and time-consuming. One of the most important issues that doctoral students often fail to understand is the critical importance of the literature review in persuading readers of the value and importance of our work. I worry that the Combs et al. (2010) model perpetuates the too-common assumption that “writing the literature review” is a fairly simple process. It does not suggest the extent or the kinds of support and guidance that students usually need, some of which are discussed below. In addition to developing models of the pedagogical process, we need to continue to discuss our expectations of students’ work. My article with Penny Beile (2005) articulates some fairly high expectations, grounded in arguments that the literature review should play a greater role in doctoral programs (Boote and Beile, 2006). Our rubric reified several important assumptions: 1 that doctoral candidates should have completed a thorough review of the extant literature and that evidence of that thoroughness be included in the dissertations;

Learning from the literature 29

2 that the literature review should convince readers that the author understands the history of the topic; key theories, concepts, and phenomena; and the research and scholarly methods used to study the topic; 3 that the author should understand the importance of the topic in its own terms, and in relation to the broader academic and practical concerns; 4 that a doctoral candidate should be able to synthesize the extant literature to provide readers with a new understanding of the topic; and 5 that they are able to convincingly argue their claims. The pedagogies described later in this chapter and in some of the other chapters can help students learn the skills and knowledge they need to achieve these goals. By contrast, critics such as Maxwell (2006) have suggested that some of our criteria and standards are excessive, and that a dissertation literature review should include only “relevant” prior research. When Lovitts (2007) completed her study of performance expectations of doctoral faculty across the US in a variety of disciplines and fields, she found that they rarely mentioned the literature review when judging the quality of a dissertation (see also Mullins and Kiley, 2002). But in her effort to articulate some performance expectations, Lovitts included the Boote and Beile (2005) rubric.1 Suffice to say that these are issues about which reasonable people can disagree and about which there is little consensus. Our students, however, need to know our expectations from the beginning, so at least within our programs we must reach some consensus. Lovitts’ (2007) book provides invaluable help to develop those expectations into assessment rubrics. Taken together, using a more dynamic, collaborative, and iterative pedagogical model, combined with wellarticulated performance expectations, they are important foundations for student success. But, before we can expect students to jump into the process, we need to help them understand the nature of the task.

Understanding the characteristics of better literature reviews Students usually start with an undifferentiated understanding of literature reviews, unable to notice and appreciate the many important differences of kind and quality. To see some of the important characteristics and how they work together, we require our doctoral students to complete two kinds of analyses. First, they review and analyze several types of literature reviews to understand the choices the authors made, how they found, analyzed, and synthesized the literature, and the rhetorical and representational strategies. By choosing representative articles from one of the major review journals in my field, Review of Educational Research, our students are introduced to sophisticated forms of literature reviews. The articles are chosen to represent some of the main strategies for searching, selecting, and analyzing the literature. The articles are also chosen to represent the wide variety of substantive topics, research strategies, and ideological perspectives seen in my

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field. One unintended outcome of choosing a variety of high-quality literature reviews has been a challenging of some of the advice proffered by my colleagues, such as: that they should only include quantitative, and preferably experimental, studies; that they must not include literature more than five years old; or that students should not explicitly state their normative stance or explicitly critique the literature. When these conflicts arise, I encourage students to try to better understand why faculty may differ on these issues and to be prepared to justify their choices when they choose differently. The overarching goal in this exercise is to help students understand the choices made by these reviewers and how those choices were a response to their understanding of the state of the literature. Second, in addition to analyzing exemplars, students choose two other literature reviews in their area of specialization for detailed analysis, and to compare and contrast. They may choose among a typical dissertation, an award-winning dissertation,2 a published literature review article, or the literature review from an empirical article published in a high-quality journal. Cooper’s taxonomy of literature reviews (1988; see Table 3.1), especially the first two criteria, is very helpful to understand some of the most important decisions that authors make while reviewing the literature. Table 3.1 Cooper’s (1988) taxonomy of literature reviews Characteristic

Categories

Focus

Research findings Research methods Theories Practices or applications Integration Generalization Conflict resolution Linguistic bridge building Criticism Identification of central theme Neutral representation Espousal of position Exhaustive Exhaustive with selective citation Representative Central or pivotal Historical Conceptual Methodological Specialized scholars General scholars Practitioners or policy makers General public

Goal

Perspective Coverage

Organization

Audience

Learning from the literature 31

As we examine the exemplary review articles, the students see how the focus and goal of the review affect the authors’ choices about perspective, coverage, organization, and audience. Students who analyze the literature reviews in dissertations see that those chapters often review several literatures, and in the better dissertation literature reviews each topic has its own focus and goal. As mentioned above, the study comparing dissertation citation patterns across three institutions (Beile et al., 2004) indicated that some students relied on low-quality and inappropriate citations—including excessive reliance on non-peer reviewed magazines, websites, and books, and less-selective peer reviewed journals—without any indication that they were knowingly deviating from widely accepted norms of scholarly communication. To start the conversation, our students analyze the quality of citations in the sample literature reviews. Specifically, for a small sample of citations in the literature review, they assess the relative scholarliness of each citation, the timeliness of each citation, and whether each citation actually supports the claim that the author is making (i.e., relevance; Beile et al., 2004, describes how each measure is operationalized). To do this analysis, students must begin to understand some of the roles of citations in scholarly work: 1 what differentiates high-quality from lower-quality publications, including the peer-review process and the relative selectivity of various publications in their area of specialization; 2 when it is appropriate to cite older publications and when it is preferable to rely on more recent work; and 3 how various kinds of citations are appropriate to warrant different kinds of claims (empirical, normative, conceptual, historical, etc.) (also see Petric´, 2007; Feak and Swales, 2009). Understanding these differences is critical later when students are deciding the kind of review that is appropriate for their topic and when constructing their own review. Having completed the citations analysis, students are in a better position to see how the reviews are constructed and assess their overall quality. As Kamler and Thomson (2006) noted, doctoral writing is an important site of identity transformation from student to colleague, and uncertainties about authorial voice are one important manifestation of this shift. Students analyze how the authors of their sample of reviews: 1 position themselves within the literature and academic community they review—insider or outsider, critic or cheerleader, leader or follower, advocate for a competing camp, etc.; 2 evaluate the literature—emerging explicitly from previously held perspectives or from seemingly neutral criteria; and 3 express their opinions and insights—using first person pronouns, ventriloquating through other authors, hiding behind passive grammar.

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Through the conversation that follows, students are asked to notice which strategies are most common in their area of specialization, to consider which approach is most comfortable for them, and to explore writing in different styles. For example, students are asked to identify an example in a lower-quality literature review in which the author expresses their view or perspective and to try to rewrite that passage using a different style. Most of our doctoral students have never taken an advanced course in writing, rhetoric, or composition, so we provide a brief introduction to the analysis of rhetorical moves. This helps them to see how the authors of these reviews organized, structured, and argued their work. After a few years of unsuccessfully trying to teach this using argumentation analysis (Toulmin, 2003), we now rely on genre analysis and especially move analysis (Swales, 1990). In particular, the small book by Feak and Swales (2009), Telling a Research Story, has been very well received by our students. We supplement it with some of the activities suggested by Kamler and Thomson in Helping Doctoral Students Write (2006). Both books avoid the simplistic and patronizing tendencies of other books in the “dissertation advice” genre (Kamler and Thomson, 2008) by directing students to analyze the diverse approaches of good academic writers and to understand the reasons that they may make those choices. For many years, most researchers studying academic writing followed Swales and Najjar’s example (1987) and included literature reviews as part of the introduction in research articles. When a literature review is serving primarily to introduce an empirical study, Swales’ CARS (“Create A Research Space”) model (1990) helps students to recognize some of the rhetorical moves that authors make. However, this model has proven inadequate for analyzing article-length literature reviews or the literature reviews in theses and dissertations (e.g., Kwan, 2005; Khoo et al., 2011). Until we have better genre-specific analyses, I simply use more general typologies of rhetorical moves in argumentative writing (adapted from Graff and Birkenstein, 2004): • • • • • • • • • • • • •

describe your topic and its importance justify your approach to analyzing the topic suggest complications not previously considered suggest inadequacies in key terms suggest relationship to larger topic clarifying defining and re-defining reveal implication reveal unexamined assumptions move from general claim to specific support represent state of dialog in the field allow counter-argument to develop your point indicate the significance of your work.

Learning from the literature 33

Asking students to use this rather general list to analyze the rhetorical moves in a good literature review usually yields an important shift in their perspective. Doing so enables them to begin to see how the authors construct their arguments about and from the literatures, and how they limit, clarify, and amplify their claims. Building on the analyzes of authorial voice and rhetorical moves, students are asked to create a “syntax and rhetoric scrapbook” to collect and analyze examples that they can later use to support their own writing (adapted from Kamler and Thomson, 2006). They are asked to include examples that successfully accomplish some specific tasks—introductions and recapitulations, transitions and anticipations, citations, evaluative statements, and conclusions—and any other excerpts or turns-of-phrase that they wish to collect. Once collected, students are asked whether they would be comfortable using the style of the example and the reason why. With those examples, students are asked to analyze the rhetorical moves, syntax, pronouns, authorial voice, verb choice, and aspect. Discussion in class then focuses on what makes particular examples work or not, and how these attributes of writing vary across the fields and sub-fields in the class. Finally, having practised all of these subordinate skills, students are ready to assess the overall quality (see Boote and Beile, 2005) of their sample literature reviews, seeing both the smaller details and how they work together in the whole. Through this process, they begin to see how better quality literature reviews differ from lesser quality works, but they also see some of the variety among high-quality reviews and how the authors of those reviews chose approaches that responded to their understanding of the state of the literature in the field. Throughout this process I also attend to students’ anxieties and expectations. Though they are beginning to understand what the final products of the review might look like, they do not yet have the skills or have a realistic sense of the challenges. Moreover, as we begin to teach them the same processes and procedures, their tacit assumptions and learned habits often get in the way.

Learning new habits for finding good-quality literature There seems to be an unfortunate tendency to believe that reviewing the literature is synonymous with searching academic databases, especially in the social and behavioral sciences (Wright, 2010). The result is that students often spend hours and hours doing aimless, disorganized searches. This process usually yields a haphazard collection of works that may or may not represent the literature as a whole (Bruce, 2001). It also yields frustration and anxiety, and decreases students’ ability to think critically (Kwon, 2007). Unfortunately, this tendency to jump directly into database searching is encouraged by the way that search skills are usually taught by academic librarians, by research methods textbooks (Onwuegbuzie and Leech, 2005), and by reference books that attempt to lead students through the literature review process (e.g., Galvan, 2004; Fink, 2009). A major reason for this emphasis on searching academic databases is to ensure that students focus on retrieving

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primary sources rather than the secondary sources used earlier in their education. But to start with searching academic databases for primary sources is to confuse the final goal with the process of achieving it. Unfortunately, by the time they get to us in the doctoral program, these unproductive habits are thoroughly engrained and, in my experience, very hard to overcome. In addition, the proliferation of online search engines such as Google and Google Scholar have only encouraged this behavior (Haglund and Olsson, 2008)—with good and bad consequences. By contrast to the methods used by novices, several studies have examined the searching behaviors of experts while completing a literature review (e.g., HsiehYee, 1993; Brand-Gruwel et al., 2005). Experts use their knowledge to quickly and efficiently find relevant information, using their acquired domain knowledge to engage in a more focused search, rather than the inefficient topical searches used by novices. Experts also use more efficient approaches such as bibliographic searches and contacting key authors directly (Cooper, 1986). There are also differences in emotional resilience and expectation: “Scholars have the maturity to cope with the ambiguity and self-doubt inherent in research. They are gratified to find nothing written on their topic; students are devastated” (Bodi, 2002: 110). (By contrast, Hjørland’s (1988) analysis of an incomplete dissertation literature review provides a caution to students about claiming too soon that there is “nothing on their topic” or believing that they have found everything relevant.) For this reason, it is important to direct students to first focus on finding high-quality secondary sources, including but not limited to published literature review articles, research handbook chapters, encyclopedia entries, synthetic books, high-quality recent dissertations, and research articles. In this way students can relatively quickly learn key concepts and vocabulary, canonical works and central authors, the main journals, organizations, and publishers, settled knowledge, ongoing problems, and emerging concerns. In other words, by initially focusing their search on high-quality secondary sources and extracting from those sources some key pieces of information, students can continue their search by emulating some of the habits of experts. In my experience, students tend to resist this approach because it seems like an indirect way of getting to the final goal. They also resist this strategy because much of the high-quality secondary literature that they find is difficult to read and understand. However, strategic use of various graphic organizers can help their understanding.

Using graphic representations for critical analysis and synthesis Somewhat by accident, the extensive use of graphic representations has become one of our core pedagogies for learning from the literature. We teach our students to use a fairly wide variety of graphic representations: Venn diagrams to clearly specify the literature they are reviewing, forms for summarizing key information from individual pieces from the literature, tables and charts to summarize and evaluate the literature, and concept maps to clarify their argument

Learning from the literature 35

and support arguments. Each kind of graphic organizer plays a specific role, but all require students to think more deeply about the literature they are reviewing. Unlike their later fully developed, detailed writing, the graphic organizers can help them to quickly understand their main ideas and explore various alternatives. By externalizing their thinking and making their emerging understandings more explicit, and by forcing them to present and re-present the information and ideas, they have more productive insights about the literature they are reviewing. The progression of graphic representations also scaffolds the students from the lowest levels on Bloom’s taxonomy to the highest levels (Granello, 2001). The two most common complaints as students start to search the literature is that there is either too little published on their specific topic or that the amount of literature they are finding is overwhelming. In all cases, students can use Venn diagrams to more clearly specify the literature they are reviewing and the relationship of that literature to overlapping literatures. For example, one of my recent students, Kristen, was interested in the use and effectiveness of evidencebased practice in athletic training. When she searched the secondary literature she found nothing directly on the topic. Both in the core journals in her field, and during her preliminary searches of the academic databases, she found only a handful of articles. Those few articles either discussed the importance of the topic or described instructional methods used to teach the needed skills, but none used high-quality research to study the effectiveness of the interventions. At this point, she assumed that she would need to choose another topic. However, when she created a Venn diagram, she saw how her topic could be understood as a very specific focus at the intersection of three rather broad literatures (see Figure 3.1).

Evidence-based medicine in other allied health professions

Education of athletic trainers

Figure 3.1 Venn diagram.

Clinical decision making – i.e., transfer of knowledge from school to work

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While there is not a large literature directly on her specific topic, she could nevertheless complete a review of the three related topics and infer the effect of each on her narrower topic. Students can use a similar process to narrow and focus their review when they are overwhelmed by far too much literature. Students can also feel overwhelmed once they start reading. Borrowing a method often used in systematic literature reviews (Wilson, 2009), we encourage students to adapt or create forms (paper or electronic) to summarize the salient features of each piece of literature while they are reading it. Using the forms helps students to read more efficiently because they can focus on extracting the information they need from the article and force themselves to immediately record the salient information instead of trusting their memory. Early in the program, we provide sample forms for them to use, but over time they see the limitations of these forms for their projects and we encourage them to adapt the forms for their own purposes. Unexpectedly, the need to adapt these forms has by itself proven to be a catalyst for better understanding the criteria they are using to evaluate the literature. In turn, having all of this information gleaned from the literature in a standard format makes it easier for them to create the charts and tables they use to summarize and evaluate the literature. While reading the examples of high-quality literature reviews, we draw the students’ attention to the extensive and frequent use of tables so that students can see how they work in these articles, efficiently summarizing large numbers of studies and helping the authors to develop their arguments without getting mired in extensive summaries. Among the high-quality examples we include quantitative, qualitative, and philosophical/conceptual reviews so that they can see how tables can be used in each. Once again, we start by offering sample tables of the kinds of information they may want to record in the tables, but as they focus their analysis they adapt the table to the argument they are making. In addition to using tables to summarize the literature, we encourage them to use simple t-charts to make dichotomous evaluations of the literature as a whole. Some of the dichotomous evaluations we encourage include those shown in Table 3.2. Table 3.2 An example of a t-chart Positive

Negative

What research findings are agreed upon? What topics have been studied?

What research findings are contentious? What has the research not yet examined? What topics may be taboo? What theories have not been considered? What theories simply passed from fashion? What key concepts are unnecessarily vague or used ambiguously? What populations are under-studied or ignored? What research or scholarly methods are not used?

What theories have been used? What theories have been discredited? What key concepts are well defined or operationalized? What populations have been thoroughly studied? What research or scholarly methods have been used?

Learning from the literature 37

Initially, students are very reluctant to express any evaluations about the literature, complaining that they do not know the literature well enough. When we discuss their reluctance, most also agree with Kamler and Thomson (2006) that they are uncomfortable with their changing social role from consumer to evaluator and contributor. The t-charts seem to ease the transition, because the outward form of the questions is descriptive. We then prompt the students to postulate explanations for each of the positive and negative evaluations they describe and, in the process, begin to validate and substantiate their evaluations of the literature. Throughout the process, we teach students to use concept maps as a way to explain their understanding of the literature, its key concepts and findings, and the relationships among them (Novak, 2010). Often confused with mind-mapping and similar practices, this form of visual representation “makes concepts, and propositions composed of concepts, the central elements in the structure of knowledge and construction of meaning” (Novak and Gowan, 1996: 7). Especially important in the process of developing the concept map is forcing students to elaborate and explicate the relationships among the concepts, and clarify the hierarchical arrangement of the concepts. Two of the main advantages of this form of graphic representation are that it allows students to represent their understanding of the literature without having to rely on extensive writing and that they can quickly update the map as their understanding changes throughout the process (for a review, see Nesbit and Adesope, 2006). In addition, during faculty and peer consultation, we can quickly assess the sophistication of students’ understanding as we see their concept maps grow, change, and organize. While the other forms of graphic representation are well managed using standard office productivity tools—word processors, spreadsheets, and database software—concept mapping is greatly aided by specialized software. Inspiration™ and CmapTools™ are both relatively intuitive to learn, and both support and encourage students to continue to develop their understanding of the literature. One advantage of Inspiration over CmapTools, which is freeware, is that the former allows students to convert their concept map into an outline format—and back again. (Indeed, some students prefer starting with an outline because it is a more familiar form of representation, and Inspiration allows them to start with the outline and convert it into a concept map.) Taken together, these graphic representations scaffold students towards more sophisticated forms of understanding. At each stage, appropriate graphic organizers can help students to define the literature (Kennedy, 2007) and its relationship to other literatures, extract and record information as they read, summarize key issues and controversies, evaluate the strengths and limitations of the literature, and synthesize their emerging understanding. They help the students to offload their thinking from memory and externally represent their thinking in ways that allow them to more easily see patterns and gaps, and to more easily share what they have learned from the literature throughout the process.

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Integrating the literature review in program milestones and capstone projects Yet, there is a difference between teaching something to our students and seeing them replicate it in a single course, and them assimilating new knowledge and skills deeply into their core intellectual habits. Understanding the importance of this insight leads to several important implications. First, we need to plan opportunities for students to practise these new skills, in isolation or together, throughout the program. Second, we need to sequence these opportunities along a developmental trajectory to encourage students to not only practise these new skills but to develop deeper understandings of their field and the implications of those understandings for research and practice. Third, we need continued discussion about our expectations, especially our expectations of candidates at the end of our programs. About four years ago we re-designed our doctoral program in several important ways. Each year in the program is now organized around milestone and capstone projects, and the coursework is better focused on helping students to prepare these projects. The first-year milestone project is an integrative literature review, and the pedagogies described in this chapter are taught throughout the first year program courses. We assess these projects both on whether students have an adequate understanding of the literature in their area of focus and whether they are able to complete a systematic, integrative literature review. Students who demonstrate adequate understanding and skills are allowed to progress to the second year of the program. In subsequent years, we continue to assess whether students are continuing to develop the knowledge and skills from the first year in the milestone projects for years two and three in the program: a program evaluation project, and the re-design and evaluation of an educational practice or product. Throughout the core courses we remind students that they should continue to review the literature and that the design of their program evaluation and re-design project should be guided by a systematic, integrative understanding of the literatures related to their topics. While not the primary focus of our evaluations of these later milestone projects, we continue to assess students on their understanding of the literature, and whether they continue to use the skills and techniques learned in the first year of the program. Our efforts to “re-purpose” (Swales, 2004) the program capstone project to better align with the goals of a professional doctorate in education have been slow to gain wide acceptance in my college. As a result, it has remained a more traditional social and behavioral research dissertation. Regardless of form, it has been important for us to continue the conversation about what we expect students to demonstrate. These conversations are challenging because in education, and many other fields, the norms and values of research and scholarship are quite diverse. Achieving consensus about what “ideal” dissertation literature reviews might look like has been elusive, let alone agreement on our

Learning from the literature 39

expectations for “normal/typical” or “marginal” dissertation literature reviews. The conversation continues.

Conclusion The chapters in this book share the common purposes of better articulating our goals in doctoral education and then suggesting methods of instruction, assessment, and organizing learning experiences to increase the likelihood that our students will meet those goals. Over the last few years I have experimented with a variety of approaches and offer the practices outlined in this chapter as some of the practices that seem most promising. When combined with many of the pedagogies discussed in the other chapters, we can help our doctoral students to improve not only the quality of their dissertation literature reviews, but also improve their learning throughout our programs, improve the quality of their research, and their ongoing productivity after they leave our programs.

Notes 1 Several Masters and even a few Bachelors programs now use this rubric to guide students’ efforts while reviewing the literature, which seems quite inappropriate. Hart (1999) discusses expectations and criteria for literature reviews that seem more developmentally appropriate for the lower degrees. 2 Jason Martin from UCF’s Curriculum Materials Center collaborated with me to compile a fairly complete list of dissertations that have won awards from US-based and some international educational organizations: http://library.ucf.edu/CMC/ NotableDissertations.asp. Unfortunately, as we began to analyze these dissertations, we learned that “award-winning” dissertations do not necessarily include “awardwinning” literature reviews.

References Beile, P. M., Boote, D. N., and Killingsworth, E. K. (2004) ‘A microscope or a mirror: The fallibility of single institution citation analysis for determining research citations (in Education)’, The Journal of Academic Librarianship, 30 (5), 347–353. Bodi, S. (2002) ‘How do we bridge the gap between what we teach and what they do?’, Journal of Academic Librarianship, 28 (3), 109–114. Boote, D. N., and Beile, P. (2005) ‘Scholars before researchers: On the centrality of the dissertation literature review in research preparation’, Educational Researcher, 34 (6), 3–15. Boote, D. N., and Beile, P. (2006) ‘On “Literature reviews of, and for, educational research”: A response to the critique by Joseph Maxwell’, Educational Researcher, 35 (9), 32–35. Brand-Gruwel, S., Wopereis, I., and Vermetten, Y. (2005) ‘Information problem solving by experts and novices: Analysis of complex cognitive skills’, Computers in Human Behavior, 21 (3), 487–508. Bruce, C. (2001) ‘Interpreting the scope of their literature reviews: Significant differences in research students’ concerns’, New Library World, 102 (4–5), 158–166.

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Combs, J. P., Bustamante, R. M., and Onwuegbuzie, A. J. (2010) ‘An interactive model for facilitating development of literature reviews’, International Journal of Multiple Research Approaches, 4 (2), 159–182. Cooper, H. M. (1986) ‘Literature-searching strategies of integrative research reviewers: A first survey’, Science Communication, 8 (2), 372–383. Cooper, H. M. (1988) ‘Organizing knowledge synthesis: A taxonomy of literature reviews’, Knowledge, Technology, & Policy, 1 (1), 104–126. Dellinger, A. (2005) ‘Validity and the review of the literature’, Research in the Schools, 12 (2), 41–54. Feak, C. B., and Swales, J. M. (2009) Telling a research story: Writing a literature review. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press. Fink, A. (2009) Conducting research literature reviews: From the internet to paper (3rd edn). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Galvan, J. L. (2004) Writing literature reviews: A guide for students of the social and behavioral sciences (2nd edn). Glendale, CA: Pyrczak Publications. Graff, G., and Birkenstein, C. (2004) They say/I say: Moves that matter in academic writing. New York: Norton. Granello, D. H. (2001) ‘Promoting cognitive complexity in graduate written work: Using Bloom’s taxonomy as a pedagogical tool to improve literature reviews’, Counselor Education and Supervision, 40 (4), 292–307. Haglund, L., and Olsson, P. (2008) ‘The impact on university libraries of changes in information behavior among academic researchers: A multiple case study’, Journal of Academic Librarianship, 34 (1), 52–59. Hart, C. (1999) Doing a literature review: Releasing the social science imagination. London: Sage. Hjørland, B. (1988) ‘Information retrieval in psychology: Implications of a case study’, Behavioral and Social Science Librarian, 6 (3–4), 39–64. Hsieh-Yee, I. (1993) ‘Effects of search experience and subject knowledge on the search tactics of novice and experienced searchers’, Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 44 (3), 161–174. Kamler, K., and Thomson, P. (2006) Helping doctoral students write: Pedagogies for supervision. New York: Routledge. Kamler, K., and Thomson, P. (2008) ‘The failure of dissertation advice books: Toward alternative pedagogies for doctoral writing’, Educational Researcher, 37 (8), 507–514. Kennedy, M. M. (2007) ‘Defining a literature’, Educational Researcher, 36 (3), 139–147. Khoo, C. S. G., Na, J. C., and Jaidka, K. (2011) ‘Analysis of the macro-level discourse structure of literature reviews’, Online Information Review, 35 (2), 255–271. Kwan, B. C. S. (2005) ‘The schematic structure of literature reviews in doctoral theses of applied linguistics’, English for Specific Purposes, 25 (1), 30–55. Kwon, N. (2007) ‘Critical thinking disposition and library anxiety: A mixed methods investigation’, in D. Nahl and D. Bilal (eds.), Information and emotion: The emergent affective paradigm in information behavior research and theory (pp. 235–242). Medford, NJ: American Society for Information Science and Technology. Lovitts, B. E. (2007) Making the implicit explicit: Creating performance expectations for the dissertation. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing.

Learning from the literature 41 Maxwell, J. A. (2006) ‘Literature reviews of, and for, educational research: A commentary on Boote and Beile’s “Scholars before researchers”’, Educational Researcher, 35 (9), 28–31. Mullins, G., and Kiley, M. (2002) ‘“ It’s a PhD, not a Nobel Prize”: How experienced examiners assess research theses’, Studies in Higher Education, 27 (4), 369–386. Nesbit, J. C., and Adesope, O. O. (2006) ‘Learning with concept and knowledge maps: A meta-analysis’, Review of Educational Research, 76 (3), 413–448. Novak, J. D. (2010) Learning, creating, and using knowledge: Concept maps as facilitative tools in schools and corporations (2nd edn). New York: Routledge. Novak, J. D., and Gowan, D. B. (1996) Learning how to learn (2nd edn). New York: Cambridge University Press. Onwuegbuzie, A. J., and Leech, N. L. (2005) ‘A typology of errors and myths perpetuated in educational research textbooks’, Current Issues in Education [online], 8 (7). Available at: http://cie.asu.edu/volume8/number7/index.html. Petrić, B. (2007) ‘Rhetorical functions of citation in high- and low-rated master’s thesis’, Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 6 (3), 238–253. Swales J. M. (1990) Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Swales, J. M. (2004) Research genres: Explorations and applications. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Swales, J. M., and Najjar, H. (1987) ‘The writing of research article introduction’, Written Communication, 4 (2), 175–191. Toulmin, S. E. (2003) The uses of argument (Updated edn). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Wilson, D. B. (2009) ‘Systematic coding’, in H. M. Cooper, L. V. Hedges, and J. C. Valentine (eds.), Handbook of research synthesis and meta-analysis (2nd edn) (pp. 160–175). New York: Sage. Wright, C. S. (2010) ‘Information-seeking behaviors of education literature user populations’, Teachers College Record, 112 (10), 2537–2564.

Chapter 4

‘Team’ supervision New positionings in doctoral education pedagogies Catherine Manathunga

Introduction ‘Team’ supervision, or the supervision of one research higher degree (RHD) student by two or more supervisors, has come to occupy a privileged position in the policy frameworks of many universities around the globe. I have deliberately used the term ‘team’ supervision, as opposed to joint, associate or co-supervision, because I wish to consider all types of supervision involving more than one supervisor. Team supervision is a more recent development in England and the rest of the British Isles and in many countries that inherited the English model of postgraduate supervision, such as Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, South Africa, Hong Kong and Malaysia. In the past, one supervisor normally worked closely with their research students. This resulted in a peculiarly intense pedagogy, which could result in highly productive experiences for both parties and/or become fraught with tension. In North America, there has been a longer tradition of having a dissertation advising panel, although there is some evidence that these panels meet infrequently and that students are likely to work mostly with one supervisor (Lovitts, 2001). Although the actual practice of supervision in many disciplines and countries may still conform more to the sole supervisor approach, team supervision has come to be regarded as best practice in policy formulations. However, there has been very little research that tracks why this supervision policy came to prominence at this moment. There has also been very little research that traces its effects on supervision pedagogy and the relations of power and desire inherent within supervision. This chapter seeks to trace the genealogy of these policies in order to understand why team supervision has come to occupy such a natural and unquestioned position at this particular moment in history and in some of these national contexts. First of all, I outline the purpose of undertaking a genealogical approach. I then analyse a number of key Australian national and institutional policy documents about supervision in order to understand the particular conditions of emergence that made this shift to team supervision possible and desirable. This allows me to speculate about why team supervision came to be hailed as best practice within this particular timeframe. Finally, I consider

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the implications of this shift for doctoral pedagogies and practices. In particular, I outline briefly how some supervisors and students in the humanities and social sciences adopt certain positionings in relation to team supervision which both complicate and enrich doctoral pedagogy and which challenge the policy notion that team supervision can always be assumed to be less risky and problematic than sole supervision.

Genealogies Like much poststructuralist research, this chapter seeks to denaturalize team supervision policy in order to understand how it came to be understood as ‘desirable and inevitable’ (Marston, 2004: 124). It adopts a genealogical approach that is designed to ‘locate the precontext, to plot a particular historical “surface of emergence” ’ (Hook, 2005: 14) of contemporary policy and pedagogical practices based on the work of Foucault (1977). Tyler and Johnson (1991) have suggested that genealogy is a kind of ‘helpful history’ that traces how the present has come to take the form and shape that it has. Hook (2005: 4), drawing on Foucault’s (1977) notion of genealogy as an ‘effective history’, emphasizes how genealogy is primarily a ‘mode of critique’. Genealogy, therefore, assists us to make familiar, current educational policies and practices strange so that we might identify the competing systems of meanings and positioning circulating at any one historical moment (Hook, 2005). This allows us to track how some meanings and subjectivities become dominant and others disappear or even become impossible to articulate at a particular time in history and in a specific place or location. So in this chapter I am trying to understand the implicit assumptions embedded in this shift to team supervision and the particular historical, epistemic and cultural conditions for its emergence. In particular, I would like to explore why anything other than team supervision has become unthinkable, at least in policy discourses, if not in actual practice. Therefore, this involved a close and critical [re]reading of the policy texts produced during the late 1990s and 2000s in the Australian context by the peak forum of leaders of graduate studies (Council of Australian Deans and Directors of Graduate Studies – DDOGS) and by one research-intensive university (the University of Queensland – UQ). While there has not been a great deal of supervision policy discourse work, two notable exceptions are Grant’s (2001) chapter deconstructing the positioning of the student and the supervisor in supervision codes of practice and Bills’ (2002) paper, which traces the discourses of management in supervision codes of good practice. Bills’ analysis touches on co-supervision, highlighting how the policy constructs the most significant relationships in supervision as those between the supervisors rather than between the supervisor and student or ‘candidate’. She also suggests that the policy suggests that associate supervisors are ‘involved, not with the candidate, but with the development of the proposal’ (Bills, 2002: 7).

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Tracking Australian team supervision policy discourses Like many other Western countries, Australian universities have now shifted to a policy of team supervision. Australia has been selected as the site of this policy discourse analysis because it is one of the countries that have effected this change more recently, but little has been currently written on exactly how team supervision is constructed in key national policy documents and how this is translated at the local institutional level. This chapter also traces the exact historical point at which team supervision becomes a feature of the policy discourse. In this section, I examine the publicly available policy documents of the Council of Australian Deans and Directors of Graduate Studies (DDOGS) from 2003 to 2008 and the relevant University of Queensland policy documents from the late 1990s to the present. The DDOGS group is the Australian national forum of university graduate studies leaders. Many other countries have similar national forums of Deans of Graduate Studies, such as the Aotearoa New Zealand DDOGS, the Thai DDOGS and the US Council of Graduate Schools, and very often these groups form global connections with each other, sharing graduate education policies and practices. The Australian DDOGS group attempts to set national policy standards in Australian research education, so their policies on supervision have been analysed in this chapter because they provide guidance for all Australian universities, carefully benchmarked against those in other Western countries. The University of Queensland is a useful institutional case because it is a research-intensive university with one of the largest enrolments of research students in Australia. The earliest policy document discussing supervision that is available on the Australian DDOGS website is a PowerPoint presentation called the Framework for Best Practice in Doctorates, 2003. There is only one minor, passing reference to team supervision – ‘a principal supervisor should be … assisted by a colleague(s)’. The focus of the presentation then outlines the necessary qualifications and characteristics only of the principal supervisor (Council of Australian DDOGS, 2003, slide 9). The next key DDOGS document is dated March 2005 and is called the Framework for Best Practice in Doctoral Education in Australia. It contains a background statement indicating this framework was originally approved by the Council at its 2004 meeting (Council of Australian DDOGS, 2005). It then provides a table with two columns – guideline for best practice and then a comments column. In the section on best practice for supervision, the original wording contained in the 2003 PowerPoint presentation is extended. In this version, ‘A principal supervisor … should be assisted by a colleague (such as an associate supervisor) or colleagues (such as an advisory team, supervisory panel) who may have different roles in the supervision process’ (Council of Australian DDOGS, 2005: 4). So there is an attempt to specify how associate supervision may be different to team or panel approaches. Attention is given to flagging that each of the supervisors in either approach may (but will not always have) different roles. The

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comments column, however, reinforces the significance of the principal supervisor. The only additional constructions of team supervision in this column include the statement that ‘at least one person involved in the supervision must have supervised a relevant research degree to successful completion as principal supervisor’ (Council of Australian DDOGS, 2005: 4). This policy was then discussed at the May 2007 meeting of the DDOGS and updated in July 2008. The document follows the same structure as the earlier version, with some updated comments in the background section. In particular, it identifies two key ‘drivers’ for the revision of this policy: 1 the increased internationalization of doctoral education [especially the Bologna process]; 2 the burgeoning practice in Australia of awarding the honorific of ‘Dr’ to graduates of professional programs without a substantive research component. (Council of Australian DDOGS, 2008: 1) Interestingly, very few changes are made to the section on supervision but they do relate to team supervision. The guideline for best practice remains identical, but the beginning statement in the comments column emphasizes that principal supervisors have ‘primary responsibility for the provision and coordination of support and advice for the candidature’ (Council of Australian DDOGS, 2008: 4). This statement creates a sense of hierarchy and line management in team supervision. It is useful then to see how these generic national policies become interpreted at an institutional level and whether references to team supervision predate national discourses or not. The University of Queensland (UQ) is a researchintensive university whose doctoral student numbers are generally within the top three in Australian universities. The relevant policies include: •

• •

4.60.1 Good Supervision: The Role of the Supervisor; later Effective Guidance: The Role of the Advisor for RHD Candidates (PhD and MPhil) (1996; amended in 2004; substantially updated in 2008); 4.60.2 Postgraduate Student Charter; later RHD Candidate Charter (c. late 1990s; substantially updated in 2008); and The Advisory Team for Research Higher Degree (RHD) Candidates (undated UQ Graduate School web guidelines).

The November 1996 UQ policy on effective supervision seeks to explore the role of the supervisor by organizing ‘the discussion around a number of organizing themes that appear to be central to good supervision’ (UQ, 1996: 1). One of these themes is ‘Associate Supervision’, which is cast as ‘an important part of the university’s policy on supervision’ (UQ, 1996: 4). There is an attempt to highlight the ‘range of roles’ fulfilled by associate supervisors from ‘general expertise’ to ‘specific skills’. Explicit attention is given in the policy to the need to ‘discuss and understand’ these roles ‘early in candidature’. Like the later national DDOGS

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2008 policy, it is clear that the associate supervisor provides a supplementary, less significant role – ‘associate supervisors [should be] kept up to date with student progress and that they are aware of potential difficulties in candidature’. Minor changes were made to this policy in 2004, but locating the text proved to be difficult so it is not analysed in this chapter. Significant revisions, however, were made to the policy in 2008. First, the policy title was changed as a result of two key shifts in the nomenclature adopted at UQ – ‘supervisor’ to ‘advisor’ and ‘postgraduate’ to ‘research higher degrees’ (RHD). Several years earlier, at what was then known as the UQ Postgraduate Studies Committee, a decision was made to change the term ‘supervisor’ to ‘advisor’ to try and capture more effectively the mentoring role undertaken by supervisors, in line with the dominant liberal discourses circulating at the time on effective supervision (Manathunga, 2007). The slight problem of not having an equivalent noun for advisor (‘advision’?) was not identified until later, although selecting the term ‘guidance’ was seen as a way around this here. There had always been a lot of confusion surrounding the term ‘postgraduate’, particularly among international audiences, so it was thought that the term ‘RHD’ would more effectively demarcate Masters and Doctors of Philosophy degrees from postgraduate coursework programs. Again there was a section dedicated to associate advising. Interestingly, supervision/advising is now described more fully as ‘candidate education, mentoring and guidance’ (UQ, 2008: Section 9.1). This appears to be the first time, in this policy at least, that the term ‘teams’ is explicitly mentioned. So, too, the range of roles performed by associate advisors is now described as ‘significant’, and an additional role of providing ‘access to particular resources’ is added to the list. The only other change in this section is that roles need to be ‘revised’ as well as ‘agreed upon early in candidature’ (UQ, 2008: Section 9.1). Another reference to associate supervision occurs in a section on alternative advisory arrangements, where it is specified that ‘an associate advisor can take on the primary advisory responsibilities’ if the principal advisor is ‘absent or on leave’ (UQ, 2008: Section 12.2.1). The final reference to the ‘advisory team’ occurs in a section about detecting and dealing with problems and conflict, where it is suggested that these matters ‘may be resolved within the advisory team or at the School level’ (UQ, 2008: Section 15.3.2). Another significant UQ policy constructing team supervision is the Postgraduate Student Charter, which was circulated as an undated brochure around the late 1990s. This document specifies what students can expect from the university and what the university expects of students. What is clear from this document is that associate supervision was possible at this time but not necessarily standard practice: •

Postgraduate research students can expect: – To have access to reasonable levels of advice and support from Associate Supervisors (where appointed) in areas of particular expertise or as backup during the absence of the Principal Supervisor, bearing in mind

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that primary responsibility for directing the research remains with the Principal Supervisor. (UQ, c. late 1990s: 3) The roles played by the associate supervisors are more limited than those mentioned in the other supervision policy above. In 2008 this policy was updated and became the RHD Candidate Charter. Again there are a number of explicit references to the ‘advisory team’, where the earlier document only assigns these issues to the principal supervisor: •

RHD candidates are expected to: – Maintain a mutually-agreed level of contact with the advisory team – Refrain from variation … Unless agreed to by the advisory team – Submit regular drafts … as agreed with the advisory team and to negotiate with the advisory team a reasonable amount of time to read and comment in detail. (UQ, 2008: Section 3.2.1)

Finally, there are some undated guidelines for ‘advisory teams’ on the UQ Graduate School website. In this document, a clear rationale for team supervision is outlined: ‘the advisory team shares the intellectual, practical and administrative responsibility and workload’ (UQ Graduate School, undated web guidelines). It is interesting to note that, although ‘intellectual’ comes first, it is slightly de-prioritized by the separating out and accumulation of ‘practical and administrative’ roles. There is an attempt to outline the relative roles of the principal and associate advisors, although this comes after a section on the roles of the advisory team. In this first section on the advisory team, the importance of clarity of roles is emphasized: ‘discuss … distribution of advisory duties among the team so that the candidate has a clear understanding of whom they should consult about particular aspects of their research’ (UQ Graduate School, undated web guidelines). Interestingly, there is an attempt to flag the possibility/ likelihood of disagreement between advisors: ‘while it is expected that opinions and judgments about intellectual, scholarly and scientific matters will often diverge’; but a stronger assumption that this can be solved by explicitly agreeing before the event on a process for conflict resolution: ‘discuss … how differences of opinion about the direction of the research or the content of the thesis will be resolved’. Most importantly, the policy reminds the advisory team that they ‘should ensure that the candidate is not given conflicting advice’ (UQ Graduate School, undated web guidelines).

Interrogating Australian policy discourses on team supervision So what do these policy discourses tell us about team supervision? First of all, mostly at the institutional rather than the national level, there are shifts over time in the types of roles ‘associate’ supervisors might be regarded as playing – from

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general expertise to specific skills; to particular expertise or during absences of the principal supervisor; to providing access to particular resources. However, the central premise that becomes stronger during the policy discourses of the 2000s is that team supervision provides access to a wider range of ‘intellectual, practical and administrative’ support, ‘education, mentoring and guidance’ for the student, who becomes increasingly cast as a ‘candidate’. As Bills (2002: 5) shows, this shift in the naming of students signals a belief that RHD candidates are no longer learners but ‘contenders for an award’ where they must demonstrate not new learning but ‘what has already been learned’. These shifts in notions of supervision and student are designed to signal an increasingly autonomous (Johnson et al., 2000) position for students who no longer need to be watched (as in ‘super’-vision) and taught but merely guided and mentored. However, as I have demonstrated elsewhere (Manathunga, 2007), this has the effect of masking the power dynamics that remain characteristic of supervision. These policies clearly emphasize the belief that team supervision has the effect of sharing the responsibilities and workload of supervisors. These policy notions reinforce assumptions that relations between supervisors are assumed to be free of power dynamics, personality clashes, intellectual or personal jealousies and so on. While the policies clearly emphasize the greater power and coordination role of the principal supervisor, if anything the assumed roles of associate advisors become stronger across the 2000s. The policies resonate with the rationalist belief that, so long as advisory team roles and expectations are clearly discussed and agreed upon at the beginning of candidature, and revised if necessary, conflict or difficulties can be avoided. Even where the potential or even likelihood of ‘opinions and judgments about intellectual, scholarly and scientific matters’ diverging is acknowledged, it is assumed that working out conflict resolution strategies in advance will resolve any matters that arise.

Emergence of team supervision in the 2000s – discourses of interdisciplinarity and risk An even more important question to ask is why team supervision has been increasingly identified as best practice since the mid-2000s in this national context and in similar timeframes around the world. No policy or practice is natural or neutral or happens accidentally at particular times. Policies shift in order to serve the needs of dominant groups at particular junctures of history. One of the more commonly accepted views about why team supervision emerged at this particular point is that it reflects a shift towards more interdisciplinary research (Gibbons et al., 1994; Klein, 1996; Nowotny et al., 2001). Certainly, much of the cutting-edge research in many fields now occurs along the gaps and cracks between disciplines. It has become more difficult for single supervisors to provide students with adequate advice about the vast array of theoretical, methodological and content knowledge required for a lot of contemporary research (Boud and Lee, 2009; Nerad and Heggelund, 2008). As a result, supervisory teams are increasingly composed of supervisors not only with specific theoretical or

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methodological expertise but also diverse disciplinary knowledge. While the policy exhorts supervisors to ‘ensure that the candidate is not given conflicting advice’, the reality is that often students must perform the difficult task of resolving conflicting disciplinary perspectives and approaches being suggested within interdisciplinary supervision (Manathunga and Brew, forthcoming). A more significant reason why team supervision has come to greater policy prominence in the mid-2000s in Australia and other countries is its link with contemporary risk management practices. Risk identification, mitigation and management have become key structural features of many postmodern organizations, including universities (Beck, 1992; Giddens, 2002). Risk is perceived as a permanent and invasive structural constraint. In a risk society, there is a focus on guarding against the ‘distribution of “bads”’ (what can go wrong) rather than on the ‘distribution of “goods”’ (McWilliam, 2009: 191). This stems partly from the current culture of audit and performativity that pervades the public sector and higher education in many countries. Performativity is a concept first developed by Lyotard in 1979 (English translation 1984) to describe the new ways in which knowledge production and consumption operate in postmodern societies. In particular, performativity is a new social logic where knowledge is evaluated on the basis of its efficiency and effectiveness in contributing to national productivity (Usher, 2006). Under these conditions, ‘performances’ of work, including supervision or RHD research projects, which are measured, calculated, added up and subtracted, must be evaluated according to risk levels. Evans et al. (2005) and McWilliam (2009) have explored how this current obsession with risk plays out in doctoral education but did not specifically address team supervision. If we track the discourses evident in these and other policy documents, we can see that, particularly since the 2000s, university management has sought to subject supervision (one of the last remaining private pedagogical spaces; Manathunga, 2005) to increasing regulation in order to manage the risks of poor supervision and student attrition or over-long times to completion. As others have demonstrated, ‘poor’ supervision can involve the full spectrum of pedagogical pathologies from over-surveillance (SUPER-vision) to under-supervision, referred to in the literature as ‘benign neglect’ (Lee and Williams, 1999: 18). Although it is acknowledged in research on RHD education that students leave the program or take a very long time to complete for a whole ‘constellation of reasons’ (Lovitts, 2001: 24), universities and governments subscribe to a project management notion of supervision pedagogy and research more generally. If you’ve got your Gantt charts sorted and your timelines and goals worked out and clearly visible, all will progress inevitably to a happy conclusion. In particular, team supervision is an attempt to enhance the accountability of principal supervisors. Supervisors are likely to more carefully regulate their supervisory practice when supervision is conducted in the presence of other colleagues. In a sense, team supervision now ensures that supervisors are watching other supervisors as well as watching the student. However, it is not only principal supervisors who are now made more accountable. Gradually, supervision

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policy has sought to increase the roles and responsibilities of associate supervisors. Shifting the terminology from ‘associate’ to ‘team’ supervision has the effect of making associate supervisors almost as accountable as principal supervisors for the progress and success of students. Team supervision, therefore, is an attempt to make supervision more transparent, visible and calculable. In this way, it is believed that the risks associated with supervision will be more widely distributed and managed. It is hoped that team supervision will serve the interests of students, ensuring greater access to intellectual and practical support during candidature. It is also hoped that team supervision will share the responsibility and workload of supervision among several supervisors. While there is evidence to suggest both outcomes can be achieved, in the long run team supervision discourses primarily serve the interests of university management and government. They enable these powerful groups to guard against risky supervision pedagogies and practices. These policies do not necessarily make supervisors aware of the complex power dynamics that now circulate between supervisors as well as those that have always circulated between supervisors and students. Nor do they automatically equip these supervisors or their students with the skills of effective team work and conflict resolution. Sometimes, team supervision can actually increase the number of risks students and supervisors may be exposed to.

Implications for doctoral pedagogies So what does this shift towards team supervision mean for doctoral pedagogy and practice? How do team supervision policies both enrich and complicate doctoral supervision experiences for students and supervisors? Which subjectivities become possible for supervisors and students engaged in team supervision? To date very little empirical evidence has been gathered about the material effects of team supervision. Indeed, Pole’s recommendation in 1998 that team supervision policies require more careful reflection and investigation appears to have gone largely unheeded. I conducted a small-scale but indepth exploration of four supervision teams in several humanities and social sciences disciplines at an Australian researchintensive university in 2006. This involved poststructuralist discourse analysis of transcripts of four meetings of each of these four teams and their separate, postmeeting emailed reflections. In three of these teams there were two supervisors, and in one of these teams there were three supervisors. This chapter highlights some of the subjectivities that become possible in team supervision, which both enhance the experience for both parties and, often at the same time, expose them to additional risks. For the students in this small study, team supervision appeared to make possible some helpful scholarly subjectivities, particularly in affording additional opportunities to develop and rehearse their scholarly voices. In some instances, one of the supervisors would deliberately hold open a space in the dialogue (or tri-logue) for the student to expand on their very brief responses, while in other

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cases one supervisor might seek to soften the critical comments of the other supervisor. Through these strategies and the experience of engaging with several supervisors rather than only one, it became evident in three of the teams studied that the student’s voice became more confident across the sequence of meetings. There was evidence of more frequent and longer turns being taken by both students in Teams One and Three. So, too, the student in Team One gradually became more willing to defend her inclusion of material and to clarify and demonstrate her knowledge. There were also instances of the students in Teams Two and Three redirecting the conversation at various points (Manathunga, 2009). Team supervision also enabled students to have more opportunities to observe and practise disciplinary discourse strategies and methods of contestation and debate. Although students often remain very quiet during team supervision while the supervisors discuss and debate particular points and issues, this also creates an opportunity for them to observe the particular strategies experienced researchers use to engage in these debates and how they might marshal their evidence to support their arguments. This has the effect of reminding students about the contested nature of knowledge, especially interdisciplinary knowledge, which is particularly vital in contemporary research (Rowland, 2006). It also allows them to closely observe and later mimic these [inter]disciplinary knowledge construction and reconstruction strategies. This was particularly evident in the meetings of Team One, where the student appears to become more comfortable with defending her inclusion of particular material. There is also a great deal of energy and excitement created when a team engages in ‘improvisation’, which is a more symmetrical, mutual form of power present in supervision (Grant, 2005). For example, in meeting four of Team Three, there are several rapid sequences of debates about theories, where supervisors and students build on each other’s suggestions and finish each other’s sentences. The student’s post-meeting reflections reverberate with an intensely happy subjectivity: We had a wonderful meeting today! It was highly productive, interesting and motivating … I’m writing these answers minutes after the meeting finished. The joy that derives from that experience is still. This was indeed a beautiful session, one of those intense moments of intellectual connection which makes you realise that the arduous dedication to research is in fact fruitful and meaningful. (Student, Team Three, email 23/6/06) Team supervision appears to create an intense sense of excitement with more people to build ideas together. For students, however, team supervision can complicate matters. In particular, students’ experiences of powerlessness can be compounded when supervisors act as a unit against the student’s suggestions. When supervisors join forces to oppose some of the student’s ideas, supervisory power and authority are greatly intensified

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which often has the effect of diminishing the student’s voice or silencing it altogether. So, too, students can experience difficulty in joining in the fast-flowing debate supervisors might engage in during team supervision (Pole, 1998). This can result in delays in the student developing their own scholarly voice. For supervisors, there are also particular benefits and challenges involved in engaging in team supervision. Many of the benefits students experience in team supervision, outlined above, are also enjoyed by supervisors, particularly newer supervisors. They are able to share the joys and responsibilities of helping students engage with new ideas and contested knowledge with their colleagues and seek additional feedback from their colleagues if they are unsure about how a particular meeting went. However, team supervision also complicates the fields of power that operate between supervisors. This can have both generative and difficult consequences for supervisors (and sometimes students as well). For example, there was a very clear instance in these data of the type of self-regulation and self-surveillance supervisors may engage in during team supervision. In Team One, the female principal supervisor tries to account for her fear of being exposed by her colleagues: ‘as principal advisor and person most responsible for the supervision … I felt a bit “under scrutiny” myself and, hence, slightly nervous …’ (Principal Supervisor (PS), Team One, email 13/12/06). The second associate supervisor in this team reflected that he was worried that I was too critical, and that my comments were indirect criticisms of her [principal supervisor] advising, which of course they weren’t. I saw … [the first associate supervisor] later, though, and he seemed to think my comments were fine. (AS2, Team One, email 14/12/06) This example illustrates the awareness of all three supervisors that more responsibility is now being placed upon associate supervisors to guard against possible risky supervision practices perpetrated by the principal supervisor. The principal supervisor is uncomfortable under this surveillance and one of her colleagues tries to account for his concern about being forced into this policing role by policy discourses. In particular, he speaks about his need to seek the absolution of the second associate supervisor. Team supervision also complicates patterns of communication in supervision, which are already fraught, as Grant’s (2003) research demonstrates. The principal supervisor laments after the meeting that she ‘wasn’t sure how much I was talking to the student about her writing and how much I was talking to the other advisors about her writing’ (PS, Team One, email 13/12/06). So, too, there were other instances in the same team, where the first associate supervisor directs a series of questions to the student but the principal supervisor feels compelled to answer on the student’s behalf, further silencing the student. The principal supervisor seeks to account for this tendency, writing later: ‘I have a problem of having

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to make myself stop answering on the student’s behalf when [the first associate supervisor] raises an issue’ (PS, Team One, 31/5/09) (Manathunga, 2009). Therefore, as these examples illustrate, team supervision invariably simultaneously enriches and complicates experiences of supervision for both students and supervisors. Team supervision may make supervision pedagogy more transparent and accountable, but it can also add to rather than reduce the number of risks involved for all parties. In particular, policy discourses about team supervision force on associate supervisors some uncomfortable subjectivities as risk managers, holding them especially accountable for any risky supervisory practices exhibited by principal supervisors. Pole’s (1998) contention that team supervision is not a ‘panacea’ for all the possible ills of supervision needs to be constantly borne in mind as university and government policies seek to mandate these approaches as ‘best practice’. As I have shown in this genealogy, team supervision discourses emerged in many countries during the mid-2000s as an attempt to address the impact of interdisciplinary boundary crossing on contemporary and future research. More particularly, these discourses are a central plank of the risk management strategies that have come to dominate the operations of universities. Rather than naively accepting team supervision as a natural and inevitable policy, all of us need to be attentive to the contradictory and complicated effects these policies have on doctoral pedagogy and to continuously rethink our supervisory practice as a result.

References Beck, U. (1992) Risk society: towards a new modernity. London: Sage. Bills, D. (2002) ‘Cracking the code: changing the discourse of research degree supervision’, paper presented at the Quality in Postgraduate Research Conference, Adelaide, 18–19 April. Boud, D. and Lee, A. (eds.) (2009) Changing practices of doctoral education. London and New York: Routledge. Council of Australian DDOGS (2003) Framework for best practice in doctorates. PowerPoint presentation, http://www.ddogs.edu.au/files?folder_id=2123770849. Accessed 27/10/10. Council of Australian DDOGS (2005) Framework for best practice in doctoral education in Australia, http://www.ddogs.edu.au/files?folder_id=2123770849. Accessed 27/10/10. Council of Australian DDOGS (2008) Framework for best practice in doctoral research education in Australia, http://www.ddogs.edu.au/files?folder_id=2123770849. Accessed 27/10/10. Evans, T., Lawson, A., McWilliam, E., and Taylor, P. (2005) ‘Understanding the management of doctoral studies in Australia as risk management’, Studies in Research, 1, 1–11. Foucault, M. (1977) ‘Nietzsche, genealogy, history’, in D. Bouchard (ed.) Language, counter-memory, practice: selected essays and interviews by Michel Foucault. New York: Cornell University Press, pp. 139–164.

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Gibbons, M., Limoges, C., Nowotny, H., Schwartzman, S., Scott, P., and Trow, M. (1994) The new production of knowledge: the dynamics of science and research in contemporary societies. London: Sage. Giddens, A. (2002) Runaway world: how globalisation is shaping our lives. London: Profile Books. Grant, B. (2001) ‘Dirty work: “ a code for supervision” read against the grain’, in A. Bartlett and G. Mercer (eds.) Postgraduate research supervision: transforming (r) elations. New York: Peter Lang, pp. 13–24. Grant, B. (2003) ‘Mapping the pleasures and risks of supervision’, Discourse: studies in the cultural politics of education, 24 (2), 175–190. Grant, B. (2005) The pedagogy of graduate supervision: figuring the relations between supervisor and student. PhD thesis, the University of Auckland. Hook, D. (2005) ‘Genealogy, discourse, “ effective history”: Foucault and the work of critique’, Qualitative Research in Psychology, 2 (1), 3–31. Johnson, L., Lee, A., and Green, B. (2000) ‘The PhD and the autonomous self: gender, rationality and postgraduate pedagogy’, Studies in Higher Education, 25 (2), 135–147. Klein, J. T. (1996) Crossing boundaries: knowledge, disciplinarities and interdisciplinarities. Charlottesville, VA: The University Press of Virginia. Lee, A. and Williams, C. (1999) ‘“ Forged in fire”: narratives of trauma in PhD supervision pedagogy’, Southern Review, 32 (1), 6–26. Lovitts, B. E. (2001) Leaving the ivory tower: the causes and consequences of departure from doctoral study. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Lyotard, J-F. (1984) The postmodern condition: a report on knowledge; translation from the French by Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Manathunga, C. (2005) ‘The development of research supervision: “turning the light on a private space” ’, International Journal for Academic Development, 10 (1), 17–30. Manathunga, C. (2007) ‘Supervision as mentoring: the role of power and boundary crossing’, Studies in Continuing Education, 29 (2), 207–221. Manathunga, C. (2009) ‘Power and desire in team supervision pedagogy: student experiences’, paper presented at HERDSA Conference, Darwin, July 2009. Manathunga, C. and Brew, A. (forthcoming) ‘Beyond tribes and territories: new metaphors for new times’, in P. Trowler, M. Saunders and V. Bamber (eds.) Reconceptualising tribes and territories in higher education: practices in the 21st century. London: Routledge. Marston, G. (2004) Social policy and discourse analysis. Aldershot, England: Ashgate. McWilliam, E. (2009) ‘Doctoral education in risky times’, in D. Boud and A. Lee (eds.) Changing practices of doctoral education. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 189–199. Nerad, M. and Heggelund, M. (eds.) (2008) Towards a global PhD? Seattle: University of Washington Press. Nowotny, H., Scott, P., and Gibbons, M. (2001) Re-thinking science: knowledge and the public in an age of uncertainty. Cambridge: Polity Press. Pole, C. (1998) ‘Joint supervision and the PhD: safety net or panacea?’, Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 23 (3), 259–271.

‘Team’ supervision 55 Rowland, S. (2006) The enquiring university. Buckingham: Society for Research in Higher Education and Open University Press. Tyler, D. and Johnson, L. (1991) ‘Helpful histories?’, History of Education Review, 20 (2), 1–8. University of Queensland (1996) 4.60.1 Good Supervision: The Role of the Supervisor. Handbook of Policies and Procedures. University of Queensland (2008) 4.60.1 Effective Guidance: The Role of the Advisor for RHD Candidates (PhD and MPhil). Handbook of Policies and Procedures. University of Queensland (c. late 1990s) 4.60.2 Postgraduate Student Charter. Handbook of Policies and Procedures. University of Queensland (2008) 4.60.2 RHD Candidate Charter. Handbook of Policies and Procedures. University of Queensland Graduate School (undated) The Advisory Team for Research Higher Degree (RHD) Candidates, http://www.uq.edu.au/grad-school/?page= 9250. Accessed 27/10/10. Usher, R. (2006) ‘Lyotard’s performance’, Studies in Philosophy and Education, 25 (4), 279–288.

Chapter 5

The seminar as enacted doctoral pedagogy Madeleine Abrandt Dahlgren and Anna Bjuremark

Introduction The focus of this chapter is the seminar, construed as a critical element of doctoral education. The seminar has a long history as a teaching form in the university and has played different roles in different times and contexts. Yet the seminar is more recently recognised as a new practice, being a key site of enacted doctoral pedagogy. The perspective taken in this chapter is that the seminar is a primary space where doctoral students are enculturated into a research community. The seminar plays an important role as a collaborative learning environment and can be seen as an important component of a knowledge-building culture (Lossman and So, 2010). The seminar also supports the process of identification with the research discipline and the traditions of scholarly work pertaining to that particular field of knowledge. In our chapter, we start by briefly situating the function of the doctoral seminar as an environment for identification and learning in an historical international perspective. We will then present a scenario from our case study of a doctoral seminar within the discipline of education at a Swedish university, as a starting point for our analysis and elaboration of a set of pedagogical principles for capacity-building, staged through explicit role-giving and role-taking. We also highlight the textual practices associated with the seminar as an important feature of learning how to communicate in an international research community.

Situating the seminar as environment for identification and learning As a teaching form in contemporary universities, the seminar has its pedagogical roots in the Humboldtian research university at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It has been argued that the introduction of seminars demarcates a shift in emphasis from the medieval university tradition of oral communication practices through disputation, to a practice where writing is used to make students independent learners and researchers (Kruse, 2006). The contemporary focus on doctoral education outcomes in terms of publications and graduate capabilities makes the role of the seminar in doctoral education today also an important pedagogical issue to explore.

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The seminar as a teaching form in the university has a long tradition, going back to the Greek philosopher Socrates and the idea of creating critical and independent citizens through political and philosophical conversation. Seminarium is the Latin name for ‘plant school’ or ‘plant garden’, but it was already used in ancient Rome to refer to educational institutions (Thiele, 1938: 356, cited in Kruse, 2006). Byford (2005) describes the university seminar emerging in the humanities in the late nineteenth century in Russia, inspired by the German tradition, as the key institution of initiation to professional scholarship, and one of the most important frameworks for shaping and reproducing the beliefs and practices defining a body of academics as a professional collective. Byford also describes how the seminar became a framework for socialisation and academic professionalisation, as well as a space for boundary work – i.e. the articulation and demarcation between scientific and non-scientific knowledge. The German seminar tradition was also an inspiration for American doctoral education in the late nineteenth century. In the seminar, original research was demanded of the doctoral students (Clark, 2008). The role of the seminar in socialising students to a collective practice receives less emphasis within doctoral education in the US, where the individual resources and performance of the doctoral student are more foregrounded – perhaps as a trace of historical discourses. Clark (2008), for example, argues that the seminar in American doctoral education in the late nineteenth century came to be the central site in which the Romantic ethos of originality and individual charisma was fostered. In the contemporary context, according to Lovitts (2005), it is the individual resources (intelligence, motivation, knowledge, thinking style and personality) that the doctoral student brings to and develops during their doctoral education that most influences the different completion and creative outcomes of doctoral students. These resources are embedded in, influenced by and interact with the micro-environment, which includes the department, location, the advisor, peers and faculty. The micro-environment is in turn embedded in and interacts with the macro-environment, i.e. the culture of both discipline and graduate education. The seminar is not mentioned as a working form in this model. Lovitts describes a focus group study with faculty members across various disciplines, which confirmed the importance of the individual resources of the doctoral student as important for successful completion of the doctorate. Interestingly, the focus groups identified the advisor as the single most important factor influencing the doctoral students’ success or failure in the micro-environment (Lovitts, 2008). In contrast, from previous studies of the seminar tradition in Sweden, we know that seminars exist in all institutions, but their importance is regarded differently in different departments (Perselli, 2000a, 2000b). These differences in the importance of the seminar pertain both to the nature of the discipline in question, but also to the tradition of the specific department. In the social sciences and humanities, the seminar is one of the most important arenas of research activity, whereas within the technology disciplines the seminar receives less emphasis. This does not mean that seminars are not at all important in the technological

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disciplines, however. Informants in Perselli’s study described a range of views, from a relative lack of interest in the seminars, to a conception of them as important spaces for intellectual engagement and encounters. The absence of attention to the role of seminars in the study by Lovitts (ibid.), in contrast, can be explained by broader differences between the German and Anglo-American educational systems. Fensham (2009) suggests that the former is more directed towards ‘Bildung’, i.e. the development of the whole person, while the latter is directed towards the introduction of the doctoral student to an authoritative system of established knowledge.

Our context and object of analysis Swedish doctoral education today is part of the European higher education community, with a common framework for qualification, and credit transfer through the Bologna Declaration (1999) and the European Qualification Framework. The Bologna process aims, inter alia, to help diverse higher education systems converge towards more transparent systems, based on three cycles: Degree/ Bachelor–Master–Doctorate. This framework was implemented in the Swedish Higher Education Ordinance in 2007 and is now operating in all Swedish universities. Among other things, this has meant that all course outlines and objectives of higher education on all levels have been rearranged according to the Bolognainspired emphasis on intended learning outcomes. The overarching structure of learning outcomes focuses on knowledge and understanding, skills and abilities, values and attitudes. In the third cycle, the doctorate, these outcomes emphasise the development of capabilities of the individual. In particular, the capabilities of critical, independent and creative thinking and the application of scientific rigour in the research process are highlighted. Similar outcomes are emphasised within Swedish legislation. In addition, the capacity for independent problemsolving, as well as the capacity to authoritatively present and discuss research findings in a dialogue with the research community and the surrounding society are seen as important outcomes (Higher Education Ordinance, 1993: 100). The Bologna process has hence put the educational aspects of doctoral education on the agenda, and started a debate on how to assess those learning outcomes that are not assessed through doctoral-level coursework and through the doctoral thesis. To sum up, if we look at the contemporary focus on doctoral education outcomes in terms of publications and graduate capabilities, we can conclude that the role of the seminar in doctoral education in relation to these issues has an important pedagogical potential to be further explored. We believe that the analysis of the seminar will enable us to articulate some of the pedagogical theory implicitly in use in our programme and make visible some of the pedagogical principles that are enacted in our local practice. But first – let us open the door to the seminar room to set the scene for our analysis of an ordinary research seminar in the Higher Education Research Group.

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Lina’s draft manuscript It is Friday morning, and time for the seminar with the Higher Education Research Group. All participants gather around the coffee machine to bring a cup to the seminar room. Today, it is the doctoral student Lina who is going to present a manuscript she is working with. The manuscript has been circulated in advance to the seminar participants. Karin is leading the seminar and opens with a question to Lina. ‘Now, Lina, how would you like to use this seminar?’ In responding to this question, Lina has the chance to specify what she is struggling with at the moment, and what she would like the seminar participants to help her with. ‘Well, I’m not sure that I have managed to get my point through clearly, and if I am using the theory in a convincing way.’ ‘OK,’ Karin said, ‘let’s also do a round and hear what your colleagues would like to bring up for discussion after having read your manuscript.’ Karin turns to every one of the participants to get an inventory of what issues, problems or difficulties that the manuscript displays, and that they would like to explore in the seminar. Karin and Lina list the issues in their notepads. After the round, it is Lina’s turn again. ‘Well, here you have now quite a broad range of issues that might be useful to discuss, from your colleagues’ viewpoints. Where would you like to begin?’ Lina is silent for a moment, pondering on the suggested discussion topics. ‘I think it would be useful to start with the comment about how I actually formulate and frame the aims of the study.’ The scene above illustrates how the seminar is used as a regularly occurring working form in a research group comprising researchers and doctoral students. The seminar is the central meeting place and an important arena for the researchers in our department, and also a central locus of involvement for the doctoral students early in their candidature; participation in the seminar is part of what is expected of all doctoral students. When new doctoral students are admitted, they are assigned to the research seminar to which their supervisors belong. All doctoral students have two supervisors, and supervision sessions are most often conducted among this triad. The doctoral student and supervisors decide together when it is time to open up for a discussion of the doctoral students’ work in the research seminar. Besides participation in the research seminar, the doctoral students also complete coursework of 90 ECTS credits as a part of the total of 240 ECTS credits that doctoral education in Sweden comprises. This seminar is the same forum where senior researchers present their research ideas and plans, and where all participants come together once a month. The seminar is the social practice in which the doctoral students, as well as more senior researchers, together share ideas and critique each other’s work with manuscripts in progress. It may be described as a process in which the doctoral students try to understand how others interpret texts and how to relate these interpretations to their own understanding of the same text. In this sense, the discussion in the research seminar also plays the

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role of collective supervision. The seminar explores and makes visible the various co-existing understandings of the text present in the seminar. Reflecting on the doctoral seminar, Lina describes how she sees the possibilities of using the seminar to develop her manuscript: The seminar is for me a welcomed opportunity to discuss my thesis in an educational theoretical context. My studies are exploratory and involve different aspects of outdoor education, and my overarching aim is to examine in what way outdoor education may contribute to students’ cognitive and affective outcomes and the value of using the outdoors as a learning environment from a teacher’s perspective. In my manuscript, I try to outline my research design and how I view my research and research area in relation to theories of learning. I must admit that although I am a PhD student in education I have not given theories of learning substantial attention so far. But my choice of empirical work is of course grounded implicitly on my own view of how learning takes place. Therefore I want to discuss the consistency in my methodological approach and my perspective on learning theory. The seminar we are analysing here is a normal working form that constitutes a formative evaluation of the research process in the department. There are also other seminars that doctoral students have to participate in as part of the infrastructure for quality assurance and summative evaluation of the thesis in progress. These seminars consist of three milestone seminars at 30 per cent, 60 per cent and 90 per cent completion before the final defence. These formal seminars have previously been described by Lee (2010) and are not foregrounded here.

Framing our analysis Taking a socio-cultural perspective on the seminar means that the discourse is viewed broadly, incorporating aspects of written and oral communication, as well as the linguistic and social practices (Lossman and So, 2010) involved in participation in the seminar. In what follows, we suggest that a careful arrangement of ways of role-taking, role-giving and communicating, orally and in writing, has a potential for improving the seminar as an environment for learning. Within a practice-theory perspective (Schatzki et al., 2001), changing the arrangements of the social practice will also produce a different social order. For example, introducing a different turn-taking practice in the seminar has the potential to open up the space for the establishment of a different social order, where hierarchies are challenged, and a different form of identification process is activated. According to this perspective, communication in a seminar is not just a matter of words and their ordering (Baerendholdt et al., 2010); it is also about physical positioning in the room, such as where participants sit and who asks whom about what. It involves language, eye contact, timing and knowing what to say or not to say. We argue that it is important to make social and cultural understandings at work in

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the seminar explicit, particularly when doctoral students are at the beginning of their academic career. The characteristics of the academic seminar are often described in terms of the provision of a creative and critical dimension to the discussion of research. Much less common is attention to the role of the seminar as a learning environment. For example, changing the patterns of turn-taking in the seminar can be viewed as a pedagogical technique, aimed at developing capabilities of constructing an argument, responding to critique and communicating effectively in a research community. Meredyth (1991) suggests that these pedagogical techniques, common within teaching in the humanities, can be understood as ‘person-forming exercises, initiated and monitored within explicit norms of assessment’.

Role-giving and role-taking In the scenario above, we can see how the first move, the opening of the seminar, involves turning directly to the doctoral student, who is presenting her manuscript, asking her what her own expectations of the contributions from the seminar should be. The intention of this turn is to position the doctoral student in charge of defining the intended outcome of the seminar. The pedagogical idea underpinning the move is twofold. First, to openly articulate the purpose of the seminar as a technique for establishing a negotiated agreement with the participants and a common understanding of the practice rules in play. In a sense, articulating the intended outcome of the seminar could also be viewed as a means of empowering both the doctoral student and the seminar leader: if the discussion develops in a direction that appears to be counteracting the purpose of the seminar, the agreement on the purpose of the seminar is a kind of oral contract, which can be used as a tool for opening up a discussion of how to re-direct and re-focus the conversation. Second, offering the first entry into the seminar to the doctoral student is aimed at giving the student a voice as a researcher and thereby fostering independence as well as interdependence. This move challenges possible power relations that might be embedded in a research seminar, where the more senior, or higher ranked, participants often take up the role of setting the agenda for the talk in the seminar. Offering this role to the doctoral student does not mean that more experienced researchers’ views are not welcome; on the contrary, our experience is that the comments from the senior researchers are highly appreciated by the doctoral students. It is a way of acknowledging the doctoral student as a knowledgeable colleague-to-be, albeit with a different kind of knowledge than the more senior colleagues. Presenting a work-in-progress manuscript can be an intimidating experience for a doctoral student, which needs to be recognised. Writing a thesis by publication, which is a common format in our environment, means the manuscripts that later become collated in the thesis are scrutinised along the way, through the mechanism of the seminar. One of our doctoral students, Anna, put it this way:

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Writing a dissertation by publications is like you get walnuts all the time thrown at yourself, small walnuts, but if you write a monograph, you get coconuts in the end. I don’t know which one is best. (Lee, 2010: 22) If we look at our case study, we can see the collaborative feature of the seminar, where senior researchers and doctoral students share the arena; all participants can be both presenter and discussant; in practice, this can also mean that the roles of teacher and learner can shift and hierarchies are open to be challenged. The seminar, which functions as a forum for the provision of comments from all research colleagues, provides an opportunity for all participants to learn from the research of others. The pedagogical challenge, as we understand it, is to create a common understanding from the participants about working together to create a forum for dialogue, for learning how to read and constructively critique the work of others. The participants are expected to explore new ideas, and to contribute with critical and collegial reflections on any ambiguity in the text in focus for the seminar. The collective collaboratively generated knowledge in the group is a resource that, wisely used, can be of great value to a work in progress, in its relation to other research within a particular field. Theoretically, these features of the seminar can be seen as the enactment of two forms of rationality. Handal (2008) distinguishes between a ‘communicative rationality’ that is characterised by dialogue, and a ‘critical rationality’ that is characterised by debate. He also makes a distinction between ‘dialogue’ and ‘discourse’. Handal finds the concept of ‘dialogue’ unclear in relation to learning processes, since dialogue is often seen as a social process, characterised by attitudes both of kindness and ‘we-must-speak-up’, directed towards ensuring involvement of the participants in the seminar. Discourse, on the other hand, is seen as linked to a critical rationality, with the aim of stimulating knowledge development and critical awareness. The seminar pedagogy, as we describe it here, is attempting to address both rationalities. The seminar serves as a part of a socialisation process that is affected by, and affects, dynamics such as gender, socio-economic background and age. The seminar is also a space in which the doctoral students construe themselves as academics, and where they are construed by colleagues as potential members of a wider academic society (Bromseth and Darj, 2010). Fazlhashemi (2002) has pointed to the particular needs of international students to become formally introduced to and acquainted with the traditions and embedded cultures and codes in Swedish doctoral education. This issue can be seen as equally important for Swedish doctoral students coming from families without academic experience. Findings from Swedish empirical studies (Gerholm and Gerholm, 1992; Perselli, 2000a, 2000b) show that the research seminar can be a contested space, where participants bring to the seminar their formal positions and roles, which can be played out in different ways that impact on the enacted pedagogy. Ethnographic studies of the micro-culture of the research seminar suggest that

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the internal structure of the seminar follows a specific pattern. Gerholm and Gerholm (1992: 156–177) describe the characteristic features identified in these studies: 1 The order of discourse in the seminar is given. 2 Roles are formal as well as informal – some examples of roles identified are those of chairman, lead speaker, question poser, listener, ‘mother’ or veteran. 3 The seminar leader is decisive for how the climate is formed, and the characteristics of this leadership varies – some examples of leadership identified are those of an engaged colleague, conductor or monitor. 4 Turn takings such as oppositions, agreements, citations, gestures, laughter or snorting contribute to the establishment of the discourse pattern. 5 The interaction is directed by more or less visible expectations on the speaker. Hierarchically higher ranked participants are the first to enter the talk. 6 The turns are often distributed according to role, status and gender. Female seminar participants tend to take shorter turns and to be open to new viewpoints, but are also more often silent, contributing less critique and more support. They are also more often interrupted than male participants. It would be naïve to think that these features of the internal seminar structure are not present in our case. The awareness of these dynamics is why we have tried to change elements of the given order of turn taking, in an attempt to empower the doctoral student more clearly. As Allwood (2007) has argued, academic seminars are usually promoted and attended by university academics who, over and above the roles given by the seminar have social identities attributed by their surrounding institution: professor, lecturer, undergraduate student, doctoral candidate. These identities are also connected to differences in social position and power among the participants, which can create conflict between the ideal goals of an academic seminar and what is possible to accomplish within the restrictions of the surrounding social environment. A doctoral student might, for instance, refrain from counter-argument against a professor because of the difference in status between them. Our argument here is that these structural features of the seminar can be challenged through a carefully staged pedagogy.

Ways of communicating – challenging prevailing patterns If we return to the opening of the seminar as described above, we can see how the second move is to make an inventory of which issues the seminar participants would like to discuss in relation to the paper. This means that all participants are invited to contribute, one by one. At this stage, however, they can only list what topics they would like to raise, not start the discussion immediately. The pedagogical idea behind this arrangement is to create an image of the forthcoming

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discussion as a whole entity. Providing an image of the critique as a whole before moving into detailed comments on bits and pieces of the text is a way of creating a collective understanding in the group of the strengths and weaknesses of the paper, as experienced by the seminar participants. Normally, between 8–15 people participate in our seminar. The size of the group is important to consider from a pedagogical viewpoint, since the participants form themselves as audience or actors in the seminar culture. A large number of participants is difficult to manage without a list of speakers, but this particular formalisation of contributions tends to construct a kind of mini-lecture, instead of being responses on presented arguments or texts. However, a speaker list can encourage an operating of an elaborated code that is understood by the participants (Gerholm and Gerholm, 1992). In our case, we mostly find that the formalisation of the contributions as described here prevents mini-lecturing and hierarchical role-taking. This might be due to the fact that our seminar group is relatively small. Of course, the dynamic of the seminar is dependent on the prior preparation of all participants, where everybody has read the manuscript that is up for discussion. Prior preparation is often, but not always, helpful to prevent participants raising their favourite topics, instead of focusing and discussing what is at hand. This is a learning process for everyone. Anna gives her account of what difficulties this learning may comprise: What I really learned most – and it is really difficult – is to listen to a piece of presentation – on its own terms – and not in terms of what I think, or what I think it should be, but in the terms that the person might be trying to think about. I learned that from being in the seminar and listening to what the others would say. (Lee, 2010: 22) It is our experience that building a collective understanding helps structure the work in the seminar, and allows for the time to be spent on the most important issues. We developed this move against the backdrop of experiences of research seminars, where the seminar leader, after the initial presentation of the manuscript to be discussed, opens for a general discussion, into which anyone could make an entry. Leaving the floor open for comments for anyone to comment is likely to set the agenda according to the traditional discourse of the seminar, as we have described above. We argue that, in addition to the difficulties in coping with hierarchies and power relations, this traditional way of structuring the seminar can be quite confusing for the doctoral student. It can be difficult to know which critique is the most important one that cannot be neglected, and there is a risk of losing the sense of coherence of the paper when big and small issues are thrown into the discussion at random. In our case, Lina is invited to choose which question she would like to start discussing. The pedagogical intention behind this move is to support the authority of the doctoral student by keeping her in control of the discussion.

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Our scenario ends with the opening of the seminar. Karin and Lina navigate through the following discussion by collecting all viewpoints related to the specific issues that have been listed, one by one. The contributions from the seminar participants are influenced by their different knowledge, positions and social identities, just as in any research seminar, and are sometimes challenging to the seminar leader. After all issues have been discussed, the final word goes to the doctoral student again, to close the seminar. The doctoral student summarises the main points that have been discussed and, if possible, what possible actions can be taken to develop the paper. This can sometimes be a quite difficult task, especially if the critique has been heavy, and there are many suggestions as to how to improve the paper. Baker and Lauttica (2010) suggest that the construction of identity and knowledge take place through participation in the intellectual community in the field and the home institution. Doctoral students build the knowledge and skills required for scholarship in their field of study and make choices about the roles and values associated with their career in the academy. We argue that our seminar constitutes the space where such identification and knowledge construction are enacted.

Working with textual practices The pedagogy in our seminar case study builds on the idea of developing the capability in the person as well as the production of the thesis. Through this, we can trace the influence of the historical tradition of European seminars, with the focus on developing the person, but also some of the features of the AngloAmerican tradition focusing on the thesis. The seminar group pays attention, not only to the content of the paper being presented, but also to how the argument is constructed and how the theoretical perspective and the literature is brought in to problematise the research question. This is particularly important, since the majority of the publications in our context are written in English, being the lingua franca of the international research community. English is not the first language for the majority of the participants in the seminar group. It is thus important to emphasise that this is not only a question of appropriating language skills, it is about learning the academic language – which is not the mother tongue of anyone; it is a crucial part of the construction of the academic subject, i.e. the becoming of an academic. Bendix Petersen (2007) suggests that, in this process, the ways of speaking, acting, writing and relating are part of how ‘academicity’ or ‘academichood’ is produced, reproduced, challenged and negotiated. Perhaps, language issues in doctoral education are particularly visible in a non-native English-speaking community. Writing academic English becomes a collective problem for the research group to deal with, to help each other to find the most appropriate and clear way of expressing something. The idea of seminar teaching as research practice, collaboratively carried out by teachers and students, was prominent already from the very beginning in the

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Humboldtian university (Hamilton and Zufiaurre, 2000; Kruse, 2006). The common feature of the seminar was that teaching was conducted in small, collaborative groups, where students were highly active and committed. The learning was independent and self-directed, and the students studied original sources in the discipline. Kruse also emphasises the connection of the seminar work with the research practices of the discipline, and the lack of writing instructions on process or genre. There was intensive feedback given on the content of papers, but not on the textual characteristics or writing processes, since these were taken for granted and not seen as part of the research practice. Working with the textual characteristics and language together is, however, an aspect of our seminar pedagogy that challenges traditional hierarchies, since it is not self-evident that the most senior researchers are the ones with the best qualifications in English. Before sending anything off for publication, the papers are also checked by a professional language editor. There is probably a pedagogy in language editing too – in our case, most of our seminar participants use the same language editor, a person we have worked with over many years. When manuscripts come back with suggested amendments, there is always a discussion with the language editor about the intended meaning before wording is changed. It might also have been a challenge in our seminars, both culturally and linguistically, that we consist of a relatively large group of participants from an African country, where English is neither the first nor the second language. Apart from the disciplinary context, there is probably reason to believe that our seminars are characterised by both a national and local context that influences the order and meaning of all participants’ contributions. This particular situation has made us reflect on how different sets of rules operate, for example how ‘Swedishness’ is produced in our seminar. It may be seen as a question about how we construct ‘we’ and ‘the others’ in our intention to achieve common understanding, as well as how we understand and apply theory and methods, in particular when topics are discussed that are unfamiliar to many of the participants. Previous research suggests that language is an important mechanism for socialisation and identification within the disciplines. Parry (1998) suggests that discipline-specific writing norms and conventions are learned by tacit means during doctoral study. She found differences between theses in science, social science/applied professions and the humanities regarding the focus of the thesis, characteristics of the language, structure of the argument, structure of paragraphs, referencing to existing research and authors, and clausal relationships. Dysthe (2002) reasons along the same lines, when she suggests that professors play an important role in mediating the academic text cultures in the discipline in question. Dysthe’s study shows that disciplinary text cultures are heterogeneous and tacit, but that the heterogeneity disappears at the level of the articulation of criteria. There are some differences to be found regarding the weight placed on content, formal features and audience awareness. The seminar pedagogy in our case articulates as far as possible these textual characteristics and opens up space for shared reasoning about disciplinary writing.

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Conclusion In this chapter, we have argued for a seminar pedagogy that addresses the development of the personal capabilities of the doctoral student and the quality of the outcome of the research in terms of the written publication, as well as the capacity to communicate in dialogue with the research community and the surrounding society. The enacted pedagogy introduces a challenge to traditional patterns of seminar interactions, by a different positioning of the doctoral students in relation to the more senior researchers. These moves make available different role-takings and role-givings for all participants, which we see as supportive for mutual learning. We would like to argue that this pedagogy requires a constant and critical awareness about the dynamics that may come to be in play, and that are not always successful. The seminar is work in progress – and processes can constantly be considered and re-considered.

References Allwood, J. (2007) ‘Cooperation, competition, conflict and communication’, Gothenburg Papers in Theoretical Linguistics. Göteborg: Department of Linguistics, Göteborg University. Baerendholdt, J., Gregson, N., Everts, J., Granas, B. and Healey, R. (2010) ‘Performing academic practice: Using the master class to build postgraduate discursive competences’, Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 34 (2): 283–298. Baker, V. L. and Lauttica, L. R. (2010) ‘Development networks and learning: Toward an interdisciplinary perspective on identity development during doctoral study’, Studies in Higher Education, 35 (7): 807–827. Bendix Petersen, E. (2007) ‘Negotiating academicity: Postgraduate research supervision as category boundary work’, Studies in Higher Education, 32 (4): 475–487. Bromseth, J. and Darj, F. (Red) (2010) Normkritisk pedagogik – Makt, lärande och strategier för förändring. Uppsala Universitet: Centrum för genusvetenskap. Byford, A. (2005) ‘Initiation to scholarship: The university seminar in late Imperial Russia’, Russian Review, 64 (2): 299–323. Clark, William (2008) Academic Charisma and the Origins of the Research University. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Dysthe, O. (2002) ‘Professors as mediators of academic text cultures: An interview study with advisors and master’s degree students in three disciplines in a Norwegian university’, Written Communication, 19 (4): 493–544. European Qualification Framework: http://ec.europa.eu/education/lifelonglearning-policy/doc44_en.htm. Fazlhashemi, M. (2002) ‘Möten, myter och verkligheter: Studenter med annan etnisk bakgrund berättar om möten i den svenska universitetsmiljön’, Skrifter från Universitetspedagogiskt centrum. Umeå: Universitetspedagogiskt Centrum. Fensham, P. (2009) The Link Between Policy and Practice in Science Education: The Role of Research. Wiley InterScience (http://www.interscience.wiley.com). doi:10.1002/sce.20349.

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Gerholm, L. and Gerholm, T. (1992) Doktorshatte: en studie av forskarutbildningen inom sex discipliner vid Stockholms universitet. Stockholm: Carlsson förlag. Hamilton, D. and Zufiaurre, B. (2000) ‘The new pedagogics: Revisiting curriculum and didactics’, paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (New Orleans, LA, 24–28 April. Handal, G. (2008) Forskarhandledaren. Lund: Studentlitteratur. Higher Education Ordinance [Högskoleförordningen]. Ministry of Education and Science in Sweden [Utbildningsdepartementet] (1993: 100). Kruse, O. (2006) ‘Writing and the Humboldtian ideal of the research university, The origins of writing in the disciplines: Traditions of seminar’, Written Communication, 23: 331–352. Lee, A. (2010) ‘When the article is the dissertation: Pedagogies for a PhD by publication’, in C. Aitchison, B. Kamler and A. Lee (eds.) Publishing Pedagogies for the Doctorate and Beyond. London: Routledge, pp. 12–29. Lossman, H. and So, H-J. (2010) ‘Toward pervasive knowledge building discourse: Analyzing online and offline discourses of primary science learning in Singapore’, Asian Pacific Educational Review, 11: 121–129. Lovitts, B. (2005) ‘Being a good course-taker is not enough: A theoretical perspective on the transition to independent research’, Studies in Higher Education, 30 (2): 137–154. Lovitts, B. (2008) ‘The transition to independent research: Who makes it, who doesn’t, and why’, Journal of Higher Education, 79 (3): 296–325. Meredyth, D. (1991) ‘The nerve and muscle of academia: The person-building techniques of the tutorial’, History of Education Review 20, (2): 36–52. Parry, S. (1998) ‘Disciplinary discourse in doctoral theses’, Higher Education, 36 (3): 273–299. Perselli, Jan (2000a) ‘Doktorander om forskarutbildning: En undersökning av hur nydisputerade och doktorander ser på forskarutbildningen vid LiTH våren 1998’, Linköpings universitet: Tekniska högskola, rapport nr 2000: 1. Perselli, Jan (2000b) ‘Handledare om forskarutbildning: En undersökning av hur professorer och docenter ser på forskarutbildningen vid LiTH våren 1999’, Linköpings universitet: Tekniska högskola, rapport nr 2000: 2. Schatzki, T., Knorr Cetina, K. and von Savigny, E. (eds) (2001) The Relational Turn in Contemporary Practice Theory. London: Routledge. Thiele, G. (1938) Geschichte der Preussischen Lehrerseminare. Berlin: Weidmannsche Verlagsbuchhandlung.

Chapter 6

Taking a break Doctoral Summer Schools as transformative pedagogies Miriam Zukas and Linda Lundgaard Andersen

Introduction This chapter focuses on the Doctoral Summer School as a challenging pedagogy for doctoral education, in which the traditional supervisory relationship and the disciplinary curriculum are deconstructed through intensive group processes. We draw on our experiences as pedagogues at the Roskilde University Graduate School in Lifelong Learning which has hosted an international Summer School for the last ten years. We describe the new learning spaces created and explore the democratic group processes and the collaborative action learning involved when discipline and stage of study are set to the side in this multi-paradigmatic, multi-national context. Despite the wide range of participants in terms of length of study, focus and methodological approach, the respite from supervisory pedagogies and the careful critiques of multi-national peer ‘opponents’ are often transformative in the doctoral students’ research subjectivities and continuing journeys.

A case study Within the context of a book that seeks to examine pedagogy for doctoral study which moves beyond the pedagogy of (mostly one-to-one) supervision, and to develop practice-based conversations beyond the handbook, this chapter examines the specific phenomenon of the Doctoral Summer School through a case study. The case examined here is the Roskilde University Graduate School in Lifelong Learning annual Doctoral Summer School. Both authors have been involved with the Summer School over a number of years. We describe its features and context and then analyse the differences between Summer Schools and the traditional mode of supervision, raising a number of questions about the learning and pedagogies involved within each sphere. We end by suggesting that Summer Schools are often transformative in terms of doctoral students’ research subjectivities and continuing journeys – and therefore provide a convincing argument for including this pedagogy as a part of doctoral programmes.

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We begin our journey with five vignettes or composite pictures of the kinds of people who participate in the Summer School, before outlining the development of the programme in the context of the highly specific pedagogic context of Roskilde University.

Doctoral students taking a transformative break – vignettes 1 Elena is a young Italian woman who is in the initial stages of her PhD. She is enthusiastic about her subject area in lifelong learning and very engaged with the PhD project. She has chosen to attend the Summer School because, although she enjoys an environment in which she is supervised with other PhD students, she feels that her supervisor does not have the expertise in educational research which she requires. She has found the Summer School enormously helpful, both in terms of the content and the pedagogies. She would like to take away with her what she experiences as a very different and more productive atmosphere of supervision – one she feels to be both respectful and more egalitarian – but is concerned about how to do this. Elisabeth is from one of the Eastern EU countries. She is in the middle of her PhD. She feels that her participation in the Summer School is critical for deepening her scholarly research, not least because the relocation to another country offers both different perspectives and rich substance related to her chosen area (some of the lecturers have expertise in that area). She is highly critical of the system within which she is studying, and she is concerned that she will not be able to voice that critique in the context of her own country. Jan is a student from RUC, part way through his PhD. He attended the Summer School the previous year, as he was starting his studies, because he knew it was a requirement that he attend at some stage. He found it a little bewildering and he did not feel he got the most out of the experience. This year, he feels ready to engage and is looking forward to meeting the ‘other’ – that is, international PhD students who work in different systems – to get a sense of his own journey and to try out his ideas in a different context. He feels that the RUC context is well organised and supportive, but it can be a bit insular, and he wants to expose his ideas to a more critical hearing from outside. He is particularly keen on the chance to work with new professors as well as his own in a variety of different formats. Jane is from the Far East and is struggling to complete her PhD in a context in which she works full time as an academic, and feels that she has little support from her own colleagues. She says that her conditions of work are intense: for example, those scoring lowest on student evaluations may be required to leave. She knows what she is trying to do and why, and has come to the Summer School to draw strength from others who will support her, and who will offer a different view. She decides by the end of the Summer School that, in order to retain her moral and ethical integrity, she will risk her job by completing her PhD.

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Joanna feels that she is stuck: she has to go through a process of upgrading her status in her own country by submitting her final proposal and her research questions. But she still doesn’t know how to narrow them down. She hopes for some help from colleagues and facilitators, but she’s not sure what help she needs. During her presentation, she is confronted by her peers with the issue of having to give up on some aspects of the research which she holds most dear. She breaks down in tears because she had really wanted to do it all. By the end of the Summer School she has come to understand, through her discussions with her peers, that researching always necessitates difficult choices, and she is ready to focus.

Entering the communities of research: the Summer School format As shown above, many participants, particularly those from abroad, come to the Summer School because they have issues about some aspect of their doctoral study which they wish to explore or to resolve. For those from Roskilde, it is required that they attend at least one Summer School during their PhD study. Participants arrive at the Summer School imbued with a wide range of values associated with doctoral study and situated within different phases of thesis work. Despite the Summer School’s organisational home, participants may not see their research as being specifically about societal and subjective understandings of lifelong learning (be it learning, education or training) – that is, they may have a strong or weaker affiliation with lifelong learning research traditions and scope. Their background and values depend on many factors in addition to the cultural context: the disciplinary context and the doctoral tradition in which their own PhD is being undertaken, the nature of the academic project they are undertaking, the supervisor’s own values and views of doctoral study, the institutional, national and cultural expectations of doctoral study and achievement, and so on, as our vignettes show. The vignettes also illustrate how some participants take significant decisions about their studies as a result of the Summer School. In summary, the objectives of the Danish Summer School in lifelong learning are to create learning arenas for stimulating and challenging scholarly discussions as well as to bridge different national and academic traditions and universities. The fact that individuals from between eight and fourteen different national backgrounds attend each year implies that the Summer School meets this objective. The probability, therefore, of forming scholarly and academic networks is very much enhanced because the group of PhD students attending is so differentiated. The Summer School format and those facilitating encourage a stimulating, informal and fun learning environment, including carefully planned case visits and study trips in the busy schedule, since these elements have proven to be important in establishing a thriving and stimulating learning environment. As described in more detail below, participants are formally required to prepare a research paper to present, which will then be constructively and critically opposed. In

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addition, the Summer School also involves workshops in which discussions and opposition take place; lectures by national and international scholars; and a symposium, where a creative work format is applied in academic settings.

Description of the study school: access and format The Summer School has taken place annually for the last ten years and is a priority for the Graduate School and the Department of Psychology and Education, within whose auspices it takes place. Each year both PhD students from the Graduate School and their supervisors agree upon a significant theme focusing on learning but also situating this phenomenon in a broad and international context. The theme is carefully chosen in order to open up space for a differentiated group of international PhD students from different knowledge fields. The criteria for selecting applicants combine relevance and quality of the proposed paper and the PhD abstract, which are submitted beforehand, with a consideration of the overall differentiation of the group with regard to gender, nationality and research area and topic. Usually between twenty and twenty-five students from eight to twelve different nationalities attend. The Summer School identifies a course fee, but in general it has been possible for students with limited access to funding to apply for a reduction in costs. The invited guest professors – usually two or three – are carefully selected and approached. They need to be able to embody dynamic, scholarly excellence and respectful doctoral training practice and to be willing to take, and be truly interested in taking, responsibility for but also granting co-ownership to the PhD students for Summer School processes and products. The international invited professors are then paired with Danish supervisors and each team moderates one of the three workshops each year. The pairing is carefully considered, taking into account gender, professional background and theoretical and methodological positions. This is important since the range of different scholars has proved to be influential in helping to achieve the Summer School objectives.

Summer Schools as scholarly venues The starting point for the Summer School as doctoral pedagogy was a formal requirement of a five-year research grant for the Graduate School of Lifelong Learning. The Danish government was motivated by an international incentive advocating the importance of strengthening international networking and positioning as part of the infrastructure of Danish research. The rationale for the Summer School as a venue for international PhD students reflects the current requirements for doctoral studies and programmes in general. Doctoral programmes are scholarly activities deeply and profoundly rooted within international scientific culture and traditions. Consequently doctoral students are required to take part in and accustom themselves to the academic and scientific world of

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peers. In many disciplines the Summer School tradition is a venue for intensive scientific meetings transcending ordinary individualised academic life. Summer Schools function as a highly specialised and advanced setting where junior and senior scholars from a multiplicity of national and cultural backgrounds come together to share and develop their interest in a specific topic. In many cases the structure and the educational approach reflect a democratic learning environment where the PhD students are supposed to present their research in workshops or the format of a roundtable. Likewise the Summer School frames the presence of a number of excellent professors or top scholars from all over the world to present their work as well as engage in discussions with the PhD students. In doing so the Summer School establishes an unusual academic environment and format advocating egalitarian values such as collaboration, respectful critique, mutual learning and inspiration; the Summer School thus acts as a counterweight to the majority of participants’ academic university cultures. The specific features and profile of the Summer School under discussion here were closely intertwined with the pedagogy of Roskilde University as well as the sponsoring Department of Educational Studies. The University, one of the Danish reform universities, was established at the beginning of the 1970s as an innovative place for advanced learning in order to cope with new needs for qualification and reform. Reform or modern universities, as opposed to the ‘old’ classic universities, were intended to be adapted to the development of society, labour markets and information technology; in order to do this, they utilised an experimental pedagogical study structure (Jensen and Olesen, 1999). Studies at Roskilde University have a distinctive philosophy and innovative approach to education: they are organised as project work, characterised by problem orientation, participant direction, exemplarity, inter-disciplinarity and collaborative learning (Ou and Nielsen, 2003). The students are situated as active learners in project studies in collaboration with professors, and these project studies are rooted in university courses and workshops. Identifying, formulating and maintaining a shared focus in a project group is a difficult and complex process of negotiation and therefore ‘open skills’ such as argumentation and negotiation are indispensable (Bjørn and Hertzum, 2006). The learning involved is collaborative, active and participatory, directed in a dialogue between the teacher/professor as a facilitator, expert and supervisor (Barkley et al., 2005). The different dimensions of this new teacher/supervisor role represents a transformation from exercising the role of the didactic expert in the academic field towards a role including and refining a focus on processes, methodological dimensions and a reflexive approach. The philosophical intention, in summary, is that students should be actively involved in the pedagogical and knowledge-making processes. Thus, students and teachers participate together in acquiring, constructing and negotiating the meaning of knowledge (Danielsen and Nielsen, 2010). It is within this tradition that the Summer School has been developed by academics politically committed to and well versed in these collaborative and participatory pedagogies.

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The main features of the Summer School Preparation and socialisation begins with a call on the Summer School website for participation from PhD students and graduate students presently engaged in educational research. The invitation is intended to be inclusive, both in terms of topic (‘all projects dealing with learning or contexts of learning can find their space’) and stage of study (‘from the preliminary research plan to complete articles ready to be submitted’). Each year, as described earlier, a theme is developed, intentionally kept as loose as possible (e.g. ‘Lifelong Learning: Inside–Outside Education’ or ‘Lifelong Learning between Policy and Practice’) to give shape to the proceedings.2 But within this open invitation, certain preferences already emerge: the website suggests that ‘we advocate a multi-cultural, multi-national, multi-paradigmatic approach to (qualitative) research’, and also invites would-be participants to expect ‘highly-qualified and challenging discussions’. The website makes clear that participants’ own work will be at the heart of the curriculum, and that it is a precondition that participants submit a research paper addressing a theme or problem in their work. Participants are notified that the paper will be available to others beforehand, and that it will need to be in a form and length which makes reading in advance ‘realistic’. This is embedded at the application stage, when participants are expected to provide the name and abstract of the paper, as well as giving details of their current research and a brief statement of how the Summer School is relevant to their research. The supervisor is also involved at this stage because would-be participants need to provide a supervisory supporting statement with their applications. The Summer School, usually a fortnight long, is constituted through parallel workshops, lectures and a two-day symposium. Each workshop (with some eight to ten participants) is convened by two professors – usually one from the host department and one from elsewhere, usually abroad. These workshops are regarded as the ‘core’ context for learning and are carefully set up by the facilitating professors so that the intention – ‘to discuss critically and constructively the research work of the participants’ – is articulated repeatedly. Timetables are negotiated early on, to ensure that everyone has the chance to have their paper discussed. Participants are expected to read each other’s papers, and to act as discussant for another’s paper in their workshop. The role of discussant (sometimes referred to as ‘opponent’ as well) is carefully spelled out on the website – ‘you are obliged to present a qualified perspective on the paper based on a careful preparation. You are expected to present your considerations in a respectful, constructive and critical manner … Some participants find it “tricky” to criticise another author’s paper, but it may help you using open questions … The idea is to facilitate and stimulate further thinking regarding the setting of the research questions, the method(s), theory(ies) …’ The role of the rest of the group as constructively critical peers is also explained. These demands reflect the pedagogical intentions of Roskilde University, as outlined above, making explicit that the participants are expected, from the start, to have a shared focus and to engage actively in collaborative learning.

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The role of professors within the workshops is also explicated. They are expected to moderate and to ‘safeguard the scientific relevance and quality of the discussion’ – in other words, not to act as supervisors, but instead to steer and to guide the group discussion. As well as facilitating workshops, participating professors are expected to give at least one lecture, offering different methodological and theoretical (international) perspectives on the theme of the Summer School. These lectures could be regarded as a reciprocal activity, in that participants have a chance to comment upon and critique the work of their facilitators; however, the terminology and implied pedagogy, as well as hierarchies of academe, do not easily give rise to such reciprocity. Nevertheless, participants often comment positively about these opportunities to engage in the academic critique of professors’ work without being concerned about repercussions, real or imagined. Again, as outlined above, this culture of reflexivity and the focus on processes and methodological dimensions is well embedded historically and practically in the broader university culture. The Summer School involves a two-day symposium which is usually scheduled half-way through and offers a change of theme, pace and pedagogy: for example, it might focus on research methodologies and involve hands-on exercises, group discussions and other organised activities in which participants are reorganised into new groups to ‘facilitate further discussions and relations’. The interlude might also involve additional staff from other parts of the university or elsewhere. A wide range of less formal learning opportunities also shapes the Summer School. There is an unspoken but nevertheless forceful expectation that participants and professors eat together in the day and most evenings, with great attention given to the quality of the catering in order to encourage full participation. It is also felt that this symbolises for participants their value and the importance of their doctoral work. Almost every year the PhD students’ evaluation summary highlights the quality and significance of the Summer School’s ‘caring environment’, accentuating how the students experience this as a token of equality and respect, which many of them rarely encounter in their home academic settings. A social agenda is also explicitly negotiated at the start of each day (‘Today’s work and leisure’), and often participants organise visits and other outings as part of the programme. Finally, near the end of the Summer School, the PhD students are invited to self-organise a panel discussion on the conditions and work situation of doctoral students across nationalities and disciplinary traditions, and they usually put a lot of energy in organising a detailed and enlightening event, pointing to the multitude of challenges and problems but also sharing and building a platform of strategies on how to survive a PhD.

Conceptualising the Doctoral Summer School Doctoral supervision and the whole process of developing as a doctoral candidate has been likened to a community of practice, in Lave and Wenger’s (1991) terms (for example, Malcolm and Zukas, 2000; Lee and Boud, 2009;

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Pearson et al., 2009). Doctoral students are engaged in learning in practice through social relations. Their participation in the practices of research, writing and scholarship as well as academic critique and debate (particularly, but not only, with their supervisors) forms the basis for their developing identities as full members of the discipline. Their increasing participation in the disciplinary community through a series of structured activities (for example, drawing up a research proposal, gaining ethical approval, giving seminar papers, and writing appropriately) over time might be characterised as the learning curriculum. One important feature, though, of these social relations is that for those working in social sciences – here specifically educational and lifelong learning research – there is a primary social relation through which all else is structured. In Lave and Wenger’s language, this one-to-one (or one-to-a-few, in the case of joint supervision) might be characterised as an apprenticeship with newcomer students and old-timer supervisors. There are a number of issues then with such an analysis. The first issue is the nature of the community to which a doctoral student is being apprenticed. Like others, Hodkinson and Hodkinson (2004) raise questions about the socio-spatial delineation of the community itself: by community, do we mean the broad community of scholars studying education and lifelong learning? Or do we mean a rather narrower community of the supervisor(s) and fellow doctoral candidates? For many of those coming to the Summer School, it would seem that this narrower interpretation has, to that point, been a more appropriate description. Second, the assumption that the positions of novice (peripheral participant) and expert (full participant) are stable or uniform has also been challenged (for example, Fuller and Unwin, 2004). In traditional supervision, supervisors may learn from doctoral students, and doctoral students may learn from other doctoral students. Nevertheless, the supervisor as expert is privileged, and other forms of learning are regarded as secondary or even incidental. And third, the ‘community of practice’ notion has been critiqued for its inherent conservatism (Hager, 2005) in the sense that novices seem unlikely to intervene, let alone transform, the community. Again, though, because the doctoral process is based primarily on a narrow range of social relations with a principal focus on the development of the individual scholar, rather than the broader community, it seems likely that this reflects accurately the community of practice of supervision. How might we then characterise learning in the Summer School? One way is through comparison and contrast with the ongoing learning within supervision, and we have drawn up a table to try and illustrate what we mean (Table 6.1). We see each pair of features as a continuum – but we have over-stated the case in order to make a point. For example, whilst continuing assessment of written work is primarily the responsibility of the supervisor(s) within the classic doctoral context, nevertheless individuals may receive feedback from peers and a number of other sources. However, within the Summer School, assessment is primarily the responsibility of peers, rather than supervisors.

Doctoral Summer Schools as transformative pedagogies 77 Table 6.1 Contrasting features of supervision and the Summer School Apprenticeship: Modelling one to one

Communities of research: Modelling many to many

Primary relationship: supervisor–supervisee Governance: institutional agreements and conditions Values: dependent on specifics (supervisor, context, disciplinary assumptions, etc.) Intermittent contact Long-term, developmental Uni-disciplinary Assessment in the hands of the supervisor, ongoing critique Classical learning scenery (offices, seminar rooms) Outcomes: long-term, thesis apprenticeship modelling

Primary relationship: peer group Loose governance: democratic, self-governance Values: collaboration, respectful critique, egalitarian Ongoing contact Short-term, intense Multi- and inter-disciplinary Assessment in the hands of peers, peer critique and discussion Informal learning scenery (trains, kitchens, study trips) Outcomes: short-term, critical doctoral awareness and engagement, networking: Communities of research (Lave & Wenger)

In order to contrast the community of practice of one-to-one supervision with the Summer School, we have chosen to use the term ‘community of research’ to characterise the latter. In doing so, we highlight the following features. First, we believe that the broader interpretation of community discussed above is appropriate: participants engage with others working in a much wider range of educational research than they are likely to have encountered to date. This often facilitates meta-level discussions and emergent understandings of what it means to be part of a ‘lifelong learning research community’. Second, participants in the Summer School are peers, rather than experts. They are required (as set out above) to participate fully (rather than peripherally) in practice, critiquing each other’s work in appropriate ways. What is important here is that the primary relationship is with peers, rather than experts, and that this relationship is ‘many-to-many’, rather than one-to-one (few). The stable position of the supervisor described above is indirectly challenged as participants take up ‘knowing’ identities or positions of identity. Sometimes, this could result in disruptions to the supervisory relationship when participants return home; however, peer groups are often involved in working together through the politics of such disruptions, recognising the power relations upon which supervision (and later sponsorship) depends. Third, whilst the doctoral project is still a major focus for participating in the Summer School, it is not the only one. Other activities include critiquing colleagues’ work, developing critical awareness of the processes of writing and

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broader social development. These collaborative and generally open processes contrast strongly with the individualised – even private – processes of supervision.

Supervisors in unfamiliar territory So far, we have focused on the doctoral participants in the community of research of the Summer School. Participating professors might also find themselves in unfamiliar territory: no longer supervisors but instead members of a peer community in which they too have to practise new forms of discourse and pedagogy, rather than rely on the familiar hierarchical relations. Their acculturation, too, might require careful negotiation. For example, to step back from the supervisory position could be disconcerting – what is it that one can contribute if one is no longer a supervisor one to one? Given the meta-level analyses of both the field and supervision itself which are likely to occupy at least some time within the workshops, a certain reflexivity and openness about one’s own research processes and supervisory practices might be appropriate. So, as we noted above, the philosophical intention of engaging participants in knowledge-making processes, so long a part of the University’s collective project, may require considerable acclimatisation on the part of visiting professors. And further, commenting upon a wide range of projects situated within unfamiliar fields and employing unfamiliar theories and methodologies is disconcerting for those whose academic careers have been built on specialisation. The engagement with, for example, positivist methodologies when one has taken a firm interpretivist stance demands high levels of reflexivity – even self-control – in this context. Moving on to the issue of collaboration, which again is such a central aspect of the Summer School, this might be counter-cultural for some. In her research on doctoral education in the United States, Jones (2009) makes the observation that many students undertaking doctoral programmes in chemistry and neuroscience report having only one supervisor or mentor, whilst those working in the humanities tend to work with a dissertation committee, involving several members of faculty. However, those working in laboratory sciences tend to enjoy frequent contact with their advisors, as well as other peers, in the course of their empirical work, whilst those in the humanities enjoy only intermittent contact with advisors and are often isolated from peers, particularly if they work in order to support their study. She suggests that, as a result, intellectual collaboration is a strong (and usually essential) feature of the science doctoral curriculum; however desirable, it is much less integrated into humanities doctoral work. Even though there may be opportunities for collaboration, such as editing journals or running conferences, the difference lies in the nature of the doctoral product: a display of individual effort, rather than the product of a collaborative project. The typical lifelong learning doctoral experience is predominantly a display of individual effort. The project is chosen and worked up by the student, with guidance through supervision. It is not necessarily part of the doctoral tradition that peers will read draft papers and give feedback. And although there

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may be opportunities to present research to others in workshops and seminars, there are rarely opportunities for peer collaboration, or critical support, since the traditional approach often appears to privilege the role of supervisor(s). The experience, therefore, of an entire group of peers and senior academics reading one’s work and offering ‘respectful, constructive and critical’ feedback may be entirely new. Stepping inside the supervisor’s shoes for a moment – that is, being asked to read and give such feedback to a differentiated group of peers – could also be a novel experience. The nature of the critique offered may also be strange: as made clear by the Summer School guidelines, this is not the polite but sometimes harsh cut and thrust of academic debate. Instead, a pedagogical stance in relation to one’s peers is needed, requiring ‘opponents’ to ‘facilitate and stimulate further thinking’. For some participants, this is even more challenging than being on the receiving end: after all, their education to date will have depended on their ability to dissect and even demolish the work of others. To be expected to respond constructively to ideas which are incomplete or ill-considered; to be respectful about research with which one might violently disagree; to be critical about work in a field about which one knows little: these demands skill and empathy. Unlike the power asymmetry of supervision, such pedagogy is also egalitarian – or at least, is intended to be so. But how are participants inducted into these new critical practices? The skills of the facilitating professors in pairing and ordering participants come into play. The early involvement of experienced participants (those already used to acting as opponents) ensures that Summer School novices understand what is required. The professors’ own critical engagement also models what is meant by ‘respectful, constructive and critical’ feedback. The timing and management of that feedback, as well as its quality (and the way in which it might differ from supervisory feedback), would usually help participants understand the Summer School ethos. Also the use of ‘scripted learning’ as a tool from collaborative learning pedagogy provides a useful learning arena in which the participants learn to engage in a critical but constructive way with research papers, theoretical concepts or methodology (Barkley et al., 2005). In scripted learning, the students are guided step by step in a process of developing a critical stance to a paper, or a book segment or a theory that the workshop participants have chosen to work on. The outcome of this is subsequently presented and discussed in a workshop plenary and facilitated by the workshop professors.

Learning from the Summer School Each year, those running the Summer School have evaluated systematically the participants (both students and staff) in order to understand better the experiences of participants and ways in which to improve the planning for future years. The evaluations indicate that the Summer School is a powerful and sometimes life-changing event for those involved. Collectively, they also point to systematic learning and longer-term outcomes.

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First, as the vignettes and description above show, at a meta-level, the Summer School develops what might be called critical doctoral awareness on the part of both students and professors. In other words, the format, process and different work tasks provide a space to reflect on the doctoral process and on supervision in a context such that individuals recognise that ‘it doesn’t have to be this way’. Supervisors might wish to change their own practices as a result, for example by providing more opportunities for collective supervision; students might seek more peer support from Summer School colleagues and/or other colleagues in a more systematic way, or they build an electronic network for future discussions and conference sharing. But this is not a story full of happy endings: there are dangers too. For Elena, whose experience was described at the beginning of this chapter, the Summer School proved to be frustrating in the long term because she felt that she was unable to change the pedagogies of supervision and doctoral programming back home. Elisabeth, too, was relieved by the support she received on the Summer School but was so concerned about the contradictions between the system within which she was working and the findings of her thesis that she felt she might not be able to submit within that country. She moved her candidature as a result. Jane lost touch with colleagues, and they became concerned that she lost her job soon after the Summer School. For Jan the outcome of the Summer School led to a more solid approach in his PhD work because the Summer School provided him with a contested arena within which his research question and his choices of theory, method and data were challenged and thoroughly discussed. In this way he was able to consolidate and refine his own unique scholarly work. Second, the Summer School is an interlude in a much longer process: although we portrayed it as contrasting with the one-to-one nature of supervision, it is, of course, its framing is entirely reliant on that process. For example, in the end, professors working in the Summer School do not have supervisory responsibility for participants; and students are accountable to their parent institution, and not to the Summer School. The relative freedom from the strictures of responsibility and assessment requirements, as well as a certain level of disciplinary openness and a high degree of collegiality, is refreshing by contrast. But the fact is that participants are connected by a common purpose which will be realised outside the bubble in space and time. The Summer School is not a replacement for supervision; but it offers both participants and supervisors the opportunity to engage in learning that is interdisciplinary, collaborative, critical and relatively egalitarian: in other words, for a short time, to engage as full members of a community of researchers. The longer lasting outcome of the Summer School might be the fact that the PhD students, for a decisive moment, experience a rewarding and egalitarian academic culture; interaction and approach to knowledge production provide them with an incentive from which they might find inspiration and gain strength to do their part in changing academic culture and manners in their own academic department and setting.

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Notes 1 These vignettes are based on a number of individuals who have attended the Summer School in the past. Details have been altered in order to ensure anonymity. 2 In 2010, the theme was elaborated as follows: ‘It will deal with learning in formal education and training as well as learning in all the other arenas where people engage and learn: Workplaces, evening classes, local communities, cultural and political activities, family life. It is the ambition to promote research approaches which will make the notion of lifelong learning a framework for critical rethinking of education and education research.’ This inclusive elaboration follows a similar pattern to previous years.

References Barkley, E. F., Cross, P. and Major, C. H. (2005) Collaborative Learning Techniques. New York: Jossey-Bass Higher and Adult Education. Bjørn, P. and Hertzum, M. (2006) ‘Project-based collaborative learning: negotiating leadership and commitment in virtual teams’, in Proceedings of the 5th Conference on Human–Computer Interaction in Southern Africa, pp. 6–15. New York: ACM Press. Danielsen, O. and Nielsen, J. L. (2010) ‘Problem-oriented project studies – the role of the teacher as supervising/facilitating the study group in its learning processes’, in L. Dirckinck-Holmfeld, V. Hodgson, C. Jones, M. de Laat, D. McConnell and T. Ryberg (eds) Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Networked Learning 2010, Lancaster University. Fuller, A. and Unwin, L. (2004) ‘Older and wiser? Workplace learning from the perspective of experienced employees’, International Journal of Lifelong Learning, 24 (1): 1–19. Hager, P. (2005) ‘Current theories of workplace learning: a critical assessment’, in N. Ascia, A. Cumming, A. Dunnow, K. Leithwood and D. Livingstone (eds) International Handbook of Education Policy. London: Kluwer. Hodkinson, P. and Hodkinson, H. (2004) ‘Rethinking the concept of community of practice in relation to schoolteachers’ workplace learning’, International Journal of Training and Development, 8 (1): 21–31. Jensen, J. H. and Olesen, H. S. (eds) (1999) Project Studies – A Late Modern University Reform? Roskilde: Roskilde University Press. Jones, L. (2009) ‘Converging paradigms for doctoral training in the sciences and humanities’, in D. Boud and A. Lee (eds) Changing Practices of Doctoral Education. London: Routledge. Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991) Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lee, A. and Boud, B. (2009) ‘Framing doctoral education as practice’, in D. Boud and A. Lee (eds) Changing Practices of Doctoral Education. London: Routledge. Malcolm, J. and Zukas, M. (2000) ‘Becoming an educator: communities of practice in higher education’, in I. McNay (ed.) Higher Education and Its Communities. Buckingham: SRHE/Open University Press.

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Ou, T. and Nielsen, L. J. (2003) ICT and the Project Studies at Roskilde University, Denmark. Department of Communication, Journalism and Computer Science, Roskilde University. Pearson, M., Cowan, A. and Liston, A. (2009) ‘PhD education in science: producing the scientific mindset in biomedical sciences’, in D. Boud and A. Lee (eds) Changing Practices of Doctoral Education. London: Routledge.

Chapter 7

‘What’s going on here?’ The pedagogy of a data analysis session Jessica Harris, Maryanne Theobald, Susan Danby, Edward Reynolds, E. Sean Rintel and members of the Transcript Analysis Group (TAG) 1

Introduction Data analysis sessions are a common feature of discourse-analytic communities, often involving participants with varying levels of expertise to those with significant expertise. Learning how to do data analysis and working with transcripts, however, are often new experiences for doctoral candidates within the social sciences. While many guides to doctoral education focus on procedures associated with data analysis (Heath et al., 2010; McHoul and Rapley, 2001; Silverman, 2011; Wetherall et al., 2001), the in situ practices of doing data analysis are relatively undocumented. This chapter has been collaboratively written by members of a special interest research group, the Transcript Analysis Group (TAG), who meet regularly to examine transcripts representing audio- and video-recorded interactional data. Here, we investigate our own actual interactional practices and participation in this group, where each member is both analyst and participant. We particularly focus on the pedagogic practices enacted in the group through investigating how members engage in the scholarly practice of data analysis. A key feature of talk within the data sessions is that members work collaboratively to identify and discuss ‘noticings’ from the audio-recorded and transcribed talk being examined, produce analytic observations based on these discussions, and evaluate these observations. Our investigation of how talk constructs social practices in these sessions shows that participants move fluidly between actions that demonstrate pedagogic practices and expertise. Within any one session, members can display their expertise as analysts and, at the same time, display that they have gained an understanding that they did not have before. We take an ethnomethodological position that asks ‘what’s going on here?’ in the data analysis session. By observing the in situ practices in fine-grained detail, we show how members participate in the data analysis sessions and make sense of a transcript. Ethnomethodology focuses on methods and resources that people use to make sense of what is happening around them and the actions

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of others (Garfinkel, 1967). Used in conjunction with Ethnomethodology, Conversation Analysis (CA) pays close attention to the sequence of interactions, to see what members make of what each other says and does. The context, then, is one of co-construction, where members work together to make sense of data, which may include audio or video recordings of interaction. Interactional moments involving members sharing different views are important for understanding how members make visible their stances. Ethnomethodological and Conversation Analysis approaches have gained increasing recognition in the in situ study of educational practices from the perspective of the members engaged in the interactions. These approaches have been used, for example, in the examination of language and literacy practices in classroom settings, to study interactions between teachers and children (see, for example, Baker, 1997; Hester and Francis, 2000), and parent–teacher interactions (Baker and Keogh, 1995). There is little research exploring pedagogic practices within university settings, although Benwell and Stokoe (2002) investigated discussion groups in university tutorials, Gibson (2009) investigated postgraduate reading groups, Bills (2003) investigated focus group data of the supervisory relationship, and Danby (2005) examined email communication between a supervisor and her doctoral student. The strength of the ethnomethodological approach lies in showing how members achieve practice through the interactional work of its members. In so doing, the approach allows us to examine how pedagogy happens within data analysis sessions. The Transcript Analysis Group, originally founded by Carolyn D. Baker at the University of Queensland as a forum for her students and colleagues to participate in data sessions and discussions about the analysis of transcriptions, has retained a similar format since its inception in the early 1990s. The organising committee for the group now comprises members from three Brisbane universities, including the University of Queensland, Queensland University of Technology and Griffith University. Meetings are held fortnightly during the semester across the campuses of the three universities, and between 10 and 30 members are present. While data sessions regularly occur in discourse-oriented research within a range of perspectives (see, for example, Antaki et al., 2008), the Transcript Analysis Group has developed a strong analytic focus using the methodologies of ethnomethodology, Conversation Analysis and Membership Categorisation Analysis (MCA). This group consists of researchers using these data analysis approaches, and is one of the longest-standing and most active groups in Australia, with members from a range of disciplines, including education, communication, sociology, medicine and psychology. Members include research higher degree students and early career and experienced researchers. All members are able to share ideas, discuss new approaches, methods and technologies, and discuss and collaboratively analyse data extracts. In 2010, in acknowledgement of the diverse range of theoretical interests and skills in transcript analysis, the

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organisers of TAG initiated a second study group, which shares some members with the original TAG. The second group offers sessions on transcription and transcript analysis, led by experienced members of TAG and is open to interested parties. For example, one session focused on using transcription conventions, while another was a discussion of a selected reading on analysing video-recorded data. The data analysis sessions offer a pedagogic arena for engaging in the practices of analysing talk and interaction; in other words, pedagogy-in-action. This chapter details actual occurrences of members going about their everyday business of looking at, and analysing, extracts of talk. The examination of our actual practices shows a shift away from traditional assumptions of experts and learners, to afford members the participation space to move fluidly between the roles of participant and analyst; novice and expert. The analytic process of writing this chapter itself deserves some comment. Members who participated in the two audio-recorded data analysis sessions in mid-2010 became analysts of their own talk and actions as well as those of their colleagues and students, and authors of this chapter. The sessions were carried out in the same way as other data analysis sessions. An underlying process of this chapter is the reflexive process (Gibson, 2009) of analysing members’ talk by the members themselves. In informal discussion with each other, we commented on the process of studying transcripts of our own talk in data sessions and our familiarity with what was being studied. There was a ‘rich and complex interplay’ (Woolgar, 1988: 16) as we went about the business of doing analysis in order to write about our own practices of ‘doing data analysis’. Our examination of members’ work was a study of our actions, as well as the actions of other members present during the audio-recorded sessions. The reflexivity of this exercise provided us with opportunities to observe our own behaviour and to ask ‘what’s going on here?’, as analytic practices were unfolding.

Blurring the roles of experts and learners In this chapter, we discuss three extracts from three audio-recorded Transcript Analysis Group (TAG) sessions. Extract 1 is from a TAG session where Greg, an expert in Conversation Analysis, presented an extract of video-recorded data and involved members in a discussion of transcription practices. Extract 3 is taken from a second session where members participated in a data analysis session using the same transcript and video-recorded data initially presented by Greg in the first session. In extracts 1 and 3, we see how postgraduate students, both novice analysts, contribute to noticing something in the transcribed data extract. Extract 2 is taken from a reflexive session where extracts 1 and 3 were being discussed and analysed by members of TAG. Across the three sessions, we, as members of the TAG group, are analysing and writing about our own practices.

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Doing noticings The pedagogic work of data analysis sessions involves experienced researchers and new researchers being immersed in the activity of ‘doing’ data analysis to produce noticings. In this way, a pedagogic space emerges that resists a traditional expert– learner institutional supervisory order. Methodological guidelines often describe producing a ‘noticing’ as a first step in data analysis (Pomerantz and Fehr, 1997). Starting with ‘unmotivated looking’ (Psathas, 1995), doing noticings in group data analysis sessions involves members bringing features of the transcript of talk to the attention of others and, often, offering some form of analytic description. These noticings provide a vital first step for analysis. The noticing in extract 1 is produced by Tanya (noted on the transcript as ‘T’), who is in the early stages of her doctoral study and is attending her first TAG session. The extract below shows how she does her first ‘noticing’, which is quickly picked up by others. Tanya starts her noticing a little hesitantly as she shares her observation that the word ‘probably’ is used repeatedly in the transcript of talk under examination. (See the Appendix for transcription conventions.)

Extract 1

Session 1

121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129

I: jus u:hm like to sa:y if you go to line sixtee:n the client (0.3) starts using the word probably? (0.2) .h and when you go down to line fordy ni::ne (0.8) the cli:ent sstarts saying the word probably (0.2) ve::ry frequently,= =Ye:hp, (.) a:nd it goes across into line fifty: fifty o:ne?

144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155

T

T

G T . . . G T G ? G K G ALL G

{continues identifying features of the transcript} (lis)uh- that’s nice. yeah. wo[w [.h ve:ry nice. erm I transcribed this in nineteen ninety seven? [.h [mh an’ I never noticed that before.= =ha[h [an I’ve used it many times since. ((LAUGHTER) bu tha’s very nice. ALL those probablies all bunched up in there, righ:t. and yunno might be worth thinking ’bout what he’s talking about at that point.

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Immediately following Tanya’s noticing (lines 121–126), Greg, who had provided the transcript of talk used in this data session, gives an assessment. He displays surprise, saying ‘erm I transcribed this in nineteen ninety seven? an’ I never noticed that before’ (lines 146–149). His response acknowledges Tanya’s competence in accomplishing this important first step of data analysis. He reports that he, as the transcriber of this data, and as an experienced analyst of this transcript, has never noticed that feature of the talk before and expresses appreciation of her point, saying ‘tha’s very nice’ (line 153). Greg’s assessment confirms that Tanya, a new member, has identified an item that he has not identified previously, even with his extensive experience of this particular transcript, which warrants further investigation. In this sequence, Tanya can be seen to be doing what ‘natives’ (Herzfeld, 1983) of data analysis sessions do. That is, Tanya engages in the group discussion by offering an item of interest to other members and discovers something that has not been noticed before. What makes this action stand out from other pedagogic moments is that, while teachers regularly ask students to make observations, the observations produced by the student are usually such that the teacher already knows the answer. That sort of pedagogic probing is exemplified by Mehan (1979) who described classroom pedagogy of questioning as: teacher asks a question (initiation), student responds to the teacher who already knows the answer (response), and the teacher then provides an evaluation (evaluation). In this setting, however, the pedagogy is such that a new member can contribute an observation before being asked, and her contribution may be new to everyone. The actual practice of a new member making a noticing that is new to experienced researchers, or to those who have spent significant time working with a particular transcript, blurs the lines of traditional novice–expert relationships. The context of the session has set up a pedagogic space, and our analysis shows how, in practice, a methodological guideline to notice something in the data is actually enacted in practice. In other words, we show pedagogy-in-action.

Fluidity of ownership of ‘noticing’ As we saw in extract 1, members with varying levels of expertise were able to produce a noticing in these TAG data sessions. Furthermore, the production of a noticing often affords the member a loose ‘ownership’ (Sharrock, 1974) of the noticing. As such, we see that various members of TAG carry out the pedagogic work or focusing the direction of the talk at different stages throughout the sessions. Extract 2 begins with Hannah, an experienced member of TAG, reopening the topic of the ‘probably’ introduced previously in extract 1. It should be noted that this extract is taken from a second data session where members are discussing and reflecting on a transcript of talk (extract 1), taken from the first session.

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Extract 2 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99

Session 2

but the ↑INteresting thing is when she’s reporting ba:ck from the form, i:n ninety eight, to a hundred, she says (.) what you told me before, is you ha:d (.) perhaps [two with= E [mmm. H =di[nner. F [hehe[hehehehehehe] B [ha [ha ha heh] G [↑oh. RIght.] H [perH(h)Aps=] F [hehahahaha heh he he ha ha ] H [=t(h)wo a night hhhh. .hhhhh] B [ (though different) ] G so tha:t’s an episte [mic d- down] grade [right?=li]ke= B [ y e ↑ a: h. ] All [↑ye:ah] G =she’sE so- (0.4) perhaps is less [certain] [(than [probably)] ? [(cough)] J [y e [a: h.] H

By packaging her turn with ‘↑INteresting’, other members hear how Hannah’s turn might be received, that is as an item of interest. Having successfully gained the conversational floor, Hannah continues her turn, identifying from the original transcript that the dietician does not use ‘probably’ as the client did, rather she uses ‘perhaps’ to describe the quantity and frequency of the client’s drinking. Hannah holds the floor for an extended turn, with Frank and Betty responding to the noticing with laughter. Greg responds with ‘↑oh. RIght’ (line 88), which may mark some interest in the noticing presented by Hannah. At the end of Hannah’s turn in line 91, Greg offers an analytic description of Hannah’s noticing. His statement ‘so tha:t’s an epistemic d- downgrade right?’ (line 93) appears to show him directing the focus of the talk more specifically by explicitly introducing a Conversation Analysis term that refers to the type of action that is occurring in the talk. While the talk has focused on Hannah’s noticing from lines 80 to 91, Greg’s turn represents a shift that offers an analytic description of the talk as representing an ‘epistemic downgrade’ (line 93). Eric, another experienced researcher, mirrors the opening of Greg’s turn, which is prefaced by a ‘so’. He then offers an expansion of Greg’s analytic description, highlighting the fact that the terms they are discussing are ‘perhaps’ and ‘probably’ (line 97). In this way, Eric and Greg both seem to be further focusing or directing the topic of the talk.

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By self-selecting to offer a noticing, as Tanya does in extract 1 (lines 121–122) and Hannah does in extract 2 (lines 80–83 and 85), individual members work to guide the activities or set the agenda at various stages within the interaction. By producing analytic descriptions, Greg and Eric (lines 93 and 97, respectively) also are focusing the direction of the talk. These extracts show that the activities of doing noticings or analytic descriptions can be produced by any member, allowing them to take ‘ownership’ (Sharrock, 1974) of the data or to direct a particular focus for the conversation. In TAG, the role of who directs the conversation is fluid; the ownership of the data and ownership of the noticing seems to construct who has rights to the conversational floor.

Collaboratively constructing analytic observations So far, our discussion of these data extracts illustrates how the in situ production of interaction differs from traditionally conceived roles of what ‘experts’ or ‘learners’ may be expected to do in pedagogic settings. We have shown that any TAG member can produce a noticing and that it is this local production, rather than the predetermined roles or identities of members, that can determine who leads the focus of the talk. In other words, there is no predetermined pattern of interaction employed routinely by members. Members self-select to offer noticings for discussion, and comment on the noticings that others raise. The collaborative construction of observations is evident in extract 3. In this extract, Sally is a postgraduate student attending her first TAG meeting, and she offers a noticing that is then picked up by several members of the group for collaborative analysis.

Extract 3 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99

G

E G ? S S G S G S

Session 1

It could be a jo↑b interview possibly: depending on the snippet you’ve got, it could be .h a MA:RKET REsearch interview. (0.3) ˚(could be[..)˚ [yeah?= =mm[h, [or a cri:me, (0.2) hehuh h[eh [a cri – o↑h yeh a poli:ce interview[, yeah, [yeh yeh yeah tha’s ri:gh? Ya’know like because soun’s like she’s quite judg- imean (.) judgemental?

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G S

G

yea:h? trying to judge hi↑m like have you cha:nge? Li:ke you’ve already made some changes. have you? (0.3) righd. oka↑y? So you’re look- at you’re re: you’re looking at the kindev .h grammatical construction there. that’s actually a: tag question isn’t ˚it˚, have you m- .h you’ve already made some (.) changes have you. .hh its an interesting one because its uh its uh two positives isn’t id you HAve already made some changes,(.) hhave you.

At the beginning of extract 3, Greg makes the observation that, depending on the extracts of talk examined, this interaction could mistakenly be identified as a range of different types of interview. In lines 85–87, he lists ‘job interview’ and ‘market research interview’ as two possible forms. Following Eric’s quiet and seemingly incomplete addition and Greg’s polar response token, Sally adds ‘or a crime’ in line 92. While Greg treats Sally’s suggestion as a possible addition to his list of interviews, it does not match the forms produced by Greg in lines 85–87. Greg then reformulates her statement by saying, ‘o↑h yeh a poli:ce interview’ (line 95), which adapts Sally’s response to fit in with the category of ‘forms of interviews’ that Greg had suggested in his original list. Sally accepts this reformulation and offers additional information to support her noticing that this interaction could sound like a ‘police interview’. Sally next accounts for her addition to Greg’s list, indicating that members could believe that this interaction was taken from a police interview because one interaction participant ‘sounds like she’s quite judgemental’ (lines 98–99). Greg then produces a polar response token (line 100), which enables Sally to maintain the floor. Sally uses her next turn to produce further evidence of her observation that the participant in the transcript sounds like she is ‘trying to judge him’ (the other participant in the transcript) (line 101), and she offers a direct quote from the transcript, ‘you have already made some changes have you’ (line 102), in support of her suggestion. Greg acknowledges the quote and offers another reformulation, this time a reformulation of the entire observation. Between lines 104 and 109, Greg offers an analytic description for the reason that Sally has ‘noticed’ or produced this observation with regards to the particular segment of the interaction that she has quoted. This turn offers additional information that supplements Sally’s original noticing. In this extract, we can see that Sally and Greg are collaborating to construct both an observation and an analytic description. Sally and Greg’s collaborative construction of an observation and description continues over multiple turns, from lines 92 to 109 Greg scaffolds Sally’s new noticing over a number of turns as he produces and refines these descriptions. While collaborative constructions in data sessions can involve varying numbers of participants, from as few as two and up to six or seven participants, in this extract only two members collaborated in the construction of Sally’s observation.

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A pattern observed regarding the collaborative construction of analytic observations in TAG sessions is that members regularly mark the end of these collaborative sequences with a formulation (Heritage and Watson, 1979). Formulations work as a ‘summarizing type of utterance’ (Jones and Beach, 1995: 61) used in a range of institutional settings to summarise or highlight potential implications of previous talk. In extract 3, Greg offers a formulation that examines a possible aspect of analytic interest that he has drawn from Sally’s observation (lines 104–109). His statement, which begins ‘So you’re look- at you’re re: you’re looking at the kindev .h grammatical construction there’ (lines 104–105), orients to one aspect of the observation that he and Sally have produced and goes on to explore an upshot of looking at this grammatical construction. While Sally and Greg collaborate to produce an analytically relevant observation, Greg’s so-prefaced formulation in lines 104–109 also offers a pedagogic scaffolding or gloss for Sally’s suggestion. His turn builds on Sally’s noticing to collaboratively produce an analytic observation as well as to provide a rationale behind why Sally may have identified this particular part of the data as being of interest. The so-prefaced formulations are used in a number of ways throughout the interactions. In our extracts, they either offer an evaluation of the collaboratively produced observation or to provide an analytic description of a reason for why a particular observation may be interesting. Jones and Beach (1995) demonstrate that ‘so’ can be used to forecast a formulation, and we see exactly that, as Greg and Eric (in extracts 2 and 3) visibly mark their utterances as formulations using ‘so’. Bolden (2009) demonstrates how this so-prefacing is used to initiate new actions and, here, Greg and Eric use the so-prefaced formulations to redirect the course of the data sessions. In redirecting the focus of the talk, so-prefaced formulations can expose power relationships within interactions (Jones, 2008), demonstrating how the experts, Greg and Eric, work to set the topical agenda while at the same time scaffolding the analytic noticings of the novices.

The social practices of pedagogy-in-action By engaging in a close analysis of practice that explicates how participants are exposed to and share ways of doing analysis, we make visible what might often go unnoticed or invisible, the unfolding pedagogic practices happening momentby-moment. The practices are pedagogically framed in that the participants are doing what the ‘natives’ (Herzfeld, 1983) expect analysts of transcripts to do. In examining ‘how’ the activity of ‘doing data analysis’ happens, we show how pedagogy is enacted through the actions of the participants, both novice and expert. They orient to, and make and remake, the pedagogic order through their engagement and participation. This shaping is most evident in extracts 1 and 3, which show clearly how the practical actions of the novice students constitute the social and pedagogic order of the data analysis session and, in so doing, remake the social order.

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Data sessions are situations in which analytic noticings about data are produced, reformulated, described and perhaps empirically tested, on an impromptu basis, by members engaged in collaborative and interactive practices. However, it is an open question as to what a research novice who goes into a data session might walk away with, compared to an experienced professional researcher. It is also an open question as to how participation in data analysis sessions translates within members’ own research practices. Such questions, though, do not diminish the importance of data analysis sessions to the discourse research community because they are undeniably an expression of the discourse research community that encompasses what might be called pedagogic work. While this chapter has examined how members of the data sessions went about looking at and analysing extracts of talk, we do not claim that the findings are generalisable to all data analysis sessions, and nor would we argue that they represent best practice of analysis. Rather, the purpose here was to show how social practices associated with stances of expert and novice are enacted and how, through the data analysis sessions, analytic expertise of analysis sessions is available for all members. Analysis has shown both the fluidity of analytic ownership and the collaborative construction of analytic observations. All members may collaborate in doing what is everyday and mundane behaviour for TAG members, including identifying aspects of a transcript of talk and producing a noticing. These noticings shape how the talk, in which all members participate, and analysis proceeds. Indeed, as we saw in extract 1, researchers with significant experience may find out something new about the data (even their own data used over many years) from the noticing of other members. Fluidity is seen especially in how noticings, not institutional roles, are treated as conveying rights to the conversational floor. Members with varying levels of experience, both in participating in data analysis sessions and the use of Ethnomethodological and Conversation Analysis methods, are afforded the space to identify and develop their noticing over multiple turns of talk. Their rights to maintain the conversational floor in these cases are more related to the group interaction and how the actions are produced in situ than to their level of experience in using the method or the length of their membership in the group. Detailed analysis of the actual practices of talk from these extracts, including the ways in which analytic noticings are made, collaboratively produced and ‘owned’ in the discussion, shows that the data analysis sessions provided a democratic and collaborative environment in which the lines of distinction between novice and expert members were blurred. All members had the opportunity to develop and hone their analytic skills through practical application and collaboration with other members. While the relationships between novices and experts may be blurred in terms of rights to participation in the analysis and discussions, the so-prefaced formulations observed within the talk suggest that another layer of pedagogic work may also be at play. In investigating how the experts, those with the greatest level of expertise in the analytic approach, interacted with other members who made a contribution to understanding the data but who did not use specific

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analytic terms (such as epistemic downgrade), we see that their ‘expert’ status as a researcher or experienced academic was constructed and maintained by their contribution of analytic descriptions to describe the noticings. In other words, their practical actions maintained and reproduced their ‘expert’ status, contributing to producing the pedagogic social order under way.

Conclusion In this chapter, we have offered one example focusing on in situ practices in doctoral education, by examining pedagogy-in-action within data sessions. By focusing on the details of the analytic talk, we showed that the actual practices that take place within data analysis sessions, including who produces the noticings and analytic descriptions, and who focuses the direction of the talk, are far from predetermined and cannot be simply explained by fixed ideas of members’ roles or identities. By examining transcripts of actual practice, we are able to demonstrate that assumptions regarding the identities and relationships between experts and novices may not always hold true. Expertise is a fluid social achievement and, in these cases, a collaborative accomplishment. Our research contributes one approach to understanding social practices associated with pedagogy-in-action. We show that, rather than being predetermined by institutional roles or strict invocations of the roles of expert and learner, concepts of expertise and learning can be built through contributing to collaborative talk and analysis, and enacting stances of learner and expert. The data analysis session is just one of many possible settings of doctoral education where in situ practices could be examined. The value of such examination is a greater understanding of just how and where, in any given discipline, pedagogy actually occurs as a relationship between programmatic learning and practical application.

Appendix Basic conversation analytic transcription conventions 2 hello. falling terminal pitch hello; slight fall in terminal pitch hello_ level pitch terminally , slight rise in pitch ¿ rising intonation, weaker than that indicated by a question mark ? strongly rising terminal pitch = temporally latched talk heltalk that is cut off HELLO talk is louder than surrounding talk °hello° talk is quieter than surrounding talk ↓↑ marked falling and rising shifts in pitch

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** he::llo hello (1.0) (.) .hh hh he he [] () (( ))

creaky voice an extension of a sound or syllable emphasis timed intervals a short untimed pause audible inhalations audible exhalations laughter pulses overlapping talk uncertainty or transcription doubt analyst’s comments

Note 1 We thank the members of the Transcript Analysis Group who generously agreed to have their involvement in TAG audio recorded, and participated in the data analysis sessions looking at the data for this chapter. They are, in alphabetical order, Polly Björk-Willen, Gillian Busch, Steve Christensen, Aaron Conway, Jakob Cromdal, Michael Emmison, Richard Fitzgerald, Rod Gardner, Sandy Houen, Ann Kelly, Jayne Keogh, Andrea Lamont-Mills, Philippa Linton, Lynnete May and Karin Osvaldsson. 2 Transcription conventions are based on Jefferson (2004) and Schegloff (2007).

References Antaki, C., Biazzi, M., Nissen, A., and Wagner, J. (2008) ‘Managing moral accountability in scholarly talk: The case of a conversation analysis data session’, Text and Talk, 28: 1–30. Baker, C. (1997) ‘Ethnomethodological studies of talk in educational settings’, in B. Davies and D. Corson (eds.), Encyclopedia of language and education. Volume 3: Oral discourse and education (pp. 43–52). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic. Baker, C. and Keogh, J. (1995) ‘Accounting for achievement in parent–teacher interviews’, Human Studies, 18: 263–300. Benwell, B. M. and Stokoe, E. H. (2002) ‘The construction of discussion tasks in university tutorials’, Discourse Studies, 4 (4): 429–453. Bills, D. F. (2003) ‘A conversational analysis of research supervisors’ conceptions of research’, European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction 10th Biennial Conference: Improving Learning, Fostering the Will to Learn. Padova, Italy. Bolden, G. B. (2009) ‘Implementing incipient actions: The discourse marker “so” in English conversation’, Journal of Pragmatics, 41 (5), 974–998. Danby, S. (2005) ‘The supervisory experience: Culture in action’ in J. Yamanashi and I. Milojevic (eds.), Researching identity, diversity and education: Surpassing the norm (pp. 1–16). Teneriffe, Qld: Post Pressed. Garfinkel, H. (1967) Studies in ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Gibson, W. (2009) ‘Negotiating textual talk: Conversation analysis, pedagogy and the organisation of online asynchronous discourse’, British Educational Research Journal, 35 (5): 705–721.

The pedagogy of a data analysis session 95 Heath, C., Hindmarsh, J., and Luff, P. (eds.). (2010) Video in qualitative research: Analysing social interaction in everyday life. Los Angeles: Sage. Heritage, J. and Watson, D. (1979) ‘Formulations as conversational objects’, in G. Psathas (ed.), Everyday language: Studies in ethnomethodology (pp. 123–161). New York: Irvington Publishers. Herzfeld, M. (1983) ‘Looking both ways: The ethnographer in the text’, Semiotica, 2 (4): 151–166. Hester, S. and Francis, D. (eds.). (2000) Local educational order: Ethnomethodological studies of knowledge in action. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Jefferson, G. (2004) ‘Glossary of transcript symbols with an introduction’, in G. H. Lerner (ed.), Conversation analysis: Studies from the first generation (pp. 13–31). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Jones, C. E. L. (2008) ‘UK police interviews: A linguistic analysis of Afro-Caribbean and white British suspect interviews’, International Journal of Speech Language and the Law, 15: 271–274. Jones, C. M. and Beach, W. (1995) ‘Therapists’ techniques for responding to unsolicited contributions by family members’, in G. H. Morris and R. J. Cheneil (eds.), The talk of the clinic: Explorations in the analysis of medical and therapeutic discourse (pp. 49–70). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. McHoul, A. and Rapley, M. (eds.). (2001) How to analyse talk in institutional settings: A casebook of methods. London/New York: Continuum. Mehan, H. (1979) Learning lessons: Social organisation in the classroom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Pomerantz, A. and Fehr, B. J. (1997) ‘Conversation analysis: An approach to the study of social action as sense making practices’, in T. A. van Dijk (ed.), Discourse as social action. Discourse studies: A multidisciplinary introduction, Vol. 2 (pp. 64–91). London: Sage. Psathas, G. (1995) Conversation analysis: The study of talk-in-interaction (Vol. 35). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Schegloff, E. (2007) Sequence organization in interaction: A primer in conversation analysis (Vol. 1). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sharrock, W. W. (1974) ‘On owning knowledge’, in R. Turner (ed.), Ethnomethodology: Selected readings (pp. 45–53). Harmondsworth: Penguin Education. Silverman, D. (2011) Interpreting qualitative data (4th ed.). London: Sage. Wetherall, M., Taylor, S., and Yates, S. J. (eds.). (2001) Discourse theory and practice: A reader. London: Sage. Woolgar, S. (1988) ‘Reflexivity is the ethnographer of the text’, in S. Woolgar (ed.), Knowledge and reflexivity: New frontiers in the sociology of knowledge (pp. 14–34). London: Sage.

Part II

Disciplinary and transdisciplinary pedagogies

Chapter 8

Designing (in) the PhD in architecture Knowledge, discipline, pedagogy Charles Rice and Linda Matthews

Introduction Architecture, it should be clear, is all about the design of buildings. So what would it be to do a PhD in architecture? Do you design a building? Or do you reflect on the process of designing a building? Or perhaps the approach should be different. Given that architecture has all sorts of social, political and environmental impacts – effects beyond and outside the intentions of those who commission, design and produce architecture – perhaps a PhD should study those effects. While these might seem like equally valid possibilities, the former set of concerns has recently become more prominent in the discipline. Rather than produce PhDs about architecture, there is a move to consider what a PhD in architecture would be. And here design as both research method and form of outcome has entered the frame. If architectural knowledge is understood to be generated through the doing of architecture, then a PhD should be available as a structure to validate this formation of knowledge. In what follows, we shall tease out the question of design in the PhD in architecture in the context of our supervisor/candidate relationship, where Rice is the supervisor, and Matthews the candidate.1 Whereas the debate over the PhD in architecture polarizes around the question of research about or in architecture, we find that in practice the distinctions are far from clear, or useful. Indeed, it is precisely the question of where architecture’s relation to knowledge might be situated that can be the focus of work in the PhD. In drawing out this possibility, we shall focus on the ‘in practice’, the ‘work’ of the PhD. In the supervisor/candidate relationship, this work is pedagogical, that is, a negotiated structuring of and agreement about how the PhD is undertaken, and how different roles are fulfilled in that undertaking. The following reflections emerge from an ongoing pedagogical experience, yet we take the position of authors of this text, rather than actors within it. In other words, our argument is not a reflection on our experience, but is rather a discussion of the critical and conceptual issues that have arisen from it. Our discussion is explicitly situated within the discipline of architecture as it has developed through historical and theoretical discourse. In this way our approach is distinctly different from, for example, a sociology of knowledge approach (Carvalho et al., 2009). Our hope is, though, that our discussion might be thought to constitute

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a valid case study, where the interaction between specific disciplinary questions and shifts in the possibilities for PhD work resonate with how pedagogical issues are being thought through in other ways and in other fields.

Upgrading the paradigm Matthews’ PhD project is provisionally entitled ‘Upgrading the paradigm – visual regimes, digital systems and design techniques in architecture’. It aims to show how web-enabled video technology, such as the webcams which capture and update views of prominent public spaces and tourist sites, challenge models of vision which have historically informed how urban space is framed architecturally. In showing this, it also aims to redefine how one might approach the design of buildings for these prominent urban sites, and, in turn, how one might understand the kinds of interaction, both virtual and real, one can have with such architecture. The research is situated within understandings of how design techniques develop and are deployed within dominant models of vision. Whether it be the technique of linear perspective demonstrated in the Renaissance, the anamorphic distortions of the baroque, or the panoptic diagram of the late eighteenth century, architectural design has historically developed a projective capacity relative to technologies and models of vision. The research question is framed in this context: to what extent has the emergence of digital systems, exemplified here by the webenabled video camera, impacted upon architecture’s ability to engage with how the world is experienced visually? This PhD project emerged from a particular pedagogical context. It is an extension of research conducted as part of a design dissertation in the final year of the Bachelor of Architecture degree at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), in 2007. The dissertation was undertaken in a design studio, the aim of which was to investigate how interventions could be designed through the collection and translation of data generated by the various digital systems that structure and permeate the urban environment, such as the CCTV camera in its many roles.2 These roles include its original function as an instrument of surveillance, its ability to act as a promotional tool for tourism, and its perfomative and interactive aspects which derive from its more recently developed live video and audio streaming capacity. Digital information from other systems such as WiFi and mobile GPS devices, which are predicated upon internet protocol data, was also examined in the studio. In this context, Matthews’ work posed the question: where a CCTV camera might be utilized for security surveillance, or for presenting iconic images for web-tourist consumption, how does this kind of view construct the appearance of architecture? Further, given architectural design’s historical relation to different technologies of seeing and projecting, how might an architectural design disrupt or call attention to the CCTV camera’s technology of seeing? In other words, what is it to design in the visual space structured by the CCTV camera? And what social,

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political and disciplinary consequences might arise from doing so? These kinds of questions and the design outcomes prompted by them, challenge productively the conventions of architectural design and, in turn, position designing as a speculation about and provocation to the contemporary city. Moreover, emergent within this type of research is the fact that the methodology that frames these questions is plural: it draws upon many fields of knowledge to achieve its outcomes. The architectural outcome of Matthews’ research was a proposal for two mixed-use entertainment buildings at Circular Quay in Sydney (see Figure 8.1).3

Figure 8.1 Webcam view (left) and street view (right) of proposed building at Circular Quay.

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Situated on two narrow sites between existing buildings, the design manipulated the form and appearance of the façade, taking into account two distinct modes by which it would be experienced: on the one hand, an engagement with the physical building at Circular Quay, where the façade and the building’s form related to the different program components; and on the other, an engagement with the building’s image via a webcam, where the façade patterning interfered with the camera’s ability to produce a legible image, the building constantly eluding any attempt to be read as a stable or fixed form. The success of this design project was, in part, in how it set up a range of issues that could be the basis of further research. Before moving on to a detailed discussion of this research as it has been articulated in the context of Matthews’ PhD, it is worth recognizing that this kind of research-based investigation undertaken through designing marks a relatively recent shift in professional architectural pedagogy. Over the last decade in Australian schools of architecture, the studio-based design dissertation has replaced the conventional written dissertation as the major research outcome from the professional degree sequence.4 In this way, research training has shifted from a grounding in humanities-based methods, mostly used in topics relating to architectural history and theory, to a design-based paradigm that aligns designing with researching. This has had a transformative effect on design teaching. Where conventionally a design brief would be given to students to ‘solve’ through the resolved design of a building, dissertation studios (and increasingly all studios at an upper level) develop the brief as part of the studio’s research, and the line between brief development and projective design is deliberately blurred. In this context, the studio environment frames research as a collective endeavour. The research work done and outcomes generated by individuals are evaluated in terms of their contribution to the studio’s research. As such, the upper-level studio can be seen to structure research training specifically for the discipline of architecture.5 But rather than simply seeing this as a ‘local’ and recent issue, it is important to place these developments within an historical context of architecture’s development as a discipline. This will enable us to think through current questions of architectural research in relation to the development of architectural knowledge.

Drawing out disciplinarity During the Italian Renaissance, the professional and artistic status of the architect began to be attached to the ability to represent architectural ideas in drawings. Hill (2006) argues that this removed architecture from the realm of the practical know-how of building, but ensured that it could direct this process through the projection of ideas and intentions through drawings, which themselves became artistic artefacts in their own right. Design’s roots in the Italian disegno made the connection between the drawing of a line and the drawing forth of ideas. This meant that architecture could assume the status of a liberal art whose instruction would take place in an academy. Crucial here is the communicability of ideas that

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the drawing, and, historically, its classical conventions, make possible. This is the period where architectural theory begins to be codified in text and drawing, not just for architects, but also for an educated public of scholars and patrons. The communicability of architectural knowledge in drawings and texts has meant that architecture does not necessarily have a direct relation to buildings as constructed artefacts; the production of a design does not necessarily imply the construction of a building. Evans (1997) has taken this further, suggesting that the primary object of architecture is the drawing rather than the building. The issue for Evans is not the severing of a relation to the production of buildings. Rather, it is about the complex translations which occur between drawings and building, translations which, for writers such as Allen (2000), define architecture as a specific practice. These translations, however, become ever more complex in modernity, without the stability of classical principles which underpinned the act of disegno. The rise of the profession of architecture in the nineteenth century is part of this complexifying picture. While architecture might have attained an ‘academic’ status in the Renaissance, it entered the modern university in the late nineteenth century, and this transformed its claims to knowledge. This inclusion occurred at the moment when the very structure of the university itself became modern, with the addition of the liberal arts, the sciences and the professions to the traditional philosophical base. In discussing the first university department of architecture to be established, housed within the School of Industrial Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1866, Wigley acknowledges that architecture took its place between science and fine art, and had to create the space of its practical instruction and scholarly inquiry as a kind of prosthetic one, a supplement to the traditional, scholarly space of the thesis (Wigley, 1991). An original design was required for graduation, and the first such presented at MIT was given the title ‘thesis’ upon its presentation: ‘Its defense involved the submission of a set of drawings and forty-two pages of “explanation” that identified the issues addressed by the thesis and gave a detailed account of the design’s programmatic, aesthetic, and technical properties, along with extensive calculations’ (Wigley, 1991: 21). While the defence of a thesis ensured architecture’s place within the traditional space of the university (though one reworked in a modern form), Hill has argued that architectural knowledge in this context increasingly became about the codification and protection of standards. As he remarks: ‘In return for the safe management of unsafe knowledge, the state offers a profession legal protection and a potential monopoly. Professionals offer competence. They are neither expected nor paid to generate ideas’ (Hill, 2006: 332). Two different sets of relations between architecture and the academy emerge from these histories. On the one hand, architecture’s classical relation to the academy authorizes design as an act of thinking and, potentially, in contemporary terms, as an act of academic research in its own right, generating speculative knowledge. On the other hand, architecture’s position in the modern university emphasizes its practical relation to knowledge, and authorizes research

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which would be professionally applicable, thereby strengthening the practice of architecture. Currently, both types of knowledge are generated through doctoral research in architecture. ‘Practical’ or applied knowledge is generated in research in areas such as environmental science, materials and building science, engineering applications, and in advanced spatial analysis, which is a branch of information technology. Speculative knowledge is generated through established PhD programs in architectural history and theory. All of these kinds of research can be and are housed in architecture departments, but also in other departments in the contemporary university, where architecture could be defined as a specific subject within a research agenda whose basis is defined in terms of other disciplines (e.g. information technology, engineering, art history, etc.). In this sense, architecture remains prosthetic or supplementary, in Wigley’s terms. There is a further complexity here, however. Hill’s argument for the historical basis of disegno in architecture’s ascension to the Renaissance academy is made to advance an agenda regarding what might be called specifically architectural knowledge. Disegno specifies a specifically architectural way of producing knowledge which is directly related to architectural design as a primarily graphic, visual activity. Practical or applied knowledge, or even the speculative knowledge produced in architectural history and theory, rarely produces what might be called a ‘specifically architectural reasoning’ (Heynen, 2006: 278), relying instead on the methods of cognate disciplines that are nonetheless fundamentally different from architecture. Allpress and Barnacle make the distinction between design research as specifically architectural, and research for or about design, which would belong to its cognate disciplines (Allpress and Barnacle, 2009: 161). Similarly, Heynen canvasses the view that doctoral work done in disciplines adjacent to architecture ‘seeks to know about architecture as a product without knowing architecture in its structures and determinations’ (Heynen, 2006: 278). She draws a distinction between knowledge within architecture, which would include its associated professional practice, and scientific knowledge, where science is invoked in the broader Germanic sense of Wissenschaft. This distinction is crucial because Heynen argues that the role of the modern doctorate is not necessarily the advancement of disciplinary knowledge, but of science. Quoting the call for papers for a conference on the ‘Unthinkable Doctorate’ which she co-organized, Heynen further specifies the difference she makes between science and discipline, with reference to practising architects: ‘They consider that architecture and “architecting” constitutes a discipline, like philosophy or art, in that it is looking for a certain truth concerning the structure of the real which is not yet constructed – and this is not inherently a science which would rather aim for knowledge of a demonstrable reality’ (Heynen, 2006: 279). These arguments need to be appreciated in light of the relatively recent emergence of PhD programs in architecture which are based on design research. Hill inaugurated and directs the PhD program in Architectural Design at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, and Allpress and

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Barnacle are writing about a series of degree structures under the umbrella of the PhD in Architecture at RMIT University in Melbourne. Theses in these programs are hybrid, though they do resemble the form of the first thesis at MIT: they generally combine the candidate’s original design work with an exegesis that situates it relative to a broader field of theory, method and precedent. For Allpress and Barnacle, this model, which privileges iterative and explorative processes of designing, generates a specific mode of knowing. This kind of research is not communicated through rational argument, which would try to deduct or apply systematized or generalized ways of knowing, but rather, following Martin Heidegger, by ‘letting truth happen in the work’ (Allpress and Barnacle, 2009: 161). For his part, Hill recognizes that a model of research built on these kinds of iterative and exploratory practices is limited, in that it does not necessarily acknowledge architecture’s materiality or its user as being integral to acts of creativity wherein architectural knowledge may be said to form. What is perhaps made less clear in relation to these programs is that their positions regarding the formation of knowledge in architecture have been shaped by quite specific agendas and contexts for research. Thus what needs to be preserved in the discussion is the contestability of the PhD as regards the knowledge it produces, which relates to the foundational contestability in respect of architecture’s place within the modern university.

Diagramming pedagogy Let us return to the specific instance of our work in light of this debate. The complexity of architecture’s relation to knowledge, and to the academy, has continually to be negotiated as part of the work of the PhD. The advancement of Matthews’ project has been articulated through the ongoing negotiation between supervisor and candidate, that is, through our pedagogical work together. Thus, the plotting out of the research, the formation of short- and long-term goals and the research work conducted from week to week and month to month become the practical questions of the pedagogy in the context of a field of dispute regarding architectural knowledge. One of the first issues to be negotiated in this context was the absence of the design studio as a pedagogical apparatus. In the transition of Matthews’ research from undergraduate dissertation to PhD, the ‘apparatus’ of the candidate/supervisor relationship took its place. This enabled a productive shifting of the project away from the mutual horizon of the studio’s research aims, and towards the project itself as an internally robust research context. This also shifted the role of the design work Matthews would undertake, and its relation to other parts of the project that were important to its overall aims. There was a ‘thickening’ of the research question, and this made clear that different components of the research required distinct and different methods, some qualitative and humanities-based, and others quantitative and quasi-scientific. At the same time as there would need

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to be more historical and theoretical work on visual régimes in architecture, there would also need to be more rigorous technical ‘proofing’ of the visual effects of architecture in the webcam interface; the speculative design in the original undergraduate dissertation was transformed into this technical proofing or testing in the PhD project. It was also clear that the different research methods being used in the project needed to be treated in a ‘plural’ way. One kind of researching did not necessarily precede another. Rather, different strands needed to be advanced simultaneously, though they each might develop within different timeframes, and with overlaps or pauses which were difficult to predict in advance. With the falling away of the design studio as a pedagogical apparatus, there still needed to be a structuring of the project between candidate and supervisor, a way of externalizing the research work as a project that was, however asymmetrically, ‘shared’. At this stage a visual tool became useful in mapping the strands of the research. A ‘research diagram’ was generated in the non-proprietary software program Freemind, and permitted the inclusion of both visual and textual elements, their juxtaposition being critical to the understanding of the research (see Figure 8.2). The diagram allows us both to understand the individuality of different strands, as well as the interaction of what are quite diverse elements requiring equally diverse approaches. Avoiding the hierarchy of an ordered list, Freemind operates in a branching organization, allowing links to be made in many different directions, and enabling major themes to be unfolded into subthemes. As a pedagogical practice, this mapping does in some way reproduce a studio feel. But more importantly, it sets up a way for the project to be collaboratively managed by supervisor and candidate. There was still the necessity that the major components of the research be able to be clearly identified, and their relation established in terms of the conventional requirements of a thesis. Broadly, these components comprised historical and theoretical framing of the research question, testing and analysis of visual technologies, which includes design-based experimentation, and qualitative analysis of the results of these experiments in terms of the initial framing. The management – and hence the pedagogy – becomes about how these quite distinct methodological areas interrelate productively in the unfolding of the argument and its demonstration. In what follows we will explore some aspects of the content of the research in order to track this sense of the research unfolding across multiple methods. In particular we will look at the transmutation of designing into testing.

Testing as design as research The most conventional aspect of the research involves an historical and theoretical account of technologies and models of vision and their impact on the development of techniques of architectural design. This involves analysing forms of visual composition and its attendant distortions, including linear perspective and its anamorphic potential, as well as visual surveillance, such as panopticism,

Figure 8.2 Freemind map of doctoral research path.

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the social and political uses to which they were put, and the effects they had historically. This in turn provides a way of framing current questions to do with how webcams capture architecture visually. This framing, however, is not explanatory of the webcam’s operation in terms of an evolution of models of vision. Rather, it provides a foundation for how the discipline has reacted to and incorporated models and technologies exterior to itself. But this foundation is only significant as a component of research in the overall project if a certain kind of design-based testing of the webcam as a new technology of vision can be undertaken. Out of this testing, which is an extension of the design-based research of Matthews’ undergraduate dissertation, the project could speculate about what the effects of this technological adaption might be for architecture’s place in the city. Thus out of a disciplinary critique and adaption of the technology would emerge the possibility for a social critique of its effects. Yet designing is positioned to make the research project specifically architectural, rather than, say, specifically sociological or political. The aim is not to undertake a ‘resolved’ design that would arise from and demonstrate professional competence, as in the undergraduate studio. Rather, design becomes about a specific kind of testing relative to the aims of the overall research project. The first aspect of this ‘designing as testing’ is to understand the technical dimensions of computer-mediated remote camera technologies. This framing extends the research into an area which is fundamentally transdisciplinary, drawing upon technical information from both science (optics) and microengineering (camera technology) to substantiate the authenticity of any claims being made for how a particular design technique or outcome might relate to the visual space of the webcam image. Important here is to understand and work with the aberrations and variables inherent in the hardware of cameras, as well as new possible uses of the non-proprietary software which is normally used to extract specific kinds of information from the images produced by such hardware. Here is an example of such work: Fraunhofer diffraction patterns produced by the incidence of the luminance of an image on the camera lens over a range of different lens apertures were used to determine any visual idiosyncrasies that might occur within the camera’s recording of a selected viewing field (see Figure 8.3). The intention was to seize these as design opportunities by capitalizing upon the discrepancy that exists between the virtual and the actual views. By incorporating design features within façades that draw upon one or more of these diffraction patterns, the designer would be able to manipulate the visibility and prominence of the resulting intervention, thereby deliberately exploiting variations between simultaneously occurring virtual and actual views. The broad range of dramatic test results gained so far suggests that there is indeed a capacity for the incorporation of these patterns into the materiality of architectural façades. Another aspect of the practical testing involves the exploitation of camera colour receptor mechanisms. In a similar way to the testing of diffraction patterns, this work is concerned with the capacity to manipulate the camera’s technical image translation structure by means of strategically designed façade patterns.

Figure 8.3 Possible façade patterns derived from diffraction grating tests.

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The dimension of colour, then, provides a different kind of possibility for the design space (see Figure 8.4). While, for the purposes of this chapter, giving an account of the actual content and outcomes of this detailed work is not critical, the presence of this kind of ‘scientific’ detail in the research is important to note. The pedagogical framework used to understand and undertake this research was the ‘lab test’. While scientific knowledge about optics is part of the research content, the framework of the lab was adopted as a rubric, an explanatory ‘story’ that would structure the practical design work understood as a series of iterations moving between ‘testing’, that is, projecting a design idea or proposal, and analysis, that is, understanding what resulted. For example, a ‘positive’ outcome from a test would be the extent to which a certain design advantage could be gained from the technical limitations of the hardware, acting in conjunction with the unexplored capacities of the software. The justification for adopting a kind of scientific terminology and apparatus is to avoid the sense that designing has ‘inherent’ or ‘essential’ qualities, that ways of design knowing are opaque and locked within the subjectivity of each designer, or in the material ‘stuff ’ of design. In this way the model of knowledge being adopted is not at all like Allpress and Barnacle’s Heideggerian ‘letting truth happen in the work’ (Allpress and Barnacle, 2009: 161). The choice of ‘scientific testing’ over, say, creativity, inspiration or even authorial intent is an explicit and strategic attempt to avoid the mysticism and cabalistic nature of much designing and its explanation; however, to situate these design experiments within the context of historically constituted models of vision provides the necessary disciplinary framing for the experiments to be understood as architectural. What is also emerging here is an interesting conundrum which raises again the status of knowledge in architecture, and the specific work of the PhD. ‘Testing’ became equivalent to ‘designing’ in order for the project to exchange the ‘one

Figure 8.4 Diagram of Bayer pattern showing how the addition of its complementary colours produces white.

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off ’ outcome of the undergraduate dissertation with the more systematic and codified knowledge of the PhD. Yet it is not as if we have simply exchanged a speculative base of knowledge for a scientific one. The impact of the ‘what if ’ that the design/testing work promises is underpinned by the actuality of the testing. This basis enables the project’s drive toward discipline-specific speculative knowledge, which sets up the possibility of socio-political critique. Hence we have found no hard and fast division between the speculative or disciplinary on the one hand, and the scientific on the other. Rather, what is required is a movement between them, not in the sense that one simply progresses from speculative to scientific knowledge or vice versa, but movement in a way which understands the potential for positive relations between different research methods.

Conclusion Heynen (2006) characterized disciplinary knowledge in terms of the ‘not yet’, the speculative, a ‘not yet’ that nonetheless drives a discipline forward in its development. She then characterized scientific knowledge in terms of its impact in revealing a ‘demonstrable reality’. Both of these modes of knowledge are at work in Matthews’ PhD research. The design-based tests are demonstrating outcomes which affect the visual presence of buildings, and the project will systematize a series of effects generated between the visual space of the camera and the materiality of architecture. On the other hand, the intent of the research is speculative. The applicability of such knowledge is based on theoretical speculation about the place of visual models within architectural design. The project argues that, if design is considered within this theoretical space, a certain kind of knowledge would be made evident about the discipline, and about its engagement in a broader socio-political field. Speculation, that is, the disciplinary, frames the entire research project. The scientific, or the demonstrable, tests that speculation, not so much in terms of its reality, but in terms of the relevance of the speculation for a discipline. What needs to be emphasized here is the way in which these two kinds of knowledge are not a matter of choice that precedes the research. Rather, a certain sort of pedagogical practice framed the initial research which led to the PhD question. This was the structure of the design studio, where a horizon of research structures individual projects which also need to demonstrate professional competence. When the structure of the design studio fell away in the transition to the PhD, the pedagogical practices put in place have moved the research along the trajectory that effectively combined, or at least worked between, different knowledge types. But we would argue, in conclusion, that, for architecture, these types of knowledge cannot be clearly distinguished from each other. If architecture is prosthetic in Wigley’s terms, then it negotiates its position in the university, at all levels of endeavour, from professional education to research, through pedagogical practices that attempt to synthesize knowledge within this particular contested space.

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Notes 1 This chapter was written at the half-way point of Matthews’ PhD candidature. 2 The studio was taught by Gavin Perin and Joanne Jakovich. 3 The project was awarded the Design Medal by the New South Wales Chapter of the Australian Institute of Architects in 2008. 4 From 2008, all schools of architecture in Australia converted to a new structure of professional education, known as the ‘3⫹2’ structure, whereby a three-year undergraduate degree is followed by a two-year professional master’s degree. 5 It must be noted that each student is required to demonstrate architectural competence across a range of criteria defined in terms of professional attainment. While research capability is increasingly seen as part of that attainment, generally students are still required to design a complex and systematically integrated building as their final graduating design, or at defined points within their upper-level studio sequence.

References Allen, S. (2000) Practice: Architecture, Technique and Representation. Amsterdam: G⫹B Arts. Allpress, B. and Barnacle, R. (2009) ‘Projecting the PhD: architectural design research by and through projects’, in Alison Lee and David Boud (eds), Changing Practices of Doctoral Education, 157–170. New York and London: Routledge. Carvalho, L., Dong, A. and Maton, K. (2009) ‘Legitimating design: a sociology of knowledge account of the field’, Design Studies, 30: 483–502. Evans, R. (1997) ‘Translations from drawing to building’, in Translations from Drawing to Building and Other Essays, 153–193. London: Architectural Association. Heynen, H. (2006) ‘Unthinkable doctorates?’, The Journal of Architecture, 11, 3 (June): 277–282. Hill, J. (2006) ‘Drawing research’, The Journal of Architecture, 11, 3 (June): 329–333. Wigley, M. (1991) ‘Prosthetic theory: the disciplining of architecture’, Assemblage, 15 (August): 6–29.

Chapter 9

Pedagogies for creativity in science doctorates Liezel Frick

introduction The social and economic significance of the doctorate is recognised across the world, and particularly in developing countries (including South Africa) where economic growth, sustainable living and social well-being are critical priorities. Backhouse’s (2008) report that South Africa produces relatively few doctorates, that active researchers are ageing and that research continues to be an elitist activity amidst the existence of some well-resourced universities is therefore a matter of concern. An added concern is what McWilliam et al. (2008) call the ‘flight from science’ (p. 226), even though there is an ever-growing demand for high-level innovation in science and technology, and inter-/national initiatives to support development in these areas. The contribution of doctoral pedagogies towards building ‘creative capital’ (McWilliam and Dawson, 2008: 634) needs to be (re-)considered, particularly in countries such as South Africa. Doctoral study can be understood as inherently a creative endeavour. The United States of America Council of Graduate Schools (1977, as quoted in Bargar and Duncan, 1982: 1), proclaims the main purpose of a doctorate is preparation for ‘a lifetime of intellectual inquiry that manifests itself in creative scholarship and research’. National plans emphasise the potential of a doctorate for increasing innovation and economic growth (Backhouse, 2008), which marks the shift in understanding creativity as an individual, idiosyncratic pursuit to ‘ways of thinking and doing that are visible, sustainable and replicable as processes and practices within daily economic and social life’ (McWilliam et al., 2008: 230). This shift has helped to legitimise doctoral creativity as a scientific endeavour. The legitimacy of doctoral creativity, however, is not undisputed. Doctoral education in the sciences traditionally has focused on supporting disciplinespecific, project-based research of a positivist nature, conducted by individual students in singular relationships with their supervisors. In addition, the function of the doctorate as developing generic abilities (such as creativity) is placed often in opposition to the achievement of discipline-specific, knowledge-based outcomes. Such notions discredit creativity as an asset to doctoral quality and relevance in the sciences.

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This chapter takes up the question of creativity in doctoral education with a particular focus on some pedagogical questions pertaining to doctorates in the sciences. The discussion draws from a broad understanding of doctoral education and the concept of creativity in general, as well as from a small-scale study in a faculty of science in one South African university.

The problem with creativity Libby (1970) describes scientific creativity as discovery through research, and creativity as the purpose of science, regardless of the discipline – but this description still does not provide a clear definition of creativity. Lovitts (2007) confirms that creativity is not adequately defined in doctoral education. Barron (1988) adds that creative potential is not adequately identified and nurtured in courses prior to the doctorate, and only at this late stage in formal education is it explicitly expected as a requirement for independent intellectual work. The lack of conceptualisation and scaffolding between educational levels make it difficult for students to understand what is expected of them, and complicates the task of the supervisor who needs to guide them on their doctoral journey. This conceptual difficulty was reflected in the study, as all the supervisors interviewed agreed that creativity is important within a doctorate in the sciences, but that creativity itself remained difficult to conceptualise.

A (tentative) conceptual understanding Creativity as a process and/or a product Some authors (Dewett et al., 2005; Sternberg and Lubart, 1999) use the notion of process/product to explain creativity. The tasks of identifying and describing a research problem, selecting an appropriate approach to investigate the problem, collecting and analysing data, as well as writing research proposals and papers, form part of the creative process in a doctorate (Dewett et al., 2005). The product (in the case of the doctorate) manifests in the doctoral dissertation itself or in refereed journal articles, book chapters and conference papers. Science supervisors interviewed commented on the importance of peer review (whether in the form of examination of the dissertation, or review of articles, chapters or papers) in measuring creativity as a legitimate part of research, but added that the understanding of what constitutes creative work differs even within disciplines. Pope (2005) challenges definitions of creativity that only apply to the creative product as reductionist, even though literature suggests a continued emphasis on the creative product (Dewett et al., 2005). A possible way of negotiating a common understanding of creativity in the sciences would be to conceptualise the manifestation of creativity as a legitimate scientific endeavour at various levels encapsulated within the research process.

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A nuanced manifestation of creativity then can be explored, incorporating diverse ideas on how doctoral creativity may manifest within both the creative process and product. The process/product notion of creativity (Sternberg and Lubart, 1999) was aligned to the research tasks identified by Dewett et al. (2005). How the interviewed supervisors understood creativity as a legitimate part of scientific endeavours is encapsulated in the phases of creative engagement in the research process/product, to show how creativity may be manifested in these phases. Table 9.1 provides an overview of how creativity could manifest in different ways within a research-focused doctoral project.

Table 9.1 The possible manifestation of creativity within a doctoral project Process/product (MacKinnon, 1970; Sternberg and Lubart, 1999)

Research task (Dewett et al., 2005)

Phases of Manifestation of creativity creative engagement

Identifying and describing a research problem Planning Creative process

Selecting an appropriate approach to investigate the problem

Highlight the gaps in existing literature

•

Identify a novel research problem to be investigated

•

Develop a new hypothesis

•

Develop complex technical skills to conduct existing experimental protocols

•

Develop new experimental techniques

•

Align new data with existing research

•

Find novel ways of presenting data

•

Ability to move beyond the interpretation of the results to the possible implications thereof

•

Develop a scholarly voice

•

Ability to place the study within the wider discipline

•

Develop a holistic understanding of the discipline

•

Discover of a new phenomenon

Acting

Collecting data Overlap between Analysing and the creative process interpreting data and product

•

Interpreting

Abstraction

Interpreting data Creative product

Reporting research results

Positioning

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The danger in portraying creativity as part of the scientific process in tabular format is that research may be regarded as a neat, linear process, which often is not the case. Therefore, the boundaries within the table reflect a permeability to indicate that doctoral students may go through the whole process and return to certain aspects throughout their study. Not all students will develop in similar ways, or in a linear fashion, or to the same level of manifestation equally in all research phases. However, the different possible manifestations of creativity in the sciences (as expressed by the interviewed supervisors) position creativity as a legitimate scientific endeavour at the doctoral level. Creativity often is used synonymously with terms such as originality. Barron (1995) sees originality as a component of the complex phenomenon of creativity, and the work of Lovitts (2007) positions originality as an eventual outcome (or product) of the (creative) doctoral process. The process/product conceptualisation of creativity is therefore useful in explaining the possible difference between creativity and originality. Other researchers have looked beyond the process/product idea to a more person-centred explanation of creativity. The notion of doctorateness demands a concomitant understanding of both the creative person and the environment. A conceptualisation of creativity in doctoral education therefore needs to extend further than a process/product view to include also an understanding of doctoral becoming.

Creativity as becoming Early notions of creativity seem to focus on cognitive processes, skills and aptitudes of the individual, the so-called big ‘C’ (e.g. Guilford, 1950). Later, researchers recognised creativity in the socio-cultural interaction between individuals and groups – the small ‘c’ (Csikszentmihalayi, 1999). Both notions are present in how academics describe creativity (McWilliam and Dawson, 2008), which may indicate that the big ‘C’/small ‘c’ distinction is not an either/or relationship for doctoral creativity, but rather a co-existence of creativity as both an individual process of doctoral becoming, and a socio-cultural process of co-becoming. Individual creativity (big ‘C’) is an identity-forming activity, as enculturation into a field of study demands ‘learning to be’ rather than ‘learning about’ (Seely Brown, 2006). Frick (2010) explains that, in order to become creative, students need to develop ontologically (understanding their contribution to their own development as experts in a discipline), axiologically (the values and ethics inherent to particular disciplines, and into which doctoral students are inducted as part of becoming doctorate), epistemologically (grasping the greater body of knowledge in a field of study), and methodologically. The development of agency, autonomy, confidence and a scholarly voice – ontological elements underlying creativity – may suffer if only epistemological, axiological or methodological concerns are emphasised and if varying identities are not accepted within a scholarly community. The outcome may be a compliant student, who seemingly performs well, but who hesitates to take the step towards becoming a responsible scholar (Lovitts, 2005).

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Creativity, therefore, can be developed. MacKinnon (1970) positions creativity as both an innate and a learned quality. Creativity requires the interplay between six interrelated person-specific resources: intellectual abilities, knowledge, personality, styles of thinking, motivation and environment. Individual creativity is more than the sum of these resources. The confluence, interaction and necessary thresholds of these components determine the extent to which creativity (and its development) is possible (Sternberg and Lubart, 1999). Creativity is determined not only by the ability to think creatively, but also by choosing to do so (Sternberg, 1997). Intrinsic, task-focused motivation seems an important prerequisite for creativity (Dewett et al., 2005). External motivators also may play a role in creativity (Gardner, 1988). The role of external motivation leads us to consider a supportive and rewarding environment (and integral to this environment, the role of the supervisor) as a necessary stimulus for creativity (Sternberg and Lubart, 1999). Second-generation thinking about creativity (small ‘c’) is well aligned to Pope’s (2005: 66) notion of creativity as co-becoming. Such thinking positions creativity as team-based, economically valuable, observable and learnable (McWilliam and Dawson, 2008), enabling people to function in a super-complex world (Barnett, 2000). Creativity therefore lies at various interfaces within the wider socio-cultural space within which doctoral education takes place and where the individual doctoral student, peers, supervisor(s), discipline(s) and current/ future employers meet. Creativity emerges through the interaction across the domain (such as the academic discipline), the social field (consisting of competent judges) and the human (student) (Csikszentmihalayi, 1999). Creativity may be seen in changes in how reality is viewed within a social system (consisting of the domain and field). Such changes may serve as evidence of doctorateness (Trafford and Leshem, 2009). McWilliam and Dawson (2008: 638) use the principle of ‘flocking’ to explain the dimensions of creativity within a social system as: • • •

separation (avoid crowding others); alignment (steering in the same general direction as local flockmates); and cohesion (moving towards the average position of local flockmates).

In this perspective, doctoral students collaborate, particularly through the use of technology such as the Internet, share and distribute knowledge, connect to likeminded researchers through shared interests rather than only personal contact, and co-create with others based on their shared passion.

The study An interpretive study of 15 semi-structured interviews with established researchers in a faculty of science at a South African research-focused university formed the basis of this work, and all further references to supervisors are to those

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interviewed unless otherwise stated. The interviews were relatively unstructured, but guided by the following broad questions: • • •

How do you [the supervisor] conceptualise creativity in doctoral education? How important is the development of creativity at the doctoral level in your discipline? How do you facilitate the development of creativity in your work with doctoral students?

Only researchers who received a National Research Foundation (NRF) rating in the categories A (rated as world leaders in their field), B (rated as receiving substantial recognition from their peers internationally) or C (rated as established researchers with a proven recent record of research activity in their field) were considered as respondents. There were 65 academics in total who received A, B or C ratings in the particular faculty of science, and all these persons hold professorates. Fifteen (N = 15) were purposely selected to act as respondents. They represented all three rating levels, as well as a distribution amongst departments within the faculty. The faculty consists of eight departments, organised according to disciplinary divisions (including Biochemistry, Botany and Zoology, Chemistry and Polymer Science, Geology, Mathematical Sciences, Microbiology, Physics and Physiological Sciences). A strong academic tradition of research exists, supporting the aim of being a noteworthy role player in the international community of science. The faculty mission promotes research of an inter-disciplinary nature. The delivery of employable graduates is noted specifically in the mission. All interviews were digitally recorded, transcribed and analysed for trends. The data were analysed for categories (coding) and relationships between categories (categorising). New ways of connecting categories were investigated (axial coding). Categories were integrated and refined (selective coding). The themes that emerged therefore reflect the researched reality. Connections between the categorised data and existing theories were made (Henning et al., 2004).

Discussion All the interviewed supervisors emphasised the importance of doctoral students’ intellectual capacities, which is to be expected as doctoral studies require substantial intellectual input. Although creativity is inseparable from intellectual ability, the relationship between creativity and intelligence is not clear cut. Nickerson (1999) therefore argues that intelligence is necessary for creativity, but not a sufficient condition in itself. The interviewed supervisors also acknowledged the importance of other person-specific resources. Numerous personality traits influence creativity. Selfefficacy, a willingness to overcome obstacles, to take sensible risks and to tolerate ambiguity (Sternberg and Lubart, 1999), awareness of one’s own creativity,

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independence, personal energy, curiosity, humour, attraction to complexity and novelty, open-mindedness and heightened perception (Davis, 1992) are personality attributes that enhance a person’s ability to be creative. One interviewed supervisor added, ‘[Doctoral students] have to have passion that would fuel their need to know, and understand deeply, and that would fuel creativity.’ Personality traits are important in the context of the sciences as doctoral students are expected to work increasingly independently as they progress, but often also in close proximity to other research students in a laboratory setting where interpersonal skills are potentially important catalysts for creative ideas. Some supervisors commented that they placed a high value on personality traits, since they required students to ‘fit in’. The interviewed supervisors acknowledged the different ways of co-becoming, but emphasised the ability to work independently and explore new ideas and ways in which to pursue these ideas, even within a group setting (separation) – implying less dependence on the supervisor as the expert authority. Students who demonstrated creativity were categorised as those who were able to foresee problems, or come up with innovative solutions to problems without losing focus (alignment), and able to work in partnership with their peers (cohesion). However, doctoral students who had these abilities from the start seemed to be the exception to the rule. Doctoral becoming therefore required a developmental pedagogic approach, and the interviewed supervisors saw themselves as experts guiding doctoral students as apprentices within the disciplines; as one supervisor commented, ‘Me and the student, we become. And as they [the students] grow, it becomes more challenging.’ Creativity is not only an individual pursuit, but also a process of co-becoming.

Pedagogies for doctoral creativity The dominant pedagogy in a discipline is a formative element in doctoral becoming and may be a catalyst or inhibitor for creativity. Through pedagogy, students become socialised into the academic community (McWilliam et al., 2008), which provides a sense of collective direction (McWilliam and Dawson, 2008). The philosophical and practical emphasis on research within the investigated faculty has a determining influence on doctoral pedagogy, with a strong positivist philosophy and discipline-based approach forming the pedagogical foundation. A doctoral candidate is expected to complete a research project that can be reported in the traditional thesis format, or as a compilation of research papers on a particular topic consisting of either being submitted or already published papers in academic journals. Publication of research findings in reputable journals is encouraged. Doctoral students are socialised into the academic culture where stature is determined by publication output, and the dominant pedagogic approach to doctoral education in the faculty focuses on the completion and reporting of a research project (the creative product). A significant change in the philosophy, pedagogy and structure of doctoral programmes at the particular

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faculty is not expected in the near future (Frick, 2007), which may influence the pedagogical practices in the particular faculty. This approach to doctoral education is typical of the approach to doctoral education across South Africa (Backhouse, 2008), is in line with the Higher Education Qualifications Framework (South African Department of Education, 2007), and also indicative of an apprenticeship model evident across the world (McCormack, 2004; Phelps et al., 2006). Nixon (1990, in Lizzio and Wilson, 2004) refers to the apprenticeship model as the scientist-practitioner model. This model is used most often to train future professionals in the sciences, and focuses on applying science and scientific findings to practice through acculturation into the discipline by following a master (the supervisor), but it often disregards the ontological elements integral to professional competence required in practice beyond the doctorate (Frick, 2010). Students’ assumptions about work often are challenged and proven inaccurate when entering practice, which could lead to work-related stress (Lizzio and Wilson, 2004). The apprenticeship approach furthermore is ill-suited to the new generation of students who prefer ‘pedagogical exchange as a form of value creation rather than knowledge transmission’ (McWilliam et al., 2008: 228). In considering the role that doctoral pedagogy plays in professional socialisation in order to encourage creativity, MacKinnon (1970) warns that creativity should not be seen as something to be taught, but rather as developed by leading through example. Austin (2009) calls this approach ‘cognitive apprenticeship’ (p. 175), and McWilliam et al. (2008) refer to ‘peripheral participation’ (p. 228), as it makes experts’ thinking processes in understanding and addressing problems visible. McWilliam and Dawson (2008) argue that it is possible to create learning environments that explicitly encourage creativity, whilst Whitelock et al. (2008) provide a pedagogical basis for the processes and activities to stimulate creativity. Table 9.2 provides a summary of their contributions. Whilst McWilliam et al. (2008) focused on undergraduate education, the principles also may apply to postgraduate learning and provide a pedagogical basis for the processes and activities to stimulate creativity that Whitelock et al. (2008) propose. These pedagogical practices may enable doctoral students to develop cognitive and meta-cognitive skills that may enhance their ability to deal with problems creatively. Involving students in all phases of the supervisors’ own research can facilitate creativity (MacKinnon, 1970). Such a pedagogic approach may enhance students’ meta-cognitive ability – that is, awareness and control over implementing their knowledge in a practical and unpredictable professional setting, and subsequent reflection on performance (Lizzio and Wilson, 2004). Such examples were common in the studied context, as supervisors were required to be specialised researchers in a particular field of study, and their students’ research projects were closely aligned to the research foci of the supervisors. A focused research approach also facilitates the procurement of funding (in comparison to a variety of smaller-scale and less-integrated research projects). Funding obtained in this

Pedagogies for creativity in science doctorates 121 Table 9.2 Pedagogical principles for stimulating doctoral creativity Paradoxical team dynamics McWilliam and Dawson (2008: 639–640)

Processes and activities to stimulate creativity (Whitelock et al., 2008: 147)

Connectivity and diversity Sensitise students to research interests locally and beyond, while at the same time allowing them to pursue their passions and contributing to the flow of information

Filtering knowledge and identifying problems

Co-invention/co-creation and separation Creating Modelling and sharing practice synergy between the individual member and the team Leading and following Establishing collective responsibility for timely and appropriate leadership in guiding collaborators at a local level

Building confidence through positive feedback

Enhancing constraints and removing inhibitors Leads to less demand and control, and creates scaffolded opportunities for optimal team (and individual) growth

Providing guidance whilst promoting autonomy

Explaining less and welcoming of error Expecting Encouraging risk taking and using errors constructively in the learning process, rather than avoiding or disguising such errors

manner usually is earmarked for particular (preconceived) projects, which limits the potential for students to contribute novel ideas to be investigated. Research tends to be centred on the interests of the individual supervisor, and projects that cut across disciplines are not common in the studied context. The interviewed supervisors are intimately involved in the creative process and agree that the tasks identified by Dewett et al. (2005) form part of the creative process (also refer to Table 9.1). However, the influence of external factors – such as bureaucratic institutional systems and funding policies – play a role in the extent to which doctoral creativity in the sciences is possible within the identified tasks. The balance between creative inputs from students versus supervisors therefore varies amongst the different tasks. Supervisors may take more responsibility for identifying research problems as part of a larger research focus in order to obtain funding. Although supervisors indicate the importance of students taking a keen interest in their research topic, students do not commonly decide on the research problem to be investigated, a process one supervisor explained as follows: I would have the original idea, because coming in they [the students] won’t have that depth of understanding. Within that idea there might be some evolution of thought and creativity that one’s got to be alert to. I might have a unique idea and I write a grant application; they want quite a lot of details: I’m gonna do these experiments and I’m gonna have those students, doing those

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parts. That gets submitted and I get the funding. Then the students come and they now have to work on that question by definition … but I’m not dogmatic about that, it might change, I might have new ideas – it happens all the time. But sometimes there’s the exception. A student comes with an idea, and it’s not what I work on, but I like the student and I say come, and then that conception is more jointly. And from that a grant maybe is spawned. Students’ creative inputs become more important in describing research problems and selecting appropriate approaches to investigate them – tasks that often form part of writing the initial research proposal for the particular doctoral study. Supervisors indicated that, at these initial stages of the creative process, students might need more support and input, but that they expect students to become more creatively independent during the phases of collecting, analysing and interpreting data, as well as eventually writing research papers. Only one interviewed supervisor paid specific attention to the development of doctoral students’ creativity prior to our conversation. Even though all the other supervisors interviewed saw creativity as an important aspect of doctoral becoming, they assumed the development of creativity as either an inherent ability that the students possessed or as part of the process that would take place as part of the existing (facilitated and non-facilitated) doctoral processes. The informal and highly contextualised nature of local doctoral pedagogy may create unequal opportunities for doctoral students to develop their scholarly abilities in a holistic manner. Even though valuable generic skills might be learned along the way, little specific attention was given to the creative development of the doctoral candidate. Pedagogic practices seemed to foster creativity in an implicit, rather than explicit, manner. Team supervision (where staff members participate in research discussions with doctoral students, whether they are appointed as supervisors or not), cosupervision (where students have two or more formally appointed supervisors) and peer learning (through collaboration within research groups) do occur in the studied context, but such initiatives are mostly at the discretion of the individual supervisor. In the cases where these practices occurred commonly, a vibrant research culture seemed to develop. Journal clubs, lab meetings and research group discussions supplemented individual student–supervisor consultations. Supervisors used these opportunities to create student-centred learning environments to encourage creative input from the students, as the following comment indicates: We have group meetings to allow out-of-the-box thinking around some data or a question, or a research paper. We have one viewpoint, one hypothesis, and there’s a contrarian viewpoint. Why? Because it will be good for us, to get the creativity going. The emphasis I put on is, think crazily. By critically questioning each other, entertaining ideas, I think is important. Hopefully that will spark some new, deep insight. And that to me is creativity. I teach

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them that I also don’t know everything, and the uncertainties they find are problems sometimes, this is confusing, we come to that as well. It’s selfish, because I may gain something, an idea by some crazy comment, it happens. Such inputs also are used to explore ideas before they are put into action, and often prevent costly experimental failures in practice. Supervisors’ input during these interactive sessions serves as a formative assessment that ensures positive feedback and diagnostic evaluation. Supervisors tended to have a number of students (including honours, master’s and doctoral students, as well as postdoctoral fellows) working simultaneously at varying levels of completion on different aspects of a central research topic. There are various advantages to such an approach. More advanced students often help those at a less advanced level or those who have started their studies more recently, which lightens the load of the supervisor. Co-publication of research results also is a common practice. Now well recognised is the importance of knowledge and immersion in the field of study in identifying problems and gaps in order to move beyond the existing perspectives and to create something new (Dewett et al., 2005; Nickerson, 1999; Sternberg and Lubart, 1999). The following excerpt from the interviews conveys one supervisor’s pedagogical strategies to ‘immerse’ students: We have regular meetings to encourage that type of critical thinking, deep thinking – present, what does that mean to me? I play the devil’s advocate. Part of that is refining it [the hypothesis] in their own minds by repeating it over and over – the hypothesis, to explain it clearly. It’s a challenging style of supervision. The notion of domain-specific knowledge as a prerequisite for doctoral creativity in the sciences was strongly supported by the interviewed supervisors, with one supervisor commenting that ‘creativity favours the prepared mind’. However, such knowledge needs to extend beyond mastering the domain (discipline/ field of study). At the doctoral level, creativity may manifest in transforming and extending the current boundaries of the domain (Sternberg and Lubart, 1999). Many examples of pedagogic practices cited by supervisors required students to transfer knowledge from one area to another, search for common principles where facts from different areas of knowledge can be related, and engage in imaginative experimentation. In this way, supervisors helped students to step back from facts to gain a greater perspective, which Pope (2005) describes as pedagogical practices that foster creativity. Supervisors create a space for debate through problematising and deconstructing knowledge, promoting a respectful, yet challenging, learning environment (Collins et al., 1991, in Austin, 2009). The supervisors interviewed commented on the difficulties in pushing the boundaries within their respective domains of science. Some supervisors approached this issue by carefully delimiting their students’ projects and leaving

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the more risky scientific pursuits to their postdoctoral fellows. These supervisors usually expected doctoral candidates to come up with convincing answers to the research questions posed, or a clear result to the hypotheses tested (depending on the type of study). Other supervisors were critical of this approach as they perceived such studies as limiting students’ creativity and producing mediocre doctoral work (which one respondent called ‘me-too science’). These supervisors were, however, sometimes criticised (even called ‘mavericks of science’ in one case), as they seemingly exposed their PhD students to risks of lengthy studies, and even failure to complete, if their novel ideas did not turn into feasible projects. The latter group allowed their students more freedom in experimenting with ideas, techniques, analyses and possible interpretations of data. They seemed to be more tolerant of failure, and indicated that ‘interesting results’ and concurrent interpretation could constitute creative and acceptable work at the doctoral level – even if these results were not conclusive. This group of supervisors was critical of time-to-completion limitations that are nationally promoted (three years in the case of full-time PhD students). Creativity does not emerge suddenly, but needs to develop and be fostered over time in an atmosphere that allows exploration and expression, regardless of the discipline or programme format (Jones, 1972). Tensions may result from the difference between institutional demands for completion and students’ needs to engage with ideas over time (Brew, 2001), as was evident in the responses from the latter group. Creating spaces where creativity can be fostered to support exploration across disciplinary boundaries leads to unique challenges for doctoral pedagogy. Arrowsmith (1970: 60) calls for an ‘engaged intellect’ that creates scope for creative research across disciplinary boundaries. Manathunga et al. (2006) add that an interdisciplinary approach to doctoral education promotes higher-order thinking, an understanding of divergent epistemologies and creative problem-solving behaviour. Only one group in the particular faculty focused on transcending disciplinary boundaries, and was established especially to explore such complexities. Other supervisors were positive about transcending disciplinary boundaries, but found it hard to implement in practice: Science has become very reductionist. I lament this – we don’t have enough time to think about the bigger scheme. We don’t have enough time to do that kind of thing. There is an information overload, a lot of detail, and you can get lost in that detail, and that’s not creative. Arrowsmith (1970) critiques the common university structure that rewards and perpetuates specialised research located within the boundaries of particular disciplines. Impermeable discipline-based boundaries among disciplines are still evident in the majority of reported research foci within the faculty studied. This tendency is mirrored in the work of Lovitts (2007) who differentiated between disciplines in her work on making doctoral performance expectations explicit.

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Closing comments This chapter explored the sciences as a context for doctoral creativity, and how creativity is conceptualised, providing the setting for exploring pedagogies for creativity in science doctorates. Literature and a contextualised study at a South African research-intensive university confirmed the difficulty in defining creativity at the doctoral level – also in the sciences – even though it is considered as a legitimate part of scientific endeavours. Creativity remains a multi-faceted concept, espousing notions of process/product, as well as of becoming and co-becoming. A pedagogical understanding of creativity in science doctorates demands a nuanced appreciation of the interplay between doctoral students’ inherent qualities, supervisory practices and environmental factors that interact in the process of doctoral becoming. Future debates on doctoral pedagogies may have to focus on how an implicit notion of creativity can be made more explicit (to quote Lovitts, 2007). Pedagogies need to foster environments that motivate students to become creative, to provide the means for them to be creative, and the opportunity for them to showcase their creativity (Frick, 2010). The continued focus on discipline-specific, project-based research and the emphasis on discipline-specific, knowledge-based outcomes found in the sciences initiate more implicit than explicit pedagogic approaches to the integration of generic skills such as creativity. Such approaches do not mean that doctoral creativity is not valued in the sciences, and the chapter reports on both how creativity manifests at the doctoral level and how pedagogy can facilitate creativity. Doctoral pedagogy is not only governed by supervisory practices. Institutional bureaucracies, funding agencies, governmental education policies and international trends also influence the way in which doctoral education develops in a localised setting, including the extent to which creativity is valued as a legitimate scientific endeavour in doctoral studies.

References Arrowsmith, W. (1970) ‘The creative university’, in J. D. Roslansky (ed.) Creativity, pp. 53–78, Amsterdam: North Holland. Austin, A. E. (2009) ‘Cognitive apprenticeship theory and its implications for doctoral education: A case example from a doctoral program in higher and adult education’, International Journal for Academic Development, Vol. 14, No. 3: 173–183. Backhouse, J. (2008) ‘Creativity within limits: Does the South African PhD facilitate creativity in research?’, Journal of Higher Education in Africa, Vol. 7, Nos. 1&2: 265–288. Bargar, R. R. and J. K. Duncan (1982) ‘Cultivating creative endeavour in doctoral research’, Journal of Higher Education, Vol. 52, No. 1: 1–31. Barnett, R. (2000) ‘University knowledge in an age of supercomplexity’, Higher Education, Vol. 40: 409–422.

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Barron, F. (1995) No rootless flower: An ecology of creativity, Cresskill: Hampton. Barron, F. (1988) ‘Putting creativity to work’, in R. J. Sternberg (ed.) The nature of creativity, pp. 76–98, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brew, A. (2001) The nature of research. Inquiry into academic contexts, London: Routledge. Csikszentmihalayi, M. (1999) ‘Implication of a systems perspective for the study of creativity’, in R. J. Sternberg (ed.) Handbook of creativity, pp. 3–15, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Davis, G. A. (1992) Creativity is forever, third edition, Dubuque: Kendall/Hunt. Dewett, T., S. J. Shin, S. M. Toh and M. Semadeni (2005) ‘Doctoral student research as a creative endeavour’, College Quarterly, Vol. 8, No. 1: 1–20. Frick, B. L. (2007) Integrating scholarship and continuing professional development (CPD) in the natural sciences at a South African university, unpublished PhD dissertation, Stellenbosch: Stellenbosch University. Frick, B. L. (2010) ‘Creativity in doctoral education: Conceptualising the original contribution’, in C. Nygaard, N. Courtney and C. W. Holtham (eds.) Teaching creativity – Creativity in teaching, pp. 15–32, Oxfordshire: Libri Publishing. Gardner, H. (1988) ‘Creative lives and creative works: A synthetic scientific approach’, in R. J. Sternberg (ed.) The nature of creativity, pp. 298–324, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Guilford, J. P. (1950) ‘Creativity’, American Psychologist, Vol. 14: 205–208. Henning, E., W. Van Rensburg and B. Smit, (2004) Finding your way in qualitative research, first edition, Pretoria: Van Schaik Publishers. Jones, T. P. (1972) Creative learning in perspective, London: University of London Press. Libby, W. F. (1970) ‘Creativity in science’, in J. D. Roslansky (ed.) Creativity, pp. 33–52, Amsterdam: North Holland. Lizzio, A. and K. Wilson (2004) ‘Action learning in higher education: An investigation of its potential to develop professional capability’, Studies in Higher Education, Vol. 29, No. 4: 469–488. Lovitts, B. E. (2005) ‘Being a good course-taker is not enough: A theoretical perspective on the transition to independent research’, Studies in Higher Education, Vol. 30, No. 2: 137–154. Lovitts, B. E. (2007) Making the implicit explicit, Stirling: Stylus. MacKinnon, D. (1970) ‘Creativity: A multi-faceted phenomenon’, in J. D. Roslansky (ed.) Creativity, pp. 17–32, Amsterdam: North Holland. Manathunga, C., P. Lant and G. Mellick (2006) ‘Imagining an interdisciplinary doctoral pedagogy’, Teaching in Higher Education, Vol. 11, No. 3: 365–379. McCormack, C. (2004) ‘Tensions between student and institutional conceptions of postgraduate research’, Studies in Higher Education, Vol. 29, No. 3: 320–334. McWilliam, E. and S. Dawson (2008) ‘Teaching for creativity: Towards sustainable and replicable pedagogical practice’, Higher Education, Vol. 56: 633–643. McWilliam, E., P. Poronnik and P. G. Taylor (2008) ‘Re-designing science pedagogy: Reversing the flight from science’, Journal of Science Education and Technology, Vol. 17: 226–235. Nickerson, R. S. (1999) ‘Enhancing creativity’, in R. J. Sternberg (ed.) Handbook of creativity, pp. 395–430, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Pedagogies for creativity in science doctorates 127 Phelps, R., K. Fisher and A. Ellis (2006) ‘Organisational and technological skills: The overlooked dimension of research training’, Australasian Journal of Educational Technology, Vol. 22, No. 2: 145–165. Pope, R. (2005) Creativity: Theory, history, practice, London: Routledge. Seely Brown, J. (2006) ‘New learning environments for the 21st century’, Change, Vol. 6, No. 5: 18–25. South African Department of Education (2007) ‘Higher Education Qualifications Framework (HEQF)’, Government Gazette, Vol. 508: 3–29. Sternberg, R. J. (1997) Thinking styles, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sternberg, R. J. and T. I. Lubart (1999) ‘The concept of creativity: Prospects and paradigms’, in R. J. Sternberg (ed.) Handbook of creativity, pp. 3–15, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Trafford, V. and S. Leshem (2009) ‘Doctorateness as a threshold concept’, Innovations in Education and Teaching International, Vol. 46, No. 3: 305–316. Whitelock, D., D. Faulkner and D. Miell (2008) ‘Promoting creativity in PhD supervision: Tensions and dilemmas’, Thinking Skills and Creativity, Vol. 3: 143–153.

Chapter 10

Creative tensions Negotiating the multiple dimensions of a transdisciplinary doctorate Juliet Willetts, Cynthia Mitchell, Kumi Abeysuriya and Dena Fam

Introduction As our global society faces increasingly complex challenges that defy disciplinary boundaries and demand new and varied ways of engaging with research contexts, doctoral researchers need training that equip them to make useful and ethical responses that are appreciative of complexity. In this context, transdisciplinarity is emerging as an important research training approach for developing the different kind of researcher needed. Transdisciplinary researchers need the skills to negotiate a set of qualitatively different inputs, processes and outcomes as compared with disciplinary-based research. They also must contend with an imperative to create some change in the world through the process of the doctorate in addition to pursuing academic achievement. In this chapter, we describe the lived experience of participants in a doctoral program that is strongly, though not exclusively, grounded in transdisciplinarity. This is an early step towards developing a transdisciplinary doctoral pedagogy, in line with the aims of this book. Transdisciplinary research ‘transcends’ disciplinary boundaries in ways that several authors have sought to describe and distinguish from disciplinary, interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary work (e.g. Max-Neef, 2005; Miller et al., 2008). An agenda for change creation to improve a societal issue, and research through collaboration, is typical in transdisciplinary research (Wickson et al., 2006). Explicating what it means to conduct quality transdisciplinary research in the context of postgraduate research training and supervision (Mitchell and Willetts, 2009) is of particular relevance to the topic of doctoral pedagogy. In this chapter, we offer an entry point into what it feels like to do and to supervise a transdisciplinary PhD. This is in response to a paucity of literature focusing on the practical realities of operationalising transdisciplinary research. The postgraduate program at the Institute for Sustainable Futures (ISF), University of Technology, Sydney, enables doctoral or masters students to conduct research aligned with the Institute’s mission ‘to create change towards sustainable futures’. Building students’ capacity for quality transdisciplinary research is central to this mission. Over the last decade, ISF has invested significant effort in developing a community of practice amongst students and

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supervisors (Willetts and Mitchell, 2006) and is continually investigating, critiquing and evolving1 our approach to transdisciplinary research. This chapter describes the experience of our students and supervisors in relation to a series of creative ‘tensions’ we have seen arise in the transdisciplinary doctoral process. These tensions arise from three main sources. First, they arise as a manifestation of dealing with multiple realities and paradoxes. According to Max-Neef (2005), transdisciplinarity provides a systemic and holistic way to see the world that involves recognising multiple realities and ‘simultaneous modes of reasoning, the rational and the relational’ – ideas that resonate with others, such as Blackburn’s (1971) ‘sensuous-intellectual complementary in science’. These concepts foreshadow the many ‘paradoxes’ that transdisciplinary researchers must embrace (Wickson et al., 2006). Second, creative tensions arise due to entering the territory of epistemological pluralism. Epistemological pluralism is seen by some as a form of transdisciplinary research (Miller et al., 2008: 49) and requires re-evaluating what the researcher believes to constitute valid knowledge and legitimate methodologies to produce new knowledge. Within a discipline, epistemological commitments function as boundaries for how the world is interpreted, and so tend to be shared and implicit, but are seldom the subject of critical reflection. Epistemological pluralism, on the other hand, requires epistemological awareness (Ison, 2008), which can cause deep self-questioning. Finally, the tensions arise simply as a result of the enormous breadth of choice open to transdisciplinary research students. They must make and take responsibility for wide-ranging decisions about the scope, disciplinary and theoretical influences, methodology and audience for their research, with their values as guides, due to the absence of the usual scaffolding provided by disciplinary rules and norms. In the field of transdisciplinary pedagogy, there exist few attempts to theorise the teaching and learning approach (Stauffacher et al., 2006; Steiner and Posch, 2006). As for transdisciplinary doctoral pedagogy, the field is yet to emerge, with just one related contribution on interdisciplinary doctoral pedagogy available (Manathunga et al., 2006). Based on this, and as a precursor towards theorising in this area, we have chosen to explore and present the lived experience of the ‘tensions’ that commonly arise within our research degree process. We describe how they manifest, and strategies that students and supervisors have used to address, resolve or ‘live with’ these tensions. We also present critical aspects related to our supervisory approaches, and discuss how our broader postgraduate program responds to these tensions.

Methodology This chapter was developed through a collaborative process within our doctoral program with a view to exposing the lived experience of a transdisciplinary doctorate through the eyes of students and supervisors. There were three main steps in the development of the chapter. First, we reviewed material from our postgraduate program (past theses, documentation of program elements and annual

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retreats) to construct a set of draft ‘tensions’ to inform the subsequent process. Second, ten supervisors and students with a keen interest in transdisciplinarity interviewed each other in pairs. Some supervisors had experienced the student role in their association with ISF, and one past student was now a supervisor elsewhere. The questioning process was informed by appreciative inquiry (Cooperrider and Whitney, 1999) to explore how we were experiencing and creatively addressing these tensions. It should be noted here, since it has ramifications for the experiences collected, that the majority of these students and supervisors came to the transdisciplinary realm from a professional background associated with a positivist epistemology. The majority of our students are mature age, arriving at ISF with their own ideas about their topic, research problem and questions based on their professional life experience, and these qualities may not be the norm in other doctoral programs. Following a collaborative thematic analysis process undertaken using NVivo, a draft was developed and reviewed by a broader set of supervisors and students in the program, seeking gaps, additions and points of resonance and dissonance from their perspectives that were then integrated into the chapter.

Students’ and supervisors’ experiences of the tensions that arise in a transdisciplinary doctorate The sections below cover a range of tensions we found to commonly arise within the transdisciplinary doctoral experience. These tensions are neither distinct nor separate from one another. Instead, they are interlinked, even inseparable, and have been perhaps artificially teased apart in an effort to highlight particular aspects of the doctoral experience. Each section below describes the core issues of a given tension and then provides examples, first, of how it manifests in the lived experience of students and supervisors and, second, of how they have responded, through addressing the tension or adjusting to living with it. The main tensions are: • • • • • •

between action or ‘creating change’ and a theoretical, analytical focus developing the boundary of a potentially ‘borderless’ field of inquiry between disciplinary breadth and depth around rules, norms and structure managing intense personal challenges whilst producing research outcomes needing to communicate effectively with multiple audiences.

Tension between action or ‘creating change’ and a theoretical, analytical focus Finding an appropriate balance between engagement with practice and engagement with theory in transdisciplinary research is challenging for many of our students, most of whom are strongly committed to creating change in society as a part of their candidature. The tension arises between investing effort in engaging

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practically with the research context with the intention to exert change in the situation, and investing time in the world of theoretical frameworks, research analysis and synthesis that are mandatory requirements of a doctoral degree. In the case of transdisciplinary research, the latter is especially open-ended and timeconsuming due to the multitude of choices and associated epistemologies. Students commonly have a wish to contribute tangibly to a particular situation as part of their doctoral degree. Our Institute supports such ‘change creation’ as a legitimate and important part of transdisciplinary research contributions to knowledge (Mitchell and Willetts, 2009): [I wanted] to try to do something that had a direct effect in the world outside academia. To be able to think about this in designing research [was a high point, as was having the] chance to go to Vietnam and to interact with an existing program to try and improve it … and that it’s legitimate. (student) At the same time, a strong investment is needed to grapple with appropriate theory that might inform the ‘action’. Many of our students deal with this tension by taking some kind of action research approach, and the fluctuation back and forth between theory and practice in many cases has provided a fruitful synergy, sometimes producing the students’ greatest epiphanies: The joy [was in] finding a theory that not only explained what I had discovered in my research but that actually helped me to understand it at much deeper levels. (student) [T]he most valuable aspects of the [trandisciplinary research] experience might well come from the reflective or write-up phase of the research when trying to make sense of it all in a research context. In my experience, it is only then that the deeper or more meaningful outcomes from seemingly chaotic transdisciplinary action research processes become clear. (student) Several students found, from their perspectives, the right balance between action and theoretical engagement, excelling in and contributing to both areas. Others decided to focus primarily on ‘theory’ for the thesis and undertake ‘change creation’ through other means in their life or their career, or indeed viewed their theoretical contribution as a long-term approach to create change.

Developing the boundary of a potentially ‘borderless’ field of inquiry A challenge facing students conducting transdisciplinary doctoral research is the need to define the field of inquiry where a number of critical factors are seen to

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influence their research topic. Forgoing a single disciplinary lens when exploring societal issues reveals a multitude of potentially intertwined and interconnected associated issues and perspectives to investigate and take into account. Therefore, defining the boundary and focus of the inquiry can become quite intractable. One student reflects on this challenge: [W]hen I did my fieldwork, there were so many political and social questions to investigate. I wanted to focus on the poetic force of old people’s stories, but there were also dramatic and complex issues of social justice and politics which inform the stories. Some such context is necessary, and all of it would have been relevant. The question is how to retain my intended focus. (student) The freedom to explore a range of related areas of research is a defining characteristic of transdisciplinary research for students. As one student suggested, ‘intellectual grappling and positioning’ is necessary and that ‘it’s plausible that an unhindered exploration of related fields is a critical step in scoping a transdisciplinary PhD’. Students have managed boundaries by being clear about the core focus of the research and ‘including explicit critique of what is included, excluded and marginalised’ around the field of inquiry. As one student noted, the tension in setting boundaries is also an ethical issue: ‘Drawing boundaries is inherently based on value judgements, hence the need to critically reflect on assumptions and the values that give rise to them.’ A related area to the issue of ‘topic boundary’ is the tension arising between a focus on breadth, or depth, further described below.

Tension between disciplinary breadth and depth The doctoral descriptors proposed by the Council of Australian Deans and Directors of Graduate Studies (DDoGS) (2005) discuss the need for a doctoral researcher to engage with significant depth the latest knowledge or breadth of knowledge for work that crosses disciplinary boundaries. The timeframe for a PhD means that it is not possible to engage equally in depth with all the chosen disciplines that might inform a transdisciplinary doctorate, so candidates must be able to make a defensible argument for their chosen balance between depth and breadth. Most students struggle with how to determine whether the tradeoffs made have been appropriate: Throughout my PhD, I experienced fluctuations in breadth and depth – feel like I’ve been oscillating – there is an interplay between supervisor asking me to do more and my sense that I’m comfortable and I’ve done enough. And then other times, I think I need to shift the breadth/depth again. (student)

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I am still grappling with this issue, and often picture imaginary ‘readers’ or examiners critiquing my work and uttering in scornful tones ‘she didn’t even mention such-and-such … or so-and-so’. (student) Some students developed confidence in their depth of knowledge across a breadth of multiple disciplines by seeking out additional input beyond their normal supervision: [S]earching out experts and mentors in their respective disciplinary fields [that] … not only provided valuable feedback but also reinforced for me that what I was attempting in my research was OK … it gave me a lot of confidence in what I was doing. (student) By the thesis-writing stage, students usually have found resolution and are able to argue their case: [T]he ‘breadth versus depth’ debate is a common criticism of inter- or transdisciplinarity … the intention of this doctoral research is not a scholarship of depth in a specific, narrow discipline, but rather the ‘scholarship of integration’. That is, through a critical systemic inquiry, identifying, conceptualizing and synthesizing connections across a broad set of disciplines and fields to more appropriately respond to … [a candidate’s particular] problematique. (Cordell, 2010)

Tensions around rules, norms and structure The tension concerns the loss of disciplinary rules and norms that one would usually follow. What results from this loss is the need for some kind of structure to guide a research process and to argue its validity. Yet, equally, is the need to avoid too much structure, which might confine and limit the creative transdisciplinary research process and destroy its very ‘raison d’être’. As one student put it: ‘Compare this to say a PhD in anthropology – the rules are set right from how you collect data to how to analyse it.’ In transdisciplinary research, a direct implication of the intent to ‘go beyond’ disciplinary boundaries and move into the ‘spaces between disciplines’ (HorlickJones and Sime, 2004) is that transdisciplinary researchers work in a formless environment, where there are no definite clear conventions to follow. This means that each student has to beat their own path, which may be challenging and unnerving: [I]f I had done that kind of research [that is, disciplinary research] I would have had a benchmark and something to compare to. In transdisciplinary

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work there is nothing to compare to. Other transdisciplinary theses won’t be like mine, and traditional PhDs won’t either. I won’t find another thesis like mine to make a comparison, so I am really being my own ‘trail blazer’ and hoping that I am producing something of quality. (student) Part of the requirement for structure relates to positioning the overall work coherently and ‘legitimately’. This is particularly challenging when the rules and norms arising from different disciplines are commonly in conflict with one another. We engage with this idea further in the context of discussing epistemological pluralism. A related challenge, which students face since they can choose from such a breadth of possible theoretical frameworks, is to ensure validity in their approach: I had a very ‘bowerbird’ approach to theory, and went down many tracks before I found some which ‘felt right’ … One of the issues in this approach is the need to be vigilant in order to avoid retrospective, self-rationalising, stretching of theories to fit ‘niftily’ together. (student) Some students found it feasible to lean on different sets of disciplinary rules and norms for different parts of their research, such as drawing on specific appropriate validity criteria for qualitative research components and quantitative research components. However, transdisciplinary work is more than the sum of such respective parts. As one student put it in her thesis, ‘such distinctions [e.g. qualitative and quantitative] may over-simplify the situation and provide only partial explanations for transdisciplinary research’ (Cordell, 2010). In general, students and supervisors alike have felt a need to find appropriate meta-frameworks that can encompass a doctoral work as a whole: ‘I need to know how to merge all of these [fields of inquiry] – I haven’t [yet] found a framework that would enable me to do that.’ Systems theory has sat comfortably for some (though not all) students as an overarching framework: Coming primarily from the sciences I had an expectation of a clear research plan as the basis for rigour. At key points I felt anxiety arising from … what I was doing. For me, discovering … Soft Systems Methodology … legitimised the iterative and evolving nature of what I was studying, and gave me the language to articulate the journey. (student) In the section concerning the postgraduate program as a whole, we continue to explore this tension around structure, quality and validity.

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Managing intense personal challenges whilst producing research outcomes Our experience suggests that transdisciplinary research benefits from, and perhaps requires, epistemological pluralism, described earlier in the chapter. The scale of the personal challenge in gaining epistemological awareness through reassessing and remodelling one’s fundamental worldview(s) requires attention and time, both of which are rare and valuable commodities in the four-year time frame of an Australian doctorate. The transdisciplinary doctoral process is unsettling, and much of the challenge is associated with the visceral process of personal questioning to arrive at an accommodation of distinctly different epistemologies: It is extremely scary doing a transdisciplinary PhD – perhaps any PhD … [T]hese are emotional processes. The boundaries of a comfort zone are always shifting as you go through these different tensions – it is like you step forward confidently and then crash again. Because transdisciplinarity is so broad and ill-defined, it makes it harder. (student) [I] also [value] the deep questioning that people are up for [that] actually changes people. I value that people want to question themselves at some level, though it is uncomfortable and can be really challenging personally. (supervisor) Even when a student ‘arrives’ at epistemological pluralism, the destination remains unsettling: [My] student is constantly questioning findings as though epistemological pluralism is wobbly ground to stand on – leaves you feeling a little anxious about whether any form of research or findings has validity and value. (supervisor) One means of working through the process of questioning involves deep reflection: [One of my student’s] epistemology has morphed enormously (as has mine!) over the course of her experience – it may not have actually changed much, but she has done much deep soul-searching to arrive at a point where there is deep alignment in every element of her work. (supervisor) I learnt a lot of things about myself, belief systems engrained in me, not incompatible, but required deep reflection to reconcile those tensions … balance [was achieved by] coming to greater self-awareness about [my] ability or approach to [the] transdisciplinary world. (student)

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Another means for managing what a student expressed as ‘the emotional and personal balances that you have to find’ was to learn to accept ‘living with complexity’ and ‘that situation of being uncomfortable’: One of the main transformations that has happened in me is that I realise I have to be kind to myself. I don’t need to know everything or have all the answers. I am now seeing the tensions as opportunity for learning … I’m now comfortable with being uncomfortable and enjoy it. (student)

Tensions associated with needing to communicate effectively with multiple audiences Transdisciplinary research typically involves collaboration (Wickson et al., 2006) and thus often requires involvement of stakeholders (beyond the supervisors, supporting institutions and funding agencies) from within the research context. As Mitchell and Willetts (2009) point out, ‘transformative or mutual learning’ for stakeholders associated with the research is a valued outcome in transdisciplinary research. This means that the research outputs need to speak to these different stakeholder audiences. Transdisciplinary postgraduate researchers are likely to create a number of outputs during their candidature that go beyond usual academic outputs, for instance in the form of media and policy briefs, industry presentations and websites (for example, see http://phosphorusfutures.net/ set up by one of our students). Tensions arise around deciding on the most relevant audiences to target, how best to communicate with them and how to ensure appropriate language since language for the same issues or concepts may vary between fields and stakeholder contexts. For example, one student noted that ‘the tension came from deciding who I was going to write this thesis for and therefore what language I was going to use. For example, was it going to be for bureaucrats, academics, politicians?’ The pathway to discover one’s ‘voice’ is faced by each student, and is made more challenging when they are covering fields that lie outside their original professional background and confront the potential need to satisfy multiple audiences. The pathway towards developing ‘voice’ in the thesis-writing process, at times, has been a moving experience for supervisors: [S]he has just submitted after a long journey – the PhD itself was really challenging … A real high point for me was the shift in how she expresses herself … Over the years she’s been positioning herself more and more in the writing … What’s been missing I think is something like confidence in the strength of her contribution – [recently] there was a really significant shift. There was a really beautiful moment when [the student] really owned her contribution in Chapter 1; when her writing got to reflect the nature and quality of her contribution. I had tears streaming down my face when I read it. (supervisor)

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In identifying their thesis audience, students become conscious that their examiners, who are likely to be from diverse fields upon which the thesis touches, typically would be unfamiliar with transdisciplinary approaches. Tailoring writing to the audience means explaining and justifying what it is and its validity: [A]dditional work was required to … [i]ntroduce and demonstrate the legitimacy of transdisciplinary academic research to new or skeptical readers. This has included explaining what transdisciplinarity is, why it is appropriate for addressing sustainability problems, how it can be applied and how it might be measured … [and] the innovative and integrated transdisciplinary approach that was taken in this doctoral research. (Cordell, 2010) It also means giving the examiners guidance on how to assess the thesis rather than an approach that left it solely up to them: [The high point was] the realisation that you can and need to argue to your examiners, and tell them ‘look, this is a worthwhile thing’ … that I needed to argue to my examiners about the scholarly value of my thesis … I think that in any transdisciplinary thesis, you have to make the argument for the criteria by which you want your examiners to assess you … justify to the examiner how to assess your thesis! (student)

The role of supervision and the program in dealing with, resolving or ‘living with’ these tensions The following sections describe unique elements of the support needed to negotiate a transdisciplinary doctoral journey through the many tensions described above.

Supervisor–student relationship The supervisor–student relationship is a critical component in the process of a transdisciplinary PhD. This relationship carries a different quality to disciplinary supervision since the primary supervisor may well not be an expert in all the fields the student is exploring. Transdisciplinary supervision requires a special blend and balance of support and challenge and openness to allow students to find their own way. [My student] is questioning whether she should consider a more holistic way of analysing the data … I gave total freedom to her to decide what she wants to do. For me it has to come from the heart, she must come to know why she’s doing it … I have given her the space to contemplate. I ask probing questions, questioning her deeply, and she knows my intent is

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not to undermine her, so it is constructive. Some supervisors might have been invested one way or another in terms of what they thought the student ‘should do’ but I don’t see that as my role. I think they need to figure out for themselves what makes sense. As I see it, there are pros and cons to each way you think about doing a piece of research and I don’t see there as being a ‘right’ way. (supervisor) There is large-scale uncertainty throughout the duration of transdisciplinary PhDs, so having supervisors who trust the process gives students confidence: It’s OK to be unsure and to have a mixture of topics, themes, places that perhaps on the surface don’t click together for others, but my supervisors have confidence in me and have allowed me to pursue something I believe in. [My] supervisor allows flexibility and sees that uncertainty is OK, provided the uncertainty arises from an informed basis … [T]here is an expectation that I am prepared when going into uncertain situations. (student) Perhaps because of the personally challenging nature of a transdisciplinary PhD, what emerges is a strong sense of partnership built on mutual respect and trust: I’m realising I see this process as a partnership. A deep learning partnership for the student within themselves, for me within myself, and for us as a partnership, as well as for the ISF program. Another key word I’ve just come to recognise is respect, and the enormous value of mutual respect, and how the paucity of relationships that are built on something other than deep mutual respect [might impact the outcome]. (supervisor) [My student] trusted me, trusted that I knew what I was doing (!) about quality requirements for his thesis even though I didn’t necessarily think I did. (supervisor) One of the overarching things … is a lot of trust in me. [Supervisor A] and [Supervisor B] demonstrated trust, allowed me to have flexibility, adapt as see fit. (student) Another enabler of the theoretical breakthroughs was my supervisor’s ‘permission’ and support to widely explore theoretical frameworks. [My supervisor] was always interested and enthusiastic when I came up with new potential frameworks. (student)

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Our experience is that it is, to a large extent, mutual trust that carries both student and supervisor through the many tensions and challenges present in the transdisciplinary doctoral process.

Support through the program and the need for its ongoing renewal In this section, we explain how students value the mutual support provided through the program’s community of practice, and also discuss how the program has dealt with the conflicting need to provide space to evolve our transdisciplinary research approach in an ongoing way and also provide some solidity and structure. Students repeatedly mention how a sense of community is a key factor in assisting them to live with and address the many tensions discussed above. I think that the sense of community is extremely important. For me, this is linked with the need to be explicit that a transdisciplinary PhD is very hard, and that it is necessary to engage with other students around you to create community and values. (student) [T]he postgrad retreat has been really important, it signifies that PG [postgraduate] community, and is really important to me. And when I spent time in the office, to connect and build relationships, this was an important part of the journey; we are lucky to have this, and many others who do PhDs don’t get that experience. (student) At the first retreat I thought I was the only one with doubts, and struggling with tensions – I realised that’s not the case at all. Therefore when confronted with tensions, the support enables me to talk openly about them, and even if I do not recognise them as tensions, having others recognise and express the tension for you. This is enabled by a sense of community. If I’m unsure, have doubts, feel vulnerable – others are supportive. (student) Doing something that is not rigid or fixed is scary, and having the support and sense of community helped me to be braver than I may have been if I had not been part of this community. (student) Students also have valued being introduced to the language of epistemology, a breadth of literature on transdisciplinarity and different ideas about scholarship (Boyer, 1990) to assist them to address the tensions and challenges of transdisciplinary work.

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[The] ISF program’s focus on [the] philosophical side of epistemology and ontology meant I had the language and awareness to work through tensions I was experiencing. I wouldn’t have known how to talk about or label what I was experiencing. I wouldn’t have had a way to see that these tensions could be resolved, or see a way to negotiate these tensions. (student) While the value of these theoretical concepts is clear, timing their introduction in a student’s doctoral candidature has been questioned: Epistemology was scary! I was introduced to this in the first few weeks of my candidature and I felt it inhibited my research process, it was overwhelming. I came from an engineering background, I hadn’t heard about these philosophical ideas before. Now in my second year, I can really see the value of understanding different perspectives on knowledge development. (student) Besides offering this kind of support in understanding theoretical concepts, the program has invested effort in defining three kinds of outcomes of transdisciplinary research (improvement in the societal issue, transformative learning for research stakeholders, and contribution to different types of knowledge). We also have developed ‘quality criteria’ that characterise good quality transdisciplinary doctoral research and how it is differentiated from disciplinary doctoral research (see Mitchell and Willetts, 2009). These proposed outcomes have assisted subsequent students to argue their contribution and the validity of their approach. The three transdisciplinary outcome spaces provided support for my research retrospectively during the write up of my thesis. I just wish they were part of the transdisciplinary knowledge available when I started. (student) Several challenges in the program remain. One is to avoid using these supports simply as replacements for disciplinary ‘comforts’ that might prevent students from some of the deep self-questioning that is so beneficial in a transdisciplinary PhD. A second challenge is to find ways to ‘help new students appreciate the wealth they are gaining from the experiences of those who went before them’ (supervisor). Finally, the challenge remains for the program to continue to renew itself, to evolve and change and be ‘regenerated by all of us who are in it’ (supervisor).

Conclusion Our experience leads us to conclude that the tensions in conducting transdisciplinary doctoral research, whilst challenging and difficult to ‘live with’ and to face, also embed the seeds of important intellectual epiphanies, personal transformation

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and self-discovery. In addition, one insight generated through the collaborative process of investigating these tensions is that some are ‘live’ and are likely to remain so for every student’s experience (e.g. breadth and depth). Other tensions may be amenable to at least temporary resolution, for example when students discover a relevant and comfortable meta-theoretical framework for their work, or through accepting support provided by concepts or frameworks that guide to their responses. For example, the tension between ‘creating change’ and a focus on analysis and theory may be ameliorated by drawing on our concept of the different outcome spaces for transdisciplinary research (Mitchell and Willetts, 2009). The creative tensions revealed in our experiences position transdisciplinary doctorates as having distinct additional challenges beyond the significant challenges experienced by disciplinary doctorates. The implication is that more enriched support is necessary for students and supervisors, and that a programmatic approach is essential to help students find, and help supervisors provide, the multiple layers and aspects of support required. Our experience also is that such a programmatic approach must remain evolving and responsive, as the literature in this field continues to evolve, and as we welcome incoming students who need to be provided with both structure and freedom to experiment. We have argued elsewhere (Carew and Mitchell, 2008) for the pedagogical value of contested conceptions in sustainability teaching. We agree with Lather (2006) that the tension-rich journey or ‘disjunctive affirmation’ is essential to the task to ‘produce different knowledge and produce knowledge differently’ that is required in these times, to create the doctoral graduate and to develop a different approach to research supervision. The heuristics of transdisciplinary postgraduate training described in this chapter is our current contribution towards developing a transdisciplinary pedagogy in the future. Lastly, although some might argue that transdisciplinary research approaches should be left until later in one’s academic career because of the tensions outlined in this chapter and the significant support required, we disagree. We believe that the doctorate is a fundamental formative experience for researchers, and that the societal issues of our time demand a new breed of professional, ethical researchers for whom it is our responsibility to offer quality transdisciplinary research training. We hope that this chapter provides a useful step towards the evolution of practice and theory in this field.

Acknowledgements Beyond the contributions of the authors, many other students and supervisors from our postgraduate program contributed to this chapter, including one colleague who was co-supervised by an ISF staff member, but who has gone on to supervise transdisciplinary research students in another institution. We would therefore like to sincerely thank Christiane Baumann, Anna Carew, Dana Cordell, Sarina Kilham, Tania Leimbach, Jane Palmer, Chris Reardon, Chris Riedy and Tanzi Smith for sharing their experiences and insights.

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Note 1 The program’s director Mitchell led a collaborative endeavour that created a set of resources to support quality inter- and transdisciplinary postgraduate research, through a Fellowship from the Australian Learning & Teaching Council – see http:// www.altc.edu.au/resource-transdisciplinary-postgraduate-studies-uts-2009.

References Blackburn, T. (1971) ‘Sensuous-intellectual complementarity in science’, Science, 172: 1003–1007. Boyer, E. (1990) Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate. The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1997, San Francisco. Carew, A. L. and Mitchell, C. A. (2008) ‘Teaching sustainability as a contested concept: capitalizing on variation in engineering educators’ conceptions of environmental, social and economic sustainability’, Journal of Cleaner Production, 16: 105–115. Cooperrider, D. L. and Whitney, D. (1999) Appreciative Inquiry, Berrett-Koehler Communications Incorporated, San Francisco. Cordell, D. J. (2010) The Story of Phosphorus: Sustainability Implications of Global Phosphorus Scarcity for Food Security [prepared for doctoral thesis – a collaborative PhD between the Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), Australia, and Department of Water and Environmental Studies, Linköping University, Sweden], Linköping University Press, Linköping, Sweden. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:liu:diva-53430. Council of Australian Deans and Directors of Graduate Studies (DDoGS) (2005) Framework for Best Practice in Doctoral Education in Australia [electronic version]. http://www.ddogs.edu.au/download/207271667. Horlick-Jones, T. and Sime, J. (2004) ‘Living on the border: knowledge, risk and transdisciplinarity’, Futures, 36: 441–456. Ison, R. (2008) ‘Methodological challenges of trans-disciplinary research: some systemic reflections’, Natures Sciences Sociétés, 16 (3): 241–251. Lather, P. (2006) ‘Paradigm proliferation as a good thing to think with: teaching research in education as a wild profusion’, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 19 (1): 35–57. Manathunga, C., Lant, P. and Mellick, G. (2006) ‘Imagining an interdisciplinary doctoral pedagogy’, Teaching in Higher Education, 11 (3): 365–379. Max-Neef, M. A. (2005) ‘Foundations of transdisciplinarity’, Ecological Economics, 53 (1): 5–16. Miller, T. R., Baird, T. D., Littlefield, C., Kofinas, M., Chapin III, G. F. and Redman, C. L. (2008) ‘Epistemological pluralism: reorganizing interdisciplinary research’, Ecology and Society, 13 (2): 46. Mitchell, C. A. and Willetts, J. R. (2009) Quality Criteria for Inter and Transdisciplinary Doctoral Research Outcomes [prepared for ALTC Fellowship: Zen and the Art of Transdisciplinary Postgraduate Studies, Institute for Sustainable Futures, University of Technology, Sydney] http://www.altc.edu.au/resourcetransdisciplinary-postgraduate-studies-uts-2009.

The multiple dimensions of a transdisciplinary doctorate 143 Stauffacher, M., Walter, A. I., Lang, D. J., Wiek, A. and Scholz, R. W. (2006) ‘Learning to research environmental problems from a functional socio-cultural constructivism perspective’, International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education, 7 (3): 252. Steiner, G. and Posch, A. (2006) ‘Higher education for sustainability by means of transdisciplinary case studies: an innovative approach for solving complex, realworld problems’, Journal of Cleaner Production, 14 ( 9–11): 877–890. Wickson, F., Carew, A. L. and Russell, A. W. (2006) ‘Transdisciplinary research: characteristics, quandaries and quality’, Futures, 38 (9): 1046–1059. Willetts, J. R. and Mitchell, C. A. (2006) ‘Learning to be a transdisciplinary researcher: a community of practice approach’, in R. Attwater (ed.) Proceedings of the 12th ANZSYS Conference: Sustaining Our Social and Natural Capital, ANZSYS, Sydney, Australia, pp. 1–8.

Chapter 11

Cognitive apprenticeship The making of a scientist Barbara J. Gabrys and Alina Beltechi

Introduction In recent years, the limited number of places available in academia for new PhDs has changed the way that academics train their successors (Park, 2005). The tension between the necessity of providing a succession of academics who continue research and equipping them with other than research skills was captured in the Roberts UK report (Roberts, 2002: 111): ‘the problem [is] that skills acquired by PhD graduates do not serve their long-term needs. Currently, PhDs do not prepare people adequately for careers in business or academia. In particular, there is insufficient access to training in interpersonal and communication skills, management and commercial awareness.’ In recent years, research into the doctorate has shown that policy has changed according to new evidence about the career path. In the UK, for example, 54 per cent of doctoral graduates are employed in jobs outside higher education in sectors including healthcare, engineering, finance, statistical professions and wider business and industry; the percentage of UK doctoral graduates working in commercial, industrial and public sector management roles increased from 7 per cent shortly after graduating to 11 per cent three and a half years later; 94 per cent of doctoral graduates use their research skills in their job with at least 40 per cent conducting research most of the time; and 92 per cent of graduates feel that their doctorate has enabled them to be innovative in the workplace (Barber et al., 2004; Fearn, 2010; Hunt et al., 2010). In other words, employers are seeking graduates who can quickly fit in to their organisation, produce added value for their employer, and who are flexible and adapt easily. The UK Research Councils (RCUK) took on board quickly the recommendations of the Roberts report, and set up substantial funds for skills training. The first payments were made to higher education institutions in 2003–2004 (Haynes, 2010). In order to meet these expectations, the RCUK produced a list of skills that graduate students are required to develop during the course of their doctoral study, to broaden their horizons and career opportunities. It is underpinned by a Researcher Development Framework (http://www.vitae.ac.uk), which the RCUK expect to be used by research organisations when planning support and development opportunities for researchers. A practical implementation of this framework

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is the Researcher Development Statement (RDS). In a nutshell, the RDS is a reference document that sets out the expected knowledge, behaviours and attitudes for being effective and highly skilled researchers in the UK. The Statement assists in supporting and promoting the enhancement of the quality of research training and the employability of early stage researchers and also can be used by researchers and their managers and mentors to review development needs and opportunities to broaden experience during research. This state of matters has had an impact on how we bring up a new generation of scientists and has resulted in implementation of complementary research training programmes. This chapter describes one such research training programme, which is a coordinated programme implemented across the Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences (MPLS) Division at the University of Oxford starting from 2007 and continually evolving, with each seminar or workshop being evaluated and adjusted by means of student questionnaire. This programme is based on a cognitive apprenticeship model, discussed below.

Implementation of the generic developmental programme In what follows, we concentrate our discussion on training graduate and postgraduate students in the Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences (MPLS) Division of the University of Oxford. It is a large division, comprising the following departments: Chemistry, Computer Science, Earth Sciences, Engineering Science, Materials, Physics, Plant Sciences, Statistics and Zoology, as well as the Mathematical Institute and Life Sciences Interface Doctoral Training Centre. At any time, there are about 1,800 PhD students and about 700 postdoctoral and early career research fellows. At Oxford, the PhD is known as Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil). During the course of a DPhil the graduate student is expected to acquire and develop a wide range of research skills, one of the key elements in the development of a young researcher. This happens via interaction with their supervisors, postdoctoral researchers and peer groups. Another focus of the programme is the development of a range of additional skills, termed transferable skills, aimed to supplement the students’ skills in experimental or theoretical techniques, by enabling them to communicate their results to a wider audience, manage their own research programmes and develop their career paths. This focus has a distinct personal development agenda. The skills identified by the Research Councils are covered at Oxford by a coherent programme offering different skills training opportunities and resources, at various levels (departmental, divisional and university, and in doctoral centres), available for graduate students and postdoctoral researchers. This information is freely available to students, supervisors and Directors of Graduate Studies via a dedicated Research Supervision Website (http://www.learning.ox.ac.uk). In the MPLS Division, a small team works under the leadership of the Associate Head (Academic) of Division on development and implementation of skills training

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programmes, expressed in the Joint Skills Statement (JSS) (2001) and subsequently in the Researcher Development Statement (RDS) launched in July 2010, to ensure the academic quality of training provision. Departments provide a range of formal and informal skills training specific to their discipline. For example, divisional policy states that all who want to teach must be trained by their departments; all second and third year DPhil students are encouraged to teach in order to develop communication and other skills. The graduate students funded by a research council are required to undertake the equivalent of ten days’ skills development activity per year. Whilst they have to take responsibility themselves for the development of their own individual set of transferable skills, the supervisor has to ensure that the training happens. Ideally, this is based on the skills listed in the RDS, and reflecting the students’ own needs and wishes based upon their own particular goals. The most important transferable skills that employers value, both in academia and outside it, have been demonstrated by various surveys to be primarily located within the following areas: communication, both oral and written, and the ability to summarise; developing ideas; fitting in; intellect; interpersonal skills; IT competence; knowledge: working from first principles, general knowledge and business acumen; language ability; persuading; self-motivation, self-regulation and self-assurance; team working; transforming; and willingness to learn (Nabi and Bagley, 1998, 1999; Beardwell and Claydon, 2007). Some students enrolling on a PhD programme already may have some of these skills at the beginning of their doctoral studies; some might be explicitly taught, and others will be developed during the course of the research. The professional development programme within the MPLS Division is aimed at graduate students and early career research staff. The programme was developed initially using funds ring-fenced for skills training (the ‘Roberts’ money’; see above) and then broadened under the umbrella of the University’s Centre of Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) funded by a grant from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) in the years 2006–2010. In the MPLS Division, different mechanisms are used to support learning as appropriate, including self-direction, supervisor support and mentoring, departmental support, workshops, conferences, elective training courses, formally assessed courses and informal opportunities. This diverse programme consists of several courses: 1 GRAD School, a course that aims to create an inspirational, challenging and experiential learning environment in which all participants will learn something new about themselves and take away skills, tools or information that will motivate them to complete their studies, further realise their potential, and enable them to make more informed choices about their future careers. 2 Springboard (for women) and Navigator (for men) Personal and Professional Development Programmes designed to develop skills to enhance personal effectiveness, making life and career decisions. 3 Graduate Prize Symposium, which presents opportunities for graduate research students to make a presentation about their work to a non-specialist

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audience. It is a valuable learning and development experience, focused on communications skills. 4 Enterprise and Entrepreneurship Suite, which aims to help researchers recognise the commercial possibilities of their research, and develop this further when appropriate and desired. For example, the MPLS Division and Judge Business School of the University of Cambridge recently organised a workshop entitled ‘Renewable Energy – Where science and business intersect’. Graduate students from both universities met for a one-day workshop to develop business awareness and to enrich their studies in science and engineering. The workshop focus was to develop business cases for an investment in a renewable energy project. A total of 53 participants had the opportunity to work with one another (in virtual teams) and to interact with experts in science, entrepreneurship and knowledge transfer. 5 Skills Toolkit, which is a joint venture between Library Services, Computing Services and the Careers Service to work with divisions and introduce graduate students (first year) to a range of key skills and tools essential to their research. Topics include plagiarism and referencing, advanced search, using citations, keeping up to date with emerging research, and also using software such as Access, Adobe, EndNote, LaTex, Picasa, PowerPoint and Word for Thesis. The students are introduced to Portal, which is an online careers guideline program, and Skills Portal, which is a gateway to training in transferable skills. 6 Towards the end of their DPhil studies, the students are offered a one-day seminar on teaching practices, and a series of six seminars on reading and reflection on educational literature in the sciences, should they wish to pursue a career in academia. A third course, What to Expect from the Viva, explores the nature and process of the final examination, with the aim to embed a professional approach to it. Currently there is a new development in the Division, called the Graduate Academic Programme, which is focused on developing research skills for graduates through easy access to courses run by all departments. The integration of research and transferable skills under this framework is in progress.

The cognitive apprenticeship model It is worthwhile to look for the link between pedagogy and the practicalities of doctoral research. The programme is built upon the premise that, during the time spent on doing a PhD, a graduate student will experience three types of learning: 1 learning under the guidance of a supervisor or supervisor ‘substitutes’ 2 self-learning and learning from peers 3 learning via transferable skills training.

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The rationale is based on the RCUK statement discussed above, along with the employers’ wish list (see above), and the programme recognises the practicalities of setting up transferable skill programmes. In what follows we concentrate on the first point, learning under the guidance of a supervisor. We focus specifically on how a supervisor can enable a learning environment that can be analysed in terms of the cognitive apprenticeship model and its four important aspects: modelling, scaffolding, coaching and fading (for details see Collins et al., 1991). This model is well suited for a description of ‘producing’ an active learner who should be fully independent by the end of the PhD training (Pearson and Kayrooz, 2004). The value of the traditional apprenticeship is universally acknowledged (‘practice makes perfect’), and the social and educational perspective is presented in terms of situated learning (Lave and Wenger, 1991). The interpretation of apprenticeship as preparation for a career in the sciences requires an extension of the cognitive apprenticeship model to an abstract thinking process, with teachers’ thinking made transparent to students and vice versa. The latter part is the most important novel component of the cognitive apprenticeship model (Collins et al., 1991). The process has three components: 1 an easily observable task to be learned 2 learning totally situated in the workplace 3 skills inherent in the task itself. The second and third components, of tasks to be carried out and ‘translated’ into a new situation, also take on a new dimension. In sciences, in order to carry out an experiment, several preparatory stages are necessary, ranging from reading literature, performing calculations and procuring a sample, to data collection and analysis, and subsequent decisions about further action. These stages are not always carried out in the same surroundings, and the methodology learned should be transferable to different materials, new procedures and algorithms for solving new problems. All traditional apprenticeship tasks can be prescribed and supervised by a teacher; in addition it is expected that PhD students engage in an independent reading of recommended literature, and as time goes on to add to the existing knowledge database through conjectures and literature search. In working from a cognitive apprenticeship model (Collins et al., 1991), we argue that in PhD supervision the main motivation is to synthesise schooling and apprenticeship so that, by the end of the process, successful PhD candidates become experts in given domains of knowledge. In addition, they should be able to apply the learned methodology and techniques to a new field of research, and eventually to be able to guide others in acquiring knowledge. Hence, the programme is based on a premise that a combination of apprenticeship in research and complementary transferable skills produce high-calibre PhD graduates, ready to take on a range of jobs in and outside the academy. We propose that bringing awareness of the above combination would help

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supervisors to train apprentices better for positions both within and outside the university. How does it translate to scientific research, in our view so different from that in social sciences and humanities? In order to make visible to PhD students the supervisor’s thinking, it is instructive to expand on a brief statement about the PhD guidance we offer in the programme. We explicitly use the terms of the cognitive apprenticeship model (Collins et al., 1991). In making thinking visible, we design the teaching methods with the opportunity in mind to observe how the experts (supervisor and colleagues) carry out a complicated experiment. For the content, we begin by establishing domain knowledge of the concepts, facts and procedures, a necessary condition for any progress to be made in the sciences. In order to be specific, we use examples from polymer science; the generic model is applicable to all experimental sciences. From our experience, the heuristic strategies are crucial in experimental polymer science. More often than not, it is essential to know subtle details of, for example, sample preparation that cannot be found in literature, and try to apply it to another material. Training is provided prior to a first experiment in order to allow the student to engage in expert strategies. During the experiment itself, the students are given tasks of increasing complexity to enable them to discover underlying experimental strategies. This design fits with the core methods of cognitive apprenticeship, which are modelling, scaffolding and coaching. An example of modelling is a demonstration of sample preparation, with an expert verbalising the process (in addition to providing some written procedures). The next stage is coaching, where the student prepares another sample while observing the more experienced researcher who controls intermediate results and provides helpful hints. During the duration of their PhDs, scaffolding – where the supervisor or another teacher provides support to help the student to perform a task – would be always present, since any new tasks invariably would require supervisors’ or other people’s support in many aspects. Fading, which is the gradual removing of a supervisor’s support, may prove very gradual and frustratingly slow. In some cases, only after a student’s viva, can one be reasonably certain that the students have become independent learners. Seminars are a proven method to promote the development of expertise via articulation. For students, the process of initial participation as active observers in group seminars through giving a presentation on an agreed topic every few months helps to articulate their knowledge and reasoning. For overseas students, we observed that exploration can be difficult to achieve due to a combination of students’ initially limited mathematical and practical skills and their relationships with their supervisors (Carroll and Ryan, 2005). Finally, encouraging students to reflect may be the most difficult part, as students might interpret ‘reflection’ and group discussions of what could have been done better as ‘failure’. The more straightforward application of the cognitive apprenticeship approach in practice is sequencing, sometimes to a point of a very fine graining of the project. Global before local skills are emphasised via writing a PhD proposal by students in the first half year of their studies, which provides an overview and

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sequence of their study. When milestones are introduced, of increasing difficulty in complexity, they provide a guide for students’ performances. This skill is introduced and discussed in time management seminars in the MPLS Division. The sociological dimension of this model (Collins et al., 1991), as applied to a laboratory in an international university such as Oxford, often offers collaborations with other laboratories, including those of government and industry. The mix of academic and external laboratories reflects the environments in which students will most likely be working after completion of their PhDs; hence these experiences offer opportunities for students to put their newly acquired knowledge to multiple uses. Through these experiences, they learn the craft by actively acquiring knowledge, and discriminate between different strategies (for data analysis).

From a fresh PhD to researcher: building a successful career in the sciences It is not rocket science to know that how the students spend their time during the doctorate will have a major impact on their future career. Whether the doctorate is part of a clear career strategy or simply seems like an interesting opportunity for now, the graduate students can still learn skills that will enhance their employability (Gabrys and Langdale, 2011). Being successful as a researcher requires carefully and strategically thinking about the skills and objectives and the areas in which they need to develop. A commitment to personal development is a key aspect of being a professional. The role of a researcher contains within it a commitment to find out about the unknown and to address gaps in knowledge. Personal development extends this process of enquiry to their own personal attributes, skills, understanding and aptitudes, so that there are opportunities for students to think about their values, desired life style and career aspirations. Sometimes their responses to posed questions (Where have I been? Where am I now? Where do I want to get to? How will I get there? How will I know I’ve got there?) in discussions with supervisors will help, and graduates are also encouraged to draw on family, friends and other professionals to find help. Universities are formalising personal development activity for postgraduate researchers in response to the Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers (http://www.researchconcordat.ac.uk), updated in 2006. The MPLS Division recognised the need for a link between skills training programmes for DPhils and for postdoctoral researchers. Initially, there was a series of twenty workshops developed by Jane Langdale in 2005 for postdoctoral researchers in the Department of Plant Sciences, University of Oxford. The topics were subsequently extended (by Barbara Gabrys) to cover other disciplines. In the academic year 2008–9, Gabrys piloted a series of seminars on ‘Preparation for an academic practice in the sciences’. The feedback was so positive that the programme has become an annual provision for researchers employed by various departments in the Division. It subsequently

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has been broadened to cater for researchers seeking employment outside academia, and renamed ‘Building a successful career in the sciences’. This newly developed programme builds on the new Concordat to Support the Career Development of Researchers established by Research Councils UK (http://www.rcuk.ac.uk). Within this programme, two key principles are the support of adaptability and flexibility of early career researchers in the changing global research environment, and active recognition of the development and lifelong learning needs of researchers. The importance of these principles are recognised in the University of Oxford Strategic Plan 2008–9 to 2012–13 for learning and teaching, one of the University’s core activities, and aligned with the University’s mission to achieve and sustain excellence in every area of its teaching and research, including in the area of teaching teachers. With the fierce competition for positions in academia and research institutes and ever-shrinking funding requiring a much broader preparation for an academic job than a narrow focus on research outcomes, there is the growing emphasis placed by students and employers alike on the acquisition of transferable skills as well as the demand for high quality professional education programmes. The main objective of this seminar series on career development for researchers is to foster a rational approach to scientific practice. The framework is based on the practical philosophy approach of Covey (2004), adapted to realities of academia (Gabrys and Langdale, 2011). In supporting participants to acquire communication and general management skills that will stand them in good stead also in non-academic professions, seminars are offered in three blocks, bringing together research, teaching and management to form a coherent whole. The emphasis is on relating the theory to participants’ own experience and professional needs, and provision of tools for enhancing transferable skills. The opening workshop dissects the complexity of academic life, which is made manageable through handling a multiplicity of roles (research, teaching, management, community service, family, etc.) and tools for managing time. This approach goes far beyond time management in a university setting as it encourages participants to link their aims and objectives to the university mission and departmental or group ethos. Subsequently, the seminars in this series explore each role in detail. The closing workshop of the series tackles work–life balance with the emphasis on maintaining physical, mental and emotional health as a key to personal effectiveness and professional development. What do the participants get out of this series? One of the greatest advantages of participation in cross-disciplinary seminars is the necessity to express one’s own research in a language accessible to a scientist from another discipline, a valuable training for both writing research proposals and engaging in outreach activities. The emphasis on aspects of collaborative work and understanding group dynamics addresses the current shift towards funding of large interdisciplinary teams. Moreover, participants get an understanding of issues inherent in managing people and prepare for building their own research group. This includes a seminar on how to recruit and guide PhD students. Notably, this seminar brings

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into perspective the informal coaching of PhDs that many postdocs would have already experienced. The role played by postdoctoral researchers in guiding and mentoring PhD students, especially in large research groups, is not well documented. But let us hear a story of a former postdoctoral researcher about the experience of managing an active laboratory, and considerations when managing a research group within that context. The researcher’s account displays vividly the complex matters of communication and tensions of running an active laboratory while, at the same time, mentoring and supporting the researchers within the group.

From a postdoctoral researcher to a lecturer at a UK university I am a medical school graduate from a European university, with relevant PhD and considerable teaching experience. Shortly after I finished my PhD I moved to the UK and started my long-term position as a postdoctoral researcher, giving up the practice of medicine. It has been one of the most rewarding periods of my professional life to date. It helped me to discover many interesting things and gave a new dimension to a scientific career I had never dreamt of having before. Towards the end of my just over eight years of being postdoctoral researcher I had to step in for my Principal Investigator (PI) and take up the position of Deputy Principal Investigator. This was due to his serious illness and lasted two years. Suddenly I was in the position of managing a very active laboratory, with two other postdoctoral researchers, even three at times, and three PhD students. For me, mentoring is a one-to-one relationship based on encouragement, constructive comments, openness, mutual trust, respect, and a willingness to learn and share. All these attributes characterise a good colleague, but for mentorship they are taken a bit further and to a different level. This new relationship becomes a responsibility as well. You, as a mentor or a group leader, are responsible for what your mentees and the people in your laboratory are doing, their welfare and their professional progress. He/she should be available and willing to spend time with the student, giving appropriate guidance and feedback, but also stimulate the student’s thinking and reflection. It is difficult to find the right time to do all these when you are involved in your own research and career path development as a postdoctoral researcher, when you have to do your own experiments, write your own papers and think of your own future. But how did I become a mentor? In fact it was a gradual transition from being a friendly and supportive colleague to becoming a team leader/mentor and it did take a few months to achieve. With my other colleagues it started like a ‘peer to peer’ learning and debating technical issues. Gradually I moved from being a laboratory manager to being a more formal deputy PI – a position where my advice had been sought before taking any important

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scientific decision. With the PhD students the change was not much easier; it went from ‘peer tutoring’ to mentorship. As each PhD student had a specific topic and, as only one of the research themes was directly within my field of expertise, I sought the help of my colleagues who had complementary fields of expertise to mine to guide jointly the other two PhD students. I believe that was a wise decision, as all the students were able then to benefit from our joint knowledge and advice. The years as a deputy PI gave me invaluable experience about how to deal with people from a senior position. I was really lucky to gain this experience at an early stage of my career and before becoming a PI myself. It also gave me a new perspective about what being a team leader really meant and the difficulties one must face when taking on such a position. This experience was crucial in deciding if that was something I would want to do in the future. When the right opportunity came, I applied and was offered a position of lecturer at another UK university. In this text, we see a postdoctoral researcher offering an account of recent experiences of managing an active laboratory. In the account, we see how the researcher orients to the cognitive apprenticeship model in practice. For example, the following components are made visible in the text: •

•

•

The recognition of the role of mentoring in an active laboratory with postdoctoral researchers and PhD students. Progressively, the researcher, placed in a leading position, naturally develops the methods practised by the mentoring process of the cognitive apprenticeship model: modelling, coaching, scaffolding, articulation, reflection and exploration (Collins et al., 1991). The researcher is interested not only in teaching the students scientific reasoning and new experimental principles and methods, but also becomes aware of their own responsibility for future scientific and personal development. The developing recognition of how best to provide a supportive work environment through considering learning how best to give feedback and other forms of support to others. The researcher offers friendly advice, guidance and support to peers and students at first, but then moves further and seeks solutions to extend the feedback and develop the best creative environment with provision of expert knowledge from others. This action denotes the researcher’s own personal growth and acknowledgement of the importance of the community of practice (‘communication about different ways to accomplish meaningful tasks’; Collins et al., 1991). The competing pressures of leading an active laboratory where there are the demands of conducting the business of the lab as well as attending to supporting the others in the lab in their professional development. The researcher is aware of the double role of managing both the research and the people in the laboratory, but cannot forgo the fulfilment of personal and professional needs. This dichotomy forces seeking the compromise between both aspects.

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Summary In the last two decades, we have witnessed a major paradigm shift in doctoral training. Historically, doctoral students were treated as apprentices, and were expected to learn mainly research skills from their supervisors. The changes in the world’s economics and funding models for universities in the last half century resulted in fewer places available for new PhDs and a much higher person specification for both academic and non-academic jobs. In the UK it has become clear that there is a need to provide a natural development path to aspiring scientists, starting from the first days of the PhD until well into the early stages of an academic post. A few years ago comprehensive programmes for doctoral students and early career researchers were implemented in the Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences Division of the University of Oxford. These programmes were based on a cognitive apprenticeship model that took into account expectations that science graduates required more than expert content knowledge on their graduation. For example, graduates were expected also to develop interpersonal relationship skills. In this chapter we described these programmes to show how they are a valuable toolkit to use in new PhD careers.

Acknowledgements We would like to thank the MPLS Division skills training team, and in particular Professor Tim Softley, Associate Head (Academic) of the MPLS Division until 2011, for his leadership. We acknowledge the pivotal role that the Professional Development Officer, appointed in 2007, has played in the development and management of the divisional graduate training programme.

References Barber, L., Pollard, E., Millmore, B. and Gerova, V. (2004) Higher Degrees of Freedom: The Value of Postgraduate Study. Report 410, Institute for Employment Studies. Beardwell, J. and Claydon, T. (2007) Human Resources Management: A Contemporary Approach, 5th edition, Financial Times. Harlow: Prentice Hall. Carroll, J. and Ryan, J. (2005) Teaching International Students: Improving Learning for All. London and New York: Routledge. Collins, A., Brown, J. S. and Holum, A. (1991) ‘Cognitive apprenticeship: Making thinking visible’, American Educator, 15 (6–11): 38–46. Covey, S. R. (2004) The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. London: Simon & Schuster. Fearn, H. (2010) ‘PhD: The gateway to employment’, Times Higher Education, http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?storycode=413323. Gabrys, B. J. and Langdale, J. A. (2012) How to Succeed as a Scientist: From Postdoc to Professor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Haynes, K. (2010) Analysis of University Reports on Career Development and Transferable Skills Training (Roberts) payments. The Professional & Higher Partnership Ltd.

Cognitive apprenticeship 155 Hunt, W., Jagger, N., Metcalfe, J. and Pollard, E. (2010) What Do Researchers Do? Doctoral Graduate Destinations and Impact Three Years On, 2010. Vitae Report, The Careers Research and Advisory Centre. Lave, J. and Wenger, E. (1991) Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambridge University Press. Nabi, G. R. and Bagley, D. (1998) ‘Graduates’ perceptions of transferable personal skills and future career preparation in the UK’, Career Development International, 3 (1): 31–39. Nabi, G. R. and Bagley, D. (1999) ‘Graduates’ perceptions of transferable personal skills and future career preparation in the UK’, Education and Training, 41, (4): 184–193. Park, C. (2005) ‘New variant PhD: The changing nature of the doctorate in the UK’, Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 27 (2): 189–207. Pearson, M. and Kayrooz, C. (2004) ‘Enabling critical reflection on research supervisory practice’, International Journal for Academic Development, 9: 99–116. RCUK statement of expectation regarding researcher development activities, http:// www.rcuk.ac.uk/media/news/2010news/Pages/310310_1.aspx. Roberts, G. (2002) ‘SET for success: The supply of people with science, technology, engineering and mathematics skills’, the report of the Sir Gareth Roberts review. http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.hm-treasury.gov. uk/set_for_success.htm.

Chapter 12

Pedagogies of industry partnership Barbara Adkins, Jennifer Summerville, Susan Danby and Judy Matthews

This chapter discusses the experiences of doctoral students who work across traditional disciplinary and university–industry boundaries. These new contexts for doctoral education are shaping how students are experiencing and responding to requirements for changing knowledge relationships. Drawing on Bernstein’s discussion of pedagogic practice as being socially constructed, and his conceptual framework outlining the social implications of the weaker boundaries required for these knowledge relationships, we discuss students’ descriptions of their topics, processes and challenges and show their strategies for performing scholarly research across these boundaries as key elements in the nature and achievement of ‘industry readiness’. In particular, we identify two key elements in the pedagogy of industry partnership: students’ understandings and management of the knowledge relationships involved in this work, and the dispositions they bring to bear in negotiating research and careers across disciplinary and sectoral boundaries.

Introduction Recent policy emphases on the knowledge economy and innovation have linked research, including higher degree research, to broader goals of knowledge transfer involving the translation of knowledge to domains outside the university, where it can be taken up and applied. An emerging focus is on university–industry relationships with respect to doctoral education, including the labour market and employment relationships of doctoral graduates (Campbell et al., 2005; Enders, 2004; Miller et al., 2005; Western et al., 2007), and their experiences of the university–industry interface (Harman, 2002; Thune, 2009). The adaptation of doctoral training to labour market and employment relationships, and research– industry collaboration, has been linked to the increased emphasis on ‘mode two knowledge’, as knowledge produced in the context of application (Gibbons et al., 1994). Recent studies identifying changing relationships among university, government and industry sectors are examining how contemporary doctoral pedagogy, and the nature of pedagogic relationships proposed to support the student, are affected within the context of these changes. For Lee et al. (2009), the

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task remains to bring together and conceptualise more fully the dimensions and dynamics of doctoral pedagogy. With particular reference to the professional doctorate, there are discrete sets of relationships that are salient for analysing it: the nature of the university and its relationships to other institutions, the new kinds of questions that now become amenable to researching, and the ways in which doctoral research and study are structured, supported, developed and made into an object of inquiry in its own right (Lee et al., 2009: 282). The discussion presents a timely recommendation that points to the importance of a systematic and analytical approach, in order to guard against the adoption of unwarranted assumptions regarding the connections between the ‘needs’ of a knowledge economy and the aspirations, preferences and practices of doctoral students (Barnacle, 2005). Following Bernstein’s (2000) account of official and local pedagogic modalities, this chapter makes an analytic distinction between knowledge economy policy and program discourses and the discourses employed by doctoral students researching at the university–industry interface. Through this distinction, we identify a domain of doctoral pedagogy oriented to ‘industry readiness’ that has received little attention in research to date: the ‘local’ modalities through which students understand and negotiate research and careers across disciplinary and sectoral boundaries. As Bernstein points out, when weaker boundaries are associated with these knowledge relationships, ‘a space is now available for pedagogic appropriations’ (p. 71). The pedagogic discourse emerges where the students have greater control over their own knowledge production and performance. We present an analysis of email interview data collected from postgraduate research students studying at an Australian Cooperative Research Centre (CRC). CRCs provide doctoral training at the university–industry interface, with an explicit, ‘official’ goal of producing ‘industryready’ graduates. Our analysis examines the identification of cross-disciplinary and cross-sectoral knowledge domains in students’ descriptions of their current and future research and careers, and the principles, constraints and opportunities that underpin their negotiation of these relationships. Our purpose is to show how they work within a pedagogic space, where they can distinguish and manage multiple knowledge domains required by a particular research problem, rather than working from within existing disciplinary discourses and constraints. We first describe the Cooperative Research Centre program in Australia as a context in which ‘triple helix’ (university–industry–government) relationships (Etzkowitz, 2008) are invoked. We argue that the program discourse, and the research that investigates it, together construct the industry–research interface as a virtual object (Shields, 2006) that should be crossed as part of the operation of the program. We then turn to the conceptual framework of Bernstein (2000) as a means of distinguishing between different levels and kinds of pedagogic discourses (e.g. ‘official’ and ‘local’), and of identifying the knowledge relationships and processes that attend the move to conduct research across university–industry boundaries. We identify the principles, constraints and opportunities to which students orient in discussing research–industry pedagogic relationships, analysing students’ descriptions of ‘crossing’ boundaries in the context of doctoral work in

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a ‘triple helix’ (university–industry–government) environment. The data reveal the complex and subtle processes that the students adopt in addressing the crosssectoral and cross-disciplinary knowledge requirements of their projects. While not all their responses attested to ‘industry readiness’ as an immediate motivation or goal, their conceptions of future career pathways appeared to be consistent with policy aspirations regarding enhancing absorptive capacity (O’Kane, 2008) in the sectors within which they gained employment. Analysis of the local modality of applied scholarship is an important analytical resource in considering the full set of pedagogic relationships producing ‘industry readiness’.

Policy/program setting: the Cooperative Research Centre program and doctoral training The Australian Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) program was conceived in 1990 by the Australian government to further national innovation goals by stronger linkages among the major players in the innovation chain: research organisations, industry and a range of research end-users (Harman, 2004). CRCs are hybrid organisations with funding through university, government and industry partnerships to provide a context for collaborative, multidisciplinary and commercially oriented research. A key feature of the CRC program is to provide a context for doctoral training where university researchers supervise doctoral research in the context of applied, industry-focused CRC projects. The specific goals of this aspect of the program are to produce ‘end-user-driven’ or ‘employment-ready’ graduates (Harman, 2002, 2004; Manathunga et al., 2009) for industry and the public sector. The location of doctoral students’ research in an integrated industry-based work study program is proposed to enhance student attractiveness to industry, develop more favourable attitudes to university–industry collaboration and encourage more positive orientations towards careers in industry. In this way, industry readiness is frequently positioned as an end in itself with respect to the outcomes of CRC-based doctoral training. However, O’Kane’s (2008) national review of the CRC program positions industry readiness as a potentially important mechanism in the achievement of a broader goal: the enhancement of graduates’ capacity to obtain employment in industry and to perform roles associated with attracting and integrating research-based knowledge into end-user products and processes (O’Kane, 2008: 61). The central vehicle for the achievement of these outcomes is the emergence of a specific kind of ‘training culture’ that bridges ‘the gap between the laboratory and the marketplace’ (Harman, 2004: 392). Such a ‘training culture’ cannot be separated from a culture of pedagogy. Research on the perceptions of CRC-based doctoral students to date has focused on the program’s implications and outcomes with respect to students’ employment needs and experiences, assessing the performance against official program goals of promoting industry-ready graduates. Prior to graduation, CRC students reported greater optimism about their career prospects than non-CRC

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students (Harman, 2002, 2004), and research experience outside of universities was seen by both CRC and non-CRC students as beneficial in their overall doctoral program. Harman’s (2004) study suggests further broadening the doctoral experience in CRCs, by integrating knowledge across traditional boundaries with professional development that meets both student needs and the needs of their potential employers in a wide range of occupations (Harman, 2004). Manathunga et al. (2009) have built on this body of work by examining the generic attributes and employment outcomes of CRC doctoral graduates. A significant proportion of CRC graduates observed that the industry linkages available through CRCs were not necessarily instrumental in subsequent career paths. In this respect, ‘CRC graduates may require additional support or more in-built training in PhD programs to become truly “industry-ready” ’ (Manathunga et al., 2009: 101). At its heart, the program logic of the CRC doctoral training program assumes that integrating industry knowledge and priorities with university-based doctoral training in the context of applied research projects will produce graduates with industry readiness. The research to date brought into question some aspects of this assumed ‘program logic’. Recommendations have focused on the addition of training elements to address professional development and enhance ‘industry readiness’. However, these recommendations as proposed additions to the program themselves raise the question of the pedagogic issues and processes at stake in the achievement of ‘industry readiness’ – the educational context and its possibilities.

Boundaries, regions and the pedagogy of industry partnership An examination of the CRC context suggests that it constitutes a specific kind of environment for industry partnerships. In general, this hybrid organisation is a manifestation of triple helix (university–industry–government) relations involving new organisational formats to promote knowledge transfer (Etzkowitz, 2008). The grouping of research and commercial functions, and university–industry research and development collaboration, in the one organisation, constitutes CRCs as a specific kind of knowledge ‘region’. Regions bring disciplines together and require ‘recontextualising’ discourses about the ways they cohere as knowledge domains within universities. The organisational format of the CRC constitutes a further development in regionalisation relationships – a particular kind of interface between the field of knowledge production and broader fields of practice (Bernstein, 2000: 9), designed to address the boundaries seen to persist in relationships between university-based research, and markets and industries. This is to be achieved by enabling the transfer and exchange of knowledge between sectors through commercialisation and employment relationships and pathways. As such, as Lee et al. (2009) argue, it is important to understand the levels of relationships at which this interface is organised and acted upon – a task that draws upon the analysis of doctoral research processes as pedagogy.

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Essential to the notion of pedagogy in any analytic context is to identify and examine the broader set of relationships involved in learning that go well beyond assumptions that learning is achieved through instruction. Thus, MacNeil et al. (2003) see pedagogy as specifically recognising ‘the cultural and societal aspects of what is learned and why it is learned and acknowledges aspects of learning that were previously described as the “hidden curriculum” ’ (p. 5). Manathunga et al.’s (2006) analysis of doctoral pedagogy points to ‘active, productive power relations between the student, the teacher (or supervisor) and knowledge’ (Lusted, 1986, cited in Manathunga et al., 2006). Researching postgraduate supervision involves inquiry into the system of relationships in which postgraduate supervision is embedded, including between learning contexts and the knowledge process. This focus enables the systematic inclusion of current tendencies for knowledge processes to move beyond strict boundaries of disciplines, and across divisions between research and teaching, and traditional roles of lecturer/student (Adkins, 2009; Green and Lee, 1995; Hodge, 1995; McWilliam and Palmer, 1995). Bernstein’s (2000) theorisation of the broader social relationships in which pedagogy is embedded is suited to addressing Lee et al.’s (2009) recommendation to study learning relationships at a number of levels. Bernstein makes an analytical distinction between ‘official’ and ‘local’ pedagogic discourses and identities: One can distinguish between official pedagogic modalities and local pedagogic modalities. The former are official symbolic controls and give rise to macro/micro regulation of contexts, practices, evaluations and acquisitions at institutional levels. The latter, local pedagogic modalities are familial, peer and ‘community’ regulations. (Bernstein, 2000: 201) In line with this distinction, we can identify the elements of industry partnership pedagogies in CRCs studied to date as closely connected to the official modalities of ‘industry readiness’, produced largely via the notion of conducting doctoral research at the interface between university and industry processes and insights. The examination of more local modalities can extend these findings by identifying the logics in use of CRC students as they negotiate this interface. The agency of the students themselves, and the role of local learning contexts, then become part of the explanatory framework through which industry readiness is understood.

Local modalities of industry partnership: boundaries and categories The positioning of doctoral research in contexts reflecting the interface between university and industry-based knowledge and interests promotes the tendency for it to be experienced as involving the crossing, spanning or addressing of ‘boundaries’. For Bernstein, pedagogic processes in general involve the experiencing of

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boundaries that, at their core, have a crucial temporal dimension. The term signifies ‘a tension between the past and possible futures’ (Bernstein, 2000: xii) where resources acquired in the past are confronted with boundaries – among disciplines, sectors, cultures and research processes – and often are unequally placed to exploit the opportunities they present (Bernstein, 2000: 206–207). The nature and strength of boundaries, and the way students are resourced to address them, are crucial to pedagogic processes. Boundaries are experienced at the level of knowledge relationships as the strong or weak classifications between knowledge domains. The negotiation of these boundaries may call for specific kinds of framing (the communication, conduct, manner and regulation of learning). This conceptualisation draws attention to the question of the way these are experienced and acted upon in the context of doctoral pedagogies of industry partnerships. Our analysis of the knowledge work of the CRC students was based on a study conducted at one CRC that would not be understood as typical of the majority of CRCs currently in operation. The Australasian CRC for Interaction Design (ACID) operated from 2003 until June 2010. Officially, its core focus was described as ‘research and development and commercialisation of technologies and content for the electronic games, digital art, performing and visual arts, design, film, television and multimedia sectors’. There are several properties of this CRC that make it of specific interest with respect to challenges concerning the ‘industry readiness’ of graduates. As a report on the digital content industry has observed, this industry in Australia is emergent (Australian Government, 2006). First, it is a relatively new industry and one that, while located broadly in the cultural sector, plays a crucial value-adding role across a range of other sectors including health, education and architecture. Second, it does not have a coherent identity, but rather is in the process of becoming a more unified industry (Australian Government, 2006). In this respect, this study of the CRC for Interaction Design provides an opportunity to examine the meanings that students attribute to applied scholarship and industry readiness in the context of industry linkages. The data were generated through email interviews conducted with 12 research higher degree students enrolled at five Australian universities, all of whom were partners in the CRC. In total, there were 17 current students funded by the CRC at the time of the interviews. Email interviews were chosen due to the distributed nature of the student group. Questions were constructed to elicit descriptions of motivations, aspirations and processes employed by students in traversing the knowledge domains involved in their work. Mostly, students did not explicitly nominate cross-disciplinary or cross-sectoral knowledge relationships as the central focus of the interview. A key interest in the research was the ways in which the students volunteered their own characterisations of the knowledge domains in which they were working and the salience of various aspects of their CRC and university that were relevant to their practice. Our analysis was focused on responses to three of a broader set of questions regarding the doctoral experience. The three questions were:

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1 Describe your research project and the contributions to knowledge you are making. 2 Describe the discipline/s your study incorporates and relationships with industry and practice that are involved. 3 Where do you see yourself working and what do you see yourself doing once you have finished your studies at ACID? Include here what ideally you would like to do and also what in reality you believe you will be doing. The data were grouped thematically, according to the dimensions of the experience covered. These dimensions were ‘Working across disciplines and fields’ and ‘University and industry’. Within these dimensions, responses were analysed for the descriptive processes through which these relationships were made meaningful for each participant.

Data analysis CRC doctoral students’ responses reveal notions of participation in university and industry contexts that have implications for the way ‘industry ready’ is given meaning at local levels. Their accounts reveal, as one might expect, senses of career pathways and processes involved in CRC-based research that were more intricate and complex than the linear university–CRC–industry process used to describe the overarching program logic of CRC doctoral training. As such, the descriptions below provide insight into key dimensions of the pedagogy involved in this context: in particular, students’ sense of the knowledge and cross-sectoral relationships involved in industry-relevant work and their own agency in understanding and managing these relationships. The descriptions reveal the way they ‘hybridise’ the space between disciplines, university and industry and research and practice, which provide insight into their sense of the nature of the work required to operate in these spaces.

Researching across disciplines and fields For many ACID students, the current categories of disciplines and research domains are not sufficient to ‘point to’ the focus of their postgraduate research. In the first three extracts, below, students’ accounts refer to interaction design, social research, creativity support, human–computer interaction, visual arts and animation that clearly identify extant disciplines and research fields. However, the use of terms such as ‘intersection’, ‘junction’ and ‘dips into’ depict these domains as points on a map or different elements that the student must navigate between or choose from in an emergent process of evolving a research focus. This is illustrated in the following extracts:

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Extract 1 My work sits at the intersection of interaction design and social research. The work takes instances of ‘doing annotation’, ‘content sharing’ and ‘collaborative knowledge’ as case studies with which to develop qualitative social research … in new directions. (Justin)

Extract 2 My research is at the junction of Creativity Support, Human–Computer Interaction (HCI) and Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW). It places its focus on the film industry and has involved a large number of practitioners during field study activities (e.g. interviews, questionnaires, observations and prototype evaluations). (Johan)

Extract 3 My work dips into the fields of computer science, visual arts, digital sculpture, rendering and animation and corrupts of the science of digital archiving. (Sam) The first two extracts characterise ‘my work’ or ‘my research’ in spatial terms, describing its ‘location’ at an intersection or junction, where disciplines or fields of study hold positions at this point of interface. For Justin, the engagement with interaction design provides an opportunity to take qualitative research in new directions while, for Johan, the disciplinary mix provides for a focus on the film industry. In Extract 3, Sam’s description depicts his ‘work’ as ‘panning out’ (Schegloff, 2000) from himself to a significant array of disciplines and fields that need to be ‘dipped into’. These interfaces between disciplines and between the disciplinary mix and industry focus are constructed as ‘virtual objects’ (Shields, 2006) that index not only the focus of the study but, inferentially, the negotiation of the ongoing choices, opportunities and work required of the student to operate in them. Here, practices cannot be designated by a specific discipline, and disciplines do not map neatly onto ‘industry’. Rather, configurations of disciplines and industry requirements constitute a landscape that inferentially requires agency on the part of the student in the negotiation of ‘intersections’ and ‘junctions’ and the requirements to ‘dip into’ a range of fields. For some students their sense of agency in working across disciplines and substantive concerns involved a more explicit identification of their work as involving ‘hybridising’ processes:

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Extract 4 While the overarching framework of my study is based on social science, two distinct literatures that inform the study are: community informatics and environmental sociology with organisational social capital as the common thread. (Matthew)

Extract 5 As I’m looking at hybrid media it relates to an incredibly broad spread of arts both performative and composed. From visual music to expanded cinema; performance theory in dance/theatre as well as live electronic music performance theory; computer-based arts and digital media in interactive, installed and virtual modes. (Steven) For both Matthew and Steven, disciplines and fields are brought together either through the finding of a common thread or through awareness of the nature and technical requirements of ‘hybrid media’. The following analyses of descriptions of university and industry suggest that the vantage point from which students negotiate intersections, junctions and the requirements of hybridity is associated with the way they understand their current and future position between the fields of academic research and industry application.

University and industry In addition to positioning their work as indexical in a disciplinary sense, students’ accounts also attended to the creation of an indexical ‘space’ of university–industry in the context of their motivations for their research topic and their future career trajectories. In the following extracts, the students position their postgraduate research and future career paths in a fluid and multi-directional approach to the negotiation of university and industry environments, practices and motivations. A review of responses revealed an orientation to ‘design’ as an organising principle in this fluidity on the part of around half of the interviewees. This orientation is exemplified in the following extracts:

Extract 6 I did not have a ‘career plan’ when I first started the project with ACID … I am just interested in where participatory or collaborative design process can really have a positive effect! I did not (and do not) really see myself as having a professional academic role – but I do like the discussion/debate having engagement in academic discourse can provide, and am particularly interested

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in shaping the minds of future practitioners through popping in and out of involvement with universities – within and also outside of the design faculty. (Ellen)

Extract 7 I will continue to conduct my design practice, and I am thinking about starting a studio with another student within my course. What I would really like to be doing is applying my research skills to my design practice and working with design groups or software development groups. (Paul) For Ellen and Paul, their focus on design appears to provide the context for a sense of continuity and complementarity between university-based and industry-based practice, where principles of design are central guiding forces in the negotiation of the university–industry interface. A central factor here could well be the relatively strong links between industry and profession-based design and university design schools and faculties that permeate undergraduate and postgraduate learning. For Ellen, the discussion and debate that characterise ‘academic’ settings are a desirable ongoing element in design practice, such that she hopes to be ‘popping in and out of involvement with universities’. Paul anticipates continuing his research in the design sector and is drawing on collaboration with another university colleague to set up a design studio – a space where he will be ‘applying my research skills to my design practice’. While the links between the design profession and university design schools could be seen as an important component in the continuities described above, students who were studying outside of these contexts also espoused these principles:

Extract 8 I have always enjoyed research and never had thought of academic research until my studies. This field is of interest to me but it would need to be within an industry/practical application environment. Whether this is with a university or external organisations wanting to understand and improve processes in business. (Natalie)

Extract 9 Doing a PhD really opened my mind about the academic world and I really want to pursue in that direction. However, I also wish to reconnect with the industry. Ideally, I would love to be able to keep one foot in each world. (Johan)

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The accounts of Natalie and Johan display a complex interweaving of industry and employment orientations and university-based research. Natalie’s account periodises a sequence of ‘research’, ‘academic research’ and then academic research ‘within an industry/practical application environment’, which implies a move from industry-based research to academic research that is, in turn, applied to industry contexts. For Natalie, the central point of this trajectory is not necessarily industry employment but rather applied, industry-oriented research that could be conducted within university or external organisations located in the field of business. This kind of temporal ordering and orientation also is reflected in Johan’s account where doing a PhD opened his mind to the academic world, itself constituting a boundary with a previous world outside of academic life. Subsequently we find that this prior experience pertains to ‘industry’ with which he would like to reconnect. Like Natalie, his goal is not industry employment as an outcome in itself, but rather opportunities to ‘keep one foot in each world’. While there are substantive differences between the narratives of the ‘design’ students, on the one hand, and Natalie’s and Johan’s on the other, the accounts also display commonalities as stories of transitions that are strategically managed by the students. The descriptions convey a sense of an emergent process that, whether the end point is university or industry employment, draws resources from both sectors, and may well involve movement between them.

Conclusion For Bernstein, the formation of knowledge regions always involves the requirement to ‘recontextualise’ previously separate disciplinary domains and university and industry/professional sectors. In the case of the CRC program, at an official level, recontextualisation positions knowledge relationships as instrumentally oriented to industry readiness and, consistent with new knowledge regions, this requires the projection of disciplinary knowledge as oriented to industry employment and professional practices. However, the data discussed here suggest that the local interpretations, experiences and management of these relationships represent a discrete level of social ordering, with rationales and practices associated with a particular version of ‘industry readiness’ not captured in assumptions of a linear transition from university to industry. The students described their careers in terms of an ongoing desire to draw resources from both university and industry with the ongoing expectation that their destinations will be contingent upon the appropriate context in which to realise their applied scholarship. Anticipating her base in industry, one student espoused the virtues of continuing to ‘pop in and out of involvement with universities’, and another described his desire to keep ‘one foot in both camps’ of the industry and university fields. This resonates strongly with the triple helix principles described by Etzkowitz and Viale (2010) where university and industry must learn ‘to take the view of the other’ to enhance the capacity of

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each sector to become ‘a creative source of innovation’ (p. 602). In this way, the students’ descriptions attested to a ‘prospective’ approach to their pedagogic process, identified by Bernstein (2000) as central to the negotiation of cultural, economic and technological change (p. 67). Change, emergence and indeterminacy also were key features of students’ discussion of the knowledge domains involved in their study and the ongoing requirement to draw upon different disciplinary approaches that best address the new research questions emerging in the CRC context. Etzkowitz and Viale, similarly to Bernstein, see this as responsive to change: The new scientist, ‘Kali scientist’, of the future converging technologies looks in the same direction, that is toward the generation of knowledge for innovation, but, like the many arms of the god Kali, she uses different disciplinary approaches in problem solving. (Etzkowitz and Viale, 2010: 599) The broad features of the students’ pedagogic orientations and processes raise questions concerning the work involved in identifying, developing and managing the new research questions that become available for research in the CRC context. A central observation regarding this process in the CRC for interaction design is that the development of the questions rests heavily on students’ agency. The descriptions employed metaphors of maps and palettes to depict a sense of actual and potential knowledge relationships at stake in their research questions. In this respect, the management of the knowledge relationships entailed recontextualising work on the part of the student. Bernstein identifies the issues involved where elements of disciplinary knowledge need to be selected and placed in a new knowledge context: As physics is appropriated by the recontextualising agents, the results cannot formally be derived from the logic of that discourse. Irrespective of the intrinsic logic which constitutes the specialised discourse and activities called physics, the recontextualising agents will select from the totality of practices which is called physics in the field of the production of physics. There is selection. (Bernstein, 2000: 34) The metaphors employed by the students are, in this context, devices to provide a framework from which to select elements of knowledge from different domains and somehow make them commensurate and serve purposes for the research question. As implied in Bernstein’s example of physics, this requires a knowledge structure capable of integrating insights from sometimes previously segmented disciplinary discourses. As Adkins (2009) has observed, the processes and modes of working needed to manage these knowledge relationships place new demands on students and

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supervisory relationships, which require high levels of trust and the capacity of the supervisor to guide the student through processes of knowledge integration. The students’ descriptions displayed first-hand access to the experiences of junctions, intersections and working across sectors and the requirement for them to navigate these in an emergent – rather than prescribed – process where research problems do not map neatly onto specific disciplines. Implicitly, the pedagogic process requires them to ‘see’, and be able to manage, the bringing together of knowledge domains required by a particular research problem, and to narrate this at the level of the knowledge relationships entailed, rather than taking their cue from existing disciplinary discourses and parameters. Further research is needed to examine the framing requirements of this process that take account of ‘the mobilities and relations’ (Shields, 2006) required to cross disciplinary and sectoral boundaries. In the context of the CRC policy settings concerning the ‘industry readiness’ of doctoral graduates, the CRC students’ descriptions point to knowledge and cross-sectoral relationships consistent with a particular form of industry-relevant applied scholarship. Specifically, these relationships appear to be significant in building a form of industry readiness capable of bringing together different disciplinary insights and cross-sectoral perspectives required for applied scholarship. The students’ orientations resonate with Etzkowitz and Viale’s (2010) recent discussion of the knowledge implications of triple helix relationships, where they propose the emergence of the requirement for ‘polyvalent knowledge’ or knowledge capable of interacting with more than one entity. For the CRC students, these knowledge relationships needed to be addressed both in terms of the disciplines that were required to be integrated for the purposes of an applied project, and the different requirements and emphases in university and industry sectors. The processes they adopted appeared suited to changing university–industry relationships and appropriate for the capacity of university and industry sectors to take ‘the view of the other’.

References Adkins, B. A. (2009) ‘PhD pedagogy and the changing knowledge landscapes of universities’, Higher Education Research and Development Journal, 28 (2): 165–177. Australian Government, Department of Communication, Information Technology and the Arts (2006) Unlocking the Potential: Digital Content Industry Action Agenda Strategic Industry Leaders Group Report to the Australian Government, Commonwealth of Australia. Barnacle, R. (2005) ‘Research education ontologies: exploring doctoral becoming’, Higher Education Research and Development, 24 (2): 179–188. Bernstein, B. (2000) Pedagogy, Symbolic Control and Identity: Theory, Research, Critique, London: Rowman and Littlefield. Campbell, S., Fuller, A. and Patrick, D. (2005) ‘Looking beyond research in doctoral education’, Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 3 (3) (Apr.): 153–160. Enders, J. (2004) ‘Research training and careers in transition: a European perspective on the many faces of the PhD’, Studies in Continuing Education, 26 (3): 419–429.

Pedagogies of industry partnership 169 Etzkowitz, H. (2008) The Triple Helix: University–Industry–Government Innovation in Action, New York and London: Routledge. Etzkowitz, H. and Viale, R. (2010) ‘Polyvalent knowledge and the entrepreneurial university: a third academic revolution?’, Critical Sociology, 36 (4): 595–609. Gibbons, M., Limoges, C., Nowotny, H., Schwartzman, S., Scott, P. and Trow, M. (1994) The New Production of Knowledge: The Dynamics of Science and Research in Contemporary Societies, London: Sage. Green, B. and Lee, A. (1995) ‘Theorising postgraduate pedagogy’, in A. Lee and B. Green (1998) (eds) Postgraduate Studies Postgraduate Pedagogy (pp. 129–146), University of Technology, Sydney, Centre for Language and Literacy and the University Graduate School. Harman, K. (2002) ‘The research training experiences of doctoral students related to Australian Cooperative Research Centres’, Higher Education, 44 (3/4): 469–492. Harman, K. (2004) ‘Producing “industry-ready” doctorates: Australian Cooperative Research Centre approaches to doctoral education’, Studies in Continuing Education, 26 (3): 387–404. Hodge, B. (1995) ‘Monstrous knowledge: doing PhDs in the new humanities’, in A. Lee and B. Green (1998) (eds) Postgraduate Studies Postgraduate Pedagogy (pp. 113–128), University of Technology, Sydney, Centre for Language and Literacy and the University Graduate School. Lee, A., Brennan, M. and Green, B. (2009) ‘Re-imagining doctoral education: professional doctorates and beyond’, Higher Education Research and Development, 28 (3): 275–287. MacNeil, N., Cavanagh, R. and Silcox, S. (2003) ‘Pedagogic principal leadership’, Management in Education, 17 (4): 14–17. McWilliam, E. and Palmer, P. (1995) ‘Teaching tech(no)bodies: open learning and postgraduate pedagogy’, in A. Lee and B. Green (1998) (eds) Postgraduate Studies Postgraduate Pedagogy (pp. 129–146), University of Technology, Sydney, Centre for Language and Literacy and the University Graduate School. Manathunga, C., Lant, P. and Mellick, G. (2006) ‘Imagining an interdisciplinary doctoral pedagogy’, Teaching in Higher Education, 13 (5): 365–379. Manathunga, C., Pitt, R. and Critchley, C. (2009) ‘Graduate attribute development and employment outcomes: tracking PhD graduates’, Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education, 34 (1): 91–103. Miller, C., Glick, W. and Cardinal, L. (2005) ‘The allocation of prestigious positions in organizational science: accumulative advantage, sponsored mobility, and contest mobility’, Journal of Organizational Behavior, 26: 489–516. O’Kane, M. (2008) Collaborating to a Purpose: Review of the Cooperative Research Centres Program, Commonwealth of Australia. Schegloff, E. (2000) ‘On granularity’, Annual Review of Sociology, 26: 715–720. Shields, R. (2006) ‘Boundary thinking in theories of the present: the virtuality of reflexive modernisation’, European Journal of Social Theory, 9 (2): 223–237. Thune, T. (2009) ‘Doctoral students on the university–industry interface: a review of the literature’, Higher Education, 58: 637–65. Western, M., Kubler, M., Western, J., Clague, D., Boreham, P., Laffan, W. and Lawson, A. (2007) PhD Graduates 5 to 7 Years Out: Employment Outcomes, Job Attributes and the Quality of Research Training, Final report, Canberra: Commonwealth Department of Education, Science and Training.

Part III

International and intercultural pedagogical spaces

Chapter 13

The graduate school in the sky Emerging pedagogies for an international network for doctoral education and research Madeleine Abrandt Dahlgren, Garnet Grosjean, Alison Lee and Sofia Nyström Introduction This chapter discusses a set of pedagogical practices associated with the establishment of an international online doctoral education network, Doctoralnet. Our title refers to the work of bringing together a set of people and circumstances to attempt to build a virtual graduate school, an international community of researchers and doctoral students working in a single extended field. This field is the complex, extensive and multi-dimensional field of education and learning in adult life, drawing in spheres such as higher education, professional education (including specific professions such as health), vocational education, professional and workplace learning, organisational learning and online and e-learning beyond childhood and school. The reference to emergence in our title signals how our experiences of conceiving, planning, designing and enacting this network have involved sequences of activities and engagements with technologies, systems, structures, beliefs and assumptions that could never have been fully worked out in advance, but which came together over time to create the conditions in which the network has its life. It is this complexity that we are concerned to try and represent in our discussion of the pedagogical work that emerged in Doctoralnet. At the same time we see the pedagogical work in Doctoralnet as offering insights into the challenges and opportunities of building doctoral education in an international context. Doctoralnet was created by a group of researchers from nine countries around the world (Australia, Canada, Denmark, Korea, Norway, Poland, South Africa, Sweden and the United Kingdom), for the purpose of building an environment for exchange and learning among doctoral students and senior researchers in a field that had the characteristics of being small, geographically dispersed and multidisciplinary. The network was established to bring together doctoral students and researchers in universities specialising in research in diverse aspects of the field, to form an international research community. A key conceptual underpinning of the network was the link between research and pedagogy that would inform the activities in the network. That is, in contrast to undergraduate or Masters-level educational networks, Doctoralnet would involve students and established researchers working together in activities that would build research collaborations among

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network members. At the same time, pedagogical activities would be developed to build capacities and knowledge among doctoral students in collaborative international exchange. It is this dual focus that shaped the particular activities and informed the pedagogical principles underpinning the network. This focus also led to the aspiration of Doctoralnet becoming a network of member universities’ graduate schools, populated by doctoral students and researchers, each of whom would also be networked through their respective research communities. Reflecting on our four-year engagement in Doctoralnet, we can identify an emerging pedagogical framing, in Bernstein’s (1977) sense, associated with a set of pedagogical principles, strategies and practices that emerged within the activities geared to generating an international climate of learning and research among doctoral students collaborating across geographical, linguistic, cultural, institutional and disciplinary borders. One key aim of the network has been to generate a ‘distributed’ pedagogy – where the emphasis is not always or only ‘vertical’: students to supervisors or senior researchers (Boud and Lee, 2005). The network offers a set of opportunities for doctoral students to undertake a range of activities with each other – in the more ‘horizontal’ relationships associated with peer learning and research collaboration (see also Abrandt Dahlgren and Bjuremark (Chapter 5) and Zukas and Andersen (Chapter 6), this volume). At the same time, we struggle to articulate the complexities and difficulties, the failures and unpredictable shapes of what was enacted and accomplished through the life of the network. In this formulation, pedagogy is not just concerned with individual experiences of teaching and learning but of the circumstances and conditions under which learning becomes possible – in unpredictable ways. In the remaining sections of the chapter, our particular focus is a set of key pedagogical principles that we have formulated through reflexive analysis of the documentation of the network’s activities over its four-year history, working in the medium of online technologies combined with face-to-face meetings, across different universities, education systems, languages, time zones, disciplines and research interests. In order to do this in a way that reaches into the practicalities and struggles encountered along the way, we shape our account in part historically, showing how the pedagogical work emerged in the course of designing and evaluating the activities as we went. A more critical historical analysis of the network has been undertaken (Grosjean et al., forthcoming). Through the account of pedagogy in this chapter, we hope to contribute some useful insights into the complexities and difficulties as well as the rich opportunities for learning and for research collaboration and capacity building afforded by the network.

Assembling the network Doctoralnet was formed in April 2007 as a collaborative venture among eleven universities in nine countries, including some of the most prominent research institutions around the world in the extended research field of pedagogy and learning in adult life. The universities that came together to form the network were Linköping

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University, Sweden; the University of British Columbia, Vancouver; the University of Alberta, Edmonton; the University of Technology and Macquarie University, Sydney; the University of the Western Cape, Cape Town; Roskilde University, Denmark; the University of Stirling, Scotland; Seoul National University; Gdansk University, Poland; and the University of Trondheim, Norway. Doctoralnet was initially conceived and set up by researchers at Linköping University. At that time, the threat of restrictions in funding opportunities within doctoral programs to Linköping and elsewhere gave impetus to the idea of mobilising existing networks to coalesce around doctoral education and pedagogy, as well as to build a collaborative research network that would help build a more viable international community in a small field of dispersed activity. Some of the network members shared the experience of developing and delivering an Intercontinental Masters Program in Adult Learning and Global Change, an undertaking by five universities on four continents (Larsson et al., 2005).1 Others had shared the experience of researching together in a comprehensive four-nation EU project, Students as Journeymen between Communities of Higher Education and Work (Dahlgren, 2010), while other members were part of longstanding relationships between universities and research collaborations. These different networks were mobilised and connected at a meeting in Linköping in 2007, in order to bring about a new opportunity for international collaboration for research students. The original thought was to build a graduate school of participating doctoral students across the eleven initial universities that responded to the call for collaboration – a graduate school ‘in the sky’, connected virtually through online communication media. At the initial meeting, a Steering Committee was appointed for a period of two years, and tasked with moving the network to the next stage. The committee consisted of the authors of this chapter: three faculty members from three of the universities, together with a doctoral student to provide administrative support. In addition, all eleven participating universities would be represented on an advisory board to which the Steering Committee would report. Collaborative planning of the activities and directions of the network was a key guiding principle. The initial assemblage of the network brought together participants with focal interests in different aspects of the idea of a doctoral network for researchers in the extended field of research into learning in adult life: for some, the idea of strengthening research in the area of adult learning was the focus, while for others, the idea of articulating doctoral pedagogy in the social sciences to conceptualise doctoral education in relation to ‘real’ research was a strong driving force for participation. The network’s pedagogical rationale was to build a rich learning environment through sharing resources, experiences and discourses. Underpinning this approach was a research rationale – the intention of building and sparking research that would enhance opportunities for collaborative international projects integrating students and experienced researchers in joint research. This dual rationale was an important part of the thinking in designing Doctoralnet. There was a belief among the founding members that there were exciting opportunities for building

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a curriculum and pedagogy for international doctoral education that was different and new. The emerging pedagogical ideas were associated with our previous experiences of teaching and research into higher and doctoral education. What was new and challenging was the idea of building a close learning community of senior researchers and doctoral students who would challenge traditional status hierarchies, and do this in an international, global context. Doctoralnet would have to work across boundaries and distances of time, place, culture and research tradition. The availability of shared online technologies was a critical element of how dispersed research groups and graduate programs could envisage forming a pedagogical network that allowed such possibilities. The original collaborations were accomplished through prior work using online learning technologies; in turn, these collaborations had been made possible through prior networking of key researchers through conferences, publications, visiting scholar exchanges and the like. As Doctoralnet developed through its initial activities, decisions were taken that led the network in new and somewhat unpredictable directions. The first activities that launched the network were a series of online seminars and the forming of special interest groups, all conducted on an online platform for communication and exchange, situated at Linköping University. The initial online activity set the scene for a series of further deliberations around the question of the pedagogical work of the network. Senior members of the network had undertaken to act as facilitators of the online discussion. As the Steering Committee, we were ‘observers’ of this process, but discussed ‘behind the scenes’ how we could intervene to ‘create some more buzz’ when we found the emerging styles of facilitation not in line with our expectations. At this point we did not have well-articulated assumptions of what a pedagogy for facilitation of communication in the discussion forums might be. This was an early signal of the complexities at stake in building viable online pedagogical activity, and one that gave rise to subsequent redesign work, described below. A second early moment shaping the conditions of possibility for building enrolment on the network was a technological hitch. When the first online seminar was run in the autumn of 2007, the web platform technology was working well in enabling the processes of enrolment and participation in the seminar. This all changed only six months later, when the initial web platform was replaced by a different platform, together with a change in policy on the use of technology at the host university, Linköping University. Access became problematic, causing user response to diminish. These challenges continued in 2009 when the committee used the new platform to deliver student-led seminars on preparing and presenting papers at academic conferences. As one way around the excessive dependence on a resistant technology, the Steering Committee moved to better exploit network members’ attraction to the face-to-face conference format. A dedicated Doctoralnet conference was planned in conjunction with an international research conference on ‘Researching Work and Learning’ (RWL6) at Roskilde, Denmark, which attracted many of the original senior members of the network. This event constituted an important pedagogical move for the network, as the conference format was translated into a set of practices

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that would align with the emerging pedagogical ideas of the network: community building, hierarchy challenging, student empowerment and internationalisation. Together with some of the students, a pedagogical format was developed in which eleven students from five member institutions in five countries presented papers and acted as discussants, along with senior researchers, on student research presentations. A second conference was held at the University of Technology, Sydney, a year later. This provided an opportunity for students from the southern hemisphere to participate. Unlike the previous conference, this event was largely student-organised, which represented a next stage in the enactment of a distributed pedagogy where students would take increasing responsibility for designing and enacting key network events. Doctoral students used these opportunities to learn how to present their work in international forums, and how to act as discussants to the research work of others. We were also now able to articulate the pedagogy more clearly and stage this conference explicitly according to the principles applied in Roskilde, as well as further developing and refining the pedagogical principles and strategies. Looking a little more closely, we now present two examples from our documentation of the pedagogical work of the network in action. After that, we discuss a set of pedagogical principles we derived from these and other experiences of working in Doctoralnet.

Pedagogy-in-action: two examples The first example concerns the explicit scaffolding of pedagogical activities into key events. As the Steering Committee, we found ourselves designing and redesigning the presentation/response work of online seminars and face-to-face conference events that developed as we went along. At the Roskilde mini-conference, a group of first-semester doctoral students from Linköping University were required, as part of their early research training, to act as discussants for papers presented by doctoral students from other universities in the network. Each presentation would receive a response from two discussants: a senior researcher in the network and a student member. The first-year students had an opportunity to engage closely with the paper they were to respond to prior to travelling to Denmark and to prepare written responses. They and several senior researchers, including international members of Doctoralnet, travelled together by train from Linköping to Copenhagen, and a lunchtime meeting on ‘being a discussant’ was held in a café the day before the conference to rehearse strategies the first-year students could utilise in their first experience of responding publicly to a research paper. During this meeting, the students asked if they could present their responses first as they were concerned that, if they went second, they would run out of questions and comments. This proved to be a very useful strategy, which was adopted in subsequent conferences, and it provided the opportunity for the students to take the conversational floor. In turn, a number of other purposes were served: in addition to providing explicit scaffolding and role modelling through senior and student members undertaking parallel tasks, there were opportunities to manage the

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interactions so that the pedagogical role of senior researchers was foregrounded (see Abrandt Dahlgren and Bjuremark, this volume, for an extended discussion of this point). This offered particular support for students whose first language was not English presenting their discussions in English. A second example involves student members experimenting with the affordances of online technologies for explicitly pedagogical purposes, extending the reach of pedagogical communication beyond the designs of the original planning group. Activities included the use of YouTube for presenting an online workshop on preparing a conference presentation at the conference in Roskilde in 2009 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91iMn54S0CY). In this presentation, Marie and Mary, who were undertaking doctoral study at UTS at the time of the recording, were planning to attend the international Researching Work and Learning conference at Roskilde University, Denmark. The Doctoralnet mini-conference, run in conjunction with the larger conference, was offering student members an opportunity to prepare, present and receive feedback on a paper from their doctoral research. As well, they had an opportunity to be a discussant in the feedback process, and to attend the annual business meeting of the network, where they were able to participate in policy formation and decision-making for the network. Marie and Mary had undertaken to conduct an online discussion geared particularly for beginning students planning their first conference paper at the mini-conference. To set up this discussion, they posted a YouTube conversation to the website three months before the miniconference was held. In the clip we can see that Marie and Mary utilise the strategy of interviewing each other, in a reciprocal question and answer mode, concerning their approaches to writing a conference paper. What is interesting about this in pedagogical terms is that they are speaking to each other but the questions are both requests for information and requests for a rehearsal of a script they have already worked out. They are addressing each other but through this to a set of unknown doctoral students who they assume will be less experienced than they are. They are also drawing on their own extensive experience, as senior professionals in their own fields, of writing and presenting in public. This work interchanges teaching and co-learning within a shared frame of preparing for a conference they will attend and meeting the other members presenting the papers they are discussing. The videoclip was used as the starting point for a seminar with doctoral students and supervisors in Linköping, and was part of the first-year students’ preparation for participation in the Roskilde conference.

An emerging pedagogical frame Three over-arching principles for the pedagogical work of the network were, first, that activities would be devised that facilitated the building of dialogue across the boundaries of senior researcher/doctoral student members, institutions, countries and research interests. These activities would include finding ways of sharing

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research expertise, experiences of teaching, learning and supervision, as well as the experiences of being a doctoral student and participant in Doctoralnet activities. Second, the pedagogical work would enact a ‘horizontalising’ pedagogy, positioning the doctoral student as a knowledgeable colleague-to-be, albeit with a different knowledge from that of the more experienced researchers. The third, related principle involved fostering senior researchers to be sensitive to the incompleteness of the students’ conceptualisation of their research, teasing out what kind of scaffolding the students need in order to be able to articulate their intention more clearly and coherently. These principles inform a range of the key strategies we have experimented with and reflected upon. Here we present six of these key strategies, which are not intended to be exhaustive but rather are a resource for the development of our pedagogical thinking in relation to international doctoral work.

Boundary crossing The first set of strategies enacts a boundary-crossing principle in a number of different ways. One way has been to put explicitly on the agenda the question of the value of international research collaborations. The first network activity was an online seminar discussing a paper that had been purpose-written by four of the senior members of the network, international leaders in the extended field. The paper, titled ‘Why bother talking to foreigners?’, was a provocation for all participants to consider the opportunities and challenges of international research collaboration. Members were invited to introduce themselves and their research interests online, and engage in a discussion in response to the paper. Differences among members began to be articulated in terms of fields of interest, disciplinary trainings, theoretical and methodological framings and research traditions. Further differences – the different challenges of communicating in English for students of different member countries; the different doctoral systems with different practices and cultural politics; the spatio-temporal and practical complexities of geographical and regional distances – began to become visible and tangible aspects of collaborating across these boundaries. This is an emerging pedagogy in every way. A key example concerns the realisation of the politics and practices of connecting students from diverse linguistic communities to the anglophone world of international scholarship.

Multiple formats and media The second set of strategies concerned our realisation that we needed multi-format ways of participating: online a-synchronous written discussion, conferencing, face-to-face meetings, and so on. One of the hallmarks of Web 2 technologies is the almost seamless move from writing-based to talk-based interactions across network members. As Doctoralnet moved from its older online platform to a new Web 2-based platform in 2010, new opportunities for repository building, formal and informal discussion forums, ‘chat’ and videoconferencing, collaborative text

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construction and links to multimedia presentations became more readily accessible. Combining online, writing-based, a-synchronous seminars with face-to-face events allows for a movement, a ‘zooming in and out’ between supporting and articulating creative thinking and the more disciplined activity of writing in a scholarly way in English. This again had particular resonance for students and senior researcher members for whom English was not the vernacular language.

Early articulations The third set of pedagogical strategies involved the creation of opportunities for doctoral students early in their doctoral candidature to articulate their research intentions in an international setting of peer students and researchers in the field. A key principle underpinning this strategy is the belief that presentation of work to an external (in this case international) audience of peers is an important opportunity to externalise their intentions, and to attempt to ‘hold’ their emerging research ideas together in order to present them to others. This principle also recognises the process of ‘becoming a researcher’ early in the doctoral student’s learning career, in that it provides a space where the doctoral students’ first articulations of their work as a researcher are acknowledged and legitimated. In activities associated with these early articulations, such as the conferences at Roskilde and Sydney, all participants who acted as discussants were briefed with the key pedagogical principle underpinning the response: to assist the presenter to better articulate the purpose in their research. Pedagogical work then involved building appropriate practices of exchange involving the development of skilful giving and receiving of feedback from the earliest stages of doctoral study (see Abrandt Dahlgren and Bjuremark, this volume, for an extended discussion of this point). Doctoral students as well as senior researchers worked to critique a contribution to a seminar on its own merits, taking into account the different architectures of the doctorates in different countries, and the different backgrounds and contexts of the students. This strategy is by no means an uncontentious one, and there are important debates about the benefits of early exposure to these opportunities, vs the provision of ‘safer’ classroom spaces for taking risks in envisaging research ideas (e.g. see Lee, 2010; Paré, 2010). At both these occasions, Roskilde and Sydney, the students did prepare papers and the initial idea had been to collect them for an online publication. As it turned out, due to the exigencies of time and the pressures of research assessment and career development, these written papers mostly went into other publications, book chapters and journal articles, or were incorporated in their respective theses.

Sharing work-in-progress A fourth, related, strategy involved bringing doctoral students into collegial working forms such as work-in-progress seminars with research peers, both senior and more junior, in respective member universities. This kind of seminar

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provided an opportunity for shifting positions, as experienced researchers present their working manuscripts and invite the doctoral students to question and critique. This strategy offered important role-modelling opportunities within an explicitly scaffolded environment, where students were coached in forms of elaborative and critical exchange with seniors as peers sharing their own developing writing.

Sharing courses On a larger canvas, a key aspiration articulated in the formative stages of the network concerned the potential affordances of Doctoralnet, through its largely online format, to share course materials, particularly in the first stages of doctoral work. Although each national system worked with a different structure in doctoral programs, it was envisaged that preliminary research courses or units of work, such as in theory, methodology, research design and writing, in specific research areas, could be shared to expand the range of opportunities for students and universities across the network. This would involve provision of resources, shared forums, multimedia engagements, and so on. This aspiration has proved difficult to attain, and the ‘graduate school in the sky’ has proved to be an elusive target. There are key learnings for all participants about the difficulties of moving to this next stage of integration of an international doctoral education community; these are the subject of the critical analysis we have undertaken elsewhere (Grosjean et al., forthcoming). However, some important initiatives were undertaken, connected to the stated intention of the network to build connections between pedagogical work associated with doctoral education and the development of international research collaborations. These included building and expanding a community of potential ‘opponents’ and ‘examiners’ of doctoral dissertations. While this was already under way within the community that came together to form Doctoralnet, it has become possible to develop a much more grounded and systematic approach to this activity, in which the cultural and institutional norms of different doctoral systems can be made more explicit, communicated and negotiated. Some of this sharing of ideas has been realised, bridging the differences in systems for doctoral education in the member universities’ countries. Examples are bilateral agreements about cotutelle enrolment of doctoral students between two of the partner universities, and the engagement of faculty opponents, external examiners and examination committee members between the member universities.

Research and/as pedagogy Intimately related to the sets of strategies outlined above, the activities within Doctoralnet were always underpinned by the stated goals of building and connecting a small, geographically dispersed extended research field and building potential international research collaborations.

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Integral to the realisation of this goal was the intention to build and spark research that created opportunities for student members to work with each other and senior researchers. An important part of the thinking in designing Doctoralnet was that the experienced researchers who designed and initiated the network, and who were already researching together, would work to generate a collaborative international research program in which doctoral students would be enrolled and would work together in a way that integrated their learning and the shared research. Some of the activities and strategies we envisaged, and have begun to undertake to realise this goal, include developing joint grant applications, strategic positioning of research initiatives, and tapping into wider international research networks to secure funding and build sustainability. One new research collaboration, between Linköping University and UTS, in the area of interprofessional education in health, is exploiting the framing of the network, building in spaces and opportunities for doctoral students enrolled to research aspects of the larger program of research, utilising the online technologies for sharing resources and for undertaking developmental discussion forums. While this collaboration is in its early stages, it is a direct realisation of the intentions to integrate research and pedagogical work within Doctoralnet.

Some critical reflections on networked pedagogies It is now commonplace in the policy and development literature on doctoral education to see claims of the benefits for doctoral students in developing and mobilising international networks of peers and other researchers (e.g. Boud and Lee, 2005; Pilbeam and Denyer, 2009; Singh and Cui, 2011). What is less common are accounts of what is involved and what is produced in doctoral networks, in terms of learning, knowledge production and new kinds of global doctoral researchers, although there is a growing literature on what is termed ‘globally networked learning’, or GNL, in the broader higher education arena. Singh and Cui (2011) have reviewed the broader higher education literature on GNL in their account of networked doctoral learning programs, drawing on Mihhailova’s (2006) notions of ‘learning globalisation’. In Singh and Cui’s account, opportunities for networks associated with doctoral education include collaborations among doctoral students from different institutions in different countries working in similar domains, opportunities for transnational knowledge exchange and the possibilities for innovative contributions to knowledge made possible through national boundary crossing and access to wider communities and resources. Beyond this, the opportunities to build doctoral research and learning communities in conjunction with international research collaborations have become possible through the affordances of sophisticated and readily available web technologies. These include the systematic investigation of research questions in global settings, building research-based understandings of the ‘systems and practices of globalising work’ (Farrell and Holkner, 2004: 142), with

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multiple contexts for larger scale data-driven, project-based learning and other affordances not normally associated with locally based doctoral-level research. What remains substantially undocumented in the doctoral education literature are the pedagogical practices of networks, including the particularities of online and internationally networked face-to-face encounters, through conferences and dedicated research meetings and international visits and exchanges. A recent and instructive exception is the work undertaken by Seddon and colleagues (e.g. Seddon, 2010) on the conduct of the EU-funded project on VET development through online professional learning, called CROSSLIFE. This project bears many similarities to the conditions and circumstances of Doctoralnet, and exists in a related research field. Its purpose was to afford participants from six countries, working in a related field, the opportunity to learn together and undertake global research. Students and senior researchers worked together in cross-cultural learning environments that consisted of face-to-face cross-national workshops and online global communications. Through these activities, participants worked with theories, empirical studies and interdisciplinary approaches underpinning research in lifelong learning. They also engaged in reflective learning activities that developed their cultural understandings and awareness in cross-cultural contexts. Despite this, Seddon’s (2010) work is short on detail of the pedagogical work that was enacted within CROSSLIFE, as her concerns lie elsewhere. Seddon discusses the challenges of working in ‘ambiguous boundary zones’, where all participants found themselves engaged in new and challenging relationship work. More generally, there is a lack in the doctoral education literature of materially grounded appraisals of what is required for networked learning in doctoral education to work and be sustainable. By writing this chapter, we hope that we can contribute to knowledge in this area by articulating our pedagogical principles and strategies in relation to key activities. Pedagogical activities of Doctoralnet revealed the culturally embedded nature of knowledge and practices, as well as the taken-for-granted national assumptions and expectations of participants from all participating countries. We encountered unexpected challenges, difficulties and opportunities to learn. The network became, in important ways, for both students and senior researcher members, a kind of ‘contact zone’ (Somerville, 2007) for developing knowledge about international collaboration. We learned to pay explicit attention to the relational dimensions of doing doctoral work, as well as the particular challenges and opportunities of networking across national and linguistic borders. The network built in sustained forms of personal participation – in the seminars, meetings, home pages – chatting and discussing, planning, sharing experiences in a dedicated space about doing doctoral work and becoming a ‘doctor’, and also within all spheres of the network, building personal relationships, building trust and confronting differences. What did we imagine a doctoral student might gain from joining this international research community? First, and most obviously, we imagined that the network would afford students greater opportunities to be in contact with a large

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international research community within their field of interest, thus de-centring the dependence many students experience on their supervisor’s international contacts. As a new student, it is sometimes hard to know how to navigate within the academy and it is even harder to enter the international research arena. In many ways the supervisors could be seen as gatekeepers into a research community. The second pedagogical value we imagined concerned the meeting between students and more experienced and prominent researchers in the field, as well as the meeting with other doctoral students within their field of research. We saw the opportunities of communicating doctoral research projects within a potentially quite large community of researchers through being enrolled in a research network. As we indicated earlier, we developed the pedagogical activities within the network on the assumption that learning how to communicate research to others, from the earliest stages of development, is an important part of doctoral education. One step in communicating within the network would be that students could approach more experienced researchers directly for feedback on their work or to ask advice about literature or methodology. Conversely, we saw the network as an opportunity for more experienced researchers to gain access to upcoming researchers and new research results. The third value we saw concerned the related opportunity for contact with fellow students from all over the world. We assumed that, despite different educational systems and conditions, there would be some issues that all students struggle with concerning the research process itself. This could involve, for example, how to structure the research process, writing academically, writing and presenting papers, presenting at conferences and so on. Here we imagined the network to be a platform where the student could find support and strength in connecting across boundaries with similar issues. These values and assumptions shaped the original design and early development of Doctoralnet. Four years on, and reflecting on what we have experienced and learned, we see that it is not easy to design a network in order to achieve these pedagogical values. We have grappled with issues of how to get the students to feel so included in a research network that they become active participants. This has involved critical questions of how the network is defined, who to include or exclude, and how to focus the areas of research we would be involved in. We have grappled further with communication, through technological and other logistical difficulties. We continue to struggle with ways of structuring the network so students become more involved in communicating online. In particular, Doctoralnet has not yet succeeded in building a platform for sharing courses. We are left with questions of whether a network such as this can work effectively to achieve its principal aims if its key activities are not integrated into the coursework all doctoral students need to undertake – i.e. that Doctoralnet becomes a formal part of a doctoral curriculum. Questions remain for us in considering the implications of this realisation: What does the idea of sharing courses assume? Are we building something coherent together across the differences? How will we know if this is possible or even a good idea?

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What has worked well and is developing actively is the establishment of specific research communities with doctoral students integrated into larger research projects being conducted collaboratively across at least two member universities and where substantial funding is being sought. This pedagogy initiates doctoral students into a ‘horizontal’ collaborative culture with each other and a more vertically integrated culture with senior researchers as researchers rather than, or in addition to, being teachers or coaches or mentors in the way of an apprenticeship. This involves a different set of pedagogical principles that remain to be worked through in the doing of the work. Finally, in the bigger picture, some of us have pedagogical aspirations for this space to be useful in ways that the network has not yet realised – e.g. in sharing resources and courseware. What logistical issues has that thrown up? But also, what pedagogical values sit underneath that idea? Building a field together? Expanding the range of intellectual resources for doctoral students, theoretically, methodologically, substantively? We have seen the network evolve, thrive in certain key areas of activity and not realise its original design aspirations in others. We have seen it metamorphose into new directions and undertakings. A collaboration that began with one set of aims has emerged into another. The changing international policy environments for higher education and research have affected the network in ways not envisaged at the outset; the changing landscape of students, researchers and research opportunities shape what is possible in unpredictable ways; technologies shape activities and relationships, opportunities for sharing knowledge and learning. Doctoralnet thus offers useful insights into pedagogical possibilities within an environment of globally networked research and learning associated with doctoral education.

Note 1 Linköping University, the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, the University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, the University of Technology, Sydney, and later Monash University, Melbourne.

References Bernstein, B. B. (1977) Class, Codes and Control. 2nd edition. Volume 3. Towards a Theory of Educational Transmissions. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Boud, D. and Lee, A. (2005) ‘Peer learning as pedagogic discourse for research education’, Studies in Higher Education, 30 (5): 501–515. Dahlgren, L. O. (ed., 2010) Students as Journeymen Bewteen Communities of Higher Education and Work: A longitudinal European Study of the Transition from Higher Education to Work Life, Saarbrücken: LAP Lambert Academic Publishing AG. Farrell, L. and Holkner, B. (2004) ‘Points of vulnerability and presence: Knowing and learning in globally networked communities’, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 25 (2): 133–144.

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Grosjean, G., Abrandt Dahlgren, M., Lee, A. and Nyström, S. (forthcoming) The Graduate School in the Sky: Constraints and Compliance in an International Doctoral Network. Larsson, S., Boud, D., Abrandt Dahlgren, M., Walters, S. and Sork, T. (2005) ‘Confronting globalisation: Learning from international collaboration’, Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 42 (1): 61–71. Lee, A. (2010) ‘When the article is the dissertation: Pedagogies for a PhD by publication’, in C. Aitchison, B. Kamler and A. Lee (eds) Publishing Pedagogies for the Doctorate and Beyond, London: Routledge, pp. 12–29. Mihhailova, G. (2006) ‘GNL as internationalisation strategy in higher education: Lecturers’ and students’ perspectives’, Baltic Journal of Management, 1 (3): 270–284. Paré, A. (2010) ‘Slow the presses: Concerns about premature publication’, in C. Aitchison, B. Kamler and A. Lee (eds) Publishing Pedagogies for the Doctorate and Beyond, London: Routledge, pp. 30–46. Pilbeam, C. and Denyer, D. (2009) ‘Lone scholar or community member? The role of student networks in doctoral education in a UK management school’, Studies in Higher Education, 34 (3): 301–318. Seddon, T. (2010) ‘Doctoral education in global times: “Scholarly quality” as practical ethics in research’, in P. Thomson and M. Walker (eds) The Routledge Doctoral Supervisor’s Companion: Supporting Effective Research in Education and the Social Sciences, London: Routledge, pp. 508–533. Singh, M. and Cui, G. (2011) ‘Multiple dimensions of globally networked learning: A case study of alternative doctoral education’, Pertanika Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, 19 (2): 535–545. Somerville, M. (2007) ‘Postmodern emergence’, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 20 (2): 225–243.

Chapter 14

Ignorance and pedagogies of intellectual equality Internationalising Australian doctoral education programs and pedagogies through engaging Chinese theoretical tools Michael Singh with Xiafang Chen

Introduction The education of doctoral students in Australia is not without problems (Boud and Lee, 2005; Cuthbert and Spark, 2008); new challenges have arisen in the teaching of international doctoral students from countries throughout Asia (Kim, 2007; McClure, 2007). The internationalisation of research education in Australian universities provides a focus for debating the definition, determination, legitimation and control of worthwhile theoretical knowledge and what this means for the marginalisation of theories from the Asian countries where it recruits the majority of its international students (Edwards et al., 2003). While ‘Western’ cultural, economic and social theories dominate research education in the humanities and social sciences (Lyotard, 1984; OECD, 2004), the marginalisation of ‘non-Western’ theories as incommensurable with Australian doctoral education is being questioned (Alatas, 2006; Connell, 2007). Australian research educators, in the humanities and social sciences at least, are being challenged to think past American, British, French and German theories as a basis for internationalising doctoral education. This entails exploring the historical flows of knowledge from East to West, from South to North, and what this has meant for the emergence of ‘Western’ theories (Clarke, 1997; Hobson, 2004; Lyons, 2009), in fields such as (Dutch) medicine and science (Cook, 2007) and (French) cultural theories (Wolin, 2010). Accordingly, Bilgin’s (2008) argument suggests the need for the pedagogical examination of the ‘nonWestern’ concepts that are already built into ‘Western’ theories, given that the former have contributed to the development of the latter. However, the internationalisation of doctoral education in countries such as Australia has produced little intellectual engagement with ‘non-Western theories’. This is because, as Acharya and Buzan (2007) argue, there is a belief that ‘Western theories’ have discovered the right path to understanding, precluding the need for engaging non-Western theoretical tools. Moreover, Asian scholarship is seen as lagging behind the West in developing theories, a view that accords with the assumption of ‘teleological Westernisation’ (Bilgin, 2008) driving the

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internationalisation of Australian doctoral education. Further, the hegemony of Western theories discourages theoretical formulations by others, especially as Asian theorists have to deal with a lack of resources and local/global conditions that discriminate against their production of theory (Qin, 2007). However, there are theoretical resources available throughout Asia that could provide conceptual tools for internationalising Australian research education. For instance, Inoguchi (2007) argues for the wider use of Japanese theories of Nishida (innate constructivism), Tabata (presupposition of the natural freedom of individuals) and Hirano (regional integration and state sovereignty). Likewise, Qin (2007) argues that the Tianxia (worldview) of the Tributary System, the radical revolutionary thinking of the past two centuries, and the post-1978 ‘open door’ reforms provide China with ideational resources for theorising national identity vis-à-vis internationalisation. Because of the educational cultures involved and the knowledge at stake, the internationalisation of doctoral education programs and pedagogies is complicated (Singh and Han, 2010a, 2010b). Green (2005) suggests the need to move beyond privatised supervisory practices of ‘cool neglect’, ‘magisterial disdain’, ‘detached indifference’ and ‘corridor supervisory greetings’. The one-on-one supervisory model, fixed linear research designs leading to a thesis, and cohort models of doctoral supervision are contested (Harman, 2003). The contested quality of these supervisory practices raises concerns about the adequacy of the education of international doctoral students. Some problems of educating international doctoral students from Asian countries may be minimised through intentional, systematic pedagogies (Adams, 2004; Major, 2005). These enhance their capabilities for strategic adaptation or Westernisation while studying abroad (Kettle, 2005; Skyrme, 2007). This chapter addresses the problem of little being known about what doctoral education programs and pedagogies might do to increase Australia’s research-based engagement with, and capacity to learn from, Chinese theories, and whether this might enhance the capabilities of these international doctoral students for scholarly argumentation and theorising. More research is needed into the pedagogies Anglophone research educators in Australia might use to engage these students in using their multilingual competence and Chinese theoretical tools in their research. This chapter begins by exploring some of the perplexities involved in the internationalisation of Australian doctoral education programs and pedagogies.

Perplexities of internationalising Australian doctoral education There are gaps between the idea of internationalising Australian university curricula and the doctoral education of international research students from China. To bridge discontinuities between Chinese theories and those used in Australia, it might be possible to draw upon the Jewish intellectual tradition of critical pedagogy, which advocates making educational connections with those voices that are part of students’ worlds (Brookfield, 2005; Darder et al., 2003; Kincheloe,

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2008; ). However, critical pedagogy has marginalised educational engagement with theories from diverse non-Western intellectual cultures (Denzin et al., 2008). The literature points to the marginalisation of the theoretical resources of Chinese students in universities in countries such as Australia. Typically, the marginalisation of the intellectual resources of international doctoral students from China begins with the complexities of negotiating with their names. Edwards (2006) reports that Chinese students have a multifarious array of strategic reasons for adopting English names, including being told their Chinese names are too difficult to remember. Academics change students’ names so their classrooms and students are ‘English’. While many Chinese students are seen to comply with, or have an investment in, adopting an English name, others resist: ‘I don’t need an English name in China’, to ‘it’s too confusing’, to ‘my parents gave me that name’, to ‘I like my own name’, to a simple ‘why should I?’ (Edwards, 2006: 99). When Xiafang (Shar-fong) Chen, this chapter’s co-author, was asked which name she preferred, Xiafang explained she would use an English name because her given name was much too difficult for an English speaker to pronounce. When asked which she preferred to use, she said Xiafang. When asked, she agreed to teach me and colleagues how to pronounce her name which we all now use. The anglicising of Chinese students’ names is a ‘missionary language project’ (Pennycook and Coutand-Marin, 2003), which some find disturbing because it suggests the insignificance of Chinese knowledge. Marginalisation of Chinese students’ intellectual resources includes rejecting their bilingual capabilities. While Australian universities make claims to being liberal, emancipatory and empowering, Pavlenko (2003) reports that English is portrayed as the only legitimate academic language, and that White, middle-class Anglophone speakers are its legitimate owners. International doctoral students sense that their English language proficiency is forever being judged as deficient, resulting in ‘a profound loss of confidence’, a sense of being ‘not worthy of attention’ and leading to an ‘inferiority complex’ (Pavlenko, 2003: 258, 264). Denied their bilingual capabilities, they take on, or have imposed on themselves, a neverending quest, for a level of English language proficiency they find embarrassingly elusive: ‘In this country, if you do not speak English “properly”, you are less than a human being’ (Pavlenko, 2003: 258). In Australian universities, there is little educational engagement with the experiential knowledge of international students from China, or the intellectual resources of their homeland (Zhou et al., 2005). There is indifference and a lack of interest in Chinese concepts among Australian students and/or academics, because they are rated as second class. Some Chinese students doubt the value and relevance of Chinese theories to Australian education and research. While some take every chance to share such knowledge, many feel it is a burden. Any possibility that doctoral students from China might have a heritage of academic disputation is also denied, along with the idea that they and their local peers might benefit from the explicit teaching of scholarly argumentation (Ninnes et al., 1999). International students from China are told that they are unable to engage

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in scholarly disputation and that critique is absent from their work (Andrews, 2007; Cooper, 2004; Grimshaw, 2007). Expected to be already proficient at scholarly argumentation (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992), these doctoral students are not taught how to produce arguments, let alone how to use Chinese metaphors or to engage Chinese scholarly concepts (Graham, 1986; Peterson, 1979). Characterising such universities as ‘elitist’, Andrews (2007: 3) says they assume ‘that immersion in a discipline will equip [students] with the argumentative skills and critical thought’. These gaps in internationalising Australian research education result in the marginalisation of Chinese theoretical tools – conceptual categories, metaphors and diagrams (Turner, 2010). Ryan and Louie (2007: 406, 407) contend that this is due to Australian academics’ ignorance, that is, their ‘lack of training in teaching students from different cultural backgrounds, [and] stereotyped, outdated and inappropriate views of the “Asian learner”’. Alternatively, the educational challenges Chinese doctoral students confront are said to be determined by China’s supposedly arcane culture and outdated traditions (Andrews, 2007; Zhou et al., 2005). However, these explanations deflect attention from the problems of doctoral education in Australia engaging with, and learning from, Chinese theories. These doctoral students’ research education is weighed down by the marginalisation of Chinese theoretical tools. How are Anglophone research educators to deal with gaps in efforts to internationalise doctoral education in Australia so that international doctoral students from Asia can use non-Western metaphors to extend their argumentative capabilities and make novel theoretical contributions to knowledge? One possibility is to resign ourselves to accepting Western intellectual hegemony (Lyotard, 1984; OECD, 2004) as unavoidable, because we have no way of knowing all that is to be known of non-Western theories. Kincheloe (2008: 149) claims that some in the United States are ‘working to reclaim the inherent superiority of the West, its imperialist aspirations, and Eurocentric ways of producing knowledge’. Thus, the problem may be that some Anglophone doctoral educators have a limited desire for accessing non-Western theories or having international doctoral students do so. Others may not know how to do so (Alatas, 2006; Connell, 2007). For the latter, the question is: What are the possibilities for incorporating the non-Western theoretical tools (Acharya and Buzan, 2007; Inoguchi, 2007; Qin, 2007) that international doctoral students know or can find out – but we do not and cannot – as part of Australian doctoral education programs and pedagogies? A key problem here is that not knowing – ignorance – has negative connotations. Ignorance is considered the opposite of, and an obstacle to, knowledge. Commonly, ignorance refers to an absence of knowledge and carries moral overtones of being ill bred or narrow-minded (Ungar, 2008). When ignorance is a synonym for stupidity, it is rightly regarded as an insult. As academics we also worry about exposing our struggles with what we do not know. It is difficult to reveal our knowledge gaps to students (Bell et al., 2003). This moral imperative is a pedagogical driver for having the light of knowledge triumph over sinister and harmful ignorance (Kerwin, 1993). Considered as warring dualities,

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ignorance is feared, while knowledge symbolises radiance, advancement and progress (Vitek and Jackson, 2008). The ignorance/knowledge relationship is seen as moving from a ‘reducible evil in an indefinite progression toward good’ (Rancière, 1991: 119). The world of international education is supposedly divided between ‘the knowing and the ignorant, the mature and the unformed, the capable and the incapable, [such that] never will the “developing” nations catch up with the enlightened nations’ (Ross, 1991: xx, xxi). Likewise, Silin (1995: 131) explains that the ‘world is divided into two camps: the knowing and ignorant, developed and undeveloped, capable and incapable’. This negative view of ignorance sees international doctoral students from Asia as less capable than are their local peers of producing the scholarly arguments and theorising that Australian universities demand of them. However, there is a positive side to ignorance. Ignorance is inescapably tied to knowledge production, being unearthed in any field where knowledge is present: ‘to inquire, we must face what we do not know. If we knew all, we would not need to learn. There would be no inquiry … Awareness of ignorance occasions inquiry, and fuels it’ (Kerwin, 1993: 172, 175). As researchers, we find that, as we investigate, the ground between what is known and unknown shifts. Research is a journey toward knowledge that starts with the unknown. Researchers proceed from terra incognita with the desire to know, moving from acknowledged ignorance, identified as gaps in current knowledge. This ignorance generates the production of new knowledge that, in turn, identifies new sites of ignorance, typically expressed as recommendations for further research. In so far as researchbased knowledge is tentative, uncertain and contested, there can be no divide drawn between knowledge and ignorance in engaged research education.

An engaged research education program This chapter arises from a longitudinal study of an engaged doctoral education program’s contribution to the development of Chinese doctoral students’ capabilities for scholarly argumentation and theorising through the incorporation of Chinese metaphors in their theses (Singh, 2009). This engaged doctoral education program, the focus of this study, goes beyond the limitations of both the ‘apprentice master’ and ‘collaborative cohort’ models of supervision (Burnett, 1999). First, it incorporates structured one-on-one tutorials, inter-university video-conferencing, research seminars and research training workshops focusing on intercultural language teaching and learning, research methods, research literacy and Australia/China theoretical dialogues. These are explicitly designed and purposively delivered to produce the research capabilities and outcomes required by university management. Teams of doctoral students in the program share a common research focus with their research educators, and where appropriate collectively create a large-scale evidentiary archive available for analysis by all. Research dissemination capabilities are developed through co-authoring of refereed publications by graduates and their research educators (Kamler and

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Thomson, 2006, 2008; see, for example, Singh and Guo, 2008, 2010). Related research and teaching/learning projects are developed as part of this program. Second, this engaged doctoral education program is anchored by, and engages, theoretical knowledge about Australia’s education system from the teaching profession, university management and evidence-driven, theoretically informed teacher research. The program makes explicit these distinct forms of knowledge the doctoral students have to engage with as part of their research education. Their research education focuses on how these different kinds of theories might be ‘re-contextualised’ (Bernstein, 1996) to produce research-based knowledge. Rather than seeking to reconcile the divisions among these different forms of theoretical knowledge, the students explore and clarify the tensions among them. Third, this engaged doctoral education program focuses on affecting the transnational exchange of theoretical tools through three key channels (OECD, 2004). The program involves strategic alliances between a University for a Western education in Sydney (Australia), Australian education authorities, and universities and education authorities in China. Here, the expression ‘a University for a Western education in Sydney’ points to the situation where many education, humanities and social science faculties in Australian universities provide programs that are largely grounded in Euro-American theories. Further, the program recruits talented doctoral students from China, most with English language proficiency well above the minimum entry standard. Here, it should be noted that at some Australian universities there is ‘an avoidance of international students and a preference for local Australian, or at least native English-speaking, candidates’ (Neumann, 2007: 469). In addition, this program explicitly addresses the challenges of engaging non-Western theoretical resources by (a) presupposing that China’s intellectual culture offers credible and valuable conceptual analytics and (b) expecting these doctoral students can verify the assumption that they have the capabilities to use Chinese metaphors to critically analyse their data about Australian education. There are several reasons for selecting Chinese doctoral students as participants in this program. In 2010, 152,826 (27.2 per cent) of Australia’s international students (n = 561,269) were from China, triple the figure of 48,088 eight years previously (AEI, 2010). In 2002, there were 806 students from Asia doing research degrees, increasing to 1,011 in 2007. Of these, 176 doctoral students were from China in 2002, and in 2007, it was 326 (AEI, 2007). Compared with other OECD countries, a ‘relatively low proportion of Australia’s higher degree students are international students’ (Bradley, 2008: 12). The 36 research students who have participated in this program to date are all researching Australian education. In Australia, where most ‘international students are concentrated in a narrow range of subject fields’ (Bradley, 2008: 12), this is a small counter to the risks this presents. This is important given that ‘67 per cent of the Chinese student cohort of 58,588 students [in 2007 were] undertaking degrees’ in management and commerce disciplines, while ‘only 3.6 per cent [of international students were] undertaking a research higher degree’ (Bradley, 2008: 92, 93). As indicated in the next section, this engaged doctoral education program creates explicit opportunities for doctoral students to use Chinese metaphors in their research.

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Engaging Chinese metaphors by ignoring intellectual inequality Through the exchange of metaphors used in China and Australia, this engaged doctoral education program is contributing to possibilities for theoretically based intellectual connections between these two countries. The challenge is how to prepare educational researchers in the twenty-first century for much-needed intellectual dialogues between the ‘East’ and ‘West’, as much as ‘North’ and ‘South’. However, as monolingual, Anglophone research educators, we are not literate in Chinese. Pedagogically, we operate from a position of ignorance – ignorance of intellectual inequality, and we invite our Chinese research students to verify our presumption that there are Chinese metaphors that they can identify and use in analysing evidence about Australian education (Singh and Fu, 2008a, 2008b). In this program, the pedagogical relationship between ignorance and knowledge is symbiotic, rather than being antagonistic. ‘Knowing’ and ‘not knowing’ are not irreconcilable opposites, but necessarily intermingle productively. Our ignorance of intellectual inequality – that we ignore claims these students are uncritical, passive rote learners (Ninnes et al., 1999) – is integral to these doctoral students’ research education and the use of Chinese theoretical tools in their research. Through pedagogies of intellectual equality we work to internationalise this research education program through having our students use theoretical tools available in China and Australia. Below is a worked example that illustrates the foregoing theoretical ideas. In this instance, Xiafang (Shar-fong) Chen responded to my presupposition that she could identify a Chinese metaphor for use in the conceptual analysis of leadership. Her doctoral research explored the leadership operating at different organisational levels and across the dissimilar systems and through various industry partnerships to implement vocational education and training in schools (VETiS) so as to reform Senior Secondary (Years 10–12) in Queensland (Australia). Ostensibly, the Queensland Government promoted its reform of Senior Secondary as a way to address the problem of young people’s disengagement from school-based learning, as much as the complex transitions in the local/global economy in which China is hugely important (Queensland Government, 2002). A key claim made by the Government driving these reforms was that they offered mechanisms ‘by which alienated young people could be assimilated into the emerging patterns of education, training, work and social life’ (Harreveld and Singh, 2007: 13). The analytics of this particular instance of pedagogies of intellectual equality, as demonstrated below, are challenge, conceptualise, contextualise and connect (Singh, 2009, 2010). This scaffold can be combined and elaborated in ways appropriate to the analytical task at hand. Together we generated the following jointly authored text. This process entailed five rounds of extensive corrective feedback, including correcting the register in which the text was written, making suggestions for its restructuring and advising on the inclusion of quotations from the relevant literature. As explained below, Ms Chen created the concept of

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lì tıˇ leadership for her analytical task (Chen, 2011). To think of ignorance other than negatively does seem strange. However, the conceptual commentary interrupts this familiar disposition by considering the generative potential of ignoring inegalitarian claims that Chinese students and China’s intellectual culture cannot provide theories for internationalising Australian doctoral education programs and pedagogies.

Challenge The first analytics entailed indentifying and then questioning Western conceptual categories using a Chinese metaphor: Queensland’s education and training reforms involve leaders from different organisational levels working together across different systems with various industry partners. For instance, State-level leaders from the Queensland Department of Education and Training work with regional directors, district directors, principals, heads of school departments, vocational teachers, school VETiS coordinators, and regional advisors to bring about reforms to Senior Secondary. In addition, there are also Catholic and independent schools including senior technical colleges. Moreover, leaders from registered training organisations, non-government service agencies and local government agencies are also involved. Thus, these reforms involve leaders from schools, industries, colleges of Technical and Further Education (TAFE) and universities, local community agencies and government organisations. In Gladstone (Queensland), for example, schools formed partnerships with multinational corporations (NRG and Rio Tinto) to establish the Power House Project. The industry provides funding every three years and a site where teachers work with young adults, preparing them for entry into the industry as apprentices. This school/industry partnership provides these young adults with work experience, and access to decent employment opportunities should they elect to pursue this option. Alternatively, the program gives them credit towards university studies, so they can pursue this option if they so choose. Such partnerships were envisaged as part of the Queensland Government’s reforms: We are building an unprecedented partnership between parents, students, state schools, non-state schools, TAFE, training providers, the Queensland Studies Authority, community organisations, universities, and employers to trial and implement the package of reforms outlined in this paper. (Queensland Government, 2002: 6) How is leadership to be interpreted in this context? Fullan’s (2003, 2005) concept of ‘tri-level leadership’ might be used to understand the leadership required to negotiate, manage and engage partnerships for making Queensland’s reforms

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to Senior Secondary work. According to this idea, large-scale educational reforms require tri-level leadership, that is, the interlinking of educational leadership at the school, district/regional and system levels. The claim is that educational reforms require changes within each of three levels and across their relationships … we need dramatically more intensive interaction within schools, across schools within districts, across districts, and between districts and the state. (Fullan, 2003: 39–40) The argument for ‘tri-level leadership’ is that leaders at each level within a given educational authority have to work at increasing interactions at their own level and to increase the exchange of theoretical knowledge across levels within the organisational hierarchy. Accordingly, the claim is ‘we need a system laced with leaders who are trained to think in bigger terms and to act in ways that affect larger parts of the system as a whole: the new theoreticians’ (Fullan, 2005: 27). However, this concept of tri-level leadership is narrowly focused on knowledge exchange within a single state bureaucracy. It dwells on a given organisation’s own hierarchy, and assumes that leaders work within a closed, three-tiered organisation. Queensland’s reforms to Senior Secondary deliberately promoted intraorganisational and inter-organisational partnerships. This means that the leadership that was required to effect these complex reforms involved more than tri-level leadership. Such complexity can be better understood using the Chinese concept of 立体, lì tıˇ leadership. This novel concept and why it is more useful than Fullan’s (2005) idea of tri-level leadership are discussed below. Pedagogically, ignorance of intellectual inequality can energise the internationalisation of research education, with the field of the known and unknown shifting as a result of Australian academics pressing Chinese research students to verify the assumption that Chinese metaphors offer potentially useful theoretical tools. Research of all kinds not only contributes new knowledge but it also discloses new areas of ignorance (Vitek and Jackson, 2008). Doctoral research education raises previously unexpected and unanticipated questions about intellectual equality. For instance, why do pedagogies that operate on the basis of Chinese students being incapable of scholarly argumentation result in the marginalisation, if not exclusion, of Chinese theoretical tools (Zhou et al., 2005)? Do pedagogies of intellectual equality, which presuppose and seek to verify grounds for the inclusion of non-Western theories, make a difference?

Conceptualise The second analytics is concerned with taking the Chinese metaphor 立体, lì tıˇ leadership, and expressing it in terms of an analytical concept. Minimally this involves providing a literal translation of the Chinese characters.

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The word 立体 in simplified (short form) Chinese characters or 立體 in traditional (long form) Chinese characters is composed of two Chinese characters (hànzì). In Chinese pı¯nyı¯n (Roman script) these characters are written as lì tıˇ, and pronounced as lèe teˇe. The first character 立,lì, literally means ‘stand’ (verb) or ‘upright’ (modifier), and its alternative meanings include ‘stand up, set up, exist’. The second character 体(體), tıˇ, literally means ‘body’ or ‘part of body’, while it also has other meanings such as ‘substance, style, form, typeface, aspect, system, personally do or experience something, put oneself in another’s position, be considerate’ (China Social Science Academy Language Research Institute Dictionary Department, 1995). The two characters that form lì tıˇ are themselves separate words. However, when they are combined, they form a new word, either 立体 (simplified) or 立體 (traditional). Lì tıˇ literally means standing or upright body. Below, the context in which this concept is used in China is explained. Here we see the power relations between Australian research educators and nonChinese research students shift further because the latter know or can access metaphors from their homeland while the former knows nothing of Chinese metaphors, conceptual categories or diagrams (Turner, 2010). That is to say, in this aspect at least, the increase in the doctoral students’ knowledge comes with an ‘undertow of ignorance’ (Ungar, 2008: 301) on the part of their Australian educators. As Australian research educators gain knowledge of some Chinese theoretical tools through each contribution by their Chinese research students, ‘the abyss of ignorance is dug again; [together they fill] it in before digging another’ (Rancière, 1991: 21). There are more unknown than is known.

Contextualise Pedagogies of intellectual equality propel purposive, systematic research education; assist in the deepening and extending of Chinese research students’ capabilities for scholarly argumentation and theorising; and identify non-Western theoretical tools for engaging in East/West, South/North intellectual dialogues. The third analytics involves providing contextual knowledge, which explains the metaphor’s history and current uses in China. The concept lì tıˇ is used in China to refer to a substance that has length, width and thickness, as in lì tıˇ tú xíng (a solid figure); or lì tıˇ jıˇ hé (solid geometrical body); lì tıˇ zhàn zhe¯ng (triphibious warfare); and lì tıˇ she¯ng chàng piàn (stereo record) (China Social Science Academy Language Research Institute Dictionary Department, 1995). Lì tıˇ ca ¯ng chuˇ xì toˇng is used to refer to an automatic three-dimensional storage system, while lì tıˇ lü huà refers to comprehensive greening. Thus, it can be seen that in China lì tıˇ is used to discuss multi-dimensional objects, as opposed to a hierarchically organised phenomenon. Lì tıˇ names phenomena that have multiple aspects, each of which may

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have different dimensions. With respect to the reform of Senior Secondary in Queensland, the concept of lì tıˇ leadership provides a more meaningful interpretation of the complexity involved than does Fullan’s (2003, 2005) tri-level leadership. This is explained in the following section. Ignorance of intellectual inequality could play a significant role in internationalising research education in Australia, which, like all research projects, starting with the unknown, with ignorance and inquisitiveness. The capability of Australian research educators to presuppose the existence of Chinese theoretical tools for use in the analysis of Australian education and to pose fertile questions for their Chinese doctoral students is a critical and creative pedagogy for doctoral research education. Without pedagogies of intellectual equality, there would be no ‘problems to solve, riddles to guess, or new worlds to discover, [life] could not possibly be worth living, since it would be a life devoid of challenges for the seekers of knowledge’ (Reginster, 2006: 240).

Connect A fourth analytics invites critical reflections on the making of theoretical connections between China and Australia by showing how Chinese metaphors can offer a useful, if not better, understanding of the issue under investigation, and reflecting upon the importance of engaging with, and learning from, Chinese theoretical tools. Importantly, it is at this stage that the assertions, assumptions and rules governing these claims on Chinese concepts may be subjected to critical scrutiny, thereby making them a focus for international scholarly disputation. Lì tıˇ leadership is multi-dimensional and not merely multi-level or even distributed. Further, lì tıˇ leadership functions across different dimensions of different partners and stakeholders at different levels, all of which are interwoven. Moreover, lì tıˇ leadership recognises the breaks or interruptions in the boundaries of the fields in which leaders from different systems and sectors operate. Lì tıˇ leadership is a concept that provides a more useful insight into leadership in the context of the complex education and training reforms in Senior Secondary than does Fullan’s (2003, 2005) tri-level leadership (see Figure 14.1). When coming to Australia, I fully expected and wanted to receive a ‘Western’ doctoral education in ‘Western theories’. However, my Australian doctoral educator encouraged me to make an advantage of my knowledge of, and ability to access, Chinese metaphors. I was encouraged to engage Chinese conceptual tools with ‘Western theories’ to establish whether it is possible to create a theoretical dialogue between Australia and China, and to provide a basis for innovative intellectual engagement with Chinese theories. Internationalising doctoral education is not just about Western universities

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Universities Technical college

Federal/ national leaders

Industry A

Training organisation

State leaders Industry B

Community committees

Regional/ district leaders

Reform coordinators

Local governments Industry C

Parents School leaders

Consulting agencies

Figure 14.1 Lì tıˇ leadership in Queensland’s reforms to Senior Secondary school.

giving ‘Western theories’ to non-Western students. It is rather an approach to education that combines non-Western and Western intellectual heritages and knowledge. Internationalising doctoral education is not just about the blending of Chinese and Western concepts, it is integral to innovative ways of doing doctoral education whereby both parties learn from each other. The world’s current knowledge base is the result of intellectual exchanges among different cultures, nations and countries throughout human history (Clarke, 1997; Cook, 2007; Hobson, 2004; Lyons, 2009; Wolin, 2010). Non-Western and Western theories are composed of ideas from the world’s different intellectual heritages and educational cultures (Acharya and Buzan, 2007). This inter-cultural communication and exchange of theories continues to be important for the prosperity of the world and the intellectual engagement of the East/West, North/ South, Western/non-Western worlds (Lyotard, 1984; OECD, 2004). These

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intellectual connections promote the exchange of theoretical knowledge and, thus, novel contributions to knowledge (Singh, 2010). The Australian policy of treating tertiary education as an export industry promotes and increases the enrolment of international doctoral students from Asia (Bradley, 2008). This cohort of research students brings to Australia their own theoretical knowledge, creating the as-yet unrealised potential for Australia to engage and learn from Asia’s diverse and rich intellectual heritage. Through intellectually engaging research education programs and pedagogies, it is possible for them to exchange analytical concepts and to make intellectual connections between Western and non-Western theories (Inoguchi, 2007; Qin, 2007). To bring a new awareness to matters of doctoral pedagogy and international students, I have ignored claims to the intellectual incapacity of students from Asia (Ninnes et al., 1999) to encourage my doctoral student, Ms Xiafang Chen, to verify my presupposition that Chinese metaphors are useful tools for conceptual analysis and that she can make a scholarly argument using them. Given that research with this focus on East/West, China/Australia theoretical dialogues is noticeably absent from the literature on doctoral education, this research represents a small but nonetheless significant contribution to advancement of knowledge about internationalising doctoral programs and pedagogies. Moreover, the foregoing analysis of pedagogies of intellectual equality has been situated within a theoretical framing of how to conceptualise doctoral programs in a way that sees ignorance of intellectual inequality related to knowledge production, disputation and theorising.

Internationalising education through pedagogies of intellectual equality This chapter has argued that ignoring intellectual inequality and presupposing intellectual equality intermingle productively in research education. Ignorance, or the gaps in current theoretical knowledge, stimulates the production of original knowledge, that, in turn, creates new sites of ignorance or recommendations for further research. Given that research contributes to new theoretical knowledge, key questions are: Whose analytical concepts contribute to the research? To whose theories does this research contribute? Pedagogically intellectual equality may enable Anglophone, Australian research educators who have little knowledge of non-Western metaphors, conceptual categories or theories to have international doctoral candidates from Asian countries relate these to the Western theories they are researching. Engaged doctoral education programs and pedagogies can bring non-Western theories into international scholarly debates. The intellectual heritage of argumentation and conceptual tools in non-Western countries can be used for reconceptualising the internationalisation of doctoral education programs and pedagogies. Australian research educators can position international doctoral students as intellectual agents able to constructively deploy non-Western metaphors

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in making original conceptual contributions to research. With this scholarly heritage, international doctoral students can use non-Western theoretical tools to critically scrutinise Western knowledge for instances of separatism or insularity, as much as for its heterogeneity and openness. Through using non-Western metaphors, international doctoral students can critique Western constructions of non-Western theories, and of students from Asia as curatorial objects, exotica or burdens on the West, while extending their capabilities for scholarly disputation. In Ms Chen’s future work as an educator, she can bring to bear this knowledge and she can use pedagogies of intellectual equality with her students, presupposing that their intellectual cultures offer useful conceptual tools, and work with them to verify the assumption that they have the capabilities to use these metaphors argumentatively. This chapter has pointed to the multi-competence of international doctoral students from China as users of multiple languages. In this study, accessing Chinese conceptual tools for research points to possibilities for internationalising Australian doctoral education programs and pedagogies, and perhaps elsewhere. Pedagogically, positioning these doctoral students as bilingual and as users of diverse communicative repertoires provides a means for allowing them to contribute original knowledge. Pedagogies of intellectual equality encourage doctoral students’ flexible, dynamic and malleable uses of theoretical tools and argumentative capabilities. The interactions between Western and non-Western conceptual tools facilitated by these pedagogies see no end point to international doctoral students’ contributions to internationalising education.

Acknowledgement This research is supported by the Australian Research Council through its Discovery (DP0988108) and Linkage Projects (LP0777922).

References Acharya, A. and Buzan, B. (2007) ‘Why is there no non-Western international relations theory?’, International Relations of the Asia Pacific, 7 (3): 287–312. Adams, K. (2004) ‘Modelling success’, Higher Education Research and Development, 23 (2): 115–130. AEI (Australian Educational International) (2007), Year 2006 Indicator Data. Retrieved 16 January 2008, from: http://221.121.69.112/AEI/Statistics/ StudentEnrolmentAndVisaStatistics/2007/2007_Annual.htm. AEI (Australian Educational International) (2010), Monthly summary of international student enrolment data – Australia – YTD August 2010. Retrieved 24 September 2010, from: http://221.121.69.112/AEI/Statistics/StudentEnrolmentAndVisa Statistics/2010/Default.htm. Alatas, S. (2006) Alternative Discourses in Asian Social Science. New Delhi: Sage.

Internationalising Australian doctoral education programs and pedagogies 201 Andrews, R. (2007) ‘Argumentation, critical thinking and the postgraduate dissertation’, Education Review, 59 (1): 1–18. Bell, L., Washington, S., Weinstein, G. and Love, B. (2003) ‘Knowing ourselves as instructors’, in A. Darder, M. Baltodano and R. Torres (eds), The Critical Pedagogy Reader (pp. 464–478). New York: Routledge Falmer. Bernstein, B. (1996) Pedagogy, Symbolic Control and Identity. London: Taylor & Francis. Bilgin, P. (2008) ‘Thinking past “Western” IR?’, Third World Quarterly, 29 (1): 5–23. Boud, D. and Lee, A. (2005) ‘ “Peer learning” as pedagogic discourse for research education’, Studies in Higher Education, 30 (5): 501–516. Bourdieu, P. and Wacquant, L. (1992) An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Bradley, D. (Chair) (2008) Review of Australian Higher Education. Canberra: Australian Government. Brookfield, S. (2005) The Power of Critical Theory. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Burnett, P. (1999) ‘The supervision of doctoral dissertations using a collaborative cohort model’, Counselor Education and Supervision, 39 (1): 46–52. Chen, X. (2011) 'Leadership for the reform of senior secondary learning: a case study of Queensland’s vocational education and training in schools’. Unpuplished doctoral thesis, University of Western Sydney, Australia. China Social Science Academy Language Research Institute Dictionary Department (ed.) (1995) Xiàn dài hàn yuˇ héng yuˇ cídiaˇn (xiu ¯ dìng beˇn). Beijing: Sha¯ng wù yìn shu¯ guaˇn (The Commercial Press). Clarke, J. (1997) Oriental Enlightenment. London: Routledge. Connell, R. (2007) Southern Theory. Crows Nest (NSW): Allen & Unwin. Cook, H. (2007) Matters of Exchange. New Haven: Yale University Press. Cooper, B. (2004) ‘The enigma of the Chinese learner’, Accounting Education, 13 (3): 289–310. Cuthbert, D. and Spark, C. (2008) ‘Getting a GRiP’, Studies in Higher Education, 33 (1): 77–88. Darder, A., Baltodano, M. and Torres, R. (eds) (2003) The Critical Pedagogy Reader. New York: RoutledgeFalmer. Denzin, N., Lincoln, Y. and Smith, T. (eds) (2008) Handbook of Critical and Indigenous Methodologies. Los Angeles: Sage. Edwards, R. (2006) ‘What’s in a name?’, Language, Culture and Curriculum, 19 (1): 90–103. Edwards, R., Crosling, G., Petrovic-Lazarovic, S. and O’Neill, P. (2003) ‘Internationalisation of business education’, Higher Education Research and Development, 22 (2): 183–192. Fullan, M. (2003) Change Forces with a Vengeance. London: RoutledgeFalmer. Fullan, M. (2005) Leadership and Sustainability. Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press. Graham, A. (1986) ‘The disputation of Kung-sun Lung as argument about part and whole’, Philosophy East and West, 36 (2): 89–106. Green, B. (2005) ‘Unfinished business’, Higher Education Research and Development, 24 (2): 151–163. Grimshaw, T. (2007) ‘Problematizing the construct of “the Chinese learner”’, Education Studies, 33 (3): 299–311.

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Harman, G. (2003) ‘International PhD students in Australian universities’, International Journal of Education Development, 23 (3): 339–351. Harreveld, B. and Singh, M. (2007) The Journey So Far in the Senior Phase of Learning. Brisbane: Queensland Department of Education, Training and the Arts. Hobson, J. (2004) The Eastern Origins of Western Civilisation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Inoguchi, T. (2007) ‘Are there any theories of international relations in Japan?’, International Relations of the Asia Pacific, 7 (3): 369–390. Kamler, B. and Thomson, P. (2006) Helping Doctoral Students Write. Oxon: Routledge. Kamler, B. and Thomson, P. (2008) ‘The failure of dissertation advice books’, Educational Researcher, 37 (8): 507–514. Kerwin, A. (1993) ‘None too solid’, Science Communication, 15 (2): 166–185. Kettle, M. (2005) ‘Agency as discursive practice’, Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 25 (1): 45–60. Kim, Y. (2007) ‘Difficulties in quality doctoral academic advising’, Journal of Research in International Education, 6 (2): 171–193. Kincheloe, J. (2008) Critical Pedagogy Primer (2nd ed.). New York: Peter Lang. Lyons, J. (2009) The House of Wisdom. London: Bloomsbury. Lyotard, J. (1984) The Postmodern Condition. Manchester: Manchester University Press. McClure, J. (2007) ‘International graduates’ cross-cultural adjustment’, Teaching in Higher Education, 12 (2): 199–217. Major, E. (2005) ‘Co-national support, cultural therapy, and the adjustment of Asian students to an English-speaking university culture’, International Education Journal, 6 (1): 84–95. Neumann, R. (2007) ‘Policy and practice in doctoral education’, Studies in Higher Education, 32 (4): 459–473. Ninnes, P., Aitchison, C. and Kalos, S. (1999) ‘Challenges to stereotypes of international students’ prior educational experience’, Higher Education Research and Development, 18 (3): 323–342. OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) (2004) Global Knowledge Flows and Economic Development. Paris: OECD. Pavlenko, A. (2003) ‘I never knew I was a bilingual’, Journal of Language, Identity and Education, 2 (4): 251–268. Pennycook, A. and Coutand-Marin, S. (2003) ‘Teaching English as a missionary language’, Discourse, 24 (3): 337–353. Peterson, W. (1979) ‘The grounds of Mencius’ argument’, Philosophy East and West, 29 (3): 307–321. Qin, Y. (2007) ‘Why is there no Chinese international relations theory?’, International Relations of the Asia Pacific, 7 (3): 313–340. Queensland Government (2002) Education and Training Reforms for the Future. Brisbane: The Department of Education, Training and the Arts. Rancière, J. (1991) The Ignorant Schoolmaster. San Francisco: Stanford University Press. Reginster, B. (2006) The Affirmation of Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Internationalising Australian doctoral education programs and pedagogies 203 Ross, K. (1991) ‘Translator’s introduction’, in J. Rancière (1991), The Ignorant Schoolmaster. San Francisco: Stanford University Press, pp. vii–xxii. Ryan, J. and Louie, K. (2007) ‘False dichotomy?’, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 39 (4): 404–417. Silin, J. (1995) Sex, Death, and the Education of Children. New York: Teachers College Press. Singh, M. (2010) ‘Connecting intellectual project in China and Australia’, Australia Journal of Education, 54 (1): 31–45. Singh, M. (2009) ‘Using Chinese knowledge in internationalising research education’, Globalisation, Societies and Education, 7 (2): 185–201. Singh, M. and Fu, D. (2008a) ‘Are we uncritical, unfocussed, plagiarising rote learners?’, in J. McConachie, M. Singh, P. Danaher, F. Nouwens and G. Danaher (eds), Changing University Learning and Teaching (pp. 261–280). Brisbane: PostEd Press. Singh, M. and Fu, D. (2008b) ‘Flowery inductive rhetoric meets creative deductive arguments’, International Journal of Asia Pacific Studies, 4 (1): 121–137. Singh, M. and Guo, W. (2008) ‘Centring students’ bilingual capabilities in quality university teaching’, in J. McConachie, M. Singh, P. Danaher, F. Nouwens and G. Danaher (eds), Changing University Learning and Teaching (pp. 221–235). Brisbane: PostEd Press. Singh, M. and Guo, W. (2010) ‘The digital education revolution and languages’, in P. Kell and G. Vogl (eds), Global Student Mobility in the Asia Pacific (pp. 117– 140). Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars. Singh, M. and Han, J. (2010a) ‘Peer review, Bourdieu and honour’, British Journal of Sociology of Education, 31 (2): 185–198. Singh, M. and Han, J. (2010b) ‘Teacher education for World English speaking preservice teachers’, Teaching and Teacher Education, 26 (6): 1300–1308. Skyrme, G. (2007) ‘Entering the university’, Studies in Higher Education, 32 (3): 357–372. Turner, C. (2010) Investigating Sociological Theory. London: Sage. Ungar, S. (2008) ‘Ignorance as an under-identified social problem’, The British Journal of Sociology, 59 (2): 301–326. Vitek, B. and Jackson, W. (eds) (2008) The Virtues of Ignorance. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky. Wolin, R. (2010) The Wind from the East. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Zhou, Y., Knoke, D. and Sakamoto, I. (2005) ‘Rethinking silence in the classroom’, International Journal of Inclusive Education, 9 (3): 287–311.

Chapter 15

Expanding pedagogical boundaries Indigenous students undertaking doctoral education Liz McKinley and Barbara Grant

In Aotearoa/New Zealand, the number of Ma¯ori (Indigenous) students pursuing doctoral studies has increased over the last ten years. This is due partly to a general growth in the doctoral student cohort but also to the targeted determination of Ma¯ori academic leaders in the broader context of indigenous development and advancement (Durie, 2006; NZ Ministry of Education, 2006). In this country, as in other post-colonial sites (see, for example, Nakata, 2007), doctoral education is understood to be a key route through which we develop leaders for education and the wider society, and also as an essential condition to growing a critical mass of Indigenous intellectuals who are able to maintain their sense of identity such that they are conscious of their obligations and responsibilities to their communities. In today’s ‘knowledge societies’, those who are licensed to produce knowledge hold positions of status and influence. Moreover, research – despite its history as a tool for colonisation – has the potential to offer Indigenous people new routes forward in countries where colonialism has wreaked deep and enduring harms on their communities. In those contexts, research can be ‘a means to reclaim language, histories, and knowledge, to find solutions to the negative impact of colonialism and to give voice to an alternative way of knowing and being’ (Smith, 2005: 91). Despite the growth, a significant challenge for the education of Ma¯ori doctoral students is that they show notably longer completion rates, particularly among students above 24 years of age (NZ Ministry of Education, 2006). A lack of support and a sense of isolation have been suggested as key reasons for this, along with factors such as age (they tend to be older) and the roles attributed to them within cultural contexts external to the university (Kidman, 2007). Another reason may lie in the ‘double job’ being done by the students as they are pursuing research projects embedded in te ao Ma¯ori (the Ma¯ori world). Some students are undertaking a double transformation through their doctoral education, becoming both scholars/researchers through a professional identification with a discipline or field, and forming a stronger Ma¯ori identity as they learn more about a worldview denied them due to the effects of colonisation: You know, [Ma¯ori doctoral students] have to do a double job. That’s to do with our system being so Westernised in a way. They often have to learn

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what their worldview is first and then engage with it and then present that to the existing body of Western knowledge. What a lot of work, it’s huge really, and they don’t realise that’s what they’re going to have to do at the beginning. Just as well probably – by the time they see that, they’re already engaged. (Karen, non-Ma¯ori supervisor) Even those students who undertake their studies from a strongly grounded Ma¯ori standpoint often find that the two identities, academic and Ma¯ori, intersect in complex ways, sometimes with strongly competing allegiances, not to mention emotional perils, as writers from other indigenous groups have drawn our attention to. For example, Martin Nakata writes of Australian Indigenous students: In studying the texts that have been written about them, [Indigenous] scholars are negotiating with representations of themselves, their ancestors and their experiences. Negotiating these texts is not simply an intellectual process. It is also an emotional journey that often involves outrage, pain, humiliation, guilt, anxiety and depression. (Nakata cited in Laycock et al., 2009: 48) Finding supervisors with the requisite expertise or background to assist a student on such a demanding journey can be difficult. Ma¯ori supervisors are few in the academy, especially in some fields, so they often are heavily worked, sometimes supervising at the edge of their academic and cultural expertise. Non-Ma¯ori supervisors may be afraid of the uncertainties of working with Ma¯ori students; those who are willing often find themselves supervising a long way outside the comfort zone of their experiences or expertise (Pope, 2008). In what follows, we draw on interviews with 38 Ma¯ori doctoral students and 20 experienced Ma¯ori and non-Ma¯ori supervisors to flesh out a local case study of the pedagogies required when a double transformation is under way. The interviews were carried out under the umbrella of the ‘Teaching and learning in the supervision of Ma¯ori doctoral students’ project undertaken in Aotearoa/New Zealand during 2007–2008. The project involved a group of three Ma¯ori and two Pa¯keha¯ researchers enquiring into a range of aspects of supervision, including: how students from various disciplines and institutions chose their doctoral supervisors, why supervisors got involved, what kinds of teaching and learning practices took place between them, what other advisors were involved, and what kinds of supervision experiences, if any, were particular to this context (McKinley et al., 2009; Grant, 2010; Middleton and McKinley, 2010; McKinley et al., 2011). From talking with the students and supervisors, we learned that, while doctoral education is usually equated with formal supervision and institutionally approved courses and events, there are other all-important pedagogies required to effectively form Ma¯ori researcher/scholar identities. These pedagogies, which

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are the focus of this chapter, do not feature in any institution’s guidelines or handbooks but take place beyond the walls of the academy and the purview of academic supervision. While the pedagogies described here emanate from te ao Ma¯ori and thus are distinctive to Aotearoa/New Zealand, our argument that institutions need to actively consider ways to support such ‘difference pedagogies’ will have salience in many other countries around the world where challenges to mainstream higher education are issuing from indigenous and other minority groups.

Ako: learning within te ao Ma¯ori Within the Ma¯ori worldview, identity is a function of whakapapa, a concept similar to genealogy. To know whom one is related to and where one comes from is very important for Ma¯ori: Traditionally every adult person was expected to know and to be able to trace descent back to the tribal ancestor, or back to at least the common ancestor after whom the group with whom one lived was named. The rights and claims that an individual could make to the resources of the group she or he related to, or identified with, depended on such knowledge. (Pere, 1982: 9) In practice, the responsibility for teaching whakapapa belonged to the most senior member of each wha¯nau (extended family) and was learned through memorisation for oral delivery on appropriate occasions (Metge, 1983). In addition, whakapapa is the basis for a system of social stratification, that is, a system based on seniority of descent determined along descent lines. For example, preference is given to chiefly lines and male lines. This system signifies who is ‘teina’ (belonging to a younger or more junior line) or ‘tuakana’ (belonging to an older or more senior line), signifiers that govern behaviours. Being born into a particular iwi (tribe), establishing one’s whakapapa and identity, keeping in regular contact and sharing in the activities and responsibilities of the group is very important (Pere, 1982). Whakapapa is still fundamental to understanding Ma¯ori identity in the present. However, as Smith (1999) has described, the injuries created through our colonial past linger in weakened, sometimes broken, connections between members of families who have shifted from their tribal land-base to urban environments and those who have stayed ‘at home’. In our study, all 38 students self-identified as Ma¯ori and were able to provide their tribal affiliations. While some identified strongly with their tribal roots, and maintained regular contact, others had weaker links. Although able to recite their tribal affiliations, some had been born in the city with very little contact with their tribal wha¯nau (extended family).

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The processes by which younger members of a tribal community were (and often still are) instructed into the ways of te ao Ma¯ori are described by Joan Metge (1983) in a study that included observation over many years in numerous more or less formal ‘educational’ environments alongside interviews with Ma¯ori men and women of all ages. Metge describes three major approaches used in the important task of passing knowledge from one generation to another: the whare wa¯nanga or formal ‘house’ of learning, everyday exposure, and apprenticeship. While each has distinctive features, all three are forms of ako, which she describes as ‘the unified cooperation of learner and teacher in a single enterprise’ (1983: 2). According to Metge, there are characteristic strategies associated with ako. One is an emphasis placed on carrying out tasks in their proper setting, with the learner looking, listening and imitating with a minimum of words. Another emphasises selection in who is taught and when they are taught, because readiness and maturity are seen to be important. Yet another is the tactic of making things more difficult than is needed so as to ‘test the desire of the learners to learn’ and ‘to make learners think, to work things out for themselves instead of relying on others to supply answers and explanations’ (1983: 7). Ako also entails ‘a very personal process in which the affection, respect, awe, maybe even a love– hate relationship between learner and “teacher” play a key part’ (1983: 14). Two values are evident in all ako practices: learning is held in high regard, and the act of transmitting tribal knowledge, especially in the whare wa¯nanga (Mead, 2003), is one holding significant gravity. In contrast to the practices that are characteristic of ‘fast supervision’ (Green and Usher, 2003), the model of supervision that is arguably favoured in the current funding regimes for doctoral education, pedagogies in te ao Ma¯ori usually require the learner’s presence alongside their teachers and in real-life contexts for extended periods of time. Much of Ma¯ori teaching ‘is carried out ad hoc, in response to particular circumstances, on the spot, when it is relevant’ (Metge, 1983: 10). During our study, we came to see similarities between practices described in the interviews and the Ma¯ori pedagogies for transferring knowledge from one generation to another. The pedagogies were particularly, although not exclusively, evident in the experiences of students who, undertaking their research in Ma¯ori contexts, also felt a strong desire to strengthen their identity as Ma¯ori. Before we proceed to explore these pedagogies in relation to our data, a note of caution is warranted. The interpretation forwarded here is (uneasily) a simplification of the forms of teaching and learning found in Ma¯ori life. For example, we do not explore the tikanga (protocols according to ancestral law) particular to teaching and learning in specific tribal contexts. Rather, what takes our interest is the importance of some distinctive Ma¯ori pedagogies (as seen by Metge) for contemporary doctoral education, some of which have been ‘borrowed’ by institutions to inform their doctoral pedagogies. Along the way, we describe various concepts and tikanga (as described by Pere and Mead) associated with these pedagogies that the student (and sometimes their supervisors) had to engage with as part of their doctoral education.

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Participation in wa¯nanga: formal pedagogies of higher learning 1 The first pedagogy Metge describes is the whare wa¯nanga, or ‘house of learning’, characterised by being ‘formal, occasional, clearly separated from everyday life, selective and exclusive’ (1983: 3). This form, to some extent, has been borrowed by the academy. For example, a high-profile feature of Ma¯ori doctoral education in Aotearoa/New Zealand is Te Kupenga o MAI programme (known as MAI), a cross-disciplinary cohort-advising model based on the notion of a wa¯nanga where pastoral, cultural and academic support is achieved through a collective of Ma¯ori students and academics (Ma¯ori and non-Ma¯ori) coming together at appointed times. The MAI program aims to alleviate the inevitable pressures of doctoral studies by creating an environment that encourages and nurtures students working for Ma¯ori advancement. It also aims to achieve a transformative, critical, cultural consciousness in the students so they understand the importance of contributions to the community. The program is run nation-wide by Nga¯ Pae o te Ma¯ramatanga2 and currently has ten regional cohort groups. Alongside regular cohort meetings and workshops at local sites, the program convenes both an annual conference and ten-day residential writing retreat for Ma¯ori doctoral students. The latter includes senior Ma¯ori and non-Ma¯ori academics who coach and encourage the students with their work. While not all the students interviewed had participated in a MAI group, most of those who did found benefits. For example, Ngaio found that the meetings helped her keep momentum: In the earlier years I regularly went to the MAI monthly sessions. They were another means by which to get supervision – from fellow students and because [my supervisor] was often there in those first years, that was another way by which to actually make contact with her … in the earlier stages going to the MAI sessions was really good. It kind of kept me really focused and on track ’cause, you know, you looked like an idiot if you hadn’t made any progress since the last time. You felt a bit whakama¯ [ashamed or embarrassed] if you didn’t progress the work at all. So in the first two to three years, MAI was really quite important for me in terms of progressing work at that early stage … Every month, two people got an opportunity to present and I always took advantage of that. (Ngaio, Ma¯ori doctoral student) Other students described being able to work through complex research issues that arose. Rangimarie, for example, was able to discuss the appropriate tikanga (cultural protocols) for dealing with human tissue as part of her research. Some found participation decreased the alienation felt in their journeys; some deepened an understanding of their Ma¯ori identity and culture.

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Another variation on the wa¯nanga model is the group supervision process described by Joanna Kidman (2007). She describes a practice of ‘clustered advising’ for Ma¯ori doctoral students in which small groups of advisors and students within (and sometimes across) a discipline or department meet regularly from early in the doctoral process. The ‘highly interactive’ (2007: 169) meetings are seen as supplementary to one-to-one advising and include student presentations and progress reports as well as workshops on particular topics. Kidman notes many benefits of this model: advisors can address some issues with the whole group, thereby reducing pressure on one-to-one time, and collectively they bring a wide range of expertise to the students’ work. As well, students draw on their varied strengths to teach each other, and their mutual accountability supports them in staying on track. A further example of the formal pedagogical mode that we heard about was participation in language (te reo) immersion wa¯nanga. For several decades now in Aotearoa/New Zealand, understanding that the ‘language is basic to the retention and maintenance of Ma¯ori heritage for it enshrines the ethos, the life principle of the Ma¯ori people’ (Pere, 1982: 17), Ma¯ori have organised regular immersion wa¯nanga mainly (but not exclusively) for adult Ma¯ori participants. Participants stay on a marae (Ma¯ori meeting complex), often for a week at a time, and learn from fluent speakers through a range of structured exercises as well as through the experience of following the tikanga of the particular tribe the marae belongs to. Some students we interviewed had committed themselves to learning te reo and participating in immersion wa¯nanga, a decision that required a significant amount of extra time, expense and effort. Besides its core function of protecting time and space for engaging in advanced levels of ako (teaching and learning), the pedagogy of the wa¯nanga embodies a range of culturally important practices. For example, there are sustained and rich opportunities for experiencing ¯awhina, actions that provide support and assistance to others beyond one’s own kinship group, and that are seen to be ‘spiritually uplifting for both the giver and the receiver’ (Pere, 1982: 62). The wa¯nanga also foregrounds the value of talking about one’s mahi (work, accomplishment) that is, in turn, ‘associated with the positive aspects of one’s physical existence and is highlighted by individual endeavour, or heightened by group endeavour’ (Pere, 1982: 58). As Ngaio says above, when groups of students and teachers gather, the dynamic of whakama¯ is at work here too: embarrassment (in the right measure) has helpful effects for getting people to push on with their work.

Education through exposure: pedagogies of everyday life Traditionally, in Ma¯ori society, much knowledge was considered tapu (sacred). Students had to belong to the iwi (tribe) or hapu (extended family grouping) before being admitted to the whare wa¯nanga. Today there remains a reluctance to share the heritage of the iwi with outsiders, hence the importance of being able

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to whakapapa to the group involved in your research. Once entry is gained, however, the knowledge is not simply handed over. Often students are asked to visit several times, sometimes being exposed to learning in ways that are different to that of formal classrooms. Metge describes this form of learning as a process that is ‘informal, semi-continuous, embedded in the ongoing life of the community, open and inclusive’ (1983: 3). A number of students described spending considerable time engaging in pedagogies of this kind, typically by staying on marae and participating in hui, that is, gatherings or meetings of people that are ‘important to social order and [that impress] upon people the significance of that order’ (Pere, 1982: 38). For example, one student took on her project to become more authoritative in understanding Ma¯ori culture related to her topic: So coming from [my tribe], but deepening my own understanding of my identity in the process, which was always part of that authority too. To have to reflect on what is the Ma¯ori worldview, what is a Ma¯ori [activity in topic area], what are the values that underpin it. Spending a lot of time on a marae or in conversation with people and just seeing that worldview becoming a lot more coherent for myself. And conversations with kauma¯tua and on a marae. I’ve learnt to be a lot more robust as well – I think I lacked a lot of confidence. Especially in the marae setting, people were very blunt with me, about [my project], no holds barred. I’ve become a lot more robust in being able to just listen, and not take [their view] personally. Just hear it and see the responsibility I have to capture it, and to present it and make sure it has a voice. So I think there’s been, at different levels, a lot more maturing within myself as well. (Susan, Ma¯ori doctoral student) During the process, Susan found herself engaging in the quiet, observant activities of watching and listening, participating in many conversations that may have had little direct relationship with her research. She waited considerable time (12 months) before initiating more orthodox researcher activities such as interviewing and audiotaping in order to gather data. If a student cannot whakapapa to their research project, then they must first seek permission from tribal authorities or similar groups to enter the area. The project needs to be explained and benefits to the people outlined. The process is not without difficulties. A non-Ma¯ori supervisor describes the unpredictable consequences of undertaking research in the community on a student’s progress (and the importance of the supervisor’s support at such times): In the Ma¯ori world, [there’s] the dual accountability issue, [the students are] obliged to listen to their elders. They’re obliged to take on board kauma¯tua and kuia [men and women elders] views and they’re obliged to keep listening if the kauma¯tua or kuia changes their view halfway through,

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and there’s a sense in which to continue to pursue the topic without dealing with those things becomes destructive. And then [the student feels] in a very vulnerable position if the thesis is driving them or coming to drive them to do things or act in ways that are counter-cultural and going to risk upsetting somebody, irritating somebody or finding that there are ten more people you should be consulting. I think the supervisory role is to support that and to help them to do that, so sometimes it would mean my going with them just to be with them, just tautoko [support], because tautoko without saying anything is very powerful, and I had to do that, and enjoyed playing that role. (Tere, non-Ma¯ori supervisor) The values that underpin research in Ma¯ori communities cannot be ignored. For example, Tere talks about ‘dual accountability’, in this case the reciprocal obligations that are part and parcel of undertaking research with Ma¯ori communities. Another important set of values, tied up in koha (gift exchange), works to maintain a balance in the flow of goods and benefits between communities and thus sustains the bonds that hold them together (Pere, 1982).3 While such values help the student to make decisions that show respect to the people and the knowledge (Mead, 2003), they can sometimes be in tension with those of the academy, such as timely completions. Learning from being exposed to the pedagogies of everyday life brought students face to face with Ma¯ori knowledge in all its forms, some of that could be included in their academic work, some that could not (tapu, or sacred, knowledge). Marvin describes one such occasion where her supervisor was asking her to unpack the stories told by her research participants: There was a point where things couldn’t be unpacked. An example is one of the kuia told a story about – we were talking about tikanga Ma¯ori in a modern context, talking about the burial of afterbirth – and she said, ‘I went to the freezer in my house, my daughter had come home or my son had come home and they’d just had a baby and, unbeknown to me, they had stuck the placenta in the freezer.’ And the kuia said, ‘I saw it in the freezer’ – all in Ma¯ori – ‘I saw it in the freezer, I took it out and I buried it.’ And [my supervisor] had said to me, ‘you need to unpack these stories’, and I thought well I wonder what she thinks the consequence is of having a placenta in the freezer. So I went back to her and asked, ‘Aunty, what’s the consequences of having the placenta in the freezer?’ And she just said, ‘I didn’t think about that’ – she spoke in Ma¯ori – she said, ‘He hopuhopu te¯na¯.’ Meaning that to think about the consequences is to actually call them into being, and so that was like saying to me, well what do you unpack, and what do you leave, you know. There’s some things that you just don’t talk about. (Marvin, Ma¯ori doctoral student)

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In this pedagogical moment, Marvin comes face to face with the value of tapu, a form of social control. Pere (1982:38) suggests wha¯nau (extended family) do not openly discuss the concept of tapu but use it to protect and discipline unskilled users. Marvin is offered incipient knowledge of the complexities of tikanga: in this case, of the significance of whenua, which translates to both placenta and land (Pere, 1982), thus underlining the strong bond between identity and place.

Apprenticeship: pedagogies of expert transmission A third pedagogical strategy is, at least on the surface, more akin to academic supervision. In traditional Ma¯ori society, apprenticeship takes place when ‘a pu¯kenga, a wise older person, takes a selected pupil under his or her wing and “feeds” him or her with assorted kinds of knowledge’ (Metge, 1983: 4). Usually the apprentice is kin and can be taken as an adult, child or baby: a common form is the relationship between a grandparent and the mokopuna (grandchild) given to them to be brought up from birth. Several students we interviewed described a significant and sustained one-to-one relationship with a Ma¯ori elder, often kin but not always, who supported and encouraged them through their doctoral work. Sometimes this person was their academic supervisor but more commonly was not: I’ve got a kauma¯tua [elder] who’s embraced me as one of his mokos [grandchildren] and he’s very knowledgeable. He had [a disabling illness] as a child but he’s very fluent in te reo [Ma¯ori language], he has mana [prestige, influence, authority] within many of the areas, and he’s been a strong guide to me throughout. And he’s coming to my oral examination as my support kauma¯tua. (Mere, Ma¯ori doctoral student) In that period I spent a considerable period of time with [senior Ma¯ori academic] talking about the options and the processes of doing my PhD, and in that year he convinced me to do it. When I say convinced, he allayed the fear in me that I could do a PhD, whereas before that it was, ‘me, do a PhD?’ … Through that year, and it took us a year, where him and I met maybe once or twice every two weeks, where we would, over coffee and stuff, talk about ideas of my proposal of what I’d wanted to do. The interesting thing is what I wanted to do in the beginning, a year later was where we wound up. But the good thing with it was that he threw a whole lot of questions at me to say what about this, what about that. (Rapata, Ma¯ori doctoral student) While each example of the apprenticeship relationship had its own shape and flavour, there were common pedagogical elements across all. One crucial element

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from the students’ perspective was the need for expert advice over ma¯tauranga Ma¯ori (Ma¯ori knowledge) and kaupapa Ma¯ori research practices (Ma¯ori-based research approaches). Another was the need for support in formal events such as tribal hui (meetings) and oral examinations. In some cases, like Rapata’s above, the pu¯kenga’s encouragement and belief in the student were essential. In more modern times, knowledgeable older people have other roles. Pu¯kenga can be central in the intellectual development of a student’s research project rather than peripheral external advisors for what the academy cannot cover. The ravages of colonisation have left ma¯tauranga Ma¯ori shattered and scattered – some knowledge has been destroyed, some hidden and some lost. Reconstruction, and revival, of ma¯tauranga Ma¯ori is a constantly ongoing process, not only recovering lost knowledge but also producing new knowledge. Hirini Mead writes: [P]eople are not concerned only with recovering the broken pieces. The educators, thinkers and researchers have to put the pieces into new places, embrace new technologies, new information and try to make sense of a changing world at large through ma¯tauranga Ma¯ori. Ma¯tauranga Ma¯ori is not like an archive of information but rather is like a tool for thinking, organising information, considering the ethics of knowledge, the appropriateness of it all and informing us about our world and our place in it. (Mead, 2003: 306) As researchers identifying as Ma¯ori, many students were involved in this work and, by association, so were their supervisors. It is in this context, in particular, that Ma¯ori advisors – pu¯kenga – are essential to the student’s intellectual work because many supervisors, depending on the topic and context, are not equipped to do so. For example, a student researching hapu (sub-tribe) history needs persons associated with that hapu (reconstructing knowledge), as does the medical science student trying to identify a ‘Ma¯ori’ position with respect to live tissue cultures (new technologies). In both situations, students have to engage with tikanga Ma¯ori – which is tribal and local in nature, as Pere (1982) points out – and its knowledge base, ma¯tauranga Ma¯ori.

Institutional responses to indigenous pedagogies In Ma¯ori society, the importance of transmitting knowledge in traditional times was emphasised by surrounding it with ritual, by placing the whare wa¯nanga under tapu and ‘the protection of the gods’ (Mead, 2003: 319). The objective was always to enhance the learning of students and to assist them to achieve to the best of their abilities. Today’s students, like their ancestors, are making their own contribution to knowledge – often to the fields of ma¯tauranga Ma¯ori and the academic discipline in which they are based. Many are also seeking to contribute

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to the wellbeing of their communities. To achieve these ambitions, students must be mindful of Ma¯ori values in research such as manaakitanga (hospitality), whakapapa (genealogy), mana (prestige) and tapu (sacredness). They must not only go to considerable lengths to gain a worthwhile result, which is often referred to as a taonga (a gift of value), but they must always be accountable to the people of their research communities. Because these obligations often entail strengthening their Ma¯ori identities, and theorising the world through the lens of ma¯tauranga Ma¯ori, they must search out substantial knowledge and support beyond the institution. In closing, it is valuable to think about the academy’s response to the contingencies of doctoral education we have described here. For example, how can the institution acknowledge the time it takes for students to engage in pedagogies essential to the entwined requirements of carrying out Ma¯ori research and strengthening their Ma¯ori identity? How can it recognise and compensate the vital intellectual labour provided by members of Ma¯ori communities? How can it (should it?) resource the costs involved in the reciprocal obligations that ensue? How does it support its Ma¯ori and non-Ma¯ori supervisors to work confidently and effectively in these contexts, in the face of repeated messages for fast supervision and timely completion? Clearly, there are many small ways in which this is possible, such as in the budgetary provision for koha for community-based ‘advisors’: I’ve been very public with the institution about the involvement [of community-based advisors], because of who the people are. And I have called them advisors, the student originally started by calling them advisors. And what happened when I had a Masters student who had used a kauma¯tua for advice, we offered koha at the end. So in my budget every year I make sure I budget for koha … And [my institution] is very good, they don’t ever question those kinds of expenses. (Samantha, non-Ma¯ori supervisor) There may be a need for more far-reaching responses as well. Following Smith (1999: 176–177), academic institutions have a range of options available to them when thinking about how to respond to the pedagogical challenges issued by students whose research journey does not map neatly onto the institution’s fantasy. Each will bring different outcomes for students and the institution. There is the (common) ‘strategy of avoidance’ because making different pedagogical provisions for Indigenous doctoral students and Indigenous knowledge projects seems too difficult, or messy, or threatening. Or there is the ‘strategy of “personal development”’ through which the institution puts responsibility onto individual supervisors and students to adapt their practices perhaps by offering additional resources including professional development (opportunities to learn the language or more about indigenous history and current concerns) on a case-by-case basis. Or there is the ‘strategy of consultation’ with indigenous people through which the institution consults with key groups about the appropriate way forward and commits to systematic, if usually limited, pedagogical change on that basis. Or, lastly,

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there is the ‘strategy of “making space” ’ where the institution actively works to recruit and support Indigenous doctoral students and academics and ma¯tauranga research into their disciplines and departments and provides the different forms of pedagogical infrastructure required for them to flourish. We suggest that it is time for institutions within Aotearoa/New Zealand and other post-colonial societies to consider the latter, paying attention to matters such as these (among others): • • • • •

• • •

Establish good pathways for sharing supervision between institutions. Find ways to recognise and reward the essential intellectual contributions of community-based advisors. Find ways to recognise and resource indigenous methodologies. Ensure institutional ethics committees are cognisant of the implications of undertaking indigenous research. With input from senior Indigenous academics and community members, produce guidelines for researchers undertaking indigenous knowledge-framed research. Ensure institutional policies, guidelines and key staff are sensitive to the particular issues that can arise in the examination of indigenous knowledge theses. Actively recruit Indigenous academics to expand the pool of supervisors and recognise and support those who have large supervisory workloads. Provide robust professional development for non-Indigenous supervisors across all disciplines to increase institutional capacity for the supervision of Indigenous students.

This chapter offers a case study of ‘difference pedagogies’, taking place beyond the institution, that are required to transform a postgraduate student into a Ma¯ori scholar/researcher/leader in a field that combines academic and Indigenous epistemologies. While the specifics of our argument are embedded in the cultural landscape of Aotearoa/New Zealand, we are confident that the general matters we raise have resonance in other post-colonial countries such as Australia, Canada and the USA at least. In each place, a resounding challenge is offered by Indigenous peoples to the Western-dominated academy. The academy, in turn, must respond by loosening its controls and widening the scope of what it recognises as salient and legitimate – and therefore supported – pedagogies of doctoral education.

Acknowledgement This article draws upon the Teaching and Learning in the Supervision of Ma ¯ori Doctoral Students research project undertaken by Elizabeth McKinley and Barbara Grant (University of Auckland, Principal Investigators), Sue Middleton (University of Waikato), Kathie Irwin (formerly Te Whare Wa¯nanga o Awanuiarangi) and Les Williams (Nga¯ Pae o te Ma¯ramatanga) and funded in 2007–2008 by the Teaching and Learning Research Initiative (project no. 9250, http://www.tlri. org.nz/teaching-and-learning-supervision-maori-doctoral-students).

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Notes 1 Today ‘whare wa¯nanga’ is not only used by Ma¯ori to describe formal houses of advanced learning but has also become the Ma¯ori term for universities in Aotearoa/ New Zealand. The term ‘wa¯nanga’ is also used to mean a forum for debate and discussion, usually in the form of a hui (meeting) where people come together for a common purpose. 2 Nga¯ Pae o te Ma¯ramatanga is the National Institute of Research Excellence for Ma¯ori Development and Advancement. It is one of New Zealand’s seven national centres for research excellence and the only one that focuses solely on Ma¯ori. 3 When researchers work with individuals and communities, it was common to give koha ‘packs’ consisting of goods such as home-cooking, vegetables, pigs, or petrol vouchers.

References Durie, M. (2006) Ma ¯ori Education 2026. Paper presented at the Post Primary Teachers’ Association Conference 2006, Wellington. Grant, B. M. (2010) ‘The limits of “teaching and learning”: Indigenous students and doctoral supervision’, Teaching in Higher Education, 15 (5): 505–517. Green, P. and Usher, R. (2003) ‘Fast supervision: Changing supervisory practice in changing times’, Studies in Continuing Education, 25 (1): 37–50. Kidman, J. (2007) ‘Supervising Ma¯ori doctoral candidates’, in T. Evans and C. Denholm (eds.), Supervising doctorates downunder (pp. 164–172). Camberwell: ACER Press. Laycock, A. with Walker, D., Harrison, N., and Brands, J. (2009) Supporting indigenous researchers: A practical guide for supervisors. Darwin: Cooperative Research Centre for Aboriginal Health. McKinley, E., Grant, B., Middleton, S., Irwin, K., and Williams, L. (2009) ‘Supervision of Ma¯ori doctoral students: A descriptive report’, MAI Review 2009 (1), Article 6. Retrieved from http://www.review.mai.ac.nz. McKinley, E., Grant, B., Middleton, S., Irwin, K., and Williams, L. (2011) ‘Working at the interface: Indigenous students’ experience at undertaking doctoral studies in Aotearoa New Zealand’, Equity and Excellence in Education, 44 (1): 115–132. Mead, H. M. (2003) Tikanga Ma ¯ori: Living by Ma ¯ori values. Wellington, NZ: Huia Publishers. Metge, J. (1983) Learning and teaching: He tikanga Ma ¯ori. Wellington: Department of Education. Middleton, S. and McKinley, E. (2010) ‘The gown and the korowai: Ma¯ori doctoral students and the spatial organisation of academic knowledge’, Higher Education Research and Development, 29 (3): 229–243. Nakata, M. (2007) Disciplining the savages: Savaging the disciplines. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press. NZ Ministry of Education (2006) Ma ¯ori in doctoral study. Retrieved from http:// educationcounts.edcentre.govt.nz. Pere, R. R. (1982) Ako: Concepts and learning in the Ma ¯ori tradition. Hamilton: University of Waikato.

Indigenous students undertaking doctoral education 217 Pope, C. (2008) ‘Kaupapa Ma¯ori research, supervision and uncertainty: “What’s a Pa¯keha¯ fella to do?”’, in P. Liamputtong (ed.), Doing cross-cultural research (pp. 71–81). Dordrecht: Springer Science+Business Media BV. Smith, L. T. (1999) Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples. London and Dunedin: Zed Books Ltd and Otago University Press. Smith, L. T. (2005) ‘On tricky ground: Researching the native in the age of uncertainty’, in N. D. Denzin and Y. S. Lincoln (eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research (pp. 85–107). Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

Index

academic librarians 27, 33 academic literacies 13, 17 agency 8, 16, 116, 160, 162, 163, 167 Aitchison, C. v, ix, xxv, xxvi, xxvii, 5, 11, 12, 13, 16, 18, 20, 23 alignment 117, 119, 135 American model of doctorate xxiii anamorphic 100, 106, Aotearoa New Zealand 44, 204, 206, 208, 215, 216 apprenticeship 76, 77, 120, 148, 207, 212; model 77, 120, 145 artful practices 8 Asia xx, xxi, 3, 187, 188, 190–2, 199, 200 assessment rubric 17, 27–9, 39 attrition rates 3, 12, 49 Austin, A. E. 8, 10, 120, 123, 125 Australia i, vi, xxiv, xxvii, 17, 18, 21, 25, 42–53 , 132, 135, 142, 157, 158, 161, 168,169, 173, 187–203, 205, 215 Authentic doctoral writing 16–25 Barnacle, R. 104, 105, 110, 112, 157, 168 Bernstein, B. 156–7, 159–61, 166–8, 174, 185, 192, 201 Bologna Process xxv, 3, 45, 58 Boud, D. and Lee, A. xxv, xxvii, 12, 24, 48, 53, 54, 75, 81, 82, 112, 174, 182, 185, 187, 201 boundaries xx, 3, 8, 116, 123, 124, 128, 129, 132, 133, 135, 156, 157, 159, 161, 168, 176, 178, 179, 184, 197, 204 boundary crossing 53, 179, 182

career development of researchers 150, 151; career pathways 158, 162; career trajectories xxvi, 164 Chinese research students 193, 195, 196 co-becoming 116, 119, 125, cognitive apprenticeship vi, 120, 125, 144, 149; coaching 148; fading 148, 149; model 147, 148, 153, 154; modeling 148, 149; scaffolding 148, 149; sociological dimensions of 150 cohesion 19, 117, 119 communication 9, 15, 31, 52, 56, 60, 84, 144, 146, 147, 151, 152, 153, 161, 175, 176, 178, 183, 184, 198 community xx, xxvi, 11, 16, 20, 23, 31, 56, 58, 61, 65, 67, 75–7, 80, 81, 92, 116, 118, 119, 128, 139, 143, 151, 153, 160, 164, 173, 175–7, 181, 183, 184, 186, 194, 207, 208, 210, 214, 215; communities of practice 17, 19, 22; of research xxvi, 8, 77; knowledge xx concept map 17, 34, 37, 41 Confucian knowledge (scholarship) xxi, xxii constructive critique 72, 74, 79 Conversation Analysis 11, 84, 85, 88, 92, 94, 95 co-publication of research 123 co-supervision 42, 122 co-tutelle 181 Council of Australian Deans and Directors of Graduate Studies (DDOGS) 43, 44, 45, 53, 132, 142 creativity vi, viii, xi, xxvi, 105, 110, 113–27, 162, 163; big ‘C’ and

Index small ‘c’ creativity 116 capital 113; industries ix, xiii, xx; potential 114; process 114, 115, 121, 122; product 114, 115, 119; scholarship 113; as originality 57, 116 culture in action 7 Danby, S. i, v, vi, xi, xxiii, xxv, xxvii, 3, 7–10, 83, 84, 94, 156 data analysis sessions 83–6, 92 database 27, 28, 33–5, 37, 148 design i, v, xvii, xviii, xix, xx, xxi, xxiii, xxiv, xxv, 3–10, 14, 15, 99–106, 108, 110, 111, 149, 161–7, 181, 184, 185, 188; as action 103; as enactment 7 designing learning opportunities 8, 10 disciplinarity 102; transdisciplinarity i, xx, 128–30, 133, 135, 137, 139; interdisciplinarity 5, 24, 73 disciplinary i, xvii, xx, xxiv, xxv, 3, 5, 6, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 49, 51, 66, 69, 75–7, 80, 100, 101, 104, 108, 110, 111, 118, 124, 128–34, 137, 140, 156, 157, 163, 164, 166, 167, 168, 173, 174, 179 discussants 62, 74, 177, 178, 180 doctoral: becoming 116, 119, 122, 125, 168; creativity 113, 115, 116, 121, 123, 125; design xviii; education i, ix, xii, xiii, xvii, xxi, xxiii, xxiv, xxv, xxvi, xxvii, 3, 4, 7, 8, 10, 12 , 13, 14, 22–4, 26, 29, 41, 45, 49, 55–9, 62, 65, 69, 78, 83, 93, 114, 116, 118, 119, 120, 124, 125, 156, 173, 175, 181–3, 185, 187, 188, 190–3, 197, 198–200, 204, 207, 208, 214, 215; expansion 4; pedagogies i, xvii, xxiv, 7, 10, 50, 113, 125, 161; programs xvi, xxiii, xxiv, xxv, xxvi, 3–5, 18, 26–8, 130, 181, 199; research xxiii, 6, 9, 18, 20, 104, 107, 128, 131–3, 137, 140, 145, 147, 150, 152, 153, 182, 184, 193, 195; student; i, ix, xxv, 3, 4, 6–9, 12–15, 18–23, 26, 28, 29, 32, 39, 45, 56, 57, 59, 61–4, 67, 69, 70, 72, 75, 76, 84, 116–20, 122, 123, 125, 154, 156–8, 162, 173–85, 187–193, 196, 199, 200, 204, 205, 208, 214; writers 12–25; writing support 12–25

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domain xviii, xx, xxv, 6, 34, 117, 123, 178, 149, 156, 157, 158, 161, 162, 166–8, 182 DPhil (Doctor in Philosophy) 145–47, 150 early articulations 180 educator xxi, xxv, 6, 12, 27, 187, 188, 190, 191, 193, 196, 197, 199, 200, 213 emerging i, xxv, xxvi, 4, 13, 31, 34, 35, 37, 57, 110, 128, 147, 156, 167, 173, 174, 176, 177, 178–80, 193 epistemological pluralism 129, 135 epistemology 17, 130, 135, 139, 140 Ethnomethodology xii, xiv, xv, 83–4 Etzkowitz, H. 157, 159, 166–8, 169 Evans, R. 103, 112 Evans, T. xxvii, 5, 6, 8, 10, 49, 53, 216 Garfinkel, H. 5, 8, 9, 11, 84, 94 genealogy 42, 43, 53, 206, 214 generic capabilities 3 generic skills xxiv, 122, 125 Gherardi, S. 6, 8, 11 globally networked learning 182 Google xx, 34 graduate school 26, 72, 173–5, 181 Green, B. xxiii, xxiv, xxvii, 4, 6, 5, 8, 10, 11, 48, 54, 160, 169, 188 Heidegger, M. 105, 110 hidden curriculum 160 ‘how’ questions 4, 8, 91 humanities xx, xxiii, 43, 50, 57, 61, 66, 78, 102, 105, 149, 187 Hyland, K. 13, 16, 24 identity: as Ma¯ori 206–8, 210, 212, 215; as researcher and scholar 4; formation xxiv, xxvi, 4, 16, 17, 31, 65 in situ practices xxv, 83, 84, 89, 93, 157 independence 61, 119 Indigenous doctoral students 214 Indigenous knowledge 214, 215 industry: partnership 156, 160, 194; readiness 156, 158, 159, 161, 166, 168; relevant doctoral education xxvi inequality 193, 195, 197, 199 institutional responses 213 intellectual: equality 195, 199; resources 185, 189

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Index

intelligence 57, 118 intercultural pedagogic spaces xxvi interdisciplinary research xii, 48 international: education x, 39; research community 56, 173, 183, 184 internationalization 45, 117, 187, 199, 195, 199

network x, 17, 80, 173–9, 181–5 networks x, xi, 8, 71, 173, 175, 182, 183

Johnson, L. 6, 11, 43, 48, 54, 55

Paré, A. 20 xiv, xxv, xxvi, 5, 12, 20, 21, 24, 25, 180, 186 Park, C. xxiii, xxvii, 144, 155, Pearson, M. xxv, xxvii, 76, 82, 148, 155 pedagogy i, ix, x, xv, xxiii, xxiv, xxv, xxvi, 3–10, 12, 14, 22, 26, 28, 42, 43, 49, 50, 53, 56, 62, 63, 65–7, 69, 70, 72, 73, 75, 78, 79, 83, 84, 85, 87, 91, 93, 99, 102, 105, 106, 119, 120, 122, 124, 125, 128, 129, 141, 147, 156–60, 162, 173–7, 179, 181, 185, 188, 189, 197, 199, 208, 209; elements of pedagogic design 7; pedagogical discourse 157; pedagogy distributed 174; horizontal and vertical 174, 179, 185; pedagogy-in-action xxiv, 6, 7, 85, 87, 91, 93, 177; pedagogic modalities – official 160, local xxx, 157, 160; pedagogies of intellectual equality 195, 199; principles 121, 151, 174, 17–179, 179–82, 215; processes 168; social nature of 8; strategy 212; pedagogic space 157peer learning ix, 18, 122, 152, 174 performativity 49 peripheral participation 120 personality 48, 57, 117–19 post-colonial doctoral education 204, 215 poststructuralist 43, 50 process benchmarking xxiv professional doctorate programs xxiv professional doctorate xii, xxiii , xxiv, 38, 157 project work 73 publication of research 119, 123

Kamler, B. xii, xxv, xxvii, 6, 8, 11, 13, 14, 19, 23, 24, 31, 32, 33, 37, 40, 68, 186, 191, 202 knowledge: economy xiii, xxiv, 3, 4, 156; ignorance/knowledge relationship 191; objects xxiii; region 159, 166; relationships 161; society 12; transfer ix, 156, 159, 161, 166–8 Kruse, O. 56, 57, 66, 68 Lave J. 17, 19, 24, 75, 76, 77, 81, 148 learning: mutual 67, 73, 136; situated 17, 19, 148; transformative 69, 136, 140 Lee, A. v, vi, xii, xxiii , xxiv , xxv, xxvii, 3–5, 9–12, 14, 23, 24, 27, 48, 49, 53., 54, 60, 62, 64, 68, 75, 81, 82, 122, 156, 157, 159, 160, 169, 173, 174, 180, 182, 185, 186, 187, 200, 201 lì tıˇ leadership 194, 195, 197, 198 library 27, 28, 147 linguistic borders 183 literature reviews 16, 26, 27, 29–33, 36, 38, 39 Lusted, D. xxvi, xxvii, 4, 11, 160 Lyotard, J. 49, 54, 187, 190, 198, 202 Ma¯ori doctoral students xiii, 204–14 mapping 17, 37, 106, materiality 105, 108, 111 Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences Division (MPLS) 145, 146, 150, 154 mentoring x, 46, 48, 146, 152, 153 meta-cognitive ability 120 metadiscursive awareness 20 metaphor xxiii, 6, 167, 190, 191–200 methodology xviii, xxi, 18, 27, 29, 101, 129, 134, 148, 181, 184 Miller, C. 5, 11, 16, 24, 156, 169 mode 2 knowledge 5, 156 motivation 57, 117, 146, 148, 158, 161, 164

obligations 204, 211, 214 online discussions 176, 178 ontology 140

quality xvii, 3, 12, 21, 26, 27, 29, 30–36, 39, 60, 67, 72, 75, 79, 113, 117, 128, 134, 136, 137, 138, 140, 141, 145, 146, 151, 187, 188, 194, 195–97, 199, 200

Index reflexivity 73, 75, 78, 85 research higher degree (RHD) 42, 45–9, 192 respect 75, 138, 139, 152, 156, 158, 159, 161, 167, 207, 211 rhetorical genre theory 16, 17 risk 18, 19, 48–50, 52, 53, 61, 64, 71, 118, 121, 124, 180, 192 role-giving 56, 60, 61, 67 Schegloff, E. 94, 95, 163, 169 science xxiii, xxvi, 18, 20, 23, 66, 78, 103, 104, 113, 114, 116, 119–25, 134, 147–51, 154 science-based doctoral education xxvi scientist–practitioner model 120 Seddon, T. 183, 186 seminar xxvi, 4, 9, 56–67, 76, 77, 79, 145, 147, 149, 150, 151, 176, 177–80, 183, 191; pedagogy 62, 66, 67; traditions 57 sharing courses 181, 184 Singh, M. vi, xv, xxv, xxvi, 182, 186, 187, 188, 191–3, 199, 202, 203 social practices 7, 60, 83, 91–3 social sciences xx, 43, 50, 76, 83, 175, 187 South Africa i, xxv, 42, 113, 114, 117, 120, 125, 173 summer school v, viii, 69–80 supervision v, viii, x, xii, xiii, xxiii, xxv, xxvi, 5, 7, 42–53, 59, 60, 69, 70, 75–80, 122, 123, 128, 133, 137,141, 145, 148, 160, 179, 188, 191, 205–9, 212, 214, 215; Advisor 45, 46; Team supervision 42–53; Principal supervisor/advisor 44, 46, 47; Associate supervisor/ advisor 43, 44, 46, 47; pedagogy 42, 49 supervisor/supervising i, x, xvi, xiii , xvi, xvii, 5, 7, 9, 10, 13, 19, 21–3, 42–53, 70–80, 84, 86, 99, 106, 113–25, 128–54, 160, 168, 174, 184, 188, 205, 207, 208, 210–15; supervisor writing support 19–22 surveillance 49, 52, 100, 106 Swedish doctoral education 58, 62 systemic functional linguistics 17

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technology xx, 20, 57, 73, 100, 104, 108, 113, 117, 176 textual practices 56, 65 theoretical frameworks 131, 134, 148 Thomson, P. xxv, xxvii, 6, 8, 11, 12, 13, 14, 19, 23, 24, 25, 31, 32, 33, 37, 40, 186, 192, 202 time-to-completion 12, 124 transcription 84–6, 93, 94 transdisciplinarity i, ix, xx, 128–30, 135, 137, 139 transdisciplinary vi, xi, xiii, xiv, xv, xvi, xx, xxi, xxvi, 97, 108, 128–41; transdisciplinary doctorate: tensions experienced 130–7; supervision 137–9 transdisciplinary pedagogies xxvi, 97; transdisciplinary research xiv, xvi, xxvi, 128–31, 133, 135, 136, 140, 141 transferable skills 145–48 triple helix (university–industry– government) 157, 158, 166 trust 138, 139, 152, 168, 183 university/ies xvii, xx, xxiii, xxiv, 3, 5, 9, 12–15, 19–22, 26, 42–6, 49, 50, 53, 56–8, 63, 71, 73, 75, 84, 103–5, 111, 113, 114, 117, 124, 125, 145, 147, 149, 150, 151, 154, 156–68, 174–7, 180, 181, 185, 187–200 university-industry 156–9, 164, 168 virtual 100, 108, 157, 163, 164, 173, 175 voice 18, 19, 31, 33, 50–2, 61, 115, 116, 136, 188, 204, 210 Wenger, E. 17. 19, 24, 25, 75–7, 81, 148, 155 work-in-progress 4, 61, 180 worldview 135, 188, 204–6, 210 writing 12–25; centrality of writing 14, 20: design 15; development / support embedded models 17; need for 19–25; giving or receiving feedback 15–19; classes 15–17; groups 18–19; studies 14–15; supervision 19–22; support for doctoral writing 13; pedagogy 15–25 Zone of Proximal Development, 17, 19