PhD Archives - Mantex

How to get a PhD

July 14, 2009 by Roy Johnson

research, writing, and information management skills

Nothing can quite prepare you for a PhD. It’s likely to be the longest piece of research and writing you ever undertake in your life. How to get a PhD is a guide to the process, and a survival kit for doctoral candidates. The authors are particularly good on the meaning and structure of a PhD, how to develop time management skills, and the difficulties of communicating with supervisors and how to overcome them. Much of this would apply to online PhD students too.

If you are intending to embark on a research degree it will introduce you to the system and help you to improve your choice of university, college, department, and even supervisor. The first part of the book deals with the process of becoming a postgraduate student, how to get into the academic system at this level, and the special demands and exact nature of the PhD qualification. There is then advice on how to do research and a discussion of the structure required in this form of writing.

Phillips and Pugh then pass on to the substance of the task so far as the candidate is concerned – the long slog through three years of reading, writing, note-taking, and data collection.

They cover the special problems of groups such as women, part-time, and adult students, plus the tricky issues of dealing with supervisors and an environment which is based on the deeply entrenched privileges of old, white, Anglo-Saxon males (some of them already dead).

New for this fourth edition is a diagnostic questionnaire for students to monitor their own progress, plus a new section on the increasingly popular professional doctorates such as EdD, DBA, and DEng.

And then suddenly, and rather strangely (though true to its subtitle) the subject of its address changes from student to tutor. They discuss how supervisors can improve the support they give to students – largely by making the effort to see the process from the student’s point of view.

As a supervisor myself, I found this section instructively chastening. They offer a number of useful suggestions for making feedback more effective, and then end with notes on the responsibilities which institutions have to provide an adequate overall service for research students.

This is a book which is standing the test of time. First published in the 1980s, new material has been added for the latest (fourth) edition, which now includes information technology, publishing your work, and teaching and working towards a PhD in a practice-based discipline. There are very few guides to help people at this level of academic work. Anyone about to embark on the three year odyssey would do well to read this first – then pass it on to your supervisor.

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Estelle M. Phillips and Derek S.Pugh, How to get a PhD: A handbook for students and their supervisors, Buckinghamshire: Open University Press, 5th edn, 2010, pp.220, ISBN: 0335242022

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Supervising the Doctorate

June 14, 2009 by Roy Johnson

good practice for supporting research projects

Now that supervisor training is compulsory, this practical, no-nonsense handbook is essential reading for both the novice and the experienced higher degree supervisor. But I suspect it will be just as useful for the serious postgraduate research student as well. It is reassuring to know that the book is based on the experiences of a postgraduate research skills workshop run at Cardiff University, and the authors illustrate the procedures and problems with real life examples – all of which ring convincingly true to me.

They start out by recommending that firm guidelines should be established for the nature and structure of the relationship between supervisor and student. Everything needs to be made explicit, and in my experience students need to be made aware of exactly what they are undertaking. Next comes drawing up some sort of schedule of work which is loose enough to give the student flexibility, but firm enough to prevent wasteful ‘drift’. It’s also essential at the outset to establish if the project is feasible. Can it be done? Are any ethical issues raised?

They then go on to the literature review. How to find the literature; how to read it; and how to write about it, including the all important issue of accurate referencing and citation. If you are a supervisor, they offer some good exercises: if you are a student, this section tells you what you should be doing.

They include advice on what is often the laborious issue of data collection. This includes the interesting phenomenon of using post-doctoral researchers as a bridge between supervisor and student.

There are also personal matters to take into account – isolation, poverty, and low morale- all of which can easily develop in the three years or more of doctoral research. They provide useful and realistic advice on these matters, as well as on what they see as the core issue – developing the student’s sense of judgement and good taste.

Of course for most people the hardest part of doing a PhD is writing up to 100,000 words. It’s not something you do often. Their key advice is good: ‘write early and write often’. And they also offer some useful tips on helping to overcome writer’s block.

Probably the most frightening part is the PhD viva, and since it’s something that only happens once for the candidate, it’s not easy to prepare for. But the supervisor can prepare, and they show some case studies to prove the point.

Finally they offer the bonus of advice for activity beyond the degree – that is, helping successful post-docs to advance their careers through networking, teaching, attending conferences, and publishing their work.

This is a very thorough and a thoroughly decent guide to what is often a long and complex process. It’s written for supervisors, but it’s worth reading, whichever side of the examination process you are on.

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Sara Delamont, Paul Atkinson, and Odette Parry, Supervising the Doctorate: a guide to success, Berkshire: Open University Press, 2nd edn, 2004, pp.220, ISBN 0335212638

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The Unwritten Rules of PhD Research

July 17, 2009 by Roy Johnson

complete guide to undertaking a PhD – and beyond

This is a guide to the whole process of postgraduate research – from the point of selecting a topic and a supervisor, through to surviving your viva and starting to apply for jobs. The claim of authors Gordon Rugg and Marian Petre is that their advice includes all the things nobody ever tells you – either because they think you already know, or they have passed through the system and forgotten that they themselves once didn’t know. For instance, they start off with topics such as the need for tact, patience, and restraint: after all, you’re not the first person to undertake research.

This is followed by what they call knowing how to have ‘the right cup of coffee’ – that is, getting the best sources of advice. They even include things as obvious but often disastrously forgotten as the need to back up your work at every stage. Their urgings are all very sound. Get to know all stages of The System and its procedures; learn how to fill in forms (first in pencil, on a photocopy); understand the role of a supervisor, and create the groundwork for establishing a good working relationship.

They take a realistic attitude to the current tenor of academic life in the UK. Yes, everything has been driven by the Research Assessment Exercise, but the PhD research project is still worth doing as an intellectual exercise in its own right.

They cover all the reading and writing skills you will need – and the general advice is that you must learn to be professionally rigorous. There’s also a section by section critique of a typical thesis, showing why it’s important that you get the smallest details right.

For the ambitious who can’t wait to further their careers by getting into print, there is a section on how to write a journal article, plus how to increase your chances of getting it accepted.

For a piece of work as long as a thesis, most of which will be produced by people who have never written such a long piece of work before (and probably never will again) I was glad to see that they tackled the issues of creating structure and generating the appropriate style.

They go into style and writing skills in relentless detail, quoting plenty of good and bad examples so that you are left in no doubt about what’s required. Then for good measure they offer guidance on delivering presentations and speaking at conferences.

There’s very good chapter on dealing with the nerve-racking finale to all this – the viva. For anyone who has not yet reached this point, it’s worth buying the book for this chapter alone.

And they don’t end there. It’s assumed that your research and your PhD are leading towards some form of employment – either to do more research or to take up a teaching appointment. They provide excellent guidance on taking both these routes.

If you are contemplating a PhD, buy the book and read it straight through to get the larger picture; then re-read each section in greater detail as you tackle each stage of your work.

I did the basic research for my PhD in about twelve months, then spent two years writing up the results – and producing possibly too much. It succeeded, but I think I might have made a better job of it if I had read a book like this first. But they didn’t exist in those days.

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Gordon Rugg and Marian Petre, The Unwritten Rules of PhD Research, Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2nd edition 2010, pp.320, ISBN: 0335237029

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Writing your doctoral dissertation

May 26, 2009 by Roy Johnson

guide to advanced academic study and writing skills

Do people at doctoral dissertation level need writing guides? Well yes, they do, because a composition of this scope usually presents difficulties most of us have never come across before. After all, we don’t produce 50,000 word research projects just for fun, do we? Rita Brause starts by explaining the differences between a dissertation and a long term paper [UK=coursework essay]. These are important distinctions which are often learned by most students only at the expense of much anguish and re-writing.

She also stresses just how much anybody will learn during the process of writing a dissertation, which is the sort of insight unlikely to be available to someone approaching this experience for the first time. She analyses practical examples to show the important structural elements of a dissertation, and then goes on to explain the stages in the doctoral process – including making an application, learning the language of institutions, and fulfilling all their technical requirements. These elements need to be taken into account even before the writing begins, and she justifies the attention she gives to them quite convincingly on the grounds that many students who fail to complete their research do so because they had no idea what to expect when they started out.

It is the US system she is describing, which contains the element of working to a committee that is not found in the UK system, but when it comes to the business of writing, all the issues of preparation, organisation, and intellectual stamina are identical.

The heart of the book comes three-quarters way through, where she describes in detail the process of locating and defining a topic, as well as the type of questions you should ask in order to ‘refine’ a topic or turn an observation into a proposal. These are the stages which in my experience of post-graduate teaching cause students most problems. A research proposal which has not been clearly defined is like an intellectual quagmire. No matter how much new material is generated, the student will be sucked ever deeper into the morass by competing priorities and a lack of focus.

There are three short bibliographies on dissertations, the academic world, and research methodology; but what I think might appeal most of all to the intended audience of this writing guide is an interesting collection of tips (some quite daunting) from former doctoral candidates. There’s often nothing quite so convincing as the reports of first-hand experience.

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Rita S. Brause, Writing your Doctoral Dissertation: Invisible Rules for Success, London: Falmer Press, 2000, pp.163, ISBN: 0750707445

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complete guide to undertaking a PhD – and beyond

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