Dear Nanna,
you wrote:
"I, personally, was never questioning the merits of your [Nigel Cross] critique, only your tone. PhD students following this list would learn nothing from such a short, harsh critique and they would potentially be afraid to post themselves. If I have learned anything grand from design expertise it is that we should cultivate a failing friendly environment. Researchers: if academics cannot do better than that we are certainly in a sorry state."
As I understand the brain research, failing happens on the Right side of the brain. This is also where we experience affects of failures such as sadness, sorrow, and disappointment.
What you seem to be suggesting is that we need to be in an environment where the Left side of the brain gets a dose of feel good chemicals every time the Right side gets bad feel chemicals, or else we shut down as researchers.
By the way, the Right side of the brain doesn't really care about failure - indeed, one can suggest that the negative emotions are the motivators for looking again. The Right side of the brain wants the answer; the Left side simply wants to be right (correct).
It may not be a requirement of PhD study that a student comes to acquire a cognitive style that allows them to attend to negative affects as well as tempering positive affects (false sense of achievement???) but as a 70 year old researchers, I certainly attend to both sides of my brain, and their affects, as often as I can.
Can you acquire a useful style of hemisphere surfing in the absence of rigour? I don't think you can. Can rigour be established minus negative emotions? I don't think it can. Can you establish rigour in isolation? Only in the sense that you have allowed the harsh critic (devil's advocate) to cohabit with your consciousness. Can you make friends with the harsh critic (devil's advocate)? Sure, when you are no longer the student.
cheers
keith
-----------------------------------------------------------------
PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]>
Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design
Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|