Dear James,
Thanks to Tim for his guidance and sensitivity and comments. I appreciate
it. . My apologies to you if my email was hasty and unfair. I agree, it
pointed to the negatives rather than the benefits of having completed a PhD.
Not as supportive as it could have been!
It is a wonderful idea to go out into the chaotic world and bring home
nuggets of useful well-tested findings to help everyone make better lives
and improve the planet. Undertaking a PhD and doing research contributes to
this great task.
In spite of the wonderfulness of this in general , I feel more than a little
concern about how PhD activities positively contribute to this task.
There seems to be two ways of thinking about PhDs. One assumes that in
general PhD education is going well with guaranteed positive outcomes. The
other suggests PhD education is going very badly, often with negative
outcomes, is undergoing radical change and could get worse, especially if it
is presumed to be going well.
For those assuming PhD education is going well, the tone of advice for its
improvement involves minor tweaking , e.g. in candidate preparation and the
supervision experience.
For those assuming PhD education is going badly, then the way forward is
the difficult task involving deliberate care to avoid assumptions and
careful critical review of all aspects of PhD processes; the dynamics of the
factors acting on them, and the outcomes during and post- PhD award. It is
expected that improvement must necessarily involve significant change. This
likely will involve changes for researchers understanding of 'the quality
of what they do'.
I tend to follow and draw attention to this second way of thinking about
PhDs; advocate a critical line and expect significant change is needed to
improve things
My apologies again if drawing your attention to this second way of thinking
about PhDs in my previous email was too hasty or unfair.
Best wishes and good luck,
Terry
===
Tim wrote:
<snip>Dear James... Thanks for your post! ...Terry is, I think, too hasty
and unfair to come straight back at you about there being dangers and
hazards ahead. <end>
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