"Cutting the mustard": standing your ground in the process of producing doctoral dissertations
Date
2015
Authors
Gill, J.
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Bryant, L.
Jaworski, K.
Jaworski, K.
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Book chapter
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Source details - Title: Women supervising and writing doctoral theses: walking on the grass, 2015 / Bryant, L., Jaworski, K. (ed./s), Ch.4, pp.55-69
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Abstract
Thesis supervision is inevitably and properly challenging. Pathways have to be worked out in terms of people and topics and often the outcomes can be quite different from what might have been initially expected. The process involves a high degree of emotional involvement on the part of the student and also of the supervisor, whose responsibility it is to guide the thesis into an acceptable standard and theoretical depth in order to qualify for the doctoral award. The relationship between student and supervisor, often regarded as a central element in higher degree work, remains somewhat mysterious (McWilliam and Palmer 1995) and poorly understood (Grant 2003). Some writers note the need to establish the “difficult balance” (Delamont, Atkinson,and Parry 1997), whereas for others it is inevitably a “rackety bridge”(Gurr 2001, 81; Grant 1999, 9). This chapter takes up one issue arising from the supervisory role—namely the degree to which the student is free to challenge some of the accepted practices of thesis writing in the execution of the task. My specific focus here is what happens when the thesis writer wants to incorporate some of their own personal data into the written development of the thesis.
This has caused concern for myself as a supervisor as well as for the students as thesis makers. In the older tradition of theses the writing was typically so depersonalized that this question would never have arisen.Undoubtedly there has been a sea change in thesis writing in recent decades.However I believe we still have to ask some key questions: Is this practice now legitimate? What are the constraints? How does one argue for the inclusion of personal data? And how do you proceed if your supervisor tells you that you cannot do it? Ultimately the position I take here is that debate and, to some degree, disagreement are both probably an integral part of higher degree study and hence they are also necessarily involved in the supervisory relationship.
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Copyright 2015 Lexington Books