All entries for Thursday 29 March 2018

March 29, 2018

Reflections Of Ph.D. Work From January To Now!

Now that Easter (or whatever you choose to celebrate) is around the corner it’s time for some reflections of the year so far and what an interesting time it has been between January and now. It’s been one of those time periods where I had a rough idea of what I wanted to achieve, but as is the nature of research I achieved other things that I had not planned on achieving, and made observations that I had not originally anticipated!

That is a good thing or a bad thing depending on the way you perceive the events and the values of the observations you have made leading to the extent to which your ideas develop! There are two tasks that I have focussed on during the recent time frame and that’s the literature review chapters, and the rethinking of the use of Grounded Theory.

The Literature Review Chapters

The main focus of the year so far has been writing and drafting the first literature review chapter, which focusses on the relationship between society, culture, Higher Education and technology, and two sections of the second literature review chapter that focusses on different concepts related to the phenomenon of research interest. I have completed the first drafting of the first literature review chapter although obviously this needs revision and expansion, and also have made suitable progress with the writing of the two sections of the second literature review chapter.

Where I feel a little uneasy with the second chapter is the fact that it is related to the concepts of the phenomenon of interest. Given that my project is based on a grounded theory methodology, I am not entirely sure of the extent to which I should be giving attention to the concepts in the literature review and the extent to which I should give them attention in the findings and discussion sections, for example comparing and contrasting my data with published data in relation to those concepts. What I am thinking is it might be best to discuss the philosophical and theoretical concerns in the literature review chapters and then analyse the concepts empirically: published data in conjunction with my own data, and compare and contrast in order to validate findings or in some way find new ways in which those concepts could be interpreted, observed, measured, occur, and thought about.

Actually writing the chapters has taken and is taking longer than I had anticipated because I did not anticipate the fact that structure of a chapter can actually emerge from the act of writing. In a sense this is not a bad thing: it is a waste of time trying to stuff content in a pre-planned structure when the emerging content, the continuous development of ideas, the emerging debates you are engaging with and the development of your arguments are no longer compatible with the pre-planned structure. Remember that your ideas and arguments and the way you shape and engage with debates relative to your research questions and objectives are continuously developing and therefore, so is your thesis structure.

But overall though I am pleased with what I have been able to achieve in terms of my thesis chapter writing, and I do believe there is value in utilising the edit as you write approach as there is no point in fighting against ideas as they emerge from ideas that you are constructing, and which causes you to rewrite or rethink perhaps the way you present or interrelate previous ideas, or to change and individual ideas as you form new ideas and test their interrelation and compatibility. This is interesting, because not only does your structure emerge as you write, but more ideas and ideas for idea development, redevelopment, restructuring, and interrelation analysis also emerge.

Use of Grounded Theory

I was aiming to progress with theoretical development, but as has been discussed during the year so far on this blog I came across a few challenges referring to the nature of grounded theory e.g, its philosophical framework; the application of grounded theory in my research, and the way in which I was perceiving and exploring the phenomenon of interest. Essentially, I have come to the conclusion that the general approach I took to coding all the data was incorrect (I should not have been coding all the data, only what’s relevant to my specific research interest); that the phenomenon of interest, therefore, was being perceived slightly incorrectly, and that I came to the realisation that a particular theoretical framework best fits grounded theory within the research context, which better guides the use of grounded theory and therefore the way that I perceive and explore the phenomenon.

In a nutshell: the emerging codes, categories and theoretical framework were incorrectly constructed because I was coding every piece of code even those that were irrelevant, but I had not realised their irrelevancy till recently, and it took me a while to figure that out. To resolve this I now have to reread the data and reanalyse through adopting not just a segment by segment analysis, but a closer inspection of the data that clearly activates and signifies the presence of the learning phenomenon of interest. To assist with this process, I am now going to adopt a network analysis method where I can clearly and more appropriately identify trends and network trends of learning phenomenon occurrences and behaviour and I shall be working on developing this method sometime after Easter.

This brings me to the problem I had of perceiving the phenomenon of interest: it took me a long while to realise that I was incorrectly perceiving the behaviour or potential behaviour of the phenomenon of interest relative to the objectives of my research and the research questions I am exploring, as I think I have discussed in a recent blog post. Essentially I perceived the phenomenon of interest as a social entity only, and not cognitive or at least a combination of social and cognitive: sociocognitive. I have now rectified this problem through understanding the phenomenon of interest as both a social and cognitive occurrence, which shall further help with my understanding of the way in which grounded theory and network analysis should be applied in my research.

And therefore, I came to the conclusion that grounded theory was being used incorrectly because I was coding everything. In a sense it is not the case I was misunderstanding grounded theory methods, but I was misapplying them. Through the use of network analysis and through the leaning towards the sociocognitive area of understanding, the problems of misapplying grounded theory should reduce.

That’s that in a nutshell! I’ve sent my supervisor the drafts of my first literature review chapter, two sections of the second literature review chapter and currently engaged with an email discussion about our ideas and conceptions of the phenomenon of interest and I am finding this to be a very fruitful and productive discussion, and which has contributed more to building my arguments, confirming my ideas, and enabling me to question and present alternative ideas to what is being presented. This is what academia is all about, and this is a reason why I adore the discipline of academia that much!

I’m now on an Easter holiday! Thank you to all my blog readers for your continued reading and fingers crossed that you are benefiting in some way from reading my ramblings. Thank you again, and have a peaceful and happy Easter holiday or whatever celebration you choose to take part in!