Latest Ph.D. Work Update!, 12/02/17, A.J.D's Ph.D progression blog

February 12, 2017

Latest Ph.D. Work Update!

Changes to Thesis, Upgrade Paper, and the Influence of Research Directions

Both the thesis and the upgrade paper have had significant changes made during the year so far in terms of their structure, particularly the thesis, and their content, particularly the upgrade paper. As I mentioned in the previous blog post the fact that a document has been rewritten several times shows progress of ideas and research directions, and different versions can act as a means of reflecting on the journey that has been made and the distance that the research has come. What’s useful is the continuous rewriting and editing efforts of the upgrade paper have acted as a guide for editing the structure and planned content of the thesis, particularly its literature review and background chapters. As a result all previous planned versions of the background and literature review chapters have been binned.

The change to both documents has come about through a more detailed exploration of a particular learning process that resulted in identification of a specific sub-process that appears to act as the backbone to many other sub-processes to a certain extent, as well as generating more concepts from existing literature that shall contribute towards contextualising the research in the literature review. The specific sub-process remains under researched: there are models and theories available that explain this particular process but I don’t think they are adequate or substantial enough to really explain what is going on within this process and its relationship with other sub-processes. That’s not to say that these models and theories should be considered no longer important: they are in particular contexts depending on the purpose and aim of the research, but for me they don’t explain the process in a particular way that I think is important and I think has been largely neglected.

All these changes to the research directions since the upgrade presentation have entailed the discussed changes to the thesis and the upgrade paper. The aim of the upgrade paper is still to prove the worth of my research, whereas the aim of the thesis is to communicate the completed research and its outcomes. An aim of the literature review now is to contextualise my own research through evaluating and critiquing the existing models and theories (as well as introducing relevant philosophical, theoretical, psychological and empirical concepts and literature) therefore identifying gaps within current research, and explain the way in which my research shall contribute towards solving identified issues.

The key here is to know where to start: and that is the challenge! Developing the structure however is helping me to know where to start, because structuring a literature review or any other chapter of the thesis or any other academic document means setting a structure for ideas. But this is in a non-regimented way: structuring ideas does not entail strict adherence therefore sections of each chapter can be chopped or changed around. It is up to you to decide the way in which your own literature review is structured, based on what you have read, the concepts you have developed from the literature, the critiques and evaluations of existing theories and models, and the categories within which you have placed the concepts you have developed as well as other thoughts, notes and analysis of the literature you have carried out. This is an ongoing and continuous task.

Philosophical Ideas

The more I read into philosophical ideas the more that I am beginning to be convinced of an ontological realism and epistemological relativism as being appropriate for my research, but it’s important to note that these are not exactly strictly adhered to. It has to be noted that I am not claiming to be a strict ontological realist and a strict epistemological relativist: these points are acting as a starting base for the research. Both points are the foundations for more substantial explorations into philosophical thinking and theories about the research design.

Currently, there are various philosophical writers that I am currently taking an interest in and are currently influencing my philosophical understanding of reality, and these are: Nietzsche’s Perspectivism, Popper’s Critical Rationalism, Hume and Kant’s discussions on causality, and various writings on fallibility, defeasibility, and social constructivism. From my current understanding all these different concepts of our understanding of reality is compatible with variants of realism and variants of relativism. Variants that recognise whilst there are aspects of reality that exist independent of our minds, not everything is independent; and, whilst objective knowledge and truth of reality might exist, attaining objective truth and knowledge of reality is difficult to achieve. I am beginning to form the belief that we will never achieve fully objective truth as our perspectives are all subjective to some extent. The best that can be achieved is to edge closer towards the truth and knowledge of reality.

Building the starting platform around ontological realism and epistemological relativism enables the beginnings of a philosophical justification for the research design, which is in addition to the methodological justifications built from knowledge gaps identified through analysing and synthesising research findings and the methodological approaches behind these findings.

The thesis is said to include several pages of philosophical insights therefore it is likely that an argument or even a small series of arguments shall be provided and fully elaborated upon, linking to the case study methodology and the grounded theory and interview methods. Providing a philosophical justification as well as a methodological (e.g., why is a particular research design use? Why are various components being used and in what way are they related through philosophy? Etc.), and practical justifications (e.g., why should the particular phenomenon be of interest? Why is the phenomenon of interested being explored using a particular research design?) That way, the thesis shall present cohesive, well structured, well grounded and logically and significantly elaborated research.

In summary

Upgrade paper has more or less been completed and was sent earlier the previous week for feedback, whilst the thesis is ongoing, as are therefore philosophical considerations. I am pleased with the progress that I have made, and moving forwards now it’s just a continuous case of developing the structure of the background and literature review chapters, as well as the methodology chapter, continue to code the data, continue to evaluate and synthesise existing literature, and continue to build a philosophical justification as well as fully elaborate on methodological and phenomena based justifications.