Reflections Of The Year 2019, 31/12/19, A.J.D's Ph.D progression blog

December 31, 2019

Reflections Of The Year 2019

Reflection is an intellectual endeavour and process that should occur continuously throughout the journey of a Ph.D. Reflection acts as a means of learning through enabling the charting and tracking of developments in our understanding, the various points or events that have resulted in those developments, to understand and identify patterns of problem resolution, and studying how our prior understanding, meaning and learning have been used in order to progress and enhance ourselves and our research further. In a nod to Philosopher Heidegger we could argue that we are reflective beings. We are continuously learning and developing through engaging with reflective processes, and through constructing meaning of these reflections. Although we are arguably reflective beings and therefore do not generally subscribe to any arbitrary and culturally acceptable reflective time points, it is an idea to use particular times to stand back and attempt to view the wider picture. It is with that in mind that I progress through this time of reflecting, learning, planning, and strategizing.

When I reflect back on what has transpired through the year I can observe moments of great personal success, and moments of feeling completely overwhelmed and very challenged academically. Completing the coding framework towards the summertime was a great personal success and the process of completing the framework drew me closer towards a fascination of qualitative research. Throughout not just this part of the year but the whole year, my philosophical, methodological, and data conceptualisations and understanding continued to develop and redevelop as I encountered various insights and constructed and questioned my own meanings of these insights. This questioning is continuous and ongoing: I am continuously questioning and evaluating my insights and the process of arriving to my own insights, and continuously evaluating new insights relative to my prior insights and understanding in order to arrive at new understanding that more closely represents the phenomenon of interest. Not only this, but I am also continuously developing and defining my own position and role as a qualitative researcher and what it means in general to ‘be’ a qualitative researcher. This is a very complex area and I am realising that I’m going off topic……

Along with completing the analytical framework, I was also completing various thesis chapter drafts and this drafting continued till around late September or early October. Prior to this completion, however, around the summertime I was beginning to find some of my analysis questionable. The analysis was suitable in the achievement of constructing a coding framework, but was not able to provide significant and detailed explanations about the process of the particular social learning phenomenon being investigated. I then realised that the problems experienced earlier with Grounded Theory were being experienced with thematic analysis. This was both a good and an overwhelmingly challenging thing. A good thing because it helped me to critically evaluate thematic analysis and grounded theory further as means of analysing social processes. Although it was right to develop the coding framework, I had to figure out a way in which I could use that framework to identify patterns of social learning. I needed to apply further analytical methods, and this led to (a) the need to overhaul my thesis chapters, (b) reconceptualization of the data, and (c) being completely overwhelmed!

The addition of extra analytical methods alongside thematic analysis was considered for a while. A conversation with my supervisor, however, confirmed the need for these methods so they were adopted. Alongside thematic analysis based methods, therefore, I added basic quantitative methods, and a pattern identification process. I shall not talk much about these methods here now simply because these methods might need redevelopment as I retest the coding framework against the entire collected data, and as I, therefore, use these methods to analyse a greater range of data, think more deeply about how these methods relate to my philosophical position and methodological perspective, to further the discussion and justification of them, and think more about how they interconnect. They have been discussed to a certain extent, but I feel that during the year these discussions and justifications shall be further enhanced and developed.

It suffices to say, however, that reflecting on their application in the research so far, it is clear to observe that when comparing all three different methods (thematic, basic quantitative, and pattern identification), each provided results that supplemented each other but also, unexpectedly, contrast each other, and provide a large volume of insights and observations about the phenomenon that were not previously considered or thought possible. The unexpected nature of these insights and the behaviour of the methods, and the volume of these insights, were completely overwhelming. My previous findings, understandings, and interpretations of the data, and developing conceptions of the phenomenon were challenged. These insights provided new opportunities to explore and explain the phenomenon of interest relative to the research question.

That was probably the most challenging academic experience I have come across so far. Challenging because of my preconceptions of the phenomenon and assumptions of what could be found by each method, built from what I had observed through coding data and building themes of the data. Although it could be argued that preconceptions are a hindrance (this has been argued in literature), I found that they were not blocking my ability to perceive and observe new or unique insights. In other words, I found that I was not attempting to “stuff” the new findings within my own preconceptions. I remained open minded and willing to accept that there might be something new and contradictory, and where contradictions were found they needed to be reasoned or resolved in some way. When I really think about it, those preconceptions were not a hindrance to my learning, but provided a platform upon which further learning occurred whilst being open or sensitised to the possibilities of there being something new. This is a substantial debate within the academic field.

Moving on, it was a significant and very important moment for many reasons for my research and how I understand myself and my research at the philosophical, methodological, personal and practical levels. It is all these considerations that have led to the requirement to overhaul the thesis chapters, and this began in November with the rewriting and reconstruction of the literature review. This is due to be followed up over the coming months with overhauling the research design, findings, and discussion chapters and these shall be discussed on here in time.

Where does all this lead me? The future! I am structuring a longer planning time frame in order to plan the tasks and activities to engage with over the comping months, and as a part of this I shall be writing a series of blog posts that documents the plan for the coming months, whilst accepting that I might come across further analytical ideas that were previously considered irrelevant or unexpected.

Briefly, however, the following tasks are to be engaged with:

The discussions that I have made so far as a result of the new insights and new analytical additions are continuous and ongoing, and any assumptions and interpretations of these findings will need further testing and refining as I rework the analysis. I had conceptualised the phenomenon in a way that entailed the analysis of certain types of data segments, but the new insights is now encouraging me to explore the whole data in order to build a much wider picture in accordance with the research question.

Each thesis chapter shall be given further edits and a complete overhaul where it is considered necessary in order to accommodate and best explain the new insights and the implications of the additional analytical methods. I shall initially establish a new outline for each thesis chapter before proceeding with the writing (and, of course, discuss it on here!).

The analytical framework shall be further tested in different contexts. I am not in a position to suggest any changes that could or could not occur, it all depends on what is interpreted from the data and how the framework matches up with the data (framework had to align with the data, not data aligning with the framework. This is process known as ‘stuffing’ the data to fit the framework, and it arguably does not work).

The other main task is to publish as much as I can in academic journals. I do feel now that I am in a position where I can get my findings and philosophies in publishable form during the year. Of course my ideas need some reworking before being publishable, but it is my aim by the end of next year to have more papers published on as much as I can!

And, of course, to continue to build post-doctoral opportunities. Throughout this whole process, I am beginning to visualise how a post-grad position and application could be shaped and the ideas and directions that I would like to take my research at post-doctoral level. I am early into this process, and I don’t really plan on focussing on this too heavily at the beginning of the year, but I suspect more focus shall be placed on this as summer approaches.

All this and more shall be discussed on this blog during the coming year!

Thank you for reading my reflections. Wishing all of my blog readers new and old a Happy New Year and a productive and positive year ahead!