UKZN – INSPIRING GREATNESS

What’s the PhD for? Postgraduate supervision,

social justice and research methodsProf Michael Samuel

UKZN School of EducationSeminar presentation 17 March 2016University of Johannesburg: Johannesburg

Structure• Selection of topics

• PhD in Higher Education (16 March 2016)

• Universities –South Africa: Daily Higher education News (03 March 2016)

• Global Edition - University World News (13 March 2016)

• THE PHD IN CONTEXT• Agenda

• What is driving the focus of the PHD?• Types of PHD

• PhD by thesis; PhD by publication and creative works• The professional doctorate: integrated doctorate; combinations• POLICY STEERING

• Operational considerations • Social Sciences vs Natural Sciences• The PHD in PRACTICE

• Methodological approach• Alternative forms of methodologies and approaches• Is the SMALL the new BIG?

• Closing thoughts• The PhD and social justice

Selection of topic focusThe PhD in context

GROUP A On PhD in Higher Education topicsMarch 2016

1. What could be the factors driving the selection of the PhD topic?2. How does who the candidate is, influence the selection of the

topic?3. How does the institution at which they are studying influence the

choice of the topic?4. What other factors might be influencing the selection of the topic?

Group B:Universities SA: Daily Higher Education News 03 March 2016

1. Which of the above topics are most likely to become part of a future doctoral study in South Africa?2. Why? Why not?

Group C Global Edition - University World News13 March 2016

1. Which of the above topics are most likely to become part of a future doctoral study in South Africa?2. Why? Why not?

AgendaWhat is driving PhD expansion?

status

access

capacity building

success

INTERNATIONAL

PROGRAMMATIC

INSTITUTIONAL NATIONAL

Knowledge productionUniversity rankings

Economic growthRedress

TransformationSocial justice

Knowledge economyEnrolment planning

Developing research learningThroughput

Collaborative partnershipMOUs

Funding

INDIVIDUAL STUDENT AND SUPERVISOR

Intersection of external pressures on doctorate production in SA

Moutonn, J 2015. The doctorate in SA:

Trends, challenges and constraints. UKZN Seminar.

18 June 2015: Durban.

?relationships

Graduate Work Social context

Types of PhDsCurriculum Policy drivers

•PRODUCTS: ARTEFACTS: papers , chapters, monographs, verbal, visual performances (largely already existing at start)

•DESIGN FEATURE:•Has a written cohesive argumentation: introduction, artefacts and summative commentary

• PRODUCT: WRITTEN TEXTS, ARTEFACTS (constructed during study)

• PROCESS: Usually includes a TAUGHT SUPPORT which may/ may not be credit bearing

• DESIGN FEATURE: Clearly defined progression steps

• PRODUCT: a WRITTEN TEXT (constructed at end)

• FOCUS: development of theoretical/philosophical knowledge based on context and practice

• PRODUCT: RANGE of ARTEFACTS: written, verbal, visual performance/s

• FOCUS: development of contextual professional knowledge based on theory and practice

Professional doctorate PhD

Integrated PhD

PhD by Publication& Creative

Works

1

3

4

2

Theory drivenPr

actic

e dr

iven

Blurred boundaries

Models of doctoral curriculum

Guiding rationale

A) PHD

THEORY

CONTEXT

IMPLICATIONS OF THE

RESEARCH STUDY

PRACTICE

B) Professional doctorates

CONTEXT

THEORY

IMPLICATIONS OF THE RESEARCH

STUDY

PRACTICE

The PhD in operationsHow are PhD delivered?Variants across Social Sciences and Natural Sciences

Differences between PhDs in Social Sciences and in the Natural sciences (Matos 2013, 631)

PhD in the Social Sciences

• Scope of the thesis• Student responsible for

whole research project

• Topic of the thesis• Student’s own

• Results• Only positive results

accepted

• Proximity to supervisor• Meeting by arrangement

PhD in Natural Sciences

• Scope of the thesis• Student responsible for a part of

a wider research project

• Topic of the thesis• Part of a wider research project

and selected/assigned by the supervisor/principal investigator

• Results• Negative results accepted

• Proximity to supervisor• Constant presence of supervisor

• Location• Student rarely has own space

provided by department/university. Many students work from home

• Proximity to other researchers• Lonely endeavor

• Funding• Student has to apply individually

for funding

• Duration of doctoral programme• Rarely within 4 years

• Facilities• Usually none

• Location• In the lab

• Proximity to other researchers• Close to other researchers in same

lab

• Funding• Attributed to student as part of the

overall funding for supervisor’s project

• Duration of doctoral programme• Stricter time limit – due to way

funding is organised

• Facilities• Lab, computing facilities, desk

PhD in the Social Sciences PhD in Natural Sciences

Frederico Matos (2013) PhD and the manager’s dream: professionalising the students, the degree and the supervisors?, Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 35:6, 626-638

STUDENT/S STAFF NOMENCLATURE PURPOSE

One One Primary/ Main supervisor LegalAdministration?OverseerPromoter

One Two Joint supervisor/sCo-supervisor/s“Fractional supervisor”

ContextTheoreticalMethodologicalPracticalDisciplineFocus

One >3…many Supervisory PanelStudy

Collaborative input

Many One Project supervisor Each student/staff researching a different aspect of the same phenomenon

Many Many Cohort supervision Could include main supervisor /not

18

Phase OneResearch Design

Proposal

Phase ThreeAnalysisReport

Phase TwoData Production

Non-cohort

Presentation of

Research Proposalto SHDC

Intended research focus

One-on-one supervision

Team supervision

headwork

field work

text work

SELECTION

APPOINTMENT OF SUPERVISOR

The UKZN PHD collaborative PhD cohort model

19

Building capacityStudents as researchers• Peer review• Oral Presentations: defending

work in progress• Planning /organising/

reflecting• Written work: phase 2• Learning to be a supervisor

Staff as supervisors• Offering supervisory advice and critique• Moving along with the students through each phase (progress)• Shifting kinds of audiences, texts, purposes• Both MIE and UZKN supervisors

Principles• Ubuntu• Serendipity• Democracy

Samuel M & Vithal R, 2011.

Emergent frameworks of research teaching and learning in a cohort-based doctoral programme. Perspectives in Education. 29 (3). 76-87.

• The power of inter-disciplinary, multi-disciplinary, juxta-disciplinary, trans-disciplinary study….

• You never know who/ what will be inspirational:

• Methodology (Approach)• Context • Theory

• DESIGNING FOR CREATIVE ACCIDENTS• LEARNING THROUGH, WITH and AGAINST

OTHERS• LEARNING IN COMMUNITY

Methodological approaches: representationsFrom big Small

• Growing critique of the limits of policy as a steering mechanism• Shift away from policy-implementation analysis• Towards smaller case study approaches:

• concentration on the lived experiences of the participants in educational settings

• Rise of Ethnographic approaches: • self study methodologies (Pillay, Naicker & Pithouse-Morgan); methodological agency (Samuel&

Mariaye)

• “Individual Individualistic/ self-centred?• Capabilities approaches (Nuusbaum, Walker) “false necessities” (Hugo)• Disguised consumerisation• The post-human condition: (Olivier)

• environment, energy, equity & economics (Sen)• People, planet and profit • Responsibility, accountability & sustainability

• A new liberalist retreat• Narcissistic: self-marginalisation; peripheralisation• ??IS THE SMALL THE NEW BIG?

Pillay, D., Naicker, I. & Pithouse-Morgan (2016). Academic autoethnographies: Inside teaching in higher education. Sense Publishing: Rotterdam

Samuel, M & Mariaye, H (eds.) (2016). Continuity, complexity and change.

Teacher education in Mauritius. Common Ground Publishing: Champaign, IL.

Closing comments• Can alternative methodologies generate new forms of social justice

highlighting?• Can methodology be a leverage?• New narcissism

Recent related publications• Samuel M and Mariaye H 2016. (in press) From a distance: Small island states and their global partners. In Tavis D. Jules & Patrick Ressler

(eds.) Is “small” always small and “big” always big? Re-reading Educational Policy and Practice in Small States. Comparative Studies Series, ed. by Jürgen Schriewer, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

• • Samuel M (2016). (in press). PhD value: what is the doctorate for? Comparative responses from South Africa and Mauritius. Paper in

press: Higher Education Forum. Research Institute for Higher Education, Hiroshima University, Japan. • Samuel M 2016 (in press). Re-membering and re-directing the self: an educational journey. Journal of International Cooperation in

Education. 17 (2). 2015: 109-127.• Samuel M & Mariaye H (eds.) 2016. Continuity, complexity and change: Teacher Education in Mauritius. Common Ground Publishing:

University of Illinois, Champaign. • Samuel M 2015. Angels in the wind: the future of educational research. Journal of Education. Number 61. 2015: 147-158.Post-conference

proceedings publication of the South African Education Research Association (SAERA) 2014 Conference: Theme: Education research: future directions. Elangeni Hotel, Durban.12-15 August 2014. (Opening address: SAERA). (Chair of Local Organising Committee).

• Samuel M 2015. Beyond narcissism and hero-worshipping: Life history research and narrative inquiry. Alternation. 22 (2) 2015: 8-28. Special Issue: Memory work and interdisciplinary studies (Editors: Sabine Marshall & Phillipe Dennis). ISSN 1023-1757

• Samuel M 2014 Doctoral career path studies: exchanging paradigms across international borders. South African Journal of Higher Education. 2014 28.(5): 1469-1484. ©Unisa Press ISSN 1011-3487

• Samuel, M & Vithal R 2011. Emergent frameworks of research teaching and learning in a cohort-based doctoral programme. Perspectives in Education 29 (3): 76-87. Special edition: The changing face of doctoral education in South Africa.

Abstract

• This presentation explores the competing expectations of doctoral education from a national, institutional, programmatic and personal perspective. The rhetoric of PhDs contributing to the knowledge economy, and wider socio-economic development is questioned as adequate explanation for the rise in interest in doctoral studies. An examination of the motivation behind choice of topics of a sampled group of PhD in Higher Education students forms the basis for this analysis. This will be explored against the backdrop of recent websites: Universities South Africa, Daily Higher Education News Education news, University World New Global Edition. How do the competing agendas of the managerial, policy and international terrains influence/not the choices of doctoral topics in the sphere of educational research locally, institutionally and personally? Should these agendas drive doctoral topic selection? How is the worthwhileness of a doctoral study topic decided; by whom and why? Who frames the agenda for doctoral education?

• Secondly, the presentation questions why the range of alternative forms of representation of doctoral studies are more restricted/dominant in certain fields/ disciplines compared to others. The following types of doctorates and their possible curriculum implications include the PhD, the PhD by publications & creative works, the professional doctorate and the integrated doctorate. How could/should doctoral education be broadened to encompass a greater diversity of types and curriculum offerings?

• The above will be located through comparing the operational foci of doctoral education (admission, selection, scope, supervision, delivery outputs) in the Natural Sciences and the Social Sciences, arguing for a reconsideration of benchmarks used to examine institutional productivity, investment of human, physical and financial resources to support doctoral education. This will be followed by an analysis of the potential /limitations of a cohort supervision model of doctoral research learning which aims to produce a community of scholars engaged in creating critical discursive spaces for more democratic rather than traditional one-on-one Master-Apprenticeship supervision models.

• Thirdly, the presentation questions whether innovative disruption of present doctoral education traditions could potentially be challenged through the choice of methodological approach. The shifting of discourses away from macro-policy-practice implementation fetishes towards deeply understanding the lived personal experiences and effects of everyday practices and practitioners, including auto-ethnographic critical reflexion, is offered as potentially a reclaiming of space, a re-definition of the small. Individuals, communities, and institutions who bear the responsibility of shouldering macro-systemic interventions and their lived worlds are foregrounded in such research methodologies, potentially offering new vocabulary for theorising, a kind of “methodological agency”. Can the small issues become big? Is this retreat into the small, evidence of a form of marignalisation, another form of self-peripherilisation? Is the “small-is-big agenda” adequate for a social reconstructivist activism? Does methodology of doctoral studies provide the leverage for a social justice turn? Is methodological innovation adequate?

• The above foci question how the rationale, curriculum design, supervision, topic selection and methodology of doctoral education are capable and/or constrained to achieve greater forms of social justice considerations.