z+Info+for+Secondary+Students


 * So what is a PhD and a doctorate?**

If you go to uni after school you will start off most likely in an undergraduate degree. Something like Bachelor of Science or Bachelor of Arts. With some exceptions, most of these take 3 years full time. You may be asked or choose to do a Honours year at the end of the 3 years which is a 1 year research project about something you found interesting in your degree. I did two undergraduate degrees, but because I did them as a combined degree it took 4 years instead of 6: Bachelor of Mathematics, Bachelor of Arts. My first two years of uni there was no HECS (ie it was free!) then when HECS was introduced in 1989 I had to pay it for the last 2 years of my degree (although I deferred it and paid it later when I was working).

Degrees that you can do straight after school are called undergraduate degrees. Many people later on go on to do post-graduate degrees as well (usually on a part-time basis while they are working). These are degrees that require you to have an undergraduate degree first and sometimes a specific degree from a specific faculty (or department). Diplomas are a bit of both, they are usually 1 year and can be undergraduate or post-graduate (confused?). I did a 1 year Diploma of Education but you had to have a degree first to do this one. A more challenging post-graduate degree is a Masters degree. Usually 1 year full time and 2 years part-time (although rather than do 2 subjects each semester over 2 years I dragged mine out much longer by doing only 1 subject per semester to reduce the workload). I did a Master of Accountancy and a Master of Education. You have probably heard of the MBA (Master of Business Administration), lots of people in business do this to get an extra qualification. You usually pay more for Masters, they can range from $5000 to $50000+++ depending on what type it is and what uni you go to. For mine I paid per subject, for Education it was around $800 per subject so about $6400 in total while the Accountancy one cost around $10000. People can pay a lot more for MBAs. Although some people are now starting to be a bit blasé about them – every man and his dog was getting an MBA a few years back.

OK, now another option is to do a doctorate. You don’t necessarily have to do a Masters first although lots of people do. Some people do an Honours year then straight into the PhD (sort of wish I had done that but at the time I wanted to get out of uni and earn money!). Some people do it as part of their professional work. I had to do a Masters first as I had done no research in my earlier degrees, they were all done by coursework. Some unis will make you do certain subjects first to prove you have the skills and knowldge needed to do research (eg in my Masters I had to do Research Design and Research Perspectives if I had any hope of getting into the doctorate program).

So why do you do a PhD? Not just to get Dr. before your name (and no that does NOT mean you can practise medicine). You do a PhD because you decide there is something you want to know more about and no-one has looked at this question from the particular angle you are interested in. You have to be keen about your topic because really although you have a supervisor from the uni you are really on your own. You don’t usually go to lectures or classes (except some one-off ones), there are not specific exams or assignments you have to do, instead it is all about working out what do you really want to know then how you can find it out and then writing up what you find out.

So my topic is about study skills in the online environment. What works, what doesn't, what technologies are best to use. So first I have to find out what has already been done in this area (called doing a literature review when you read about the research in the field) then I have to decide exactly what I will research, what sort of data I will collect and examine and then it all gets written up into an 80000 word book (called a thesis).

How long will this take? Well estimates vary. Supposedly 3 years full time and 4 years part-time, have also been told it is 4 years full-time and 8 years part-time. I am aiming for 5 years part-time. Many people take years and years to finish. As many places are government funded (this mean you don't pay uni fees - the government wants people to do higher education research so was a nice bonus to find in this case I didn't have to pay!) the unis only get their funding from the government when you finish - so it is in their interest to help you get to the end as quickly as possible.

PhD stands for Doctor of Philosophy and it is the title that is conferred when you complete your doctorate.

Here is a formal definition: ‘A PhD is a form of accreditation that certifies that the holder has proved himself or herself as a researcher and warrants admission to the community of licensed academics or competent scholarly independent researchers'.

//You might also like to check out my blog where I reflect on the PhD process:// []

.................................................................................................................................................................. //Thoughts on article from 'What does good educational research look like?" by Yates, Lyn (2204) from 1st PhD block//


 * Some ideas after reading this article:**

Perhaps we need to question what we are trying to achieve before we can decide whether the end result showcases ‘good educational research’.

A criticism of doctoral research raised in this article is that it can sometimes lead to the production of things read only by 3 people. This had been a criticism that previously I would have agreed with. Being a pragmatic type of person, I like things to have a purpose and an outcome so I had always been a bit dismissive about researching something that does not have a practical application and outcome. Find something out, then use this knowledge to make something better.

However I am now starting to question this approach, and really the whole thrust of the PhD is that you are significantly contributing to the wider body of knowledge in your field. Although the work may not have immediate practical applications, it may lead to further developments in the future – we get higher by standing on the shoulders of those who have gone before us.

But perhaps I am focusing too much on outcomes? The article points out that being forced to pursue research in a ‘pure’ way is an experience that can train and transform a potential researcher and help them develop and refine not only their research skills but also undertake a personal journey of discovery. The experience and scope and depth of the research may lead the candidate into questioning their own beliefs and assumptions not just about their topic but about the research process in general.

This tallies with some advice I received from other (further along) doctoral students. The advice was to treat the whole process as a journey of discovery, to not worry if you cannot see all the steps lined up but instead to focus on the immediate steps and to in effect take a leap of faith that eventually everything will come together.

The definition in the article of what is a PhD: ‘A PhD is a form of accreditation that certifies that the holder has proved himself or herself as a researcher and warrants admission to the community of licensed academics or competent scholarly independent researchers'.

So what is good educational research?

I think it is original and creative yet has taken into account the existing research (interesting point made in the article: the problem to be tackled should emerge naturally from the literature review). The research has been done properly. Methodology is well-thought out and applied appropriately. The research question has been addressed resulting in an original contribution to knowledge in that field.