Equity in higher education – An Australian researcher

My RTP scholarhip/Stipend kicked in on the 8th of January and I have been working on my PhD full-time since then. I WOULD say so far so good but that is not 100% correct. I should admit right now that I am not 100% clear on what goes in what section of my PhD thesis. I’ve put some stuff about Social Cognitive Theory as my framework in the introduction but I know it is going to do throughout. I’m nto exactly sure what I then need to put in the literature review. Plus I KNOW that I’ll put things in the literature review that should go in the discussion and visa versa. Helpfully Anna (principle supervisor) gave me a dot point “list” of the chatpers of a standard thesis and what goes where. It was very useful but not detailed enough. I know every thesis is different, so I understand why it wasn’t very detailed. Anyway I should have probably just said that I know absolutley nothing about how to write or structure a thesis this big – I guess until you do it, no one does!

I’ve got a timeline and chunks of the thesis to write. I am keeping up with those very well so far – but I’ve only just got feedback back on the first chunks. Anyway the churn out words – that part is going well. I’ve been taking my confirmation report and adding in more details, few more sub-headings etc. Perhaps I should just stick to this – write, write write and then edit when I get my comments back. But I am me – and that wouldn’t be. So I’ve done a couple of things that have landed me in a spot of trouble really!

First I put in an expression of interest for a RHD spot on the Research Board for Federation University. So that’s where my PhD is, not where I work. But I let my supervisor at work know – I guess that was my first mistake. It didn’t go down well because I have had to withdraw from a number of research projects, including one with the Associate Dean (who I absolutley LOVE). Anyway, I can see from a personal level how that was quite rude of me. Withdraw from her research project and then take on something else instead. I would apologise but she hasn’t spoken to me about it, only through my supervisor. To me that particular part is apples and oranges. I withdrew from an ongoing research project that would take up an unknown amount of hours over a long period of time. I replaced it with a fixed role for one year that involves 4 meetings plus some reading and thinking time. I estimated 20-40 hours over the year. Anyway – that is one part of it. The main consideration for me is that this is something I am chosing to do outside of my 18.13 hours per week of employment. I spoke to our HR equavelent and they agree – it’s my time, not the universities so they really have no grounds to be concerned unless they think it is impacting my job performance – it’s not. So that is one thing that has taken up a bit of my emotional energy lately. The other is a NCSEHE stipend.

I beleive it is brand new because I would have surely noticed it, and applied, if I’d seen it before. They just want to give some money to a PhD or Masters student to help them prepare a journal article manuscript that can be submitted for publication. It’s like their good deed to promote the next generation of researchers in equity. So good on them! But gee I want to apply. A LOT. Of course I need my PhD supervisors to back me and THAT has been the issue. I mis-understood their initial comments and when I got clarification what Anna wants me to do is essentially write a substantial rough draft of the artilce that I’m going to write for the NCSEHE stipend… BEFORE she will back my application for the NCSEHE stipend! As I’m planing to do a Scoping Literature Review you can see how ridiculous that is right?

The money would pay a research assistant to apply inclusion and exclusion criteria to the thousands of search results. But I’m expected to somehow magically do that myself in 3 weeks??? Just so I can apply to get the funding to do that work in the first place. Anyway it’s ridiculous but it’s prompted me to dig my heels in and get stubborn. So I’m going to write the method section and findings with a whole lot of XYZ and X’s where I don’t yet have the data. Then I’m going to write “a substantial draft” of all the rest and see what happens. Hopefully my supervisor will see I can and will find time to do the systematice review and support my stipend application. I beleive I CAN do it for a few reasons:

1. The funding is a pretty large motivator!
2. We have done a scoping literature review looking at worldwide literature and this one would be systematic zooming in on the Australian literature. So a lot of the planning and thinking has already been done. Ie the research questions are already refined and ready to go.
3. The NCSEHE know how long it takes to do a systematic literature review so they are not going to expect a 6 month timeline for the project. I can stretch it out a little bit so that the majority of the hours that I need to put into it will be AFTER I’ve submitted my thesis. I think that shows I understand the nature of research becasue NOTHING ever happens as fast as you think it will!

In other news I’ve done two out of three focus groups for the TAFE project. One was horrible as a participant kept turning the TV on when I wasn’t speaking directly to them. They didn’t mute and the transcript is a mess. The other one got some great data, actually they both have some great data, it’s just buried in one transcript and clear in the other. It was a learning experience that is for sure! Had a good be-brief with Sue and then set clearer expectations in the second focus group which I think helped.

I’m just about to finish off another emial interview for the NAEEA social equity discourses project. I believe that will give me 4 interviews so that is certainly enough for a conference presentation and probably enough for a journal article. There’s a couple of other participants that I hope will also finish their interviews so I am expecting 10 or 11 by the time I’m done. Could be a while though!

Both autoethnography projects are plodding along nicely. No complaints. Progress is slow but it’s there and it’s encouraging. Same with the meme project – about to recruit for the survey this coming term. So no worries there – it’s just the other challenges around my PhD, the stipend application and managing my relationships at work when they are asking about things outside of work! So those are the challenges for me at the moment – keep up with the writing timeline (tick) and then deal with all the other rubbish (half a tick… maybe). Please send patience!