For the love of books: On the tactile PhD thesis

Posted on March 31, 2016 by Dr Deborah M. Netolicky

the shameless joy of the thesis selfie & those three little letters emblazoned in gold

Having books bound signifies respect for the book; it indicates that people not only love to read, but they view it an important occupation. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Demons

The chemical breakdown of the smell of books was the subject of a 2009 study (downloadable here and nicely summarised here), but those smells are about more than science. They are about emotions and memories. Libraries. Being read to snuggled in beds. Reading alone in beanbags, on sunny window ledges or in hidden cubbies or corners. Dragons and sleuths and science and fantasy. Escape into other worlds and other lives. Empathy, fear, disgust, happiness, tears. The pads of fingers on pages. The whoosh of the page turning. The thud of a closing book. The grief when a trilogy or series ends.

I’ve written before about the memories of my grandfather’s study, filled as it was with old books, including the two prized books he left to me. My grandfather wasn’t a Ron Burgundy kind of man, but he did have many leather bound books. He was an academic, a professor and a book binder. (He also made those little wooden ships and magically placed them inside bottles.) The smell of old books–which is described here by Deepak Mehta as bibliochor, inspired by the word petrichor–takes me back to sitting in the cushiony chair in that study, having books gingerly passed into my hands. Feeling their physical and symbolic weight. He didn’t live long enough to see me finish my PhD and share my own Big Book with him, but I was lucky enough to be able to share the first part of my PhD journey with him.

This week I was full of nerdy book-loving joy when I picked up the hard bound copies of my PhD thesis. I’m an English and Literature teacher, reader, bibliophagist, smeller of books, narrative researcher and writer of texts. So it stands to reason that I would be obsessively perfectionist about the physical thesis book (totally reasonable, right?). I agonised over font, paper and end papers.

What’s in a font? That which we write in Helvetica by any other font would read as sweetly.

I always envisaged my thesis volume as channelling the old storybooks and encyclopaedias (remember those?) of my childhood. My selection of the font Garamond acknowledges that serif fonts are more readable, while visually referencing the traditional old-style serif typefaces of literary fiction. Garamond is a sixteenth century French artisanal font based on the work of Claude Garamond, and it is lovely in italics. It was a more beautiful option that the conventional Times New Roman. Apparently TNR is mandated in some institutions but as its inception was to squeeze the most text into the columns of The Times, it’s a bit squishy and a bit ubiquitous.

If you are thinking about thesis fonts, check out Anitra Not’s wonderful Slideshare on how to make a beautiful thesis. There should be a word for ‘the joy brought by beautiful typeface’. I don’t think that thinking about the beauty and readability of your thesis is total phdcrastination; there’s some method in wanting to present your work in a way that resonates with its purpose.

O, feel of paper and smell of page!

While my university prints theses on heavier-than-usual copy paper, I ended up researching papers on which I might print the thesis. I eventually settled on an archival paper watermarked with the National Archives of Australia registered trademark. It was cream rather than white and a bit textural rather than super-smooth. I tested the paper for its ability to handle the illustrations in my thesis and printed double-sided, to keep the thickness down and save some paper, rather than for aesthetics (there was a bit of show-through).

I also bought some white Japanese Unryushi paper to act as endpapers after I discovered that getting marbled endpapers in Australia is prohibitively difficult (my granddad would have known where and how to get some).

thesis pages

Bound pages nestled within the regal carapace

To bind a doctoral dissertation is not just to join pages prosaically together into a document. There are medieval bookbinding traditions and regal colours. In Australia there isn’t really a choice in the actual binding as each university tends to have theses bound by a particular book binder, to particular specifications. The traditional binding is in buckram cloth with gold lettering. Each university has different colours associated with each degree. At my university, the PhD thesis is bound in maroon, so maroon it was. The nice thing about that was that on the day I picked up my pile of five theses (one for the university library, one for each supervisor, one for the school at which I conducted my study and one for me) people congratulated me as I walked through the grounds. “Well done!” “Congratulations!”

The Big Book

Of course, none of this matters in the big picture. A font does not make or break the substance of a thesis. A bound thesis needs to meet its university library’s specifications, but no more than that. I know that my thesis could have been printed in Arial or Times New Roman, on ordinary copy paper, and it would have been of the same written quality. Now that most theses will be read online, the archival quality of the thesis makes even less difference than in the past.

Yet, my own love of books and their tactile, olfactory and objet d’ art properties meant that I put a lot of cognitive and emotive energy into the physical book. And I took a lot of joy from experiencing the finished product. It might have been my favourite PhD moment so far. If you’re like me, go ahead and embrace your inner book nerd.

It’s ok to be a book-perfectionist. It’s ok to love your finished thesis, imperfect as it might be. Think of it as a handmade quilt, full of the humanness of your mark. For me the choice of font, slightly textural end papers and creamy archival paper were about valuing the text and helping my reader enter the narrative of my thesis, which uses Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as a literary lens. The tactile experience of turning those first pages might help them down the rabbit hole of the text and into the world of story, into the study and back to their childhood memories of reading.

bookish gifts for my supervisors

Coaches, fit your own oxygen masks! How do we support the coach’s needs?

Posted on March 26, 2016 by Dr Deborah M. Netolicky

Sources: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/293719206921791445/ and https://sites.google.com/site/ccccsorba/2013-julius-18

As a coach, and leader of a team of coaches, I spend a lot of time thinking and writing about the needs of the coachee. Coaching is all about the coachee. The context in which coaching happens must establish and maintain trust. In my school, this means that the coaching conversation, when it happens with one of our team of trained cognitive coaches, is confidential. The details of any observed lessons or coaching conversations are not passed on outside of the coach-coachee relationship. Line managers are still expected to be aware of the teaching, development and work of their staff. Managers might pop in to lessons and conduct their own conversations, but the person’s coach is not a place for others to glean information. We have been very deliberate about protecting the sanctity of the coach-coachee relationship as, without trust, the conversation is no longer a safeguarded space for formalised reflection. It would become tainted with hints of evaluation, accountability and fear that could hinder honesty and prevent vulnerability.

A coach uses their coaching toolbox of strategies and awarenesses to minister to the coachee. To reflect, facilitate, provoke and deepen the coachee’s thinking, by paraphrasing and asking questions, while applying a nuanced understanding of non-verbal language and of cognition. When coaches reflect, they do so to develop their craft in order to better help others to build internal capacity, to better create a non-judgmental space for coachees to freely explore their thoughts and experiences, to paraphrase with more precision or question with more sophistication, to more deeply internalize the many layers of coaching knowledge and practice.

But recently I’ve been wondering about the needs of the coach. I’ve been a coach in some coaching conversations which have been emotional or confronting for the coachee. I’ve found myself affected by the emotion of the conversation, deeply immersed as I am in rapport with that person. I have left these conversations wanting to debrief, but aware of the moral obligation to maintain confidentiality for my coachee. When confidentiality is promised to the coachee, so that the conversation can be a safe space for talk, where can the coach go to reflect on their own experiences? How does a coach refine their practice if they are unable to share their experience of the conversation?

Coaches require somewhere for the coach to go in order to refine their coaching practice through reflection and planning, and as a tool for self-care. Fit your own oxygen mask before helping others, and all that. What support do coaches need? Who coaches the coaches? Where and how might they access support in ways which are mindful of the trust put in the coach to be trusted fortress of coachee information? What responsibility do organisations have in providing support structures for their coaches?

I’m lucky to work with a team of coaches at my school. We have all been trained in Cognitive Coaching, in non-inferential lesson observations and in using the Danielson Framework for Teaching as a tool for teacher reflection. In our meetings and in our Voxer group, we are able to debrief with each other to some extent, or to throw out questions to the collective mind when we come up against coaching challenges. We never use coachees’ names in these discussions or divulge identifiable information, so we tend to talk cautiously around issues or questions we have. For example: How might we differentiate our coaching model for highly-reflective or highly experienced teachers? What questions might be useful for surfacing deeper or more abstract thinking? How might we respond in a coaching conversation which becomes highly emotional for the coachee? We might have textbook answers from our training, but talking about and around these sorts of questions helps us to tease out our beliefs about coaching, our coaching practices and the tensions within our specific context. It helps to develop our shared understandings and language of coaching, as a collaborative group of coaches.

Ideally, a coach would be provided the opportunity to be coached on their coaching. In my coaching team we sometimes participant in meta-coaching (coaching about coaching) with each other. While we don’t ask our coachees to permit us to collect data during conversations, we can do this when we coach each other. A video or audio recording, or a transcript of questions and paraphrases, can act as data on which the coach can be coached around their own practice. We tend to do this in training or within our own coach group, so as not to impact our conversations with coachees. There’s nothing more likely to shatter the sense of a trusting, safe space than setting an iPad or dictaphone on the table to record the conversation!

Of course a coach can debrief at home, to a partner or family member, which might allow an opportunity to download. But this won’t necessarily provide a high level of support in working through an issue or experience.

Another possibility is finding support from coach-educators outside one’s own school context. I’m grateful to have connected with other Australian educators who are using and leading coaching in their own schools. On Voxer, we are able to discuss the issues in our own contexts, again without divulging names or identities of others. I can ask a question of the group and receive thoughtful, informed feedback from those who share my view of coaching but have different tools and knowledge at their disposal. Sometimes a paraphrase from another coach is all I need to see my own issue more clearly. Coaches informally coaching coaches, at point of need. It’s brilliant DIY professional support. I’ve found this invaluable in allowing me to think aloud about, and be coached through, wonderings or experiences, while protecting the confidentiality of my coachees.

Learning through sharing with other coaches is one reason that a few of us—myself, Chris Munro, Corinne Campbell and Jon Andrews—started the monthly Twitter chat #educoachOC. This one hour chat, which we co-moderate on the first Monday of each month, is a vehicle for bringing together those involved in coaching in education. The discussions are often rich and allow coaches, and those leading coaching initiatives in schools and systems, to explore the commonalities and differences, privileges and challenges. I emerge from that hour feeling understood and invigorated.

Being a coach (like being a principal or CEO, I imagine) can be lonely work, because the coach is required to keep what’s said in the coaching conversation, in that coaching conversation. As coaches, it’s important that we find ways to develop our practice and support our own needs, while protecting the trust of the coaching relationship. We need to support coaches, so that coaches can best address the needs of those they coach.

The index-cardification of education

Posted on March 20, 2016 by Dr Deborah M. Netolicky

This blog post (a kind of montage-pastiche of educational observations) was inspired by Jon Andrews’ wonderful post today, Trouble Brewing at Snake Mountain High, which used the characters of He-Man and Skeletor to make some very powerful comments about education.

______________________________

The following is a transcript of a podcast in which Dr Adora, school principal at Etheria College, speaks to Mr Hordak, head consultantpreneur at the Institute of Think Tankery and Toolkitisms.

Adora: Hello Mr Hordak. Thank you for joining me for this week’s Education Newsroom podcast.

Hordak: Thanks, Dr Adora. It’s great to be here. I’m looking forward to clearing up some common misconceptions about our work and sharing some of the great things we’re doing at the Institute.

Adora: Your work at the Institute has caused some backlash in the educational community …

Hordak: Well, we at the Institute of Think Tankery and Toolkitisms are getting a bit sick of being called ‘the Evil Horde’ in the media. We are doing excellent work. We have developed toolkits which really distil the business of teaching down to its essence. There’s no reason for teachers and schools to get caught up in worrying about research and innovation and such. We’ve done all the hard work for you! Our toolkits each provide a one-page summary which tells you all you need to know. About teaching literacy in the early years for instance. Or about instruction in the sciences. Or assessment. It’s index cards for the profession, if you like.

Adora: But Mr Hordak, you aren’t listening to the profession. Those working in schools want to engage in thinking about, reflecting on and interrogating our practices. We want to engage in research literatures and what insights these might offer to our own contexts. We enjoy engaging in robust debate that teases out our understandings or challenges us to think differently and act deliberately. As a principal, I don’t want a one-size-fits-all straightjacket or a one page simplification of the complex work my staff and I do. I want my teachers to consider the needs of their students, the idiosyncrasies of our school and the ways in which we might work together to serve our students.

Hordak: Let me interrupt you there, Dr Adora. We at the Institute make your work easier. We make sure your people are doing teaching right. We cut through the mumbo jumbo and the disputes between educational factions who are constantly warring and disagreeing about what should and shouldn’t be done. You can say goodbye to having to listen to experts and academics and teachers banging on about their apparent knowledge and expertise and, ahem, research studies. We’ve done the analyses and the diagrammatic representationising and the product researchervisation. We are experts in education thinkification and edu-preneurial-innovationism. You don’t need to do all that time consuming thrashing about with ideas, or unproductive action research in professional learning communities. For too long the concept of teaching has been spiralling out of control into some kind of overblown and meaningless discussion. We’ve given it meaning again. Clear, indisputable meaning.

Adora: But as you noted, Mr Hordak, those actually on the ground, teaching and leading in schools, don’t like the way you’ve distilled teaching down into atomised parts. Teaching and school leadership aren’t things you can streamline into wafer-thin pieces. School culture isn’t something you can cook up from a shake-and-bake packet. These things are contested for a reason. They are complex. They are nuanced. They are contextual.

Hordak: Types like you won’t ever come to understand what we at the Institute understand. Overthinking, egomaniacal principals like you will continue to ‘lead’ your schools into the ground. Why overwork your teachers when you have the short, sweet recipes for success at your fingertips? Even now my Think Tankery minions are finialising our brand management and commodification procedures. My Toolkitists are reassessing our pictorial illustrations for their effective cognitive impactiness and persuasivity.

Adora: To me your toolkits and pictures-of-practice sound like Orwell’s totalitarian Newspeak, in which the complexities of thought and action are deliberately limited through the distilling of language down to parts. This no longer allows the kinds of thinking we want teachers and leaders to be doing. You are attempting to control teaching in order to make money. In doing so, you are destroying the profession, not helping it.

Hordak: That’s where you’re wrong, Dr Adora, so very very wrong. We are purists. Our index-cardification of education allows not only the guidance of practice, but also its measurement. You can have all the data you’ll ever need. Our one page summaries aren’t just index cards, they’re score cards. Everyone from principals like yourself to education ministers can easily and quickly score teachers against our simple formulae in order to determine their effectiveness and punish or reward them as appropriate. Failing teachers and failing schools have never been easier to identify. This is the future of education! At this very moment we are in discussions with the Ministry of Education in order to distribute the work of the Institute throughout the country. We will influence every school and every teacher. Mwahahahahhh!

Adora: Well, that’s all we have time for today, Mr Hordak, but I’m sure there are many educators around the nation despairing at the thought that organisations like yours might have power over the important work that they do.

End of transcript.

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An afterword …

Since writing this post, the following blog posts have been written by other bloggers exploring satire and/or 80s icons as lenses into educational issues. They are well worth a read.

A pedagogy of Astro Boy, by Stewart Riddle

The Missing Superheroes, by Corinne Campbell

Eye on Education, by Mark Johnson

On (teacherly) identities: Who am I and who gets to decide?

Posted on March 15, 2016 by Dr Deborah M. Netolicky

Know thyself.

my multiple selves reflected back at me

In policy, research and practice, the teacher voice is a vulnerable and vital one, but other perspectives (student, school leader, academic, parent) are also important in educational discourses. What or who is a teacher in terms of identity? I don’t mean job description, the kind of thing you’d find on a curriculum vitae or Twitter bio where people often label their current professional role. Teacher. Principal. Consultant. Advisor. Coach. Lecturer. Professor. Some might quibble over whether a teacher of teachers who used to teach in schools is in fact a teacher, as Stewart Riddle recently found. Yet labels don’t explain the complexities of self in terms of being a living human in the world.

The field of identity is sometimes lamented as being confused, contested and slippery, with different definitions meaning different things in different contexts. Theorisation of the self has a long history, appearing as early as 1902. At times identity has been seen as fixed and singular, but now more often it is seen as shifting and plural.

My PhD thesis defined identity as the “ongoing sense-making process of contextually-embedded perceived-selves-in-flux”. I see identity as process rather than product, as shifting rather than fixed, and as constructed and operated by the individual. It is a constant process of being and becoming. We are never finished. We don’t foreclose on an identity, but fluidly negotiate a variety of self-perceptions in a variety of contexts. We imagine and enact our identities by looking at past, present and potential future selves.

Additionally, identities are individual and collaborative. We construct our versions of ourselves based, not only on our perceptions and imaginings of self, but on our relationships with others, organisations and contexts. Costa and Garmston’s concept of holonomy is based on Koestler’s ‘holon’ which describes something which is simultaneously part and whole. Holonomy can be used to conceptualise the symbiotic interrelationship between individual and group or organisation.

My PhD looked at professional identity, in conjunction with professional learning and school change, in order to explore what it is that shapes educators’ development of professional identity perceptions, what shifts those self-perceptions, and in what ways schools and systems might work with a greater understanding of educator identities when designing and implementing education reform. My doctoral study found that professional learning deeply involves senses of self. Learning which taps into who educators see and feel they are, has the most impact on beliefs, thoughts, behaviours, and practices.

I often write on this blog about identity (look! there’s a tab for that). Writerly identity, doctorly identity, teacherly identity, researcherly identity, experty identity, parenty identity, coachy identity. I create stuff. I teach stuff. I tell stories. I learn stuff. I write stuff. I coach people. I lead teams and projects. I read. I am coached. I am led. I am a learner, a parent, a teacher, a researcher, a coach, a flâneuse.

So, as we are selves in action and in motion, can we decide when someone starts or stops being or becoming a teacher? I wonder about what makes a teacher identity. Surely it’s not something that enters a person as they set foot in their first school classroom and leaves them the moment they step out of their last taught lesson at a school. If I left the classroom for academia, would I no longer be a teacher? Well, maybe not a ‘current school teacher’, but I wouldn’t shed my teacherly-ness or my years of identity-forming teacherly-experiences. What about teachers who teach for decades and then retire? I guess those wanting labels might call them former teachers or retired teachers, but might they still identify as teachers? Many school leaders in my PhD study saw themselves as teachers first and foremost, and leaders/teachers of teachers second; for all, serving the student was at the centre of their senses of self.

Who gets to tell us what roles we can and cannot identify with? Who is the keeper of the labels? I’d argue that we are the constructors, operators and refiners of our own identities. Who am I and who gets to decide? Me.

Because: beauty

Posted on March 13, 2016 by Dr Deborah M. Netolicky

Sometimes we can get caught up in the details of our lives. The minutiae of tasks and to-dos, which for me this week has meant an explosion of Post-Its across my work space and yet another blog post on finishing the PhD. I’ve been existing very much in my head.

It’s nice to be reminded of the beauty, wonder, and creativity in the world. This morning I took my boys to Cottesloe for the Sculptures by the Sea exhibition which runs each March. We ran along the sand, splashed in the water, and admired the art. They played, laid on their backs to appreciate the sky and sculptures, and clambered over rocks. It was gloriously simple, and yet the art gave us much to talk about and to think about.

Below are some of my photos from this morning. You can find some of my pics from last year’s exhibition in this post.

by @debsnet

Diary of a PhD completion: All the feels

Posted on March 11, 2016 by Dr Deborah M. Netolicky

The thane of Cawdor lives. Why do you dress me In borrowed robes? ~ Shakespeare’s Macbeth

‘Future Roller Coaster’ by xuanlim http://xuanlim.deviantart.com/art/Future-Roller-Coaster-473968133

In my last post, I described how I felt once I knew that my thesis amendments had been approved by my supervisors. I really didn’t think that this very pointy end of the PhD would be complex. Surely there would be a quiet moment of joy followed by the pop of a champagne cork. Well, I was right about the champagne, but the last week has been more of a rollercoaster than I imagined. It turns out that finishing a doctorate is wound up in some messy identity-entangled feelings. Below, I try to give a sense of what that looked and felt like for me.

My week’s diary of PhD completion went something like this.

Friday: Supervisors sign off on the amended thesis. Form goes to the Dean for university sign off. Elation. Excitement. Light can be seen at the end of the tunnel. Hugs. Champagne. I tell my kids. My 5 year old shouts “Wooohooo! No more PhD!” I remember that I’ve been doing this most of their lives (they were 6 months and 2 years old when I started; now they are 4 and 5).

Saturday and Sunday: Checking and re-checking the thesis, especially the amendments. I fully proof the first and last chapters, line by line, punctuation mark by punctuation mark. Obsess over commas and hyphens, or the lack of commas and hyphens. Wonder why I’m so unable to let go of a document which I’ve been told is done. My husband takes me to lunch on the coast on a glorious day. I drink a bellini. We cheers to the thesis being done.

Monday: Dean signs off on my thesis. It’s through. Accepted. Officially done. I jump up and down. Whooping. Air-punching. Triumph.

Tuesday: I’m still tinkering with the already-approved thesis. I’m haunted by nightmares and daydreams of mistakes existing somewhere in the 300 page document despite it being checked by me, two supervisors and three examiners. Impossible obsession with checking over and over. And over. I keep reminding myself the thesis has been signed off. It is considered doctorate worthy. I save the document as a pdf to stop myself from my compulsive tinkering. I sneak another peek. Ok, maybe more than one.

Wednesday: Wake with a cracking headache, knowing that today is the day I print the final final final copies for permanent binding (buckram cloth! gold letters!). One of which will live on the library shelf (maybe never to be opened). Anxiety builds as I worry that this final copy means there can be no more tinkering. I am overwhelmed by the pressure of printing the tangible final pages. It’s a relinquishing of control. If there are errors, they will be inked there for eternity. I feel increasingly ill as I print and check the final copies of my thesis. I take the box of printed pages in to university and submit them to the library to be sent for final binding. I drive to pick up sick child from school; no time to savour the moment. I upload the thesis document to the university library. Fall into a heap of exhaustion and hollowness. It’s the thesis finishing comedown, an emotional and energetic crumbling, a descent into the post-thesis abyss. I tweet my feelings of emptiness and strangeness. Responses come: yes, the mourning, the crash, the void. Others have felt this, too. I head out for dinner and champagne. Company helps and I’m reminded that – without lab partners, a writing group or colleagues at the university – my journey is mostly in my head. I’ve been the working mama who comes and goes from uni in a blinding flash, working mostly alone, often in the night. It’s good to be out, and to talk about it. And to talk about other things to forget about it.

Thursday: I get word that my thesis is online. There it is, a citation with my name on it, and a downloadable document. My thesis title in black and white. My words out of my head and into the world. My work now in the public realm. Elation again. Pride. And then the crack of the Imposter Syndrome whip. I hadn’t felt it until now. I was perfectly comfortable being a PhD candidate. An eager student. A work in progress. Of course I am still a neophyte. A partially-formed apprentice scholar. I realise I’m almost doctored, but feel unworthy of the title. I know I’ve worked hard for this. My family has both sacrificed and benefited from my doing the PhD; we’ve lived it. I know I’ve walked the path that leads to the ‘Dr’ and the medieval flourish of the Tudor bonnet. Yet I hear Macbeth’s line in my head “Why do you dress me in borrowed robes?” My sense of identity hasn’t caught up with the reality of finishing the PhD. My new almost-doctor-ness feels ill-fitting. My neverending PhD story is coming to an end. Or is that a beginning? When I started the doctorate I saw its completion as the pinnacle. Now I realise it’s entry level.

Friday: I notice missing Oxford commas in the text. I begin to think about the work I’ve now projected out into the world. I remember how non-traditional my thesis is. That it was risky. That some might be inspired by my novel approach and others bemused or horrified. I reflect on how I have attempted to push at the boundaries of what an acceptable thesis is. I’ve worked within the accepted parameters of a thesis (introduction, literature, method, results, discussion; some use of the distant academic voice). But I’ve also challenged the traditional thesis genre by embracing creativity, shifting voices, and a literary lens as a way to make meaning. I wonder how my attempt to create a text which compels and propels the reader will be received now that it lives outside of my laptop and my head. I’m comforted by accepted journal articles and conference papers which affirm that my work fits somewhere. I breathe.

The ride continues. Maybe soon, I’ll grow into the robes.

all the feels means all the bubbles

How it feels to finish – really finish – a PhD thesis

Posted on March 5, 2016 by Dr Deborah M. Netolicky

No book can ever be finished. While working on it we learn just enough to find it immature the moment we turn away from it. ~ Karl Popper

Yesterday, I watched my supervisors sign the form which declares that I have completed my thesis revisions and adequately addressed the examiners’ reports. In fact, my amendments go over and above those required by the examiners. I’ve taken on plenty of non-compulsory feedback and done some extra editing, so that (as Mullins and Kiley, 2002, put it) my thesis will ‘glow more brightly’ on the library shelf (or online repository).

The reason I’ve been revising more than necessary is that while the thesis is still in my hands and control, my perfectionism has been running rampant. I’ve been waking in the night thinking about the minutest of textual details and having night terrors of opening a freshly bound copy to a jarring typographical error. I’ve been proofing chapters line by line, unable to limit myself to addressing the recommended amendments. But finally, it seems, the thesis is done. Soon I will be notified that I can print the final copies for permanent binding. You know, the glorious ones with buckram covers and golden lettering.

After my final supervision meeting, in which the thesis was finished and signed off on, I tweeted out that I felt somewhere between these images …

Jay Gatsby & Frodo Baggins as metaphors for doctoral completion

Jay Gatsby is an interesting analogy for someone at the end of the doctoral journey. Perhaps there’s a celebratory note, glorification of the doctorate, the pursuit of greatness, party-like excitement, or even a smugness to completing the PhD. But Gatsby was the ultimate imposter who re-invented his identity. He pursued an outward appearance that belied his own past and insecurities. Imposter syndrome can encroach into the nearly-doctored or newly-doctored persona. Do I deserve this? Do others know my limitations? Was my dissertation really enough to warrant a PhD? Am I worthy of the title ‘Dr’?

Frodo Baggins can also provide a lens for reflection on finishing the thesis. In some ways the PhD can seem like the quest to return the ring to the fires of Mordor. Frodo Baggins, as the ring-bearer tasked with a seemingly impossible mission, is central to the job. He emerges emotional, exhausted and battle weary. But it’s the multi-membered fellowship, and additional others supporting them, which work together for ultimate success. Luck and coincidence play a part, too. And persistence. Frodo doesn’t have magical powers or super strength or skill. He is ordinary. But he has persistence, grit, stick-to-it-iveness. In the PhD, the doctoral researcher is central to the successful completion of the task. They need to work through challenges, persist despite being knocked down, move onwards even when hitting a dead end or sinking into a swamp. But they cannot do it alone. Supervisors, family, friends and others are critical to completion.

Additionally, at the Crack of Doom Frodo struggles to release the ring. He has become attached to it. So while his friends fight armies of evil, he stands at the precipice of the end of his quest, above the fires of Mount Doom, unable to let go of the thing which he has carried, like an ever-heavier burden, for so long. Of course not all doctorates feel like a burden. One can love the PhD, but maybe even this fondness can have a Stockholm Syndrome type attachment; we learn to feel comfortable in capture. I feel a sadness that my PhD is coming to an end. It’s hard to let it go.

And when is a piece of writing finished? Ninna Meier recently explored the unfinishedness of writing, the layering of writerly thinking and identity, and the ways that reviewers and co-authors help to move a piece of writing forward. She talks about revisiting earlier writing and being appalled at its unfinishedness. How, she asks, could her past-writer-self have thought it was ok when her present-writer-self is surprised and horrified?

My thesis felt finished when I submitted it for examination, but after space and time away from it, along with the lens of examiners’ comments, I was able to see it as still requiring work. Now, after the amendments have been done, it has been signed off on as complete and worthy of the doctorate. No doubt, however, my future writer self will look back in surprise that I ever thought it was ok. I will see glaring naivety and cringe worthy phrasing. I can already see a (somewhat experimental and diversionary) paragraph which might well cause my future writer self to wince, but for now I’m attached to leaving it in.

Although the PhD can feel never ending, it does end. For me, the work is done. So, for now, while I wait for the wheel of academia to slowly turn, for university administration to do its administering, I wait, work, write papers, read trashy fiction. And drink champagne. I finally feel like I’ve hit a milestone worth stopping to celebrate, no matter what my future self might think. Next will come more steps: final printing, binding, the floppy velvet hat and the two letters in front of my name. Then achievement will really be unlocked.

The PhD as collaborative work not lone journey

Posted on February 27, 2016 by Dr Deborah M. Netolicky

light at the end of the tunnel (taken with an iPhone & Olloclip in an old train tunnel)

though the road is rocky / sure feels good to me ~ Bob Marley

Sometimes my PhD has felt like a solitary slog, with long isolated times deep in the subterranean thesis cave. At times of intellectual and emotional struggle, the embers of self-belief and persistence can seem to be dying in the darkness and enormity of the work at hand. The sounds of keystrokes and the scratching of pen on paper echo through seemingly empty caverns. Hands knead and brows furrow in the silence. Fist-pump moments of success swirl in a vortex of separateness. The occasional tweet is sent out as a kind of SOS, with hashtags punctuating the despair or grim solitude; #amwriting #sendhelp #needcoffee #phdchat.

The feeling of isolation is partly why I am so grateful when anyone asks about my PhD. I know that others don’t like being asked about their progress on what is a long process seemingly without an end. But for me, “How’s it going?” becomes an invitation to bring my experiences out from inside my head and make them real through talk. Sharing with someone who seems interested is a relief. I am awash with gratefulness for those who have been willing to hear about my PhD work.

In fact the PhD is not a solo effort, but collaborative, work. It is shaped by personal and supervisory relationships, by reading, by feedback, and by the examination process. As I do my post-examination thesis revisions, I’m aware that the final document, while stamped with my name, only exists in its final form because of the fluid interactions, over years, with others.

I have been influenced by the words and work of scholars (there are 376 references in my reference list at last count). In this way, my work emerges out of, situates itself alongside, or reacts against, the work of others. Research is academic conversation.

I have read the blogged experiences of others and the advice of online academics, which have shaped my understanding of my own experiences. People I know through social media have shown support and engaged me in conversation.

My supervisors have read my work, given feedback, and coached me through challenges. My mum read my work, especially early on, and helped me to talk about and think through my ideas. My research proposal panel provided advice and feedback on the direction I intended to take. Editors and peer reviewers, from journals and conferences, have commented on the ways in which I have shared my doctoral work through the writing of academic papers. Conference goers have listened to me present and engaged me in conversation about my work, or asked questions which have helped me think it through. My examiners have provided feedback to which I am currently responding.

So whose work is the PhD? Mine, all mine? Not really. The words are those I have written but on which others have made comment. The sweat and tears on the page are mine, but informed and supported by the words and actions of others. A PhD thesis is indelibly shaped by webs of influence. As Pat Thomson points out, the PhD is not a wholly individualistic journey, but a social and relational one. Even a political one. Whose is the responsibility for a candidate’s progress, success or failure, and the quality of the final thesis?

As I finish up my post-examination amendments, I’m aware that the text I’m presenting to the world is what it is because of the messy web of influences on me, my work and my writing. The one page of acknowledgements seems to be hardly enough to communicate the social networked nature of a dissertation.

Doing PhD revisions: The last thesis embrace

Posted on February 20, 2016 by Dr Deborah M. Netolicky

Gustav Klimt’s ‘Der Kuss’, 1908 http://www.klimt.com/en/gallery/women.html

This week I received news that my PhD will be awarded, subject to changes to my thesis. Wahoo! What a relief after months of examination limbo.

The requirement to address examiner comments is interchangeably referred to as doing corrections, amendments or revisions to the thesis. The actual process from receiving the official letter and examiners’ reports goes like this at my Australian university. Under the direction of my supervisors, I am to address the recommendations suggested in the examiners’ reports. When my supervisors and I are happy that all comments have been considered and any relevant changes made, we can sign off that it’s been done. This needs to be documented in the kind of table sent to journal editors outlining recommendation, response, and any resulting change to the text. Our response to the examiners’ reports then goes to the Dean, for sign off at that level. Then I’ll be notified that I can print my thesis and lodge it at the library for binding (one for me, one for the university library, one for each of my supervisors, and any more I fancy). I also need to submit to the library a digital copy of the thesis for the online repository of university theses. At this point my degree can be tabled at the university’s appropriate council (when they next meet after all these steps) at which I will be conferred the degree: PhD me!

While it is tempting to feel like getting revisions recommended in the examiners’ reports is some kind of failure, I am grateful to my examiners for their advice. I thought I wanted the ‘Gold star! Perfect work! Here, have a PhD without as much as a corrected typo!’ response (hey, who wouldn’t?), but of course it turns out that drawing on the expertise of three experienced academics will help me to strengthen my work before it goes out into the world and onto the interweb plastered with my name.

Some examiner comments were glowing (yay!). Others confirmed what was original about my work (phew!). There were some comments which were a delight to read and a wonderful affirmation of my thinking, researching and writing. There were no referencing errors and only a couple of typos in the 300 odd pages, despite me choosing to edit the work myself rather than employ a copy editor to check it for me.

Some of the examiners’ comments pointed towards the need for me to clarify areas of the thesis. These comments showed me the importance of the first chapter in setting up the readers’ expectations for the thesis. My thesis takes a novel approach (no doubt not to everyone’s taste and probably unexpected to many thesis readers) so I am doing some work on the first page of the introduction and elsewhere to make my approach clear. I can see that I need to help the reader know what to expect – or as one examiner said, ‘pre-imagine’ – the journey on which my thesis will take them.

Other examiner comments were around the need to cite less and take on the role of expert more in my closing chapters. I have struggled with that before (you can read about it here and here) and it seems I can move my closing chapters more convincingly towards authority and, as one examiner put it, audaciousness. This is all part of the PhD as identity work; becoming a researcher, becoming a writer, becoming a scholar. This seems to me an ongoing process of self reimagining. As we rework our scholarly texts, we rewrite our scholarly identities. We write ourselves through our work. I write myself into being.

Thesis corrections are an exercise in considering feedback. It requires being open to seeing our work through others’ eyes and working to apply that understanding to strengthen the text, and to our writing of future academic texts. If someone has misunderstood something, how can I make it clearer? If someone has suggested a new direction or additional layer of analysis, how might I consider that for now, or for the future? If someone has a criticism, how might I present a response or strengthen my case? It’s important to (do our best to) put any emotion or attachment aside and consider how expertise, and even criticism, from others might help us to develop our scholarly thinking, our research method and our academic writing.

Responding to reviewer comments for academic journals has given me some practice at applying professional distance to revisions, but thesis corrections are different. While a journal article often goes back to the reviewers for re-reading, the PhD thesis (unless required to be re-examined) does not go back to examiners for another look. The PhD candidate awarded amendments without re-examination needs to engage with, consider and respond to all examiner recommendations. But the candidate, as soon-to-be-doctored researcher and expert in their own research, can make decisions (under the advisement of their supervisors) on what is appropriate for their thesis. As Thesis Whisperer Inger Mewburn says in her post about doing thesis amendments, the examiner reports are suggestions, not a shopping list.

Personally, I have found this opportunity to get back into my thesis (albeit, briefly!) as a moment to luxuriate for the last time in an experience which I have found so personally rewarding. While, as wishcrys (Crystal Abidin) writes recently, it can be a lonely and seemingly neverending road, I resonate too with this post by almost-double-doctored Carloyn Ee on feeling misty-eyed fondness for the PhD experience. As a working mother of small children who has been doing a PhD in the ‘spare’ moments of my life, it has been an indulgence and a pleasure. That’s not to say it has been easy (it hasn’t) or that life hasn’t gotten in the way (it has). But my PhD has been an artistic endeavour and a love affair. This is my last embrace and I am enjoying it!

The Danielson Framework for Teaching as tool for professional reflection and conversation

Posted on February 13, 2016 by Dr Deborah M. Netolicky

2013 Danielson Framework for Teaching Evaluation Instrument cover

The Framework for Teaching is a research-based set of components of instruction, aligned to the INTASC standards, and grounded in a constructivist view of learning and teaching. The complex activity of teaching is divided into 22 components (and 76 smaller elements) clustered into four domains of teaching responsibility. ~ Danielson Group website

I have spent a lot of time blogging about the coaching part of my school’s coaching model and some outlining the specifics of the model and the ways we use lesson data. I’ve spent less time talking about why and how we use Charlotte Danielson’s Framework for Teaching as a tool for professional reflection and conversation. In this post, I’ll illuminate some of the reasons for adopting the Framework and the ways in which we use it at my Australian school.

Danielson’s Framework—explained in the most detail in Enhancing Professional Practice: A Framework for Teaching (Danielson, 2008)—provides a map of what excellence in teaching might look like, providing a set of shared, explicit descriptors. Grounded in research, it is a thorough, multi-layered definition of good teaching which identifies a comprehensive range of teacher responsibilities. The Framework is intended to be part of transparent, active processes such as teacher reflection, professional inquiry, classroom observations, mentoring, coaching, and Human Resources processes such as recruitment, evaluation of teacher performance and appraisal. The use of such a framework depersonalises conversations about teaching, focusing discussion on specific elements of practice, rather than on the individual. It provides a shared, explicit set of descriptors.

The Framework clusters its twenty two components of teaching into four domains of teacher responsibility:

Domain 1: Planning and Preparation
Domain 2: The Classroom Environment
Domain 3: Instruction
Domain 4: Professional Responsibilities

The components are intended to be applicable to diverse settings and independent of any particular teaching methodology. Whilst these components are separated for the purpose of the Framework, they are acknowledged as interrelated parts of a complex holistic endeavour. In action, the Framework is more web-like than grid-like. This is reflected in the choice of cover artwork for The Framework for Teaching Evaluation Instrument (Danielson, 2013) which shows the four domains as an intersecting Venn diagram.

The Gates Foundation’s Measures of Effective Teaching project studied 23,000 lessons of 3,000 teacher volunteers in six USA urban school districts in order to investigate how teacher practice affects student achievement. It found that the Framework:

was positively associated with student achievement gains;
focused observers’ attention on specific aspects of teaching practice;
established common evidentiary standards for each level of practice; and
created a common vocabulary for pursuing a shared vision of effective instruction.

The project also concluded that, when implementing an instrument for teacher evaluation (or, in our case, reflection and growth):

clear standards and multiple observations are required when evaluating a teacher’s practice;
evaluation systems should include multiple measures;
combining observation scores with evidence of student achievement gains and student feedback improved predictive power and reliability and identified teachers with larger gains on state tests; and
the true promise of classroom observations is the potential to identify strengths and address specific weaknesses in teachers’ practice.

It was our reading—of Kane and Staiger’s (2012) Measures of Effective Teaching research paper and Sartain, Stoelinga and Brown’s (2011) report on Chicago’s implementation of the Danielson Framework, as part of its Excellence in Teaching Pilot—which influenced the design of our observation model in which each teacher has four 20 minute observations per annual cycle of coaching.

For us, using Danielson is about each teacher looking at specific lesson data at a particular moment in time, and interrogating where the evidence places that data against Danielson’s framework. In any one observation, teachers’ data might be rated (by themselves, or as calibrated with a coach or manager) across three different levels. Of course with knowledge and increasing familiarity of Danielson’s framework, teachers can work with an understanding of the way it frames ‘distinguished’ teaching, aiming for that, but all teachers, no matter their expertise, will have lessons which fall across components and across bands.

Dylan Wiliam's book on my desk; just a few Post-its

Dylan Wiliam’s new book on my desk; just a few Post-its

Imagine my delight (yes, serious nerd delight) when I discovered that Dylan Wiliam’s just-released book Leadership for Teacher Learning spends seven pages (pp.45-51) outlining the research findings around the Danielson Framework. While he cautions that the Framework is limited, especially in its ability to differentiate variation among teachers, he describes it as “rigorously researched” and “the best we can do in relating student progress to classroom observations.” Wiliam cites research on which my school’s decision to use Danielson was based. He points out that it has been shown that students taught by teachers who are rated highly on the Framework make more progress. In fact, students taught by a teacher rated as ‘distinguished’ make almost 30% more progress than those rated as ‘unsatisfactory’.

For my school, the Danielson Framework for Teaching instrument—congruent with our performance review, professional development and coaching processes—helps us to develop a precise and shared language of practice. It isn’t used as a scorecard for external evaluation, something which I strongly advocate against. We instead use it in the following ways.

Coaches and managers are trained by a Danielson consultant in generating lesson data and using the Framework in professional conversations (which aligns with out Cognitive Coaching model for coaching conversations).
Teachers complete an annual online self-reflection against the Framework, in order to surface reflections about their teaching, help them set goals, and guide their thinking as they plan for the year ahead;
During coaching conversations, coaches help teachers to consider their lesson data against the Danielson Framework, looking closely at the descriptors and facilitating reflection against the rubrics.
The Danielson Framework sits alongside the Australian National Professional Standards for Teachers as a tool for deepening reflection and conversation about practice, allowing teachers to more specifically envisage, articulate and enact excellence in teaching practice.

This use of the Danielson Framework fits with our philosophical position that everyone is coachable, that all teachers have the will and skill to improve, that coaching should develop internal capacities, and that the coach is always in the service of the coachee.

the édu flâneuse

Blog reflections by Dr Deborah Netolicky