Part time EdD student:

  You may be aware that often, full-time PhD students are encouraged to teach on various programmes, predominantly to undergraduate students. This is an opportunity to both share aspects of their research and their point of view with others, as well as an opportunity to make some additional income on the side.  As a part-time EdD student, the same teaching opportunities don't appear to be as available. But as someone who is keen to build my academic experience as well as have an opportunity to talk about my research and share my thoughts, I wanted to have the option to deliver some sort of teaching.  I am lucky in that I have worked in Higher Education for a number of years, allowing me to build connections with numerous academics. Through these connections, I have openly talked about my interest in perhaps delivering guest lectures from an ethnographic perspective where I am able to bring theoretical concepts to life by using my own commercial work experiences as case st...

As you may have gathered from the posts on here, I love learning the practical aspects of completing a doctorate successfully. I am interested in people and how they experience their PhD journey, the tools, tips and tricks that they employ to get them through each step of the process and succeed. One of the blogs I read to learn about other peoples aspects of PhD life is Pubs and Publications  and I find the posts there a real breath of fresh air. People write about their ups and downs of PhD life in a manner that feels therapeutic, humorous and that makes me want to read more of the posts. I reached out to them earlier this year and offered to contribute a guest post for them. I wasn't too sure if they would agree to my contribution and I was over the moon when they came back and said that they would love for me to write a post for them. So I wrote a post about how I juggle full-time work, part-time PhD, being a parent and all the rest of life and it was published early in May....

The summer has completely flown by and i feel like all i have done is work (my full time job) whilst parenting my 2 year old son and trying to read for my EdD in and around and when I can. We managed a week in Wales by the beach and that was heaven to simply switch off and enjoy a sunny week. Admittedly the laptop did come with me and I read a journal or two per night just to feel like i was keeping on top of things. I had an assignment deadline early September and when i got into writing my assignment I realised that this task had asked a lot more of us than previous assignments. I had a couple of days where I panicked and I scolded myself for leaving things a bit last minute. I had some really insightful and motivating chats with my supervisor and I hunkered down and made my deadline. With Covid and the constant changing rules and the increasing pressures at work, I have really questioned my position as a doctoral student throughout the summer and I have gone from thoughts and feelin...

I was offered the opportunity of presenting my research ideas at the University of Bristol's School of Education  virtual conference that took place on the 5th and 6 the June and even though I didn't feel that aspects of my research were ready to present I took this opportunity to at least attempt a presentation.  My research is looking at the marketisation of the UK higher education system, neoliberalism and the effects that this may be having on the teaching and learning experience. My initial focus was to consider how students are experiencing education but through my job working with academics on research funding opportunities, I am becoming more exposed to how academics are feeling about so many chances, mechanisms and demands on their performance. I am now leaning towards designing my research project in a way that focuses on academic identities but more on that as it unfolds over the coming couple of months, then years.  I presented on Michel Fouc...

When contemplating applying for a PhD I was pretty set on the fact that my research would have to be quantitive in terms of data-heavy, or qualitative where I only considered interviews as a source of data. Without being either of these, how could my research possibly contribute to existing knowledge and be of any value to both the academic and wider societies? Having been on my EdD course for almost two years I have been exposed to a wide range of methods for data collection and this has really inspired my thinking as I develop my own plans for my research. I am also in a lucky position to be working at a university where I interact with academics on a regular basis and I hear a lot about their research and the methods that they use in data collection and this, combined with my studies has really opened my eyes to vast opportunities available in conducting research. My most recent study-block on the EdD course introduced a number of methods for data collection and all of these methods...

I get weirdly hung up on aspects of my experience of my PhD and one thing that continuously worries me and pops into my head making me evaluate how I am progressing is how I organise my literature and ensure that it is easily found again when it comes to writing up my thesis. Now I wouldn't say there is one key way of doing this as there isn't. It will very much depend on you as a person and your preference for your working methods. Before settling on my current method of working, I tried to find a number of options that other academics had used successfully and I found that no two people seem to do this the same way and this frustrated me as I was hoping for maybe 3 or 4 good options for doing this. In a previous post all about reference management software , I talk about Zotero  and I also give some useful tips on using this programme.  I would say it's not important what reference management software you use but it is important to learn the functions and limita...