Reflections as I (finally) finish my thesis on why it took me two decades to start

Retrospective

I wrote this in 2015. I'd not long had my 50th birthday and I'd been invited to swap from a quick 'in and out' one year Masters by Research to a full blown PhD. 

If I'd known what the next six years would hold, I would not have had the courage to take the leap. But I didn't, so I did. 

I stumbled across this tonight. Turns out I still don't know the answer. But at least I have now remembered the question!

I've had people suggesting, encouraging or pushing me towards a PhD for about 20 years.

I have been tempted. But I've always drawn back. It was never that I doubted my ability to produce work to PhD standard, although sometimes I doubted my character and ability to stick to the same thing for three years.

One reason has remained constant. If my main aim is to change the world, is it worth three years of my life to complete a PhD - bearing in mind that "good enough" research to help me and others change the world could be done in a much shorter time, albeit without the academic rigour or standing (but still of more rigour and value than, dare I say, much commissioned research),

The other reasons have changed down the years.

When I was 30, I thought I was too old to do another three years of study.

When I was 40, I rebelled against a society that gave extra value and status to the knowledge of people with a PhD compared to the knowledge of people who were living the lives being researched by those with PhDs. A few people I knew within disabled person led organisations did suggest there was a need for people like me to "infiltrate" academic life and take on the status symbols of that life so I could work from within to change how research happens. But although the idea of infiltration appealed, I lack the skills to be that person. I'm a bit of a bull in a china shop when it comes to politicking. I also know myself, and think if I had chosen this route, I would have "turned native" and begun to believe the myth that my knowledge had greater standing than someone else's because of my PhD.

By the time I was almost 50, I had rebelled against anything that involved bringing together the knowledge, insights, time and effort of many people but crediting only one of them with creating new knowledge. After all, why should only one person get their name on a PhD? Sadly, you can't award a PhD to a collective body, only an individual body. And, anyway, that might not be the full answer because it is important to recognise who has contributed what. While I am adamant that I don't want to take credit that isn't due to me, I am equally adamant that I should get credit that is due to me.

Who does what and who should be credited is something people can get heated about within inclusive research. So here's my position:

·                  there are different kinds of knowledge and skills. We need them all. If we don't need them all, then we shouldn't be working together as a team. So I don't agree with the "everyone does everything" approach. I believe in everyone using their knowledge and skills for a common purpose, and laying their knowledge and skills at the disposal of the rest of the team.

·                  some research-generated new knowledge is a team effort. If it's a team effort, the whole team gets equal status, acknowledgement and should have had equal pay while doing the work.

·                  some research-generated new knowledge depends on the additional work of one member of the team, as they take what the team came up with, re-interpret, add new insights and create something new based on their additional work. That could be someone with a learning difficulty taking the team's report, thinking about the needs of the self-advocacy movement, adding their personal insights to take the ideas of the report further and then presenting the information to the self-advocacy community. This could be someone with a PhD taking the team's report and writing a paper that re-frames the research in the light of a particular social theory. This could be a support worker, producing a training manual based on the research findings. And the person who has put in the additional effort should get the acknowledgement and status for this additional work.

And now I'm 50. 

I no longer think I'm too old to do a PhD. 

I've got to a place, thanks to Barod, where I don't need to worry about getting above my station and believing I'm special because I have a PhD. 

So can a PhD be done that attributes contributions fairly and accurately? Maybe.

Here's what I'm thinking:

Imagine a research team. They work in line with the first two points I made about inclusive research. They co-author a number of publications. Then the third point kicks in. Anyone from the team could then choose to take the publications and use them as they wish, and be credited for that additional work. If anyone chose to do the additional work needed to turn the publications into a PhD by publication, then that person gets named on the PhD for that additional work. 

Could the solution be that simple? Right now, I don't know. But I could be about to find out. 

The sweet shop window: An allegory about the world as lived and the world as socially researched

This morning I decided the world of blogs was a better place for this way of telling a story than my (soon to be written and submitted) doctoral thesis. And so I cut it from there and pasted it here. 

The sweet shop window

I belong in the world where we use everyday reasoning to make sufficient sense of our lives to create adequate social order so we can interact and work together as some kind of society. I do not want to leave that world to join the academic world.

But my everyday reasoning is proving inadequate. I cannot make adequate sense of what I am observing and experiencing in relation to public involvement in policy making. I suspect that the academic world may have more adequate tools for making sense of my observations and experiences.

I stand outside the academic world, looking in like a child looking into an old-fashioned sweetie shop, at the array of theoretical approaches, lenses, perspectives and stances on offer from the academic world.

I enter the shop.

Once inside, I discover I am expected to choose just one jar. I am then expected to stand inside that jar, looking back out at my world through the lens of just that jar. I am expected to become expert at understanding that jar and its contents, and learn to ask questions of my world that are appropriate for sweets in that jar.

Do I want to be on the outside looking in? Or on the inside looking out?

If I am on the outside looking in, I cannot explore the jars.

If I am on the inside looking out, I can only see the outside world through a narrowly focused lens.

     But what if…

What if I ignore the convention, go inside the sweet shop, browed the jars, pick and mix those that look promising and then assemble and reassemble my selection until I find a pattern that makes adequate sense – at least to me – of my observations and experiences of public involvement in policymaking?

Implications of the sweet shop for research design

My purpose for being in the academic world has been to find and create academic tools that can help those in the world beyond academia and those in the academic world to value each other’s knowledges. My territory was public involvement in Welsh Government social care policymaking.

To be led by a set of clearly defined research questions would have meant adopting an academic map of the territory I wanted to explore. Instead, I wanted to embrace what I brought with me into academia as an older, deeply embedded, highly reflexive student. And for me, that meant enquiring how others inside and outside of academia have made sense of the territory as I explored and charted the territory for myself. By meandering and exploring the territory, I believe I have found a destination worth visiting. [Spoiler: you'll have to wait until I've actually written the thesis to know where that destination is!]

One caveat: what I have termed a destination is better considered a scenic resting point at which to break a journey or, in the language of Deleuze and Guattariz, an intermezzo (1987:12).

• Reference
• Deleuze, Gilles, Félix Guattari, and Brian Massumi. 1987. A thousand plateaus: capitalism and schizophrenia.