Margaret Zeegers

Pedagogical concerns in doctoral supervision: a challenge for pedagogy

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to focus on pedagogy as a crucial element in postgraduate research undertakings, implying active involvement of both student and supervisor in process of teaching and learning.Design/methodology/approach – Drawing on Australian higher degree research supervision practice to illustrate their argument, the authors take issue with reliance on traditional Oxbridge conventions as informing dominant practices of supervision of postgraduate research studies and suggest pedagogy as intentional and systematic intervention that acknowledges the problematic natures of relationships between teaching, learning, and knowledge production as integral to supervision and research studies.Findings – The authors examine issues of discursive practice and the problematic nature of power differentials in supervisor‐supervisee relationships, and the taken‐for‐grantedness of discursive practice of such relationships. The authors do this from the perspective of the student involved in higher ...

Subjects of Western education: Discursive practices in Western postgraduate studies and the construction of international student subjectivities

This paper focuses on discursive practices of postgraduate research as a crucial element in constructs of international student subjectivities when they undertake postgraduate studies in Australian universities. As such, it focuses on a discursive field emerging within domains of internationalisation, globalisation, and resistance. It examines processes and protocols in a number of Australian universities’ postgraduate divisions’ practices in the conduct of postgraduate supervision, in the context of increasing pressures towards internationalisation within frameworks of globalising influences. It takes issue with Western custom and tradition as privileged within the field of supervision of postgraduate research studies and suggests a model of postgraduate research supervision as intentional and systematic intervention, based on literature deriving from research in postgraduate supervision which acknowledges the problematic natures of cultural relationships as to teaching and learning and knowledge production, and student resistances within these fields. In doing so, it examines issues of discursive practices and the problematic natures of power relationships in supervisor-supervisee protocols and possibilities suggested by alternative models of postgraduate supervision of international students.

Redefining the Role of English as a Foreign Language in the Curriculum in the Global Context

The English language has become a global language, a development which has influenced English language teaching and learning throughout the world. This influence has occurred more impressively in China than in other parts of the world as a result of the breathtaking pace at which China has integrated with global economies. Increasing industrial, economic and multicultural development has spurred language educators in China to question the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) curriculum in relation to the role of English, particularly in secondary schools. In this paper we present a brief review of the role of English as a global language in the Chinese context, a context which is now to be seen as a global one. The new curriculum has been progressively rolled out in Chinese schools since 2001. We highlight the redefinition of the role of English in the new EFL curriculum in Chinese secondary schools in particular and the significance of this as it presents new features of the new EFL curriculum as part of a developing research field, based on a comparison with the 1993 EFL curriculum. In this study, we focus on policy statements and curriculum documents as well as published previous research in order to understand the redefining of the role of English as a foreign language in the new EFL curriculum.

Discourses of Deficit in Higher Degree Research Supervisory Pedagogies for International Students

Global student mobility has placed pressure on western universities to recruit students from non-western, non-English-speaking backgrounds. In this article, we argue that language requirements such as the International English Language Testing System bands are underpinned by discourses that privilege western modes of thought. We go on to argue that English language proficiency underpins discourses of deficit that construct non-western students as less able to undertake research programmes. In exploring pedagogical possibilities, we draw on a published story of an international higher degree research student, called Mei, at an Australian university. We question the idea that a research higher degree is more about linguistic skills than it is about research skills, and we argue that rigour, scholarship, and new knowledge constitute the assessable factors in what international higher degree research students produce.

Positioning the school in the landscape: exploring Black history with a regional Australian primary school

This paper deals with a project establishing an Indigenous Australian artists-in-residence program at a regional Australian primary school to foreground its Black History. Primary school students worked with Indigenous Australian story tellers, artists, dancers and musicians to explore ways in which they could examine print and non-print texts for a critical appreciation of ways in which their school has been positioned in the physical landscape on the land, and in the historical landscape, where Indigenous Australian roles and contributions have continued to be marginalised. From such critical engagement, the children have created non-print texts of their own: tangible, durable artefacts of acknowledgment of their own schools Black History. Constructed as texts which may be read by all who enter the school, the artefacts produced are visual texts that have formed part of a continuing critical engagement with creators of Indigenous Australian texts, and interpretation by the children of the texts that they have engaged as part of this project.

English as a Foreign Language Curriculum Reform in China

China has experienced a number of reforms in EFL teaching and learning since 1949, when The People’s Republic of China was established after years of struggle between the losing Chiang Kai Shek Nationalists and the winning Mao Zedong Communist forces.

Milestone 7: Technique

This milestone takes the researcher to some of the more practical aspects of conducting research. Up to this milestone, you have been becoming increasingly practical in engaging issues in the design of your research. Some call it data collection instrument design, or strategy, or data-generating techniques. In all probability, you will use a number of techniques: interviews and transcripts of interviews plus field notes; focus group plus professional journal; observation plus field notes; the wording or phrasing of documents plus interviews; the items in diaries or journals plus surveys; your observation notes plus photographs plus video tapes; and so on.

Milestone 4: The literature review

This chapter is not necessarily the next milestone; it is just one of them. There are many possible strategies that a PhD candidate may use to prepare and write their literature review, but the focus is to present an overview of issues in the field and their interrelationships, identifying main concerns, findings and common themes, and presenting current debate on these issues. A literature review is not a list of your reading over the past few weeks, or months, or years. It shows a very direct relationship with the research project as existing knowledge is identified and shown to be informing this research of yours. You will also identify gaps in the existing literature, gaps which provide you with openings for your own research. You will decide when you will start and complete this literature review, but starting early is highly recommended. This is because of the important role that the literature review plays in establishing the research question(s) and doing your research.

Milestone 8: Collecting the data

The data collection stage, setting up interviews and interview questions, distributing surveys, tracking down and gathering documents in one place, doing transcripts, and so on, is one of the more exciting aspects of completing the PhD. Some caution is required to ensure that you have a thorough understanding at least of the methodology that you are using before you get to collecting the data.

Milestone 6: Method

Research method is a way of conducting research, a sort of package of strategies for gathering data. Method is not the same as methodology, and writing two separate chapters for each of these will help to ensure that the difference between them is maintained, but this is not necessary. You will make your own decisions regarding whether to address both in the same chapter or not. It is also useful to have a section in this chapter headed Technique , such as doing a survey or interviewing research participants. Some of the more common methods in qualitative research are case study, ethnography, document analysis, discourse analysis, and narrative enquiry. The selection of method will be informed by the methodology you have selected, and you will address issues of validity and trustworthiness as these pertain to the ways in which you employ the method selected.