Much is written in research textbooks about understanding your positioning in relation to your question. Even more is written about ensuring that your question and methodology align. But what happens if you lose your question? In this blog post, I reflect on a possible pathway to resolving unanticipated difficulty in deciding what your field of enquiry will be.

Some people begin their professional doctorate in education (EdD) with a strong sense of their intended purpose of study, others are less anchored, primarily motivated by a desire to start their research journey (Wellington & Sikes, 2006). Although EdD programmes provide ample space for reflection, growth and change before beginning the actual research, feeling lost about the subject of study is unsettling.

I fell into the latter camp. My intended research topic had quickly become insufficiently motivating. With no sense of direction, I began to question whether I was ready for doctoral study, or indeed suited to research at all, until two resources came to the rescue: conversation and anger.

Conversation

It’s easy to feel a doctorate should be a solitary experience and, consequently, the value of conversation is easily underappreciated. But it was conversations with my tutor, fellow EdD students and colleagues that helped me through doubt and confusion (Wisker et al., 2003).

Three types of conversation have been instrumental to my journey so far:

1) Conversations with my tutor helped me sit more comfortably with uncertainty, seeing it as a waypoint rather than an obstacle.

2) Conversations with fellow doctoral students provided a sounding board for ideas, revealing new possibilities.

3) Conversations with colleagues in other projects brought surprising clarity by providing small pieces of the research question jigsaw.

I learned that pursuing interesting ideas from other contexts, without worrying about whether any would prove to be ‘the idea’, was a useful long-term strategy (Willson, 2022). The ideas I latched on to tended later to reveal themselves as connected in some way, coming together with increasing focus around me. But my most important conversation was the one about being angry.

‘I learned that pursuing interesting ideas from other contexts, without worrying about whether any would prove to be “the idea”, was a useful long-term strategy.’

Anger

A well-known actor posted a video on (then) Twitter expressing considerable disdain for (then Prime Minister) Rishi Sunak’s proposal for compulsory mathematics education until the age of 18. What made me angry was the misguided declaration that mathematics is irrelevant to contemporary personal and professional life, stifling creativity and achievement in other fields. Mathematics has entered every sphere of social life, often invisibly (O’Neil, 2016). It has enabled technological advances which both benefit and terrorise humanity, and perpetuating this narrow view of mathematics leaves society susceptible to political and economic manipulation and injustice (Ravn & Skovsmose, 2019). And there it was, amid the anger, a glimmer of a question: Why do we communicate about mathematics in ways that leave mathematical knowledge largely unchallenged?

Changing how mathematical knowledge is perceived was something that I was angry about. A misconception that I felt I could correct and that would motivate me throughout and beyond a doctorate. It sounds like a moment of epiphany. It wasn’t. It was only when my tutor highlighted how passionately I spoke about the topic that I saw it as a possible area of study. It then took many conversations, with people and literature, to clarify and refine my specific area of research. No longer an end goal, completing my doctorate has become the first step in a much longer journey towards changing minds about mathematics.

My advice for researchers in the first phase of their EdD is, therefore, to talk to tutors, fellow researchers and colleagues, and to find a topic which bothers you. When you understand why you are bothered, your position in relation to your research and, subsequently, your methodology will fall into place. It took a while to find my ‘anger’. If you haven’t found yours yet, keep talking.

References

O’Neil, C. (2016). Weapons of math destruction. Penguin.

Ravn, O., & Skovsmose, O. (2019). Connecting humans to equations: A reinterpretation of the philosophy of mathematics. Springer International Publishing.

Wellington, J., & Sikes, P. (2006). ‘A doctorate in a tight compartment’: Why do students choose a professional doctorate and what impact does it have on their personal and professional lives? Studies in Higher Education, 31(6), 723–734. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075070601004358

Willson, R. (2022). ‘Bouncing ideas’ as a complex information practice: Information seeking, sharing, creation, and cooperation. Journal of Documentation, 78(4), 800–816. https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-03-2021-0047

Wisker, G., Robinson, G., Trafford, V., Warnes, M., & Creighton, E. (2003). From supervisory dialogues to successful PhDs: Strategies supporting and enabling the learning conversations of staff and students at postgraduate level. Teaching in Higher Education, 8(3), 383–397. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562510309400