Abstract
The completion of a doctoral candidature is usually marked with a thesis, a degree certificate, and the PhD title awarded to the author of that thesis. While the thesis, degree, and title can be tangibly celebrated, intangible and long-lasting values lie, more often, in the skills and thinking that have been shaped throughout the candidature. This chapter, as an autobiographic account, illuminates the formation of transferable skills and new thinking, while I strived to complete my PhD thesis and, more importantly, handled my crises of identity and of academic writing as “identitywork”. Humanistic aspects of a candidature, especially discourses between my supervisor and myself, and other scholarly encounters, are emphasised. I present excerpts from my research diaries as the records of my thinking and generation of ideas and draw on Pierre Bourdieu’s multiple interrelated conceptual tools to give analytical insights into those records. In the chapter, I explain how my supervisor’s questions about my identity and writing triggered my reasoning and led to the development of proactive reflection and critical eclecticism. Thus, I argue for Bourdieu’s key concepts as useful tools for self-analysis to gain an insightful understanding of your doctoral candidature and to appreciate what the candidature offers.
“What is truth but to live for an idea? … It is a question of discovering a truth which is truth for me, of finding the idea for which I am willing to live and die.”
(Kierkegaard, 1967, as cited in Christian, 1990, p. 218)
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Acknowledgements
This chapter was inspired by my presentation, When questions answer themselves: Micropolitics of discourse on PhD candidature, at the 2017 Annual Conference of the Australian Association for Research in Education. I would like to thank my colleagues, Lam Minh Chau, Bui Thi Bich Lien, and Dang Thi Kim Anh for sharing their early thoughts with me, the editors of this book for their valuable feedback, and the Sir Louis Matheson Library Thesis Writing Group and Shut-up-and-Write Group for their partnership in crime. My PhD programme was sponsored by an Endeavour Scholarship and Fellowship, and I would like to thank Louisa Crotti, my case manager, for her support during the final stage of my candidature.
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Nguyen, L.T.C. (2019). When Questions Answer Themselves: Proactive Reflection and Critical Eclecticism in PhD Candidature. In: Pretorius, L., Macaulay, L., Cahusac de Caux, B. (eds) Wellbeing in Doctoral Education. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-9302-0_13
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