Mining for gold: Learning from our doctoral experience as we transition to supervisors

by Dr Haidee Hicks and Associate Professor Lynelle Watts

Since completing our doctorates, we have noticed that people rarely discuss – or reflect on – their experience of supervision and learning during their candidature. We have been curious about this notable absence. In this blog, we engaged in a pair interview process of reflexive dialogue (Gilmore & Kenny, 2015; Hodgson & Watts, 2016) to better understand our own experience. We were reflecting on how we navigate new doctoral spaces as supervisors while considering what we take forward, and what we want to leave behind. We also wanted to explore what we learnt from our own experience as doctoral students, to transfer to our supervisory practices. In other words, we aimed to  apply our experiential learning to this new supervisory space.  We resonate with scholars such as González-Ocampo and Castelló (2019) who analysed doctoral supervisors’ current experience in comparison to their own experience as students. 

This blog is partly our response to Halse’s (2011) question:  how does the doctoral student experience shape their experience as doctoral supervisors? (p. 557) What emerged is a reflection on the complexity associated with doctoral supervision: students, supervisors and university research administrators are embedded in a labyrinthine network of policies and procedures, each designed to ensure a “smooth” candidature.  Amongst this, there are the less visible emotional and relational layers for unpacking which can sometimes emerge, often when we least expect it. In our analysis, we were mostly surprised at the myriad of experiences and points in our narratives that intersected, particularly concerning support strategies and feedback during the doctoral candidature.  

Doctoral supervision overview  

Our beginning point is an agreement that supervision anchors the doctoral journey. Despite the value, we continue to reflect on the complexity of doctoral supervision and our conversations with colleagues affirm the use of diverse models and approaches. Beyond contrasting supervisory practices, the current literature points to a “changing landscape” (p. 606) in global doctoral education. Taylor (2023) suggests that “it has changed beyond recognition” (p. 609) with greater evidence of “collectivisation” (p. 609) observable across global higher education contexts. Taylor and Wisker (2023) note that in Australia two or more supervisors, or even a research team, are considered the norm (p. 786) and yet add complexity to the supervisory process. Other supervisory differences include disciplinary and program frameworks as well as ensuring compliance with institutional requirements.  

Significantly less visible, however, are the many ways that each supervisor’s own experience as a PhD student might shape their own supervisory practice. How does one develop a critical consciousness of how this learning is transferred and transformed as we transition from student to supervisor/advisor? How do supervisors learn to reflect on their experience and intentionally apply these insights? These questions are especially salient when the PhD submission process is largely focused on the examiners’ reports and feedback but they also may apply to the entire candidature. Where is the space to ask what kind of supervisor/advisor will I be going forward, especially for folks on an academic track? We hope the discussion that follows resonates and inspires others to consider their own experience as both student and supervisor. We begin with a reflection on the types of support that we valued during our candidature. 

Supports during the doctoral journey 

One thing that has lifted up for us in our discussion has been the role of support during the doctoral journey.  

Haidee: Just in relation to your last comment around peer support and how this enabled supervision…I think there is an emerging literature around, I guess the importance of  this as a supplement to what’s going on in the supervisory space…  

Lynelle: Yeah, well, support was certainly really important for my process. I think I also offered that support to other people as they were going through it. And I do find myself saying that to students that I’ve got now. So who are your PhD buddies? Who are you talking to?  

As acknowledgement pages in a finished PhD so often movingly attest, support can be from family, friends, and colleagues but it can also come from peers. Peer support may be formal and informal. Formal support refers to support  “that has a strictly professional purpose, is structured and/or monitored, and has clear goals and boundaries” (Gandy-Guedes et al., 2016, p. 325). This kind of support is sometimes referred to as peer learning networks (PLNs), which are “formal groups of “status equals or matched companions” (Miller et al., 2016, p. 361). In contrast, Gandy-Guedes et al., (2016, p. 325) portray informal support as something that is “received outside of organised structures or mechanisms” In talking about our doctoral education,  we find there are both informal and formal kinds of peer support and these can sometimes cross over. For example, informal support can be offered by family, friends and indeed, peers. People participating in PLNs may experience the support as collegial, often leading to long-term collaborations and friendships. Both of us came through the experience with long-term friendships and networks. Our reflective dialogue has also reminded us that we were both proactive in establishing peer networks which enhanced our research and our well-being. 

The advantages of formal supports have been discussed extensively,  but in the main, the benefit is that they “maximise the opportunities for learning and support” (Christianson & Bell, 2010, cited in Miller et al., 2016, p. 361). According to Miller and colleagues (2016), and speaking from a North American context, formal PLNs have been slow to establish for various reasons. Some of these include faculty time to support their establishment and that there are few models for how to go about it. Many programs in this context rely on a cohort approach where students undertaking doctoral education move through coursework together, but once candidacy is achieved, this cohort approach has less resonance for scholars working with their supervisory panels (Miller et al., p. 362). It is as though one is pushed out of the nest to fly on one’s own!

Cape Weaver Bird Leaving Nest – Duncan Noakes

In the Australian context, doctoral candidates primarily work with their supervisory panels from the very beginning and thus isolation can be an ongoing struggle, especially in smaller doctoral programs with less critical mass. PLNs and cohort models are less likely in the Australian context and so peer support is informally built via networks and in proximity to the candidate.  

Our reflections also note the marked difference between our supervisory experience. As such we have explored our contrasting experience of the supervisory process that included supervisors who were located outside our discipline. Our institutional context differed also: one of us studied at a small rural campus and the other at a large campus located in the city. Unsurprisingly, this made a difference in terms of access to informal support on the doorstep. Social media communities emerged towards the end of Lynelle’s candidature and became a significant form of support and was critical because it connected her to a whole host of folks in the PhD Twitter community – creating many connections to others that continue today.  

Unpacking feedback 

Lynelle: So I had supervision with several people. Each of them gave feedback in a really different way. Some gave minute detailed feedback, others gave positive encouragement, “That’s awesome, keep going!” but with little detail. So I did not always know what else I should be looking at.  

Haidee: I kind of felt like the feedback stretched me. My supervisors gave feedback that the examiner might give you, you know, they’re kind of saying “I’ve got your back”. I often say this to my Honours students and I’ll be saying it to my PhD student as well. 

For doctoral researchers, feedback is a key dimension of learning and development. Often oversimplified, Chugh et al, however, acknowledge that it is a “complex sociocultural construct” that draws on “various modalities over the lifespan of a research candidature” (p. 683). There are definite tensions between its complexity and inherent value to student learning. Discussing our experience of feedback, we reflected on the different types of feedback we received – and needed – at different stages of our candidature.  We are aware of the challenges associated with this process, which we see as supporting and enabling the learning process. While we affirm that doctoral supervision is a feedback-driven process, we are aware that it remains challenging for doctoral students and supervisors alike (Chugh et al., 2022).  Despite this, we have reflected on the feedback we received: both the timing and process. As supervisors now, we think it is important to be conscious of how the student is receiving the feedback and the timing of the feedback provided and whether it is ongoing, formative, or, as part of the milestone process. Likewise, there are diverse ways of providing feedback: written, verbal, structured and unstructured, formal and informal.  Feedback that assists, is feedback that has resonated with the student where they are in their process or journey. We suggest that this resonance makes it more likely that the student will see feedback in the spirit of sharing expertise, in the form of time and care from the supervisory team. For social work as a profession, it is important for us to explore how to incorporate feedback literacy (Nieminen & Carless, 2023) for both sides of this important relationship. 

Conclusion 

Like all good dialogical processes, when we started to reflect on our own doctoral experiences, we did not anticipate experiences that aligned with similar themes. We wondered if others had taken the time to have similar conversations. Where are the spaces for sharing with peers such an important transition? How might we share our insights with those we supervise and support on their doctoral journey? We would like to pose the question to others: How does your experience inform your supervision practice and pedagogy?  

References 

Chugh, R., Macht, S., & Harreveld, B. (2022). Supervisory feedback to postgraduate research students: a literature review. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 47(5), 683-697. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2021.1955241 

Halse, C. (2011). ‘Becoming a supervisor’: the impact of doctoral supervision on supervisors’ learning. Studies in Higher Education, 36(5), 557-570. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2011.594593  

Gandy-Guedes, M. E., Vance, M. M., Bridgewater, E. A., Montgomery, T., & Taylor, K. (2016). Using Facebook as a tool for informal peer support: a case example. Social Work Education, 35(3), 323-332. https://doi.org/10.1080/02615479.2016.1154937 

Gilmore, S., & Kenny, K. (2015). Work-worlds colliding: Self-reflexivity, power and emotion in organizational ethnography. Human Relations, 68(1), 55-78. https://doi.org/10.1177/0018726714531998  

González-Ocampo, G., & Castelló, M. (2019). Supervisors were first students: Analysing supervisors’ perceptions as doctoral students versus doctoral supervisors. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 56(6), 711-725. https://doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2018.1531775  

Hodgson, D., & Watts, L. (2016). What Can Moral and Social Intuitionism Offer Ethics Education in Social Work? A Reflective Inquiry. The British Journal of Social Work, 47(1), 181-197. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bcw072  

Miller, J. J., Duron, J. F., Bosk, E. A., Finno-Velasquez, M., & Abner, K. S. (2016). Peer-Learning Networks in Social Work Doctoral Education: An Interdisciplinary Model. Journal of Social Work Education, 52(3), 360-371. https://doi.org/10.1080/10437797.2016.1174632 

Nieminen, J.H., Carless, D. (2023). Feedback literacy: A critical review of an emerging concept. High Education, 85, 1381–1400 . https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-022-00895-9 

Taylor, S. (2023). The changing landscape of doctoral education: A framework for analysis and introduction to the special issue. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 60(5), 606-622. https://doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2023.2237962 

Taylor, S., & Wisker, G. (2023). The changing landscape of doctoral education in the UK. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 60(5), 759-774. https://doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2023.2237943  

Trauma informed and dignifying practice in qualitative research

Rebecca Moran has a background in youth work, domestic violence services, mental health, criminology research and training. Her PhD project with UNSW explores meaning-making and social action as part of recovery from child sexual abuse. Rebecca works for Curtin University in teaching and research roles. Rebecca has lived experience of trauma and recovery, and draws on a mix of professional and personal experience in much of her work. Find Rebecca at rebecca.moran@curtin.edu.au

Sophie Ridley is a social worker and PhD student at Curtin University in Boorloo (Perth). Her PhD research explores culture change in the Australian mental health system. Sophie currently lectures in social work at Curtin University. Email Sophie at sophie.ridley@curtin.edu.au

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Trauma-informed practice (TIP) is now a familiar model in clinical and therapeutic settings. However, little attention has so far been given to understanding what TIP means in research. Researchers exploring sensitive topics or engaging with people who have experienced violence, abuse, injustice or oppression encounter many of the same challenges and potentialities as practitioners working with trauma survivors in health and social services, including navigating relationships, possibilities for growth and healing, risk, safety, and ethical and moral responsibilities (Moran & Asquith, 2020).

As PhD researchers using qualitative methodologies in the areas of child sexual abuse and mental health respectively, we knew that many participants in our research had been impacted by trauma, and that our inquiries must broach sensitive topics. We are accustomed to working with TIP in other settings (domestic violence services, youth services, victim support, mental health, tertiary and professional development settings). Rebecca also has lived experience of complex trauma, including experience of traumatising systems and services. However, despite our experience, we were unsure how to enact TIP in our research and found that our university research training and ethics processes were of limited assistance in developing trauma informed project designs and research skills. We were fortunate to have support from our supervisors (particularly Dr Michael Salter and Dr Robyn Martin) and each other throughout our projects, and often needed to talk through our uncertainty about what to do, and how to do it.

We were committed to conducting our research in ways that did not replicate the harmful dynamics of participants’ experiences of abuse and trauma, both at the hands of individual perpetrators and in dehumanising and retraumatising systems (Bateman, Henderson & Kezelman, 2014). This began to provide the blueprint for TIP in our qualitative research: through our awareness of what we were determined not to do, our understanding of what we might do, was formed. We remain aware that the impacts of trauma vary and change throughout the lifespan. TIP therefore requires flexibility, openness, and collaboration to customise what trauma-informed work looks, feels, and sounds like for each person we interact with.

A limitation of TIP in any setting is that it can be difficult to translate aspirations into practical action. TIP is also limited in its de-politicised, individual, psychological focus; frequently lacking consideration of the socio-political impacts (Salter & Hall, 2020) of trauma. Drawing on our professional, lived, and research experience, we have therefore developed the following template, intended as a practical guide for researchers to self-check their enactment of TIP. We have drawn on Blue Knot Foundation’s TIP guidelines (Kezelman & Stavropolous, 2012), with the addition of two new domains; critical reflexivity and dignity.  Conceptualisations of dignity (Hicks, 2011; Salter & Hall, 2020), witnessing (Reynolds, 2012), reflexivity (Berger, 2015; Finlay, 2002), “ethics in practice” (Guillemin and Gillam, 2004, p. 263) and coproduction principles, such as attending to power differentials and reciprocity (Roper, 2016; Slay & Stephen, 2013), have also informed the guide.

Domain	Prompt question	Your responses and reflections
Safety	What do you and the participant/s need to protect your physical safety? Consider venue choices, times, mode of contact (both before, during and after data collection). What do you and the participant/s need to protect your emotional safety? Consider triggers, potential for humiliation or invalidation, predictability and preparedness, feeling in control. What do you and the participant/s need to protect social safety? Consider anonymity and confidentiality, potential for humiliation or invalidation, potential for backlash from social groups for participation or speaking out, any potential for future encounters or mutual acquaintances. Have you asked the participant/s whether they have any concerns about safety (physical, social and emotional)? Remember that this might need revisiting as safety is dynamic and needs may change. Have you asked the participant/s what usually helps them to feel safe, and what supports or resources they might draw on?
Trustworthiness	What is trustworthiness for you? What does trustworthiness look and feel like? How is it communicated, demonstrated, and enacted? How can you demonstrate your trustworthiness? Consider authenticity and transparency, keeping your word, anything you might wish to communicate to the participant/s about your position, identity, motivations, intentions, or uncertainties. Have you discussed communication preferences and needs with participant/s? How are you signposting what is going to happen and when? How will you demonstrate to the participant/s that you have open understanding of, and compassionate respect for, their identity or circumstances?
Empowerment, choice, collaboration, and control	Are there opportunities for the participant/s to make choices about the extent and nature of participation in an ongoing manner? Are there opportunities for the participant/s to give feedback or have input into research design or the processes of data collection?  Are there opportunities for the participant/s to see how their contribution is being used? Are there opportunities for the participant/s to have some control throughout their participation? Consider the choices that could be made available: input into research design and data collection processes venues, timing, choice of pseudonyms, checking of transcripts. Have you considered power differentials and inequalities? How can you attend to these inequalities and issues of power? Have you considered your positioning and privilege in this space? Do you need to engage with community leaders, for example through an advisory group, specialist supervisor, or consultation process? If so, in what ways are you formalising this involvement of expertise, for example through payment of consultants or advisory group members? How is the nature of their involvement negotiated and recognised? What happens if you do not agree with the views or ideas of advisory group members or consultants? Are you truly avoiding exploitation? For example, ensuring experts are for preparation time as well as meeting time.
Critical reflection	What is your position (personal and political), your motivation, and your identity in this work? How might this impact the participant/s? What are your vulnerabilities in this work? How might this impact the participant/s? What are your prejudices, biases, preferences, and alliances? How might these impact the participant/s? Are you prone to prioritise certain viewpoints or voices ahead of others? What are your responses? Consider physical, emotional, spiritual, and political responses to the topic, the participant/s, and data content. How might these responses be entering into your research? How might this impact the participant/s? Where might you encounter ethical or moral distress in your work? How might this impact the participant/s? What are your uncertainties or doubts? What do you feel like you don’t know, or don’t know enough about? How might this impact the participant/s? Do you need external support to navigate any of these concerns?
Dignity promotion	Do you have an understanding of the participant/s personal or cultural history, and the potential impact of previous experiences of injustice, oppression, invalidation, and denial of dignity? Is this something you could ask about in your discussions of safety? (it may not be). Are you sensitive to the political context of your research and the participant/s life and history? Is there a collective history? Is there expertise you can access to develop your understanding? For example, literature by the psychiatric survivor or consumer movements, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander scholars and researchers, disabled academics and writers. Have you considered issues around epistemic justice? Consider use of people’s words and voices, access to knowledge, the ways credibility and expertise might be awarded, and the potential for participation to be a valuable opportunity for meaning-making. Consider if and how the participant/s may have experienced epistemic injustice (for example, dismissal or discrediting of their knowledge, experiences and perspectives) and the impacts of this. Consider the participant/s circumstances and how much participation might be costing them, in terms of physical, emotional and social health as well as economic or time costs. Is your request an unfair burden or imposition? How is reciprocity present in your relationship with the participant/s? Consider dissemination of results, financial reimbursement, and what you might share of yourself in your interactions with the participant/s. Are there ways that institutional (e.g., university) power might impact upon participants’ agency, autonomy, and dignity? How will you communicate to the participant/s that you value them and their expertise, and believe that they matter as citizens?

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We hope that other researchers will find this template useful for designing, conducting and reflecting on trauma informed and dignifying research practices.

References

Bateman, J., Henderson, C., & Kezelman, C. (2013). Trauma-informed care and practice: Towards a cultural shift in policy reform across mental health and human services in Australia. A national strategic direction. Mental Health Coordinating Council. https://mhcc.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/nticp_strategic_direction_journal_article__vf4_-_jan_2014_.pdf

Berger, R. (2015). Now I see it, now I don’t: Researcher’s position and reflexivity in qualitative research. Qualitative research, 15(2), 219-234. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1468794112468475

Finlay, L. (2002). Negotiating the swamp: the opportunity and challenge of reflexivity in research practice. Qualitative research, 2(2), 209-230. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/146879410200200205

Fricker, M. (2007). Epistemic injustice: Power and the ethics of knowing. Oxford University Press.

Guillemin, M., & Gillam, L. (2004). Ethics, reflexivity, and “ethically important moments” in research. Qualitative inquiry, 10(2), 261-280. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1077800403262360

Kezelman, C., & Stavropoulos, P. (2012). Practice guidelines for treatment of complex trauma and trauma informed care and service delivery. Sydney: Adults Surviving Child Abuse. https://www.childabuseroyalcommission.gov.au/sites/default/files/IND.0521.001.0001.pdf

Moran, R. J., & Asquith, N. L. (2020). Understanding the vicarious trauma and emotional labour of criminological research. Methodological Innovations, 13(2), https://doi.org/10.1177/2059799120926085

Reynolds, V. (2012). An ethical stance for justice-doing in community work and therapy. Journal of Systemic Therapies, 31(4), 18-33. https://doi.org/10.1521/jsyt.2012.31.4.18

Roper, C. (2016). Coproduction as a methodology. The Australian journal on psychosocial rehabilitation, 18-21. https://www.mhvic.org.au/images/PDF/newparadigm_/2016WinterNewParadigm.pdf

Salter, M., & Hall, H. (2020). Reducing shame, promoting dignity: a model for the primary prevention of complex post-traumatic stress disorder. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, https://doi.org/10.1177/1524838020979667

Slay, J. & Stephens, L. (2013). Co-production in mental health: A literature review. London: New Economics Foundation. https://b.3cdn.net/nefoundation/ca0975b7cd88125c3e_ywm6bp3l1.pdf

‘Losing my undergraduate consciousness’: Reflections on the transition from undergraduate to postgraduate identity in social work research

Melissa Laing is a PhD candidate in the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies at RMIT University. She graduated from the RMIT Bachelor of Social Work (Honours)/Bachelor of Social Science (Psychology) in 2016. Melissa’s blog describes her experience of transitioning from undergraduate study, graduation into practitioner identity, and commencing postgraduate research (almost) simultaneously. Melissa can be contacted at melissa.laing@rmit.edu.au.

Commencing a doctoral degree can be a big transition for any new PhD student, but doing so soon after graduating from an undergraduate degree brings unique challenges to the emerging social work professional identity. As one of the few social work graduates at my university to go directly into a PhD program, there was no clear process to guide me through this unique and at times overwhelming transition. In this blog post, I reflect upon aspects of my own experience of transitioning from undergraduate to postgraduate study, which could be helpful for final year social work students contemplating a similar path.

During my final year Social Work placement, which was in the research centre I am now associated with, I overheard a conversation between an academic and a student he was supervising. The student was asking about how she could really step up into feeling like a PhD candidate. Her supervisor replied, “you need to lose your undergraduate consciousness”. There seemed to be something a bit magical about these words, but I would not recognise what they were foreshadowing until quite a bit later…

Completion of an undergraduate social work degree necessitates a shift in identity from student to the social work practitioner. Is there a discrete social work identity? Miehls and Moffatt (2000, p. 339) describe social work identity as “a sense of ego mastery and control by the acquisition of theory to enhance skill-based practice expertise”, while Barnard (2009) makes the claim that the graduate social worker ‘self’ attains stability on becoming a practitioner. But what if this new identity emerges concurrently with the cultivation of another ‘self’ –that of the PhD student? Kamler and Thomson (2014) suggest that the process of constructing an identity as a PhD scholar is about multiple identities, and this was certainly the case with my identity as both a graduate social worker AND new PhD student.

Beginning a research degree as a new social work graduate was not the plan that I had when commencing as an undergraduate, so this unexpected and divergent ‘PhD identity’ path choice entailed treading overwhelming terrain. I was now a social worker, but I wasn’t ‘doing social work’. Who was I, and what was the point of having invested five years on two degrees (social work and psychology)? Was I a failed social worker? My research wasn’t even related to social work practice.

 

Image via Fotolia ©Rawpixel.com

A turning point arrived when I witnessed an inspiring lecture on World Social Work Day, where the need for social work researchers was articulated. I had the realisation that this was the integrated identity I could aspire to. Bringing social work more explicitly into my research would enable me to give expression to my identity as a social work graduate within my emerging academic identity. My fully integrated identity would be as a Social Work Researcher collecting stories about how social workers in direct practice are working in ways that the literature has yet to catch up with.

Getting back to the overheard words of wisdom, I pulled the supervisor aside later to share how his words had affected me, and that I wondered how I could lose my undergraduate consciousness (hypothetically speaking). He suggested that it was largely about cultivating authority, and that in the identity work required to become a postgraduate researcher, we by necessity become an expert in the little piece of academia that we are staking out and claiming as our own. In the twin emergent identities, there lies a tension between the aspiration to be an expert in academia, versus the social worker who relinquishes a desire to be an expert as a necessary part of anti-oppressive practice. As a means of sitting with this tension, Kamler and Thomson (2014, p. 16-17) have made propositions about identity construction in the context of completing a doctorate, and the developing social worker can be nested with ease within these ideas. To each proposition (in bold italics), I have added direct questions and an example of my own experience with that proposition.

Identity is plural, not singular – identities

How does my social work identity ‘fit’ with my emerging researcher self? What does the Researcher bring to the Practitioner?

Since beginning my PhD, my social worker self has strengthened as my research has become more explicitly informed by the major driver of my decision to take the divergent path—my animal advocacy. As I have moved through the first year of my doctorate and acquired a range of skills necessary to attain the first milestone, my social worker identity provided the skills required to complete my literature review and problem identification (needs assessment), research proposal (intervention plan), and a confirmation of candidature seminar (case conference).

An identity narrative is informed by the ways in which we are seen and described

Am I ‘putting myself out there’? Am I rehearsing my emerging PhD scholar by seeking out and engaging with peers?

New social workers are guided to build strong, often interdisciplinary networks of relationships. I was able to find a desk in both the research centre I am affiliated with, and the social work office, which has enabled me to embody both identities in a very tangible way. Not only had I become a postgraduate student at the university where I completed my undergraduate social work degree, but my former lecturers were now relating to me as though I was their academic equal. This took some getting used to, but having a constant physical presence in both spaces allowed for many serendipitous hallway conversations and helped me to ‘feel’ like a peer to both those who had helped shape my social work graduate identity, and were shaping that of the emerging scholar.

 Identities are continually being made and remade in and as action

Am I saying ‘yes’ to opportunities to get out of my comfort zone? Am I asking for help when I feel lost?

Social work students are taught from early on that critical social work requires regular reflection and reflexivity. Use of a journal to track emotional, academic and task-specific progress has been central to this process for me, as has using new experiences (such as writing articles and speaking at lectures and symposia) as learning opportunities gave me the chance to ‘perform’ the doctoral identity (Kamler & Thomson, 2014).

Twelve months of occupying both the social worker and PhD candidate, I feel I am embodying the social work researcher, and look forward to how these identities will intertwine further in the next 12 months.

References

Kamler, B., & Thomson, P. (2014). Helping doctoral students write: Pedagogies for supervision. London, United Kingdom: Routledge.

Miehls, D. & Moffatt, K. (2000). Constructing social work identity based on the reflexive self, British Journal of Social Work, 30, 339-348.

 

It takes a Village….and a Research Symposium

This post is from Haidee Hicks, who is completing her PhD at RMIT University. Her research focuses on international students’ learning during social work field placement. Haidee is also a Sessional Academic at RMIT University and Victoria University. Haidee asks what could a regular research symposium do for Trans-Tasman Social Work and Welfare Education PhD and Early Career Researchers? Haidee answers through reflecting on her own experience attending such a forum at Sofia University, Bulgaria in 2014. 

I have recently been reflecting on my experience as a social work researcher, and specifically as a doctoral researcher located within the broader social work discipline in Australia. Questions such as: what is likely to happen to my “original contribution to knowledge”? How might that be disseminated? Who is listening? Is there an opportunity to engage in a critical dialogue with other researchers within the profession? Research from the United States perspective from Maynard et al. (2014) confirms the low rates of publication of dissertations in the United States and that only 28.8% are published and “enter into the discourse of the social work profession” (p. 1045).

In September 2016, ANZSWWER launched The “New Voices in Social Work” Research Symposium at the Symposium held in September in Townsville. This Symposium is an opportunity to disseminate social work knowledge and research. It is an opportunity for PhD and ECR Research Symposium to contribute to scholarly discourse in Australian and New Zealand through a collaborative approach.  It will provide forum for PhD and Early Career Researchers to receive feedback and comments in relation to the progress of their research from an experienced Panel of social work thesis supervisors. This Panel will comprise 4-6 members who will provide feedback and comment in relation to the progress of presenters’ research.

In August 2014, my PhD Supervisor, Professor Charlotte Williams (RMIT University) and I travelled to Sofia, Bulgaria to attend the TISSA Conference (The International ‘Social Work

St  Kliment, Ohridski, Sophia University Source: Google Images

& Society’ Academy)  http://www.tissa.net/  that includes a Pre-Conference of the PhD Network. This Pre-Conference offers PhD students an opportunity to present their research to a panel of approximately ten academics who are experienced in doctoral supervision. It specifically offers students an opportunity to present an aspect of their research for further comment and feedback from the Panel. The panel spanned a number of countries – Switzerland, Germany, Bulgaria, United Kingdom, Sweden and Australia – and offers a broad, global perspective and analysis to presenters. In relation to my own PhD research, I was at the ‘Confirmation of Candidature’ stage, so the feedback related to research design, methodology and some discussion in relation to conceptual frame of the research.

Auspiced by ANZSWWER, the “New Voices in Social Work Research” Symposium – also draws on some of the TISSA model: it too will be a “cooperation between universities and institutions” and allow for a “broad international connection for a critical discourse about social professions” http://www.tissa.net/. Attending TiSSA, highlighted for me the need to collaborate across a broader research community of practice.

The focal point of a research symposium is in itself important for individuals – but also important in relation to connecting us as a community of researchers. It also an opportunity to strengthen the research capacity of the social work profession through developing the skills and knowledge of emerging researchers. This symposium offers an important opportunity for dissemination of knowledge within the collaborative Trans-Tasman research network that ANZSWWER continues to promote.

If you are interested in participating in the ANZSWWER New Voices in Social Work Research Symposium to be held in 2017 you can register your interest here by emailing us at socialworkresearchnewvoices@gmail.com