I have so many thoughts running through my mind at the moment about my PhD journey and I'm finding it hard to find a coherent means to express it. Over the past two weeks I have had many 'encounters' with my old friends, colleagues, mentors...and each of these encounters had made me reflect on my PhD journey in different ways. Sometimes these reflections relate to 'product' issues – i.e. the actually outcome of my thesis, thus related to my topic or research methodology, and at other times I have been forced to think about the actual process of completing the degree. Maybe it's hard to separate out the two. But I feel that irrespective how conscientiously I try to articulate in words my thoughts and ideas as they relate to both product and process issues, what is reflected on paper or more appropriately, on screen doesn't come close to being an accurate account of all the thoughts and ideas running through my brain. Here is an abridged and possible disconnected list or 'note' of some of these thoughts as I feel them at this point in time, while I'm sitting here on the couch in Little Mowbray, Cape Town:
- I am part of a collective interchange of ideas channelled to me via my interactions with what seems to be a group of intelligent, intuitive and grounded women working in the education and development sectors
- That we all see the world in different ways, using different theoretical, methodological, conceptual tools and lens; these different vantage point allows us to see a comprehensive view of the world – the knack is allow one's self to really look at these completing views and see the value they bring to your own perspective
- Listening to other people's ideas, positions, perspectives helps to accentuate your own view, while possibility enhancing its strength and robustness
- I need to develop a way in which to stay grounded in the South African agenda – it's too easy to lose sight of what makes 'us' significant and unique, especially when living and working in England
- I have forgotten what I was like as a mature student in South Africa. My previous supervisors have both pointed this out to me and I need to find a way to reconnect to that 'personhood' and use it in my engagements with my Open University supervisors
- Other people see us differently to how we see ourselves – sometimes it extremely powerful, positive and redeeming to believe that 'other' reading of ourselves
- There is a way to bridge the divide between the ideals of the adult education and academic literacies fields; An adult educator needs to hold onto partisan perspectives that allow her to challenge and critique the inherently unequal social world and encourage her student to learn about, while challenging, the processes and practices they encounter. An academic literacies practitioner works within the system, even though critical of that system, her primary focus is on helping her students to successfully engage in the practices of academia, marking out how the system works so as to facilitate access to these privileged practices. Assessment however is a major stumbling block – I would argue that adult educators working predominantly in informal learning contexts don't have to deal with the negative effects of assessment on students and learning, while for academic literacies practitioners working in higher education – assessment becomes the mechanism whereby student's work must be recognised, judged and evaluated, thus forcing the practitioner to work in contrast to any positive, humanistic, development ideals associated with learning for learning sake which they might hold
- Holding onto these seemingly divergent perspectives is what can strengthen my thesis – the academic literacies perspective will allow me to focus on student literacy practices in a non-judgemental way and in so doing allow their voices to be heard – the adult education perspective will give me some of the conceptual and analytical tools, amongst others, to critique the structural mechanisms acting on and shaping the practices which student need to gain access to in order to be successful in higher education
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