I like inexpensive, easy-to-read, fast-paced, nimble books. Writing the Doctoral Dissertation: A Systematic Approach by Davis, Parker and Straub is exactly that kind of volume. My only complaint with it is that precisely because it’s so thin (150 single-spaced pages, regular font size), it misses a lot of trees in order to provide an overview that looks like a forest.
Gordon et al are extraordinarily honest and they won me over in the first 10 pages: "we've worked with PhD students at all program stages" pic.twitter.com/kSPVmKQ7u7
— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) May 18, 2018
The fact that Davis et al are almost apologetic about not having all the answers in their volume made me really feel happy about having spent my hard earned money on this. Do note, the author’s last name is not Gordon, but I was exhausted last night as I live-tweeted my reading notes of this book.
They're all like "this is a systematic approach and like any generalized piece of advice, YMMV" Davis et al say a PhD process isn't linear pic.twitter.com/0u3qyE6hlV
— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) May 18, 2018
I’m still uncomfortable with books on how to write a doctoral dissertation or how to manage the PhD process that focus so much on productivity, pages written, output produced. But at the same time, I understand that a doctorate should be completed within a certain time frame, so I suppose there’s value to the productivity approach this and other books take.
While WAY more moderate than "Complete your PhD in 2 Semesters", Davis et al focus on concept of productivity. This makes me queasy. pic.twitter.com/WsdxmpsV8a
— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) May 18, 2018
Admittedly, writing the doctoral dissertation IS producing text and data and analyses and results, but I’m not sure we ought to treat the work as three 40 pages’ papers plus an introduction and a conclusion and WHAM BAM we have a PhD dissertation. I think there’s more to life as a doctoral student than producing pages.
Ideal student-advisor relationship. I think I have this relationship with my advisees. This is actually a reasonable set of expectations. pic.twitter.com/PzGlWywRcP
— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) May 18, 2018
One of my doctoral students did 18 months of fieldwork for three case studies. And he was super fast, and came back to do analysis/write.
— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) May 18, 2018
This book is very easy to read, because these authors’ writing is super agile and nimble. Perhaps their core competency is a discussion of how to choose the right topic and how to “fill a gap in the literature”, an issue that many doctoral students face and it’s hard to deal with.
This list of strategies to choose doctoral dissertation topics reminds me of @mchorowitz 's 2×2 matrix (Michael, do you have it handy?) pic.twitter.com/WthtpKwS0M
— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) May 18, 2018
Actually reading the next two pages totally reminds me of @mchorowitz 's smart 2×2 table. New data, old theory, new theory, new data. pic.twitter.com/Rci4d77OUc
— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) May 18, 2018
Overall, this book is super good for what it attempts to do (make it easier for a PhD student to finish their doctoral dissertation), but still is not enough to be used stand-alone, in my view. At least, I wouldn’t assign it to my advisees without providing additional support, either through my own mentoring, or by reading other complementary books.
At 150 pages and 12 chapters, Davis et al rushed through major parts of the PhD process "WHAM BAM, file for defence and WOWZA you're a PhD!"
— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) May 18, 2018
Bolker and/or Dunleavy for whole PhD process description, help walking through the process. This is disappointing. No single book does it
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