A Pilgrim’s Progress Report #2

“Hazmat” by Clement127. Creative Commons licence CC BY-NC-ND

Oh my, it has been 7 months since my last blog post and 19 months since my last Pilgrim’s Progress Report!

The Road to Hell…

I had the best of intentions for using this blog to record my progress. Instead, I have kept a private journal (in Microsoft Word) of everything that has been happening with me on the EdD. In part, this has to do with some of my thoughts and feelings being a little too raw and not wanting to expose all those processes and activities that I got embroiled in that left me feeling frustrated and angry.

Ah well! You know what they say. Onwards and upwards with a dash of outwards … and remember to breathe!

Previously on Pilgrim’s Progress…

You may remember that my two supervisors were Dr Simon Hayhoe (with the Wikipedia page) and Dr Darren Ambrose, first and second supervisors respectively. They have now morphed into Dr Chris Beighton and Prof Andrew Peterson (first and second respectively). They, too, are warm, generous, witty and wise gentlemen and, again, I feel very lucky to have them in my corner. Given my interest in professional learning and sociomateriality, Dr Beighton is a particularly good match and comes with a wealth of experience and expertise in these fields. He will be pressing me quite hard to develop these areas. It is a challenge that I am looking forward to with relish.

From January 2016 to July 2016, I spent time on the data collection phase of the study. January 2016 was the online academic staff survey. Between March and May 2016, I was conducting 12 semi-structured interviews with academics. From May to July 2016, I was sitting through 12 photovoice presentations with the same academics. By the end of August 2016, the transcription for these audio recordings were completed. It amounted to 24 hours in all. In between all of this, the University’s HR Data Officer helped me enormously by producing a series of statistical reports that I can use to overlay with my academic staff survey data.

Next time…

This year (2017) will be all about the writing. This is where the writing process becomes fun, interesting and maddening in equal measure. I will draft the words that will form the basis of my chapters. Those chapters will be crafted into something that resembles a purposeful thesis.

Coming soon…

I have a couple of blog posts that I would like to write. One concerns professional learning and the other is on sociomateriality. Then the swamp will beckon me and the pilgrimage continues apace once more.