Doctoral students often focus on simply getting to the right answer, only doing work directly related to their research project and only writing text they will include in their thesis. But scholarship is a non-linear, messy process that goes beyond simply acquiring knowledge.
In her paper on reading in the digital age, philosopher of education Alison Brady makes the following distinction:
- Learning – acquiring knowledge
- Studying – an ongoing practice that involves searching for literature, meaning, connections.
I would argue that the best and most generative part of doctoral study is the time and space it grants to meander between topics, which enriches students’ development and breadth of experience.
How can supervisors help students to drift productively?
- Spotlight guide: Research supervision that supports and inspires
- Research supervision is about more than imparting knowledge – it’s mentorship
- Campus Talks: Why it takes more than a PhD to become a good doctoral supervisor
Talk to your students about your own research journey
Many guides on doctoral research use the “journey” to describe the process. A journey can be long or short, straightforward or stalled by disruptions. Sometimes the destination can change completely, or takes you down a different route, through choice or necessity.
Sometimes the journey gets rough and students need support to find the right path, but in my experience, students more often need reminding that they don’t have to have all the answers about what they are doing at the beginning, and that they can take detours and dwell in the dead ends for a while. This can introduce different perspectives, disciplines and methodologies, enriching the work.
Perhaps that fluidity can feel overwhelming, which is why students often prefer the linear, efficient route with the defined outcome. But we must remind them that if they take it, they may miss out on the scenery along the way.
Encourage students to attend seminars, societies and conferences
There is so much more to being a doctoral researcher than the thesis itself. Getting involved with the academic community can take students outside their comfort zones and help them view their PhD as a holistic experience rather than just a written document.
When I was a PhD student, I was lucky to join weekly seminars about the philosophy of education. I was not studying the subject, but after taking an optional course that touched on it, I was invited to “drift” further into the subject, which enriched my study and introduced me to a whole new academic community. The fact that these seminars weren’t directly related to my research made them more generative.
While not all experiences yield results, they can be extremely productive, pushing students to think about scholarship differently.
Facilitate group conversations with other researchers
As a research student, I thought there was a right way to approach research. The papers and chapters I read were all structured in the same way: rationale, literature review, method, results, conclusions. It made sense to assume that research was carried out in this linear method – with a clear set of questions that framed a researcher’s actions and decisions and always produced successful results.
As soon as you carry out research on a larger scale, you question this linearity, realising that research is messy, iterative and doesn’t always produce the results you expected. But because of the way that research is presented, when this happens, it can feel like a problem that’s unique to you – or your fault.
Often, we encourage students to add a positionality statement or a reflective chapter where they explain how their identity, experience or decisions have impacted their research. These can allow students to “come clean” about the mistakes they made or the dead ends or detours they went down before arriving at their destination. But describing these “mistakes” in this way and placing them in the reflections or limitations section makes them sound undesirable, rather than a natural and generative part of the process.
If researchers are honest about the research process or their study practices, this wouldn’t feel like an isolated problem. Providing opportunities, like research seminars or workshops, can be a great way to create space for doctoral researchers to hear about others’ experiences. Asking questions like “what was something unexpected in your research?” or “what didn’t work as you planned?” can be good ways to facilitate conversations about challenges so they don’t seem so negative – they normalise them as part of the process.
Work with colleagues to make links to other relevant areas
When co-supervising with colleagues, I love it when we can make links to other areas or suggest topics or authors for students to explore. To me, this points to the interconnectedness of ideas and different disciplines, which is especially common in my field, education.
Incorporating interdisciplinary insights to a student’s work can enrich their research and bring a unique perspective and contribution to the field. But students need to be open to making these connections, and supervisors can nurture this openness by making initial links or pointing out opportunities for bringing ideas together.
Instead of worrying about students taking detours, we should be encouraging them to expand their horizons, to see things from a different perspective and to enjoy the messiness of scholarship. We should also work as a community to make this messiness a visible part of the research process, by writing and talking about it, to normalise and celebrate the opportunity to meander and drift.
Lauren B. Clark is a lecturer in education at the UCL Institute of Education.
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