Rethinking doctoral publication practices : writing from and beyond the thesis

This article addresses the importance of giving greater pedagogical attention to writing for publication in higher education. It recognizes that, while doctoral research is a major source of new knowledge production in universities, most doctoral students do not receive adequate mentoring or structural support to publish from their research, with poor results. Data from a case study of graduates in science and education are examined to show how the different disciplinary and pedagogic practices of each discourse community impact on student publication. It is argued that co-authorship with supervisors is a significant pedagogic practice that can enhance the robustness and know-how of emergent scholars as well as their publication output. There is a need, however, to rethink co-authorship more explicitly as a pedagogic practice, and create more deliberate structures in subject disciplines to scaffold doctoral publication - as it is these structures that influence whether graduates publish as informed professionals in their chosen fields of practice.

Dancing doctorates downunder? Defining and assessing 'doctorateness' when embodiment enters the thesis

Assessment frames the focus of this paper, which emerges from our collaborative research, Dancing Between Diversity and Consistency: Refining Assessment in Postgraduate Degrees in Dance, funded by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council (ALTC). We examine the attributes of danced ‘doctorateness’, giving special attention to those factors in the Australian environment, which may endow resilience to concepts of excellence, independent thinking and originality when kinaesthetic knowledge becomes pivotal to research. Have the small pool of examiners and relationships between academia and the professional artistic environment shaped these doctorates in a particular way? Can these perspectives illuminate and forge parameters by which to legitimate danced insight? These and related issues are interrogated giving voice to supervisors, research deans, candidates and industry professionals across Australia who participated in this research project.

Dancing the thesis : potential and pitfalls in practice-led research

Practice-led or multi modal these (describing examinable outcomes of postgraduate study which comprise the practice of dancing/choreography with an accompanying exegesis) are an emerging strength of dance scholarship; a form of enquiry that has been gaining momentum over a decade, particularly in Australia and the United Kingdom. It has been strongly argued that, in this form of research, legitimate claims to new knowledge are embodied predominantly within the practice itself (Pakes 2003) and that these findings are emergent, contingent and often interstitial contained within both the material form of the practice and in the symbolic languages surrounding the form.

This paper draws on Dancing between diversity and consistency: Refining assessment in postgraduate studies in dance, a study conducted with funding by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council 2006-2008, to critically examine some of the issues raised by such degrees. The study's structure formed around extensive literature reviews into higher degree dance studies; general examination/assessment discussions at research masters and doctoral levels; and issues arising from the relatively new artistic degrees involving practice components. Focus group discussions and semi-structured interviews with 74 supervisors/examiners, research deans and administrators, and candidates/graduates elicited the views on assessing practice-led dance research of two principal participant groups; the professional dance community represented by Ausdance (The Australian Dance Council) and the staff and student cohort of Australian universities who offered dance or related postgraduate degrees.

Tensions arose through the project specifically in terms of deciding what kinds of articulations of practice-led dance research might be acceptable at the PhD level. Here, we address underlying issues of interdisciplinarity that arise from the current common practice of requiring a written requirement for PhD theses. This leads to a consideration of how differing cultural inflections and practices might be incorporated into our reading and evaluation of theses, how creative approaches to layered documentation can function as durable artifacts of creative research while contributing to the overall 'knowledge generation' of the thesis, and what kinds of language structures, such as metaphor, allusion and symbol, can be co opted to function generative in dialogue with other kinds of texts and discourses.

Relationship between alcohol abuse upper gastro-intestinal haemorrhage and nutritional status during acute hospital admission

This thesis is concerned with the effect of alcohol consumption on the pathogenesis of bleeding from the upper gastrointestinal tract via nutritional pathways. Altered nutritional status is a frequently recognised clinical accompaniement of heavy alcohol consumption in hospitalized patients. Similarly, upper gastrointestinal bleeding is frequently accompanied by the presence of heavy alcohol consumption. Nevertheless, the clinical quantification of alcohol intake is often descriptive, so that a link between alcohol use and upper gastrointestinal haemorrhage via nutritional mechanisms has been only generally defined. In the literature review, the methods of defining alcohol use and abuse, using interview, biochemical and haematological techniques are noted. The relationship between alcohol abuse and nutrient imbalances is reviewed, especially in relation to possible effects on the gastrointestinal tract, appetite and eating habits. A further section reviews the relationship between alcohol use and anatomical lesions of the upper gastrointestinal tract likely to lead to bleeding. Following the chapter in which the methods used in this thesis are described. Chapter 4 seeks to describe the study population and its subgroups in this thesis in relation to interview, biochemical and haematological methods. Alcohol use is defined in relation to (1) a clinical classification of heavy or light drinking, based on a questionnaire administered in Casualty, (2) a quantified method of determining alcohol consumption during a subsequent ward dietetic assessment, (3) in relation to a biochemical definition (recent drinking and non-drinking), and a classification of (1) and (2) called, for the purposes of this thesis, 'alcohol abusers' and 'nonabusers'. Heavy, regular and recent drinkers and alcohol abusers tend to be male and younger than light, infrequent and nonrecent drinkers and nonabusers. Chapter 5 relates the nutritional status of those patients admitted acutely to hospital in relation to the groups defined in Chapter 4, Nutritional status is defined in terms of food intake, anthropometry, biochemical and haematological parameters. Different methods of defining alcohol use give rise to different patterns of nutritional impairment. Chapter 6 relates the nutritional status of those patients admitted acutely to hospital in relation to the presence or absence of an endoscopically defined site of upper gastrointestinal bleeding. A difference is seen between those bleeding from a Mailory-weiss tear and other sites of bleeding, similarly, biochemical differences in nutritional status emerge between those patients who presented in shock, and those who did not. Chapter 7 explores the relationships between biochemical markers of nutritional status and haemostatic variables in the groups of abusers/non-abusers, the various sites of primary bleeding/controls, and shock/non-shock. Serum copper appears to be related to altered haemostasis in a manner not apparently described elsewhere.

“I would rather write a thesis than a letter”: from description to inscription in feminist pedagogical enquiry

The discourses that dominate schooling and education are complicit in, and circulate reductionist and bounded understandings of social relationships (Lather, 2004; MacLure, 2003; Atkinson, 2003a). Those deeply implicated in these  relationships understand that the pragmatic discourses of teaching and learning do little to elucidate or generate understandings about pedagogy that recognise the complex and contingent. There is a need for research that gives account of the experience of learning to teach without abetting the neoliberal accountability discourses in teacher education. This paper unfolds to the reader one practitioner researcher’s ways to come to know living pedagogy (Aoki, Low & Palulis, 2001) and research through the possibilities of epistolary in pedagogical enquiry.

Classifying Australian PhD bibliographic thesis records by ANZSRC field of research codes

This report provides a brief report detailing the methods and approach used to classify the 2007-2009 theses by ANZSRC Fields of Research codes and any recommendations.

The syntactic priority thesis and ontological disputes

The article focuses on the neo-Fregean's claim that syntactic priority thesis (SP) can constitute a decision-procedure in relation to substantive ontological disputes. It examines alternative interpretations of SP and demonstrates why SP cannot settle disputes about the existence of numbers or deliver on the stronger meta-ontological claims made on behalf it. Problems associated with the attempt to establish ontological theses through logical and linguistic analysis are tackled.

Why should I present my thesis on computer assisted ndjébbana on dvd?

This paper justifies the presentation of a Phd thesis about Computer Assisted NdjTbbana on a Digital Video Disc (DVD). NdjTbbana is a language spoken by 200 Kunibfdji who are the traditional indigenous Australian landowners of Maningrida in Arnhem Land, Australia. The tools of this study are simple digital talking books that were created in NdjTbbana and then presented on touch screens computers. The data was the interaction around the touch screens that was recorded on digital video. Using DVD technology, the NdjTbbana talking books and the digital video can be integrated into a scholarly text for academics and NdjTbbana narrated report for the Kunibfdji, which can be combined to present a thesis. From a theoretical perspective, a thesis on a DVD can be located in the centre of critical literacy, a critical theory of technology and critical research methodologies. There are also logistical, semiotic and ideological reasons for presenting a thesis on about computer assisted NdjTbbana on DVD. Presenting Computer Assisted NdjTbbana on DVD will link the tools and data of the research with academic discourse to enhance the examination process and will also support the empowerment of the Kunibfdji as they are more informed about the research process.