Inclusivity at what cost?

I have been doing a lot of work over the past couple of weeks on the inclusivity project and it has brought me into several discussions with a variety of colleagues, friends and family about the practice of being inclusive. What does it mean? How is it achieved and at what cost? 

Inclusivity in its basest form is ensuring that your organisation or company (in my case a university) doesn't unnecessarily exclude particular groups because of a practice or procedure. In order to develop an inclusive culture most organisations will need to identify the current groups that may be excluded, typically excluded groups (especially within a university) are students from BME backgrounds, those from lower socio-economic backgrounds and disabled students. On certain courses students from some religious groups, LGBT students and male and female students are under represented and work needs to be concentrated on their inclusion. This is all fairly obvious really. What has struck me in my discussions this week is the commonly held view that inclusivity means lowering standards. Even those people who believe strongly about building a more inclusive environment will often assume that this will in some way mean 'making it easier'. 

For me inclusivity is not, and never should be, about lowering standards, if anything the reverse is true. If your standard of teaching and course content and delivery is good enough to reach a wider audience and not exclude people because of your approach then it is not only more accessible but richer and of a higher calibre. 

This idea of 'lowering standards' really troubles me as it has the potential to undermine work around inclusivity culturally. We need to move away from this idea in order to avoid patronising highly talented students. We also need to look to ourselves more as educators of the diverse communities we work with and see this as a challenge to INCREASE our standards of quality not dumb them down. 

All this talk of standards brought me to a further thought about how we measure a standard or a student's individual achievement. If you think about an 18 year old, white, male student from a relatively middle class background who has been through the education system and applies to a university to study a history degree - we will be able to track this student's progression statistically and it will look good. He will more than likely enter the university with the required entry grades and he will progress quickly as the familiar environment allows him to develop academically. On graduation we should see the student leave with a good 2:1 or first degree and therefore their student journey will represent a success for both the institution and the individual. It is all very nice. However consider the 35 year old single mother from a low income background. She has decided to give up her job and go back to university to retrain as a social worker. Her entry to the course will be through access qualifications and her previous experience of education is quite negative. She graduates with a third degree but her experience at university and her achievement of a degree has had a transformative impact on her life and that of her child. However statistically she is not a success. 

These are fairly stereotyped and cras examples and there is nothing to say that the student in the first example may leave or drop out and the second achieve a first class honours. However, they are useful examples in this debate of inclusivity.  I am interested in the way that we measure success and the impact of a higher education qualification on students who are typically excluded. If we are in the business of transforming people's lives of shaping and supporting communities and of creating excellence who is the best example of this and how could we measure this more accurately? 

How can we promote this transformation of people's lives, how can we see success as the process by which someone has obtained their degree rather than just assessing the final outcome using a system that entrenches pre-established prejudice?

By finding a rigorous way of doing this we also get to demonstrate how much a university is able to put back into its community and is not an elitist playground for the educationally privileged. 

Conferences of inclusion and a stubbed toe

Last week I went off on my travels to Leeds and a place called Weetwood Hall and very nice it was indeed. I was attending a Higher Education Academy conference on building inclusive cultures in HE, it is part of a wider project that myself and a colleague are working on with 16 other institutions. It is not directly linked to the PhD (as in it wasn’t a conference where I was presenting my research) however most of the debates and topics discussed were very relevant as they focussed on how not to exclude people unnecessarily, which links nicely with my work on disability and societal barriers.

It was a pleasure to be surrounded by colleagues from across the sector who are showing a level of commitment to not just introducing a couple of tokenistic policies but thinking around ideas of institutional change that could drive forward a more inclusive culture within their university and the sector. Chatham House rules so I can’t blog too much about some of the discussions but I can say that there was a real mix of institutions and it was fascinating to hear the challenges of other colleagues. Real mix of attendees too academics, support and professional staff and PVCs and Deans – meant discussions about change at all levels had real substance and weren’t just lip service at a workshop.

My colleague and I have come back with a real drive to push forward our work around the evidence base required to make cultural change. Having listened to some of the other institutions I have realised that our cultural change will not need to be as significant as some others. There was also discussion about getting senior management involved or interested – it appears not everyone’s VC is on twitter – CRYING SHAME, if you ask me. So in some ways we are very lucky, but that luck shouldn’t allow us to be come complacent and having such a sound platform to start from should allow us to start some really valuable work.

That is as soon as colleague’s toe gets better – she broke it – on the bedside table. Nit.

What is the difference between being a wheelchair user and being depressed?

You don't have to tell your mum you're a wheelchair user.


'Coming out' as mad. It can't be easy. I have been writing this morning about making reasonable adjustments for disabled people in Higher Education and tied in with that was thinking about whether we see disabled students as students first and then disabled. There is a definite push for this within the current research. It builds on ideas about inclusive cultures and making the education accessible for all and therefore not having to make reasonable adjustments for individuals. It makes sense when you think about it. Let us have an education that the majority of people can access, rather than an elite system that excludes people not because of their ability to learn, but rather their ability to engage with a curriculum that excludes them because of discriminatory practice. 


This led to me thinking about how we would know people were disabled if their conditions weren't physically apparent. Would we need to? Is there a sense of wanting to define as a disabled person because there is a sense of pride about it? I am running cras parallels with the gay community, but it is similar. No one needs to know you are gay (except perhaps your partner) but people are proud to come out and there is a political gain in doing so. Is it the same within the disabled community? Am I perhaps over simplifying?


This has really got me thinking about this idea of people/students with mental health issues constantly having to 'come out' in order to exist. If in order to exist and make noise about your experience you have to keep telling people what does this do to your identity? Does 'coming out' make it a bigger part of you than you would like it to be?


Whatever the motivation and overall result surely single instances of revealing the personal about yourself to colleagues, family and friends never gets any easier, especially when reactions are often of stepping back, reassessing you and never allowing you to mention it again.

Duck consultation

No really. 


Yesterday I was enjoying the bank holiday a little too much. We have had such glorious weather - it makes working so much harder. This morning it was lovely and sunny and so I took the PhD thoughts for a little walk. I was actually walking for a couple of hours but it was a gentle pace and there was a lot to see and think about.


The more I have read about methodologies the more I am understanding how deeply excluded people with mental health difficulties have been from their own categorization and research. There is a lack of an autonomous political movement surrounding mental health. Without this mental health is predominantly discussed by professionals with varying agendas of their own. 


I talked to the duck about this. His feelings were quite clear. He wanted his voice to be heard and he shouted loudly to tell me so.

After chatting to the duck for a while I went and hid out under a tree in full blossom. I wish this was a scratch and sniff screen because it smelt amazing.

So here to further pondering about my methodology. Whilst I am aware I will need to make a strong academic case for whichever I decide to choose my heart is pulling me towards a narrative approach. I want to give students who have experienced or are experiencing mental health issues the opportunity to tell me their story. I am not a counsellor, I don't want to hear these stories so I am able to in some way 'help'. I am conscious that this itself is not a positive position to take. Perhaps, it is in part the literature student (who is kept hidden from my social science colleagues, but is my background) screaming at me that all people's experiences are lived through their own story and this is where you uncover the most interesting details. I think it was also the duck quacking away at me, happily recounting his narrative, his story. I wish I spoke quack, he had a lot to say.

Take a bow

So today was the big presentation day of reckoning. Can I just say that before one presents their research I suggest the following:


1) Don't spend the night before on the phone to your ex wife for 2 hours
2) Don't sign mortgage papers in the morning
3) Avoid an hour with a student and her dad just beforehand discussing a quite serious and very complex disability related issue that has you almost in tears.


Simple advice but it might help, oh and WEAR PINK.


Today I was only giving a taster of the research. Perhaps I would have been better to give a link to the blog and then sip tea and let people read for themselves. I prepared a very brief overview of the project. As I have not collected any data yet I was conscious that although the research area is very interesting to me it may be less so to my audience and I wanted to keep people engaged. I had decided to focus on the methods, methodology, framework suggestions and an account of what has led me to this area of study.


I am not an academic member of staff and the audience was made up of academic colleagues and research students. First job is to shake the chip off your shoulder and stare through the invisible barrier and tell yourself you do deserve to be there. I hope I did that successfully and I have to say that the staff were incredibly supportive. They listened and didn't laugh and asked good questions afterwards. I was also lucky enough to get a couple of great suggestions. One of these was to do a pilot before I begin my first round of data collection. Embarrassed that I hadn't thought of this but I will definitely be testing out my questions now to ensure that I am asking the right things.


I think it went well. It is the first time I have presented my research and as someone who is never nervous of speaking in public I actually found it quite a challenge - it is different when it is your research you are opening to scrutiny. It has definitely made me want to present more. It is impossible to defend a position publicly, unless it is the right one and this is invaluable.


Afterwards a colleague popped to see me to discuss a couple of things I had mentioned and another colleague joined our 'corridor' discussion. The result was I was loaned a couple of books and had a chance to have a chat with people about their work and mine. Which leads me to conclude tonight that the best thing about today's experience was that I felt part of something and perhaps more importantly accepted as a part of it.


Thanks HLS :-)

Working Girl

In true Melanie Griffith style - I am 'letting the river run'. My metaphorical shoulder pads are in, my jaw is square and my lipstick is apricot. I have a fire in my belly and an attention to detail that will serve me well if Sigourney Weaver turns up and wants to take me on. In other words I have found my inner working girl and by god is she getting a little exposure.


My younger and much wiser sister said to me this evening, 'how long does a phd take?' to which I gave the obligatory ten minute waffle about 'life's work' and 'if one were able to do it full time' and 'striking a life balance being important'. To which she retorted - gesturing to all the paper scattered around me - 'and you have set yourself a three week deadline to do the entire thesis because...?'


I, of course, have not done this, but the last few weeks have seen a decided increase in my output. I have found my drive and this is an exciting, but dangerous place to be. You know when you start a really good book and by about page four you start to realise that your windows are not going to get cleaned and the shopping is not going to get done and you have no chance of an early night because every single spare minute is going to be taken up with devouring the delicious story, language, characters that are languishing behind page after page of recycled paper. Well that feeling is how my research has been going over the last few weeks and this weekend has been like the culminating drama of the closing chapters of a great novel.


My inner Working Girl has stepped up to the plate. She has cast Harrison Ford aside and stared down Sigourney, she has picked up her hem line and her focus and is strutting headlong into the credits. 


Basically, I have written a chapter - but to me this feels like I have just been given a corner office, all of my own, in a very tall city block.


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096463/

A model experience

Today I have written nearly 4000 words. This is despite the glorious sunshine, despite the slight hangover and despite the computer crashing on me more than once (six times in fact - once with a total lack of auto-save recovery - mustn't dwell). Anyway the 'rug', as I have aptly named my temporary office, was a hive of activity today. 


I have been working on my models. Theoretical framework models that is. I am pleased to announce I have one. This has taken about a year. Which seems a long time, but the framework is so fundamental to the whole project that I am glad it has taken this long. When it clicks it clicks - it is like buying a house or falling in love - you just know.


For all those who are interested I have been using a Social Model approach to disability and like many I was getting bogged down in the subsequent arguments that follow in relation to the lived experience of impairment. By having a focus on mental health it has allowed me to move one step to the side and actually find a fresh angle worth stretching round for. 


Mental health is not the same ball game as disability, although there are welcome similarities. This new model places the service user at the centre of the conceptualisation of mental ill health. It moves away from diagnosis, treatment and recovery models which are positioned and pushed by professionals. In that regard it is similar to the Social Model of disability but it cannot be identical. As some service users identify a diagnosis can be hard fought over, it often offers a rational explanation for an individual's experiences and it is essential for accessing welfare support. 


This new model is exciting and new and is being developed by academics, practitioners and service users/non-users. It provides me with the perfect framework within which to position my research which is not about the causes and effects of mental health issues but how to make reasonable adjustments within an educational and training setting.


I have now cleared the rug of the days work in order to free up the space I need to jump around in excitement about this.


PS - check out the blog redesign - hope it meets with approval :-)

I love Saturday mornings

Do you know why? Simply because it is always peaceful and I always get stuff done. No one is up who makes lots of noise because they are sleeping off the racket they made on Friday night. Most people are walking their dogs, or wandering round their gardens, or just sipping tea and planning their weekends. 

Saturday morning is a wonderful time to be doing research. It is sunny today and I have managed to get a load done which means I am now allowed to go outside and sit in the sunshine and read my book for a bit. Marvellous. 

I want to update the blog on the work I have being doing over the last couple of days, but I am not quite ready to share it yet. Instead I will get on with the rest of my Saturday morning and come back later.

Go forth and present

So, I have agreed to present my research to my faculty next week. In one way this is a score because it is Easter and a lot of people will be away. In another way I should not be seeing the lack of audience participants as a good thing. I can't help it; beforehand I will be nervous and insecure and afterwards I am bound to wish there had been more people there! 


I have already prepared a couple of slides and seeing as I will only be talking for about 15 minutes it is not going to be too intense. I fully intend to make the best use of the sad ass people (myself included) who are not on their jollies next week and come along. It will be a good opportunity to get feedback from other students and colleagues. It will also be a good opportunity for me to defend my research. This will be invaluable I think. Learning to defend without being defensive. Hard work.


One thing I was concerned about was my methodology. My methodology is not rock solid. However a chat with my supervisor today has sorted this out in my head. It doesn't yet need to be set in stone. I've not collected my data and I will develop a strong methodology as I progress. I have a few ideas of what I don't want to use. COUGH COUGH Grounded Theory COUGH COUGH. I am taken with a discursive approach which suits the qualitative project, so we will see.


Presenting one's research is all the things it is supposed to be; terrifying, exhilarating, exhausting and utterly worthwhile. At worst it is a few minutes of feeling a little vulnerable at best a fantastic opportunity to think about communicating the ideas and processes behind your work to a captive audience, as opposed to having to hide the remote at home just so you can blather on to the cat about your latest chapter. 


I suppose it might be like watching your children in their first school play. You have nurtured and created and developed something that is incredibly important to you and then you introduce it to the world and open it up to criticism and opinion - brave and dangerous. Maybe I should present in front of a nativity scene dressed as a donkey...maybe not.

What do you do when it is obvious?

'For me, the beauty of (universal design approaches) is that an individual's impairment is not seen as a barrier but rather, the focus of how best that individual learns.'


Adams (2007) in a speech to Leeds Met.


I love this, but then I would.  Surely anyone who is involved in education of any sort would read this and think - yes, of course? This is what I am struggling with ce soir; I feel a little like I am cheating.


I am not locked in a lab somewhere frantically staring into petri dishes and happening across an amazing discovery. I am merely presenting a collection of theories and ideas that are a way of framing a concept. I personally believe that Higher Education is essential and that people shouldn't be excluded from the experience because of unnecessary barriers that are often institutional and sometimes attitudinal. However, I say this like no one else has thought this, like there is no one out there who would say they agreed, like I have discovered something on a petri dish. 


So how then does one not feel like they are in some way cheating a little bit?


I guess for me it has to come back to personal experience. Day in, day out I am presented with evidence that suggests to me in theory many may agree with the sentiment of inclusivity but they mean inclusivity for people who look, think or learn like them. It is frustrating that looking at how people learn and the diversity present in any classroom of students as brains process, hands scribble down notes, memories are stored - or not, is not something that always comes naturally to those in the business of educating. We seem to want people to learn as we do. To explain concepts as we would best understand them. To believe our way is not only the best way but the only way. Does it matter how you unscrew it as long as the lid comes off? Is it not more exciting that there are 25 different and inventive ways to free the jar? Yes, I hear you cry, yes it is OBVIOUS.


It is rather isn't it.

A Dedication

Tonight I am dedicating the blog to the national bureau of students with disabilities: SKILL. It has been announced that they have ceased operating today.

http://www.skill.org.uk/index.aspx

This is a charity that has been running since 1974. They have campaigned tirelessly for the rights of disabled students. They have worked with individuals, with groups, with organisations and with other charities. They have provided free information to disabled people and those professionals who work with them to help tackle the prejudice and barriers existent in society. 

Their closure will be a great loss to Universities who have worked with them on many a vital project. It is also a loss to students who lose those who advocated for them in the face of discrimination.

As Universities face 80% cuts and widening participation becomes a burden rather than a celebration it is a truly sad day when we watch a charity such as SKILL close its doors.

So a sincere thank you to all the staff at SKILL for their work over the last 37 years, it has not gone unnoticed. 

Right at the bottom

Tough reading tonight. I have downloaded about 25 articles on depression in the work place. Entirely relevant for the research and some key data and approaches are covered well by the authors, doesn't stop it being slightly glum reading though. Most of the articles I have accessed are not about personal experiences - that reading comes later - and that is oddly less gloomy. People's narratives are always full of strength even if they are talking about times when things may have been particularly difficult. There is a welcome voyeurism attached to  reading the personal stories of people; through their voices we learn about their experiences and from the way they choose to tell us we learn about their feelings towards these experiences - often we find more in the things they do not say. We dip momentarily into their life and their interpretation of it and we leave no footprint. We are not there to comment, console or correct. We are there to observe and to perhaps learn. Therefore we creep in and we creep out and those stories that touch us we think about in private later. The articles I have read today are different.


They are policy driven. They are interpretations of how legislation has been developed. They are suggested theory. They are statistics and they are depressing. They are not charting a human story, they are a representation of human failure in black and white. Failure of society to adequately legislate, failure to build an inclusive agenda, failure to develop and support a workforce that considers the mental health of its workers. Failure to engage with people's narratives to let them inform future agendas. Pages and pages written about stigma and discrimination. Coldly, starkly and matter of factly. Without the human element it is a long way down and a mountain to climb back up.


However, it must be read. Therefore I will approach it in the same way. Calmly and coldly. I will theme. I will table. I will order. Then I will take a bit of time to reflect and look up from the bottom every now and then to wave.

The power of a friendly cuppa

I had a meeting today with a work colleague. We were meeting to discuss a project we are both working on and we did indeed get to some session planning. However, over the hot tea, bought for me, I hasten to add, far more took place than I was expecting.

There is existing, unwritten support amongst new researchers. It is because the competition of being published and critiqued hasn't yet come to the fore; academic rivalry remains a distant dream. Young researchers (and I refer not to age here, but experience) are wonderful. We are keen and interested and honest and most importantly we are intrinsically and forcefully supportive of one another. This was my experience today. A meeting that should have started with a friendly 'how are you?', 'good thanks' and then turned to work took a different turn as I poured out the woes of my research methods. My colleague listened attentively and with real interest. Then sensitively got me to explain the background, where I saw myself and my participants within the research, how I felt about certain theories, my relationship with language, my politics until I stopped noticing the big flashing sign over my head that reads 'you were a humanities student you don't know anything about social research methods' and I talked about the things I understood about my methods and methodologies.

I was concerned, it turned out, more by the fact that I couldn't justify the methods I WASN'T going to use than the ones I was. I was terrified that I had missed out on some wonderful opportunity to use a particular method and that if challenged I wouldn't be able to defend my decision. My colleague was hugely understanding about this and without a whiff of a patronising sniff. There then followed a wealth of practical advice; some books to read, some names to look up, some ideas to toss around. Notes were scribbled down. Promises were made about emails. Tea went cold.

I realised as I sat in the cafe that this kind of support was, indeed is, invaluable. It isn't about presenting your findings to a supervisor, it isn't peer review, it isn't organised support networking – all which have their merits. No, today was about the power of research and the way that in any given moment ideas will grip us. If the idea is good then people will go out of their way to ensure that it isn't lost by a lack of confidence. As I talked about what I wanted to achieve it gripped my colleague sitting opposite me and then we worked on how to nurture it, to help it grow. The power of ideas is immense and when paired with a genuine desire to see people achieve it's unstoppable. The ability to foster that infectious spirit that all researchers share is a beautiful thing and should be treasured.

Let me please be able to repay this favour one day to someone else who needs it and let the tea be on me.

A guilty secret

Yesterday, I didn't do anything. Well nothing in relation to the PhD. I woke up feeling shall we say slightly wounded from my escapades the night before. I did put 'library search' on my to-do-list but it never came to anything. Today, however I am intending to do quite a bit. There is the new literature review to get cracking on and I am really excited about some of the reading I will have to grapple with over the next few months. I intend to make a nice long list and then divide it all up into themes, which will also help with the actual writing of the review. 

It does occur to me though how quickly researcher guilt descends. One day I had off. One day where I didn't pick up a book, or put pen to paper or even give some thought to my data collection. I have heard people say that they never stop thinking about their research - I think that is in part academic pretension and partly answering back to the little voice of the niggling guilt that lives within us all. There are times when I do find my mind wandering and thinking about my research when I am doing something else, this is only to be expected when you spend so much of your time focussed on something. However, I have times when I don't think about it all - during the Coronation street omnibus or whilst singing karaoke - which is entirely appropriate. It interests me though that having spent a day not doing anything on the research it does feel a bit like one is turning up to double maths having not done the homework. 

One of the major differences between a long piece of research like a PhD is the lack of the sense of completion. Nothing gets 'handed in' or marked and can then be laid to rest, it is relentlessly continuous. This is of course, also one of the absolute joys of research that you get to stay with a project, spend time getting to know it, work on it, change it, but it does mean that when you have a day off it makes it harder to justify to yourself. Even now I am thinking that today I will somehow have to redeem myself after yesterday and will put in an extra hour or so to relieve the guilt. Perhaps though I was lying about not thinking about it all yesterday, I did stand my cup of coffee on 'Foucault and the Government of Disability' - surely that counts for something? No?

What's 10,000 words between friends?

Can one call their research their friend? I think so, in fact I think sometimes you must. My friend I had written 10,000 spectacular words about in the shape of a literature review. It wasn't finished, but then when is writing ever finished, but it did have content and flow and structure and 10,000 little words strung together over weeks of drafting and redrafting. In my big brave decision to alter the direction, albeit slightly, of the PhD I now find myself in the unenviable position of having to write another literature review.


Part of me is secretly pleased about this. I am, when it comes down to it, a total swot. I like studying, reading, writing and thinking. I enjoy deadlines. I want to have to put pen to paper and produce something promising. However, there is another part of me that has 'the fear'. The fear that I'll get stuck at the reading, or at the first sentence, or I'll never find a closing paragraph. To those of you who write regularly you will know that 10,000 words isn't really all that many; not once you have headings and the ideas take over and you churn out twenty pages just to define one of the words in the subtitle. 


I suppose my real fear is not that I have to write 10,000 words. It is not that I will probably lose a plethora of evenings and most weekends in order to do so - and just as the sun is coming out. It is because I want it to be good. One of the best pieces of advice I saw given to a writer was 'it doesn't have to be good, it just has to be written.' I wholeheartedly take this principle on - but just not in this case. I don't just want it to be written. I want it to be bloody good this time. I want the argument to be clear from the start. I want to find things in the literature that not only excite me but that I can use as leverage to excite others about my research. I want to know that I have the building blocks set and ready to bear my weight. So really, I had best get on with it then. There's just a couple of articles to read first, and then there was that chapter in that book, and I'm sure I saw an abstract about something somewhere...

The annual review

So, it was with trepidation I faced the prospect of the annual review this afternoon. Most sensible students (which is not a category I find myself in) would have quite happily stuck to their original intention for their PhD to get through the annual review; chart progress, show development, list clear followed through intentions. Oh no, not I. I decide one week before the main event to change the direction of the research - giving my supervisors precisely 20minutes to get to grips with the new direction before we are faced with selling this to our reviewer. Give them maximum credit, they rose to the challenge and didn't throw me out along with the new proposal. Instead we had an excellent discussion about why the change in direction and if I am honest I think it actually helped with the review; I had to really defend my decisions - quite rightly. 


I seem to have done a fairly good job as there was lots of smiling and they have allowed me to both progress and in the new direction. YIPPEE! I just need to write up all of the paperwork this evening and get it off to them.


I have had some tough supervisions in the past but today's was a definite success, At one point I could hear myself talking about my project and I thought, you have really thought about this, you really care about this and you sound like you do. Good feeling. I did have to stifle a giggle at the end when the reviewer noted that she found my enthusiasm for the work infectious - I am always accused of being enthusiastic - sometimes when I don't even realise I am being. I can be quite a cynical bugger internally but I have the outward persona of a possessed bunny rabbit on speed. Secretly I am enthusiastic about this project though, because it is great. Just shhhhhhhhhh.

Who'd have thunk it

So, this evening's challenge was only to look up the telephone numbers of student support departments in the 17 Universities in the Midlands. I foolishly thought this would be easy. HA. Wrong. I have laboriously trolled through comparison websites, university sites, even wikipedia to try and identify departments and phone numbers and emails. To no avail. I have managed to get the switchboard numbers to every University in the West Midlands and tomorrow I will ring them and ask for a name and email for the Director of their student service departments. Why is this harder than the research itself! 


Tomorrow I go East!

The google-tap

Today I have developed a new found respect for the 'old school' among us. This is because I have spent the evening cutting and pasting until my fingernails were sweating. In revising a research proposal one realises that there are elements that can be borrowed from previous work and there are the notes that are stored on a hard drive somewhere and the 3rd version of a literature review that got sidetracked. All of these bits and pieces can be amalgamated and tweaked, in places entirely rewritten, but they can be laid out on a page and digested. How did one do this with pens and paper and without the use of a computer, especially with notes or half finished things where the references are often incomplete? 


Now we are but a google tap away from polished footnotes and complete page references for any quotation I find myself thinking that this evening's work would have taken me days in the past. The actual physical act of writing would possibly not have varied that much but I would certainly have needed at least one trip to a library and a heck of a lot more patience. Tonight I have rewritten paragraphs - had a cup of tea - and then revised them. Once I am happy with them I get that feeling of completion, even if it is just with a sentence or paragraph. If I knew that I had to handwrite it again in some format once the whole project was complete I think the tea would have rapidly become gin.


My other observation was on-line communities. Whilst I have been working I have also been able to tweet, email and check the book of face. This is great. In the past, when working, I would dread the phone ringing because of the interruption but a little part of me would long for it so I had contact with someone, even if it was to tell them to sod off. Social networking means I can work and then email my supervisor - who is also up working - to ask them a question - and they get back to me. I can tweet a friend for some banal quick interaction which leaves me satiated and also able to focus. The windows don't look dirty because I am not looking for distractions, I have them on another tab if I need them.


This all leads me to conclude tonight that academics, scholars and researchers of the past - pre-computers, pre-internet and google and social networking must have laboured over their work. They must have been beaten down by the time it would take to get an answer to a simple question and they must have lived in MASSIVE houses with room upon room stuffed full of papers and notes and scribbles and letters and sweat and tears. So tonight I raise my glass to all researchers of the past. Well done you.

What a day!

Well it has been a bit of a roller-coaster today and I would be lying to say that some tears had not been shed along the way. I also have a stinking cold which fuzzes up the brain somewhat. However, I am pleased to say that I have finally finished my new and improved shiny research proposal and I am so pleased with it. It flows, there is an argument, there is a clear mode of research and actual identifiable outcomes. When I look at the jumble of my first proposal I am further convinced that I have made the right decision to make this change, despite the extra work. I am excited about the recommendations that could eventually sprout from this piece of work. It feels like there really is an opportunity to make a difference and I am delighted that I get to work on it. Tomorrow I need to tidy up a couple of paragraphs, update the bibliography and send it off to my supervisors and see what they make of it. FINGERS CROSSED. Right now I am going to have one last cup of tea and stick the electric blanket on. As hard a day as I have had in a long while, but ultimately rewarding.

A brave decision

Starting this blog is not the only brave thing I have done today. I have also decided to change the focus of my research slightly. It is possibly not the wisest of moves as I have ethical approval and have registered the PhD with a particular focus. However I don't believe the change is fundamentally different from my original intention, if anything it is sharpening the focus. I also believe that this change is the most honest thing to do as I really feel the new direction is vitally important. 


My original proposal was to look at disabled people's access to the professional placement element of programmes such as Social Work, Nursing, Speech and Language Therapy and Probation. I still want to keep this focus on the placement environment because I believe it is fundamentally overlooked in legislation, guidance and policy. Students on placement find themselves as student and employee in an environment that doesn't quite accept them as either. However, I want to concentrate on issues of mental health within this environment and not on disability more generally. I believe mental health is an area that is misunderstood within society generally and when looking at areas where there are fitness to practice stipulations and health checks it becomes even more difficult.


The disclosure rates for students with mental health issues are very low and this does suggest to me that there is a lot of work to be done in this area. I would like this research to address why the support is lacking and the barriers remain.

And so it begins

I have been enrolled as a PhD student at DMU since January last year I am also an employee of DMU and work within the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences as a disability coordinator.

I have decided to start this blog to chart my progress as I move through the research. I hope that it will be a sounding board for me when I need to vent my frustrations with the research. I hope over time if I build up followers that it will also offer support to other people who find themselves in the same place that I am, which as any researcher knows, is often lonely. Research means late nights and early mornings. It means hours spent at a computer instead of socialising with friends or wandering in the sunshine. Research means compromise but it also reaps wonderful rewards.

In order to complete any successful research you must believe in what you are doing as it is the one thing that will keep you going when the teapot is empty and your eyes are sore. I do believe in my research. I believe very strongly that above all my research will be useful and not collect dust on a shelf somewhere. Let's hope so!

Since I have been enrolled on this PhD I have watched my partnership disintegrate and my life be turned upside down by divorce and a loss of hope. For a while the research bore the brunt of my emotional meltdown but now it is the thing that keeps me strong. Any project is conducted by a human being and that  human being will have their ups and downs in the personal life and it will no doubt affect their writing, their perspective and the time they have to spend with their work. Research should never be used as therapy but it does give one a purpose and a focus when the world conspires against you.

This blog will not be an account of all the reading and writing that I am currently doing - my supervisors get this particular pleasure. Instead it will be a very honest account of the emotional journey that a PhD student goes through to get to their viva and beyond.