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edvisor PhD writing

Research update #40: Proposal writing day 4: Edvisors and teachers

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I really didn’t expect to but I’ve caught up to my schedule. It’s largely because I decided that I needed to write words rather than write well although there is also the fact that I decided to trust my recollection of the broad ideas in the literature. Rather than painstakingly find each citation and quote on the fly as I write, I’m going to trust that they are out there and that on my next pass I can take the time to put them in. I think this will also help because I’m building a basic scaffold that seems to be flowing nicely and which should make it easier for me to find and compartmentalise the citations and quotes. I’m also fairly confident that I’ll also rediscover richer ideas that I can use to flesh out what I’ve already said. I’ll need to spend a little more time thinking about what the literature doesn’t say, and how to explain that and why it matters, but it’s been nice being able to put the pedal to the metal and just let the words come out as they want to.

In a nutshell, I covered the fact that the way that edvisor teams are structured and placed in institutions – centrally/college-based and also functionally – can be a barrier to effective work and particularly because of the tensions that exist between institutional and academics’ priorities. (Trying to remember that most good edvisors also have their own values conversation going on about ensuring the best possible learning and teaching amongst this). I moved on to the relationships between academics and edvisors and noted the difference between those from academic vs professional backgrounds. Touched on disciplinary silos, pressures faced by academics to be the experts in all things and the fact that many of them don’t really know what we do – or can do. This can be evident particularly in the research that they write and I think this will be a rich primary source to explore when I move into the research phase.

So I guess there is going to be a little more work than I expected when I’ve written draft one but the words are coming and draft two should not be far behind at all.