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Showing posts from October, 2014

Stages of Competency: Doing a PhD and The Notion of Doing a PhD

A month in and where am I at? Mainly, more aware of all the things I don’t know. I’ve been thinking about the Four Stages of Competency model of learning and have sailed through the first stage of (blissfully unaware) unconscious incompetence : “I’m doing a PhD!  Hurrah!  What fun it will be!” As the days passed I could see myself floating into the (mindfully concerning) conscious incompetence stage: I was going to list some things here that I don’t yet know but listing things you don’t know - or at least you know you don’t know - much about is not only an oxymoron but also rather demoralising and the ontology of social research is enough to be dealing with just now let alone any other philosophical quandary relating to logical (im)possibilities. Returning to the stages of competency… the next two stages are conscious competence and unconscious competence, which in the life cycle of my PhD, I’m hoping will arrive before my viva. In relation to the inner workings of a PhD, i.e. the