I once heard that "academia is in a state of
polite warfare", and as a PhD student, I think I run the risk of becoming
a 'casualty' of that war.My home field of Psychology is fractured - it has many sub
disciplines, sub divisions each with their own idea of what counts as
'important scientific research'. As an
undergraduate I could study these debates from an impartial stand point, but
now as a PhD student I no longer have the 'luxury' of being impartial. I must
decide which methods, theories and ideas to use, and be able to defend my
decisions. In other words - I need to take a stand and pick a side in the 'war'.
One of the
biggest debates in psychology is whether is a science. The notion that psychology is not a science is
a insecurity which rests at the heart of psychology, and has lead to the belief that scientific psychology research is
based on numbers, not words. This idea
has been shouted from the pulpits of psychology with great ferocity, so much
so, it would not be unreasonable to see it as 'dogmatic'. Without naming names
I have met PhD students who blindly accept quantitative as the method of psychology study, and rarely consider the viability
of qualitative methods. Some even mock
those who use qualitative methods - seeing
this research as 'second rate' and 'unscientific'. The idea of whether qualitative research is
or is not scientific is a debate for another time, but suffice to say I believe
qualitative research is not less objective or valid that quantitative
research. Having this belief sets me
apart from mainstream psychology, which is quite risky considering I am trying
to enter the field as a researcher.
We as PhD
students do seem to spend a large portion our time trying to be accepted by the
academic community. Following the 'in crowd' and accepting dominant beliefs
without question would seem to be an easy, direct route to acceptance -
especially for those students who aspire to be well respected and win renown. It could improve job opportunities and limit
the risk of being marganisled and, in my case, branded as 'unscientific'. But, is it the right? What if the minority
actually has a better approach?
This 'debate'
seems to run through a lot of what I do at the moment; from deciding what
writing style to use, which theoretical perspective to take, who should be involved in my research and how
I will eventually analyse my data. For me, I could not just blindly follow one
approach - I need good reason and evidence to decide why I should. I usually go
through a process of choosing which approach is best for what I want to
achieve, by comparing and contrasting different approaches and whether they
'fit' with the aims of the research. I try to do this regardless of what
'mainstream' psychology accepts. This
could have consequences for my career, but if I decided to use a method
which is ill fitting but would be widely
accepted, I would be sacrificing the validity of my research and my own
personal integrity.
I realise
that by now this might sound a lot like a personal manifesto (*), but these are
decisions which all PhD students make and this is why I wanted to write a post
about 'taking a stand' in academia. If
anyone else has struggled with deciding whether to take their own path or
follow the majority I would like to hear from you, and how you resolved the
issue.
*this could
be because I was listening the the Les misreables sound track whilst writing
this - it's very good, go see it if you haven't!
Hi Mike, greetings from Italy!
ReplyDeleteI'm surfing in your same waters (but) as an anthropologist and PhD student. I share your same feelings, fears and need to "stand up" or just choose which path to follow. I'm struggling in my field to create my own identity since two years now. Just engaging a war in my discipline, with my relative little community (Dept.) will not produce any results. Considering that my discipline has no mainstreams at the moment if not those of the 20s and the 50s, after all (with professors that just ask you if you are "classical" or "post-modern" kind of anthropologist?), I resolved going into the interdisciplinary debate & scene, taking advantage of being a linguistic anthropologist (thus a cognitive scientist for some part of the world). It would be a way even in your case?
MCM
Hi MCM, greetings from rainy England! it's nice to hear that there is someone else out there who is not afraid to do there research differently. I agree, engaging war with ones discipline may not always be productive. I guess I'm lucky that I'm not the only academic that feels this way, so I know that even if my work is mainstream it would still be supported by many academics.
DeleteI'm glad inter-disciplinary research has helped to resolve your difficulties. Doing inter-disciplinary work could certainly work for me, and as you say it does have advantages. In fact, some of the research I have/will be doing is going to be inter-disciplinary. Such work does seem to provide novel insights into problems. I guess it is a shame that more researchers don't do it, or at least read about other areas study.
Mike