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Events for supervisors


 

Doctoral School Supervisor Expert Forum 2020-21

 

An invitation for you to register to attend either of these forums will be sent out to you mid / late February.


Forum one

16 March 2021, 14:00 - 16:00

Event title: Supporting PhDers with writing “problems” 

Facilitator: Professor Pat Thompson, Professor of Education, School of Education, The University of Nottingham. Fellow, Academy of Social Sciences; Fellow, Royal Society for Arts.Best paper: Literacy 2011 (with Christine Hall); Highly commended book prize: British Educational Studies Association, 2010; Outstanding Thesis Award: Australian Association for Research in Education, 2000; Canadian High Commission Faculty Enrichment Award, 2000.Inaugural Garth Boomer Award, Australian Curriculum Studies Association 1995; Commonwealth Conference Australian delegate 1993; Fulbright Study Award 1991; Public Service Medal 1990.Life member South Australian Secondary Principals Association. Distinguished contribution to research in educational administration: Australian Council for Educational Leadership 2017

About the workshop: At some point most supervisors find themselves with a PhDer who just can’t, or won’t, write. Unfortunately, there is no simple or quick fix for writing troubles, and thus we supervisors must develop a repertoire of strategies for the variety of issues and needs that we encounter. A key element of such a writing-centred supervision repertoire is diagnostic. I focus on diagnosis in this workshop. I will address some common writing problems and sticking points and present some of the ways in which writing researchers and teachers suggest that these be addressed.  

 

Forum two

22 March 2021, 14:00 - 16:00

Event title: ‘Examining a doctoral thesis:  the theory and practice of the UK viva voce examination from an examiner vantage point’ 

Facilitator: Dr Gill Houston, Vice Chair UK Council for Graduate Education (UKCGE) and independent researcher, who recently completed a  PhD on the assessment of the doctorate at the University of Oxford; and Professor Rosemary Deem, Emerita Professor of Higher Education Management Doctoral School Senior Researcher, previously first Royal Holloway Doctoral School Dean (2014-201), former Chair of UKCGE and a very experienced doctoral examiner. 

About the workshop: The workshop is aimed at academic staff who are new or relatively new to doctoral assessment and the roles of internal or external examining. It aims to provide both practical advice to examiners about how to proceed from reading the thesis, through the writing of a preliminary report to the kinds of questions asked in the viva, coming to a decision about the outcome and writing the final report (including any changes to be made to the thesis) but also explains  the system of UK doctoral assessment and the  rationale for the form of doctoral assessment used, which unlike the systems in most of Europe, uses a single stage of examining, using a closed viva, which is sometimes recorded. The viva panel includes  the candidate, internal examiner, external examiner (usually the subject specialist) and sometimes, the candidate’s supervisor(s) in an observer capacity. There may also be an internal chair for the panel (who does not need specialist subject knowledge). 

 

What you can hope to gain from the workshop:

1. A clear understanding of the UK system of assessment of a doctoral thesis and its underlying rationale

2. How to approach examining a thesis. This includes accepting an invitation to examine, conducting a critical reading of the thesis, writing a pre-report, framing questions in the viva, understanding the length of vivas in different disciplines, coming to a final decision and writing a consensus report on the viva.

3.How to assess and check changes made to the thesis after the viva 

 

 

Contact us

By email: 

doctoralschool@rhul.ac.uk