Step By Step
From this vantage point in the centre of the Joint PhD program, I share the steps that outline how I got here. This section begins with the academic growth made as I stepped through the course work from Doctoral Seminar 1 (July 2018), Cognition and Learning (Fall 2018), Self Directed Study (Winter 2019), Doctoral Seminar 2, (July 2019), and the Research Colloquium course (Fall 2019). It continues with academic growth experienced from academic writing for publication and grant proposal submissions. The sequence of steps in this unicursal yet non-linear path concludes with scholarly tasks including a literature review, a research framework, and research into alternative dissertation formats. These elements will crystallize the competencies I have gained thus far, as evidence of my readiness to complete my research and dissertation.
I recognize the imperfectness and embrace the "unfinalisability" (Midgley & Trimmer, 2013) of this comprehensive portfolio document. While espousing to demonstrate knowledge, understanding, competencies, and synthesis, this portfolio also "embraces, reveals, and even celebrates knowledge as inevitably situated, partial, constructed, multiple, and embodied" (Ellingson, 2009). This portfolio reveals my positionality within ontologies and epistemologies that framework my research as shared in greater depth in The Centre of the Labyrinth section of this portfolio.
References
Ellingson, L. L. (2009). Engaging crystallization in qualitative research: An introduction. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications Inc.
Midgley, W., & Trimmer, K. (2013). “Walking the labyrinth”: A metaphorical understanding of approaches to metaphors for, in and of educational research. In W. Midgley, K. Trimmer, & A. Davies (Eds.), Metaphors for, in and of educational research (pp. 1–9). Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Retrieved from https://www.cambridgescholars.com/download/sample/59592