Managing Contested Issues of Representation in a PhD Dissertation

Abstract

This paper looks at contested issues around representing learning in a PhD dissertation, and the controversial structure that resulted, in one particular case. During her PhD Mary constructed a partial explanation for unsatisfactory learning in science, using a cross-disciplinary body of literature (including that relating to critical literacy teaching, second language learning, social and cognitive psychology, and sociolinguistics). Taken as a whole, the literature seemed to suggest that deep learning and change depend to some extent on the nature of interpersonal relationships in the setting, and (tacit) cultural as well as rational factors. The dissertation explored the nature of learning and change in two rather different contexts, science education and a PhD and proposed that such processes involved a complex of interrelated cognitive, social and biological aspects. This proposition had significant implications not only for teaching and learning science (Hanrahan, 1998a) and similarly for research methodology (Hanrahan, 1998b), it also challenged some of the epistemological assumptions and generic conventions underlying expectations about dissertations.