Taming your tiger

“Staying OK” (Harris A, Harris, T., 1985) is an early self-help book, using Transactional Analysis methods. early childhood experiences shape our lives: for the better or worse. I was struck by their description of how we can continue to fear a person, or situation, that no longer has the power to threaten us:

“It is as if [we] spend out lives locked in a cage with an enormous tiger…and all we know how to do is walk backwards. Anyone else can see the tiger is fifty years old, toothless and slowing down. Also, the lock on the cage is rusty. Escape is possible. We do not see what may be obvious to others because our seeing apparatus is not working for us.”

Whether it’s an ex-friend, an ex-boss, an ex-colleague, how many times have I failed to realise that my tiger is now toothless, and that I’m fighting an enemy who no longer has power over me. In the PhD jungle, toothless tigers are lying in wait. I fear the pile of unread books; sitting down to write, when writing is so hard; the journal reviewers who turned down my first draft….This is where the world of blogs, writing workshops and coffees with friends come in: talking about your fears with other people, makes them much less scary.

Let me know what toothless tigers you have successfully recognised as such, and escaped from…

“Lords of the Swamp” by Gabor Dvornik http://www.pixoto.com/cpt?category=animals&subCategory=lions-tigers-and-big-cats

Research-led Teaching

Now 5 months into my PhD, I have been taught by research-active academics from a number of universities. I have also started teaching final-year undergraduate students, though the content and style of my teaching is fairly traditional at this stage.

 

I would love to develop research-led teaching, whereby I’m involving undergraduates in research work. Some of these students may also want to take up a research career in future. So, how would you go about setting up a research-led teaching programme?

• Relate the specific area of your research to the broader module outline and the broader curriculum: in my case, this could be to ask MBA or undergraduate students to think about “How does entrepreneurship work for family businesses? Think about family businesses that you know and think about what makes them successful? Which of their techniques for marketing, product development, training, succession planning etc. would be transferable to another type of business?”

• Stick to second or third year undergraduates who are keen to improve their academic and team-working skills. I’ve found a wide range of abilities and confidence in reading and writing, even amongst my final year students.

• Hold writing workshops to ensure their language, analytical and research skills are up to the job. Writing workshops would also improve my own writing abilities!

• Check that your academic colleagues are supportive. I suspect that some of the faculty would be more enthusiastic than others in letting undergraduates loose on a research programme.

Taking a longer-term approach yields better results: at UCL, a 3-year project encouraged students to take up a piece of research which had been conducted by students from the year above. This “mechanism of inheritance” meant that each cohort was learning from the previous year’s work. This process was repeated for 3 years until publishable materials were produced. The students found it valuable to join an evolving community of peer-researchers. Read more about the project here: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/teaching-learning/teaching-learning-methods/research-led-learning/documents/Turning_an_undergraduate_class_into_a_professional_research_community.pdf

Have you ever tried research-led teaching, or been a student in a research-led teaching progamme?

Did you find the experience positive? Your comments, as ever, would be much appreciated

Finding your feet

Welcome to the first post on the Family Business PhD Blog. I am a PhD student at the University of Salford in the UK, researching the fascinating and volatile area of family businesses.

 

It’s my first month, so I’m still thrashing around in the literature and occasionally coming up for air. Finding my research question will take a while, as I am easily distracted. So far, I’ve found the following tools invaluable:

• EndNote: satisfies my hunter-gatherer instincts for amassing huge amounts of (unread) articles
• Inspiration: a mind-mapping tool which is great for capturing links between theories
• Excel: I have a dorky spreadsheet which has one row per journal article and one column for the following: Journal Title; Journal Author; Themes; Methodology; Link to Family Business; Link to other research questions; Strengths; Weaknesses

I’m also finding the chocolate vending machine one floor down from my desk quite a handy little tool.

What tools did you find useful in your first month? What fell by the wayside as you got into your PhD…