Doctoral Research Project Research Articles

Anticipatory evaluation

Starting with the Australian Evaluation Society 2024 Conference theme of ‘wayfinding’, the article reflects on how evaluators navigate time as well as space, with particular reference to how they incorporate qualitative approaches to ‘futures thinking’ into their evaluative practice. The article takes a reflexive case study approach, drawing on a simple model of evaluative practice to review the role of futures thinking in evaluation of doctoral research projects, impact investments, social assistance, and development studies as an academic field. The article focuses particularly on the role of ‘backcasting’, as well as deliberative processes and the causal mapping of narrative claims linking future possibilities to current thinking and activities.

Digital and analogical discretion: an exploratory study of Italian street-level bureaucrats

PurposeThe article examines how street-level bureaucrats (SLBs) manage the digital bureaucratic relationship in dealing with customer needs and the technological innovations introduced into organisations (digital tools). The topic of technological transformations from a street-level perspective has garnered limited interest so far, especially in Italy. The research question underlying the article is as follows: how does the discretion of SLBs change with the introduction of digital tools within the public administration? We expect that the characteristics of clients on the one hand, and the degree of institutionalisation of the digital tool in question on the other, will change the way in which SLBs exercise their discretion.Design/methodology/approachThe data were collected from two separate research projects in which the authors were involved: (1) the first was a doctoral research project concerning labour inspectors tasked with investigating labour irregularities reported by workers; (2) the second was a research project regarding the relationship between the elderly and public service caseworkers. Information gathered through a series of semi-structured interviews was analysed, with a focus on the digitalisation process. The interviewees included 15 labour inspectors, and 12 long-term care caseworkers. With regard to the interviews conducted with labour inspectors, we examined the online request for action submitted by workers reporting irregularities in their employment relationships. As regards the interviews with caseworkers involved in services for the elderly, the discussion revolved around the option introduced during the pandemic period in 2020, to request access to the services in question through submission of an online form rather than requesting such services in person.FindingsWhat emerges is that while the introduction of digitalised policies allows SLBs to obtain more information with which to assess the situation of individuals, the discretionary power exercised by front-line workers only results in the partial use of the digital tool, whilst favouring the traditional relationship between bureaucrats and their clients.Originality/valueWe introduce the concepts of “digital discretion” and “analogic discretion” in an attempt to understand how SLBs use their decision-making powers, which may prove to be useful analytical tools for studying the ways in which the discretion of SLBs is realised through new digital practices.

The Upper Secondary School Act as legal violence in the Swedish welfare state: ‘I came to Sweden just so I could live’

In this article we investigate the harmful effects of the 2018 Upper Secondary School Act (the ‘Study Law’) upon young people in Sweden who have sought to regularise their stay with the help of this law. We analyse these harmful impacts as ‘legal violence’: structural and symbolic violence embedded in or intensified by law (Menjívar and Abrego, 2012), in the context of Swedish welfare regulation. The Study Law was ostensibly enacted to provide a new opportunity for some 7,000 young people, the majority of whom had fled Afghanistan. These young people had sought asylum in Sweden in 2015, but had not had their needs for protection recognised, instead being subjected to exclusionary laws, policies and growing racism. The Study Law substituted the possibility of protection with strict requirements of study, work and conduct, while the social and material support needed to fulfil these requirements largely was withheld. In our analysis, we draw upon interviews with young people collected as part of a doctoral research project, legal materials, and our own, earlier joint experiences as legal practitioners working with those affected by this law. The legal violence of the Study Law, we argue, has produced individual and social harms, particularly impacting the lives of young people seeking asylum. The law has created a complex and hard-to-navigate, legally-violent regime that, directly and indirectly, has exacerbated hardships and facilitated suffering and even death.

The figure of Eros in a rare and unpublished French book hosted by the National Library of Sweden (1785-1814)

A French book relating to flea literature has recently been discovered at the National Library of Sweden in Stockholm. This article claims to be the first presentation of the work Histoire d’une puce by Louis Marie Céleste d’Aumont, Duke of Piennes (1762-1831), with the first literary analysis of its erotic content. The second half of the story is remarkable for the presence of Swedish words in the French text. The style of the work is somewhat reminiscent of La Fontaine and Voltaire. The story takes the reader to a late 18th century setting, such as an aristocratic boudoir and women’s perfume, dances in the courtyard, an evening at the opera. The suggestion of women’s poses is reminiscent of Boucher’s paintings. This little book was probably written and published in Sweden to amuse a small circle of friends. Louis Marie Céleste d’Aumont was close to Axel and Sophie von Fersen, and the book was kept by the Piper family for some time at Löfstad slott. It is also of interest to Swedish history. This work is now a part of Gwénaëlle Beynet Fröjd’s doctoral research project and will result in an edition in both French and Swedish.

Research on the Constructed-Wetland/Regulation-Tank System at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana's Bogotá Campus

The stormwater harvesting (SWH) project at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (Bogotá) began in 2007, initiated by the Water and Environmental Engineering research group (Ciencia e Ingeniería del Agua y el Ambiente), as part of PUJB's Environmental Management Plan and in collaboration with the University's Office of Physical Resources. This process included assessments of water supply and demand, rainwater quality, and financial and construction considerations. The system—a constructed wetland/regulation tank (CWRT)—collects rainwater runoff from the university's parking building (3,776 m²), the soccer field, and surrounding areas (14,816 m²). Beyond its hydrological performance, especially during periods of water scarcity, the system also functions as a full-scale laboratory to study biodiversity and ecological impacts in hydrological and hydraulic processes. The monitoring program, focused on changes in rainwater quantity and quality, has inspired several master's and doctoral research projects. These studies explore critical topics in urban hydrology, including stormwater harvesting, urban sediment management, real-time decision-making systems, and environmental and human health. This paper outlines the development of the stormwater harvesting system, shares the main findings from research projects, and discusses ongoing projects.

Notational actants: new musical approaches through the material score

This exposition brings together a collection of images, thoughts, and descriptions of the initial stages of a doctoral research project that explores the concept of 'notational actants': materially-focused, 3-dimensional objects intended for touch-based interpretation in musical performance. The majority of the content in this exposition was created during a one-month residency at Mustarinda (Hyrynsalmi, Finland).

Therapeutic mediation through nature experiences: towards trajective criteria?

This article is part of a doctoral research project in philosophy exploring the links between nature and care. Weoutline the hegemonic epistemologies that evaluate the contribution of therapeutic mediation through experience of nature, and review the main criticisms levelled at them. We then suggest an approach, mesology, that we believe is relevant to renewing their evaluation criteria.

Sartorial Sessions

This video article draws on visual and textual materials developed as part of a doctoral research project that examined embodied and sensory encounters with fashion and clothing. The core focus was on understanding the significance of embodiment in fashion and exploring opportunities for redirection through critical approaches to researching embodied experiences and exploring and representing those experiences in the broader context of fashionable representation. To achieve this, the research developed and applied a digital video-based methodology, which allowed for the identification, elaboration, and thematization of sartorial behaviors and actions. This video article presents eight digital video works as a sequential series, developed using the aforementioned methodology. These videos synthesize the primary findings of the research into a visual form and invite viewers to engage in a somatically felt reflection on them. At the same time, the video article details the development and process of the sartorial sessions as specific contexts where body-garment relations can be examined. The audio narration accompanying the visual content is derived from the textual material of the research. It combines contextual information, visual descriptions, and analysis of the images on screen, using selected passages from the written thesis. The aim of the article is to cultivate reflexive forms of sensory knowledge in fashion, encouraging viewers to become more attuned to the sensory dimension of fashion.

Sustainable School Financial Education: a possibility in the Early Years of Elementary School

School Financial Education is a subject that has yet to be widely disseminated in Brazil, although indicated in official documents. That said, there is a lack of material aimed at children. This research is justified by proposing a Teaching Guide that seeks to respond to the problem of how to work on Sustainable School Financial Education in the Early Years of Primary School. This paper aims to present the results of a doctoral research project that looked at the value of things, the fundamental and the superfluous, ethics, economics, and sustainability. The methodological approach applied was Didactic Engineering. The main result was confirmation of the hypothesis that students aged between 7 and 9 can work on the themes and put their learning into practice.

Hybrid learning environments: It’s all about ecology

Technology-enhanced learning has been part of higher education health contexts for nearly three decades, but since the recent Covid-19 pandemic specific challenges emerged, requiring learning design reconfigurations to facilitate continuity of student learning. The pandemic calls for a deeper understanding of how technology can promote connections, active participation and knowledge building in higher education health contexts. Identifying what is currently occurring and considering potential innovations requires a move towards a nuanced understanding of the ecology of complex elements contributing to productive networked learning in these contexts. This multiple-case study doctoral research project includes four undergraduate health courses at a New Zealand university, in the disciplines of nursing, social work, and bioscience. Drawing on the Activity Centred Analysis and Design (ACAD) framework, the research explores the influence of course design elements, such as social arrangements, learning space formats, learning tasks, on learning activity, taking a systematic approach to the analysis. In this paper, we report on initial observations and interviews with students involved in diverse hybrid learning environments, in order to identify how innovative learning designs are supporting students' agency and active engagement.

Building a Pedagogy of Welcome in practice: ways to support refugee children in early childhood education and care through examination of professional positionality

ABSTRACT Child displacement levels are rising due to conflict and violence; early educators often provide the first sustained contact young refugee children have with host-country culture. Sensitive pedagogical practices can provide refugee children with a sense of safety as they navigate their new world. This article shares one aspect of a Pedagogy of Welcome, which was developed through a small-scale doctoral research project and investigated the lived experience of four Syrian refugee children in ECEC. Successful models and approaches that enabled ethical power sensitive research engagement have been translated into praxis encouraging educators to deeply examine their professional positionality. This study found ways to navigate differences between Judaism and Islam utilising shared values of welcome. This Pedagogy of Welcome offers a third way for educators to create respectful spaces of welcome for both refugees and other marginalised children.

‘We work in the grey around decision making’; how ‘thematic discretion’ can help understand police decision-making in cases of youth image-based sexual abuse

ABSTRACT In this paper, I argue that a new term, ‘thematic discretion’, can help us understand police decision-making in cases of youth image-based sexual abuse (YIBSA). YIBSA can be defined as harmful image-sharing practices amongst young people, inclusive of the non-consensual sharing of private sexual images, upskirting and cyberflashing, alongside other actions. I will be drawing on findings from a doctoral research project investigating YIBSA, which utilised a mixed methods approach, comprising of quantitative analysis of freedom of information requests from 40 police forces in England and Wales, as well as 26 qualitative interviews with police and non-police practitioners, also based within England and Wales. Research findings established that YIBSA is highly complicated, and as a result, police officers utilised discretion at a considerable rate, alongside crafting their own guidelines to direct their decision-making, which is argued to be steeped in sexist and victim-blaming narratives.

Using Discovery Learning Approach in Teaching EFL Grammar to High School Students: Its Possible Effects and Limits

This article presents part of a doctoral research project aimed at investigating the effects and possible limits of the discovery learning approach in teaching grammar to English as a foreign language (EFL) students in high schools in Slovakia from the teachers’ perceptions. The research project deployed design-based research with a total of 7 EFL teachers in Slovak high schools collecting data in three phases. The data presented in this article focused on intervention and were collected during the second phase of the research project. During the intervention, the teachers were taking field notes which were subsequently analysed. The results of the analysis of the teachers’ field notes showed there are mostly positive aspects of the discovery learning approach, pointing out students’ experience with discovery and their engagement when learning grammar. However, the results also showed some limits of this approach in the high school environment. Mostly training is needed for both teachers and students so they can make the most of the discovery process.

Integrating Qualitative Content and Narrative Analysis: A Five-Step Approach

The integration of different analytical approaches allows harnessing their respective benefits. Nonetheless, the integration of varied methods is challenging, primarily due to the scarcity of comprehensive guidelines for such complex analyses. This paper introduces a five-step approach for combining two distinct research methods: qualitative content analysis and narrative analysis as a useful tool for researchers working under critical realist paradigm, or those who just wish to use both – categorizing and connecting approaches – in their research analysis. Qualitative content analysis plays a crucial role in categorizing insights from data. However, an exclusive reliance on content analysis might result in the loss of important contextual aspects associated with these insights. Consequently, narrative analysis becomes valuable, as it enables linking diverse elements in the data, such as the subject of study, its context, associated events, and identified categories. The process of combining the qualitative content analysis and narrative analysis method introduced in the current study was formulated during a doctoral research project within a critical realist paradigm, which necessitated a thorough consideration of both the subject matter and its context. In response to the absence of guidelines for combining content and narrative analysis, the author developed and tested a unique process during her research project. Employing the suggested approach of connecting content and narrative analysis can assist researchers, particularly those applying the critical realist paradigm in the process of generating contextually situated yet generalisable results. From a practical standpoint, innovative research methods and more comprehensive insights from academic studies enhance our understanding of various patterns in the business and management landscape.

Analyzing color training in design education: A review from 2010 to 2022

AbstractThis study was part of a doctoral research project which looked into the current issues with color education, documented by several authors in recent years. It presents a comprehensive analysis of 103 color courses taught within design programs of higher education institutions from different countries over the last 12 years, 2010–2022. The analysis aimed to define the state‐of‐the‐art of including color training within higher education design programs, identify the main didactic strategies implemented, and recognize the main critical aspects to face when proposing an innovative framework for color training. Among the formal aspects analyzed are the course level, the course duration, the student entry profile, the specific disciplinary area, the course location, the type of institution, and the language of the course. The didactic strategy elements analyzed were the learning outcomes, the contents proposed by the course, the teaching strategies implemented, and the suggested bibliography. Finally, a description of the main findings of the analysis is provided to assess how color is being taught within the design area.

Drawing and installation on the British Peak District: Self, environment and a mobile working kit

This text reports about my practice-based doctoral research project exploring the question ‘How can the relationships between self and the outdoor environment of Bakestonedale Moor manifest in a creative arts practice from drawing and installation?’. I have developed a drawing and installation practice as the bearer and expression of my relationship with the outdoor places of the British Peak District in the vicinity of Pott Shrigley. This led to the development of the ‘mobile working kit’, a collection of modules fashioned from paper, string, wood and fabric, which I use to make drawings and mark the land with sculptural additions. My outdoor art-making events may only last a few hours but I later exhibit its artefacts as indoor art displays complemented by photographs and videos from the outdoor sites. I provide descriptions of two drawing activities outdoors, first, using a three-dimensional fence-like paper sculpture as a drawing surface and, second, drawing on a ground-based paper platform. These examples of art-making are then contextualized in reference to Barad’s concept of intra-activity where material changes in the world are understood to occur in co-constitutional negotiation of all active components. I use this concept and Barad’s understanding of performativity to describe process in art-making and in geological, meteorological and biological changes outdoors. I then relate these positions to current performance drawing in reference to the role of the artist and how the arts practice determines her connection to the outdoor environment.

Indigenous StoryWORK

In this presentation, made at the launch of the Narrative Practice Research Network, Tileah Drahm-Butler introduces her current doctoral research project, titled Emergency Storycare: Transforming the Cairns Hospital emergency department into a place of cultural safety as determined by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community through Indigenous storywork and narrative practice. This research will position Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as expert knowers and teachers, turning our backs on the narrative that we are damaged, broken and always on the brink of extinction. Its research methodology celebrates the friendship of Indigenous storywork and narrative practice to retrieve stories of wisdom, skill and know-how from First Nations communities, to position stories as pedagogy into the emergency department, and to bring forth the preferred practices of the emergency department workforce.

Impacts of neoliberal school reforms policy on students with disabilities in Nepal

This article argues that special and inclusive education policies in Nepal have been influenced by neoliberal policy reforms. The study employs discourse analysis as a theoretical perspective to analyse the effects of market-based schooling practices on students with disabilities in Nepal. The findings of this study are informed to some extent by the outcomes of the doctoral research project (Thapaliya, 2018). Data was collected through policies and documents. A selection of key education policies and documents between 1990 to 2020 were examined and analysed. One core theme and five sub-themes were identified from the data analysis. Disability as a resource management issue was a main theme. (i) Managing resources; (ii) resource allocation criteria; (iii) professional experts deciding resource funds; (iv) competing for limited resources; and (v) competition and school choice were sub-themes. The available evidence signals that the marketisation model of education does not assist students with disabilities adequately. The findings of this study reveal that the current policy and practice signal changes in government structure rather than working to fulfil these commitments in the everyday practice of students with disabilities. The limitations of the study and recommendations of this research are also discussed.

From Interpretation to Interruption: Embracing disruptive analysis

Qualitative analysis is, inherently, a complex, messy and nuanced process. In the context of contested notions of validity, for novice researchers there is therefore an attraction in adopting established, systematic and formulaic approaches. Yet, in prioritising methodical processes, over critical engagement and methodologically coherent quality criteria, these approaches can risk limiting research to a process of cataloguing and reporting face value readings. This research note reflects on an attempt to address and examine this risk in a doctoral research project by progressing from an initial thematic interpretative approach to data analysis to a secondary stage informed by ideas of interruptive analysis. The paper introduces a conceptualisation of interruption as prioritising interrogation of aspects of presentation, over a focus on the interpretation of content or a shift from analysing what is said, to how it is said. Empirical data from research exploring doctoral students’ methodological decision-making is utilised to illustrate the approach and to provoke consideration of the value of embracing disruption. Analysis of two narrative accounts from the study is presented, providing a snapshot of the different understandings and an insight into the learning it generated. The learning in this research note is intended to act as an illustration and provocation for thinking rather than any form of procedural guide.

From classroom to global goals: A bibliometric analysis of Universitas Indonesia’s student projects addressing Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 3

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) represent a vital contribution to both developed and developing nations. It is imperative to assess SDG-related activities to discern the impact of such initiatives across various domains, including health and education. While current bibliometric analyses on SDGs predominantly encompass peer-reviewed articles, it is paramount to acknowledge that SDGs are universally pertinent and necessitate universal engagement. Consequently, there is a compelling need to broaden the bibliometric scope concerning SDGs, surpassing the realm of peer-reviewed papers. This research introduces a pioneering examination of SDG-associated academic undertakings, encompassing undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral research projects on an expansive scale. The evaluative framework stems from a decade’s culminating research endeavours published by Universitas Indonesia (UI). The emphasis of this study was directed towards Good Health and Well-being (SDG 3), given its intricate set of indicators. Furthermore, there remains a paucity of research probing the influence of libraries in the context of SDG 3 indicators within the Indonesian milieu. Through a bibliometric approach, we employed a descriptive analysis to scrutinize the publications’ breadth and evolution. Science mapping facilitated an exploration of inter-topic relationships and spotlighted prominent research themes. The diverse range of research predilections unearthed through our analysis underscores the significance of integrating student research projects into the bibliometric discourse on SDGs. This inquiry aims to heighten recognition of the extensive scholarly contributions by students and ideally will galvanize a younger demographic to immerse themselves in SDG-aligned research pursuits.