Garden stories and metaphors to support masters and doctoral students start and finish their research projects

The purpose of the Blog is not to replace the role of your supervisors in the supervision of your masters and doctoral (M&D) research projects. Supervisors are subject matter experts; as such, they play a critical role in guiding you as you build your subject matter expertise. Research itself is the creation of a student. Yes indeed, as an author of your dissertation or thesis you are a creator!  Your powers of creating a masters or doctoral thesis will be limited by your subject matter expertise. This explains something I will be discussing with you at length: the importance of mastering literature in the area of your research, before you put together a research proposal.

The obstacles that students face, at least from my experience, is not in the performance of research activities, but in the area of self-mastery (knowing oneself – ontological stance), and subject-matter mastery (mastering theory and literature in the area of research). Self-mastery alone is a huge topic that ranges from knowing how to think critically, to adaptive capabilities when faced with unprecedented life challenges. Most importantly self-mastery is about living up to the values that underpin your worldview on a daily basis. Knowing who you are in the infiniteness and finiteness of life (ontology) is a key part of self-mastery.  You create with your inner and outer voice, you create with your words, with your thoughts that reflect, that critique, that integrate, that build  on others’ voices, words, and thoughts. This is one of three areas that this blog will be focusing on: building and strengthening your metacognitive capabilities to sharpen your capabilities to create scholarly research. 

To use the metaphor of a gardener: as an M and D student you are a creator (a research scholar) with a variety of seeds (research idea(s) seeking to sow these seeds in a fertile ground (literature, theory) in order to realise a yield to solve social, political economic, or business problems (contribution to knowledge). You need to understand the laws of creation and the importance of time in the process of creation. Scholarship requires you to put in sufficient time, hundreds of hours before you can enjoy the fruits of your garden.

The second area where this blog will be focusing on is the intellectual position of your research. Specifically, you will be looking at ways of acquiring knowledge in order to form a reasonably accurate picture of the world/ phenomenon that you are researching. This is the epistemological position of your study. The framework within which you interpret and understand the topic you are researching. Staying with the garden metaphor, an epistemological question would be how do you know that lemons in your garden are medicinal? How do you know that ‘úmhlonyane’ herb (Artemisia Afra) is medicinal? Simply put, how will you create knowledge that confirms that umhlonyane is a medicinal herb? What epistemological stance will you take to create such knowledge?

The third focus area of this blog is to hear from you SBL masters and doctoral students about where you are getting stuck with your research. I have to qualify this statement by saying that I will not be responding to your individual queries; but I will use the information you provide to customise my blog topics to address research productivity related issues. I already know a number of reasons why students do not complete their research projects. These reasons include, lack of supervision, administrative processes, lack of motivation, work-life-research balance, etc. This blog is not a place for addressing these issues; but rather a space to give you more control and power over the creation process of your research garden.

From my perspective as the Executive Dean, I am interested in ensuring that as a Business School we improve our students’ success. This blog focuses on conversations about research,  because this is one of the areas that affect our students success rate.

So, I would like to start-off this blog by requesting you to share your research garden stories and share with me what research gardening problems you are experiencing. While doing so, I encourage you to join me on Tuesdays at 18h00 for a Facebook live streaming session on Ontology, Epistemology and Academic Writing. Here is our Facebook link: #sblteachingtuesdays

Here’s to fruitful research gardening times!

Prof P Msweli
Executive Dean and CEO (A)
School of Business Leadership
17 August 2020