Welcome
to the MSU Doctoral Program
in Teacher Education
I
am your digital advisor. Call me DA (pronounced
"duh.") I am designed to help you develop a
course through MSU's PhD program in Teacher Education. The
reason I exist is because human advisors are busy and unreliable, so
use me to make sure you are covered. Use me to make list of things
you need to do, experiences you need to get, and people you need to learn
from.
My pages are organized according to four major hurdles
you have to overcome while you are here: Developing yourself personally
and professionally, surviving, learning to conduct research and learning
academic writing. Below I offer a brief introductory paragraph to each
of these tasks. But if you are in a hurry, let me give you a couple of
shortcuts to get you started.
1. Highest Priority: Go to the page entitled Yearly
Steps Toward a New Identity.
I admit the title of the page is pretty hokey, but the page itself gives
some specific tasks for you to do during each year you are here, to ensure
that when you leave you've got what you need. Don't expect your advisor
to take care of this stuff for you. Make your own goals and lists and
take care of yourself.
2. Highest Priority: There is a university policy requiring
that each doctoral student undergo an annual review. Take advantage of
this. It gives you an opportunity to think about where you are, where
you are going, what is missing, how you are doing. You get to write this
out for yourself and have a conversation with your advisor about it.
Don't let your advisor off the hook on this. Use these annual meetings
to review your progress and re-think your plans.
Here
is a bit more each of the four hurdles.
1.
Develop yourself personally and professionally
The
links on the right side of this page offer several tools
to help you redefine yourself. For sure you should look
at the page entitled Yearly
Steps to a New Identity, which gives you ideas about things
you should do during your first year, second year and
so forth. The other pages listed on the right offer other
helpful tools and guidelines.
One
big part of your task is to take ownership of a field of study. You
have to internalize ideas and evidence to such an extent that you
can draw on it flexibly to solve new problems and to think through
new dilemmas. I have a page
that talks more about that. At some point, you will need to prove that
you have done this by taking a
comprehensive exams.
(Incidentally,
if you have just arrived here from another country, you
might find it helpful to visit my Orientation
to the US Education System page. This will give you
an overview of our system, focusing on how it differs
from other countries.)
2.
Survive
Many
graduate students find doctoral work stressful. You are expected to
read tremendous volumes of material, and to write numerous papers in
your courses. At the same time, you may have employment obligations
and family obligations. The rules, norms and customs of graduate study
are very different from those you have been accustomed to in other
areas of your life. My page on survival can't
help with the emotional adjustments you may need to make, but it can
help you find the tools you need to survive.
3. Learn how to engage in academic writing
You will discover that a great deal of your time will be spent writing,
and another big chunk of time will be spent reading criticisms of your
writing. You are entering a specialized community, with it's own
approach to communicating. It relies more heavily on reasoning,
argumentation, and evidence, far less on anecdotes and chatty tone. It
is a difficult style to learn. I have some pages on academic
writing to help you with that task.
4. Make your own original contributions to the field
Generating new knowledge in your field may be the most
difficult thing to learn. Everyone acquires a great deal
of knowledge in life, but most of this knowledge has not
been tested and has not been scrutinized by anyone else
for its validity. In a field of scholarship, people regularly
scrutinize new ideas and evidence for their plausibility,
credibility, validity, and relevance. People don't look
at evidence as guaranteeing anything, but rather they
view evidence as merely providing clues that need to be
interpreted for what they really tell us. The Department
will not grant you a Ph.D. until you have demonstrated
your ability to generate new knowledge in your field.
The dissertation is the primary evidence of your ability
to do this. But in addition to the dissertation, the Department
requires you to take a research practicum, called "TE
995," which is intended to give you experience in
this process before you embark on your dissertation. My
pages on research
aim to guide you through this process.
