phd dissertation critical thinking

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 Critical thinking - what it is and why it matters

What does it mean to be a critical student? This part of the guide will introduce you to the key aspects of critical thinking:

• the main components of an argument
• what makes an argument succeed or fail
• identifying supporting evidence
• recognising the most reliable research

What is Critical Thinking?

View the following introduction to critical thinking, which comes from the University of Leicester.

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• Critical thinking exercise - Teesside University Publication date: 2008
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Critical Thinking in Context: Practice at an American Liberal Arts University in Egypt

--> Bali, Maha (2013) Critical Thinking in Context: Practice at an American Liberal Arts University in Egypt. PhD thesis, University of Sheffield.

The American University in Cairo (AUC) considers critical thinking (CT) essential for academic success, global employability, and effective citizenship. Nevertheless, CT remains a highly contested notion, with insufficient evidence that universities succeed in developing it. This study explores how CT develops in practice for diverse AUC students. After exploring different understandings of CT, I synthesize a working definition, then draw on interview evidence from students’ perceptions of AUC experiences that contributed to their CT, illuminated further by faculty and administrator interviews, and relevant AUC documentation and research. Students’ incoming CT levels differed according to high school experience, parental attitudes, and interaction with diverse others. Key factors fostering CT were found to be: liberal arts education, rhetoric and composition courses, opportunities for learning situated in authentic contexts, and intercultural learning. The thesis explores how student backgrounds and the institutional structure result in inequalities in students’ access to, and capacity to participate in, those beneficial AUC experiences, and shows the limited notion of criticality developed through most of these experiences - findings that are applicable to other university contexts. I conclude that AUC needs a critical contextual approach to curriculum development and implementation: an approach that encourages stakeholders to continually question the values behind learning experiences, recognize power struggles within the learning environment, address ways of supporting students with diverse capabilities and privileges in order to develop their capacity for CT, and question what it means to be critical in Egypt’s changing, uncertain context. Egypt's struggle for democracy after years of oppression and corruption needs a conception of critical citizenship that involves both a social dimension focusing on empathy, and a critical action dimension promoting a constructive social justice orientation. While the study addresses AUC stakeholders, it has relevance for all educational institutions aiming to develop CT in bi/multicultural contexts. Such institutions include Western-style universities located in Arab/Muslim countries, Western universities with large numbers of international students, and universities with local but diverse students and staff.

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Filename: Critical Thinking in Context Maha Bali PhD thesis October 25 2013.pdf

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Critical Thinking at the Doctoral Level

What does it mean to exercise critical thinking? Does it mean to be negative and adversarial? Does it mean to provide constructive criticism? Or does it mean something totally different? To explore the nature of critical thinking, we begin by examining the concept of left and right brain thinking.

Left and Right Brain Thinking

Brain research suggests that the left and right sides of the brain have distinct and complementary functions. Simply put, the left brain is the seat of logic and, hence, analytical thinking, and the right brain is the seat of intuition and, hence, system thinking.

So, is critical thinking left-brained, analytical thinking, or is it right-brained, system thinking?

Lower vs. Higher-order Thinking

differentiate the work of students from scholars, academics use a framework called Bloom’s Taxonomy. According to Benjamin Bloom, there are multiple levels of thinking.

They follow a hierarchy from the lowest to the highest order or level:

Comprehension

Application

New doctoral students tend to focus on the lower level skills since the educational system at the levels below the doctorate tend to emphasize their use.

As a doctoral student, however, your work must reflect all levels of thinking, particularly the higher-order thinking skills of analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. In addition, your work should incorporate a whole-brain approach that uses right-brained, systemic thinking to support left-brained, analytical thinking, and vice-versa.

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Evaluating the impact of instruction in critical thinking on the critical thinking skills of English language learners in higher education

EL-SOUFI, NADA (2019) Evaluating the impact of instruction in critical thinking on the critical thinking skills of English language learners in higher education. Doctoral thesis, Durham University.

In 1994 the Lebanese government called for an education reform to introduce critical thinking (CT) in the curriculum. The reform failed as there was no consensus on how CT should be taught. Some commentators consider CT a cultural practice that cannot be taught in cultures that do not encourage independent thinking. This study examines whether instruction in CT can develop the CT skills of undergraduate English language learners in a system where politics and religion take precedence over the quality of education. The thesis begins with a systematic review that synthesises empirical evidence of the effect of teaching CT on CT skills of undergraduate English language learners. Of 1,830 records, only 36 studies were deemed relevant. The review suggests indicative evidence that explicit instruction may be beneficial. However, because of methodological flaws, the strength of the evidence is weak. To establish the effect of this approach, a cluster randomised control trial was carried out in a university in Lebanon involving 29 English classes (413 students). The trial was conducted over one term in which 11 lessons in CT (14 sessions) were substituted for material from the regular curriculum. Experimental students made bigger gains on the Cornell Critical Thinking Test between pre- and post-test (ES = +0.3). Process evaluation shows that the key factors in successful implementations were teachers’ positive attitude, training of teachers, and the readily available lesson plans that were integrated into the curriculum. Students’ attitudes and lack of general knowledge were key barriers. The predominance of poorly designed research in the review suggests that research in CT is underdeveloped and is not a priority for policymakers in non-native English speaking countries. More funding could be invested to strengthen research in CT. Overall, this study shows that the objective of the education reforms in Lebanon to introduce CT is not difficult to achieve if teachers are trained.

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• 14 February 2018

Train PhD students to be thinkers not just specialists

• Gundula Bosch 0

Gundula Bosch directs the R3 Graduate Science Initiative at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland.

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Under pressure to turn out productive lab members quickly, many PhD programmes in the biomedical sciences have shortened their courses, squeezing out opportunities for putting research into its wider context. Consequently, most PhD curricula are unlikely to nurture the big thinkers and creative problem-solvers that society needs.

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Nature 554 , 277 (2018)

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Drowning in a sea of authors – How to be critical in a PhD literature review.

Feb 10, 2019

One of the problems I see often when I proofread PhDs is people being too descriptive and not being critical enough. This is most often the case in the literature review.

Critical thinking is one of the hardest skills to master in the entire PhD. Yet, it’s frustrating that many supervisors and doctoral training programs assume that PhD students are already capable critical thinkers.

To be critical in your PhD literature review doesn’t just mean describing what others have written. Instead, it means evaluating and analysing what it is that is being said.

Easy, right?

In this post we explain how to master the art of being critical in your literature review. If you haven’t already, check out our post on how to conduct a literature review.

We’ve also made an infographic. Simply click on the image below to download it.

So many questions…

When we say ‘you must be critical’, we mean that you must critically evaluate whatever it is you are discussing. Your job when critically evaluating is to think analytically, rather than descriptively.

However, being critical doesn’t mean criticising. Instead it means evaluating.

We saw in our post on how to write a literature review and in the PhD Writing Template that the literature review serves three purposes.

• To provide sufficient background information so that your own research problem can be contextualised
• To discuss how, how well, or even if, others have solved similar problems
• To outline the methods used by others when discussing similar problems

It is the first and second purposes that require critical thinking skills, because you want to be evaluating each work you read and act as an investigator.

A quick and easy way to do so is to ask five standard questions of each thing you read:

1. Who? 2. Where? 3. What? 4. When? 5. Why?

Asking these questions means we don’t just take what is written at face value. Instead, we evaluate, interpret, explain, analyse and comment on the text. These questions are a starting point for you to do that.

You’ll need to expand on these questions in order to go into more depth. You can do this by asking (you’ll find these questions in your PhD Writing Template ):

• Who wrote this and why?
• What are the authors trying to say?
• On what basis are they forming their judgements and arguments?
• Are they convincing?
• What theories or perspectives have been used? What alternative ones may have been used instead?
• What perspective are they coming from? What research tradition? What methods do they use? Are they appropriate?
• How does this work relate to others in the field?
• What are others arguing about the same topic?
• How does it relate to your research question or problem?

Ultimately, you’re asking: so what?

Don’t drown in a sea of authors

Let’s take an example of what not to do. Consider the following paragraph, from my very own PhD, on a theory of environmental politics known as ecological modernisation (that’s what the EM stands for):

We can see that I’ve become lost in the literature. All I’m really doing is listing various different studies. I’ve failed to think analytically and instead I’m just thinking descriptively.

I’m drowning in authors, navigating complex ideas and theories with little care for critically thinking about each of them. Instead I am piling up layers of ‘this person said this’ in order to showcase the field.

I – the academic – do not appear in this text at all. I offer no insight into my own critical reflection on any of the concepts, authors or ideas that I have listed. I have become invisible. I have not used the literature to put forward my own argument about the state of the discipline or to make the case for my own study.

There are two things to take from this:

• You need to speak with authority. Avoid falling into the trap of ‘he said, she said’, simply listing scholars and becoming invisible in the process.
• Avoid being overwhelmed by the literature.

How could I have improved my own literature review, using what I know now after years of working as an academic, proofreader and a literature review writer?

Consider the following excerpt from a literature review a colleague and I wrote as part of a journal article we had published . Notice how we aren’t invisible in a sea of authors and a sea of ‘he said, she said’.

Instead, we offer our own voice and put forward our own analysis of the literature. The sentence, ’this article argues, however, that all institutional formations are characterised by a combination or formal rules…’ is just one example of this.

Read, read, read, then write, write, write

Counterintuitively, when you are reading something for the first time, you should do so uncritically. Get a sense of what the writer is trying to do and whether the problem that they are tackling is in itself interesting.

We’ve written a guide about how to find content for your literature review. Check it out here .

You want to understand at this stage the ‘how’ and the ‘what’.

Once you have read the chapter, article, or book, and once you have a good sense of what it is about, you can then ask the when, why and how.

You can begin to unpack whether the conclusions are valid, whether the methods are appropriate, whether alternative theories or concepts could have been applied, and so on.

It is also at this stage that you can judge the validity of the paper as a whole. You need to ask yourself:

• Is it an incremental increase in the knowledge in your field, or is it game-changing?
• Is it a classic, or does it just add a little to what we knew before?

The answer to these questions can impact the significance the article or book plays in your literature review when you come to write.

As you write, you are forced to tackle what might seem like a wide range of literature. You are forced to relate different articles and books to one another and to explain the who, where, what, when and why.

But, you need a filter; much of what you read won’t be relevant to the study you are trying to develop or may be of poor quality.

It is these five questions above that act as your filter and which serve as your guide, against which you relate one piece of literature with another.

Master your lit review & theory framework.

Learn what goes where (and why), and how it all fit together with this free, interactive guide to the PhD literature review and theory framework.

Conclusion: Don’t be mean

So, thinking critically involves thinking like a detective in order to understand what others have written, why, and how it relates to that which came before and to your thesis. It involves not taking things at face value and questioning everything.

But, it’s not your job to be mean to other scholars. It’s your job to understand how well something was written and how relevant it is to your purposes. If you just list articles in a descriptive way, you won’t be doing this. You need instead to be critical, to ask questions, to probe the words.

Doing so will give you a voice and avoid you getting lost in sources.

Hello, Doctor…

Sounds good, doesn’t it?  Be able to call yourself Doctor sooner with our five-star rated How to Write A PhD email-course. Learn everything your supervisor should have taught you about planning and completing a PhD.

Now half price. Join hundreds of other students and become a better thesis writer, or your money back. 

Share this:

32 comments.

Thanks this was useful!

Great! Glad you found it useful.

I am yet to write a Ph.D. literature review in English Literature on Kazuo Ishiguro. This article boosted me up to the importance of Critical and analytical thinking rather than descriptive thinking. I am also a blogger of Ph.D. https://phdstudytips.com But this information I have not written anywhere on my blog. Thanks for all efforts Dr.Max Lempriere

Thanks for the kind words. Critical thinking is so important, but so hard! I hope this article helped you in your academic journey.

Do you have any tips on how to approach a research proposal regarding structure and the do’s and don’ts ?

Thank you David

Sure – you can check out a guide we’ve written here: https://www.thephdproofreaders.com/writing/how-to-write-a-phd-proposal/

Hope this helps,

Hey Max.. This is very helpful for me. Thank u for writing this blog, i am now confident to start my review

I’m glad you are finding it useful. Good luck!

Really helpful. Thank you.

You’re welcome. I’m glad you found it useful.

Hi Dr Max, I’m about to write my Literature review. Your blog helps me a lot. However could you share with me some samples of Literature reviews in Phd?

Hi Sachin. Thanks for your kind words. I’m glad you’re finding the blog useful. I can’t offer any specific examples of literature reviews. It depends on your discipline. My advice would be to read similar PhDs in your discipline for inspiration. If in doubt, ask your supervisor or colleagues for their suggestions of particularly good examples. I hope this helps! Good luck!

Hello Dr. Max. I must say that I enjoyed in this guide to literature review, and while I initially made the same mistake about just listing different studies, I have corrected that thanks to your guide.

There is one thing that I would like to ask you. How to approach to a thesis that is rarely documented, with very small number of published and relevant papers. Obviously, future PhD. thesis is going to offer better understanding of the matter that is about to be explored by experimental study, but what to do when very small number of researchers is dealing with this subject, or all of the available literature is of old date, but there is nothing new or better than this literature from the 60’s or 70’s.

Wish you all the best, and once again thank you for this guide.

Hi Faruk, thanks for the kind words. Your struggle is a common one. If there isn’t much literature to review, your literature review will necessarily be shorter than average and that’s okay. Make sure you thoroughly review the literature that goes exist, even if it is old, and make sure that your argument in the literature review chapter is built upon this idea that the literature is poorly developed. In some ways this makes your life easier, as the gap in your literature is so large that it will be easier for you to fill it. Hope this helps!

Hello again,

Thank you for the prompt response. Yes, this definitely helps. It gives hope 🙂

Thanks for this article. My thesis is on a specific artist about whom very little has been written, relative to other artists. On the other hand, my general approach to the questions I am asking about this artist is interdisciplinary, which means there is a massive literature from about five different fields to review. Do you have any advice about how to manage this. I’ve written about 17,000 words, but my supervisor keeps telling me it’s not enough.

Hi! Without knowing more about your topic it’s hard to say, but I know from my own PhD that blending various literatures together in a review is tough. If you find yourself getting stuck and tied in knots, step away from the chapter/review for a few days and come back with a fresh set of eyes.

Very Very helpful Sir. I am about to start my PhD.

Welcome to the club! Good luck on your amazing PhD journey.

Dear Dr Max

I just started this course and would like to say that its contents are very useful to my current confused state of mind. Thank you for making me see the clearer picture so as not be overwhelmed by the PhD thesis writing. I was at the brink of giving up few years of work, and am so glad I came across your website and registered for the course. Thank you.

I’m glad you’re finding it useful. It’s my mission to make other students’ lives easier than mine was when I was doing my PhD, so I’m glad to see it is having the desired effect.

Thank you so much Dr. Max. It is very helpful, I joined PhD in this year 2020 in January.

You’re welcome. Thanks for reading.

Dear Dr Max ,

Good day sir and thanks for all your good work trying to make sure we get it easier than you did . am not yet in PHD class yet but in DR class .Please how soon can i start my Thesis Writing ? and how do i chose topic to write on ? Please i need help . Thanks again and God bless. Osy

Hi Osy, I’m afraid I can’t offer any advice to help you choose a topic. Have you approach any potential supervisors and asked them? They’ll be better placed to help.

This was very useful. However, I find it difficult to articulate some complex thoughts (English is not my first language). Developing a discursive writing style is my greatest challenge in doing a Ph.D. I am only able to recognize them when someone else has written them,

You might want to work with a proofreader. Check out our website for more info.

Very good pointers shared. thanks for this post.

No problem.

Thank you very much for your article. It addresses some of the many struggles PhD students seem to face. Knowing that I am not alone is a good start. I have finished my methodology and currently writing my literature review. I thought I would have enjoyed it more… but it’s a tough one! I must say I am finding it quite overwhelming particularly to organize the chapter. The first part contexualising the research is fine and done, but trying to critique the main text that acted as a springboard to my research is tough.

I am not quite sure whether I should engage with recent research that has adopted the same main text/research I am using and critically discuss those or else fuse the said recent existing research with other broader themes (which I still need to include as part of the lit review).

Getting my head around this is overwhelming!

Thanks again!

When it gets too tough, remind yourself that this stuff is meant to be difficult.

Thank you, Dr. Max. This blog is a booster for me. I am a research scholar in agribusiness I cover green marketing in agro-based industries. This blog helps me a lot.

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The doctoral dissertation and related research are the most significant and extensive part of a doctoral degree. The University of Helsinki does not measure dissertations in credits, but their scope has been calculated to correspond to approximately 200 credits. A doctoral dissertation is a consistent scholarly work based on independent research that makes an original contribution to scientific knowledge. It can be a monograph or based on articles. In the natural sciences, dissertations are typically based on articles. The humanities and social sciences have traditionally preferred monographs, although the number of article-based dissertations is continuously increasing in these domains, with most dissertations already being article-based in such fields as the educational sciences.

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General dissertation criteria.

Article-based dissertations consist of several peer-reviewed scholarly publications or manuscripts accepted for publication as well as a summarising report on them. A monograph dissertation is a scholarly work on a single topic issued under the name of the author alone and based on previously unpublished research results. In exceptional cases, a doctoral dissertation may also take another form, provided it meets the appropriate scholarly criteria and the doctoral candidate’s independent contribution to it can be verified.

Regardless of the chosen format, the dissertation must always make an original contribution to scientific knowledge. The dissertation should demonstrate the doctoral candidate’s critical thinking skills and profound familiarity with the topic as well as his or her knowledge of key research methods in the field and competence in their application. The research results presented in the dissertation must be justified, scientifically convincing and sustainable in terms of research ethics. Faculties assess dissertations on consistent criteria that are announced in advance. You and your supervisors should acquaint yourselves with the criteria at the outset of your dissertation work.

The topic of your dissertation should be clearly defined so that you are not overwhelmed by an excessive workload. Remember that the dissertation is just the first step on your career path as a researcher and should not take you forever to complete. You and your supervisor should together limit the topic and content of the dissertation in such a way that you can complete the dissertation and the doctoral degree in approximately four years of full-time study.

A completed dissertation always includes a one- or two-page abstract outlining the objectives or research questions of the dissertation, as well as the key research methods, results and conclusions.

Article-based dissertations

Article-based dissertations consist of scholarly publications focusing on the same research problem as well as a summarising report.

The summarising report is the core of an article-based dissertation: it must present the background, objectives, methods, material, results, discussion and conclusions of the research. It must be a balanced work based on both the publications included in the dissertation and the research literature. Its recommended length varies by faculty, so read your faculty’s instructions before writing the report. For practical tips on how to write a good summarising report, we recommend for example this blog post by researchers from Tampere University .

As a rule, the publications included in an article-based dissertation must have been published or approved for publication. However, article-based dissertations can also contain articles that have not yet been accepted for publication. In such cases, the preliminary examiners will pay particular attention to articles that have not yet been peer-reviewed. A typical article-based dissertation includes a summarising report and three to five scholarly articles. The number of articles required depends on their scope, scientific quality and significance, and publishing forum as well as the author’s independent contribution to any co-authored articles included in the dissertation. Read your faculty’s instructions for article-based dissertations, including the sections relevant to the above, at the outset of your dissertation work.

Article-based dissertations can include co-authored publications – indeed, such articles are the rule rather than the exception in some disciplines. However, if your dissertation includes co-authored articles, you must be able to clearly demonstrate your contribution to them. You and your supervisor must together write an informal report on your contribution to each co-authored article. You are strongly recommended (and in some faculties, required) to have the report approved by the other authors of the articles in question.

The recommended scope of a monograph is 250 pages, excluding appendices. Monographs must be previously unpublished, but doctoral researchers writing a monograph need not keep their findings under lock and key until the public examination. While working on their monograph, doctoral researchers can publish articles related to the dissertation topic and then refer to them in the completed dissertation using common referencing practices.

Other types of dissertations

Some faculties accept dissertations that differ from the format of a monograph or an article-based dissertation, provided the work otherwise meets the scholarly criteria set for dissertations. Decisions on the scope and structure of such dissertations are made by the faculty council of the relevant faculty at the proposal of a doctoral programme. As a rule, however, all dissertations must be monographs or article-based, and the acceptance of other types of dissertations is exceedingly rare at the University of Helsinki.

Faculty-specific grading criteria and additional requirements for article-based dissertations

The faculty-specific criteria for evaluating doctoral theses and the possible additional requirements placed on article-based dissertations are available on your home faculty’s external website, in the instructions aimed at the examiners of doctoral theses. Getting acquainted with the instructions aimed at the examiners is a recommendable idea in general, as it will give you a good idea of how your final doctoral thesis will be evaluated. However, do not forget that reading only the instructions aimed at the examiners is not enough – when you are ready to submit your doctoral thesis for preliminary examination, do not forget to read the instructions aimed at doctoral researchers about to get started with the examination process of their doctoral thesis. All those instructions are available elsewhere on this site.

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How to tackle the PhD dissertation

Finding time to write can be a challenge for graduate students who often juggle multiple roles and responsibilities. Mabel Ho provides some tips to make the process less daunting

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Writing helps you share your work with the wider community. Your scholarship is important and you are making a valuable contribution to the field. While it might be intimidating to face a blank screen, remember, your first draft is not your final draft! The difficult part is getting something on the page to begin with. 

As the adage goes, a good dissertation is a done dissertation, and the goal is for you to find balance in your writing and establish the steps you can take to make the process smoother. Here are some practical strategies for tackling the PhD dissertation.

Write daily

This is a time to have honest conversations with yourself about your writing and work habits. Do you tackle the most challenging work in the morning? Or do you usually start with emails? Knowing your work routine will help you set parameters for the writing process, which includes various elements, from brainstorming ideas to setting outlines and editing. Once you are aware of your energy and focus levels, you’ll be ready to dedicate those times to writing.

While it might be tempting to block a substantial chunk of time to write and assume anything shorter is not useful, that is not the case. Writing daily, whether it’s a paragraph or several pages, keeps you in conversation with your writing practice. If you schedule two hours to write, remember to take a break during that time and reset. You can try:

• The Pomodoro Technique: a time management technique that breaks down your work into intervals
• Taking breaks: go outside for a walk or have a snack so you can come back to your writing rejuvenated
• Focus apps: it is easy to get distracted by devices and lose direction. Here are some app suggestions: Focus Bear (no free version); Forest (free version available); Cold Turkey website blocker (free version available) and Serene (no free version). 

This is a valuable opportunity to hone your time management and task prioritisation skills. Find out what works for you and put systems in place to support your practice. 

• Resources on academic writing for higher education professionals
• Stretch your work further by ‘triple writing’
• What is your academic writing temperament?

Create a community

While writing can be an isolating endeavour, there are ways to start forming a community (in-person or virtual) to help you set goals and stay accountable. There might be someone in your cohort who is also at the writing stage with whom you can set up a weekly check-in. Alternatively, explore your university’s resources and centres because there may be units and departments on campus that offer helpful opportunities, such as a writing week or retreat. Taking advantage of these opportunities helps combat isolation, foster accountability and grow networks. They can even lead to collaborations further down the line.

• Check in with your advisers and mentors. Reach out to your networks to find out about other people’s writing processes and additional resources.
• Don’t be afraid to share your work. Writing requires constant revisions and edits and finding people who you trust with feedback will help you grow as a writer. Plus, you can also read their work and help them with their editing process.
• Your community does not have to be just about writing!  If you enjoy going on hikes or trying new coffee shops, make that part of your weekly habit.  Sharing your work in different environments will help clarify your thoughts and ideas.

Address the why

The PhD dissertation writing process is often lengthy and it is sometimes easy to forget why you started. In these moments, it can be helpful to think back to what got you excited about your research and scholarship in the first place. Remember it is not just the work but also the people who propelled you forward. One idea is to start writing your “acknowledgements” section. Here are questions to get you started:

• Do you want to dedicate your work to someone? 
• What ideas sparked your interest in this journey? 
• Who cheered you on? 

This practice can help build momentum, as well as serve as a good reminder to carve out time to spend with your community. 

You got this!

Writing is a process. Give yourself grace, as you might not feel motivated all the time. Be consistent in your approach and reward yourself along the way. There is no single strategy when it comes to writing or maintaining motivation, so experiment and find out what works for you. 

Suggested readings

• Thriving as a Graduate Writer by Rachel Cayley (2023)
• Destination Dissertation by Sonja K. Foss and William Waters (2015)
• The PhD Writing Handbook by Desmond Thomas (2016).

Mabel Ho is director of professional development and student engagement at Dalhousie University.

If you would like advice and insight from academics and university staff delivered direct to your inbox each week,  sign up for the Campus newsletter .

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The Impact of Bias on the Scholar-Practitioner's Doctoral Journey

Strategies to legitimize it.

This essay discusses the utilization of safeguard strategies, particularly Improvement Science principles, in the academic and professional writing of scholar-practitioners within EdD programs. These strategies bridge the gap between theory and practice, enabling graduate students to apply their scholarly insights meaningfully. The essay highlights the roles of bias, professional wisdom, positionality, and reflexivity in inquiry, empowering scholar-practitioners to develop authentic solutions to the problems of practice they encounter. Drawing on the recommendations of Perry and colleagues (2020), the essay emphasizes rigorous data collection, explicit theoretical frameworks, evidence of impact on practice, and transparent mitigation of biases. Strategies such as positionality and reflexivity statements, adoption of Improvement Science as a conceptual framework, critical questions as safeguards, and engagement with critical friend groups (CFG) enhance the integrity and rigor of scholar-practitioners' inquiries. By implementing these measures, scholar-practitioners foster a robust examination of problems of practice and contribute to the advancement of knowledge.

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Commencement 2024: gso doctoral candidate mansur ali jisan explores hurricanes and r.i.’s lighthouses.

KINGSTON, R.I. – May 8, 2024 – While some may just want to rest after five and a half years of research, Mansur Ali Jisan is already looking for his next challenge.

“I’m spending more time thinking about how I can apply the insights I’ve gained through my dissertation research or perhaps find some new and interesting topics related to climate science,” said Jisan, a doctoral candidate in the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography.

Jisan just completed defending his dissertation, which focused on understanding the impact of land roughness on hurricane wind structure during landfall. “I’ve developed a physics-based, 3D hurricane boundary layer (HBL) wind model to simulate these effects.”

He has worked with Isaac Ginis, professor of oceanography at the GSO, analyzing the changes that take place in a hurricane when it moves over land, and how the local land cover types, such as buildings, forests, and vegetation affect speed. Jisan used numerical models to represent those physical processes to improve the forecast over the land surface. “We worked with the Department of Homeland Security to improve the forecasts so that we can use this wind data to determine wind hazards, plus the storm surge forecasting,” he said.

Jisan earned his bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Dhaka, Bangladesh, and a Master of Science degree in coastal marine and wetland studies at Coastal Carolina University, where he continued his studies focusing on storm surge forecasting, sea level rise, and increased flooding conditions. He graduates from URI this month with a Ph.D. from the Graduate School of Oceanography.

In 2018, Jisan was invited to work with Ginis. “I was very excited; it inspired me to do some creative work in this domain,” Jisan said.

During that time, he mentored three undergraduate students while they visited Ginis’ lab. “It was a very rewarding experience because I learned so much from them,” he said. “I don’t feel as if I spent so much time teaching them, because I spent so much time learning from them. The ideas they generated really inspired me in my research.”

Jisan also became involved with a variety of climate change organizations, including Greenpeace and the Climate Reality Project led by former Vice President Al Gore. “It’s important to make people aware of climate change issues and how they’re affecting developing countries like Bangladesh,” he said. Jisan’s friends don’t know that he’s so passionate about climate issues, and that he’s very interested in educating the public about climate change.

“I feel that perhaps I didn’t do as much climate work while pursuing my doctorate due to research time, but now I’ll reignite my interest.” And is there still time to reverse the effects of climate change? “I don’t want to lose hope,” he said. “I think we can still work to reduce carbon emissions and reduce our footprint through our personal activities.

“More attention needs to be paid to developing nations on how we can make their communities more resilient by investing more money and building sustainable infrastructure against the climate change threat.”

Between his pursuit of his doctorate and his climate change activities, Jisan doesn’t have much free time. However, there was a period around 2021 when he found himself with two or three months of leisure as he waited for the next project to begin. It was then that he discovered photography, so he went out and bought a drone. His subject since then photographing lighthouses.

“Rhode Island is such a beautiful place, and we’ve so many beautiful lighthouses, especially Beavertail and Point Judith. Now I try to get out two or three times a week to take pictures.”

Jisan lives minutes away from the Bay Campus with his wife, Nadia, and their pet rabbit, Oreo. Nadia commutes to Boston University. Although it’s a long commute, the couple love living in their farmhouse. Meanwhile, he is contemplating his next move.

“I’ve been spending lots of time reading about different research topics like cloud modeling,” he said. “I find it really fascinating because now that I have gained this knowledge from URI about physical oceanography and the climate system, I feel more confident when I review any research fields.”

This story was written by Hugh Markey.

Expecting mother delivers baby in car just hours before earning her Ph.D.

NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. (WABC) – This Mother’s Day is going to be a special one for a New Jersey woman.

It will be Tamiah Brevard-Rodriguez’s first Mother’s Day as a mother herself and also the same day as her graduation ceremony.

Six weeks ago, she became a mother and earned her Ph.D.

Baby Enzo was born a month before his due date on the same day Brevard-Rodriguez was scheduled to deliver her dissertation defense.

“I was physically prepared for a pregnancy. Mentally, my brain was not on a baby,” she said. “So I was having a very emotional response to knowing that I was in labor, knowing that I had this defense, like I was literally shaking.”

Brevard-Rodriguez had everything planned out with staff and faculty at Rutgers University to examine standards Black college women face on historically white campuses.

Her plan even had a name: Operation Dissertation Before Baby.

However, things quickly went off-schedule when the expecting mother’s water broke in the early morning of March 25.

Brevard-Rodriguez’s wife, Alyza, rushed the couple to their car after their doula told them to get moving as the contractions increased.

The drive to the hospital turned into a race against time.

“Every moment. I remember sort of the area that we were in as we were exiting the highway and the first one was coming off,” Alyza Brevard-Rodriguez said. “And we flew through the red light, and at that point, I was probably going 120 mph.”

Brevard-Rodriguez said she had three pushes.

“The first one was the baby’s head, he was crowning. Second push, he was out, he was in my hand. Third one, we were just, we were just there,” she said.

At the hospital, Enzo was checked out by doctors, who found him in good health.

Because Brevard-Rodriguez was well-rehearsed for her dissertation, she delivered her defense about seven hours after Enzo came into the world.

“I was prepared for it,” she said. “Like, what I do is some final touches on the presentation. Like, I did the study, I had the support. I just needed to take a nap, take a shower and regroup.”

No one even knew about the delivery until after the successful defense was complete.

The new mother successfully delivered both her dissertation and her newborn son to make for a very special Mother’s Day story.

Copyright 2024 WABC via CNN Newsource. All rights reserved.

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