social work in turmoil

Decision that do not add up.

1. Critical success factors for improving social work

   Claudia Megele

   Monday 12 December 2011 16:20
   The Social Work Reform Board's recommendations provide a window of opportunity for social work to reassert its role and enhance its professional image, says Claudia Megele. But what are the critical factors necessary for their successful implementation?

   1. Reclaiming social work's values and role

   Social work's image has been overshadowed by its statutory functions as an agent of government. We must reclaim the profession's fundamental value of social justice and reassert its role as agent of positive social change. This requires a greater recognition of the different aspects of social work practice, including the non-statutory, and a greater engagement of social workers. The appointment of a chief social worker in England is a welcome development, but it is important to establish appropriate mechanisms that ensure effective two-way traffic of ideas between those who represent social work and frontline practitioners.

   2. Establishing a knowledge culture

   Social work operates in a knowledge economy but lacks the cultural orientation and fundamental awareness and expertise in knowledge transfer and management. Therefore it is important to develop a culture that facilitates the recognition and transmission of professional knowledge. We can begin by recognising the everyday practice wisdom of practitioners through action research. Local authorities and third sector organisations can, with appropriate cooperation and guidance, translate this wisdom into more structured evidence-based knowledge. Such a body of knowledge will provide a wealth of in-house know-how for organisations' internal development while strengthening the profession on a larger scale.

   3. Using new technology and social media

   It is essential that social work at all levels develops its understanding and use of social media and technologies for e-learning and e-governance. These will transform the current systems of participation, problem resolution, knowledge generation and learning while reducing costs and increasing quality standards. This requires greater training and familiarisation for social workers and a new approach to social services engagement, delivery and management.

   4. Non-academic professional progression

   The reform board's continuing professional development (CPD) and post-qualifying guidelines are meant to simplify the progression pathway for social workers after their initial qualification. It's an excellent development that encourages the creation of mechanisms that recognise and accredit practitioners' experience and practical knowledge. The guidelines imply that specific skills developed on the job, such as court presentation skills, could be assessed by the practitioner's manager or employer and accredited by a higher education institution. This recognises the value of practitioners' knowledge and enhances their morale, but it is important that standards are in place to uphold social work's theoretical and professional foundations and its evidenced base.

   5. Transparent and participatory governance

   When speaking to student social workers one cannot help but be impressed by their passion and idealism. If social work is to be a dynamic and vibrant profession then it must strengthen that sense of mission, passion and commitment in its practitioners and practice. This requires transparency on the part of institutions and the genuine, open engagement of all practitioners. Given the hierarchical culture of social work, establishing a participatory model of governance and operation and moving from the current systems of control to systems of support, development and learning may be challenging and delicate is an indispensable critical success factor for the reform board's recommendations.

   6. Co-operation between employers and academia

   Many of the reform board's recommendations depend on closer cooperation between employers and academia. But these stakeholders must ensure their own financial survival in an adverse climate of budgetary cuts combined with increasing demands, leaving little room for investment on their part. The new supply and demand model for social work aims to produce closer cooperation between employers and academia and a gradual realignment of their objectives. This will improve the quality of social work training and employment by ensuring better placement opportunities and greater employability for social work students while better responding to the needs of employers. However, this will also generate fewer graduates which, in turn, increases competition between universities and will eventually reduce the number of successful programmes offering qualifying social work courses. Given increased tuition fees and reduced funding, these programmes may need to turn into de facto sponsorships.

   About the author: Claudia Megele is a psychotherapist and service director at A Sense of Self. She is also a trainer and an associate lecturer in applied social work practice at the Open University.

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This column will change your life: is there such a thing as an afternoon person?

'Nobody feels that they come into their own about an hour after lunch'

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The 'afternoon slump' enfolds us in its toxic mist of lethargy and irritation. Illustration: John Holcroft for the Guardian

According to the old wives' tale, nobody ever sees a dead donkey, and as George Carlin observed, "You never see a really big, tall, fat Chinese guy with red hair", either. To which I'd like to add: you never meet someone who describes themselves as an "afternoon person", do you?

The population divides into larks, night owls and people who are neither. The distinction often seems to have as much to do with self-image as energy cycles: it's close to sacrilegious to be a morning person if you're in a band, say, while hard-charging celebrity businesspeople seem obliged to tell interviewers that they wake at 4.30am. (That's the reported rising time of both Disney and Apple's current chief executives, though as this column has noted before, sleep studies suggest that such claims are often exaggerated.)

Nobody, on the other hand, feels they come into their own about an hour after lunch. The "afternoon slump" enfolds us in its toxic mist of lethargy and irritation. It seems to be global; not long ago, sociologists analysed the "mood words" in 2.4m tweets and discovered that the Twitterverse gets crotchety in the afternoon in India, Europe, Africa, New Zealand, and North America. "I really dislike afternoons," said Kingsley Amis, who wrote best in the mornings and evenings. The only remedy, he felt, was "drinking more cups of tea until the bar opens at six".

Actually, that's far from the only remedy. Opinions differ on whether the slump can be avoided entirely – ultimately, there may be no arguing with circadian rhythms – but the world of productivity books and blogs abounds with suggestions. You could avoid eating too many carbohydrates at lunchtime, and make sure you get some sunlight; if, unlike me, you're capable of napping, you could take a "caffeine nap": drink coffee, drift off, then wake as the caffeine hits your brain. Failing all that, to the extent your job allows, you can schedule your day so the slump coincides with brainless tasks.

But here's a possibility striking enough to jolt you from your depleted haze: what if those groggy afternoon hours might be some of your most creative? As the British Psychological Society's Research Digest reported recently, psychologists in Michigan divided hundreds of students into night owls and larks, according to their own declared preferences for times of day, then posed them problems that demanded insightful thinking. (Such as: a coin dealer calls the police when he's offered a valuable-looking coin that says it was minted in 544BC. How does he know it's fake?) Some faced these tasks around 9am, others around 4pm. By a clear margin, larks did best in the afternoon and night-owls in the morning – the opposite of what you'd expect. The unfocused dreaminess of the "off" hours seemed to aid creative thinking. The same didn't apply to more analytical problems, involving mental arithmetic.

Anthony Burgess – who may be the "afternoon person" exception who proves my rule – was on to this years ago. "The unconscious mind has a habit of asserting itself in the afternoon," he told the Paris Review. "The morning is the conscious time, but the afternoon is a time in which we should deal much more with the hinterland." Whether you think of yourself as a morning or an evening person, perhaps it's time to rethink. And perhaps you should be doing that thinking at your drowsiest time of day.

oliver.burkeman@guardian.co.uk; twitter.com/oliverburkeman

This column will change your life: new seekers

Is it always bad to look for new experiences?

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Illustration: Rachel Gannon for the Guardian. Click on picture for full image

In 1990, in Strasbourg, as the result of a jovial lunch with friends, the French journalist Joel Henry founded the Laboratory of Experimental Tourism – promoting "a new way to travel", he told one interviewer, "based on scientific or pseudoscientific rules. Travelling under such constraints turns travel into a game." Among his proposals were "chance-travel" (rolling a die, then in the index of an atlas counting down that many entries from your hometown, so a resident of Melbourne who rolled a four would end up in Melenki, Russia) and "counter-travel" (journey to famous landmarks, but turn your back on them, and photograph what you see). This may strike you as self-consciously eccentric: what's wrong with staring at old things or getting drunk, like a normal tourist? But in one sense, experimental tourism is refreshingly honest. It cuts to the chase, focusing solely on one of our most basic motivations for travel: the urge to see something – anything – new.

As Winifred Gallagher points out in her (new) book New: Understanding Our Need For Novelty And Change, we can seem rather conflicted about this hunger for newness. Someone who travels widely is praised for their broad horizons, but someone who craves every new gadget is "obsessed"; it's one thing to get your thrills from gobbling up new highbrow novels, another to hunger for the excitement of ever higher stakes at the casino. Partly, this is because novelty-seeking isn't a unitary phenomenon: "sensation-seeking" is associated with problems such as compulsive gambling, criminality and alcoholism, Gallagher explains, while "experience-seeking" is not. More broadly, though – and in a time when "novelty" has come to imply "superficial" – she makes a case for respecting our need for newness.

Relying on work by the psychologist C Robert Cloninger, Gallagher suggests that your stance towards new things – with "neophiliacs" at one end of the continuum and "neophobes" at the other – is a fundamental personality trait; all else being equal, a dose of neophilia is a strong predictor of happiness. There's some credible evolutionary reasoning here. It's obvious how adaptability to change favours survival; even a tendency to mere restlessness, though, could have "helped Homo sapiens survive by spurring our vast African exodus to distant parts unknown".

These days, we're surrounded by "novelty machines", devices designed to bombard us with new stimuli. But the fact that our neophilia can be diverted into trivialities, or exploited by advertisers, isn't an argument against neophilia, any more than the use of sex to sell beer is an argument against sex. Neophilia combined with persistence – to counter the neophile tendency to skip from one thing to another – may be the ideal combination of traits, Gallagher concludes. The quiet heroes, she suggests, are the moderate neophiliacs who recognise the stirrings of the urge and cultivate it, rather than suppressing it: the couple who retire to the big city, instead of to a gated community; the midlife career-switchers who finally decide to stop ignoring the inner call they've been hearing for years. Seeking new experiences seems to have the effect of slowing down perceived time, too, countering the feeling of the weeks flashing past as you age. Embrace neophilia, then, and it'll seem as if you have more time for more of it.

A Narrative Study of social work with refugees in UK

By Charles Mugisha

Abstract

This is a study of the lives of fourteen asylum seekers and refugees who fled war and insecurity from the Great Lakes region of Central Africa to seek asylum in the UK. It has two modest aims: to investigate the effectiveness of narratives in social work with refugees and difficulties in disclosure during social work assessments. The second was to explore more systematically ways African refugee narratives are elicited and structured in exile.

Qualitative data from two sets of interviews with refugees and social workers are presented. One is based on the activities of African refugees at a day centre in South London where I was a participant-observer. This deals with actual testimonies and refugee experiences. The other is based on interviews I conducted with social workers addressing their direct work with asylum seekers and refugees. Stories in this study do not have a clearly defined beginning and end but they have boundaries between the “formal period of actual interviewing, where questions were asked and answers recorded, and the informal preliminaries, interludes and lengthy farewells which surround and cushion what some think of as the ‘actual’ interview” (Bozzoli, 1991: 7). The topic of a story and the manner in which it is relayed provide direct and indirect sources of information that might help social workers to both understand problems of refugees and formulate models of intervention. Rather than simply using refugee stories as a guide to understanding the needs of refugees and asylum seekers, the study recommends that social workers focus on the “story” as a medium through which change can be effected. This process involves moving from uncovering or deconstructing the narrative to externalising and creating an alternative narrative (Fook, 2002: Busch, 2007). The validation or deconstruction of the initial narrative depends on the setting and purpose of the interaction between the social worker and the asylum seeker (Fook, 2002).

Prologue to the study

Those who do not have power over the story that dominates their lives, the power to retell it, rethink it, deconstruct it, joke about it, and change it as times change, truly are powerless, because they cannot think new thoughts (Salman Rushdie).

This research owes its conception to my experience of working with asylum seekers as an interpreter and community worker in Birmingham and London respectively. Asylum seekers I worked with had fled war, insecurity and genocide and had suffered a catalogue of losses. My role as an interpreter also involved working with social workers, solicitors and the Home Office. My experience revealed limitations of professional engagement with refugee families known to social services. It is these perceived gaps in direct work with vulnerable refugees and my interest in solving problems related to poverty, discrimination and human misery that initially attracted me to the social work profession. This emphasis led me to enrol on a social work graduate programme at a university in London and seek a career in social work. However when I qualified and started to practice in a busy children and families social work team, I became increasingly aware that social work too, despite its fanfare about equality and social justice - did not have a knowledge and theoretical base reflective of the diversity of UK population and some of the clients it sought to assist specifically (Schiele, 1997; Bamberg, 1997).

According to Jacobsen and Landau (2003), working with refugees is one area in which there are many complex ethical challenges that stem from a combination of the precarious situation of refugees combined with a risk that, for some researchers, the ends may justify the means, leading to ethical lapses (p. 187 & pp. 192-3). Jacobsen and Landau illustrate this point with examples of ethically very poor practice with refugees. Although there has been a considerable growth in research about and with refugee populations (Pittaway and Bartolomei, 2003), no specific studies have examined narratives of African refugees in the context of social work in the UK. In my experience, African refugees known to social services tend to present as vulnerable and powerless -highlighting the need for research in order to understand the range of issues they face and develop more appropriate and effective interventions (Hugman, et al. 2011). Several social work researchers have also advocated cultural grounding to tell stories of the people whom we serve, acknowledging their lived experiences, realities and ways of knowing (Schiele, 2000). In narrative research, the potential for marginalised refugee groups to rediscover and validate identities which have been previously unrecognised is known as identity politics (Fook, 2002: 136). Fook observed that the process of expressing, legitimating and creating a social identity for marginalised groups, using a narrative process is widely recognised as an important step in changing power positions. A narrative approach is seen as helpful in assisting vulnerable refugees who are regarded as voiceless – to articulate their own experiences (Fook, 2002). The narrative methods also enable vulnerable groups to participate in defining themselves in their own terms, rather than against norms determined outside their experience and culture (Fook, 2002; De Haene et al. 2010). In the present study, the narrative method is used as a theoretical framework because of its potential to mobilise participants’ voices and provide a space to give words to life histories within a broader social context (Gubrium & Holstein, 2002).

Social workers that participated in the study were not employed by the Refugee day centre but came from different local authority departments such as adult mental health services, children and families (CYPS) and learning or physical disabilities. The purpose of the research was to investigate the effectiveness of African refugee narratives and testimonies in the context of social work and difficulties in disclosure during social work assessments. Using narrative social work theory, this research also examines ways African refugee testimonies are elicited and structured when negotiating their existence in exile. Narrative social work theory suggests that clients start with a problem-saturated account that can be made to shift towards a strength-based narrative that is unique to the client (Busch, 2007: 9). Hollway (1984: 236) asserts that the goal of narrative social work as a model of intervention is to help co-construct a new story of a client’s dominant, problem saturated, and often self-pathologising, account, and a discursive-based evaluation that examines the change in the client. A narrative therefore is a temporally organised account that has a beginning, middle and an end (Reissman, 1993). In this case, narrative social work leads one to expect that each client or service user begins with a pathologising testimony or life story, the middle reveals the therapeutic social work through the process of externalisation and the end will reveal unique, strengths-based accounts by clients (Busch, 2007). Stories analysed in this study exemplify some of the complexities involved in seeking asylum.

In this study, the term “testimony” is used loosely to describe narrative accounts of life experiences, with attention to using a person’s actual words. Yudice (1991:17) defined a testimony as:

An authentic narrative, told by a witness who is moved to narrate by the urgency of a situation (e.g. war, oppression, revolution, etc.). Emphasizing popular oral discourse, the witness portrays his or her own experience as a representative of a collective memory and identity. Truth is summoned in the cause of denouncing a present system of exploitation and oppression...

Warner (1998:75) observes that “although testimony is similar to life stories, there is usually a temporal bifurcation in the testimonial narrative.” She explains that individuals in refugee situations structurally divide their typical testimonial narrative between their lives in exile, life when seeking asylum, life during flight and the lives they led before being forced to seek asylum (p. 75). This research treats refugee stories as texts, imperfectly reflecting lives, and more accurately reflecting lives of African refugees in South London.

The study has not pretended that these refugee stories were “obtained through the sterile means of removing the interviewer as far as possible from any involvement in the interaction and turning them into the absent listener” (Bozzoli, 1991: 6). Additionally, my interviews do not have a clearly defined beginning and end but they have boundaries between the “formal period of actual interviewing, where questions were asked and answers recorded, and the informal preliminaries, interludes and lengthy farewells which surround and cushion what some think of as the “actual interview” (Bozzoli, 1991: 7). The study attempts to examine biographical narratives, which, if taken at face value, would qualify their tellers as “refugees.” From a legal point of view, however, in the UK a person does not decide that he or she is a refugee – they start off as asylum seekers and only after their application for asylum is accepted does one become a refugee – the status of refugee is in this sense “other conferred”(Dahl & Thor, 2009: 1). If the application for asylum is not successful, the applicant becomes a “failed asylum seeker.” Interestingly most of my informants referred to themselves as “refugees” or “asylum seekers”, acknowledging both personal and legal perspectives (Harrel-Bond, cited in Dryden-Peterson & Hovil, 2003:3). There is no impartial way of categorising my informants and therefore the study uses the term “refugee” and “asylum seeker” interchangeably. Other studies such as Fazel et al. (2005) also do not make a distinction between refugees and asylum seekers, as “refugee”is used to include asylum seekers.

I employed semi-structured interviewing but was flexible enough to ensure that our interaction was more conversational and non-threatening. Taylor and White (2000: 57-8) highlighted the importance of conversational strategies in research, which form part of people’s narratives in establishing the credibility of themselves and their stories. They note that any description of phenomenon represents a selection of descriptors, which is variable, and context dependent. Therapists (Epston and White, 1990) and social workers (Pitt, 1998) have written about storytelling’s healing and empowering capacities with respect to individuals and families. Labonte et al. (1999) examined studies that concentrated on storytelling as a method for challenging dominant social structures, improving community work practice and empowering the voiceless. Narrative researchers emphasize the process of storytelling in promoting social justice (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005; Groleau, Zelkowitz, & Cabral, 2009). The use of life history methods is also interwoven with a clear concern for social change and empowerment (De Haene et al., 2010). My intention in using narrative methods in research with refugees was to give voice to silenced lives and, thus, to counteract the marginalization of vulnerable African asylum seekers (Barbour & Kitzinger, (1999; Bochner, 2001; Tierney, 2000). Moreover, in facilitating meaning-making processes, the act of storytelling itself offered research participants pathways of psychological well-being (Behar, 1993; Fook, 2002).

The narrative methodology developed in this study therefore attempts to integrate the transformative power of storytelling (Busch, 2007). By emphasising the transformative power of narration, both in voicing marginalized lives and in enhancing participants’ personal well-being, narrative inquiry thus locates social purpose at the heart of its research process (De Haene et al., 2010). With this model, research deontology “moves beyond the principle of nonmaleficence to a clear ethic of benefit” (De Haene et al., 2010:1). The British Association of Social Workers (BASW) Code of Ethics (BASW, 2012, paragraph 4.4.4.b) is closely based on De Haene et al., (2010) work. The BASW code states that social work researchers should “seek to ensure that the research in which they are engaged contributes to empowering service users, to promoting their welfare and to improving their access to economic and social resources.” Morris (2006: 189) on the other hand argued that the researcher’s task is to report what “voiceless” populations believe and wish to communicate about their condition. Hugman et al. (2011) observed that voiceless service users should be involved in research as “active participants or co-researchers and not simply constructing them as sources of information” (p. 1276). Some critics, such as Beresford (2003) go further and argue that research that does not have service users as active participants is harmful.  And for Lofland and Lofland (1995: 12) the researcher’s voice, should be very “front and centre” in research reports.

Recognising the co-construction between participant and researcher, a researcher journal was maintained throughout the process to enhance reflexivity by monitoring the research process, and to bracket personal ideas (Streubert & Carpenter, 1995; Yardley, 2000). In his article on self-reflection, Bell (1998) suggests that critical theory researchers should always reflect on their personal context, their social context and the complex environmental context of the research setting when analysing data and reflecting on a research project (p. 22). Fook (2000: cited in Alston and Bowles, 2003) argues that “the reflective approach rejects the scientific, positivistic and rational approaches in favour of more emancipatory and participatory approaches” (p. 173). A self-reflective practitioner will acknowledge the “power differentials inherent in practice, will note the contextual issues” and will view the client not as some marginalised ‘other’ but as the expert in their own right (Alston and Bowles, 2003: 173).

Critical researchers begin their investigations having declared their assumptions so that no one is confused concerning the epistemological and political baggage they bring with them to the research site (Kincheloe & McLaren, 2000). Lofland and Lofland (1995: 23) assert that the researcher should “start where you are” which is what I have done in this research. As the researcher in this process, it is important that I acknowledge my own position as a black African man, with an interest and commitment to the empowerment of refugees and asylum seekers. However, I acknowledge that as a consequence of my own ethnicity and professional background, I may have been perceived by respondents to have particular views on refugee experiences.

Whilst being an African black male may provide partial “insider” knowledge (Wainwright 2009) this term is such a generic description of ethnicity, that any understanding I may have of a potential participant’s experience will be very limited. This becomes even more evident when multiple identities are considered for instance concerning language and nationality (Anthias, 1998). It is because of these multiple identities, which change temporally and spatially, that I may be considered by respondents to be simultaneously an “insider” and an “outsider” (Wainwright, 2009). An “insider” because of the commonality of being an African, yet, an “outsider” because of the myriad identities that the respondents have that may not be the same as my own (Merton, 1973 cited in Wainwright, 2009). Being an “insider” may have provided the opportunity for respondents to achieve a mutual trust in trusting me with their life stories. In contrast, being an “outsider” may have been particularly significant especially if I was perceived as a researcher who is also a gatekeeper for the Home office. Additionally female respondents may have experienced my research through a prism that refracted gender as a central signifier of difference, either of more importance or inter-connected with ‘race’ and ethnicity (Hill-Collins, 2005). Thus, my identity may have provided the potential for reticence from some participants in feeling able to talk openly with me (Wainwright, 2009). Alternatively, my presence as a black African male may have encouraged the respondents to ‘racialise’ their answers (Gunaratnam, 2003). In other words, to appear more ‘African’ or radical in their responses than perhaps they would in other circumstances. I attempted to address this by emphasising the voluntary nature of participation. In addition, it was stressed that the questions asked in the enquiry were aimed at eliciting knowledge based on their experiences; there were no right or wrong answers. However, whatever my subjective positionality in relation to my “African” presence, I tried to be reflexive and professional when considering issues of commonality or difference (Gunaratnam 2003).

Steve Hilton, David Cameron's closest confidante, is to spend a year teaching at Stanford University in California


Hilton believes he is leaving at the right time with the bulk of the party's 2010 manifesto agenda gradually taking legislative shape. But he has been pondering his departure for many months, expressing frustration at the slowness of the government machine. A natural insurgent, he feels at times he has been banging his head against a benign brick wall of civil service complacency. Although there has been no great rupture, there has also been a gradual disillusionment that Cameron in office has not proved as radical or risk-taking as he hoped. His often impatient style lost him some friends in the civil service, leading to hostile briefings that suggested his ideas were impractical. He himself became frustrated at the pace at which the civil service moves, the apparent deference to EU regulations and the feeling that the levers in Numbers 10 do not work.

Preparing for your viva

Preparing for your viva by Student Development, University of Leicester is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Study guide

This guide addresses the period between the submission of your thesis and the day of your viva. It offers ideas to help you perform calmly and confidently inyour oral examination.

Introduction

So far you may have focussed primarily on writing your thesis: making sure it was in good shape before submitting it. Handing in your finished thesis is a massive achievement, and is the first step in the concluding stage of the PhD process.

Attention now turns to the viva. Most students are concerned about whether they will be able to perform well. Although it may feel like a completely new challenge, you will already have done more preparation than you realise. You may have presented some work at a conference or an in-house seminar, and been asked challenging questions. A neighbour, relative, or friend may have asked what research are you doing at the moment? And why?

This guide aims to take the mystery and fear away from the viva process, and to support you in preparing methodically so that you can look forward to a positive experience.

What is a viva?

The viva has its own ceremony and tradition. It can be considered part of a rite of passagein your academic apprenticeship, a trial to be addressed confidently, and the gateway to joining the academic community as an independent teacher or researcher.  It may be more helpful to think of it simply as the verbal counterpart to your written thesis.

The viva voce, shortened to the word ‘viva’, is:

‘an oral examination, typically for an academic qualification’, derived from the Latin: ‘with the living voice’ (Ask Oxford 2006).

http://www.askoxford.com/

Your thesis demonstrates your skill relating to the written presentation of your research.In the viva you will demonstrate your ability to participate in academic discussion with research colleagues: ‘with the living voice’.

Its purpose is to:

• confirm that the thesis is your own work;
• confirm that you understand what you have written;
• investigate your awareness of where your original work sits in relation to the wider research field;
• provide a developmental opportunity for considering future publication and research options.

This guide takes you through six stages of preparation for the viva and its outcome:

Stage 1: You have submitted your thesis

Stage 2: Stepping back from the detail

Stage 3: Returning to the detail

Stage 4: The last few days

Stage 5: Within the viva

Stage 6: The outcome of the viva

Stage 1: You have submitted your thesis

This is the culmination of all your effort so far. How are you going to celebrate? You may now have time to catch up with people you have neglected, and with activities you have neglected, preferably enjoyable ones, not just the housework!

It may then be helpful to assess your time commitments over the next few months so that you can build in adequate time to prepare for your viva.

• Aim to establish the date for your viva as soon as you can. This may be a few weeks away, but is more likely to be several months hence. You also need to know the time and the venue. The Graduate Office may be able to advise you on this: www.le.ac.uk/graduateoffice
• Confirm who has been appointed as examiners. There will usually be one internal and one external examiner, but there may well be more. This may be due to the relativeinexperience of the chosen examiners, or because your area is interdisciplinary and more than two examiners are required to form an academic judgement.
• Work out a timetable for viva preparation. You need to remain engaged with yourthesis, but this is a time to step back from the detail.
• Talk to your supervisors about whether it would be useful for you if one of them was to be present at your viva. A supervisor may be present but would not usually participate.
• You may want to use some of the time to work on articles or conference papers fromyour research.

Stage 2: Stepping back from the detail

Examiners are likely to ask you to comment on the wider implications of your work, so take time to think more broadly about your research. You may wish to use the following questions to help you prepare for discussing these issues in your viva.

• Which overarching philosophical or theoretical assumptions have you been working within? Why? How did it work out?
• If you were given a block of new funding now, how would you like to follow up yourwork?
• Thinking about your examiners: what links their work with your own research? Have you got hold of some of their published work to get a feel for how they work and how they discuss research?
• What would you do differently if you were starting again?
• What has been happening in your field since you did your research? Is a further literature review necessary? How does your research fit into this updated context?

Stage 3: Returning to the detail

Your aim is to know your thesis very well and to be calm and confident as you begin yourviva. Remember that most students who reach this stage do succeed in gaining theirPhD. Here are some ideas to help you regain and retain familiarity with the detail:

• re-read your thesis carefully. If you notice any mistakes, don’t panic. Make a note of them so that it won’t be a surprise to you if they are mentioned in the viva, and so that you can address them when you are making your final corrections following theviva;
• as you read, make summary notes on the main points on each page;
• print out the contents pages with plenty of spacing, and write very brief summaries of the content under each heading;
• practise telling the story of the whole research in 2 minutes;
• practise telling the story of different chapters, each in 2 minutes;
• identify areas of weakness and make notes on each;
• identify the elements of originality in your thesis;
• identify your contribution to knowledge;
• identify the theoretical, research, and practical implications of your findings.

You are not expected to memorise your thesis. You can take it into the viva with you, and it is acceptable to refer to it to remind yourself of specific details. However, it will not impress the examiners if you flick forwards and backwards trying to find what you are looking for. Some people choose to use small ‘post-it notes’ to attach to the top of pages they think they might want to refer to so that they can locate them quickly and easily if needed.

Mini viva

You need to practise answering viva questions. A list of typical questions is provided towards the end of this guide, and you can add to this yourself. Make sure you include the difficult questions so that you have a chance to practise how you might answer them.

Some form of mini viva is essential, but there are various ways of conducting this: from the formal to the informal, from public to private, depending on what you would find most useful. The important thing is to answer out loud not just in your thoughts. This can be done in a formal setting with an audience of your supervisor or colleagues, but can also be done in private while walking round a garden or park, or in your room. In speaking aloud you force yourself to put your responses, clarifications, and deliberations into words.Initially this can feel embarrassing, stressful, and difficult, but it is invaluable preparation for arguing your case coherently on the day.

Stage 4: The last few days

This is the time to address practical details.

• How will you get to the viva in good time?
• When/what will you eat and drink, both before and after?
• What will you wear? Ideally something that allows you to feel both smart and comfortable.
• What will you take into the room with you?
• Have you sorted out some calming activities to dispel nervousness? The Study Guide on Stress Management for Presentations and Interviews has useful suggestions for techniques to cope with pre-viva anxiety.

Think positively. You may now be:

• anticipating a potentially interesting discussion;
• ready to engage in debate;
• confident in your preparation;
• eager to get on with it;
• relieved at being there at last;
• excited at the challenge ahead;
• looking forward to completing the process.

Stage 5: Within the viva

How will my examiners behave?

Your study will have strengths and weaknesses, and the examiners will want to discuss these. It is considered positive, indeed essential, that you can discuss both strengths and weaknesses. You could think of these weaknesses as an opportunity to demonstrate yourskill at critical appraisal. Examiners will seek to find and discuss weaknesses in all theses. You should not interpret criticism as an indication that you will not get a positive outcome.

Examiners have different personalities, styles, and levels of experience. Sometimes a candidate may feel that a challenge has been made in a confrontational way. Experienced and effective examiners will not be inappropriately confrontational, but some personalities are more prone to such approaches. It is important that you do not take offence. A relaxed, thoughtful, and non-confrontational response from you will help re-balance the discussion.

Murray (2003:105) suggests how not to respond to a challenge of a weakness in yourresearch. She suggests that you do not:

• give a general, resigned declaration that ‘this happens in every study’;
• blame your supervisor for the weakness;
• blame your data;
• say ‘that was beyond the scope of my study’, without giving a cogent argument to support the statement;
• dismiss what is identified as a weakness as unimportant.

A better approach is to:

• take time to consider before replying;
• remember to breathe and to speak reasonably slowly;
• don’t take criticism personally;
• don’t take offence;
• don’t get angry;
• enjoy the opportunity to talk about your research.

The questions that crop up in vivas can be grouped under four basic headings.

• What’s it about?
• What did you do?
• What did you find?
• Why does that matter?

Practising answering these four questions will take you a long way in your preparation. The questions below all fall within these four, but are more specific, and are arranged following the order of a typical thesis.

General questions

• Why did you decide on this particular research question?
• What have you found the most interesting aspect of your research?
• How did your thinking about this topic develop as you went through this research process?
• Now that you have finished the research, which part of the process would you say you enjoyed the most, and why?
• Were there any surprises along the way?
• How did doing this research change you as a researcher?

Context

• You refer to … as a key influence on your research. Can you summarise the particular relevance of their work?
• What developments have there been in this field since you began your PhD? How has this changed the research context in which you are working?
• You make only passing reference to the field of . . . why do you think that field is less relevant than the others you give more space to?
• You don’t say much about the . . .  theory in your thesis. Can you explain why you have not focussed more on that?

Methods

• How well did the study design work in practice?
• Did you have any problems with the data collection process?
• You used an existing research method and developed it further. Can you tell us why this further development was needed?
• What were the main ethical issues of conducting this research?
• How did you establish the limits around the scope of your data collection?

Analysis and findings

• Talk us through your method of analysis.
• Did you encounter any problems with applying this method of analysis?
• Do you think the data you collected were the most appropriate to answer yourresearch question, or are there any other data you would have liked to have collected?
• Can you describe your main findings in a few sentences?

Discussion

• If you were starting your research again now, are there any changes in the way you would plan it?
• You interpret these findings as . . .  Do you think there could be an argument forinterpreting them as . . . instead?
• You said in your thesis that . . .  Can you expand on that point?
• In what way do you consider your thesis to be original?

Conclusion/implications

• What are the research, practice, theoretical implications of your findings?
• How would you hope that this research could be followed up and taken further?

Stage 6: The outcome of the viva

Most people who reach the stage of the PhD viva will gain their PhD. However, it is very rare that a thesis will be passed without any changes being required. Almost everybody is asked to make minor or major amendments. Having got this far do not give up: the end is in sight.  The recommendations available to examiners at the University of Leicester are shown in Table 1, below.

Recommendation	How likely is this?	What you need to do
Immediate award of the degree without any changes being made to the thesis	Although this is possible, it is very rare	No further work needed
Award of the degree subject to minor amendments	This is a common result	Amendments to be made and submitted to theinternal examiner withinone month
Award of the degree subject to amendments	This is a common result	Amendments to be made within six months to the satisfaction of the internal and external examiner
Revision of the thesis and a requirement to resubmit	You may feel disappointed with this result but it is not uncommon and the vast majority of students go on to resubmit successfully	You may be required to rewrite substantial parts of the thesis and the revisions needed are not minor
Revision of the thesis and the requirement to resubmit for a lower degree	This happens rarely	Amendments need to be made as required for submission for lower degree
Award of a lower degree with or without minor amendments	This happens rarely	Amendments need to be made as required for submission for lower degree
Thesis failed with no right of resubmission	Very rare

Table 1: Possible outcomes of the viva at the University of Leicester

You may well take away from the viva a mix of positive and negative feelings. You may feel positive because you have passed the viva, but you may also feel negative because there is further work to be done on the thesis.

Don’t be surprised if you have some feeling of an anti-climax. Almost all candidates will have further work to do. You can be assured that getting through the viva is in itself something to celebrate.

Summary

• Remember to celebrate the submission of your thesis.
• You began preparing for your viva as soon as you started explaining your research to others.
• Find out your viva date and plan backwards from this in stages, with the aim of givingyourself time to think about your overall view of your work, as well as time to review the detail.
• Create a list of viva questions, including tricky ones, and practise answering them aloud, rather than just in your head.
• Aim to feel calm and well-prepared as you begin your viva. Remember not to take offence at any questions that seem confrontational.
• As well as preparing for celebration, be prepared for a feeling of anti-climax, especially as there is likely to be some re-writing to do.
• The vast majority of people who reach their viva will gain their PhD.

Useful reading

Murray, R. 2003: How to survive your viva. Maidenhead:Open University Press.

Rugg, G. & Petre, M. 2004: The unwritten rules of PhD research. Maidenhead:Open University Press.

Tinkler, P. & Jackson, C. 2004: The doctoral examination process: a handbook for students, examiners and supervisors. The Society for Research into Higher Education and Maidenhead:Open University Press.

Wellington, J., Bathmaker, A., Hunt, C., McCulloch, G. & Sikes, P. 2005: Succeeding withyour doctorate. London:Sage.