I am framing my dissertation as a “pilgrimage”. Yes, this is a “journey” but a special kind of journey and one more meaningful for me given where I’ve some from, where I am, and were I may be going.
McCulloch, A. (2013). The quest for the PhD: A better metaphor for doctoral education. International Journal for Researcher Development, 4(1), 55–66. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJRD-05-2013-0008
- KF – McCullough writes how the most commonly used metaphor – “the journey” is “too simple”, proffering “the Quest” as an alternative.
- Neither is appealing to me but I agree that helping “to understand and to make sense of their experience, [is] one of the key functions of metaphor” – my PhD experience is best described through the metaphor of “pilgrimage”.
- KF: McCullough dismisses the “journey” metaphor
- “too simple relatively predictable… too routinized”
- “not particularly generative, being descriptive rather than heuristic”
- too linear
“Metaphor works by bringing “into cognitive and emotional relation any two separate domains, using language appropriate to the one as a lens for seeing the other” (Haynes, 1975, p. 275)
“metaphors operate at two different levels, “the comparison level and the interactive level. The latter is not mere comparison, but the whole eureka process which, in bringing together the hitherto unconnected gives a new insight which belongs to neither” (Haynes, 1975, p. 273)
- KF: my pilgrimage reflects the other penitents I’ve met along the way
- KF; the affective element of my doctoral education has been central; I haven’t thought my way through this, I have felt my way through this, guided by my heart more than my head.
- Brown states, “(t)he idea that learning is an intellectual pursuit separate from emotional processes has long been dismissed as nonsense” (Brown, 2009, p. 9).
- Haynes argues that metaphors “offer a meta-dialogue concerning the researcher, the process of research, relationships with self and others involved with them in this lived experience”