Thinking Tools: Navigating a Three-Year Phd Journey

By Rahinah Ibrahim

The Thinking Tools is a self-help book for preparing doctoral students towards navigating a 3-year PhD journey. It will help new doctoral candidates who just realized how overwhelming things are once the journey started. It also enlightens those doctoral students who are thinking about quitting the journey because the end never seems to be in sight. Based on the author’s ethnography study, the book points out key misconceptions at different research design phases, which are detrimental to postgraduates from developing countries due to differences in their learning cultures. The book includes several unconventional tips such as for fast critical writing and avoidance of research methodology thinking until after completion of rigorous literature review. The Thinking Tools book is a systematic compilation of selected simple tools for helping graduate students develop their understanding about the complex doctoral study. Kicking off with an emotional problem identification, the author introduces the innovative RQ Constructs formulae for developing novel inquiries. She details how this inquiry concept helps visualise the critical linkages among key research methodology components to ensure a doctoral qualification. The tools have proven to accelerate critical thinking competency if followed well by the doctoral students with some guidance from their supervisors.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing Singapore
• Release date: Dec 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9781543757736

Rahinah Ibrahim

Malaysian scholar, Rahinah Ibrahim, is the first known person to clear her name from the United States’s No-fly List in 2014. During the 9 years fighting for justice, she developed easy tools for postgraduates from developing countries to excel in impactful knowledge creation based on her experience at Stanford University.

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Copyright © 2020 by Rahinah Ibrahim.

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Contents

Foreword

Preface

Acknowledgements

Testimonies

Dedication

PART ONE Happiness Lies in

Discovering Knowledge

1    Navigating Knowledge Discovery

–   Exploring Uncharted Knowledge Territories

Part Two: Fundamentals of The Eagle Table

2    Problem Statement

–   Finding a Meaningful Problem to Pursue

3    Research Questions Construct (RQ Construct)

–   The Who, What, and How Constructs in an Inquiry

4    Main Research Question

–   Deciding on a Five-Year versus Twenty-Year Knowledge Contribution

5    Sub Research Questions (Sub RQ)

–   Mobilizing Actions for Each RQ Construct

Part Three: Planning and

Developing The Eagle Table

6    Research Objectives

–   Aiming for the Appropriate Results

7    Inquiry Strategy (IS)

–   Manipulating the RQ Towards the Preferred Research Methodology

8    Expected Results

–   Capturing Data from Activities with Purpose

9    Expected Knowledge Contribution

–   Affirming a Doctoral Graduation

Part Four:Presenting The Eagle Table

10    Completing the Research Design Framework Table

–   Fitting All the Research Components Together

11    Visualizing Structured Knowledge Flows

–   A Workflow towards Doctoral Qualification

12    Presenting an Innovative Research Abstract

–   Writing a Big High-Impact Picture about the Research Proposal

Part Five: Stepping Off with The Right Footing

13 Getting On with the Actual Research

–   Being Smart to Work Smart Always

Foreword

The vision to achieve a developed nation status at the start of the twenty-first century saw the Malaysian education landscape transformed and experiencing unprecedented growth. Universiti Putra Malaysia was not left behind in this pursuit. While still upholding its agricultural excellence foundation and background, the university forged ahead by introducing new educational programmes. With that came the need to develop its own progressive intellectual human capability to handle the challenges of the Knowledge Age. Calls were made for young academicians to pursue their doctoral studies at the top six universities in the world, and Rahinah Ibrahim, a lecturer at the Faculty of Design and Architecture, became the first PhD scholar of the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation of Malaysia to attend the prestigious School of Engineering at Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, United States, in the year 2000.

The university is proud to record Professor Ibrahim’s achievements in academia. Being awarded the Top Research Scientists Malaysia 2012 and 2018 by the Academy of Sciences Malaysia and the National Academic Award 2013 by the Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia are testaments to her leadership in design research and innovations. This book, Thinking Tools: Navigating a Three-Year PhD Journey, is her legacy for the people of Malaysia. The prospect of finishing a high-quality doctoral study in less than three years is no longer impossible for students from developing nations. I applaud her innovative visually structured technique to assist novice researchers in breaking through the often confusing PhD intellectual maturity more quickly. I recommend this book to those who are starting their PhD journeys and to those who are still struggling in completing those journeys.

Academician Emeritus Professor

Tan Sri Dato’ Dr. Syed Jalaludin Syed Salim

Pro Chancellor, Universiti Putra Malaysia

Preface

I worked so hard for three years to find my elusive doctoral research question. In a decisive supervisory committee meeting, I was let down to learn that what I had presented was not acceptable. So much had been done, yet somehow, my efforts were insufficient. My supervisory committee estimated it would take me another two years to satisfy the doctoral requirements. That was a humbling experience, because I thought I knew all about PhD requirements.

What seemed to be the worst event in my whole doctoral study, however, turned out to be a blessing. Reality struck. I realized that what I had done for the past three years could not support my journey to a successful end: graduation. This aha realization forced a new energy into my way of working, thinking, writing, reading, and discussion.

Just a month after that milestone committee meeting, the committee members approved my dissertation’s research question. The next six months saw me passing the comprehensive exam, and six months later, I completed all the data collection and analyses. I was ready to finalize the last two chapters of my dissertation. So what actually happened in that one month following my committee meeting?

I had the opportunity to reflect on the magic of that one month after my return from Stanford University. What did I do right, and what did I not do right the previous three years? Most importantly, what did I do in that magical one month? I often asked myself, If those matters had been taken care of earlier, could I have graduated faster than I did?

I was assigned the RSB5001 Research Methodology in Design course for graduate students after I returned to work. Much to my chagrin, I started seeing similar horrors to those of my first three years repeated among the students—and more so, since mature professionals do not like critical reading, and critical writing is not similar to technical reporting. Considering all the uncertainties and complexities of tying loose ends together, the goal did not seem so near after a while.

Efforts to arrest potential disastrous outcomes due to misconceptions about necessary actions gradually, through the years, turned into an instructional approach. Together with all the students in the course, I gradually developed a methodology to overcome major issues I believed had put natural brakes on the speed of completing a complex process. The improvements were documented and content made easier for meeting instructional objectives each semester. The ethnography skill I gained in my doctoral work helped me to construct and test the technique’s variants on different sets of students each semester. Results were further verified in several research-methodology training workshops. I finalised the Research Design Framework Table in 2009, and it went on to become what is now known as the EAGLE Table.

An international peer validation was needed for this Malaysian invention. The innovative technique was presented at the 10th European Conference on Research Methodologies in Business Studies in Caen, France. The paper was selected as one