Deconstructing the Intercultural Learning of a Doctoral Group Undertaking Qualitative Research—Or how not to do a ‘White PhD’

Abstract

This article looks at the intellectual and linguistic dilemmas of an international doctoral group and juxtaposes these with some of the existential challenges the group faces. The intention is to offer a kind of ‘dialectical tacking’ between doctoral thinking and doctoral experiences more broadly. The overall aim of the piece is to think in front of each other while developing a sense of ‘equality’ in relation to group contributions. Each of the excursions into research in this article enacts different approaches to research thinking – comparative, inductive, deductive, dialectical and deconstructive. In this piece, the voices of the tutors (Stronach and Frankham) are mostly dominant, but further publication will shift that balance significantly towards the voice of the doctoral student. We begin with an empirical detail that highlights the nature of some of the problems of cultural and linguistic translation.