Photos & Words

Conclusion

Though this dissertation is not over yet, I must admit that from the day I wrote the last word and got the overall feedback on the manuscript I feel relieved. Overall, I can say that after some initial difficulties I found my own pace in the writing. This was helped by setting clear deadlines and the number of pages for each chapter. One important lesson from this experience has been about the importance of being precise, a problem I have because I tend to be carried away by ideas and thoughts. The dissertation has taught me the necessary patience required to check, re-check, and check once more information, data, and text (and hope not be proved wrong here).

Some more general comments I would like to add here are the following:
• Beside Prof. Takala comments, feedback, and questions on the overall structure, content, and academic standards, I found also useful to remain in touch with colleagues and friends in Cambodia who provided feedback on the accuracy of specific sections of the thesis such as, for example, the correct reference to laws and sub-decrees regulating decentralisation in Cambodia or the recent history of the country. These comments have also helped to find new references and sources.
• David Ayres, who is one of the main reference in my thesis because of his research con education and state formation in Cambodia, has poof checked the whole manuscript. This means that one more person has red the whole thesis and has makes the correction in the English language.

• All the writing took place at the University, either in the library or in the PC labs. This created sometimes logistical problems with books and articles that were solved by occupying two or three lockers at a time. Nevertheless, coming to the University every day has provided the regular schedule and rhythm that I need when working.

I can certainly agree now with the description by Simon Down about the intensity of the process, particularly due to the deadline set by the birth of my daughter in November. After crossing the finish line of the Tampere marathon, I remember that my first thought was: “I did it”. Followed by: “never again!” But then the days and weeks passed, the legs recovered, and I started again to go for some evening runs. I know that next year I will look again for a half marathon to participate to. Similarly, once I wrote the last word of the dissertation I felt happy that most of it was over. However, I know that, without going back to the whole doctoral research process, at some point in the near future I will look again for materials and resources to learn more about development and to write a chapter in a book or an article in a journal. Therefore rather than a point of arrival, this dissertation represents a point of departure.

30 – 42 km: legs feel the distance, but you can’t stop at this point

The positive feedback on Chapter Five gave new energy to continue with Chapter Four, the research methodology section. The description of the personal context and research activities was relatively easy to write, what I found more difficult, as you already know from my previous presentations, has been the justification of the qualitative methodology and the link with the dual role researcher – project advisor. Without going back to it, I can say how I tried to overcome this difficulty that has been with me all along. First of all, I found very useful some of the reference on the principle of qualitative research and the role of the researcher in participatory research I got from the TAMCESS “Theory of Social Science” course I followed last May and from Virve Lapinlampi and Anne-Mari Raivo presentation in our seminar. Secondly, I used a comment by Nelli Piattoeva made some years ago to describe the advantages and shortcomings of the two roles for the research process.

Only after the feedback on Chapter Four I started to see the end; like passing the 35 km sign and realising that the kilometres left to the end of the race are now one digit numbers.

I began with the conclusions, Chapter Six, until I realised that what I was writing could also be part of the introduction. I left the chapter half done and moved to Chapter One, the introduction. This helped to avoid repetitions, leave for the end real conclusions and suggestions, and limited the use of references in the final chapter. Working on the Introduction and Conclusions, I felt the pressure of being short, clear, and avoid repetitions with other parts of the dissertations. Since these are probably the parts that people will be most likely to read, they are also the ones I revised the most and where I had to struggle the most with the language.

20 – 30 km: legs feel heavy and tired

The time between mid-June and the end of August has been certainly the hardest. Maybe because of the summer, or because the World Cup kept me awake almost every night till late, or because in the desert landscape eat the University with just two or three people in the PC lab working on their dissertations, or maybe because this was also the part were I wondered whether my data would make sense.

I started by organising the data. I numbered interviews and personal observations, divided them into four categories, and entered them in an Excel spreadsheet: Cambodian background, education background, civil society, and community participation. This helped me to have clear categories and reference numbers to refer to in the text. I then went through the interviews and observation in each category to gather also some numbers out of the qualitative data. I listed, for example, all people who said that the main contribution in schools is labour, or that the school-community committees exist on paper but do not work in reality, etc. With regard to the checklist (questionnaires) I used to interview School Association members, I soon realised that Excel was useless for the analysis. I began to work with SPSS, a programme I never used before. In doing so, I found it extremely useful to communicate with a friend working in the GTZ project in Kampong Thom who is also working on a PhD in rural development and who is very knowledgeable with SPSS. He helped me to improve the data entry structure and suggested in some cases the most appropriate analysis. Having said that, I must admit that during these months I had to struggle to keep going as the work with data entry, analysis, and table/charts layout progressed very slowly. Though I derived the most useful information for the dissertation, I did not enjoy it as mush as other parts of the thesis probably because the analysis of data helped to prove a point rather than to discover new things.

0 – 20 km: start slowly, find your pace.

The first step of the writing process has been the preparation of the dissertation outline with number of chapters, an estimated number of pages, and the main references to be used in the different sections. I found this initial step easy since the articles and project reports I had already written helped to think the dissertation structure. I have to admit that I started with too much optimism and though that the dissertation would be over in six months.

I decided to begin with the theoretical part, Chapter Two, since this was the section where I had less references and material. I started by reviewing literature on three main topics: development and the role of the state, rationale of decentralisation reforms and the decentralisation of education with specific focus on school governance / school based management, and social capital theory. Following my supervisors, Prof. Tuomas Takala, suggestion to include experiences from other parts of the developing world, I also review some literature on community participation in schools from Africa and Latin America, and other Asian countries.

While I definitely enjoyed reading new material, I had also to struggle not to get pulled too far from the research topic or drawn under the amount of information at my disposal here at the University. In other words, I had to put my initial optimism under control and find the right pace between writing, literature review, and time constraints. Nevertheless, this has been the part I enjoyed the most because of the many new things I learned which made me realise how much more there is to explore on this topic.
Chapter Three, on the history of Cambodia and its human development, gave me the chance to take my mind off the theory and travel back to Cambodia. For this section I used information included in my previous publications, particularly on the history of the country. I used two or three weeks to collect the most updated human development data from internet databases and drawing the charts and figures that would help to reduce the amount of text of the chapter. In the end I had to rush to meet the deadline for submission and to limit the historical information as well as data on the decentralisation reform and human development of Cambodia. I also struggled with the structure of the chapter. The final version that you can see at the end of this paper is quite different from the early drafts. For example, initially I wanted to link the history with the section on community, but in the end I decided to separate them and move the description of community to the end of the chapter by including more specific descriptions of kinship, patronage and Buddhism. I felt, in fact, that I had not explained sufficiently basic things such as how pagodas look like, who is working in them, the role of elderly people, what kind of links exist between people in the villages, etc.

During ten months, from February to November 2006, I have been writing my doctoral dissertation at the University of Tampere. Simon Down, a lecturer from the University of Newcastle who gave a presentation in a two day seminar at the University of Vaasa in April 2006, described the PhD as the most intense period of the academic life of an individual. During those months I have been thinking about a metaphor that could describe this intensity and the various moments of alternate mood that inevitably accompany writing of a doctoral dissertation. One metaphor that in my opinion provides the best illustration of the process and its difficulties is a marathon. Both are lonesome activities. Both alternate moments of great excitement with low points where one has to find new strength. Both need training and preparation. In both cases starting does not secure the crossing of the finish line. .
My aim here to present, using the marathon as a metaphor, some thoughts about the writing process. The table below presents the three main stages as well as the sequence of the chapters. It also refers to different moments of the race to describe the mood and feelings that accompanied the process at those particular times and which are described in more details in the next sections.