After 14 hours by plane and 5 hours by train for me to reach the red wooden house on the top of the Niinikumpu hill is always a special moment. We always arrive by car from the railway station which is about 10 km away. We enter the garden through two very old and high pine trees and see the house front door of the house. It more than 10 years now that I come […]
The main difference this year compared to other years is the silence that surrounds our mökki. Actually this is not correct. There is a noise and is is the one of the wind. But that’s it. No others. This is particularly evident at the sunset, the twilight which lasts until about ten in the evening. This is the sauna time. So when walking to the sauna to the lake shore. I look at the still […]
Mi sento un po’ come uno dei personaggi di un racconto di Haruki Murakami. Sono le 5:44 del mattino. Mi giro e rigiro da un po’ nel letto senza successo: il sonno se ne e’ andato. Il fuso orario che non si e’ ancora adeguato all’Europa. I pensieri. Non so. Mi alzo. Metto l’orologio al polso. Cammino sulla punta dei piedi per evitare che il pavimento di legno scricchioli troppo e svegli Venla. Scendo in […]
The Complexity of Decentralisation Reforms (Paperback) by Arnaldo Pellini This book analyses the characteristics of community participation in Cambodian rural schools. It looks at the spaces for participation created by the decentralisation reforms that the government of Cambodia has undertaken in the education sector through two main policies: school clustering and Priority Action Programme. While institutionalised spaces of participation created by these policies are relatively new, Cambodian communities, despite twenty five years of political turmoil, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
The marathon is almost over. The PhD dissertation is now back in Tampere to be edited for the book and web pubblications. It gives an odd feeling to be so close to the end and to see, at the same time, that the day of the public defense is real and approaching quickly. In the next days I will post some of my reflections on the process of writing a PhD dissertation that I hope […]