University of London Institute of Education - a good place for a PhD?

Two of my colleagues are currently doing part-time doctorates in education with the IoE and they invited me to an event where IoE students in Tokyo presented their current research. Professor Paul Dowling was there to answer questions too. I got a chance to ask several people, including Paul, about the process of application and the "tortuous" challenge of getting the disseration done, especially on a part-time basis while teaching full-time.

Most of the advice I had heard before, but it was good to hear it again:
-Make sure you know what your research passion is
-Design a small, realistic project for researching that passion
-Try to find a good supervisor for the research
-Make a solid financing plan
-Be ready to dump your social life and neglect your family (My interpretation)

So, Mark, what's the plan? Decisions, decisions.
-I have many research interests, but what's my research passion? How in the world do you decide that?
-Which school is best for that research area/approach?
-Do I go full time (and break the bank) or go part time (and try to balance job and degree)?
-Do I go to a US program with course requirements (which I kind of feel I need), or a British program which is mainly just the disseration?
-Do I wait until...

Mark

Black Gold - A film about coffee and fair trade

http://www.blackgoldmovie.com/



I picked this up at Tsutaya and felt it was very valuable to watch. I'm not very knowledgeable of the fair trade movement (need to educate myself) and this short 78 minute film helped me get some understanding of the effects of international trade on farmers in developing countries.

But will I make sure to buy Fair Trade Coffee now? Unfortunately, the film was not as compelling as it might have been. As a beginner in the concept of "fair trade" purchases, I found myself confused as to what I was supposed to be persuaded by. It sounds nice, but how exactly does it work...and does it?

Yes, I think I believe that multinational corporations in the US and EU tie up with their government trade offices to maximize profits at the expense of developing countries, basically disregarding the need to set up a system that will help poverty stricken areas of the world gain some stability for minimum needs such as food, water and literacy. Improvements in corporate social responsibility seem needed very much. I imagine those companies see business and charity was different things and try to be as cut-throat in business as they can get away with. It is the way businesses are.

Also, the fact that farms in developed countries are subsidized to a point that developing countries suffer from low international commodity prices seems in need of reform. The WTO seems to be a political tool for powerful countries to impose their will on poorer countries.

However...how does buying a slightly more expense package that says "fair trade coffee" exactly work in terms of helping the farmers' cooperative in Ethiopia that this film portrays? It sounds like a good idea to eliminate the various middlemen that take their cuts, but how does that exactly work? Also, since "fair trade" sounds awefully good to the responsible consumer, many big coffee companies like Starbucks are jumping on the bandwagon and advertising that they serve free trade coffee. Is that working at all? By the way, Starbucks was implicated in the movie in a confusing way--was it contributing to poverty or wealth in Ethiopia?? Not clear to me. I may have missed something since my infant daughter decided to vie for my attention around that part.

Need to get an informative resource about trade and efforts to eradicate poverty in developing countries. I have no doubt that fortunate countries/people need to be doing more to help less fortunate countries/people. The question is what.

Wine and culture on Fridays

One of my colleagues in an office nearby introduced the idea of a wine party to wind down and share teaching ideas on Friday afternoons and I've enjoyed three or four to date.

The interesting thing for me is that these parties have a non-Japanese, English-speaking country crowd-US, British, Aussie mostly. Having been socialized through high school in Japan and mostly hanging out with Japanese persons in college and past jobs, I tend to find it difficult to keep up--in terms of topics of interest, vocabulary, turn-taking speeds, cultural background needed for jokes etc. I always end up feeling like I'm a bystander rather than a participant in the conversation. Very difficult to take the floor and chip in at the pace things go.

But the amount I learn is amazing--books, films, theories I've never heard of, and since I know all members well enough as colleagues and they know (mostly) I'm a native speaker of Japanese with a bicultural background, they don't seem to mind too much when I interrupt to ask dumb questions. Of course, it's not just where I grew up. All of these colleagues are just well-read, well-travelled people.

For example, the other day the conversation turned to the influence of the Jewish vote on US politics and it felt like all the Brits and Aussies at the table knew more about US politics than I did. Also, I'm learning that it is probably not a matter of how much you read/watch as much as how critically and selectively you read/watch, and having a chance to talk with people about what you read/watch.

So, here's to looking forward to more wine on Fridays.

Happy New Year! Goals for 2009--hopefully!

5 Goals for 2009

1. Keep blogging on my Learning Blog! I'm doing this mainly for my own reflection and won't worry too much about quality of content or readability. In general, develop my personal learning environment with my Google tools and Delicious bookmarks.

2. Read with my kids! I hope to keep up an almost daily pace of reading English books with my almost 6 year old son and almost 2 year old daughter. I've gotten a bit inconsistent on this.

3. Run 2 marathon races to keep fit. I'll do the Tokyo Marathon in March, but I want to do another one in the autumn.

4. Develop my research on how "confidence" develops in learning to speak a foreign language and how goal-setting, self-recording/analysis, reflection, and other active learning skills can contribute to that. Write two papers and make two presentations on that--hopefully. Explore PhD programs for this.

5. Get a babysitter so Meg and I can get away from the kids!

An excellent library, but do students know how to use it?

ICU's library is voted as No.1 or No.2 among all Japanese university libraries year after year. I feel the resources in the library are satisfactory for most purposes, the staff are dedicated and friendly, and the facilities are comfortable. Today, my research paper writing class for 2nd year students had an orientation about how to use databases for finding sources, and the library staff gave a nicely planned overview of how to do key word searches and obtain relevant texts. The reminder about being critical of information was good too.

The main need for improvement on today's orientation was "interactivity". The lecture with PowerPoint was full of useful content, but the engagement of the students seemed low. I think the best solution is to put all resources on a website as a How to manual so that students can access by themselves when they have a need. The overview can be a video or voice over slide show easily and that will help the library staff avoid making a droning presentation to a large room of semi-engaged students. The interactive resources will be valuable for all students, not just the ones who enroll in the research writing class - so good luck ICU library! You're doing a good job! (I wrote this to them in Japanese already in the comment section of today's orientation )

Since I'm blogging about this, I should note that the library needs to be open more, like on Sundays, holidays, and later at night and on Saturday (they shut down at 4:30pm on Saturdays and are not open at all on Sunday - How are my students supposed to get their research done?)

Rabbit Proof Fence (Excellent-Please watch!)

http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1808396460/info
A colleague lent the DVD to me to watch as a possible fim to use for our curriculum unit on the concept of "race." I hope I can arrange for my students to watch this because it is a good illustration in film of how one race and culture assumes and imposes its superiority on another race. Based on a true story, it is painful to watch how blind and harmful the benign intentions of the "Protector" of Aborigines are as it tries to breed out aboriginal blood by forcefully removing "half-caste" children from their mothers.

Training for Tokyo Marathon 2009

>Dear Mr. MARK CHRISTIANSON. [ID - 0849]
Congratulations! You have been selected to run the Tokyo Marathon 2009.

I'm in! http://www.tokyo42195.org/2009/index_e
Despite lottery odds of 7.5 to 1, I got lucky again for the second year in a row and am scheduled to run the big one with 35,000 others on March 22nd. Strangely lucky? Or does the committee have a policy of letting non-Japanese skip the lottery? All three of my regular Japanese running buddies failed to get in.

Now I need to get serious after staying off most running for most of November due to a painful ligament problem in my left foot. I'm not 100% yet, but had no problem with a one hour run yesterday. Fortunately, university is out for Spring break from late Feb, so I should be able to get plenty of miles in.

My running plan and time goal? Last year's time was 4h 57min, so anything less than that would be nice. Need to drop some weight and increase distances gradually 10~15km in Dec, 15~20km in Jan, 20~25km in Feb, and do some 30km runs in March before cooling down in the previous week. Something like this.