Our Mission
We think, firstly, that as retired teachers, academics, non-practicing teachers and academics and educators we have a wealth of knowledge in contemporary subject areas and specialisms, and that we possess skills, competences and experiences which we have acquired in our respective fields over decades of practice. And secondly, we think that retirement does not mean that we are no longer willing or are unable to teach, supervise, mentor and advice students, design and conduct and disseminate quality research in our fields.
Therefore our mission is as follows:
- To create a platform that would enable us to connect with global communities of teachers, academics, educators and students.
- To enable us to accept knew challenges and engage in intercultural dialogues on an expanding global educational landscapes.
- To provide a platform to discuss and disseminate our research freely without let and hindrance.
- To create a platform from which we could share our specialisms, expertise, skills, competences and experiences with up and coming teachers, academics and educators.
- To establish professional relationships with individuals, groups, institutions and organisations, be they in public or private practice and/or sectors, in order to create a basis that will enable us to continue to play constructive roles in our areas of specialisms and expertise.
What we do
We do not seek to replace or supplant institution-based teachers, academics, tutors, supervisors, mentors and advisors.
But in our experience significant proportion of students who enrol on post-graduate programmes, particularly the degree of Doctorate of Philosophy (PhD), encounter serious problems and many do not subsequently go on to complete their degrees.
The reasons why PhD students do not go on to complete their degrees are many and interwoven and these reasons do have combined consequences for completion rates. However among the myriads of problems reported by PhD students two fundamental problems stood out. The first problem was poorly defined research focus and hypotheses, unclear and ill-defined research aims and objectives, proposals, research questions and more importantly feeble and badly researched literature reviews. The second reason was institutional culture which categorises PhD supervisors as teachers: there are no ‘impact factor’ and hence no accolades to be won in teaching. ‘Impact factor’ and accolades lay in research and journal publications. Thus PhD tutors often have to balance the need to research and publish against the needs of their PhD students. The latter often take a back seat.
Teachers and emeritus educators do not have ready made poultice to apply to the above problems, but we think we could and are able to do the following:
- We will provide online mentoring, tutoring, advice and supervision to PhD students during the following critical stages in their research:
The design and development of research proposals, focus and hypotheses
Definition of research aims and objectives
Literature reviews
Methodological approaches
Design and development of research instruments
Data analysis
The structure of dissertations and theses
Scope
We think that all students should have access to our resources, specialisms, expertise, skills, competences and experiences. Therefore the term students mean the following:
- PhD students
- Master’s degree students
- Undergraduate students
- Level 3 students: Advanced level and National Diploma