Peeling back the layers

I mentioned in my previous post that Thesis Whisperer, Professor Inger Mewburn from ANU, had written a post touching on her PhD research findings (here). That post linked a side issue she talked about with social construction; but I want to come back to a more central point that she made, which is how being focused on a particular outcome can blind us to what is actually going on - and which may end up being the more interesting story.

Through her PhD research, Inger found that, of the video footage gathered on gestures architects used in presenting:

"Later I found out that I had unwittingly only filmed, or kept footage of, the top performing students. I asked some of these students about their family background: of course, they had architects as parents. My theory is they learned to ‘talk architecture’ (which includes ways of gesturing ‘properly’) at the kitchen table.

"These people had an invisible advantage, one that possibly would last all the way through their career. This would have been a much better argument to further in my thesis than the kind of anodyne one I pushed about gesture being ‘important for teaching practice’. Since gesturing is a basic human trait, there’s a broader question about what role it plays in the commonly observed phenomen[o]n of children prospering in the same profession as their parents. Those ‘bad’ interactions, full of lingering silences and awkwardness were potentially far more interesting than the ones full of people talking and having a good time. But they were hard to make sense of, so I deleted them.

"I still kick myself about this oversight (Thesis Whisperer, 2025).

While I take Inger's point about seeking the wrong story in the data, I think it also takes a long time for us to truly see: and sometimes many years must pass for us to be able to peel back the layers. Reflection is a time skill: mastery accumulates, like patina on aged furniture from all the living going on around it. Our oversights are not something that we CAN see straight away; we are too close to the event to gain perspective. It time that allows us to see that s-l-o-w-l-y developing image of each more interesting story.

I suspect that most of us can only peel back the onion one layer at a time. 

Sam

References:

Thesis Whisperer. (2025 , May 1). The Power of No: Learning to Refuse in Difficult Times. https://thesiswhisperer.com/2025/05/01/the-power-of-no-learning-to-refuse-in-difficult-times/