On Saturday, 13th April 2019 we ran a hands-on webinar on Mirroring as a means to build up your thesis. As it turned out this seemed to be a quite popular topic with lively discussion.

To all those that didn’t make it let me flag one of the key out takes: Mirroring can be a key to REDUCING THE TIME: ‘time to problem understanding’, ‘time to results’, ‘time to key literature’, ‘time to methodology crafting’, ‘time to write the thesis up’, and ultimately ‘time wasted’.

Take a look at the image below to see for yourself how mirroring can guide you.

The point here is that the webinar has made me, myself, more aware on how I have evolved to use mirroring in my own work and as part of the feedback that I provide. If I recall correctly, I used mirroring only by accident once undertaking my PhD, and only at the very end [which perhaps contributed to this being a rather hard and long journey…]. I also used it to support my wife Ana in her PhD journey yet it still did not produce significant short-cuts [and so her journey was equally hard and long…]. However, looking back at my thesis and Ana’s thesis, it is clear from the outset that Ana’s thesis excels in clarity and preciseness [or at least when compared to mine…]. Look at the below images to see how well her table of content and sections align and relate to each other. The colour coding will guide you, demonstrating the alignment.

This shows the early signs on the utility of using mirroring. Several hundred doctoral students later and the double-looped feedback that comes with this, I have to notice how mirroring can be applied at the various stages of the thesis research process and in a number of ways.

Looking at two examples of the application of mirroring: In our advanced course on ‘Tackling Wicked Problems – or how to nail jelly to the wall!’ the course has been structured in a way that promotes mirroring. Judging from the learning taking place in the first edition this worked out quite well as it resulted in excellent learning amongst the participants [as well as excellent feedback and evaluation of the utility of what was learnt and achieved].

Likewise, we use mirroring in our mentoring and coaching services and here we can see how it allows our students to quickly juggle in between Chapter 1 research problems and research questions, and Chapter 4 findings and stakeholder engagement, and with a targeted touch in back to the methodology and key literature sources (in Chapters 2 and 3). Thus far the students have progressed well.

If you are interested in learning more about mirroring, be it as part of our advanced courses, through mentoring or coaching, or at one of our workshops and residencies, then please reach out to us!

Following is a sample of the slides from the webinar. The full slide set is available here.

The next webinar will held at 12noon (UK/GMT time) on 11th May 2019, covering ‘Quantitative Data Analysis’. Register here for this next or one of the upcoming webinars and advanced courses.