PHENOMENOLOGICAL STUDY OF POSTGRADUATE RESEARCHERS EXPERIENCES OF NANOSCIENCE AND NANOTECHNOLOGY RESEARCH

Nanoscience and nanotechnology are considered as one of the important disciplines of the 21st century. The growth in nanoscience and nanotechnology area largely depends on researchers who have the necessary knowledge, skills and education to work in this area. Therefore education and training of undergraduate (science and engineering) students to become competent and aware in this scientific research area is a priority in higher education. The broad, complex and interdisciplinary character of nanoscience and nanotechnology research however makes the task challenging for the education systems. Given the above reasons, it is imperative that the education systems should identify the necessary knowledge, skills and competences required to work in this complex and multidisciplinary area and reform science curriculum and training programs in a more targeted manner to develop a skilled workforce for nanoscience and nanotechnology. With this background, the research in the paper is set out to identify the necessary knowledge, skills and competences required to successfully undertake nanoscience and nanotechnology research.
The research framework is qualitative and involves an examination of the lived experiences of the participants using phenomenological research tools. The participants are the postgraduate researchers pursuing doctoral studies in nanoscience and nanotechnology related research areas from different institutes and universities across Ireland. The participants are chosen in order to obtain a wide variation in terms of their undergraduate disciplines, research experience and area of research. The purpose of the phenomenological interviewing is to study in depth how the individual researcher experiences the phenomenon of ‘researching in nanoscience and nanotechnology area’. An examination of their lived experiences can lead to a broader understanding of how nanoscience and nanotechnology is perceived by the researchers and how they relate different elements of their undergraduate education and training to their research in nanoscience. The researchers’ experiences of ‘doing nanoscience research’ can also provide an insight of the knowledge, skills and competences necessary for nanoscience and nanotechnology research.
The pilot study demonstrated the success of the research framework to examine these factors from researchers’ experiences. Consequently, ten interviews amongst the forty proposed interviews have been carried out to date which further explore the researchers’ experiences about nanoscience research. The study so far could provide a closer view of the variations in the researchers’ perceptions about nanoscience and nanotechnology and the impact of their disciplines on these perceptions. The ongoing analysis also indicated a relation between the disciplinary skills and ability to learn the techniques and protocols used for nanoscale research and will be presented in the paper. Furthermore the studies are in progress to examine if the knowledge, skills and competences identified are unique for nanoscience and nanotechnology research.