Mentor-shape: exploring the mentoring relationships of Black women in doctoral programs

Using a Black Feminist Thought framework, this phenomenological study focused on lived experiences with mentoring relationships among 38 Black women in doctoral programs in multiple disciplines across universities in the United States. Although emerging studies on Black women in academia acknowledge the significance of mentorship and the reality of discrimination at the intersection of race and gender, the literature lacks empirical support pertaining to the formation and outcomes of mentoring relationships, specifically for Black women in doctoral education. Findings from this study suggested four central themes in the mentoring relationships among Black women in doctoral programs: (a) organic evolvement, (b) shared identity/mutual interest, (c) personal transformation and (d) increase in access and opportunity. Implications for future research, policy, practice and education across disciplines are offered.     

Does adviser mentoring add value? A longitudinal study of mentoring and doctoral student outcomes

This study of the impact of doctoral adviser mentoring on student outcomes was undertaken in response to earlier research that found (a) students with greater incoming potential received more adviser mentoring, and (b) adviser mentoring did not significantly contribute to important student outcomes, including research productivity [Green, S. G., and Bauer, T. N. (1995). Personnel Psychology 48(3): 537–561]. In this longitudinal study spanning 5 1/2 years, the effect of mentorship on the research productivity, career commitment, and self-efficacy of Ph.D. students in the ‘hard’ sciences was assessed, while controlling for indicators of ability and attitudes at program entry. Positive benefits of mentoring were found for subsequent productivity and self-efficacy. Mentoring was not significantly associated with commitment to a research career.     

Curriculum homeplacing as complicated conversation: (re)narrating the mentoring of Black women doctoral students

ABSTRACT

Through personal and dialogical narratives, we explore the ways Black women mentors (do not) reveal to their mentees their lived-experiences and the personal pain associated with the pursuit of careers in higher education; how and why their narratives of pain and pursuit are negotiated, sanctioned, and/or strategically altered; and the impact these decisions have on the development of Black women graduate students. Drawing on hooks’ notions of ‘imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy’ (2015), ‘radical honesty’ (2004), and ‘homeplace’ (1990), we deploy the concept of curriculum homeplacing to more critically examine Black women’s mentoring relationships.     

Isolation,resilience, and faith: Experiences of Black Christian students in biology graduate programs

To increase participation of students of color in science graduate programs, research has focused on illuminating student experiences to inform ways to improve them. In biology, Black students are vastly underrepresented, and while religion has been shown to be a particularly important form of cultural wealth for Black students, Christianity is stigmatized in biology. Very few studies have explored the intersection of race/ethnicity and Christianity for Black students in biology where there is high documented tension between religion and science. Since graduate school is important for socialization and Black students are likely to experience stigmatization of their racial and religious identity, it is important to understand their experiences and how we might be able to improve them. Thus, we interviewed 13 Black Christian students enrolled in biology graduate programs and explored their experiences using the theoretical lens of stigmatized identities. Through thematic content analysis, we revealed that students negotiated experiences of cultural isolation, devaluation of intelligence, and acts of bias like other racially minoritized students in science. However, by examining these experiences at the intersection of race/ethnicity and religion, we shed light on interactions students have had with faculty and peers within the biology community that cultivated perceptions of mistrust, conflict, and stigma. Our study also revealed ways in which students' religious/spiritual capital has positively supported their navigation through biology graduate school. These results contribute to a deeper understanding of why Black Christian graduate students are more likely to leave or not pursue advanced degrees in biology with implications for research and practice that help facilitate their success.     

The doctorate unbound: relationality in doctoral literacy research

What do literacy events look and feel like for doctoral students, and how do these events overlap intertextually, materially and relationally? The last three decades have seen a rapid diversification in doctoral education where new opportunities for study, combined with an increasingly competitive landscape, have disrupted what it means to undertake a doctorate, as well as reshaping the literacy practices that comprise doctoral experiences in new ways that have not been fully explored. To understand literacies in new ways, we put to work the construct of literacy-as-event, and engage ideas from assemblage theory, to theorise the relationality of literacy practices. Crucially, our study seeks to examine how literacies are emergent and entangled within a wider network of relations. This article draws on data from interviews involving critical incidents with 12 doctoral students, in order to unpack the literacy moments, beyond the thesis, that comprise students' experiences. Our data suggest that we can understand doctoral literacies, not as bounded occurrences, but as assemblages of practices. We contend that thinking with concepts of assemblage and of event offers new insights into the evolving experiences of doctoral students, as well as offering an enriched understanding of literacies and literacy research.     

The role of research education coordinators in building research cultures in doctoral education

The development of cultures of support has become important in programmes for the preparation of research students. The paper draws on in-depth interviews with 21 research education coordinators from Australian and UK institutions to identify the strategies that they use to build research cultures and integrate research students into them. Students’ research cultures are not always linked to departmental research cultures more generally. Local contexts and conditions and staff (including supervisors’) attitudes are found to be critical in how research education coordinators respond and what is considered possible in order to ensure that research students are involved in research cultures.     

Science education textbook research trends: a systematic literature review

The number of science education research papers has been rapidly rising in recent years. This number has been particularly influenced by researchers from non-English speaking countries who contribute to the field. With this number of papers, literature reviews gain in importance as they help researchers more easily orient themselves in problem areas. The authors of this study present a literature review on science textbook research. The importance of textbooks in education is indisputable, yet research in this field is surprisingly unbalanced between particular regions or states. In this paper, a review of 183 papers published between 2000 and 2018, indexed to the Web of Science database, is introduced. The results show that researchers in Europe and the USA focus on textbook research more than researchers elsewhere in the world. The textbooks most frequently researched on are science books for secondary schools. Textbook research consists mostly of analysing learning concepts and how concepts are integrated, non-textual elements in textbooks, visual representations, learning content or learning text analysis.     

Diversifying Kinesiology: Untapped Potential of Historically Black Colleges and Universities

Increasing the involvement of African Americans in the field of kinesiology has been an ever present issue. While many colleges and universities are making attempts to diversify their undergraduate students, graduate students, and faculty, many are finding this a difficult task due to the lack of minority undergraduate kinesiology majors pursuing advanced degrees. There is a body of evidence that suggests that kinesiology programs should find ways to recruit African American students to undergraduate and graduate programs as a basis for diversifying the field. The three related problems discussed in this article are: (a) how to attract quality African American physical education teacher education students to the field of kinesiology; (b) how to identify African American students with the potential to thrive in graduate level coursework; and (c) how to recruit exceptional African American students to participate in professional organizations, such as the National Association for Kinesiology in Higher Education (NAKHE). Ultimately, I provide suggestions for recruiting African Americans to the field of kinesiology and ideas for involving them professionally in NAKHE.     

African international doctoral students in New Zealand: Englishes,doctoral writing and intercultural supervision

While the experiences of international doctoral students, especially those from Asian countries, have been well researched, fewer studies have explored the experiences of African students in Southern countries like Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand. This article reports on doctoral writing and student and supervisor perspectives on English languages in a small study of supervisors and African students in New Zealand. It challenges deficit constructions of African students and illustrates how the growing internationalisation of higher education is adding to the complexities of doctoral writing, raising questions as to how students and supervisors recognise and navigate differences in Englishes and doctoral writing. It makes a number of recommendations about how supervisors might work effectively with African and other doctoral students.     

Imagined and emerging career patterns: perceptions of doctoral students and research staff

Increasingly, research staff positions rather than lectureships are the reality for social sciences PhD graduates wishing academic work. Within this context, our longitudinal study examined how social science doctoral students and research staff in two UK universities imagined their futures in and out of academia. The variation over time in how they viewed their futures is examined through the lens of identity-trajectory. The results emphasise how individuals balanced their academic intentions with social, personal and physical desires and constraints. The results also enrich understanding of early academic career experience and the conceptualisation of identity-trajectory. Research and policy implications are considered.     

Becoming researchers: doctoral students' developmental processes

A key step in the development of skills to conduct independent research is the ability to develop topics of interest into research studies that examine problems of significance in a field of study. This qualitative interview study conducted in the USA examined how seven novice qualitative researchers who had taken course work in qualitative research methods selected topics for research and developed these into studies for dissertation research. Findings identify processes contributing to novice researchers' abilities to conceptualize their topics as significant. These processes include recognizing the need to integrate their interests in existing disciplinary fields, learning that occurred through the practice of fieldwork, applying guidance from advisors and committee members, and developing a deeper understanding of the relationship of their studies to existing research. The paper suggests points of tension for new scholars in the development of research topics, exploring how doctoral supervisors and instructors might assist students in learning how to design and conduct qualitative studies for doctoral research.     

More than just a brain: emotions and the doctoral experience

While the epistemological and ontological challenges faced by doctoral candidates are well documented, the same cannot be said of the emotional dimensions of the journey. This paper draws on Activity Theory in exploring the role of emotion in the longitudinal doctoral learning experiences of six international PhD candidates studying in Australia. Analysis reveals that writing and supervision practices are common sites of tension but that the prevailing culture of silence militates against systemic change.     

Black First-Generation Social Work Doctoral Students

Black students are underrepresented in doctoral programs in social work, and the disparity calls for greater attention to the preparation of such students for doctoral programs. Toward this goal, this article examines the sociocultural influences on the matriculation of Black students in social work who are the first in their family to pursue a doctoral degree. The author expands on the general concept of first-generation college students to capture a more inclusive population of students who may be equally disadvantaged in doctoral programs in social work. The author also identifies strategies social work faculty and administrators can use to facilitate the entry and achievement of Black students in the doctoral pipeline.     

The benefits of publishing systematic quantitative literature reviews for PhD candidates and other early-career researchers

Universities increasingly expect students to publish during a PhD candidature because it benefits the candidate, supervisor, institution, and wider community. Here, we describe a method successfully used by early-career researchers including PhD candidates to undertake and publish literature reviews – a challenge for researchers new to a field. Our method allows researchers new to a field to systematically analyse existing academic literature to produce a structured quantitative summary of the field. This method is a more straightforward and systematic approach than the traditional ‘narrative method’ common to many student theses. When published, this type of review can also complement existing narrative reviews produced by experts in a field by quantitatively assessing the literature, including identifying research gaps. The method can also be used as the initial step for further analysis, including identifying suitable datasets for meta-analysis. Students report that the method is enabling and rewarding.     

Generic qualitative dissertations in counselor education: A content analysis

We conducted a content analysis of generic qualitative counseling dissertations (GQR; N = 70), examining their methodological justifications, coherence, and trustworthiness. Dissertations authors often presented vague methodological justifications. Findings have implications for constructing methodological justifications, integrating relevant literature, and awareness of how GQR compares to other qualitative methodologies.     

Invalidated identities: The disconfirming effects of racial microaggressions on Black doctoral students in STEM

Black students face repeated racial microaggressions that may challenge their mental health and academic performance in engineering doctoral programs. Researchers attribute this to stereotypes and institutional climates that juxtapose their STEM and racial identities as incongruent. In this article, we analyzed the perceptions of environmental, behavioral, and verbal racial microaggressions of 33 Black doctoral students and postdocs, with a focus on their interactions with non-Black peers. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with Black doctoral students from 11 Predominantly White Institutions in the United States. To analyze the experiences of our participants, we utilized two theoretical frameworks: Racial microaggressions and identity nonverification. Across the interviews, participants described various forms of racial microaggressions that greatly challenged their sense of belonging and identities as engineers. This research affirms the need to develop initiatives at the departmental and institutional levels to encourage more inclusive spaces for diverse students in STEM doctoral programs and to combat the types of exclusionary practices found in this study.     

20世纪90年代以来美国博士教育的问题与改革

美国博士教育虽处于国际顶尖水平,但随着其社会经济的发展及政治需求的变化,到20世纪90年代,美国博士教育出现完成学位时间长、博士生辍学率高而导致博士教育高损耗现象,其原因是博士教育培养目标与社会需求不协调、资金不足、课程质量低劣和就业指导缺乏。对此,大学和博士教育研究机构采取了相应的改革措施。     

Widening participation to doctoral education and research degrees: a research agenda for an emerging policy issue

Widening participation is on the political agenda but, to date, policy, practice and research has focused on undergraduate education. This article identifies an emerging widening participation focus on doctoral education. Using England as a case study, the article examines this development within the context of the long-standing concern with equity in education, before reviewing the relatively small literature addressing who participates (and why) in doctoral and more general postgraduate education. An analysis of Widening Participation Strategic Assessments produced in 2009 by 129 English Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) reveals an emergent institutional awareness of this new development. Finally, a research agenda for widening participation to research degrees, focusing on research students, HEIs and policy-makers, is outlined. The conclusion calls for this agenda to be pursued at institutional, national and cross-national levels so that future policy can be made and implemented on the basis of a robust evidence base.     

Peer to peer support: the disappearing work in the doctoral student experience

This paper reflects on the importance of study groups in contributing to a positive postgraduate experience and explores specific concepts, such as ‘disappearing behaviours’ in contrasting the ‘official’ languages of universities with the beneficial behaviours found through study groups. Additionally the paper advocates the systematic inclusion of strategies such as study groups in the postgraduate experience. Funding arrangements and research frameworks for higher education in Australia focus on student progress and completion, as well as comparison of research quality within and between universities. As a result, there is a significant emphasis on timely completion of postgraduate degrees. This paper posits that there is an apparent contradiction between the indicators of success in this area, such as completion rates and annual progress reports and the positive contribution that study groups can make to the doctoral student experience.