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.     

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.     

Becoming an academic: the role of doctoral capital in the field of education

This paper draws on Bourdieu’s concepts of field, capital and habitus to examine the learning and enculturation of alumni of a Canadian PhD programme in the discipline of Education. We introduce the concept of doctoral capital to help explain how and why some PhD graduates go on to secure faculty positions and others do not. Our research suggests that certain existing and acquired academic practices, attributes, dispositions and behaviours collectively form a type of doctoral capital that alumni can then use in the academic marketplace.     

Bringing pedagogy to doctoral publishing

This article explores the role of publication in taking forward the work of the doctorate. Low publication rates from doctoral degrees have been noted as a problem in the quality of doctoral education for preparing students to participate in research cultures. At the same time there is ambivalence and some resistance among doctoral supervisors and candidates about the place of publication in doctoral work. This article argues that issues of writing and publication need to be systematically addressed within doctoral pedagogy. In a climate of increasing pressure to publish during and after candidature, pedagogies need to take up a more explicitly outward-looking stance, developing a stronger orientation to induction and participation in the world of peer-reviewed publication. These arguments are developed through two case studies that illustrate ways of supporting doctoral researchers to effectively recontextualise their dissertation writing for wider audiences.     

Positive and negative experiences related to doctoral study conditions

ABSTRACT

During their doctoral studies, students undergo an emotionally and intellectually intensive process involving a wide range of positive and negative experiences. This article analyses PhD students’ perceptions of the most positive and negative experiences related to doctoral study conditions. Previous researchers have primarily focused on analysing experiences that negatively affect doctoral work and have related these experiences to institutional, social and individual variables. However, little is known regarding positive experiences and how both positive and negative experiences are interpreted and related to variables connected with doctoral study, such as discipline, funding, enrolment type, and the stage of the doctoral process. In total, 1173 doctoral students from 56 Spanish universities completed an open-ended online survey. The findings indicate that opportunities for PhD students to communicate their scientific advances, receive expert feedback and interact with other researchers have a high positive influence on their doctoral journey. However, funding difficulties, particularly for students in the social sciences, and relationships with the research community, principally with the supervisor, were perceived as the main negative challenges. Experiences related to research design, data collection and analysis were perceived either negatively – primarily for mid-level students – or positively. These results should be considered in future doctoral programme policies to determine when, how and why to provide specific support during the doctoral process.     

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 learning alliance: ethics in doctoral supervision

This paper is concerned with the ethics of relationships in doctoral supervision. We give an overview of four paradigms of doctoral supervision that have endured over the past 25 years and elucidate some of their strengths and limitations, contextualise them historically and consider their implications for doctoral supervision in the contemporary university. Two common threads across the four paradigms are a view of doctoral supervision as pedagogical practice and that supervisors have primary responsibility for the supervision of doctoral students. We challenge these assumptions. In their place, we propose that the goal of doctoral supervision is praxis and that this involves a learning alliance between multiple institutional agents grounded in a relational ethics of mutual responsibility.     

Student researchers in the middle: using visual images to make sense of inclusive education

Using 'visual narrative' theoretically and practically, this paper explores issues of inclusive education, during a period of curriculum reform and renewal in Australia. In Australia, the middle years of schooling, Years 5 to 9, are well researched and known as a period when students disengage with learning and participation in schooling. Research in the middle years affirms the importance of engaging with 'student voice'. In this special edition, we are aiming to highlight how the use of visual imagery can be a rich source of understanding, illustrating students' self-knowledge of schooling. Methodologically we refer to our research approach as 'visual narrative'. Other writers in this edition use the term 'photo voice'. For researchers it is important to highlight the differing orientations that 'visual narrative' and 'photo voice' signify. The terms are not mutually exclusive but highlight differing research possibilities and emphasis. Our argument, through the use of visual narrative produced by middle years' students, is that visual texts open out some innovative possibilities for understanding inclusive education and supporting new relationships with our research community. Such approaches are not new; however, in a field such as special education that purports to support marginalised groups, liberatory research methods are under-represented. This paper aims to open out these discussions and provide a way forwards for teachers and researchers interested in breaking apart why it is that inclusive education remains a never-ending struggle.     

Personal study planning in doctoral education in industrial engineering

The duration of doctoral studies has increased in Europe. Personal study planning has been considered as one possible solution to help students in achieving shorter study times. This study investigates how doctoral students experience and use personal study plans in one university department of industrial engineering. The research material consists of a questionnaire study and personal study plan forms submitted by doctoral students. The results show evidence concerning the usefulness of personal study planning in doctoral education in industrial engineering and reveal differences across student groups. This study highlights the situation-dependent character of personal study planning and confirms that the implementation of personal study planning requires time and effort in order to change the culture of individualised studies.     

Student perceptions of satisfaction and anxiety in an online doctoral program

Eighty-four students in an online health education doctoral program taking the first course in the program over one year (four quarters) were surveyed in regards to their computer, Internet, and online course anxiety, and overall course satisfaction. An 18-item anxiety tool with domains in computer, Internet, and online learning was administered in the first and last weeks of an educational research course to assess for changes in student anxiety. A 24-item satisfaction tool with domains regarding the instructor, technology, setup, interaction, outcomes, and overall satisfaction was administered at the end of the course. Results show a significant negative correlation between anxiety and student satisfaction. Student anxiety levels were in the relatively moderate range; changes in anxiety levels over time were not significant. Participants who felt anxious when using computers or the Internet, or when taking online courses experienced anxiety with other domains.     

Juggling competing activities: academic staff as doctoral candidates

ABSTRACT

This article explores the experiences of a group of established academic staff in New Zealand and the UK, as they undertake a doctorate in their home institutions. Our interest is in how individuals negotiate this dual status from a cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) stance that explores how rules, tools, community and divisions of labour, and interacting activity systems, shape doctoral experiences. The focus in this article, having analysed their detailed narrative accounts, is on how academics experience three interdependent activity systems: those surrounding the thesis, the institutional context, and the home-life spheres. Issues related to time, workload and supervision issues, variability in collegial support and impact on personal priorities and time emerged. There is a range of particularities – from easy access to resources/supervisors to inflexible institutional regulations – applicable to this group of doctoral candidates. Negotiating life as an academic with concurrent doctoral candidature provides positive outcomes in terms of teaching, research confidence and general personal and professional development. However, a range of difficulties can also be encountered, particularly in relation to personal and professional relationships, and workload management.     

A sociocultural view of doctoral students' relationships and agency

Existing literature suggests that doctoral students' learning and experience are significantly influenced by their relationships with a wide range of people within and beyond academic settings. However, there has been little theoretical work focused on these issues, and questions of agency in doctoral study are in need of further attention. This paper draws on sociocultural theory in the analysis of interviews conducted with 33 doctoral students across four UK research-intensive universities. It focuses on agency and frames others as mediating students' experiences whether as embodied or represented in material, or imaginary form.     

Curating care-full spaces: doctoral students negotiating study from home

ABSTRACT

This article explores how care and space shape doctoral becoming. We extend previous higher education research that has critically examined the spatial arrangements of postgraduate study to explore how doctoral students negotiate both study from home and care-work responsibilities. The article draws on collaborative autoethnographic texts created by the authors to understand the ways in which care shaped their decisions about study spaces. We identify both exclusions and disadvantage in these accounts, at the same time as we discern wilfulness in the ways the contradictory positions of postgraduate student and caregiver were negotiated. We conclude the article by arguing that educational spaces are involved in the maintenance of academic norms that position care-work as invisible and out-of-place/space. Despite this, the creation of productive home spaces that facilitate both care and doctoral work remain possible.     

Identity and agency: pleasures and collegiality among the challenges of the doctoral journey

How do doctoral students develop their identities as academics? In this analysis, we explore identity from the perspective of agency – humans as active agents. The analysis was based on the collective data from three earlier studies in different contexts. Embedded in the data were expressions of agency linked to affect – both positive and negative – in which doctoral students were acting to shape and not just be shaped by their experiences. Key findings were evidence of collective student identity as well as supervisors modeling and affirming student agency. Both these findings are pertinent in rethinking doctoral pedagogies: the latter provides a model for supervisors to explicitly model student agency, and the former suggests the value of creating opportunities for collective identity in which students act as positive agents in improving their own doctoral experiences.     

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.     

Negotiating differences: cosmopolitan experiences of international doctoral students

Drawing on the literature on international student experiences and identities, this study discusses theories of identity from a social constructionist perspective. ‘Identification’ is the preferred term to describe a dynamic process through which students negotiate the meaning of their identities in different societies and communities. Based on interviews with 35 international doctoral students from two graduate schools in Germany, the article illustrates the significance of international mobility for education when external ‘differences’ are appreciated and contribute to cosmopolitan imaginations and when internal differences are created in relation to ‘Others’ in the host society. The article contributes to the literature on international student mobility by providing a fine-grained analysis of student identification, showing how the discourse of difference is used as a double strategy.     

博士生希望什么样的培养环境——基于博士生意见调查的实证研究

博士生对院校培养工作的意见是进行培养环境优化的重要依据。基于1200余名博士生调查数据,采用混合式研究方法展开探索,结果发现:第一,博士生意见集中在奖助体系、导师指导、考核评价和学术交流上,具体内容分别指向奖助学金支持力度不够,导师的学术指导缺位,考核评价方式固化单一,学术交流机会不足;第二,在学科差异上,理工科博士生的导师指导满意度和科研自由度得分较低,并且相比其它学科学生提出较多导师指导方面的意见,人文学科博士生更加支持采用1篇论文代表作的评价方式,并且相比其它学科学生提出较多考核评价方面的意见。基于上述发现提出博士生培养环境的改进对策。     

‘They have different information about what is going on’: emotion in the transition to university

Most new students experience school to university transition as challenging. Students from backgrounds with little or no experience of higher education are most vulnerable in this transition, and most at risk of academic failure. Emotion appears implicated in the differential way in which first-generation students and students with family familiarity of university experience the transition. This article draws on the voices of first-year dental and oral hygiene students at a South African dental faculty regarding university transition experiences. It draws on the construct of capital and Archer's [(2002). Realism and the problem of agency. Journal of Critical Realism Alethia, 5(1), 11–20] understanding of ‘competing concerns’ to examine how emotion shapes students' experiences of university transition and how they position themselves with regard to these experiences. The article explicates the ways in which emotional commentary and classed locations intersect, exploring the extent to which this intersection shapes young people's framing of their concerns of ‘being a student’ and ‘becoming a dentist’. The article identifies aspects of the university's material and cultural environments which shape students' emotional responses and which consequently are implicated in the perpetuation of class-based differential life chances.     

The doctoral viva voce as a cultural practice: the gendered production of academic subjects

This article reports on a recent small‐scale phenomenological study into the student experience of the doctoral viva voce. It was prompted by strong concerns about viva voce processes on the part of a Director of Graduate Studies in an English university. The study involved semi‐structured interviews with 20 respondents from eight English universities in a range of disciplinary areas. An initial analysis of the interviews illuminated the powerful affective dimensions of the viva voce and the gendered nature of its processes. Resisting the binary separation of reason and emotion, the paper draws upon discursive theories of affect, gender and subjectivity to consider the affective economies that are illuminated in this data and suggests that this involves the reproduction of gendered hierarchies.     

Fitting the Mold of Graduate School: A Qualitative Study of Socialization in Doctoral Education

Doctoral student attrition in the United States has reached alarming proportions, with reported rates of approximately 50% across disciplines (Nettles and Millett 2006). Attrition rates of underrepresented populations have been reported at higher rates across disciplines (Council of Graduate Schools 2004), pointing to a disparate experience for these students. Socialization has been shown to be a determining factor in doctoral student success and retention (Turner and Thompson 1993) while not necessarily reflecting how the socialization experience differs by disciplinary and institutional contexts. Through this qualitative study I sought to understand the effects of the socialization process upon doctoral student success and retention in the disciplines of chemistry and history at two institutions. Results highlighted a disparate experience for women, students of color, students with families, part-time students, and older students. Suggestions for policy, practice, and further research are included. Susan K. Gardner  received her Ph.D. in Higher Education from Washington State University and is currently Assistant Professor of Higher Education at the University of Maine in Orono. Her research interests include doctoral education, student development, and issues of social justice in higher education. She can be reached at susan.k.gardner@maine.edu.