How can PhD supervisors play a role in bridging academic cultures?

ABSTRACT

PhD supervision is generally deemed a rewarding experience as supervisors and students embark on an academic journey together. Pursuing a PhD in a ‘foreign’ context inevitably brings forth distinct opportunities and challenges for students and their supervisors. Using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, this qualitative study of supervisors and PhD students examines the cross-cultural facets of doctoral supervision in the light of Urie Bronfenbrenner’s bio-ecological theory of human development and its underpinning explanation for supervisory processes and learning orientations. Undertaken in the Danish context, our paper highlights exemplars of contrasting supervisors’ and PhD students’ experience in relation to academic and psychosocial adaptations. This research strongly endorses that supervisors’ appreciation of the intertwined link between academia and society combined with a positive view of their role in bridging academic cultures can powerfully complement students’ adjustments and subsequently make a qualitative difference towards a more fulfilling and meaningful academic journey together.     

Outcasts on the inside: academics reinventing themselves online

Recent developments in digital scholarship point out that academic practices supported by technologies may not only be transformed through the obvious process of digitization, but also renovated through distributed knowledge networks that digital technologies enable, and the practices of openness that such networks develop. Yet, this apparent freedom for individuals to re-invent the logic of academic practice comes at a price, as it tends to clash with the conventions of a rather conservative academic world. In other words, it may still take some time until academia and the participatory web can fully identify themselves with one another as spaces of ‘public intellectualism’, scholarly debate and engagement. Through a narrative inquiry approach, this research explores how academic researchers engaged in digital scholarship practices perceive the effects of their activity on their professional identity. Pierre Bourdieu’s concept of habitus is used as a theoretical construct and method to capture and understand the professional trajectories of the research participants and the significance of their digital practices on their perceived academic identity. The research suggests that academics engaged in digital practices experience a disjointed sense of identity. The findings presented in this article illustrate how experiences with and on the participatory web inform a new habitus which is at odds with a habitus that is traditionally expected in academia.     

The relevance of identity style and professional identity to academic commitment and academic achievement in a higher education setting

Student retention remains an ongoing concern for higher education institutions worldwide. In the present study, we examine the predictive utility of identity styles, professional identity and academic commitment to academic achievement. We asked 120 second-year students in the profession of engineering in an augmented degree programme to complete the Identity Styles Inventory, the Engineering Identity Factors Inventory and the Academic Commitment Scale. We found that a normative identity style predicted professional engineering identity and meaningfulness, which predicted the participants’ investments in their studies. Additionally, a diffuse-avoidant identity style negatively predicted professional identity, meaningfulness and satisfaction, which provides empirical evidence of the contribution of identity to academic commitment. None of the variables we studied predicted academic achievement. Our findings are relevant, given current debates on access, equity and decolonisation in higher education, because it suggests that students’ sense of identity largely influences whether they feel a sense of belonging at university. Although identity styles and meaningfulness are not significant direct predictors of academic achievement, they probably do have an indirect effect on academic achievement through their direct influence on investment.     

The interaction of academic and industrial supervisors in graduate education

In this study we explore the work and the cooperation of academic and industrial supervisors concerning single graduate students in so called industrial research schools, which are financially supported by a national research foundation and involve universities and industrial enterprises. Academic and industrial supervisors of totally eleven graduate students have been interviewed with focus on their cooperation. This cooperation entails negotiating the contract and monitoring the progress of the research project and the student. When students have problems this cooperation is particularly important. The places new demands on both the academic and industrial supervisors. In our study these demands were dealt with differently by different academic supervisors, depending whether their main orientation was towards industrial projects or traditional academic research. The way the industrial supervisors dealt with the new demands depended on their previous acquaintance with academic research, basically whether they had a doctoral degree or not. Another important finding was that academic knowledge had a strong position while the supervisors from the industry accepted a minor role. The main findings of the study are that industrial graduate students often require joint engagement in a way that differs from other forms of knowledge transfer between the academy and the industry. To explain the features of this type of knowledge transfer, we use the analytical concepts boundary subject and phronesis.     

Professionalising Ph.D. education to enhance the quality of the student experience

Ph.D. student numbers have been increasing in Australia as has government interest in the economic and social outcomes of graduate education (Moses 1994, Cullen et al. 1994). Yet the position of Ph.D. students can still be seen as marginal within universities and the institutional organisation of Ph.D. education as problematic. This situation can be related to the highly individualistic nature of research and supervision which is both a barrier to and part of the argument against efforts to examine and discuss in general the processes of research training and supervisory interactions across disciplinary and departmental boundaries. This article positions all Ph.D. students, in all fields of study, as learners in a form of professional education -a perspective which offers a way out of this apparent dilemma. Drawing on data from a study reported in Cullen et al. (1994) the following topics are explored: Ph.D. students as learners of the knowledge and skill of the professional practice of research and scholarship; the role of the supervisor in assisting students to become independent practitioners; and the complementary professional role of student participation in the academic community. Implications for policy and practice to professionalise Ph.D. education and enhance the quality of the student experience are discussed.     

Broadening communication yet holding back: Teachers’ perceptions of their relationship with students in the SNS-era

Teacher-student relationship is vital for students’ academic, emotional and social development, as well as for teachers’ professional and personal development. This quantitative study examines teacher-student communication and relationship on Facebook among secondary school teachers (N = 180). We examined teachers’ attitudes towards: a) a policy that bans teacher-student Facebook connections; b) using Facebook for learning. Overall, teachers were interested in broadening communication channels with students, in order to empower learning and interpersonal relationship. However, teachers also maintain traditional teacher-student differentiation; they approve using Facebook for learning and disagree with a banning policy, but also prefer using a professional profile for interacting with their students. Data regarding teachers’ perceptions of relationship with their students and SNS-mediated communication present issues regarding means of communication, attitudes towards the policy of banning SNS, standpoints on using Facebook for learning, and preferred profile for communicating with students. We discuss these issues in light of academic, pedagogical, and inter-personal implications.     

Constructing an academic identity in Australia: an autoethnographic narrative

This paper examines the process of academic identity construction experienced by a Chinese PhD student in an Australian university from 2010 to 2014. The researcher draws on his diaries written in Australia and uses some stories of the relationships with his supervisors and other scholars to unfold the process of his academic identity construction in a host academic community. Two years on, the researcher reflects on the challenges confronted during his candidature, exploring the Australian PhD education system from within. This study will help educators and supervisors to understand an international higher degree research student’s gradual academic identity construction as a cultural Other in the context of globalized higher education systems, and it will contribute to the mutual understanding between supervisors and international research students, as well as supervisors’ professional supervision in a globalized higher education context.     

Absence of the academic from higher education policy

This article argues that the individual academic is all but absent from the assumptive worlds of policymakers in UK higher education. It is taken for granted in research on academic identity that those who work in higher education as teachers and researchers refer to themselves as, and indeed are referred to by others as, ‘academics’. Evidence is drawn from a study of policymakers in the UK to demonstrate that the word ‘academic’ is not a part of the lexicon of higher education policymaking. Moreover, the concept of the academic is cast into shade by an overwhelming emphasis on ‘the student experience’, and, from another direction, by a location of professional academic accountability at the level of the higher education institution rather than the individual. The article concludes with an exploration of what work this absence of the academic in policy does in disrupting the possibilities for engagement between the worlds of academia and policymaking and in perpetuating the discourses of marketisation and new management in higher education. It also suggests understanding the assumptive worlds of policymakers is a crucial counterbalance to a growing body of literature on academic responses to change, some of which has tended towards the self‐referential.     

创建新型毕业环节——美国教育博士学位论文革新的个案分析

美国教育博士专业学位教育与教育哲学博士学位教育的趋同问题由来已久。关于教育博士研究生该不该像教育哲学博士研究生那样撰写传统博士论文,一直聚讼不休。目前越来越多的大学认为传统博士论文不适于或者至少不能充分展现教育专业人员应掌握的专业知识和技能,并尝试用专题博士论文、项目研究、顶岗实习等新型毕业环节取而代之,以便突显教育博士专业学位教育的特点。     

Information Policy and Social Media: Accept or Decline

In this article I examine how intersections between information policy and social media affect professional ethics and instructional decision making as considered through the lens of professional development and continuing education. The discussion uses techniques from autoethnography such as personal narrative, figurative language and scenarios. Data are extracted from my field notes, observations and writings. My experiences as an instructor of information policy and as an academic with a Ph.D. in Educational Communication and Technology who teaches online courses to graduate professional learners are included. My conclusions are: (1) The formal information policies of social media platforms create an environment requiring instructors to apply professional ethics considerations when deciding how students will use social media platforms. (2) The informal information policies which students hold affect their responses to the information policies of social media platforms used for educational purposes. (3) Instructors can examine the intersections of information policies, professional ethics and student preferences to aid their instructional decision making regarding the integration of social media platforms into professional development and continuing education.     

Learning in academia is more than academic learning: action research in academic practice for and with medical academics

Academic learning traditionally involves research, and the production of journal papers, books, etc. ‘Learning in academia’ refers to academics becoming more skilful in what they do. It is what legal or medical clinicians would refer to as continuing professional education (or development) (CPE/D) which, by analogy, invokes the notion of CPE in academic practice. Action research and reflective practice through action learning processes in a graduate programme in higher education are used to promote such learning. Participants are mid‐career medics.

Five themes stand out: mapping the terrain to be addressed; creating the required ‘space for learning’; keeping projects confined in scope; assessment and the shift in emphasis from ‘content’ to ‘process’; and, achieving a whole that is greater than the sum of the parts. Many attributes of threshold concepts are evident, but conceiving of learning as progress along a continuum rather than crossing a singular threshold is favoured. Issues to do with promulgating CPE/D in academia, identity construction, rethinking learning, and universities are briefly addressed.     

Gender and doctoral studies: the perceptions of Ph.D. students in an American university

Twenty students enrolled in Ph.D. programmes were interviewed to examine the role of gender in their academic experiences. Gender was examined in three ways: gender of the student, gender of the student’s faculty supervisor and gender make‐up of the faculty within the student’s department or academic unit. All students reported the importance of supportive faculty mentors and that financial worries, time pressure and the uncertainty of future employment were sources of stress. Family formation and striving toward personal as well as professional goals were particularly of concern for women, as were perceptions of differential treatment. Women students valued women faculty mentors, although female faculty were perceived as less supportive than male faculty of family concerns when these women had themselves sacrificed family formation for the sake of their careers. Both men and women experienced less stress and reported greater career commitment when faculty in their departments exhibited less traditional values regarding the balancing of personal and professional goals. The implications of these findings for reducing doctoral student attrition rates and for creating a more supportive environment for Ph.D. students are discussed.     

Continuing professional and career development: the doctoral experience of education alumni at a UK university

This article reports on a study of alumni who completed their doctorates 2, 5 and 10 years ago at a Graduate School of Education in the University of London (n=162). It investigates the circumstances within which these research students started and completed their research and how they have subsequently used their studies, showing the particular place of the Ph.D. and the new Ed.D. in professional development in the field of education internationally. It questions current national proposals to ‘improve’ doctoral ‘training’ in the UK by enhancing students' employability and suggests that policy should be based on the actual employment and other life needs of postgraduate students in different disciplines. It argues that research students are paying for the privilege of satisfying their intellectual curiosity and making an original contribution to knowledge and are as concerned with personal growth as with vocational development.     

Doctoral Education,Danger and Risk Management

This paper examines how risk management is reworking the doctoral supervisor/candidate relationship. We argue that a larger and more diverse population of doctoral students means special challenges for universities worldwide in managing doctoral programs to optimise their productivity and minimise the risk of failure, costliness and/or litigation. An effect of this is that professional and personal relationships in universities, as in many other public and private institutions, are being reshaped in order to be more closely aligned with risk minimisation policy directives and strategies. To understand what effects such reshaping is having on doctoral education, we bring together anthropological theorising of risk with pedagogical theorising of power and identity in education contexts. This theoretical cross-over between anthropology and education situates the pedagogic work of doctoral training within a culturally constituted order of professional care and risk management. We utilise this framework to interrogate "soft marking" as a specific domain in which risk minimisation is producing new relational identities for both supervisors and students involved in doctoral studies programs.     

Producing ‘industry‐ready’ doctorates: Australian Cooperative Research Centre approaches to doctoral education

How the experience of science‐based Ph.D. students working in or funded by Australian Cooperative Research Centres (CRCs) compares with their peers in regular university science‐based departments is the key focus of this article. CRC doctoral programmes that integrate industry needs with professional development offer an alternative to traditional research training, emphasizing producing ‘industry‐ready’ graduates with a broader educational experience linked to the needs of research users. The overall experience of both groups, their attitudes to collaboration with industry and where their studies are leading them are analysed. Of particular interest is whether CRC‐related Ph.D. students have more positive attitudes towards their training, towards industry and research and development (R&D) partnerships with industry than those outside CRCs and to what extent both favour the idea of careers in industry. Findings, based on a survey of Ph.D. students in two Australian research‐intensive universities, indicate that the CRC research training experience has much to commend it. This suggests that in reforming doctoral education programmes, universities would do well to further examine the effectiveness of aspects of this alternative.     

研究生论文发表层次矛盾的博弈与长效机制

在破“唯论文”导向下,高校对于学术型研究生的培养更加关注其专业知识的学习和学术素养的养成,而不再盲目地要求发表论文,尤其是低层次论文。对于学术型研究生和青年导师而言,发表高水平学术论文,可以更好地实践破“唯论文”政策。但矛盾的是,在研究生扩招背景下,很多研究生由于学校政策或以就业为导向,只追求低层次快速发表的论文,从而满足最低的毕业要求。这与破“唯论文”是相背而驰的,也潜在地导致了研究生和青年导师之间关于论文发表层次的矛盾。因此,通过分析他们之间的博弈关系,认为缓解矛盾长效机制为:增加科研成果的对等条件;从其他方面培养研究生的学术素质;降低发表低水平论文的收益或增加撰写高水平论文的收益。     

Counselor Educators and Qualitative Research: Affirming a Research Identity

The lack of enthusiastic research activity among counseling professionals has been a subject of professional concern for the last 2 decades. Many graduates of counselor education programs are not connected to academic research and do not establish a research identity. Qualitative research methods have the potential for creating this connection for some students. To increase understanding of the nature and potential usefulness of this paradigm for increasing counselors' connection to academic research, the authors conducted a phenomenological study to investigate the experiences of counselor education doctoral students as they encountered qualitative research. Students' positive responses were summarized as they reflected 4 themes: worldview congruence, theory and skills congruence, research identity and professional viability, and holistic nature of perceptions and experiences.     

Constructing academic identity in the changing Russian higher education context: preliminary perspectives

ABSTRACT

Currently, Russian academics are facing significant demands because of a new, urgent requirement to pursue their research in accordance with international standards. Until recently, these academics were used to working within a familiar community and communicating their research via the Russian language, but now, they are expected to move beyond that and function on a global level, which can challenge their academic identities. A qualitative study was carried out in a research-intensive Russian university. The aim was to explore academics’ experiences and perceptions of the dynamic changes in their academic work with a particular focus on the limitations and pressures they meet in their career path towards global research. The data were collected by means of reflective journals during a course on English for academic purposes. Thematic analysis was employed for data analysis. The results showed that global trends turned out to be unachievable for Russian academics due to the lack of specific knowledge, attributes and skills required to do research globally. This might be the first study from Russia contributing to the literature on academic identity construction. The article provides insights into the experiences and perceptions of Russian academics and offers a research agenda for further investigation to bridge identity shifts in academia. In terms of practical purposes, the results will be used as a source of preliminary data within a broader research project aimed at supporting Russian academics in their research in an international English-speaking academic context.     

Cultural diversity and the imagined community of the global academy

Transnational academic mobility and the ongoing push towards “internationalization” together raise challenges for the cultural climate of today's universities. This paper explores these issues from the perspective of supervisors of research degrees in an Australian university in which “internationalization” and “academic mobility” apply to supervisors as much as to students. The concepts of the imagined community and cosmopolitanism are employed to interpret a series of one-on-one and group interviews conducted with international academic staff, conversations which reported surprisingly untroubled negotiation of cultural difference. Using the insights provided by the concepts of “imagined community” and “cosmopolitanism”, we investigate the mechanisms mobilized by these supervisors in apparently backgrounding cultural diversity in the workplace, and consider the implications of the academic subjectivities they perform.     

A tale of two women leaders: Diversity policies and practices in enterprise universities

This paper explores the ways in which senior female academics’ leadership practices are informed and negotiated in relation to a multiplicity of fields. As part of the shift in the logics of practice underpinning the Australian academic terrain, there has been a movement from the implementation of equity policies to that of diversity in relation to the employment of academic staff, characterised by neoliberal discourses of new public management which favour the production of the individualistic, entrepreneurial academic identity as opposed to notions of collectivity and the public good. However, diversity policies are not the sole texts that inform the ways in which many women leaders operate, nor the most important in guiding the practices they produce. Drawing on a larger study of representations of women’s leadership in the media and academia, this paper examines how two leading female academics drew upon a range of logics of practices within the different fields of academia, feminism and Indigenous rights to inform their leadership practices. In so doing, the women contested the emergent logic of practice underpinning the contemporary Australian academic field. Such contestation can be considered one of the “subaltern” consequences of policy regimes and forms an integral part of policy fields.