A Rollercoaster Ride of Emotions: Investigating Learning Challenges in a Doctoral Learning Journey

Abstract

Although there has been a substantial increase in the number of research students enrolled in public higher learning institutions in Malaysia, the high attrition rate amongst doctoral students is quite alarming. Various research efforts have been carried out to investigate this phenomenon; however, most of the studies were focused solely on supervision. Even less is known about the challenges that research students in Malaysia face during their doctoral learning journey and how they cope with these challenges. This study examined the learning challenges that research students experienced during their doctoral learning journey and how they managed to overcome the challenges. This qualitative study involved an extensive collection of time- and context-sensitive data and emphasized on giving participants a personal voice. Snowball sampling was used and a total of eight participants were involved in this study. Four stages of data collection generated rich data from lengthy interviews and provided opportunities for re-interviewing the same participants all over again. Three types of interviews were utilised, and necessary steps were taken to ensure trustworthiness was established in this research. Based on the research findings, three broad categories of learning challenges were identified namely supervision, academic and psychological. Academic challenges were most profound in their learning in which knowledge creation and conceptualization being the most challenging skills whilst psychological issues were the least challenging. This study introduced a fresh perspective to the literature on research students, which has been dominated by investigation into the supervision process.