African Doctoral Students Research Articles

Returning home to conduct research: reflections of research work in Kenya

ABSTRACT African students studying abroad and returning home to conduct research face several challenges. The purpose of this article is to describe the dilemma of a Kenyan student conducting research in Kenya, for her Australian-based doctoral studies in inclusive education. The research explored instructional strategies and Indigenous knowleges used by teachers to support students with disabilities in classrooms. The student had to negotiate positionality as an insider and outsider. This paper contributes to the literature on the experiences of African doctoral students returning home from Western universities to conduct research. It also contributes to knowledge of the positionalities of a researcher and also to the growing literature on methods of conducting research in education. This article also adds to the literature on the use of Indigenous methodologies in research in education. I explain how I transitioned from insider to outsider and vice versa during conversations.

An assessment of post‐graduation residency plans of international doctoral graduates in the United States and economic status of their country of origin: The case of sub‐Saharan Africa

AbstractThis study assessed the economic status of the country of origin of US doctoral graduates from the sub‐Saharan African region and their post‐graduation residency plans. The National Science Foundation's 2012–2017 Survey of Earned Doctorates provided data for the study. The data were analysed using descriptive statistics and contingency table analysis. The results revealed an association between the economic status of the country of origin and the post‐graduation residency plan. Sixty percent of students from the low‐income and lower‐middle‐income categories expressed an intention to stay in the United States after graduation. The study concluded that the economic status has a relationship with the decision of sub‐Saharan African doctoral students' residency plans. The recommendation is that sub‐Saharan African countries introduce and implement policies that incentivize high‐calibre personnel trained abroad to return to their home country.

‘They are just women, what do they know?’: The lived experiences of African women doctoral students in the mathematics discipline in South African universities

Background: The presence of African women in mathematics has been nearly invisible. The underrepresentation of African women in this field is a result of their historical socio-political marginalisation. The mathematics discipline is politicised, racialised, and gendered to systematically oppress African women. The mathematics fields continue to be a masculine and white male dominated field, which reinforces and preserves masculine culture which is hostile and unwelcoming to women. African women mathematicians are further oppressed because of their racial and gendered identities in fields that are ideologically founded on proving the racial, gendered, social, cultural, and intellectual inferiority of Africans.Aim: The article aims to exemplify the lived experiences of African women doctoral students in the mathematics disciplines in South African universities. The article critically interrogates the factors that influence the participation, progression, and retention of African female doctoral students in the mathematics disciplines.Setting: The article comes from a larger study which investigated the reasons why African doctorate students do not become academics after they receive their doctorates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines in South African universities. This paper focuses on the experiences of 10 African female doctoral students at five universities in South Africa. The universities were selected because they ranked in the top five in South Africa. Two of the institutions are historically Black universities and the rest are historically white institutions, with one historically Afrikaner-speaking university—between 2019–2021.Methods: This article employed a qualitative research methodology, where semi-structures interviews were conducted with 10 African female doctoral participants in mathematics disciplines in five South African universities and is underpinned by the theory of intersectionality.Results: The findings reveal how interlocking systems of oppression continue to influence the recruitment, retention, and progression of women in the mathematics discipline, thereby providing insight into the mechanisms that need to be altered and/or put in place to actively recruit African female doctoral students and retain them in academic positions.Conclusion: The article concludes that despite the mathematics field proclaiming neutrality and objectivity nevertheless, African women still experience racism, sexism, and classism. The experiences of African women in mathematics are vital to understanding the reasons why there is a high attrition rate of African women in the mathematics discipline in academia and why they do not become academics when they could transform this discipline.

Engaged and/or burnt out? Finnish and South African doctoral students’ experiences

PurposeDoctoral students’ ill-being in terms of stress, exhaustion and high levels of mental health problems has been well documented. Yet, the well-being of doctoral students is more than the absence of these negative symptoms. The number of studies exploring the combination of positive and negative attributes of doctoral students’ well-being is limited. Therefore, this study aims to focus on exploring individual variation in doctoral students’ experienced engagement and burnout across two distinct socio-cultural contexts in Finland and in South Africa.Design/methodology/approachA total of 884 doctoral students from Finland (n = 391) and South Africa (n = 493) responded to the cross-cultural Doctoral Experience Survey. The data were quantitatively analyzed.FindingsAltogether four distinctive engagement–burnout profiles were detected, including engaged, engaged–exhausted, moderately engaged–burnout and burnout profiles. Differences between the Finnish and South African students were identified in profile emphasis. The profiles were also related to several study progress attributes such as drop-out intentions, time-to-candidacy and satisfaction with study.Originality/valueThis study provides new understanding on doctoral students’ well-being by focusing on both positive and negative attributes and exploring doctoral students’ discrepant profiles with a cross-country design.

Dismantling Common Perceptions of Research Proposals Through South African Doctoral Students’ and Supervisors’ Experiences

Aim/Purpose: There is a significant amount of research on supervision, assessment, and socio-economic benefits in South Africa. However, there have been relatively few attempts to analyse the research proposal phase, which remains a critical part of doctoral education in South African. Background: As part of the broader transformation agenda in South Africa, universities are under pressure to produce vastly more high-level doctoral graduates. The aim is to allow South Africa to build its knowledge base so it can address the socio-economic problems inherited from the apartheid regime. In South Africa, quality in doctoral education is mainly understood and measured in terms of throughput rate. The danger is that greatly increasing the number of doctoral graduates will have a deleterious effect on the quality of the studies done. At present, the general view is that the research proposal phase is an administrative requirement or merely a planning phase in doctoral education. However, the research proposal phase is when doctoral students have their first opportunity to show their capacity for high-level intellectual engagement. This article explores what doctoral students and supervisors regard as necessary for a quality research proposal and how they view this phase of the doctoral journey. Methodology: This qualitative research used phenomenology to capture the lived experiences of participants. There were nineteen (19) participants from three South African universities. Eleven (11) of them were supervisors and eight (8) were doctoral students. Semi-structured interviews generated the data that were used to explore how participants experience and construct their understanding of quality at the research proposal phase. Contribution: The study makes three contributions: (i) it increases our understanding of the research proposal phase of doctoral education, (ii) it provides an alternative understanding of quality attributes: those centred on research learning. At present planning to meet administrative requirements dominates notions of quality; and (iii) it positions the doctoral research proposal at an intersection of different views of knowledge production: mode 1 that favours disciplinary knowledge production, mode 2 that favours cross disciplinary knowledge production and mode 3 that favours quadruple helix innovation systems of knowledge production. Findings: The findings indicate that participants understand quality in terms of planning for research, compliance with administrative requirements, confinement of research ideas within disciplinarity boundaries and the calibre of academic support. These understandings inform the common perceptions of the research proposal phase and its quality attributes. Participants’ narrow understanding of the research proposal phase and its quality attributes have, in turn, supported the view that writing of research proposals is a matter of technical compliance. This has deprived the research proposal phase from harnessing the full potential of research learning. It has also restricted the epistemological imagination of students, as econometrics parameters are being used to measure the production of knowledge. Recommendations for Practitioners: The possibility of enhancing the quality of the doctoral research proposal phase could be increased if those directing doctoral education were more aware (i) that the support programmes should encourage significant doctoral research; (ii) of the importance of having courses that are an integral part of the research proposal phase, which enable candidates to develop the ability to sustain a cohesive, coherent, critical and logical academic argument, and (iii) of the necessity for interdisciplinary research at the level of doctoral education. Recommendation for Researchers: Researchers from diverse social and cultural contexts need to improve the quality of their research proposals through engaging in research learning. This would require deeper understandings of social and cultural diversity of the context from which the research proposal phase is being experienced. This requires further research on understanding how students negotiate the transition from different social learning contexts into doctoral education. Impact on Society: Implementation of the recommendations would help to establish a robust standard of doctoral education, which could enhance the personal, professional, social, and economic growth of South African society. Future Research: Future research should explore different approaches to support services to identify the kind of support services that would enable doctoral students to engage in quality interdisciplinary research.

Pursuing PhD by publication in geography: a collaborative autoethnography of two African doctoral researchers

ABSTRACT Several scholars have, over the years, written about their experiences of the pathway of PhD by publication (PBP). However, little is known about why African doctoral students pursue PBP and their experiences . In this article, we adopt collaborative autoethnography to document our experiences and motivation for choosing the PBP pathway. Based on our experiences, the choice of PBP is primarily influenced by the candidate's previous research experience and the requirements/practices of the university. The common motivation among African doctoral students is the quest to acquire the requisite research skills and training in journal article publishing and the determination to catch-up in the knowledge economy through the production of high-quality scientific publication. Everyday experiences of PBP are shaped by university expectations, scholarly writing skills, institutional, supervisory and external support systems, research training and resilience. This study concludes by highlighting the positive implications of PBP for educational and socio-economic development in Africa and the world, more generally. It is recommended that journals develop scholar development programs to enable their editors to provide individualized support to PhD students, especially those pursuing PBP.

The role of social networks in the transitional experiences of international African doctoral students at one university in South Africa

ABSTRACTInternational doctoral students’ sojourn encompasses three transitional processes: to the new country, to the university and to a new academic identity as a researcher in a specific discipline. This article examines the role of social networks in facilitating these transitions for international doctoral students at one South African university. It is based on qualitative interviews conducted with 23 international PhD students representing eight different disciplines and various countries in Africa. The findings suggest that students are involved in a number of social networks, which all, apart from the academic network, exclude local students. This close-knit co-national network, while providing international PhD students with a well documented survival mechanism, may hinder their international experiences and limit the acquisition of the inter-cultural skills necessary for global citizenship in the twenty-first century. The findings also indicated that family networks back home played a role in instilling worries and doubts among students related to xenophobic attacks against foreigners.

Knowledge Assumptions amongst Doctoral Students: A Case Study at the University of South Africa

This study explores the correlation between a group of South African doctoral students’ assumptions about knowledge or epistemological beliefs and their behaviour applicable to research information gathering activities while compiling their research proposals for the doctorate. Six divergent models of epistemological development from the educational psychology (in chronological order) as well as an information search process model formed the conceptual, theoretical framework for the investigation. Ten enrolled doctoral students from the College of Education at the University of South Africa were interviewed about this correlation. The findings provide a rich theoretical foundation for future information-seeking behaviour research among doctoral students and provide insights into the impact of students’ epistemological beliefs on their information seeking patterns. The findings furthermore confirm the correlation between core epistemological beliefs and information gathering patterns amongst South African doctoral students and provide substantial justification for using epistemological beliefs in the supervision of doctoral students. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n20p1068

The Experiences and Needs of African Doctoral Students: Current Conditions and Future Support

‘Next generation’ issues are attracting considerable attention in higher education (HE) policy and programming. This is particularly true in Africa, where depleted academic capacity, insufficient levels of doctorate-qualified staff, and the steady retirement of many experienced lecturers and researchers place a particular urgency on identifying, training and nurturing new cohorts of research and teaching staff across the continent’s HE and research institutions. Recent contributions to the debate have also raised concerns about the extent to which doctoral study has been ‘casualised’, interrupted by the demands of employment, and hampered by inadequate supervision and support to develop and undertake research, resulting in fragmentary research and long times to completion. This paper presents the results of a survey of African and European doctoral students alongside a desk review of current funding programmes, bringing new evidence to this debate, particularly around what it is to be a doctoral student in different regions of Africa and how this is currently supported. In doing so, it highlights issues to be considered in future programmes to strengthen doctoral study.

The Correlation between Knowledge Assumptions and the Gathering of Research Information among South African Doctoral Students

This article, based on a qualitative case study among a group of ten enrolled South African doctoral students, explored the correlation between their knowledge assumptions and their respective behavior during research information gathering activities while compiling their research proposals for the doctorate. The ten participants interviewed were all doctoral students from the College of Education at the University of South Africa. Six divergent models of epistemological development from the research literature (in chronological order) as well as an information search process model formed the conceptual, theoretical framework for the investigation. The findings of this study provide insights into the impact of students’ epistemological beliefs on their information seeking patterns and provide, in addition, a rich theoretical foundation for future information-seeking behavior research among doctoral students. The findings furthermore confirm the correlation between core epistemological beliefs and information gathering patterns amongst South African doctoral students and provide substantial justification for using epistemological beliefs in the supervision of doctoral