Doctoral Journey Research Articles

An Exploratory Community-Engaged Framework to Operationalize Building Bridges between Public Library Education and Praxis

This article explores an exploratory/emerging framework collaboratively developed by a public librarian and library and information science (LIS) educator to operationalize community-engaged programming through critical autoethnographic reflections from Williams (first author) doctoral journey. The authors propose a novel framework, emphasizing elements crucial to a community-embedded approach, and employ a critical autoethnographic methodology to provide a nuanced understanding focused on generating community impact. The findings apply elements of a community-engaged framework in relation to both authors’ contributions with regard to the performance of their roles as a public librarian (and doctoral student) and LIS educator respectively. The discussion critically addresses the emerging challenges and presents opportunities with potential implications for LIS education.

Doing decoloniality in the context of a PhD born in precarity and pandemic

This article takes a deep dive into my doctoral journey and my lived experience as an emerging Black African scholar doing decolonial research in a South African colonial and Westernized university. I wrestle with the contradictions and tensions that emerged during this period that took place at the time of the Covid-19 pandemic. I also look back with ‘willful resistance’ to the oppressive systems of knowledge productions and the limitations of doing decolonial work. I consider my own complicity with these oppressive systems of knowledge production as I attempt to work within institutional constraints to fulfil the requirements of a PhD degree. Using Black existential theory as a lens and autoethnography as method, the goal is to generate a discussion with other emerging scholars about their own lived experiences doing decolonial research in colonial universities.

The Journey is the Goal: Encouragement to Get to (and through) Your Doctoral Journey

The Journey is the Goal: Encouragement to Get to (and through) Your Doctoral Journey

Doctorate Education: The Connection Between Academic Success, Doctoral Identity, and Relationships

Doctorate education is a highly specialized and sophisticated type of higher education that intends to help develop students into autonomous researchers and scholars who can make novel contributions to their study fields. This paper explores the essential components of the doctoral education journey, with concentration on how to achieve academic success, doctorate Identity, and build relationships. The paper underscores the importance of positive relationships with advisors, peers, and family in facilitating the doctoral journey, while highlighting mentorship as essential for developing a strong researcher identity. Also, the paper pinpoints the essential elements that lead to academic achievement, including aptitude for the subject matter, drive, mentoring, and a nurturing atmosphere for research. Knowing the rules of discipline, doing research, and building faculty relationships all contribute to the formation of a doctorate identity. Overall, it highlights how important it is to take a comprehensive approach to doctorate education, incorporating identity formation, academic performance, and supportive connections, in order to help students make the shift from doctoral students to independent scholars.

Reflections on the Education Doctorate

In this reflective essay, I explore learnings and reflections along my doctoral journey and analyze how this journey has been untraditional for an education administrator. As a scholar-practitioner, I include a section on the impact of societal changes since the COVID-19 pandemic. I then document continuing challenges for women of color administrators and refine imposter syndrome theory in my own way. Finally, I offer some thoughts about how to move forward.

“We can work on this”: exploring supervisor approaches to feedback in the context of writing for a professional doctorate

Purpose This paper aims to show how an Academic Literacies lens can contribute to a deeper understanding of writing for a professional doctorate (PD) by focusing both on the language of supervisors’ written feedback and on student and supervisor perspectives on feedback throughout Year 1 (Y1). Design/methodology/approach Firstly, written feedback summaries on formative assessments across two Y1 cohorts on a UK PD programme were analysed thematically to identify patterns in feedback practices. Secondly, two longitudinal, detailed student/supervisor case studies were developed, drawing on multiple data sources. Findings Supervisors’ written feedback enacted an encouraging dialogue around assessed writing, discursively constructing a sense of solidarity on the doctoral journey, focusing on the “long view”. Case study analysis, however, revealed tensions centred around jarring discontinuities in students’ feedback experience as they transitioned from formative to summative assessment at the end of Y1. Research limitations/implications The paper demonstrates that an Academic Literacies approach can offer valuable insights into the specific, situated context of writing for a distance learning PD and makes the case for greater attention to writing in contexts of partly taught doctorates. Practical implications Findings suggest that PD programmes should work towards providing continuity of feedback experience, through supervisor and examiner training and through assessment arrangements which support students to navigate challenging transitions between formative and summative phases of assessment. Originality/value This paper reports on an innovative research design which combined a textual “snapshot” of supervisory feedback, paying close attention to language, with detailed longitudinal case studies exploring perspectives on feedback over time. It contributes to doctoral writing research by throwing light on the relatively underexplored domain of writing in the taught phase of the PD. It contributes to doctoral education studies by highlighting the central role of feedback on writing in shaping the experience of PD researchers.

Symposium 1: Tracing analytic assemblages – doing doctoral research with actor-network theory

The practices of doctoral education are intricately entangled with technologies. This methodological paper examines the practical concerns involved in doing the analytic work in a networked learning setting with Actor-Network theory (ANT). It is a story about engaging with ANT as a companion in an ethnographic research project on teaching practices in Sweden during the Covid-19 pandemic. The empirical examples are pulled from online interviews in the pandemic outbreak and two ways of assembling the analytic practices of those interviews. On the premises that method and technology are non-neutral, the focus is on how the interviews are analysed and the modes of knowing that they form. For example, the paper examines how computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software acts on the analyses of the interviews and the knowledge patterns made possible and what signals are silenced. A second analytic assemblage is deployed that traces those signals. Based on the empirical examples of doing analyses, the paper discusses how analytic assemblages change and move research and the researcher in unpredictive and performative ways that troubles the expectations of a singularised doctoral journey.

Evaluation of Public Involvement in Doctoral Research Using a Four-Dimensional Theoretical Framework.

Working together and co-production with public advisors have become popular among health researchers. This practice extends to doctoral researchers who involve public advisors at different stages of their research or throughout their doctoral journey. A doctoral researcher and two public advisors jointly evaluated public involvement in doctoral research. Using the established public involvement evaluation framework by Gibson and colleagues, public advisors and a doctoral researcher mapped and evaluated their experiences of public involvement in doctoral research. The four-dimensional framework allowed the authors to reflect on (1) the strength of the public voice, (2) the number of ways in which public advisors had an opportunity to get involved, (3) whether the discussion was about the public or organisation's (doctoral researcher, university or funder) concerns and (4) if the organisation changed or resisted feedback. Results are presented in a diagrammatic and narrative way. Public advisors saw themselves as having a stronger voice in doctoral research than the doctoral researcher perceived. All agreed that there existed multiple ways for public advisors to be involved. Public advisors' feedback was taken on board, but it was also limited due to restrictions of what the doctoral programme allowed. Public advisors ensured that the doctoral research was more relevant to the public. The ongoing involvement also shaped the doctoral researcher's thinking and views. Two public advisors were involved throughout the 3 years of this doctoral research. They co-evaluated this involvement and are co-authors of this paper.

A physician's legacyOn Call: A Doctor's Journey in Public Service Anthony Fauci Viking, 2024. 480 pp.

Tony Fauci reflects on a remarkable career.

PERSPECTIVES OF EARLY CAREER SUPERVISORS ON NAVIGATING THE SOCIO-EMOTIONAL NEEDS OF THEIR DOCTORAL CANDIDATES

All supervisors of doctoral research aim at guiding their students towards success on their doctoral journeys. Desired characteristics of successfully guiding doctoral studies have been widely reported in relevant literature and gave rise to various models of exemplary supervisory practice. One area within the supervisory relationship that has received limited attention is the emotional aspect of supervisors’ role, their dispositional qualities of mind and character which are key factors in establishing an intellectual and emotional working rapport with candidates. This exploratory qualitative study sought to gain a deepened understanding of how supervisors address the socio-emotional needs of their students. A combination of online and in-person semistructured interviews with ten doctoral study supervisors, and thematic analysis of data, revealed that supervisors fully acknowledge the notion that interpersonal and emotional issues are key factors in the supervisory process. However, the way they see, and experience emotional factors differ. While some regard the supervisory process as an intellectual academic relationship, others regard supervision more as mentoring, allowing more space for selfexpression and emotions. The study’s findings carry implications for enhancing the training and support offered to doctoral supervisors and students enrolled in doctoral programmes, as well as identifying potential areas for improvement.

Alone in the Academic Ultraperiphery: Online Doctoral Candidates’ Quest to Belong, Thrive, and Succeed

Despite the increasing number of non-traditional doctoral researchers, this population’s experiences remain largely understudied and their voices unheard. Through in-depth interviews with 24 part-time online doctoral candidates, we explored the perceived facilitators and barriers to academic integration and sense of belonging, as well as how online delivery influences the doctoral journey. Reflexive thematic analysis revealed a strong drive for participation, sometimes matched by the supervisor but rarely supported by the institution, which in the end does not sufficiently promote community building. Online delivery was viewed as both a blessing for the accessibility it enabled and a curse due to pervasive feelings of isolation and virtually non-existent peer networks. Online doctoral researchers coped by breaking free from the fully online model whenever possible to seek in-person and synchronous interactions and guidance. We conclude that online doctoral candidates constitute an ultraperipheral population in the academic landscape. Support provided by online PhD programmes should be modelled after the actual needs of their non-traditional students.

Designing Trauma-Informed Online Support and Mentorship for African Applied Science PhD Scholars

We provide a design case using applied trauma-informed frameworks to guide the design and usage adoption of an online support and mentorship platform for African applied science PhD scholars. In the Rsif context, scholars traverse countries, systems, and cultures to obtain their PhDs. The project objective was to create an online system to support their doctoral journeys. We will describe the program, introduce our team, summarize the literature guiding our selection of support objectives and overview the features we integrated into our platform design. After this, we will discuss our platform adoption approach and summarize the results of this project. Finally, concluding with a reflection on bringing trauma-informed frameworks into other learning ecologies.

Impact of Bias on the Scholar-Practitioner's Doctoral Journey

This essay discusses the utilization of safeguard strategies, particularly Improvement Science principles, in the academic and professional writing of scholar-practitioners within EdD programs. These strategies bridge the gap between theory and practice, enabling graduate students to apply their scholarly insights meaningfully. The essay highlights the roles of bias, professional wisdom, positionality, and reflexivity in inquiry, empowering scholar-practitioners to develop authentic solutions to the problems of practice they encounter. Drawing on the recommendations of Perry and colleagues (2020), the essay emphasizes rigorous data collection, explicit theoretical frameworks, evidence of impact on practice, and transparent mitigation of biases. Strategies such as positionality and reflexivity statements, adoption of Improvement Science as a conceptual framework, critical questions as safeguards, and engagement with critical friend groups (CFG) enhance the integrity and rigor of scholar-practitioners' inquiries. By implementing these measures, scholar-practitioners foster a robust examination of problems of practice and contribute to the advancement of knowledge.

Personal Development of Doctoral Students

Personal development refers to the process of increasing one’s self-awareness, associated increases of self-esteem, increasing skills, and fulfilling one’s aspirations. The current paper reflects on these elements within the doctoral journey, for PhD students within the UK Higher Education system. The paper makes particular reference to frameworks to encourage and capture personal development needs and supervision or coaching styles that may be used to encourage a continual reflection of personal development throughout the doctorate.

Cultivating Resilience in Part-Time Doctoral Students

In an increasingly competitive world, master’s degrees are becoming the new common educational currency, leading to a markable increase in the number of students pursuing Professional Doctorates to stand out, boost their professional standing, and increase their income. The rise of Professional Doctorates is eclipsing the growth of traditional PhDs, and the academic intakes of the future look to be built of part-time professionals, who must also balance additional stressors such as family and personal life and their day-to-day careers. As such, this author recommends academic institutes promote the skills of resilience to help part-time students manage day-to-day stressors and embark on a more successful doctoral journey. This is an opinion-based paper that utilises lessons learned from the author’s own academic journey and the classic underpinning literature on resilience to recommend three sets of skills and mindsets that could help boost part-time doctoral students’ resilience.

Importance of patient and public involvement in doctoral research involving people living with dementia.

There is increasing recognition of the need to include patients and the public in the research process. There is extensive literature about patient and public involvement (PPI) in research, but fewer articles report on PPI in doctoral research. To reflect on establishing an advisory group for a doctoral study, exploring the opportunities and challenges associated with including patients with dementia in the research process. The authors discuss the practicalities of establishing an advisory group, the challenges of being a novice researcher, long-term commitment to PPI, the overall approach to PPI and ethical considerations. Establishing an advisory group for a doctoral study can facilitate mutual learning and enhance the study's quality. Achieving high-quality PPI in health and social care research can ultimately improve its quality and relevance. An important aspect of the doctoral journey is developing knowledge and skills to facilitate PPI as part of a researcher's apprenticeship.

Navigating Cultural and Academic Tides: A Systematic Literature Review On The Supervision Experiences Of International Chinese Doctoral Students In Malaysian Universities

This article embarks on a comprehensive literature review to explore the unique experiences of international Chinese doctoral students under the supervision of faculties in Malaysian universities. The study aims to identify the challenges, coping strategies, and academic dynamics encountered by these students, considering the cultural, linguistic, and educational backgrounds that influence their doctoral journey. It also seeks to understand the role of supervisors in facilitating a supportive and effective learning environment for these international students. The review synthesizes findings from existing academic papers, doctoral theses, and institutional reports, providing a multi-dimensional analysis of the supervisory relationship, adaptation processes, and academic achievements. This article contributes to the broader discourse on international education, cross-cultural supervision, and the specific needs of Chinese doctoral students abroad, offering valuable insights for academic institutions, educators, and policymakers aiming to enhance the doctoral experience for international students.

Collaboration, Socialization, and Support: Accountability Partners in an Online Doctoral Learning Environment

Non-traditional doctoral students encounter numerous challenges seeking a doctoral degree in an online learning environment. Non-traditional online doctoral students tend to be working adults who are integrating their online doctoral studies with the existing challenges of work and family. Effective online accountability partners must work within a framework of virtual mentoring competencies for online doctoral students to successfully collaborate, communicate, and learn together. The qualitative exploratory study explored the experiences of successful online doctoral students at working with accountability partners during their doctoral journey. The research question guiding the study was: How can accountability partner relationships be effective for online doctoral students when almost no face-to-face and in-person interaction takes place? The three themes emerging from the study addressed the online doctoral student's need for (1) collaboration, (2) socialization, and (3) support from their accountability partners. Study participants emphasized the many characteristics of a successful accountability partner relationship, including bidirectional support, feedback, communication, encouragement, cooperation, and collaboration. The study findings aligned with existing literature and illustrated the many challenges faced by online doctoral students that their more traditional student counterparts studying in a more traditional brick-and mortar university environment do not encounter. Numerous practical implications and recommendations resulted from this study. The researchers created the Collaboration, Socialization, and Support (CSS) framework using the thematic analysis of the coded interview results. The CSS framework is a practical model for creating and maintaining successful accountability partner relationship between online doctoral students.

Becoming a Vehicle of Knowledge Creation: How Autopoiesis Changed My Practice

Autoethnographic narratives are ways of normalising and giving meaning to the human experience, allowing the reader to resonate with what is relevant and important in the writer’s experience, while generating new insights and knowledge we would not otherwise access. Using my doctoral journey of striking moments and the shifts created in me, in this paper, I argue that human experiences must be valued as equal to diagnostic and objectivist approaches in the pursuit of knowledge. By juxtaposing my autoethnographic narrative with the Theory of Autopoiesis, acting as both a framework of analysis and metaphor, I offer my emotional process as a political representation, a questioning of power paradigms and a source of knowledge and support to other researchers. The rendering of my journey, from working in and believing in organisations governed by a business logic and rational economic theory, to daring to challenge such discursive powers, shows what is possible through conscious noticing, embracing, and transformation. I argue that by combining scientific theories with analytical autoethnography, we can bridge sciences and communities of practice, and open doors for the application of autoethnography in new professional domains, thereby significantly contributing to an adjustment of research practices and to what counts as knowledge.

Theorising a connectivity mindset in doctoral candidates – using critical mobilities as a point of departure

ABSTRACT This conceptual paper considers doctoral candidate mindset and effective doctoral supervision. I explore mindset through a Critical Mobilities lens to posit two mindsets that candidates inhabit on their doctoral journey: transit and connectivity (Kesselring, (2006). Pioneering mobilities: New patterns of movement and motility in a mobile world. Environment & Planning A, 38(2), 269–279. https://doi.org/10.1068/a37279). I suggest management of doctoral research in the UK and internationally predisposes doctoral candidates and their supervisors to a ‘transit mindset’ which focuses on completion. On the other hand, a ‘connectivity mindset’ of exploration better enables critical and creative thinking. While both mindsets are necessary for the production of a high-quality thesis, a connectivity mindset can be more uncomfortable for both supervisors and doctoral candidates in the context of the neoliberal performance management culture. With the aim of supporting better doctoral research and doctoral experience, the paper theorises three manifestations of connectivity mindset that supervisors may encounter. These are: ‘rhizomic thinking’ which the supervisory team can identify and support in their supervisee; the ‘nomadic space’ which is created between supervisor and supervisee when they share a connectivity mindset; and a ‘third space’ that is entered into by supervisors and supervisees, when a shared connectivity mindset incorporates personal experiences, feelings and needs. The paper concludes with six areas of focus for development of supervisory practice.