Doctoral Journey Research Articles

Cartooning and Mind Mapping in the Doctoral Journey

This article is a commentary of the author’s experiences with visual representation as a doctoral candidate. It is an autobiographical reflection of her doctoral journey towards a PhD in education, a mixed methods study which explored teaching for creativity and creative processes for music educators. The author reflects on the experience of engaging with her own work visually via cartooning and mind mapping, and what this meant for her studies and her experience as a research student. The author hopes that this can offer a scope for reflection to readers who are doing similar types of studies or intend to engage more creatively with their doctoral studies. The article aims to demonstrate the benefit of cartooning as a self-expressive tool for the PhD candidate and to show the value of visual representation through mind mapping in the process of data analysis.

‘The collision of two worlds’: when a teacher-centered facilitator meets a student-centered pedagogy

ABSTRACT Social aspects among Mexican society are based on gender hierarchy influencing every decision-making process. I was taught from a young age that every decision needed to come from me. While I had the opportunity to learn an activist approach to working with youth during my doctoral journey, I never thought it would challenge the epistemology of my personal and professional life. An activist approach is based on critical and feminist pedagogies. As such, Chicana feminist theory invited me to question what has been inherited, learned and imposed throughout life, and how this created a conflict between what I was taught and what I was learning. The purpose of this study was to explore the challenges of a teacher-centered facilitator implementing a student-centered pedagogy. This paper is the result of a four-year critical autoethnography project using an activist approach for working with youth in an after-school sports club. Findings are divided into three sections: (1) learning to understand the influence of cultural backgrounds on becoming an activist teacher/researcher over time, (2) how to negotiate the discomfort and challenges faced in the process of moving from a teacher-centered to student-centered positionality and (3) moving from discomfort to comfort with a student-centered approach. Through this process I began to take inventory of my historical upbringing, creating a space for self-reflexivity that allowed me to deconstruct ‘old ways’ and merge them with ‘new’.

Career progression after core surgical training

We examine the employment journey of doctors who successfully complete core training.

Facilitating a Mentoring Programme for Doctoral Students: Insights from Evidence-Based Practice

Aim/Purpose: One approach to helping doctoral students deal with the many challenges they face is the provision of a structured mentoring programme to complement the more traditional doctoral curriculum and supervisor relationship. This paper reports a mentoring programme containing such activities as individual consultations and peer-mentoring workshops, introduced at one of the non-public universities in Poland and discusses the development of a model of support. In developing the model, two evaluation studies were conducted seeking to discover how participants perceived the mentoring programme, what needs the mentoring programme addressed, and what benefits it provided for doctoral students. Background: With reference to a new paradigm proposed by Kram and Higgins, mentoring emerges in the context of many developmental networks, where the more junior mentors and peer-mentors together discover new roles involved in doctoral education. Methodology: Case study methodology is utilized to gather perceptions of a doctoral mentoring programme. The conceptual framework for a two-part programme is presented and the results of two evaluation studies conducted on-line using a mix-method approach are reported. In total, 42 doctoral students participated in the studies, representing social sciences and the humanities disciplines. Contribution: This paper discusses a novel doctoral mentoring programme which finds its basis in evidence-based practice. This research goes beyond previous studies by undertaking an analysis of doctoral students’ needs, then considering relationships between those needs and structuring a programme to meet them. Findings: Findings showed three main areas of need for doctoral students: the need for social interaction at university; the need for structure in the doctoral journey, and the need for psychological support. Participants distinguished two perspectives that influenced the assessment of programme activities: (a) the meaningfulness of the mentoring programme to the individual; (b) the mentor’s attitude including the general atmosphere of collegiality during meetings. Results presented are supported by a proposed intervention model. Recommendations for Practitioners: The model presented may inspire other universities to implement similar approaches for supporting their own doctoral students. Researcher enablers are also offered as strategies relating to workshop topics, meeting schedules, and programme organization. The main recommendation for practitioners is to be sensitive to the psychosocial needs of students. Recommendation for Researchers: Researchers interested in doctoral students’ needs and ways of supporting them can utilize the proposed model for strategically planning such support. It is recommended that further research into the area of mentoring doctoral students makes use of the mixed-method approach. Such an approach takes cognizance of phenomenological exigencies as they pertain to individual meaning-making. Impact on Society: Supporting the effectiveness of doctoral students is significant as failure comes at great professional and personal cost to the doctoral student. There are also potential costs in terms of faculty disillusionment and impacts on university reputation. Economic benefits to the nation may also be forfeited when doctoral students fail to graduate. Future Research: It would be valuable to corroborate the model presented and extend it through the development of a mentoring support scale which identifies more linearly specific doctoral students’ needs. Longitudinal studies are also required to verify long-term effects of the programme.

Psychological Adjustment of Chinese PhD Students: A Narrative Study

Aim/Purpose: International PhD students suffer a lot of stress. However, many studies about international students focus on identifying the stressors these students experience rather than the stress-coping strategies, and those that explore international students’ coping behaviour often report maladjustments. Background: This study intended to fill the research gap by examining the strategies that Chinese students employed to psychologically adjust to their PhD study. Methodology: Narrative inquiry method was employed to give voice to the research participants. Six Chinese doctoral students in social sciences in Australian universities were purposefully sampled and interviewed three times during their candidature in order to gain an in-depth understanding of their lived experiences of stress-coping. Contribution: This paper provides positive stress-coping strategies used by six Chinese doctoral students, which can be used by international doctoral students or those who work with doctoral students from abroad to improve their psychological well-beings. Findings: These Chinese PhD students adopted positive stress-coping strategies of regulating their emotions and retaining their motivation. They adopted illusory and interpretive forms of secondary control by reframing realities to obtain psychological peace when faced with stress. The ways that Chinese PhD students handled stress suggest that the Chinese moral education and the characteristic motivation for learning attributed them with positive personal characteristics to battle the adverse conditions. Recommendations for Practitioners: Institutions/departments can initiate support groups for PhD students from the same disciplines where students can express their stress, seek assistance from senior doctoral students and exchange their strategies. Institutions/departments can also support international doctoral candidates by taking a more flexible approach to policies and procedures concerning doctoral students taking leave both in terms of when it is taken and the duration. Recommendation for Researchers: Researchers can focus on international doctoral students’ positive stress-coping experiences as well as negative experiences to present a balanced picture of the doctoral journey. Impact on Society: The findings from this research on doctoral students’ stress-coping can equip doctoral students with strategies to handle their psychological challenges, which in turn may enhance their overseas doctoral experiences, reduce the dropout rates, and raise awareness of supervisors and institutions about doctoral students’ psychological well-beings. Future Research: Future research can examine the stress-coping experiences of other international doctoral students, focusing not only from the individual psychological angle but from the academic and social perspectives.

Choosing the Thesis by Publication approach: motivations and influencers for doctoral candidates

The primary research output of a contemporary doctoral journey is no longer limited to a traditional thesis. Amongst other possibilities, current doctoral candidates may choose to produce a Thesis by Publication (TBP). However, very little is known about the factors shaping doctoral candidates’ decisions to adopt a TBP approach during their doctoral journey. This paper reports on quantitative and qualitative data collected in 2018 and 2019 from 246 recent doctoral graduates from Australian universities who completed a TBP. It reports on data exploring when candidates made the decision to select this option, who influenced their decision, and their reasons for choosing the TBP approach. We found that candidates typically adopted a TBP approach early, strongly influenced by their supervisors, to meet vocational, promotional and process goals. The study has implications for administrators, supervisors and candidates in selecting the thesis mode that suits the unique needs of each candidate.

Identifying Significant Personal and Program Factors that Predict Online EdD Students’ Program Integration

Based on a synthesis of persistence theory and the empirical literature, an online doctoral program integration model was developed using data from 232 online EdD students. A predictive, correlation design and regression analysis were used to examine if personal factors (sex, race, age, marital status, and presence of children in the home) and program factors (stage in doctoral journey, synchronous interactions, cohorts, and orientations) could predict program integration. The entire model was significant. The variables of sex, race, participation in a cohort, and engagement in synchronous communication individually contributed to the variance in program integration.

Using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) to explore the career experiences of women deputy headteachers

ABSTRACT This paper offers an autoethnographic account of using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) as a doctoral researcher to explore the career experiences of women deputy headteachers. IPA is a qualitative methodology which lends itself to a detailed exploration of the ways in which individuals make sense of their lived experiences. Despite the wide use of IPA in many areas of social science, this methodological approach is not commonly used by those investigating the career experiences of those working in educational leadership, management and administration. To examine the methodological implications of using IPA in such studies, this paper reflects on the author’s doctoral journey as she investigated the career experiences of twelve women deputy headteachers working in state-funded secondary schools in England. Participants were interviewed at the point in their careers when they were contemplating the significant decision whether or not to pursue promotion to headship. Interview extracts and illustrative excerpts from the author’s research journal are used to discuss the possibilities of IPA as well as the potential challenges facing first-time IPA researchers.

CHOT STUDENT REPRESENTATIVE

As the Senior Student Representative for the Social Research, Policy, and Practice Section for GSA one of the goals is to organize a symposium that would be beneficial for students and junior researchers. In this section, we will have a student who was involved in CHOT to speak about his experience. Neeraj Puro is a doctoral candidate who has been involved in several CHOT projects during his academic career. The CHOT has helped fund his doctoral work and allowed him to travel and present at more conferences. The projects that he was involved in helped him with early publications and assisted when he was out in the career market. He will speak about his experience; what he learned, and his opinion about the process. He will reflect on this program from a student/junior researcher’s perspective and how it has influenced his doctoral journey and the beginning of his career.

I Need Somebody to Lean on

Abstract. In the literature, social support is depicted as an important determinant of whether someone completes their doctoral process. However, few studies actually test the impact of social support in sound quantitative designs. The present study provides an incremental understanding of the social support effect by (a) assessing the joint influence of three sources of social support (supervisor, academic peers, and relatives) on the emotions of doctoral students, their perceived progress and intention to persist; and (b) testing the interactions between these three sources of support and the doctoral stage of advancement. To this end, we carried out a longitudinal three-wave study with 446 doctoral students from two Belgian universities. The hierarchical regressions showed that (1) only supervisor support significantly predicted the outcomes of doctoral students and (2) the influence of social support on intention to persist was moderated by the stage of advancement in the doctoral journey. We discuss these results and their implications for further work on social support in light of existing literature on doctoral persistence.

Mapping the emotional journey of the doctoral ‘hero’: Challenges faced and breakthroughs made by creative arts and humanities candidates

This article discusses how doctoral candidates identify and navigate personal learning challenges on their journey to becoming researchers. Our study asked creative arts and humanities candidates to think beyond the research project itself and reflect on emotional hurdles they were facing or had overcome. The findings point to a great deal of ‘invisible’ work that underpins doctoral study, and show that such hidden work can have a major influence not only on the research project, but also on progress and satisfaction with the learning journey. In this article, we outline the key themes that emerged from the study: on the emotional and transformational dimensions of the doctoral journey. Using these themes and the candidate stories surrounding them, we align the doctoral journey with Joseph Campbell’s journeying ‘hero’ and Mezirow’s concept of transformation, and suggest how making such invisible aspects of candidature more visible might enhance research training.

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.

MAI Te Kupenga: Supporting Māori and Indigenous doctoral scholars within Higher Education

This article shares insights into the Māori and Indigenous Doctoral support programme, MAI Te Kupenga, as one assertion of Indigenous approaches within the Higher Education sector. Including the views of Māori and Indigenous staff and scholars from a larger project “Te Tātua o Kahukura” which explored Māori and Indigenous postdoctoral capacity building, this article provides an overview of Māori staff and students reflections on the role of MAI Te Kupenga in supporting Māori and Indigenous scholars throughout their doctoral journey. Key areas of focus for this article are (i) the implications of systemic racism for Māori and Indigenous scholars; (ii) the effectiveness of supervision for Māori and Indigenous scholars and (iii) the role of MAI Te Kupenga in providing positive support mechanisms for Māori and Indigenous scholars studying in mainstream university contexts.

Postgraduate supervision and the early stages of the doctoral journey

This article looks at two previous study reports on postgraduate supervision, views, and experiential as well as academic advice from other scholars. It presents the various perspectives on the central phenomenon relationship between the supervisor and the doctoral student at the initial stages of the PhD programme, arguments, suggestions and insights into the nature and substance of PhD supervision, early articulation of expectations and clarifying them; commitment to establishment of clear goals; and developing a study plan and time-table that are consistent with work. It also explores knowledge and a warm, supportive relationship; planning from the beginning, including research mapping and concept charting; proper time-management; and internalising the criteria for examination of a PhD thesis, capacity to relate the research topic to the discipline; encouraging the use of writing as a voyage of discovery. It argues that all these are vital to sustaining the momentum and completion of a PhD by research. It concludes that postgraduate supervision requires that supervisors and doctoral students by research clarify and discuss their expectations at the beginning and on a continuous and regular basis; that differences in perception or procedure can present the supervisor and the student with debilitating challenges that can impede progress and eventually fail to get the coveted PhD.

Socio-Technological Enrollment as a Driver of Successful Doctoral Education

Aim/Purpose: This article uses the enrollment approach contained in the Actor-Network Theory (ANT) to challenge the deterministic perspectives of doctoral socialization and offers a new perspective based on co-construction between social and technological entities mobilized during the doctoral education as a driver of success. Background: Most studies have used deterministic approaches to show that the success of doctoral education is the outcome of socialization as shaped by the individual/personal, racial/ethnical, national/cultural, organizational/institutional and disciplinary contexts in which supervisors and supervisees cooperate. In doing so, they overlook the complexity of student-supervisor relationships and the gradual power-based processes of negotiation and persuasion that make the doctoral education successful. Analyzing the author’s own doctoral journey, the article highlights that the doctoral success is rather the result of a socio-technological enrollment as reflected in power-based supervisory politics. Methodology: The methodological approach consisted in an autoethnography that self-reflected on all stages of the doctoral processes and the author’s collaboration with his thesis supervisor from March 2012 until October 2016. Contribution: This paper reveals that the use of an approach of co-construction between technology and society also makes it possible to better understand the relationships between students and supervisors and the implications for socialization in a doctoral setting. Findings: The success of doctoral socialization is not necessarily a matter of individuals, disciplines, or contexts, but rather it depends on the level of articulation and implementation of the supervisory politics inspired by the imbalanced power relations among those involved. The deconstruction of the doctoral supervisory politics reveals that enrollment is an important component that mobilizes human and non-human resources from various scales. Enrollment strategies play a key role in how doctoral students start, progress and complete their doctorate. Recommendations for Practitioners: The results and analysis on socio-technological enrollment-based doctoral education can be useful in the context of support policies towards improving student supervision and facilitating doctoral studies in higher education. Recommendation for Researchers: The paper invites researchers in sociology, anthropology, psychology, education sciences, and other scientific disciplines to a theoretical reconsideration of student-supervisor relationships in the context of research and support to higher education. Impact on Society: The content of this article will help improve collaboration among supervisors and supervisees in higher education and could, thus, contribute to reducing attrition and doctoral dropout.

An Archetypal Analysis of Doctoral Education as a Heroic Journey

Aim/Purpose: The purpose of this conceptual paper is to align key aspects of the heroic journey archetype with existing research and writing about doctoral students, thereby extending previous discussions of this topic. Background: While obtaining a doctoral degree is often described as a heroic journey, that assertion has not been fully explored from a depth psychology standpoint. Because myth is a form of pedagogy, key heroic archetypes (Pearson, 1986; 1991) provide a means to describe and understand the student experience. Methodology: This synthesis of the scholarship on doctoral education is framed within an alignment of the heroic journey monomyth described by Campbell (2008) to the progression of doctoral student experiences (Gardner, 2009). Various movie characters are used to illustrate the three primary stages of the heroic journey: the departure, initiation, and the return. Contribution: Consistent with other applications of archetypal psychology to education (e.g., Mayes, 2010), the paper presents a way for faculty and students to understand and reflect on the overall educational process. Findings: A more elaborated view of the doctoral journey is provided, including the sequence of challenges faced by students in the process and the types of Hero energies expressed at different points. Recommendations for Practitioners: The responsibilities of doctoral program faculty to create an experience that helps assure success and to mentor students appropriately are reinforced. Recommendation for Researchers: While not a research study, the discussion in this conceptual paper provides a broader context for use of the monomyth as an organizing framework for studies of doctoral education. Impact on Society: The commonly recognized 50% success rate of the best-and-brightest in higher education speaks to the size and scope of the challenge and the resulting stresses from taking this journey. Based on the apparent congruency of the monomyth to the process of doctoral education, continued use of this archetype to address these challenges would seem to be indicated.

From distant collaboration to collaborative presentation: the EdD and one bedtime story more

As part of their ever-evolving doctoral journey, the authors presented their recently-published article ‘The EdD and one bedtime story more! An exploration of the Third Space inhabited by mothers working in educational leadership whilst studying for a professional doctorate’ (Gibson, Shanks and Dick, 2017) at the Greenwich SHIFT Teaching and Learning Conference, 2018. From distant collaboration to collaborative presentation, the conference brought together two of the three women who had written the article together via online communications between London to Scotland in a virtual ‘third space’ (Soja, 1999), having never previously met face to face. Third spaces, such as online messenger platforms as used by the authors, can provide a place for individuals to collaborate, and identities to develop. The article focused on the “ever-present pressures, tensions and opportunities for women leaders in education” (Gibson, Shanks and Dick, op.cit., p.172). This conference piece draws parallels between the pressures, tensions and opportunities that conferences can provide. The article offers an opportunity for further reflection on the experience of the conference as yet another part of doctoral study and makes links to the original article’s claim that study can be a ‘third space’ (Soja, op.cit.). The conference revealed itself as the ideal third space for both professional and personal development.

The invisible others: stories of international doctoral student dropout

A doctorate degree is characterized in the literature as a time of high stress and uncertainty for students as well as subject to worrisome attrition rates, with an estimated 50% of doctoral students discontinuing their degrees. International doctoral students (IDSs) specifically face the additional challenges of adapting to new academic environments and cultures upon embarking on their doctoral journey. While existing research provides us with insight into the general challenges associated with the international doctoral experience, we have limited understanding of how these challenges contribute to their dropout. Drawing on life story interviews, this study qualitatively investigates the attrition experiences of IDSs at a Western European university. To analyze IDSs’ discontinuation stories, we employ the concept of Othering. This concept draws our attention to students’ perceptions of being marked as different by those in positions of power or privilege. We identify four types of Othering, where students were cast the Foreign, Academic, Financial, and/or Social Others and the role these played in their discontinuation. Findings suggest that Foreign Othering shadowed and reinforced additional Othering experiences; the IDSs lacked familiarity with the academic system, culture, and language which made them more vulnerable to acute academic challenges, financial hardship, and social exclusion. Based on these findings, we provide recommendations for a more barrier-free and inclusive doctoral experience.

Integration into a PhD Program: An Arts-Based Research Approach to Examine the Experiences of Doctoral Students

[full article in English]
 This article explores the experiences of twelve doctoral students during their processes of integrating into a doctoral program. In this qualitative study, by using a participatory, arts-based research design, twelve participants were asked to create collages and write narratives depicting their collages representative of their integration experiences. The research question this study addressed is the following: how have the students experienced integrating into their doctoral program? The gathered data revealed that academic and social factors play important roles in shaping and impacting the doctoral journey of a student.

A narrative study of the experience of feedback on a professional doctorate: ‘a kind of flowing conversation’

ABSTRACTFeedback has an important role in supporting learning. It is through feedback that learners can actively construct and clarify understanding, monitor their performance and direct their learning. Despite attention on feedback in higher education, limited research exists exploring the role and experience of feedback within doctoral programmes. This article focuses on student experiences of feedback during a professional doctorate in England. Analysis of the narrative of one recent Doctorate in Education graduate reveals several inter-related themes, illustrating the role of peers in supporting the move to autonomous researcher. This intensive focus on one student’s experience narrative contributes to a reconceptualization of feedback as dialogic, revealing feedback through the doctoral journey as an ongoing dialogue, with the doctoral researcher taking increasing responsibility for orchestrating the conversation. I argue that such a perspective moves beyond the traditional view of doctoral learning through the support of a supervisor to encompass both formal and informal learning experiences within a community of research practice, emphasising the active participation of the doctoral candidate in this community. I discuss the potential contribution of student experience stories to the development of doctoral relationships and practice.