Doctoral Journey Research Articles

Power effects, normalising advice and evolving knowledge of doctoral writing

Prescriptive advice about doctoral writing often fails to recognise the complexities of the doctoral journey. Linguistic and cultural backgrounds are negated where advice about writing converges around a norm. In this paper, we explore the role of ‘advice’ in our growth as thesis writers by examining our literacy history and tensions we faced while writing our theses. We pursue a duoethnographic process (Sawyer & Norris, 2013), a process that facilitates the construction and reconstruction of perspectives. From our differing backgrounds, we experienced discourses of ‘advice’ in alternative ways. We identify opposing 'advice' trends which, in turn, provided a space for our agency. Inspired by Foucault’s (1977) ‘power/knowledge’ we think of past experiences and encounters along our doctoral journey as power effects which shaped our views on advice. We conclude by outlining how insights for our teacher-selves inform how we speak about impacts and advice with doctoral students.

What Does It Mean To Be a Resilient Student? An Explorative Study of Doctoral Students’ Resilience and Coping Strategies Using Grounded Theory as the Analytic Lens

Aim/Purpose: This study aimed to explore doctoral students’ perceived resilience and the coping strategies they choose to employ to overcome challenging circumstances during their studies. Background: Doctoral students often experience barriers which may include personal, professional, academic, and institutional-related challenges. The students’ ability to recover from any burdensome situations is essential for their progress, motivation, and well-being. Methodology: The data for this study were gathered utilising qualitative interviews conducted with a diverse cohort of thirteen doctoral candidates enrolled at a single higher education institution in the United Kingdom. These participants were deliberately chosen to encompass a range of backgrounds, including international and domestic students, varying study statuses and stages within their doctoral programs (full-time or part-time, and at the beginning, middle, or end of their studies), as well as differing funding situations (either funded or self-funded). The Grounded Theory methodology was employed as an appropriate analytical framework, providing a systematic set of procedures that facilitated the elucidation of the participants’ conceptualizations and the significance they attributed to the concept of resilience throughout their doctoral pursuits. Contribution: Empirical studies have explored the stressors and motivations of doctoral students’ journeys, but little is known about the in-depth investigation of the choices students make to respond to adversity and how they demonstrate resilience. This study aimed to fill this gap in the relevant literature. Findings: Five emergent contextual conditions represented circumstances of adversity for the study participants. These were relevant to five thematic areas: (1) supervision and supervisory support; (2) key milestones and challenges inherent to the doctoral journey (i.e., self-regulation and finding a daily working routine, data collection, and analysis, the writing process); (3) personal and family-related expectations and responsibilities; (4) study status related considerations (e.g., being an international and/or a part-time student); and (5) challenges arising from the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings demonstrated doctoral students’ state of psychological capital, inner strength, and persistence that they considered in their attempt to employ varied strategies to tackle challenging circumstances. Recommendations for Practitioners: The findings are transferable to different populations of doctoral students from diverse disciplines. Different students may be able to relate to the doctoral-related experiences that are reported and interpreted in this paper through the Grounded Theory analytic lens. This may enhance their sense of relatability with like-minded peers and help them realise that they are not alone in the challenges presented along the doctoral journey. Most importantly, the institutional-related challenges presented in this study will help raise awareness for institutions to employ strategies on human capital and academic identity by placing a stronger emphasis on practical solutions that would encourage, enable, and empower doctoral students to construct their identities. Recommendation for Researchers: The study aims to increase the scholarly knowledge of doctoral students’ resilience and coping mechanisms that they employ during the doctoral journey. Researchers can develop a resilience scale using the results of this in-depth study to understand doctoral students’ perceptions and experiences on a larger scale. The scale will enable students, supervisors, and institutions more broadly to ascertain resilience/psychological capital that students may demonstrate during the doctoral journey based on targeted interventions that can be put in place to support students’ work, progress, and overall doctoral success. Impact on Society: The stressors associated with the doctoral journey may cause obstacles for students to progress and can affect timely completion to the extent that dropping out may become an unavoidable outcome and an obvious decision for some students. During academic challenges, doctoral students’ well-being and mental health are likely to suffer. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated academic challenges even more. It is imperative for educational scholars and researchers to explore how doctoral students perceive and respond to adversity to strategise appropriate interventions that can be designed and put into place to offer support and guidance to facilitate progress and maximise success. Future Research: Further research can extend the study’s findings with the aim to increase transferability in other educational contexts and contents. The findings offer ground for the development of a resilience/psychological capital scale by drawing on the five thematic areas and their key components. The scale can help guide the development of targeted interventions to support doctoral students’ work.

Višedimenzionalnost svakodnevnih iskustava internacionalizacije korišćenjem kolaborativne autoetnografije - narativi o pripadnosti i prelasku granica dve sociološkinje

This paper elucidates approaches to collaborative autoethnography (CAE) drawing on two female academics' experiences, who live in Ireland. As Ellis et al., (2011) state, autoethnography 'seeks to describe and systematically analyse personal experience to understand cultural experience'. We as two female sociologists, retrospectively and selectively analyse experiences with international academic life; borders, cultural norms, and identity. We refer to belonging to explore academic mobility within the contexts of our lives. We explore relationships between enabling/constraining factors contributing to our engagement with knowledge production and belonging to new academic environments outside our places of origin. Tanja's account documents her doctoral journey from Slovenia to Ireland, learning the host country's cultural fabrics to engage with academia, leaving and coming home, which did not mean returning to 'the known'. Lisa's narrative displays synergies to Tanja's illuminating emotions upon entering the UK in 2017, when antiimmigrant sentiment was heightened. However, her experiences of returning during COVID-19 disrupted her imaginaries of coming home. Written in a conversational style, we explore commonalities/differences in experiences of international academic careers. This paper illuminates CAE for opening conceptual avenues into multi-layered dimensions of academics' experiences, illuminating its significance for international Higher Education policy-making.

Inductive Process to Analyze the Structure of Lived Experience: A Scholar-Practitioner Protocol for Evidence-Based Practice in Qualitative Research

One of the criticisms leveled against research and knowledge, especially "knowledge for knowledge’s sake" is that it seldom goes so far as to make a significant difference in practice. Thousands of doctoral graduates worldwide produce new knowledge every year, only to run out of steam at the end of their doctoral journey. For many, earning their doctorates is sufficient to justify the painstaking academic journey, so they give up the ghost and strive no more to make a difference. As 12th century French abbot St Bernard of Clairvaux writes, "Some seek knowledge for the sake of knowledge—and that is curiosity. Some seek knowledge that they may be known to have knowledge—and that is vanity. Some seek knowledge that they may give to others their knowledge—and that is charity." But how does one apply the knowledge to solve real-world problems? How does what you have learned and discovered, find its way into praxis? How does it find favor with organizational and community leaders who are not academically inclined and could not care less for academic theories and jargon? This paper is inspired by the work of a team of French researchers who have conceptualized and developed an innovative approach entitled "Inductive Process to Analyze the Structure of Lived Experience" (IPSE), which is being successfully integrated into evidence-based medicine (EBM). Taking a cue from EBM, an attempt is made to unpack and elucidate the IPSE framework for doctoral researchers that are unfamiliar with it and offer a compelling case for its application in the practice of social science research, outside the field of medicine.

Doctoral Student Perceptions of Faculty Advisors: Four Supportive Behaviors to Promote Doctoral Completion

The number of doctoral recipients per year in the United States has grown considerably, yet on average, half of all students do not persist to degree completion or far exceed the expected completion timeline. Attrition and extended time to degree negatively impact both doctoral students and institutions and costs each time, money, and effort. Advisor-advisee relationship quality significantly affects degree completion. This study explores experiences of 17 full-time working professionals who had recently completed a doctoral degree in education within 6 consecutive years at a regionally accredited institution in the United States. Our findings revealed four faculty advisor behaviors that contribute to doctoral completion: encouragement, accessibility, dependability, and expertise. We offer recommendations for advisors to improve the student doctoral journey.

African female doctoral graduates account for success in their doctoral journeys

Doctoral education is regarded as a crucial engine for development by the knowledge economies, thereby making the research capacity of scholars play a critical factor towards development. Widening participation within doctoral education is seen as a way of enhancing this capacity. However, African scholars produce only 1.4% of all published research, indicating that Africa lacks research capacity. Even though both men and women contribute to the development of their continent and their countries, the number of women holding doctoral degrees on the African continent remains low across all nationalities. In high-income countries, there are 3963 PhDs per million people, whereas in some African countries (such as Tunisia, Egypt and Kenya), the number ranges from 100 to over 1500; however, in most low-income countries (such as Ethiopia, Uganda and Tanzania), the number is less than 100. Much research in doctoral education examines the reasons for low graduation rates and high attrition rates, but little research examines the contributors to the doctoral study for African women, especially in these times when doctoral education is viewed as a driver of the economy. Based on a qualitative study that interviewed 14 women from African countries, this article aimed to investigate how women account for completing doctoral studies. Data were gathered through semistructured interviews and analysed thematically using a capabilities approach as a theoretical framework. The findings suggest that institutional support, peer support and academic support played a role in their achievement.Contribution: The article contributed to doctoral education scholarship of African women and indicated that religion contributed to African women’s success in doctoral programmes, granting them strength to push until completion. This research may greatly encourage more women to enrol in doctoral programmes when reading other women’s success stories.

In the Depths: Synergies Between the Doctoral Experience and Life in Hong Kong

The process of gaining a PhD does not occur in isolation; it is situated within and against the contexts doctoral students find themselves in at any given time. Through sharing three diary entries penned in the depths of my PhD in Hong Kong in 2017, I highlight the interconnections between particularly memorable events and junctures within my doctoral journey. In so doing, I reveal the importance of journaling for identifying the echoes between personal and graduate school experiences to understand the complex terrain of doctoral life.

Stories and Shame in Front‐Line Medicine

AbstractThis review of Jay Baruch's Tornado of Life: A Doctor's Journey through Constraints and Creativity in the ER considers the book's contributions, including its explorations of the clinical dilemma of working with patients’ stories that are fragmented, how easily clinicians can miss crucial parts of patients’ stories and how that affects care, and the “agonizing compromises” between what patients need and what institutions can provide. Baruch acknowledges, without any self‐indulgence, the shame that his work causes him, given the limitations of what he can do.

Assessing Doctoral Candidacy: The Development of an Assessment Tool for Comprehensive Portfolios

This article presents an assessment tool for doctoral students preparing their comprehensive portfolio. This tool was created from my firsthand experience in the Joint PhD program in Educational Studies—a collaboration between three universities in Ontario, Canada: Lakehead University, Brock University, and the University of Windsor. Following the three criteria for evaluation of the comprehensive portfolio in the program handbook, I developed nine sub-criteria (three for each criterion). This assessment tool can be used for educational purposes, as doctoral students begin to organize and narrate their doctoral journey. Students can map their experiences to the sub-criteria developed, allowing them to be explicit about how their presented scholarly tasks have helped in preparing them for candidacy. While this tool has an obvious application for students within the Joint PhD program, students in other programs with similar requirements may also find it useful due to its theoretical grounding in literature on the process of scholarship.

Nothing but publishing: the overriding goal of PhD students in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau

ABSTRACT Publication pressure is perceived to be filtering down into doctoral education worldwide. We explore the causes and effects of the perceived centrality of publishing among doctoral students, emphasising the impact of publication pressure on students’ identity trajectories. We draw on a qualitative analysis of 90 mainland Chinese doctoral students at universities in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Macau. We find that the credentialisation of publications in the increasingly competitive and publication-dominant academic labour market results in publishing-centred doctoral journeys. Our key finding is that the centrality of publishing affects every aspect of identity trajectory development: it causes doctoral students to commodify knowledge production, devalues coursework, conference participation, and teaching assistantships, encourages students to regard their supervisors as publishing facilitators and their peers as rivals rather than collaborators, and marginalises engagement with external stakeholders. In discussing these dimensions, we emphasise the need for a more comprehensive evaluation of candidates’ abilities and honours in academic recruitment and call for policies to curtail the overemphasis on research output in academic evaluations.

Understanding the journey and decision-making process of doctors throughout their career

Background: Often, we perceive healthcare from the patient’s point of view. Very seldom do, we think about the doctors, pillars of our health-care system. They have to overcome the journey and faced challenges before fully established. Aims and Objectives: This study aims to explore this area on the perception of doctors about their career, the support they desire and the challenges they face to establishment of their private clinical practices. Materials and Methods: The data were collected from doctors using questionnaires circulated through digital platform during COVID-19 pandemic situation for cross-sectional study. Cluster followed by snowball sampling method was followed to collect the data using two different Google form questionnaires for doctors completed under-graduation and completed postgraduation/super-specialty. Chi-square analysis was used to assess the frequency count variables. Results: The millennial as well as senior doctors have securing financing the highest rank overall as the major challenge, they faced before starting a clinic. Conclusion: Decision-making process of doctors is very complex and dynamic influenced by different factors throughout their career. Factors such as securing post-graduation, securing finance and procuring equipments for the establishment of clinics were found to influence career decision.

Towards a framework for embedding doctorateness in research proposals

ABSTRACT Doctorate graduates are expected to contribute original knowledge and possess advanced skills essential for addressing complex problems. Embedding doctorateness in doctorate programmes could help ensure that the productivity of doctoral research is explicitly demonstrated. Doctorateness represents independent scholarship, the transition from knowledge consumption to knowledge creation, original scholarly contribution, and research integrity. A research proposal is the backbone of a doctoral journey, as it acts as an academic development plan for supervisors and students. Hence, understanding the role of supervisors in enabling doctorateness in preparing a research proposal is essential for improving student satisfaction and competencies in their academic development. Here, we develop a framework for facilitating doctorateness in preparing a research proposal and provide recommendations on supervisor functions.

The Doctoral Journey as an Emotional, Embodied, Political Experience: Stories from the Field

The Doctoral Journey as an Emotional, Embodied, Political Experience: Stories from the Field

Conducting a PhD as a project: sharing insights from my doctoral journey

PurposeThe aims of this paper are to mobilize project management concepts in order to draw parallels with the doctoral project and to share the author’s experience and lessons learned.Design/methodology/approachThis paper is based on a qualitative inquiry using an autoethnographic approach.FindingsThis paper contributes a self-reflexive examination of the doctoral project experience that incites current and future doctoral students and early-career researchers to take advantage of opportunities that make the experience satisfying, lay the foundations of an academic career and help ensure the thesis is completed in a timely and orderly manner.Originality/valueExamining the doctoral project through the lens of one of the highest standards in project management, developed by the Project Management Institute (PMI), this paper enables PhD students in project management and other fields of study to understand the basics of a project and take action to structure their doctoral journey in a way that enhances both their experience and chances of success.

An Assortment of Meditations

An Assortment of Meditations

Review of “Lifelines: A Doctor's Journey in the Fight for Public Health”: A Doctor's Account of Public Health's Invisible and Indispensable Effects

Review of “Lifelines: A Doctor's Journey in the Fight for Public Health”: A Doctor's Account of Public Health's Invisible and Indispensable Effects

Participatory Relationships Matter: Doctoral Students Traversing the Academy

In this article, we take our thoughts for a walk through our three different doctoral journeys and experiences with the Post Philosophies and the Doing of Inquiry Webinar Series (2020–2021). The webinars presented an example of Slow scholarship, enabling us to think deeply and differently from others and develop new ideas to take further. The online connections offered opportunities for extending learning spaces beyond traditional bounded structures. Here we explore the rich learning gained from each other’s experiences of research, learning, and teaching in different higher education settings and ways in which these intersected with the webinars during the global COVID-19 pandemic. We contend that the generosity of senior academics in leadership positions who embraced global networks of communication, connected students with experts, and learned with and from their students through communal egalitarian spaces has enormous potential to support students as they traverse often demanding and challenging doctoral journeys.

“I’ve Been in a Box Too Long and I Didn’t Even Realise That I Was.” How Can We Conceptualise the Subjective Well-Being of Students Undertaking a Part-Time DBA? The IICC Model

The well-being of doctoral students is a matter of concern for the Higher Education sector, not least during the Covid pandemic. The challenge of a doctorate is regarded as a test of a student’s capability as an independent researcher and for future career potential. However, this challenge extends beyond the formal examination process to include a test of the student’s resilience and the ability to cope with a multitude of pressures that emanate from a variety of sources. Hitherto, much of the research into doctoral students’ well-being has concentrated on the experience of full-time Ph.D. students. This article reports on the well-being of part-time students enrolled onto a professional doctorate—the Doctor of Business Administration (DBA). Unlike full-time campus-based doctorates, many part-time professional doctorates are often remote, take longer to complete, and present a range of challenges that affect work, family life, and health, albeit to varying degrees. This article set out to ascertain how British and Dutch DBA students cope with the challenges of studying for a part-time doctorate. In doing so, Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was used to elicit students’ experiences of their doctoral journey and their subjective well-being. The findings point not only to the stress placed on personal well-being and family life but also the resilience of students and the sense of fulfilment that is associated with doctoral study. This article offers a conceptualisation of this complex phenomenon through the Individual, Institutional, Challenge, and Coping strategies (IICC) model.

Knowledge Meals, Research Relationships, and Postqualitative Offerings: Enacting Langar (a Sikh Tradition of a Shared Meal) as Pedagogy of Doctoral Supervision

In research, particularly within the pedagogies of doctoral supervision, the significance of relational experiences is less explored and understood. Such relational aspects determine the nature and quality of the doctoral research output and are a crucial element of successful doctoral completions. A conscious assessment, estimation and management of the vulnerable sensibilities surrounding these relation fosters a deeper insight into the way student-researchers and supervisors experience their doctoral journeys. In this paper, to feature the importance of these relational experiences and to accentuate ideas and concepts for pedagogical change, my co-authors and I forsake the repetitious and employ Langar - a Sikh cultural practice of congregational cooking and consumption of a shared meal as a postqualitative methodological alternative. We utilise the innovative insights of Langar to reflect on our own research experiences and demonstrate the complexities of ‘becoming’ researchers to explicate how a sometimes-distant cultural practice could induce a shift in our research thinking. In context of methodological approaches, and within an educational framework, we argue that such a shift may instil freshness into the way doctoral journeys and cognate supervision pedagogies are viewed, navigated, and experienced. Methodological innovation, we submit, may occasion pedagogical transformation.

Departmental academic support for doctoral students in Russia: Categorisation and effects

AbstractDepartmental academic support plays an important role in a doctoral journey. However, different types of support may be related to different outcomes. This paper aims to provide a categorisation of types of departmental academic support and analyse the relationship between these different categories of support and doctoral students' confidence that they will complete their dissertations. The empirical base for the research is data from a cross‐institutional survey of doctoral students at six Russian universities. Based on the results of latent class analysis (LCA), we distinguished six types of departmental academic support depending on the functions performed by supervisors, other faculty members and department heads. Consistent with previous research, we found that departmental academic support plays a crucial role in doctoral students' experiences and outcomes, while lack of support is related to a lower level of confidence about completing a dissertation. At the same time, our results provide evidence that excessive collective engagement in doctoral students' work from departmental staff may be less effective than the strong engagement of a supervisor, assisted by informational support from other staff members.