The Doctoral Experience


Book Description

This book offers important insights into the challenging yet rewarding journey of undertaking a PhD. Written by students, for students, the book explores a range of case studies from creative arts and humanities doctoral students, embracing a cognitive, emotional and transformational metaphor of the journey. The volume is organised around themes and concerns identified as important by PhD students, such as building resilience and working with supervisors, and includes personal stories, case studies, scholarly signposts and key take-away points relevant to all doctoral settings. With perspectives from all stages of the doctoral journey, this book is sure to become a valuable support to students and supervisors alike, as well as those working in research education and training.




The Doctoral Experience


Book Description

Presents a vivid picture of the experiences of PhD students and their academic mentors in a variety of different disciplines and identifies key themes pervading academic life.




Research Journeys


Book Description

The aim of this book is to provide prospective and current doctoral students, and their supervisors, with a range of narratives of doctoral experiences. The book is an outcome of a conference where both academic and professional doctorate students at different stages of their research shared their experiences of the process of completing a doctorate. The ten candid accounts included in the volume provide a valuable insight into the kinds of challenges that arise and the ways in which these might (or might not) be overcome. In so doing, this book ‘lifts the lid’ on some of the hitherto concealed aspects of the doctoral process. The book also includes a chapter from an established academic with a record of writing about the doctoral student experience, as well as inserts from a doctoral programme leader and an experienced academic supervisor. In the Introduction, the editors review some of the current literature on experiences of the doctoral research journey and the research process. The book concludes with the editors’ reflections on both the unique nature of doctoral research for each individual and the common stages that students experience on the journey.




The Doctoral Journey as an Emotional, Embodied, Political Experience


Book Description

The Doctoral Journey as an Emotional, Embodied, Political Experience is the first text of its kind to capture stories of involvement in doctoral journeys from students, supervisors, and examiners. Drawing from experiences across a variety of disciplines in the social sciences, medical sciences, education and the humanities, these stories share a keenness to demonstrate the ways in which this journey is emotional (rather than detached), embodied (rather than separated), and political (rather than having no relationship to politics). The journey metaphor is often adopted to describe and explore the PhD process. However, this journey is usually only seen from the perspective of the doctoral candidate. This implies that it is only the student that learns, develops, and reflects. This is clearly not always (maybe never) the case. The suggestion that the candidate ‘learns’ whilst the supervisors ‘teach’ harks back to traditional masculinist educational approaches and neglects the reciprocal knowledge-sharing process between student and supervisor. Similarly, the prescription that relationships between all concerned remain ‘professional’ and removed, rather than in any way intimate, suggest an unrealistic acceptance of an scientific, detached objective agenda rather than an emotional, embodied, political, and holistic approach to research. The contributions to this book extend the journey metaphor to additionally consider the experiences of supervisors and examiners, including the joint, collaborative journey of the ‘team’ (the candidate, their supervisors, and their examiners). This provides a challenge to traditional understandings of the doctoral process and offers implications for future reflection and practice. This book is therefore an invaluable resource for doctoral students, supervisors, examiners, and readers interested in pedagogy and educational practice.




Wellbeing in Doctoral Education


Book Description

This book offers a range of personal and engaging stories that highlight the diverse voices of doctoral students as they explore their own learning journeys. Through these stories, doctoral students call for an academic environment in which the discipline-specific knowledge gained during their PhD is developed in concert with the skills needed to maintain personal wellbeing, purposely reflect on experiences, and build intercultural competence. In recent years, wellbeing has been increasingly recognised as an important aspect of doctoral education. Yet, few resources exist to help those who support doctoral students. Wellbeing in Doctoral Education provides a voice for doctoral students to advocate for improvements to their own educational environment. Both the struggles and the strategies for success highlighted by the students are, therefore, invaluable not only for the students themselves, but also their families, their social networks, and academia more broadly. Importantly, the doctoral students’ stories should be a clarion call for those in decision-making positions in academia. These narratives demonstrate that it is imperative that academic institutions invest in providing the skills and support that doctoral students need to succeed academically and flourish emotionally.




Doctoral Education: Research-Based Strategies for Doctoral Students, Supervisors and Administrators


Book Description

The quality of the academics who undertake the work of teaching and research is critical to the significance, status and relevance of our universities. There is widespread evidence that doctoral students are not being properly prepared for the changing face of higher education and that once they take up academic positions, they often experience many frustrations and tensions. This book, based on a four-year-long research program conducted by four academics and four graduate students, investigates the experiences of doctoral students, new academics and senior academics as they engage in their work related to doctoral education. Doctoral Education: Research-Based Strategies for Doctoral Students, Supervisors and Administrators offers research-based strategies for improving doctoral education in a non-technical and conversational way. Those strategies include learning to be a new supervisor alongside other academic work, developing an intellectual network during the doctoral journey, giving and receiving feedback on scholarly writing, and preparing for the oral defence. Also, based on research evidence, the book challenges taken-for-granted practices and policies surrounding doctoral education, including the gendered nature of disciplinary practices, the paradox of writing in doctoral education and the public oversight of more and more aspects of academic work. Intended for doctoral students, academics, staff and administrators, this book provides several perspectives on the topic of doctoral education and contains the actual voices of doctoral students and new academics to illustrate its discussion.




Doctoral Education and the Faculty of the Future


Book Description

American colleges and universities simultaneously face large numbers of faculty retirements and expanding enrollments. Budget constraints have led colleges and universities to substitute part-time and full-time non-tenure-track faculty for tenure-track faculty, and the demand for faculty members will likely be high in the decade ahead. This heightened demand is coming at a time when the share of American college graduates who go on for PhD study is far below its historic high. The declining interest of American students in doctoral programs is due to many factors, including long completion times, low completion rates, the high cost of doctoral education, and the decline in the share of faculty positions that are tenured or on the tenure track. In short, doctoral education is in crisis because the impediments are many and the rewards are few; students often choose instead to enroll in professional programs that result in more marketable credentials. In Doctoral Education and the Faculty of the Future, scientists, social scientists, academic administrators, and policy makers describe their efforts to increase and improve the supply of future faculty. They cover topics ranging from increasing undergraduate interest in doctoral study to improving the doctoral experience and the participation of underrepresented groups in doctoral education.




Women Scholars: Navigating the Doctoral Journey


Book Description

Over and over, studies have concluded that the doctoral experience is a monumental challenge in higher education, particularly for women. This book, Women Scholars: Navigating the Doctoral Journey, provides an enlightening ethnographic look at women and their doctoral developmental experiences. The book’s aim is to empower women to be able to contextualize their experience while also offering support and inspiring readers to consider alternative ways to successfully approach the doctoral process. Women anticipating and entering the life of academia will benefit from the voices and experiences shared by the women scholars in this book. The essay writers in this volume offer an examination of critical incidents in their doctoral experiences and offer strategies they have found helpful in managing those incidents. The book also addresses challenges presented by the transition from doctoral study to post-doc employment. The volume presents 46 essays from 40 women representing a range of ages, ethnicities, academic disciplines, sexual orientations, family circumstances, and family educational histories. Their stories are told in five stages: Stage 1: Preadmission to Enrollment Stage 2: First Year of Program Stage 3: Second Year Through Candidacy Stage 4: The Dissertation Stage Stage 5: Completion and Transition to Employment These are stories of empowerment, of pitfalls and barriers overcome, of successful negotiations of the graduate school process, of the joys and challenges of scholarly pursuits, of positive help-seeking behaviors and strategies, and of life after the dissertation is completed. Potential applicants for doctoral studies will walk away with a sense that graduate education is possible and that one can be successful. Higher educators in doctoral programs, as well, will acquire a deeper understanding and appreciation for the idiosyncratic challenges facing their female students and, one hopes, develop policies and/or strategies and behaviors that empower and encourage these students’ completion of their doctoral studies.




Online Communities for Doctoral Researchers and their Supervisors


Book Description

Bringing together accounts of online community engagement from a range of perspectives, this book considers how the changing landscape of doctoral communities might be used to inform institutional level decisions about doctoral provision and support. Despite the increasing availability of online communities dedicated to doctoral supervisors, there has been little consideration of how they form and operate. This book surveys the landscape of these online communities and examines their impact on the production of the doctorate, and on the experience of doctoral researchers and supervisors. Bringing together accounts of online community engagement from a range of perspectives – doctoral students, supervisors, content curators, and research support practitioners, one of the overarching aims of this volume is to explore these communities in action. With the supporting doctoral research through online media catalysed as the ‘new normal’, this book allows stakeholders in doctoral education to better understand how students are using social media in their PhD studies, how online communities of practice impact upon researcher/supervisor relationships and support, and ways in which student experiences of various platforms might converge to create an augmented experience.




The Doctoral Journey


Book Description

The Doctoral Journey: International Educationalist Perspectives assembles a collective narrative related to the doctoral journey of recent graduates in the field of education. Clearly, the doctoral journey is not a linear process but rather a lattice of ever-evolving professional and personal relationships, experiences, perspectives, and insights.0From early on when considering whether or not to apply to a programme, to deciding on an institution and supervisor, to delving into the related literature, to data collection and analyses, to closing in on the defence, to results dissemination, and everything in between and beyond, the doctoral journey presents incalculable obstacles that can be, and have been, overcome by doctoral graduates-including the contributors in this inspirationally-sparked collective narrative.00Contributors are: Trudy Cardinal, Philip Wing Keung Chan, Jose da Costa, Alison Egan, Janet McConaghy, June McConaghy, Kelsey McEntyre, Sammy M. Mutisya, Christina A. Parker, Carla L. Peck, Colin G. Pennington, Kathleen Pithouse-Morgan, Edgar Schmidt, and Pearl Subban.