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This paper aims to investigate doctoral examiners' narratives on their expectations of the candidate's oral performance in the PhD viva. Both the PhD examiners and handbooks that offer advice on the PhD viva preparation appear to share the same expectation of the candidate's oral performance in the viva. That is, candidates must answer questions to the satisfaction of examiners to warrant a pass in the oral examination. However, what constitutes a satisfactory viva performance – let alone an excellent one – is often undefined.

Using narrative inquiry as the guiding research approach to investigate this issue, 12 experienced doctoral examiners from across the disciplines at a Malaysian research university were interviewed. Their narratives were analysed inductively.

The findings show that examiners expect candidates to speak the language of defence by manifesting confident, interactional behaviour, providing credible and convincing responses and displaying doctoralness. The aspects of candidate's oral performance undesired by the examiners, as well as the reasons for having such expectations, are also discussed. The paper argues that the expectations of examiners in the PhD viva should be made explicit and communicated to the candidates and examiners to ensure a positive doctoral assessment process and outcome.

This paper contributes to the literature on doctoral assessment, particularly on the PhD viva, through the voices of examiners in the Global South. It also offers an examiner expectancy model of the PhD viva.

The purpose of this paper is to present a case for appraisal of the current curriculum provisions for international students. In this paper, the authors summarise the key challenges of Asian international research graduate students pursuing doctorate studies in Australian universities to become researchers for the global communities. The intention is to advocate further research on current higher degree research curriculum with a view to enriching the developmental experiences of international research graduate students in preparation for global practice.

This is an analytical paper that adopts a conceptual and rhetorical approach.

The authors review a growing body of research on higher degree research studies and establish a need for appraisal of current curriculum provisions.

This is the first paper to concentrate on an emerging need to appraise current higher degree research curriculum provisions to enhance the development international research graduate students for global practices.

Knowing what occurs at doctoral vivas is restricted to those who attend. Since 1998 the author has observed the transactions of doctoral vivas in the disciplines of applied sciences, education, environmental sciences and social science as either Chair, examiner or supervisor. With the agreement of participants the author’s participation in, and observation of, viva processes enabled him to collect data. Records were made of examiners’ questions, and the discussions that were held with participants. The evidence shows that patterns of generic questions transcend disciplines, and their respective types of questions reflect relationships between examiners. The evidence portrays how examiners approach, and explore, the nature of doctorateness. Questions asked in doctoral vivas follow discernible patterns, and specific clusters of questions are critical as examiners determine the outcome of doctoral viva examinations. Questioning by examiners follows different patterns in the natural and social sciences.

Social marketing and government policy are intertwined. Despite this, policy analysis by social marketers is rare. This paper aims to address the dearth of policy analysis in social marketing and introduce and model a methodology grounded in Indigenous knowledge and from an Indigenous standpoint. In Australia, a minuscule number of First Nations people complete doctoral degrees. The most recent, major policy review, the Australian Council of Learned Academies (ACOLA) Report, made a series of recommendations, with some drawn from countries that have successfully uplifted Indigenous doctoral candidates’ success. This paper “speaks back” to the ACOLA Report.

This paper subjects the ACOLA Report, implementation plans and evaluations to a detailed Indigenous Critical Discourse Analysis using Nakata’s Indigenous standpoint theory and Bacchi’s Foucauldian discourse analysis to trace why policy borrowing from other countries is challenging if other elements of the political, social and cultural landscape are fundamentally unsupportive of reforms.

This paper makes arguments about the effects produced by the way the “problem” of First Nations doctoral education has been represented in this suite of Australian policy documents and the ways in which changes could be made that would actually address the pressing need for First Nations doctoral success in Australia.

Conducting policy analysis benefits social marketers in many ways, helping to navigate policy complexities and advocate for meaningful policy reforms for a social cause. This paper aims to spark more social marketing policy analysis and introduces a methodology uncommon to social marketing.

This chapter proposes authentic leadership as a generic competence and an integral part of doctoral education regardless of field of study. The authors explore its potential to enhance the development of doctoral candidates and academics and search for answers to the questions: Can and should authentic leadership be developed as a generic competence in doctoral education? How can it be designed and implemented in a doctoral training module? What would its learning outcomes be? The authors address these questions in the context of doctoral education. They assert that authentic leadership training should be mandatory for all doctoral candidates, and that supervisors should be actively engaged in the development of this underappreciated transferrable skill.

This paper aims to present a summary of findings of a doctoral thesis on the impacts of contingent employment on IT project management (PM) practices in three large representative Hong Kong organisations. It also presents the candidate's experience of the doctoral process in successfully completing the thesis as a mature and experience PM practitioner.

This is a thesis research note reporting on the thesis that was undertaken as a series of case studies and includes reflections on the doctoral experience by the candidate and one of the two supervisors.

The doctoral research findings are summarised and the URL link to the thesis is provided http://researchbank.rmit.edu.au/view/rmit:160254. Important findings about the way that the case study organisations managed the attraction, retention and career development of contingent workers are summarised. The nature of the doctoral journey is presented as findings through reflection.

The thesis addresses a poorly researched area, contingent employment and the relationship between project managers and the organisations that hire them. The way that contingent workers develop their skills and how they may effectively engage in knowledge transfer is vital to organisational learning.

The paper places its discussion in a Hong Kong context. There are few if any such studies in the PM literature in this region and consideration of HR issues for project managers are also an emerging area of research. The doctoral thesis reported upon and the link to it as provided allows readers access to a highly current source of literature and empirical work.

The purpose of this Thesis Research Note (TRN) paper is to provide a summary of key aspects of a recently completed and passed PhD thesis. It enables readers who may be interested in the thesis topic to gain an overview of that work and a link to the entire thesis through a URL link http://researchbank.rmit.edu.au/eserv/rmit:160896/Taylor.pdf. The second main purpose of this TRN is to explain the thesis author’s doctoral journey.

The research approach discussed in relation to the reported upon PhD was soft systems methodology and sensemaking. The approach for the paper is to provide a reflective narrative to explain the lived experience of the authors throughout the candidate’s doctoral journey.

Findings from the PhD are summarised. The contribution to theory about practice, for practice and theory in practice is identified and the use of coding interview transcripts as an additional tool to be used in developing rich pictures is also discussed.

The research reported upon is limited to a specific context and while conclusions cannot be generalised they can be used to better frame further context-specific studies.

The TRN provides a highly individualised account of a doctoral journey but it is intended to contribute to the growing body of TRNs published in this journal that in turn may inform decisions relating to candidates embarking on a doctoral journey.