Search results

This paper aims to outline a participative approach to researching education doctoral students' trajectories that functions both as a form of training in research methodology and as a means of reflection on the doctoral trajectory and what doctoral students have brought to the doctoral process through their experience.

Ten participants formed dyads and acted as both researchers and subjects of research, using narrative accounts and interviews. The collaborative approach aimed to allow “hands‐on” experience of the selected methods, as well as full engagement in negotiating each stage of the project.

Project group meetings and the data generated by participants provided a rich source of learning about methodological issues in education research, in addition to the personal understandings emerging from such a project.

This project reports an approach to “hands‐on” learning of methodological and ethical issues within doctoral development programmes that could be adapted for use on similar programmes. It suggests an alternative to the more common forms of doctoral training (such as exposition, discussion, reading, or simulation) that is of real value to doctoral students in that it enables deep reflection on the journeys that have brought students to doctoral study, whilst at the same time providing a rich resource for methodological learning.

The purpose of this study is to examine doctoral students’ developmental trajectories in well-being and disciplinary identity during the first three years of doctoral study.

This study relies on data from a longitudinal study of PhD students enrolled at a large, research-intensive university in the USA. A group-based trajectory modeling approach is used to examine varying trajectories of well-being and disciplinary identity.

The authors find that students’ physical health, mental health and disciplinary identity generally decline during the first few years of doctoral study. Despite this common downward trend, the results suggest that six different developmental trajectories exist. Students’ backgrounds and levels of stress, psychological needs satisfaction, anticipatory socialization experiences and prior academic success predict group membership.

Although there is emergent evidence of a mental health crisis in graduate education scant evidence exists about the way in which well-being changes over time as students progress through their doctoral studies. There is also little evidence of how these changes might be related to academic processes such as the development of disciplinary identity. This study reported varying baseline degrees of well-being and disciplinary identity and offers that stress and unmet psychological needs might be partially responsible for varying trajectories.

The purpose of this chapter, which is a response to calls to examine students’ perspectives of the doctoral experience, is to investigate the notion that doctoral education facilitates developing nodes in leading networks of knowledge for leader and leadership development – a theme that has not been examined.

Using data generated from in-depth interviews embedded with excerpts of personal life stories and the questionnaire, this qualitative study analyses the views of some African students about their experiences of doctoral study in the United Kingdom.

The study discovered that doctoral education is perceived as: acquisition of knowledge and capabilities for professional leadership trajectories; creator of learning communities, networks and relationship resources; developing nodes in leading knowledge networks; progression from the self to the relational and to the collective; and action learning, all for leader and leadership development.

Drawing on the findings, the chapter argues for the novel notion of doctoral education as developing nodes within leading networks of knowledge for leader and leadership development.

Although, the research is a qualitative study that focused on a small group of students in one university, and as a result, its findings cannot be generalised, its implication for doctoral agendas worldwide and Africa and its Agenda 2063, in particular, need consideration.

The purpose of this paper is to present a theoretically-informed analysis of an exploratory study which included a focus on postdoctoral researchers' views of their training needs.

The wider mixed-methods study was focused on post-doctoral career trajectories at a time of ongoing policy interest in doctoral education. Bernstein's theoretical perspectives are used to illuminate the data, particularly his concepts of classification and regionalisation.

Respondents' reflections on their doctoral training showed a much stronger appreciation of training which was based in disciplinary practices, even if these were subject to regionalisation, as opposed to more generic professional skills training.

The small scale and exploratory nature of the study is recognised, as well as the need for more independent research in this area.

The study has implications for the nature of the training provided as part of doctoral education. First, it is argued that this should include more explicit discussion of policy shifts relating to doctoral education. Second, rather than being glossed over in the imposition of generic competency frameworks (conceptualised through Bernstein as a generic performance mode), researcher training should attend closely to the social and cultural base of the skills and practices of different regions of knowledge production, at the same time as recognising these to be fluid and dynamic.

Overall, while recognised as exploratory, the study aims to contribute insights on doctoral graduates' perspectives on researcher training as well as suggesting the usefulness of Bernstein's theoretical framework for understanding the reconstruction of doctoral education in the UK.

Given declining tuition funds and government grants, Kenyan universities need to develop strategies, including increased research grants and collaborations, to diversify their income sources. Well-managed doctoral students can boost a university’s teaching and research outputs. However, numbers of students enrolled in doctoral programmes at Kenyan universities are low, and graduation rates and time-to-graduate statistics are disturbing. Research undertaken elsewhere underline the important role played by supervisors and peers in facilitating students’ sense of belonging and their success. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the influence of supervisory and peer support on PhD students’ sense of belonging and their success at Kenyan universities.

In this cross-sectional study, data were gathered through an online questionnaire from 614 students admitted to doctoral programmes at Kenyan universities between 2010 and 2018. We used multi-item scales to collect data on PhD students’ self-efficacy, supervisory and peer support and a sense of belonging.

Structural equation modelling results revealed that PhD students’ modes of study and self-efficacy were significantly associated with the quality of supervision, peer support and a sense of belonging. However, only age, a sense of belonging and the quality of supervision were directly linked to their success.

This study contributes to the literature on doctoral-level education, responding to the need for research on the influence of relationships with supervisors and peers on PhD students’ sense of belonging and their success, especially in developing countries.

The underrepresentation of women in engineering has important consequences for meeting the need for a larger, talented scientific and technological labor force. Increasing the proportion of women faculty in engineering will help increase the persistence probabilities of women undergraduate and graduate students in engineering, as well as contribute to the range and diversity of ideas toward innovations and solutions to the greatest engineering challenges. This study aims to examine the association among gender, family formation and post-PhD employment patterns of a cohort of engineering doctorates.

Using the National Science Foundation’s Survey of Doctorate Recipients data, 2001–2010, descriptive and multinomial logit regression analyses are conducted to illustrate the career trajectories of engineering PhDs over a ten-year period.

The career trajectories of engineering PhDs are nonlinear, and transitions between employment sectors commonly occur over the ten-year time period studied. Although women engineering PhDs with young dependents are less likely to be employed initially after PhD completion, they tend to enter the workforce in the academic sector as time progresses. Early post-PhD employment as a postdoctoral researcher or in the academic sector contributes to the pursuit of the professoriate downstream.

While previous studies tend to focus on the early career outcomes of science and engineering students, this study contributes to the literature by focusing on the long-term career outcomes of engineering doctorates. Research findings provide engineering PhD students and PhDs with more information regarding potential post-PhD career trajectories, highlighting the multitude of career options and transitions that occur over time. Research findings also provide higher education administrators and doctoral program stakeholders with foundational information toward designing and revitalizing professional development programs to help PhD students prepare for the workforce. The findings have the potential to be applied toward helping increase diversity by shaping policies and programs to encourage multiple alternative career pathways to the professoriate.

This chapter examines the challenges of getting two different systems of doctoral education to interact. The development of the joint PhD agreement between Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and King’s College London is used as an example to illustrate some of the challenges of developing a transnational PhD programme. After an outline of the recent trajectories of doctoral research culture in Germany and the United Kingdom, we will use the two partner institutions as examples to discuss key differences between the two systems in admission, status of the enroled ‘student’, supervision and training and – most challenging – the examination and degree awarding process. In a third step, we will consider the process of developing a shared set of working rules for the Joint PhD programme, preserving as much of the partners’ autonomy whilst at the same time creating a common and transparent framework for doctoral training. It will be argued that this process of balancing respect for local rules and practices with a desire for more integrated systems contains – in a nutshell – important lessons for a future ‘Europeanization’ of the PhD system.

This study aims to examine how PhD students with diverse profiles, intentions and expectations manage to navigate their doctoral paths within the same academic context under similar institutional conditions. Drawing on Giddens’ theory of structuration, this study explores how their primary reasons, motives and motivations for engaging in doctoral studies influence what they perceive as facilitating or constraining to progress, their strategies to face the challenges they encounter and their expectations regarding supervision.

Using a qualitative design, the analysis was conducted on a data subset from an instrumental case study (Stake, 2013) about PhD students’ persistence and progression. The focus is placed on semi-structured interviews carried out with 36 PhD students from six faculties in humanities and social sciences fields at a large Canadian university.

The analysis reveals three distinct scenarios regarding how these PhD students navigate their doctoral paths: the quest for the self; the intellectual quest; and the professional quest. Depending on their quest type, the nature and intensity of PhD students’ concerns and challenges, as well as their strategies and the support they expected, differed.

This study contributes to the discussion about PhD students’ challenges and persistence by offering a unique portrait of how diverse students’ profiles, intentions and expectations can concretely shape a doctoral experience.