This book uses belonging as a lens through which to understand women students’ experiences of studying for a doctorate, exploring the impact of academic cultures on career aspirations. Drawing on discourses of neoliberalism and academic identities, it makes a valuable contribution to ongoing discussions of gender inequality in the academy. Based on data gathered from women doctoral students in the UK, this book offers a contemporary, research-informed understanding of the doctorate as an inherently gendered experience, which has implications for individuals, academic institutions, and for the future of the academic sector. The book will be of interest to academics working in the area of doctoral education, doctoral supervisors and those involved in doctoral student support, including researcher developers and individuals working in graduate schools, as well as doctoral students themselves.
Drawing on academic research and practitioner expertise, this essential volume provides a multidisciplinary and cross-institutional perspective on postgraduate researcher mental health and wellbeing in order to support academic and professional staff in the higher education sector. Contributing authors unpack the key debates, issues and initiatives within higher education policy and practice, while also considering wider contextual factors that may impact upon the mental health of researchers. Readers are encouraged to recognise the importance of belonging throughout and to understand how we may promote healthy research cultures by fostering connections and community. A crucial read for anyone working with doctoral students or involved higher education policy, this edited collection provides a new contribution to research within the field, bettering our understanding of the mental health of postgraduate researchers by drawing from a range of perspectives.
This handbook explores feeling like an ‘imposter’ in higher education and what this can tell us about contemporary educational inequalities. Asking why imposter syndrome matters now, we investigate experiences of imposter syndrome across social locations, institutional positions, and intersecting inequalities. Our collection queries advice to fit-in with the university, and authors reflect on (not)belonging in, with and against educational institutions. The collection advances understandings of imposter syndrome as socially situated, in relation to entrenched inequalities and their recirculation in higher education. Chapters combine creative methods and linger on the figure of the ‘imposter’ - wary of both individualising and celebrating imposters as lucky, misfits, fraudsters, or failures, and critically interrogating the supposed universality of imposter syndrome.
This book explores the experiences of gifted Black women doctoral graduates, featuring narratives of their challenges related to race, gender, parenthood, class, and first-generation status offering discussion on the role of community and academic support in their success. Delivering concrete guidance on navigating the challenges of doctoral programs, this critical text draws on endarkened epistemology, recognizing the nuanced path gifted Black women walk in the academy. Accessible and evocative, this collection highlights the role of academic and social sisterhood, supplying a much-needed contribution to the ongoing discussion around race, academic achievement, gender, and mental health.
The concept of belonging has been increasingly understood as the missing piece in diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in higher education. This book explores the need to recognize and account for institutional-level factors that shape academic belonging, thereby improving student experience and outcomes. Though recent scholarship has identified several factors that are associated with student belonging in academics, there is little research that addresses what faculty can do in concrete terms to promote belonging, particularly in the domains where they have the most influence. The 12 chapters in this volume introduce readers to an array of collaborative, cutting-edge efforts to develop pedagogies, programs, strategies, and environments that help students develop academic belonging; that is, a sense of connection, competence, and confidence in academic domains. This book is written for higher education faculty, administrators, and researchers who wish to enhance their students’ sense of academic belonging by taking informed, practical measures to make them feel valued and supported.
This collection draws broadly on decolonial studies, postcolonial feminist scholarship, and identity studies to present autoethnographies written by female scholars who migrated from Latin America to universities in the Global North and vice versa. Contributors examine how gender, race, and place/displacement have impacted their social identities.
This guide helps faculty and student affairs practitioners better serve graduate and professional school students as they navigate what can be an isolating, taxing, and unfamiliar context. Providing actionable strategies, as well as a common language for practitioners to advocate for themselves and for their students, this book is a quick start manual that defines current issues around graduate and professional student development. Drawing together current resources and research around post-baccalaureate student outcomes, this book explores the diverse student needs of graduate and professional students and provides a clear understanding of their social, personal, and psychological development and how to support their success. Case studies showcase specific examples of practice including a holistic development model for graduate training; integrating academic, personal, professional, and career development needs; promising practices for engagement; a diversity, equity, and inclusion approach to access and outcomes; how graduate schools can be important partners to student affairs professionals; and examples of assessment in action. This book provides tools, resources, communication strategies, and actionable theory-to-practice connections for practitioners, professionals, and faculty at all levels who work to support post-baccalaureate student thriving. Appendix available for download online at www.routledge.com/9780367639884 on the tab that is entitled "Support Material."
Learning and identity development are lifetime processes of becoming. The construction of self, of interest to scholars and practitioners in adult development and adult learning, is an ongoing process, with the self both forming and being formed by lived experience in privileged and oppressive contexts. Intersecting identities and the power dynamics within them shape how learners define themselves and others and how they make meaning of their experiences in the world. The series, I Am What I Become: Constructing Identities as Lifelong Learners, is an insightful and diverse collection of empirical research and narrative essays in identity development, adult development, and adult learning. The purpose of this series is to publish contributions that highlight the intimate and intricate connections between learning and identity. The series aims to assist our readers to understand and nurture adults who are always in the process of becoming. We hope to promote reflection and research at the intersection of identity and adult learning at any point across the adult lifespan. The rich array of qualitative research designs as well as autobiographic and narrative essays transform and expand our understanding of the lived experience of people both like us and unlike us, from the U.S. and beyond. Identity and Lifelong Learning: Becoming through Lived Experience, Volume Two of the series, focuses on identity and learning within informal settings and life experiences. The contributions showcase the many ways that identity development and learning occur within cultural domains, through developmental and identity challenges or transitions in career or role, and in a variety of places from assisted living facilities to makerspaces. These chapters highlight identity and learning across the adult lifespan from millennials and emerging adults to midlife and older adults. The authors examine cultural, relational and social identity exploration and learning in international contexts and within marginalized communities. This volume features phenomenological and ethnographic qualitative studies, autoethnographies, case studies, and narratives that engage the reader in the myriad ways that adult development, learning, and identity connect and influence each other. Praise for: Identity and Lifelong Learning: Becoming Through Lived Experience "We all pay lip service to the importance of lifelong learning, but what is it exactly and how does it come about? The connections between identity and learning are intriguing and complex, especially when it comes to adult learners. In this very thoughtfully organized collection, researchers present qualitative and narrative studies, along with personal narratives, to explore identity development in formal and informal learning environments. Contributions from varied cultural contexts, most with powerful and moving stories to tell, provide insight into how identity, meaning-making, and adult learning and development intersect and influence each other. Psychologists, scholars and educators interested in identity development and meaning-making will find inspiration and fresh understanding in this innovative and enlightening series." Ruthellen Josselson Author of Paths to Fulfillment: Women’s Search for Meaning and Identity "This innovative series on adult development is inspiring and substantive. We hear voices from the margins and stories of courage. We read identity-formation narratives by young adults and experienced professionals who share impressive capacities for transparency, vulnerability, and self-reflection. Many of the narratives are embedded in rigorous qualitative research that highlights diverse ways that identity is shaped through social positionality, lived experience, the quest for individuation, and willingness to encounter life as a dynamic learning process." Jared D. Kass, Lesley University Author, of A Person-Centered Approach to Psychospiritual Maturation: Mentoring Psychological Resilience and Inclusive Community in Higher Education
The second volume of Rethinking Women’s and Gender Studies addresses the complexities and inherent paradoxes within the expansive knowledge project known as Women’s and Gender Studies for audiences both inside and adjacent to the field. Each of the volume’s chapters identifies and critically examines a key term that circulates in this field, exploring how the term has come to be understood and mobilized within its everyday narratives and practices. In constructing provocative genealogies for their terms, authors explicate the roles that this language, and the narratives attached to it, play in producing and limiting possible versions of the field. The ongoing aim of Rethinking Women’s and Gender Studies, both in the original volume and this entirely new extension, is to trace and expose important paradoxes, ironies, and contradictions embedded in the field – from its high theory to its casual conversations – that rely on these terms. Forging collective conversation and intellectual community from its thoughtful and critical lines of inquiry, the second volume of Rethinking Women’s and Gender Studies remains bracingly original and full of fresh insight. It provides a perfect complement for Feminist Theory, Senior Capstone, and introductory graduate-level courses offered in Women’s and Gender Studies and related fields.
The Routledge International Handbook of Gender Beliefs, Stereotype Threat, and Teacher Expectations presents, for the first time, the work of leading researchers exploring the synergies and interrelationships between these fields, and provides a catalytic platform for advancing theory, practice, policy and research from an integrated perspective. An understanding of how gender beliefs, stereotype threat, and teacher expectations interrelate is vital to creating safe, equitable, and encouraging learning spaces. The collection summarises how gender beliefs, stereotype threat, and teacher expectations act in association to influence gendered student achievement, engagement, and self-beliefs, and suggests ways toward rectifying their negative effects. The chapters are organised into four sections: Gender Beliefs, Identity, Stereotypes, and Student Futures Stereotype Threat Teacher Expectations Synergies and Solutions By examining synergies and solutions shared between the three fields, this book creates more meaningful, consistent, and permanent approaches to achieving gender identity safety, gendered scholastic equity, well-being, and positive futures for students. This comprehensive publication brings together cutting-edge research at the intersection of gender beliefs, stereotype threat, and teacher expectations. It is an essential reference for researchers and postgraduate students in education and gender studies as well as educational, social, and developmental psychology.
