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.
Richly illustrated with case studies and interviews, this book identifies key themes pervading academic life: the nature of research and research supervision; key social processes and problems; distinct and contrasting sub-cultures of departments and disciplines in universities; mentorship and sponsorship; and apprenticeship and rites of passage for postgraduate students. Anyone developing policy and practice in Higher Education, or wishing to understand their own position within the wider picture will benefit from reading this book.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This groundbreaking book highlights the profound impact of internationalization in doctoral education, offering a variety of models to align with student interests and needs. It includes insights from over seventy contributors spanning more than thirty-five national contexts on six continents, who explore the values and benefits of internationalization at the doctoral level, such as social and cultural enrichment, academic and personal growth, network enhancement, and research collaboration, paving the way for meaningful career opportunities in academia or elsewhere. Evaluating the outcomes of internationalization and the development of researcher identities, the volume underscores the immeasurable value and impact of internationalized doctoral experiences while recognizing the importance of student agency. Reflections from students and graduates reveal the merits of international experiences but also address challenges and pitfalls, including environmental, economic, equity, and decolonization concerns. With implementable recommendations for institutions, academics, and students, this important book offers guidance for the future of internationalization in doctoral education and emphasizes the importance of strategic institutional approaches. Internationalization of the Doctoral Experience: Models, Opportunities and Outcomes is essential reading for anyone interested in the evolving landscape and transformative potential of internationalization in doctoral education.
One of the major intangible benefits associated with the postgraduate research experience is precisely that: the experience. And more specifically, for an increasing number of international research students: the British doctoral experience. This experience is often largely defined and shaped by their relationship with, and support from, their supervisor. Enhancing the Doctoral Experience brings together the authors’ experience and research, frameworks and models as well as pragmatic feedback and understanding. This synthesis of scholarly theory and pragmatic sampling has produced a book that provides a scaffold for students and supervisors to have conversations about their expectations; to discuss what supervision is; to articulate clearly what both parties need in order for a successful relationship to occur, and to build a mutually beneficial endeavour. In many cases, these conversations can be complicated by cultural and linguistic differences so the text explicitly addresses these and other sources of misunderstanding. Against a challenging background of growing numbers of students but also increasing pressures on time and costs, Enhancing the Doctoral Experience offers an approach to improve the effectiveness of the doctoral student and increase the professionalization of research supervision. It does so by providing both with an awareness of, and a toolkit to approach, student diversity.
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.
