Conceptualising the PhD. The Students’ Perspective
Angele Jones
10.25905/5bf34ead4299e
https://torrens.figshare.com/articles/journal_contribution/Conceptualising_the_PhD_The_Students_Perspective/7318904
<p></p><p>Debates continue about the PhD and its purpose in a changing
academic landscape. The original purpose of the PhD was to create new knowledge
and become an academic. In the 21st century though new knowledge is quickly
surpassed and as a result new knowledge derived from most PhD’s will have a
relatively short shelf-life (Group of Eight, 2013). Traditionally completion of
a PhD opened the doors to a career in academia. Though increasing numbers of
PhD students and high levels of academic workforce casualisation means many PhD
graduands face low prospects to securing a permanent role in academia and for
many the academic profession is losing appeal. The debate has also extended to
the skills and competencies that are developed as part of the PhD and how
transferable these skills and competencies are beyond academia for industry or
government, and openly questioning whether doctoral education is having the
impact desired, or required, by academia and industry. What is interesting in
this debate is that there is little reference to, or input from, the perspective
of PhD students about the impact doctoral education is having on them.</p><p></p><p> </p><p>
</p><p>This paper addresses the impact and engagement this debate is
having on the human dimension by (re)conceptualising the PhD, or doctoral
education, from the critical perspective of the students. This paper reports on
part of a recently completed PhD thesis, The Lived PhD Experience: Critical
reflections from the Students’ perspective; a research project that iteratively
collected the lived experience narratives from 23 PhD students, in various
disciplines and stages of their PhD, studying at Australian Universities over a
period of 12 months. The Adventure Park is presented as a conceptual framework
for the research participants reported experiences of navigating the challenges
they encountered and tested their self-efficacy and sense of belonging. The
Adventure Park facilitates us to examine the impact of the PhD from the
critical perspective of those who live the experience firsthand, and provide
another lens to view institutional doctoral education practices that determine
many of these experiences</p><p></p><h2>This paper was originally published as a peer reviewed conference paper
at the 13<sup>th</sup> Quality
in Postgraduate Research Conference (QPR 2018)</h2><br><p></p>
2018-11-20 00:00:43
Doctoral Education
PhD Impact
Lived Experience
Higher Education