Albertyn 2024 Doctoral intelligence

International Journal of Critical Accounting, 2017

Earning a doctorate entails the learning of skills necessary to investigate the underlying truth of issues and exposure to epistemology that portrays reality. Subscribing to a certain epistemology and training plays a pivotal role in the perception students develop once they become an accounting academic. Doctoral studies, generally, focus on pre-setting students' minds to utility and convincing them of the usability of prescribed meta-theory. However, preparing a thoughtful and independent scholar mandates multiplicity in research methodologies and methods to broaden the academic's ontological horizon. Thus, in addition to discussing the philosophies of running a PhD program in accounting, in this essay, I highlight a PhD program that broadens students' perspectives.

International Journal of Doctoral Studies, 2016

This is a report on a qualitative investigation into the challenges and solutions for Information Systems PhD candidature in Australia by conducting a three-phase research process. Information Systems doctoral theses approved within the past 10 years in Australia were identified in three areas of research, using structured evidence-based search and review methods. This was followed by two focus groups. The first focus group provided a forum where participants engaged and contributed by sharing and reflecting on experiences during their candidature. The data generated was thematically analyzed. The second focus group provided a forum to compare, contrast, and combine findings from the first focus group and the theses review. This was then conceptually organized into a SWOT framework for discussion. The findings imply that there is a need, not only for an inclusive candidature research pathway now provided by most Australian universities, but also an integrated research and personal s...

Studies in Graduate and Postdoctoral Education

Purpose Concerning trends in graduate education, such as high attrition and underdeveloped skills, drive toward a new doctoral education approach. This paper aims to describe and propose a transformative doctoral education model (TDEM), incorporating elements that potentially address these challenges and expand the current practice. The model envisions discipline-specific knowledge coupled with a broader interdisciplinary perspective and addresses the transferable skills necessary to successfully navigate an ever-changing workforce and global landscape. The overarching goal of TDEM is to transform the doctoral student into a multi-dimensional and adaptive scholar, so the students of today can effectively and meaningfully solve the problems of tomorrow. Design/methodology/approach The foundation of TDEM is transformative learning theory, supporting the notion learner transformation occurs throughout the doctoral educational experience. Findings The model envisions discipline-specific...

In the last two decades, interest in doctoral education has prompted wide-ranging debate among stakeholders on the purposes of doctoral education in general, and the Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in particular. Although this swelling interest has triggered an exponential growth in research and literature on doctoral education and the PhD, an integrated theorisation of students’ perspectives of the impacts that occur during the PhD process has not yet been developed. The aim of this thesis is to address this gap in knowledge. Using grounded theory methodology and methods, the research examined the impacts of the PhD process from the perspective of 23 full-time students attending a large metropolitan university in Sydney, Australia. Through the simultaneous processes of data collection, constant comparison and theory generation, learning emerged as the core impact of the PhD process across the different contexts, conditions and circumstances of students’ candidature. This learning comprised seven sub-categories: personal resourcefulness, intellectual understandings, research skills, workplace and career management, leadership and organisation, communication (written and oral) and project management. Working inductively and deductively (abductively) generated insights into relationships between the categories of learning that emerged from the data and Aristotle’s concept of intellectual virtues. From the processes of exploring and constantly comparing these inter-relationships, this thesis proposes that the learning students experienced as impacts of the PhD process can be theorised as the acquisition of the intellectual virtues of phronesis, sophia and technè. Specifically, through the complex processes involved in undertaking a PhD, students develop the personal resourcefulness to accumulate phronesis (practical knowledge), enhance their cognition to acquire sophia (intellectual knowledge), and obtain the intellectual virtue of technè (productive knowledge) by developing their research, workplace and career management, leadership, and organisational, communication (written and oral), and project management skills. It is proposed that theorising the PhD process as the acquisition of intellectual virtues offers a more comprehensive and integrated insight into the impacts that occur during the processes of the PhD.

Higher Education Research & …, 2010

In the past decade there has been a marked push for the development of employability skills to be part of the PhD process. This push is generally by stakeholders from above and outside the PhD process i.e. government and industry, who view skills as a summative product of the PhD. In contrast, our study interviewed stakeholders inside the PhD process; twenty final year, full time Australian PhD students; to provide a bottom-up perspective into the skills debate. Using grounded theory procedures, we theorise the skills students develop during the PhD as a formative developmental process of acquiring intellectual virtues. Drawing on Aristotelian theory, we propose that theorising the PhD as a process of acquiring intellectual virtues offers a more robust and conceptually richer framework for understanding students’ development during the PhD than the instrumental focus on skills evident in contemporary debates.

2010

idea of PhD students as knowledge workers or “super-technicians” (Pearson et al., 2009, p. 100), its predominantly descriptive nature also limits its potential in providing deeper insights into students’ experiences during the doctoral education undertaking. This highlights the need for research that conceptualises the different and diverse elements of the doctoral education experience as a complex, interrelated range of activities and further, the need for a framework that recognises how all these elements and processes contribute to enabling the production of a skilled, resourceful and competent PhD graduate. 3.3 Theorising the PhD experience There is also a paucity of research that theorises students’ experiences of the PhD process, although more recent research is contributing to this gap by providing accounts of the doctoral experience that move beyond descriptive accounts. Haggis’s (2002) research with eight PhD students in the UK, for example, is amongst the small number of a...

Reflective Practice, 2010

Our paper is a conversation with the implicit and explicit expectations of the academy, namely that as doctoral students we must achieve a high degree of intellectual autonomy and generate new knowledge. We contest the implications of this view of learners and learning – that learners are autonomous intellectual agents, that knowledge is a private possession, that cognition is an individual process, and that learning is a static and singular path. We propose instead an understanding of learning as pathmaking, which suggests a creative, richly textured, open‐ended, collaborative and passionate process through which new possibilities emerge. This paper comes out of our shared experiences of doctoral studies in Education. We began with initial conversations about our learning in an Ontario Faculty of Education, which then unfolded into a decision to write a paper together. Our process oscillated between individual writing, shared discussion, and analysis. After jointly identifying six keywords, each of us wrote a reflection about a different one – then we merged our individual reflections into a larger whole. The authorial voices in the paper vary between ‘I’ (representing individual reflections of six authors) and ‘we’ (representing the collective voice).

Understanding Teaching-Learning Practice, 2019

Completion mindsets and completion contexts are essential elements within the PhD endeavour. In short, what is vital is a shared focus between candidate and the supervisory team on completion of the research and thesis, as well as a supportive environment related to resources and the research culture. What we mean by the completion mindset is clarified and the implications for supervisory practice are highlighted. The chapter looks at changing supervisory models, the notion of 'effective' supervision, and the systemic pressures that candidates and supervisors endure. The pressure on candidates to perform ('complete or retreat') poses risks for doctoral standards, but also for the well-being of the PhD candidate. The chapter looks at supervision spaces (the RIP model to RIPE): relational, intellectual, physical and emotional, and raises issues to be addressed within each space. When supervisory teams and candidates work together towards shared mindsets that focus on completion, the likelihood of enhanced focus and commitment towards success is increased, and matters of integrity are kept in sight. Working together in such ways, in negotiated spaces or spaces of influence (action, explicit discourse, learning, practice development and trust), enables mindful approaches to doctoral work and enhances the possibility of new ways of problem-solving, as well as the emergence of fresh insights. These spaces contribute to the growth of completion contexts that offer support when plans go astray (as they do at times), and that provide pathways to PhD success. 5.1 Adopting a completion mindset when things go wrong A question that commonly arises within conversations about doctoral supervision is: What should we do when things go wrong? Despite the best planning and careful execution of doctoral research, something can always go astray. The doctoral journey is never quite what we predict despite our clever plans and strategies. While completion target dates are set at the outset, backed up by high-level organisation and research management, disruptions can occur. Life can get in the way of doctoral work at times. Interruptions can enter the process and momentarily sideline progress, as well as shift the focus away from the main goal. Times like these emerge when life