The Professional Doctorate has become an increasingly popular doctoral route. Research has tended to focus on outcomes and "impact" or on the epistemological nature of programmes and resulting student identities compared to other routes. This paper takes a different focus, examining the "process" through which students come to…

This paper explores fit as an important theoretical construct in the study of doctoral education and doctoral student development. We discuss how research based on three types of fit (person-environment fit, person-culture fit, person-vocation fit) may provide critical insights into the doctoral student experience, and offer a framework based on…

The educational doctorate (EdD) is being re-envisioned as a distinct professional degree. Today's EdD graduates are envisioned as scholarly practitioners. Given this it may be reasoned these individuals have unique identities comprised of several layers. In this study, we examined how 18 entering students and 17 graduating students from an…

In practice and process PhD examination is distinctive, reflecting the high expectations of students whose learning has been directed to their becoming researchers. This article builds on previous research on the examination of Australian theses that revealed that examiners in Science (n?=?542) and Education (n?=?241) provide a substantial…

The study investigates the relationship between prior job experience and current academic performance among management students in India. It further explores the impact of individual and situational factors on the above relationship. Based on a longitudinal study spanning over nine months in the academic year 2010-11 among a sample of 324…

One of the tasks of postgraduate education is to develop students' conceptions and skills necessary for lifelong learning in their profession. Therefore, this study aimed at identifying students' development in self-regulated learning throughout a postgraduate teacher education programme. A longitudinal design with three measurement…

This article explores the features and potential of an embodied, rather than merely skills-based, approach to doctoral writing. The authors' conceptual framework is derived from the phenomenological literature, particularly Heidegger's critique of modern life as permeated by a quest for mastery and control. They address two key questions…

Doctoral supervision continues to be an interesting pedagogical site. As the university changes, so do the expectations and circumstances for doctoral education, including supervision. Although it is unhelpful to overstate the homogeneity of the doctoral student body of the past, there is no doubt that global and local changes to higher education…

The UK higher education system receives the second largest number of Chinese overseas students in the world. The Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) data used in this study show that the total number of Chinese graduates (at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels) increased from around 6000 at the beginning of the twenty-first century to…

This study investigates how doctoral students perceive research work in the context of their own PhD projects. Thirty-two students from a Finnish university were interviewed, representing three disciplines: medicine, natural sciences and behavioural sciences. Their conceptions of research varied in terms of describing research as "a job to…

There are no universal, precise, or explicit criteria for completing a doctoral degree successfully. Researchers and practitioners have pointed out how difficult and time consuming the supervision of graduate student research can be. When students in doctoral programs complete their degrees via distance delivery, supervision of graduate students…

An important element of doctoral studies is identification with the academic community. Such identification is often complicated by part-time student status. In this paper, two part-time doctoral students and their supervisor employ Lave and Wenger's concept of legitimate peripheral participation to explore, through a critical socio-cultural…

The purpose of this study is to better understand the differences in selected retention constructs by student nationality in US graduate programs. Surveys administered at four universities across the United States during fall 2010 resulted in responses from 685 PhD students from six international regions. Using univariate ANOVA, responses were…

In this article, the determinants of "time to dropout" from doctoral studies and "time to PhD completion" are studied using a discrete-time competing risks survival analysis for a sample of 3092 doctoral candidates from the Université libre de Bruxelles. Not surprisingly, results show that students supported with research…

Research indicates that modifying teachers' beliefs about learning and teaching (i.e. teaching orientation) may be a prerequisite to changing their teaching practices. This mixed methods study quantitized data from interviews with 65 graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) from science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields to…