Fulfilling the Potential of Your Doctoral Experience. Pam Denicolo
manage and deliver projects, selecting and justifying appropriate methodological processes while recognising, evaluating and minimising the risks involved and impact on the environment;
understand funding and how it can be generated and managed as well as organise infrastructure and identify/locate resources;
engage in professional practice, including ethical, legal, and health and safety aspects, bringing enthusiasm, perseverance and integrity to bear on their work activities;
support, collaborate with and lead colleagues, using a range of communication, teaching and networking skills to influence practice and policy in diverse environments;
appreciate the need to engage in research with impact and to be able to communicate it to diverse audiences including the public;
build relationships with peers, senior colleagues, students and stakeholders with sensitivity to equality, diversity and cultural issues.
Further, doctoral researchers are increasingly being encouraged to develop their foreign language and enterprise skills and to cultivate business acumen.
During their research, all doctoral graduates will have developed additional specialist discipline knowledge while those who have studied a professional doctorate are likely to have been required to have specific professional experience that informs the topic of their research studies. They may well also have been required to engage in further study related to that professional field as part of their doctorate.
Finally, they must be able to prepare, plan and manage their own career development whilst knowing when and where to draw on support.
It is generally recognised that doctoral researchers begin the degree with a wide range of previous experience, personal attributes and acquired skills. Researchers will also have a varying range of opportunities to enhance current skills or learn new ones within their doctoral studies programmes. Thus, when they graduate, each will have a unique collection of attributes and skills developed to varying degrees. Therefore, the list in Box 1.1 is general for you to select which skills and attributes to focus on specifically over the course of your doctoral studies. Note that the first three bullet points emphasise that research still forms the core of a doctorate. At the same time, though, the intent to develop excellent researchers with a wide range of attributes and skills is at least as important as the purpose of simply producing written bodies of work describing the content of and process of the research. That written body of work, a thesis or dissertation depending on country of origin, is still a vital product and is the most readily examined (Chapter 8).
Whatever stage in the process you are currently at, do not be dismayed by the list, for much help is available to support your achieving these numerous skills. We all recognise, though, that undertaking research over several years can be a demanding task, one unlike your previous education, otherwise the title doctor would not be worth such kudos. Let us explore further what we mean by demanding and different to previous education.
Implications of the contemporary doctorate for newer researchers
For many new doctoral researchers, it is not simply the level of work required that comes as a surprise but also its nature. If we are to guide you to get the most from this degree, then we must start by being realistic and honest. When we meet new researchers for the first time we often ask for their understandings about the doctorate and are often concerned by descriptions such as the following:
‘It is like a master’s but much bigger;’ ‘It is called a doctor of philosophy but that is a historical name; not much philosophy now in doctorates;’ ‘My supervisor will tell me what to do and when, and I will get on with my bit of the big research project;’ ‘You have to write a thesis in complex language using multi-syllabic words to show your erudition!’ ‘It will involve loads of reading until my supervisor tells me to stop.’
Comments like those above indicate the need to consider what researching for a doctorate entails. There is, indeed, a large step-change between a master’s degree and a doctorate, and, of course, a greater one if the transition is from an undergraduate degree. However, every doctorate involves some philosophical consideration of about the nature of knowledge and what are appropriate paradigms and ways of accessing it, while considering the ethics of the process. Further, one of the key skills that researchers should learn is to make the complex accessible and the specialist topic understandable to lay people. However, there are also other challenging features to contend with, such as:
the increasing amount of independence required throughout the process;
the continuing lack of certainty about the nature of the outcome;
whether the research questions are relevant, sensible and unique;
and whether the chosen research activities will answer them.
Indeed, prolonged uncertainty is a key feature of doctoral study, with many commentators suggesting that tolerance of uncertainty (finding it stimulating rather than dispiriting), along with stamina/perseverance and passion, are key attributes of good researchers. Angela Duckworth and colleagues (2007) incorporate these into their key attribute for long-term success: grit. They suggest that achievement of difficult goals (a doctorate must surely fit this description) entails not only talent but the sustained and focused application of that talent over time.
In the Denicolo and Reeves book (2014), although we had not then come across Duckworth’s work, we compared levels of study with feats of swimming, likening undergraduate study to gaining awards in national competition and master’s study to winning Olympic medals. In those cases, though huge effort is needed – and talent and stamina – the end of the race is visible; the lanes are clearly marked in a clean, clear and calm pool; your competitors are in view beside you in the water and supporters are close by, with cheers and warm towels at the ready. In contrast, the requirements of doctorate level study are more comparable to swimming the English Channel: the other shore is shrouded in mist; there are no lanes and many nasty or dangerous things are floating or sailing or swimming around you; you have little idea what the competition is up to; and you are alone in the choppy water albeit that your supervisor may be shouting encouragement and guidance from a dingy in the vicinity. Your personal supporters have little idea about what you are engaged in and keep asking if you are nearly finished yet! Although we cannot teach you to have grit in such circumstances we can nevertheless provide you with strategies to overcome some of the obstacles to success, or at least find your own way around them, building your confidence with each mini-success in the process.
You will find that a key feature of many of our recommendations in this book is careful planning. The first important plan relates to choosing the right kind of doctorate to meet your needs. If you have already made that choice, depending on the stage you have reached, then you may find it useful to go on to the next chapter, about making a good start, or Chapter 3 about developing your role as a researcher, or Chapter 5, which delves more deeply into making the best use of resources and opportunities that abound in higher education. If you have yet to make the decision about what kind of doctorate and mode of study would suit you, then the next section may be of help.
A doctorate to meet your needs
Selection
Two of us have much experience in training supervisors to select the best candidates with whom to work on a doctorate but we do take pains to remind them that selection is a two-way process; prospective doctoral researchers should have their own selection criteria that cover the kind of doctorate as well as the nature of the institution and calibre of the supervision that will suit them best. Supervisors have, in turn, assured us that they are impressed by prospective candidates who respond to questions