Palgrave Macmillan/Springer Nature has recently published the latest volume (Mulligan et al., 2022) in its Palgrave Studies in Education Research Methods book series (https://link.springer.com/series/15092). This volume, which I had the privilege to co-edit with Dr Deborah L. Mulligan and Dr Naomi Ryan, both affiliated with the University of Southern Queensland, Australia, is entitled Deconstructing Doctoral Discourses: Stories and Strategies for Success (https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-11016-0). The book includes 20 chapters that traverse highly varied contexts and topics, with the latter traversing knowledge contribution claims, ethics approval, doctoral students from variously marginalised perspectives, thesis by publication, writing tribes and circles, research impact and the doctoral viva, among other foci. Editors and chapter authors alike defined, analysed, deconstructed and in some cases reconstructed dominant and not so dominant discourses related to doctoral study and supervision. The book’s subthemes explored the intersection between doctoral students’ and supervisors’ narratives about their experiences and distilled strategies that had proven effective in certain circumstances in enhancing the overall success of those students and supervisors.
This blog post is focused specifically on what might be taken from this book and others like it by doctoral students and supervisors keen to expand their skillset and toolkits for conducting and facilitating doctoral research respectively. The book is certainly intended to share specific strategies for success. To take just one example, several chapters elaborate from different perspectives the formation of varied kinds of alliances that can strengthen support networks. These alliances range from productive doctoral student–supervisor relationships to research administrators to research stakeholders and end users to journal article reviewers to thesis/dissertation examiners. While tales abound of the deleterious effects when these key connections fail, the book presents several examples of the benefits that arise from these connections succeeding and even thriving, as well as analyses of what makes the difference between success and failure with these core relationships.
A crucial corollary of these stories and strategies for success is that, while individual resilience is undoubtedly important and contributes directly to a doctoral student’s eventual graduation, it is equally important to avoid oversimplifying accounts of such resilience. For instance, individual resilience is enacted in complex environments with cultural and sociological as well as psychological dimensions, and individual doctoral students and supervisors have only limited influence over those environments. From this perspective, individuals who exhibit resilience are to be applauded, but those who in certain circumstances find themselves unable to enact such resilience should certainly not be criticised for that outcome. Sometimes the alignment of the doctoral study and supervision planets is just too counterproductive and overwhelming to be endured.
The preceding paragraph was intended to provide something of a reality check rather than being unduly pessimistic or unnecessarily discouraging. I have had the pleasure and honour to have worked with a large number of graduated doctoral students and fellow supervisors, and in every case I have been in awe of the student’s commitment, cleverness, persistence – and resilience. Similarly, for the students for whom that particular doctoral journey did not lead to the desired outcome on that occasion, I have nothing but respect, regard and interest in how they will take forward what they learned from their research projects into their future lives.
I hope that you will find in this book stories and strategies worthy of consideration, whether for yourself as doctoral student or supervisor, and/or in support of others who are engaged in this complex, resilience building and testing, and worthwhile personal and professional endeavour.
Reference
Mulligan, D. L., Ryan, N., & Danaher, P. A. (Eds.) (2022). Deconstructing doctoral discourses: Stories and strategies for success (Palgrave studies in education research methods vol. 11). Palgrave Macmillan/Springer Nature. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-11016-0