Leveraging critical friendship to navigate doctoral student role transitions
Studies in Graduate and Postdoctoral Education
ISSN: 2398-4686
Article publication date: 9 September 2021
Issue publication date: 23 March 2022
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of critical friendship on a first- and last-year doctoral student’s novice and expert mindsets during role transitions. Doctoral students are challenged to navigate role transitions during their academic programs. Experiences in research expectations, academy acculturation and work-life balance, may impact doctoral students’ novice-expert mindsets and contribute to the costly problem of attrition. Universities offer generic doctoral support, but few support sources address the long-term self-directed nature of self-study.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors participated in a collaborative self-study over a 30-month period. The authors collected 35 personal shared journal entries and 12 recorded and transcribed discussions. The authors conducted a constant comparative analysis of the data, and individually and collaboratively coded the data for initial and focused codes to construct themes.
Findings
The critical friendship provided a safe space to explore the doctoral experiences and novice-expert mindsets, which the authors were not fully able to do with programmatic support alone. The authors identified nine specific strategies that positively impacted the novice-expert mindsets during the following role transitions: professional to student, student to graduate and graduate to professional.
Originality/value
While researchers have identified strategies and models for doctoral student support targeting specific milestones, this study identified strategies to support doctoral students’ novice-expert mindsets during role transitions. These strategies may benefit other graduate students, as well as faculty and program directors, as they work to support student completion.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
We are appreciative of our graduate students, Juny Coyoy, Gordon Goodwin and Rachel Shields, who completed transcriptions, proofreading and editing.
Declaration of interest statement: The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.
Citation
Gregory, K.H. and Burbage, A.K. (2022), "Leveraging critical friendship to navigate doctoral student role transitions", Studies in Graduate and Postdoctoral Education, Vol. 13 No. 1, pp. 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1108/SGPE-01-2021-0002
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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