Emergency methodological pivots: a situational analysis of doctoral candidates’ research engagement during crisis in the United States

Abstract

Purpose

In this study, the authors explored the situation of the doctoral candidate in the social sciences as they were confronted by crisis and forced to make changes to their dissertation research plans. The authors conceptualized this as a methodological pivot, or an unexpected shift in trajectory, in which candidates engaged and that culminated in new research plans.

Design/Methodology/Approach

Using situational analysis, a form of qualitative grounded theory, the authors conducted interviews and collected extant artifacts to understand the situations of the candidate engaged in the pivot. The analysis produced a situational map and a grounded theorizing. The authors also bound the analysis by a specific time period: the COVID-19 pandemic in the USA.

Findings

The grounded theorizing evidenced stages of pivoting, reflected as an internal process of grieving. Participants also endured external institutional impediments around programmatic support, funding and policy. Each internal and external situation exerted some degree of pressure on the candidate’s pivot. Technology and its impact on fieldwork, methodological assets and epistemological shifts mediated internal and external situations to produce the pivot.

Originality/Value

This work is unique in that it expands on the field of study and practice that has emerged from the complexity of crisis in education, situated predominantly in lower to middle-income countries. In higher income countries, like the USA, educational institutions remain unprepared for crisis. This work underscores this paucity. The authors also build on the literature that addresses the challenges graduate learners face with support and its implications for persistence.

Citation

Johnson, A.T. and Kerrigan, M.R. (2022), "Emergency methodological pivots: a situational analysis of doctoral candidates’ research engagement during crisis in the United States", Studies in Graduate and Postdoctoral Education, Vol. 13 No. 1, pp. 74-89. https://doi.org/10.1108/SGPE-04-2021-0030