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This paper aims to respond to the need for a model of doctoral supervision that can capture and represent the focus, range and complexity of instructional intentions, practices and possibilities.

The study draws on the substantive literature on supervision and changing doctoral programs in the Fine Arts and relatively new empirical findings about supervision and learning. The authors posit a holistic model of supervision ranging across micro–macro and product–person dimensions. The model is further explained and illustrated using four supervisor cases in Fine Arts.

The model offers a heuristic for supervisors to reflect on and identify existing emphases, alignments and integrative possibilities to better understand the complexities of Fine Arts supervisory practices.

There is a dearth of research that addresses how doctoral supervisors perceive and articulate their roles and breadth of responsibilities in light of new programs and changing sectoral expectations.

Highly developed and agile learners who can clearly convey and call on their skills are sought in all walks of life. Diverse demand for these capacities has called attention to how the skills and knowledge gained during doctoral study can be conveyed, translated and leveraged in non-academic settings; however, the complex learning reality underneath doctoral development is challenging to convey.

The data set for this particular analysis was obtained from 245 in-depth telephone interviews with PhD candidates collected prior to COVID-19. Candidates were asked about learning processes, challenges and changes, and both the questions and thematic analysis were guided by theories of doctoral development and transformational learning.

For many participants, learning and development were not familiar topics, while a small proportion deflected questions about learning altogether. One fifth of participants presented rich and lucid accounts of learning in which cognisance of complexity, metacognitive processes and transformational experiences were embedded and multiple avenues of development were in evidence. They were well-placed to convey the complexion of doctoral development. Candidates more deeply engaged in learning also commented more about changes they noticed in themselves. The most identified avenue of development was in understanding and approach to knowledge.

Candidate communication about learning and development is an under-explored dimension of doctoral experience and skill that is relevant to advancing knowledge about doctoral development and illuminating graduate potential both within and outside academe. This must constitute a key element of the re-vitalisation of the doctorate post-pandemic. The salience of framing transferable skills within a learning development perspective is discussed.

While current research is reporting on a crisis in school leadership aspirations and appointments, this research sheds light on the mediating factors that school middle leaders (MLs) attribute to their appointment as a leader and their aspirations to senior leadership positions.

Qualitative data from a larger, mixed-method, research project were collected using an online survey completed by 2,608 MLs in a large public school system in Australia and is analysed using an inductive thematic process.

The findings suggest that MLs experience varying and non-linear career progressions and that a range of personal and professional factors impact their career aspirations. The support of an “experienced other” such as a principal, mentor or coach and strategic career planning are all important in the identification, support, development and advancement of MLs.

This paper contributes to the scarce body of research on middle leadership identification and aspirations. The study recommends a system approach drawn from the empirical data and associated literature that may be useful to inform policymakers, school systems and school leaders in efforts towards middle leadership identification, development and advancement.

The burgeoning practice of peer-to-peer breastmilk sharing in the United States conflicts with public health concerns about the safety of the milk. In-depth interviews with 58 breastmilk sharers highlight the ways in which these respondents counter widespread risk narratives. These caregivers deploy existing social values such as self-reliance, good citizenship, and “crunchy,” or natural, mothering to validate their milk-sharing practices. However, because of stratified reproduction, in which society encourages White motherhood while it disparages motherhood among poor women and women of color, these discourses are more accessible to milk sharers who are White and from middle-class. Black and Latinx milk donors and recipients offer additional rationale for milk sharing that includes reclaiming their legacies as worthy mothers and elevating milk sharing to justice work. In rejecting and reframing risk, all of these milk sharers work toward flattening the good mother/bad mother binary.

A great deal of contemporary research in education, and in the social sciences more generally, is conducted through interviews. Interview-derived accounts and narratives have been used as data for many decades. We argue that, despite their popularity and their long history, such data are not always subjected to rigorous analysis. Researchers too often treat interviews as sources of insight about informants’ experiences and feelings, but pay insufficient attention to the forms and functions of such accounts. We argue that they need to be approached through the analytic lens of accounting devices and narrative structures. We exemplify this approach through ‘academic’ narratives: scientists’ discovery accounts and accounts of doctoral supervision. We emphasise how such accounts need to be examined in terms of the discursive construction of reality. Such an approach is an important corrective to the selective reporting of ‘atrocity stories’ about postgraduate education.

In the contemporary US, pregnant women must navigate competing ideas about their bodies, including expectations for weight gain. Given that there are few social spaces where women may gain weight without disapproval, pregnancy represents a period when women are allowed to put on weight. However, gaining weight means doing so within the context of the obesity “epidemic” and increased medical surveillance of the body. To explore how women navigate the medicalization of pregnancy weight, I draw on data from in-depth interviews with 40 pregnant and recently pregnant women. Findings indicate that women reframe the meaning of pregnancy weight as “baby weight,” rather than body weight. This allows them to view it as a temporary condition that is “for the baby,” while holding two concurrent body images – a pregnant and a non-pregnant version of themselves. Women also resist the quantification of their maternity weight, either by not keeping track or not looking at scales in the doctor’s office. Doing so prevented baby weight from turning back into body weight – a concrete and meaningful number on the scale. Such resistance to quantification is often accomplished with the help of doctors and healthcare professionals who do not explicitly discuss weight gain with their patients. These findings suggest that women rely on a variety of strategies to navigate the medicalization of pregnancy weight, and provides another lens through which to understand how and why women may make similar choices about other medicalized aspects of their pregnancy (or pregnancy experiences).