Traversing the Doctorate: Reflections and Strategies from Students, Supervisors and Administrators

This book explores the multiple ways in which doctoral programs are traversed by students, supervisors and administrators. Rather than proposing a single, homogeneous approach as the most effective form of doctoral education, the editors and contributors focus on the diversity of global approaches to the doctorate, including doctoral experiences from Australia, Finland, Chile, New Zealand and Spain. The doctorate emerges from this analysis as a highly complex, heterogeneous and situated phenomenon that resists easy solutions. Strategies that are successful in traversing the doctorate are found to be grounded in contexts that cannot necessarily be generalised to other situations: in doing so, the authors emphasise the importance of presenting a diverse array of experiences and stories. The separate and shared perspectives of doctoral students, supervisors and administrations are mapped and analysed in ways that bring their voices compellingly to life: this book will be of interest and value to students and scholars of the doctoral journey, as well as of international and comparative education.