Table Of ContentDoctoral Education as If People Matter
Critical Issues in the Future of
Learning and Teaching
Series Editors
Britt-Marie Apelgren (University of Gothenburg, Sweden)
Pamela Burnard (University of Cambridge, UK)
Nese Cabaroglu (University of Cukurova, Turkey)
Pamela M. Denicolo (University of Reading, UK)
Founding Editors
Pamela M. Denicolo (University of Reading, UK)
Michael Kompf† (Brock University, Canada)
Volume 24
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/cifl
Doctoral Education as
If People Matter
Critical Issues for the Future
Edited by
Marie-Louise Österlind, Pam Denicolo and
Britt-Marie Apelgren
leiden | boston
All chapters in this book have undergone peer review.
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Contents
Acknowledgements vii
List of Figures and Tables viii
Notes on Contributors ix
1 Prologue: Doctoral Education as If People Matter 1
Marie-Louise Österlind, Pam Denicolo and Britt-Marie Apelgren
PART 1
Challenges and Opportunities for the Key Participants in
Doctoral Education
2 Alienation and the Problem of Work in Doctoral Education 15
Alistair McCulloch
3 Restructuring Doctoral Education in Sweden 28
Britt-Marie Apelgren, Sverker Lindblad and Gun-Britt Wärvik
4 Challenging Policy Barriers to Doctoral Supervision: Qualifying as a
Supervisor and Recruiting Students in Chinese Research Universities 43
Bing Lu
5 Doctoral Final Examinations: (Ir)Relevance to New Skills and Future
Challenges 58
Pam Denicolo, Dawn Duke and Julie Reeves
PART 2
Challenges and Opportunities for the Staff Supporting
Doctoral Researchers
6 Re-framing Supervisor Development for Internationalisation and
Professionalisation 77
Pam Denicolo, Julie Reeves and Dawn Duke
7 The Professional Development of Doctoral Supervisors through an
International Lens 89
Isabel Huet, Diogo Casanova and Fabiane Garcia
vi Contents
8 Towards a Person-Centred Discourse in Doctoral Supervisor
Development 106
Matthew Sillence
9 The Role of Supervisors in Preparing Doctoral Researchers for the Final
Examination 126
Gillian Houston
10 New Beginnings or Same Old Ending for Researcher Development? 140
Julie Reeves
PART 3
Challenges and Opportunities for Doctoral Researchers’
Wellbeing
11 Dimensions of Wellbeing in the Doctoral Research Environment:
Implications for Quality 157
Martin Gough
12 Sustainability of Doctoral Education: A Well-Being Perspective 172
Manuela Schmidt and Erika Hansson
13 The Role of Liminality and Reflexivity in Transformative Doctoral
Learning 188
Shane Dowle
14 This Could Be Heaven, or This Could Be Hell: Exploring the Complexity
Experienced by Swedish Doctoral Researchers from a Workplace
Perspective 201
Marie-Louise Österlind
15 Epilogue: Continuing to Focus on the People Involved in Doctoral
Education 213
Pam Denicolo, Marie-Louise Österlind and Britt-Marie Apelgren
Index 219
Acknowledgements
Our passion for developing improvements in doctoral education has been both
stimulated and sustained by the support of colleagues, friends, and research
students worldwide who have also enthusiastically responded to similar chal-
lenges and opportunities in the field. We appreciate especially the contribu-
tions of those who supplied chapters and advice on our own and we thank
them for sharing our journey.
We are also indebted to our publishing colleagues at Brill who have always
been ready when required with advice and information and have provided us
all with a platform to share our obsessions with the wider academic community.
We would also like to thank the universities that we have been affiliated to
over the years for their support of our research and writing.
Most of all, we appreciate the patience and help of our families while we
engaged with this project.
Figures and Tables
Figures
3.1 Total number of doctoral examinations over years in Sweden 1960–2020. 34
3.2 Development and change in Swedish doctoral education 1972–2020. 36
8.1 Doctoral Learning Ecology Model (© Elliot, Bengtsen, Guccione, & Kobayashi,
2020; reproduced with permission of the authors). 108
8.2 Number of documents per theme in the dataset. 113
8.3 Number of references per theme in the dataset. 113
8.4 Modified Doctoral Learning Ecology Model. 121
8.5 Person-centred CPD model. 123
13.1 Doctoral researchers’ river of experience. 193
Tables
4.1 Major national postgraduate policy documents. 47
7.1 Search parameters – literature review. 92
8.1 Documents mapped to genre sub-domains, and examples of readers. 111
8.2 Themes and rhetorical features of the CDA framework. 112
8.3 Foregrounded themes coverage in genre sub-domains. 114
8.4 Coverage of agents/patients across the genre sub-domains. 115
8.5 Matrix query of references for doctoral researchers, supervisors and the
institution. 115
8.6 Levels of formality coverage in genre sub-domains. 116
8.7 Matrix query of levels of formality and agent/patient. 117
8.8 Matrix query of levels of levels of technicality and agent/patient. 119
Notes on Contributors
Britt-Marie Apelgren
(PhD) is Professor of Language Education at the University of Gothenburg in
Sweden. She has extensive experience in doctoral education. Her main research
fields concern teacher cognition, language teaching and learning, language pol-
icy, doctoral studies, and leadership in higher education.
Diogo Casanova
(PhD) is the Vice-Rector for Quality and Innovation at the Universidade Aberta.
He has experience in leading institutional and international projects related to
online learning, teaching and postgraduate education.
Pam Denicolo
(PhD) is Professor Emerita, Reading University, and a chartered psychologist,
Academy of Social Sciences Fellow, and honorary pharmacist. She is also an
advisor/consultant to universities worldwide on doctoral education. She pro-
vides workshops for supervisors and researchers on supervision, examining,
research methods, publishing, gaining funding, etc.
Shane Dowle
(PhD) is Senior Continuous Improvement Manager in the Change and
Improvement division at University College London. He was previously Head/
Deputy Director of the Doctoral College at the University of Surrey and holds
a PhD on the topic of doctoral completions.
Dawn Duke
(PhD) is Head of Researcher Development for the Africa Research Excellence
Fund (AREF) and leads professional development programmes for early career
researchers and academics across Africa, following years of experience run-
ning and contributing to doctoral researcher and supervisor development
programmes.
Fabiane Garcia
(PhD) is Professor in Education at the Universidade Federal do Amazonas
(UFAM). She coordinates the postgraduate programme in Education and has
experience in supervising doctoral students to completion.
x Notes on Contributors
Martin Gough
(PhD) is variously a doctoral supervisor, researcher and academic developer
(including leading on supervisor development), based at the University of
Liverpool Centre for Higher Education Studies. He is Co-Convenor of the
Society for Research into Higher Education Postgraduate Issues.
Erika Hansson
(PhD) is currently working as a lecturer at Kristianstad University, Sweden. She
completed her degree in psychology in 2017, and her areas of interest comprise
of disordered eating among boys, bullying among youth, as well as the well-
being of doctoral students.
Gillian Houston
(PhD) completed a PhD on the doctoral examination in 2018 and now works
as an independent researcher and author. She has supported the UK Council
for Graduate Education for many years, as a speaker, board member, chair and
vice-chair, now as an Honorary Life Member.
Isabel Huet
(PhD) is Assistant Professor in Education at the Universidade Aberta, an Invited
Research Fellow at the University of Hertfordshire, and an Honorary doctoral
supervisor at the University of Liverpool. She has experience in designing CPD
programmes for doctoral supervisors.
Sverker Lindblad
(PhD) is Professor Emeritus in Education at the University of Gothenburg,
researching Education Policy, an area in which he has published extensively. A
recent publication is on typecasting in the recruitment of full professor. He is
an experienced doctoral supervisor.
Bing Lu
(PhD) is a doctoral researcher in Department Education Studies at University
of Warwick She founded the ‘Superb-vision network’ (SVN) sponsored by
Warwick Doctoral College. Her doctoral research investigates how returned
doctorate holders conduct doctoral supervision in their home countries.
Alistair McCulloch
(PhD) is Head of Research Education at the University of South Australia.
Chair of the QPR conference, in 2017 he was awarded a national ‘Australian
