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Employing Agency in Academic Settings: Doctoral Students Shaping Their Own Experiences

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Discourses on Professional Learning

Part of the book series: Professional and Practice-based Learning ((PPBL,volume 9))

Abstract

The majority of research on doctoral students’ success is aimed at the identification of personal and/or situational factors that contribute to PhD candidates’ attrition and persistence, respectively. By doing so, the literature has adopted a rather passive perspective towards PhD candidates and their development. The active role of candidates being agentic constructors of their academic career has been widely neglected. This study therefore focuses on how PhD students can take an active approach towards their academic development. A qualitative interview study with ten German faculty members was conducted to answer the following research questions: (1) How do supervisors conceptualise academic success of PhD students? (2) How does professional agency affect academic success of young researchers? (3) What individual and/or contextual factors affect the exercise of professional agency? Based on these interviews, evidence is reported on how doctoral candidates can indeed affect their academic development and eventually their success by exercising professional agency. Among others, the study participants mentioned proactive networking, negotiation of external demands and deliberate information and feedback seeking as important manifestations of professional agency in academic contexts.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This question was asked since research of Gardner (2009) showed that apart from PhD completion a range of factors are accounted as doctoral students’ success. In her research Gardner found different conceptualizations of success between different disciplines. As output criteria the faculty staff named research dissemination (Communication), job satisfaction (Oceanography), secure employment and dissemination (English), as well as a good position after graduation (Mathematics). It is interesting that only one of the 38 interviewed faculty member equated degree completion to success. This is surprising since the high quote of non-completers in the most disciplines is overwhelming.

  2. 2.

    In comparison to many Anglo-American countries, the most German PhD students do not study in structured PhD programs (although such programs do exist). The majority of PhD students are employed by the university in a fixed-term position, whereby a full position is accompanied with teaching duties of 4 h a week during term time. The doctoral candidates’ supervisor is not only their intellectual advisor and eventually examiner but also their direct legal superior. In general the university is based on academic self-administration (“Akademische Selbstverwaltung”), meaning that decisions concerning the development, staffing or teaching of the university have to be made in academic committees consisting out of faculty members, postdocs, doctoral students, non-research personnel and undergraduate students. For more information about the German university system, see Kaulisch and Hauss (2012) or Teichler, Arimoto and Cummings (2013).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Educational Science, University of Paderborn, Paderborn, Germany

    Michael Goller & Christian Harteis

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  1. Michael Goller
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  2. Christian Harteis
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Correspondence to Michael Goller .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Educational Science, University of Paderborn, Paderborn, Germany

    Christian Harteis

  2. Department of Business Education and Educational Management, University of Bamberg, Bamberg, Germany

    Andreas Rausch

  3. Economics and Business Education II, University of Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany

    JĂĽrgen Seifried

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Goller, M., Harteis, C. (2014). Employing Agency in Academic Settings: Doctoral Students Shaping Their Own Experiences. In: Harteis, C., Rausch, A., Seifried, J. (eds) Discourses on Professional Learning. Professional and Practice-based Learning, vol 9. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7012-6_11

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