2 research outputs found
Exploring the impact of a professional doctorate on higher education organizations: A critical realist perspective
The impact of a professional doctorate on students and their organizations has become a recent topic of interest to researchers, however, there has been debate regarding the impact of a professional on his or her organization and whether this represents the straightforward manifestation of professional learning. As a doctoral student enrolled in the educational doctoral programme (EdD) offered by the University of Liverpool and a lecturer at one of the Universities of Applied Sciences and Arts (UAS) in Western Switzerland, I wanted to explore how the learning that occurs within such a programme can enhance organizational change. Consequently, this study investigated the interplay between agential and structural dimensions to develop causal explanations of how organizational change might – or might not – result from undertaking a Doctor of Education (EdD) programme based on the study of higher education. The critical realist paradigm offered a good basis to do this, grounded as it is in the stratified ontology of a layered reality contingent on context, people’s personal experience, and social structures. The study addressed the following research question: What are the mechanisms that influence the impact on a higher education professional’s organization through the learning that arises from undertaking a professional doctorate in higher education? This study has used a combination of grounded theory techniques with critical realist retroduction to explore causal explanation about mechanisms. Semi-directed interviews were conducted with 16 participants, five of whom were EdD students focused on the study of higher education offered by a UK university, and the remaining 11 participants were their work colleagues well placed to comment on organizational change. Data analysis identified individual meta-reflexivity as the key mechanism enhancing individual agency giving rise to professional concerns, in turn generating students’ projects that attempted to address these concerns. In terms of individual agency, transformational leadership was also identified as a key mechanism emerging from the sharing of professional concerns with work colleagues, thus fostering social relations between human agents. Another aspect of this mechanism was the emergence of social relations resulting from collective meta-reflexivity that engaged work colleagues with the students’ concerns, thereby leading to corporate agency. However, different expressions of collective reflexivity influenced how corporate agency unfolded, which in turn shaped the nature of organizational change. Indeed, the need to align human actions with existing social structures triggered countervailing mechanisms whose powers could either enable or constrain human actions and their capacity to impact on the student’s organization. Critical realism explicitly endorses the view that generative mechanisms will not always be triggered. The theory that ensued from this study is that doctoral learning needs to be conceived, not simply in relation to producing knowledge for one’s personal growth, but also in terms of mastering a discourse that crosses both research and professional practice and through one’s capacity to draw others into that discourse in an ecologically-relevant fashion. Keywords: corporate agency, critical realism, impact, knowledge economy, organizational morphogenesis, professional doctorate, reflexivity, social relation
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Integrating and normalising coaching as a routine practice in doctoral supervision
Aim/Purpose: Recent research highlights the growing decline in doctoral students’ mental health and wellbeing, caused not only by the pressures, stress, and isolation of doctoral studies but also by existential issues around personal development and future prospects. Consequently, we argue that there is an urgent need to reassess the supervisory process to support doctoral students in addressing these concerns. This paper offers a potential solution to this challenge by exploring and examining how integrating coaching methods into doctoral supervision can support doctoral students’ growth and development, thereby increasing their wellbeing and human flourishing. Coaching aims to help individuals produce optimal performance and improvements in personal and professional settings by deploying a series of tools and models. Coaching is essentially a non-directive form of development, enabling people to identify goals and skills and then extracting the capacity people have within themselves to achieve their ambitions. This paper explores how coaching methods could be made a regular feature of doctoral supervision.
Background: The need to reconfigure doctoral supervision as a practice to address humanistic issues regarding whole-person development, self-actualisation, and personal worth is nothing new. Over the years, researchers have produced models of doctoral supervision, highlighting the growing need for supervision to incorporate more pastoral and emancipatory elements, which facilitate personal growth instead of focusing purely on academic function and criticality. Although coaching is identified in previous studies as being a valuable addition, nothing examines how to modify existing supervision practices to accommodate more pastoral elements.
Methodology: This paper offers a conceptual analysis whereby the argument primarily synthesizes existing research on doctoral supervision to understand why coaching methods may provide a solution to the evolving requirements of student welfare and emancipation. Since the commentary in this paper is not based on the findings of an empirical study, the following two conceptual research questions frame the discussion. First, are coaching methods beneficial when super-vising doctoral students? Second, what are the challenges when implementing and integrating coaching methods into existing doctoral supervisory practice? The paper utilises the Normalisation Process Theory as a ‘thinking tool’ to help answer these questions. The theory evaluates phenomena in applied social research settings to help understand how complex practices are made workable and integrated into context-dependent ways. Therefore, the theory acts as an analytical tool, enabling researchers to think through implementation issues when designing complex interventions and their evaluation.
Contribution: This paper contributes to knowledge by highlighting ways in which management responsible for a doctoral provision in higher education settings can modify their organisational structures and systems to encourage coaching methods to become a normalised part of doctoral supervision, thereby legitimising its practice.
Findings: The Normalisation Process Theory has value because it produces a roadmap for integrating and implementing new or modified practices into existing systems of operation. It, therefore, assists by producing an output that enables a current/new practice to be dissected and categorised under specific headings. In this research context, this output assisted in understanding the operational challenges when considering the normalisation of a practice. The theory helped generate something managers tasked with managing doctoral provision could consider (i.e., institutional paradigms, policies, regulations, etc.) when thinking about what may need to be reconfigured to enable coaching methods to become an integrated and normalised part of doctoral supervision over time.
Recommendations for Practitioners: It is recommended that practitioners consider the integration of coaching methods into supervision. First, once implemented, it requires monitoring to ensure the practice’s quality and consistency amongst the supervisory community. Secondly, to assess the impact of the practice on other services within the organisation, such as student services or faith services, and thirdly, to ensure training in coaching methods is made timely and relevant to assist all academics involved in doctoral supervision.
Recommendations for Researchers: The authors recommend collecting empirical evidence using the Normalisation Process Theory to evaluate the integration and normalisation of a range of practices in higher education settings. Moreover, once implemented, more research is required on the long-term value of coaching methods within doctoral settings.
Impact on Society: Doctoral education is increasingly significant in a world where knowledge is fundamental to generating economic growth. Identified as having the technical and professional skills needed to fuel the knowledge-based economy, student wellbeing, and mental health must be optimal to ensure they can contribute to the knowledge-based economy as effectively as possible.
Future Research: More research must be conducted on how doctoral supervision can become more humanistic; for example, by focusing on student self-awareness, reflection, and reframing instead of just the traditional academic function. Consequently, improving these facets is vital in developing sustained wellbeing and life-long success