Governing the social, material, textual, and advancing professional learning of doctoral candidates in the contemporary university
| Published date | 01 March 2018 |
| Date | 01 March 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0144739417706428 |
| Author | Rosalie Goldsmith,Marie Manidis |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Governing the social,
material, textual, and
advancing professional
learning of doctoral
candidates in the
contemporary university
Marie Manidis and Rosalie Goldsmith
University of Technology Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Abstract
Doctoral education is increasingly of interest to higher education researchers and policy-
makers as the qualification’s diversity, governance, reach and policy outcomes come
under growing scrutiny. In the context of these changes, the paper adopts for the first
time since Cumming’s seminal study, a practice-based exploration of the social, material,
textual, and professional learning of doctoral candidates in an Australian university. The
exploration, drawing on empirical data and practice-based analyses of the university as
‘organisation’, examines divergent and growing pressures on the qualification. Data
indicate that current arrangements privilege sociomaterial (disciplinary) learning. Textual
practices, central to accomplishing the dissertation, develop over time and in irregular
fashion across disciplines, as candidates learn new rhetorical and publication practices.
New practices aimed at reimagining the doctoral qualification as a vocational/profes-
sional formation program are unlikely to succeed given the prevailing nature of practices
and practice-based conceptualisations of situated learning.
Keywords
Doctoral education, dissertation, sociomateriality, learning, higher education changes
Introduction
This paper is set against a raft of changes taking place in doctoral education, including
dramatic shifts in the role and shape of doctoral qualifications in the past two decades
Corresponding author:
Marie Manidis, University of Technology Sydney, Tower Building 1, Sydney, New South Wales 2007, Australia.
Email: Marie.Manidis@uts.edu.au; Telephone: +61414799899
Teaching Public Administration
2018, Vol. 36(1) 14–33
ªThe Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0144739417706428
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internationally and in Australia (Brabazon, 2016; Guerin et al., 2015). Changes signal a
discernible shift in seeking to align research education with vocational/professional
outcomes, societal impacts and instrumental research goals.
This paper begins by outlining emerging influences on doctoral education to reveal
diverging trends in ways the qualification is increasingly being conceptualised. One
trend is the focus on instrumental purposes and outcomes of the qualification, pre-
dominantly from industry and government. A contrasting trend is the emergence of
scholarly concerns seeking to address the quality of supervision and access and equity
concerns arising from the increasing internationalisation and diversity of PhD candi-
dates. With these trends in mind, the paper then introduces the theoretical and metho-
dological approaches drawn on to explore learning in the contemporary PhD. The
qualification’s current form is set against its origins in mediaeval times, presaging the
more instrumental visions for its future.
This paper examines the organisation of learning in the PhD from a practice-oriented
perspective: specifically, how the sociomaterial, textual and vocational practices of the
qualification are currently ‘bundled’ (Schatzki, 2006), that is how they link to/unfold
alongside each other. The paper concludes that sociomaterial and textual practices are
likely to persist given the prevailing nature of practices and practice-based con-
ceptualisations of situated learning (Gherardi and Strati, 2012; Ronnerman and Kemmis,
2016; Schatzki, 2001). Consequently, the paper argues that aspirations of industry and
government to shift the focus and purpose of the PhD radically to vocational ends are
unlikely to succeed, at least in the short term.
Current developments in doctoral education
Doctoral education is increasingly of interest to higher education (HE) researchers and
policy-makers as the qualification’s diversity, governance, reach and policy outcomes
come under growing scrutiny (Bengtsen, 2016; DIISRTE, 2012; McGagh et al., 2016).
Doctoral education is also receiving considerable attention from HE researchers inter-
ested in the scholarship, access and equity aspects of the qualification. These two trends
have divergent priorities.
The first trend focuses on strengthening the nexus between doctoral outcomes and
economic growth initiatives (DET, 2016; DIISRTE, 2012; McGagh et al., 2016) taking
the lead from the Bologna Process Reform initiatives (EHEA, 2010) in which candidates
are beginning to undertake focused programs aimed at research(er) skill development. In
Australia, policy initiatives intend the doctoral qualification to advance knowledge and
develop a ‘researcher’ – a graduate with entrepreneurial skills and professional and
workplace-ready attributes (DIISRTE, 2012). These developments have come about as
the qualification has increasingly attracted the attention of governments worldwide, with
many seeing research outcomes intimately connected to increased economic achieve-
ments of national agendas.
The Chief Scientist of Australia has recently expressed concern at the fact that only
10%of Science, Technology Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) PhDs own a
business compared to 23%of non-STEM PhDs (Baranyai et al., 2016). This is framed as
Manidis and Goldsmith 15
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