Doctoral candidate learning

Abstract

The doctoral journey is frequently a long, arduous, and lonely process, one experienced with different specific requirements and challenges depending on national, institutional, and disciplinary expectations, along with the added stressors that come with personal experiences and the dreams of those involved. Even through this doctoral stew, many commonalities exist that allow us to explore doctoral education similarities with thesis or dissertation requirements and how they are enacted. Perhaps the one thing we can appreciate from the literature is that a critical aspect of the doctoral experience relates to learning to be a researcher. This special issue of Innovations in Education and Teaching International will investigate this theme – international perspectives on how learning is lived and portrayed by candidates through doctoral education – along with implications and recommendations for supervisors to help and scaffold them along the process.