Post-PhD researchers’ experiences: an emotionally rocky road

Abstract

Purpose This study aims to examine how post-PhD researchers construct their identities through significant work experiences as they endeavour to develop their research independence and a distinct scholarly profile. The authors were especially interested in how they made meaning of their important work experiences, the ones that were emotionally salient. Design/methodology/approach Using a narrative approach, the analysis was conducted on a data subset from a large cross-national mixed-methods research project about early-career researchers’ identity development. The sample included 71 post-PhD researchers from the UK who completed an online survey. Ten of whom were also interviewed through a semi-structured protocol. Findings Post-PhD researchers considered work experiences to be significant when those experiences helped them to gauge whether their self-representation as researchers was coherent and a further research career was practicable. The same type of significant event (e.g. publishing in a prestigious journal) could hold different meanings depending on who experienced it. Positive experiences helped to maintain their motivation and made them feel that they were consolidating their identities. Negative experiences tended to challenge their sense of identity and their sense of belonging to academia. Whereas positive feelings towards a significant experience appeared to persist over time, negative feelings seemed to fade or evolve through self-reflection, but ultimately had greater saliency. Originality/value Few previous studies have been conducted on how emotionally powerful work experiences influence post-PhD researchers’ identity development. Besides highlighting how emotions and feelings, often-neglected aspects of identity development, influence the process, this study offers a constructive – and, in some ways, alternative – view of the impact that negative experiences have on their identity development.

Significant events and the role of emotion along doctoral researcher personal trajectories

“…The aim of this study was to examine the emotions that doctoral students experience when facing different types of events during their PhD studies and to analyse how these emotions may have influenced the development of their doctoral trajectories. Overall, the findings draw attention to the emotional involvement entailed in doctoral training, which is linked to high exposure to stress (Castelló et al 2017;Skakni and McAlpine 2017) and reaffirm the need to pay attention to emotions in doctoral education. The analysis also identified specific activities that seemed particularly to affect doctoral students' emotional state, triggering both positive and negative activation emotions, affording insight into the affective dimension of students' experiences throughout their journey as PhD candidates.…”

“…The notion of trajectory (Skakni and McAlpine 2017) implies that there is a connection between interpretations and responses to certain events and the way in which subsequent events develop. A succession of events marks a journey that shows continuity or moments of inflexion, thus enabling us to visualise the process that doctoral students go through.…”

“…While research conditions and institutional or personal factors have a great impact on the situations described above, previous studies (Leonard et al 2006;Skakni and McAlpine 2017) point out that the way in which individuals interpret and give meaning to their experiences is even more important. These studies demonstrate a particular interest in understanding the subjects' representations, intentions, decision-making and resilience throughout a doctoral trajectory (McAlpine, Amundsen, and Turner 2014).…”

Becoming a researcher. Dialogical-self based methods to the identity formation of postgraduate students

“…Although research conditions, institutional or personal factors have a great impact on this process, previous studies (Skakni & McAlpine, 2017) highlight that the interpretation and meaning that students build on their experiences is even more relevant. These studies refer to the particular interest in understanding the subjects' representations, intent, decision-making process and resilience that they may develop during their PhD careers (McAlpine et al, 2014).…”

Towards Supporting Academic Authors, Researchers, and PhD Students in Higher Education

“…Academics, librarians, researchers, PhD and doctoral candidates, master and undergraduate students, may at some stage of their career write up and report scholarly research findings for publication. The PhD researchers' journey can be an emotionally rocky road (Skakni & McAlpine, 2017). This chapter proposes providing supports to guide and assist in this complicated process, by investigating some of the issues which researchers encounter when performing their research and suggests that an e-learning module would assist researchers in overcoming these issues, "with the worldwide spread of journals in educational research, such technology-enhanced research has received much attention since the turn of the century" (Hwang & Tsai, 2011, p. 65).…”