The quality of Ph.D. training can be conceived of as being dependent on the learning environment provided by the scholarly community. In order to become a researcher, participation in a scholarly community and culture is key. Hence a crucial prerequisite of the meaningful interaction is whether the students perceive themselves as active participants of the scholarly community (e.g. Bandura, 2001; Martin, 2004; Pyhältö, Soini, Pietarinen & Huusko, 2008). The present study aims to gain better understanding of doctoral students’ integration and participation in their scholarly communities by exploring their sense of professional agency and it’s relation to study engagement.

The study is part of a larger national research project on Ph.D. education in Finland. The present study includes data collected from three faculties: arts, medicine, and behavioral sciences (psychology and education). Altogether, 602 doctoral candidates responded to the survey.

The results indicated that doctoral students’ sense of professional agency in terms of their scholarly community varied from perceiving oneself as an active subject to a passive object of the community. A minority (30%) of the students considered themselves to be active subjects in their scholarly communities. Further investigation showed that doctoral students’ sense of professional agency was related to study engagement. Those students’ who had considered withdrawing from their studies perceived themselves more often as passive objects in terms of their scholarly communities than those who had not considered withdrawing from their studies. They also suffered more from lack of interest with their studies.

Ph.D. studies always take place within a particular context and they are influenced by the social practices of the scholarly community in question. The scholarly community as a learning environment provides the grounds for not only the learning of academic expertise, but also for other developmental self-regulatory processes such as the development of motivation. Therefore, in the process of becoming a researcher, participation in a scholarly community and culture is key.

A crucial prerequisite of meaningful interaction between doctoral students and their scholarly communities is whether the students perceive themselves as active participants and members of the community (e.g. Bandura, 2001; Martin, 2004; Pyhältö, Soini, Pietarinen & Huusko, 2008). This includes not only benefiting from the community, but also contributing to it. Attaining active professional agency in the scholarly community provides opportunities and support, as well as will and skills of participation.  Previous results have shown that up to one third of Ph.D. students did not consider themselves to be part of any scholarly community (Pyhältö, Stubb & Lonka, 2008). We argue that among those doctoral students who feel that they are part of their own communities, a central precondition for meaningful participation is sense of professional agency.

Aims

This study is a part of a larger, national research project on doctoral education conducted in Finland.

The aim of this part study is to gain better understanding of doctoral students’ social integration and participation in their own scholarly communities by exploring Ph.D. students’ sense of professional agency in relation to their scholarly communities. Furthermore, the relation between the students’ sense of professional agency and level of study engagement was examined.

Data

The data was collected with a questionnaire in 2006. The questionnaire consisted of both Likert-scaled items and open ended questions. The themes of the survey were: Ph.D. students’ ideas of the Ph.D. process and its main regulators (e.g. problems and critical incidents), perceptions of themselves as a part of the scholarly community and the student – supervisor interaction. Ph.D. students’ perceptions of their learning environment, experienced stress, anxiety and their ideas about academic writing and themselves as writers were measured by 14 scales including 49 items.

In this part study, Ph.D. students’ perceptions of themselves as part of the scholarly community were explored with open ended questions. Consideration of dropping out and lack of interest (modified  Mäkinen et al., 2004) were measured with 3 items. Altogether 602 doctoral students from medicine, humanities, psychology and education responded the survey.

Analysis

Answers to the open ended questions about Ph.D. students’ role in the scholarly community were content analysed using an abductive strategy. In the first phase of the content analysis, all the text segments in which the Ph.D. students’ referred to their own role in the scholarly community were coded into the same hermeneutic categories using a grounded strategy. After this, the basic category was classified into the two exclusive categories: perceiving oneself as an active 1) subject versus perceiving oneself as a passive 2) object in terms of the scholarly community.

In the second phase of the analysis, the qualitative categories were quantified and the relation between sense of professional agency in the scholarly community and the quality of the personal meaning given to the Ph.D. process was analysed using cross-tabulation and χ² -testing. Differences between students’ sense of professional agency and lack of interest and intentions of interrupting studies were measured using an independent samples t-test.

Results

Results demonstrated that both Ph.D. students’ perceptions of the scholarly community and of themselves as members of the community varied considerably. Ph.D. students’ ideas about themselves as members of the scholarly community ranged from perceiving oneself as an active subject, whose ideas and contribution do matter and who is valued in the community, to just seeing oneself as a passive object, who has no role in the community and whose actions are mainly regulated by external factors. About one third (30%) of the doctoral students described their role as active subjects in their scholarly community. However most (70%) of the students saw themselves as a passive objects in the scholarly community.

Further analysis showed that seeing oneself as an active subject was related to engagement in studies. Conceiving oneself as a passive object in the scholarly community was related to negative attributes such as lack of interest and intentions to interrupt studies. Students who did not consider themselves as active subjects in the community also experienced more lack of interest (m= 2,26) than students who perceived themselves as active subjects (m= 1,92). The difference was statistically significant (t= -3,104, df= 474, sig.= .002). Doctoral students who perceived themselves as passive objects had also considered interrupting their studies more often (77%) than students who perceived themselves as active subjects (68%). This relation was statistically significant (χ²= 5.14, df= 1, sig.= .023).

Conclusions

 Results of this study demonstrated that doctoral students’ sense of professional agency in their own scholarly communities varied considerably and that the majority didn’t perceive themselves as active subjects in their communities. Furthermore, on the basis of this study, it seemed that a sense of professional agency was related to phenomena such as level of study engagement. The results of this study could benefit planning and development work in doctoral education and also in research groups and scholarly communities in general.

References

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Martin, J. (2004). Self-regulated learning, social cognitive theory and agency. Educational Psychologist, 39(2), 135–145.

Pyhältö, K., Soini, T, Pietarinen, J. & Huusko, J. (2008) (submitted) Comprehensive
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Pyhältö, K., Stubb, J. & Lonka, K. (2008) (accepted for publication).  From Ph.D. student to professional researcher – a scholarly community s a learning environment for doctoral studies. International Journal of Academic development.

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