Five-Year Study of Doctoral Education Calls for Changes |
The Formation of Scholars: Rethinking Doctoral Education for the Twenty-First Century (January 2008, Jossey Bass, 256 pages, $40) is the culmination of a five-year study by the Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate (CID) of 84 doctoral-granting departments in six fields to assess how well they are preparing their graduates to be scholars in the 21st century.
The authors, George Walker, Chris Golde, Laura Jones, Andrea Conklin Bueschel, and Pat Hutchings, find doctoral education programs generally lacking. More teaching opportunities for graduate students are needed as well as “better, more systematic feedback and reflection that can turn pedagogical experience into pedagogical expertise.” Preparation for research has been taken for granted and ignored in reports and recommendations for doctoral education, they note. Additionally, graduate students “may be treated as cheap labor in the service of an adviser’s current project and personal advancement,” and funded research does not encourage the types of behaviors, such as creativity, collaboration, and risk taking, that are valued in today’s work world.
The participating departments in the CID study made a commitment to examine their purposes and effectiveness, implement changes in response to their findings, and monitor the effects of the changes. The authors report that, in some cases, departmental deliberations revealed “inconsistent and unclear expectations, uneven student access to important opportunities, poor communication between members of the program, and a general inattention to patterns of student progress and outcomes.”
The authors suggest four focal areas to guide change in doctoral education programs:
(1) Protocols for faculty and graduate students to question whether traditions, such as qualifying examinations and doctoral dissertations, serve their intended purposes;
(2) Attention to the “complex process of formation,” a phrase the authors use to describe the development of professional identity, guided by principles that delineate faculty and student responsibilities and emphasize collaboration and mutual respect;
(3) Adoption of an apprenticeship model that is reciprocal and fosters learning for both the professor and student, “with greater collective responsibility for the student experience”; and
(4) Cultures that are “lively” intellectual communities that celebrate “the advancement of learning and knowledge.”
To read more about the CID or to learn more about some of the participating departments and their work in the study, visit http://gallery.carnegiefoundation.org/cid/