Ongoing Doctoral Study Process to Live by: A Narrative Inquiry into the Doctoral Identity Construction Experiences—A Chinese Case

• Published in: Frontiers of Education in China Vol. 15; no. 3; pp. 422 - 452
• Main Authors: Sun, Xiujuan, Trent, John
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Singapore Springer Singapore 01.09.2020; Springer; Higher Education Press Limited Company
• Subjects: Doctoral Programs; Doctoral Students; Education; Expectation; Foreign Countries; Graduate students; Graduate studies; Identification (Psychology); Identity; Individual Characteristics; Narratives; Professional Personnel; Reflection; Research Article; Self Actualization; Socialization; Student Experience; China; identity trajectory; reflexivity; agency; doctoral identity; narrative inquiry
• ISSN: 1673-341X; 1673-3533
• DOI: 10.1007/s11516-020-0018-4

The study employs a narrative inquiry approach to probe a Chinese doctoral student’s identity construction experiences fraught with interruption and transformation. The longitudinal narratives gathered through participant entries in Evernote, a face-to-face life story interview, and researcher memos, have enabled a dynamic configuration of the intellectual, social, emotional, and spiritual dimensions characterizing doctoral identity development. Using identity-trajectory as an analytical lens, the study highlights how individual agency is embodied and exercised in institutional, relational, and personal spaces where doctoral identity is formed and contested. Findings are episodically ordered as: beginning doctoral study with great expectations; conceptualizing the nature of becoming a doctoral student; forces that are disruptive to the development of the doctoral-researcher identity; the ongoing process of being mediated by socialization into an extended research community, socio-professional support, and agentic reflexivity over time. The study argues for using narrative inquiry to speak of and express the subtleties and continuities of doctoral students’ experiences. It also provides practical implications for action by supervisors and students in doctoral programs respectively.