Summer Mentoring Experiences for Students in Online Doctoral Programs

University faculty created the Llano Estacado Writers' Alliance (LEWA) in response to improving the quality and rigor of online doctoral programs. The goal for LEWA was to promote meaningful academic writing and transform doctoral students' identities as agentic academic writers. After LEWA's inception, the authors incorporated the perspectives of their alumni and advanced doctoral students to help address students' needs. This chapter documents the four-year journey of forming LEWA and developing new approaches to mentoring online doctoral students. Specifically, the authors recount the evolution from the faculty-led, week-long summer intensives that addressed students' anxieties and uncertainties about the doctoral program to the writing intensives that were more student centered, responsive, and primarily focused on the mores of academic writing. Results demonstrated the benefits of professor-led and peer-led networks in developing students' sense of belonging, sense of accountability to their peers, and a sense of self-worth as capable academic writers.

Scholarly Voice and Academic Identity

This chapter presents the results of a systematic review of the current scholarship into doctoral student agency from a U.S. perspective. In past work, the authors and others have explored doctoral student and research supervisor agency from the perspective of scholar-practitioner agency within the doctoral learning community as well as the post-doctorate practice-based research agenda. This chapter focuses on a systematic analysis of the current scholarship published since 2019 that has continued to examine the aspects of doctoral student voice, agency, academic identity, and dissemination of graduate student research. Theoretical perspectives are drawn from the scholarship of situated learning theory and other theories that define how and why doctoral students are able to move from the periphery of the doctoral learning community to entrance into the scholarly academic and publishing community.

Contextual Factors Shaping the Student-Supervisor Relationship

Postgraduate and doctoral research may be conceived as a social process requiring continuous interaction and negotiation between the student and the supervisor with the aim of developing scholarly disposition in the student. However, the dynamics of student-supervisor relationship go beyond the two actors and are also shaped by certain contextual factors arising from the disciplinary, institutional, cultural, and temporal context. Disciplinary context influences the relationship in terms of task structure and via funding availability. Institutional context has an impact in terms of rules framed and practices followed. Cultural context influences in terms of expectations regarding initiative, feedback, and independent thinking. Finally, temporal context signifies the change in student-supervisor relationship depending upon the research stage and the maturity of student/supervisor. This chapter also offers some recommendations and potential research designs to engage with these contextual factors.

Developing Scholarly Dispositions While Becoming a Participatory Action Researcher

Participatory action research can be difficult to enact, especially as a novice researcher. The tensions between remaining true to the heart of PAR while also reconceptualizing her own identity as a student, novice, teacher, scholar proved challenging. This feat was accomplished with a thorough understanding of participatory action research; the scholarly dispositions needed to engage in this work; and the guidance, support, and careful questioning of a dissertation chair and committee. This chapter includes an overview of the methodology, participatory action research with photovoice; the possibility of unique scholarly dispositions needed by doctoral candidates interested in action-oriented methodologies; the author's own dissertation experiences; and concludes with lessons learned throughout the dissertation. Although a framework for the scholarly dispositions specifically for action-oriented methodologies is yet to be determined, the dissertation journey shared in this chapter could be a launching point for such work to occur.

Fostering Professional Dispositions of Preservice Teachers in an Educational Psychology Course

This chapter describes pedagogical approaches for fostering preservice teachers' professional dispositions in an undergraduate educational psychology course. First, scholarly literature related to advancement of preservice teachers' professional dispositions is reviewed. Select conceptual frameworks are reviewed and aligned with teacher preparation approaches used in the target course for advancing preservice teachers' professional dispositions. Next, analyses of preservice teachers' course experience and field experience in the target course are showcased as pedagogical approaches used for promoting preservice teachers' professional dispositions. Thereafter, additional pedagogical approaches are suggested for promoting preservice teachers' professional dispositions for teaching diverse students in secondary schools. Finally, options for examining development of preservice teachers' professional dispositions within teacher preparation programs are discussed as a future research direction.

Bridging Theory to Practice

In this chapter, the authors present concepts of bridging theory to practice for doctoral students in an effort to build their research self-efficacy. Research self-efficacy is essential to doctoral students' success in completing dissertation research, and connecting theory to practice not only benefits doctoral students in the ability to conceptualize research, but it supports the development and enhancement of doctoral student dispositions. Providing these connections as early as possible, and as often as possible, can lead to scholar socialization and higher levels of research self-efficacy. The instructional strategies, including theory application, perspective shifting, and guided reflection, provide the necessary skills to help doctoral students be successful scholars, especially in preparing for the doctoral dissertation, as well as opportunities for faculty collaboration and student engagement.

Writing Feedback Groups in International EAL Doctoral Students' Development as Scholarly Writers

For many international doctoral students, English is an additional language (EAL), and consequently, scholarly writing in English is a source of academic anxiety. Although international English as an additional language (IEAL) students often have professional experience in their field of study and have been academically successful, the shift in linguistic demand at the doctoral level is especially challenging. Learning to communicate as a member of the academic community requires the development of discipline specific knowledge, rhetorical conventions, and discourse registers which precisely communicate complex ideas in their nonnative language. Research evidence points to the importance of social support and feedback in international/EAL doctoral students' socialization into scholarly writing. This chapter outlines the implementation of a writing feedback group with four IEAL doctoral students and their developing scholarly habits of mind and academic writing skills.

Creating Cultures of Daring Greatly for Early-Career Teachers and Early-Career Faculty

Being an early-career teacher and an early-career faculty member are experiences that are fraught with vulnerability. Yet, the vulnerability that underlies these processes of becoming are not always addressed within academic cultures. Unless early-career teachers and early-career faculty are taught how to engage with vulnerability productively, early-career teachers and early-career faculty may blame themselves for the challenges that they encounter, when, in fact, these challenges may be more indicative of the complexity of their professional role rather than a reflection of their personal shortcomings. This chapter will draw on the writing of Brene Brown to describe how early-career teachers and early-career faculty members can choose to engage with vulnerability by daring greatly. This chapter will also make recommendations for how programs of teacher education and institutions of higher education can promote cultures in which the disposition of daring greatly is encouraged and supported.

Find, Organize, Analyze, Critique

This chapter outlines frameworks, principles, and practices that can be helpful in teaching students how to “review the literature” as part of course assignments, capstone papers, theses, dissertations, or other similar writing experiences. Common student concerns and struggles are considered, along with other instructional challenges that are inherent in the teaching of diverse students who are researching and writing about diverse topics. This chapter also includes practical suggestions as to how instructors can support and scaffold students' literature review efforts in ways that align with the frameworks, principles, and practices discussed in this chapter.

Empowering Doctoral Students for the Dissertation

In this chapter, the authors discuss the relationship between the dissertation chair and the doctoral student using the empowerment framework. They provide a description of the empowerment framework and discuss ways that dissertation chairs and students can utilize the framework to enhance the quality of their relationship and increase the likelihood of student completion. The goal of this chapter is to provide a framework to guide this often complex relationship and offer insight from the perspective of a chair and student.