Doctoral Students' Exploration of Their Identity as Researchers: Synthesizing Studies of Self

• In Event: Self-Study, Mentoring, and the Next Generation of Teacher Educators

Abstract

The current paper aims to explore how doctoral students have used self-study and related methodological approaches to understand their development as educational researchers. Learning to become a researcher is a significant transition for education doctoral students as they come to see themselves as researchers. The study began as part of a larger research synthesis of doctoral students' researcher identities in which we found a cluster of thirteen articles in which students were examining their experiences as evolving researchers. Guided by the research question of “how do doctoral students study their own practice and development as educational researchers?”, we used a qualitative research synthesis approach (Major & Savin-Baden, 2010) to analyze the articles and their implications.

Authors

• Margret A. Hjalmarson, National Science Foundation

• Xingya Xu, George Mason University