Learning About Knowledge Production in Doctoral Education: Setting Epistemic Injustice in Motion

• In Event: College Student Well-Being, Socialization, and Identity

Abstract

Doctoral students will become the standard bearers of research and policy development across professions, making it critical to understand how and what these students learn about knowledge production. We examined doctoral student socialization as it relates to knowledge production. Interviews with 35 doctoral students revealed six forces of socialization concerning knowledge production. Specifically, students were encouraged to pursue knowledge in ways that emphasized 1) individualism, 2) prestige-getting, 3) disciplinary compliance, 4) western science, 5) theory over application, and 6) distinction through boundaries. Ultimately, we argue that doctoral students, regardless of discipline, are encouraged not only towards disciplinary compliance, as many scholars have argued, but towards epistemic compliance in ways that engender epistemic injustice, often harming minoritized scholars in the process.

Authors

• Leslie D. Gonzales, University of Arizona

• Brittany Brooke Moreno, University of Arizona