The New Normal? The Practice of Doctoral Education in a Global Pandemic

Abstract

There has been an increasing interest in doctoral education in recent years, and an increase in the number of doctoral graduates as institutions and nations strive to be competitive in the global knowledge economy, making doctoral education a prescient issue. There is very little existing literature on doctoral education in Canada. In the broader, existing literature, a socialization framework is frequently employed to explore the student’s journey from novice to scholar. A significant factor in this socialization has been the global COVID-19 pandemic, with the Canadian response first being felt in March 2020. In some provinces, some of the COVID-19 social distancing measures remained until early 2022. To address the broad aim of this research — to attempt to understand doctoral students’ perceptions, experiences, and socialization during the COVID-19 pandemic, contextualizing these aspects using Bourdieu’s conceptual tools — the following two-part research question was addressed: Firstly, how were students’ perceptions and experiences of their doctoral programs affected in the immediate response to the COVID-19 pandemic? And secondly, how can Bourdieu’s conceptual tools help us conceptualize students’ experiences? Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 18 doctoral students across various disciplines and departments at three research-intensive universities in one Canadian province. A fundamental aspect of this thesis was the application of Pierre Bourdieu’s conceptual tools of habitus, capital, and field, both in the design of interview questions and examination of the participant responses, to explore doctoral student experience both generally and with specific reference to experiences between March 2020 and the date of their interview, with the final interview occurring July 2021. The results suggested that previously described factors affecting socialization were exacerbated during this time. The expectations placed on students and the valued activities for socialization remained unchanged, but how students perceived those expectations and experienced those activities changed significantly. The research revealed that long-standing assumptions of doctoral study as leading to an academic faculty position are not only outdated but may be actively hindering socialization. This research advances that a new field of doctoral education has emerged due to pandemic adaptations, which has implications for the design of future doctoral programs.