Developing professional researchers: research students’ graduate attributes

Abstract

The impetus to broaden the scope of research education is not new. Since the 1970s, concern has been expressed about the suitability of research education as preparation for a research career outside academe. Universities have been criticized for producing over-specialized research graduates, who struggle to apply their expertise to new workplace problems and agendas. These concerns have been heightened by the demands of the knowledge economy. One approach that may begin to address these concerns is to design a systematic program to develop research students’ graduate attributes. While much attention has focused on developing undergraduate generic attributes, it is only recently that universities and governments have sought to identify and develop research higher degree students’ graduate attributes. This article seeks to explore the development of a research student portfolio process (called RSVP), which was originally developed in the Advanced Wastewater Management Centre (AWMC), and subsequently modified and applied across an Australian research-intensive university.

The authors would like to acknowledge the work of research assistant Ann Webster-Wright in this project, which was funded by the University of Queensland's DVC Research, Professor David Siddle, and the Director of the Graduate School, Professor Alan Lawson. They would also like to thank Dr Gloria Dall'Alba for her insightful comments on an earlier draft. Finally, they would like to thank all of the staff and students of the AWMC for their enthusiastic involvement in the project and the students’ willingness to give the authors additional special permission to quote sections from their reflective reviews and action plan.

Notes

1. This acronym is used throughout this article because RSVP has now become a product with that name, known across the university in that way, and an application to register this product name has been made in the process of commercializing it.

2. All names have been changed.