Conceptualising manifestations and shapers of doctoral student agency: A subject-centered approach

ABSTRACT

The growing complexity of doing a PhD necessarily demands candidates to robustly exercise their agency in navigating the doctoral journey. However, the conceptualisation of how students use their agency across multiple facets of their studies has yet to receive due scholarly attention. Drawing on the subject-centred sociocultural view on agency, this study analysed life story interviews conducted with 16 doctoral students in Hong Kong. Findings show that participants’ agency was manifested both in socially and collectively organised enterprises (proactive engagement in a wide array of developmental opportunities, responsiveness to situational research problems, contestation against unsupportive institutional cultures) and as individual-level strategic perspectives and actions (self-management of everyday emotions, imaginative construction of post-graduation prospects). Concurrently, the results shed light on the inextricable and complex linkages between the enactment of agency and the personal, relational, institutional, and broader higher education conditions delimiting students’ lived experiences of candidature. Implications for educational practices and future research beneficial to develop doctoral agency are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Doctoral education
• agency
• subject-centred approach
• agentic manifestations
• experiences of candidature

Acknowledgments

We wish to thank the editor and the anonymous referees for their constructive comments dedicated to improving the quality of this manuscript. Our thanks also go to Prof. John Trent and Mr. Justin C. H. Lau for thoroughly reading the earlier drafts and providing useful feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Xiujuan Sun

Xiujuan Sun is currently a full-time PhD student in the Department of English Language Education at the Education University of Hong Kong. Her research interest lies in the areas of doctoral agency and identities, doctoral writing, and post-PhD careers. Her recent publications include articles in Innovations in Education and Teaching International and Studies in Continuing Education.

Michelle W. T. Cheng

Michelle W. T. Cheng is a postdoctoral fellow at the Graduate School, Education University of Hong Kong. She is the recipient of the Research Grants Council Postdoctoral Fellowship Scheme (PDFS2021-8H01) funded by the Hong Kong University Grants Committee. Working in an environment surrounded by different postgraduate students, she is interested in scaffolding their study journey. Her research interests also lie in the area of student wellbeing and development, including student motivation, holistic competency development and residential education.