ABSTRACT

This conceptual paper contributes to a broader perspective on doctoral experience via a synthesis of several crucial concepts during the doctoral journey. The first part discusses the core challenges customarily confronting doctoral scholars due to the distinct PhD genre leading to introducing the main conceptual base. Metacognition, being central to doctoral knowledge creation, is explored through the stages of competence development and against the competing notions often faced by PhD scholars: the Imposter Syndrome and the Dunning-Kruger Effect. Drawing upon these metacognitive concepts, the implications of crossing competence stages during lengthy, non-linear doctoral trajectories in a high-performance academic culture are further explored. While recognising associated challenges, this paper also highlights a range of available tools, resources, and skillsets useful for the transitional period, doctoral learning progression and eventual completion. This paper has, therefore, interwoven and unified key doctoral experience concepts with a view to proposing a conceptual framework for a doctoral self-management strategy. This holistic framework, a form of metacognitive scaffolding for navigating the PhD experience, is likened to a ‘compass’ for trekking both the research landscape and the doctoral development landscape. In the absence of a doctoral ‘map’, employing one’s personal metacognitive ‘compass’ can empower doctoral scholars to manage a potentially complex experience – by identifying essential praxes to scaffold the entire doctoral process through iterative cycles of reflection, calibration and recalibration of strategic reflection and personal evaluation of one’s progression.

摘要

这篇概念性论文通过在博士之旅中综合几个关键概念，有助于更广泛地了解博士经验。第一部分讨论由于不同的博士类型导致引入主要概念基础，博士学者通常面临的核心挑战。元认知是博士知识创造的核心，通过能力发展阶段和博士学者经常面临的相互竞争的概念进行探索：冒名顶替综合症和邓宁-克鲁格效应。利用这些元认知概念，进一步探讨了在高绩效学术文化中漫长的非线性博士轨迹中跨越能力阶段的影响。在认识到相关挑战的同时，本文还强调了一系列可用工具，对过渡期、博士学习进展和最终完成有用的资源和技能。因此，本文将博士生经历的关键概念相互交织和统一，以期为博士生自我管理策略提出一个概念框架。这种整体框架是一种用于导航博士经历的元认知支架形式，被比作用于在研究领域和博士发展领域跋涉的“指南针”。在没有博士“地图”的情况下，使用个人的元认知“指南针”可以使博士学者能够管理潜在的复杂体验——通过反复思考，确定必要的实践来支撑整个博士过程，