Recontextualising "Doing a doctoral degree" as a social practice complex: Evidence from Malaysia

Abstract

The current study is part of a longitudinal research project into the relationship between students’ ways of recontextualising their doctoral degree experience and eventual programme completion. Building on earlier findings reported in De Rycker (2014, 2022), the objective is to examine the hidden ontology of “doing a doctoral degree”. The primary data consist in structured interviews conducted with 20 doctoral students at the Universiti Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Using Van Leeuwen’s (2008) socio-semantic model for the critical study of discourse, the analysis of the interviews produced two major empirical findings. First, doctoral students’ discourse is characterised by a strong sense of personal agency but also a lack of specificity and a simplification of the overall practice complex, in which doing research seems to be reduced to mere semiotic actions. Secondly, students construe “doing a doctoral degree” as a mystifying process replete with paradoxes. Further interpretative analysis suggests that semiotic action representations play a significant role as self-enhancing metonyms for “doing research”, helping students to demystify the academic practice and resolve some of its inherent contradictions. Implications for supervisory practice as well as the larger research project will be discussed.