Towards An Understanding Of Doctoral Students’ Professional Identity Complexity

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Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 191 ( 2015 ) 2693 – 2698

ScienceDirect

Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of WCES 2014 doi: 10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.04.603

WCES 2014

Towards An Understanding Of Doctoral Students’ Professional

Identity Complexity

Kristina Kovalcikiene

a

_{*, Loreta Buksnyte-Marmiene}

a

a_{Department of Theoretical Psychology, Faculty of Social Sciences, Vytautas Magnus University, K. Donelaicio st. 52-315, Kaunas LT-44244,}

Lithuania

Abstract

Increased numbers of doctoral students’ drop-out rates and thesis, defended after the due time, shows the importance of identifying challenges the students face. Such challenges relate to the costs for universities and can have an impact on students’ personal lives and social consequences for society. The purpose of this study is to reveal peculiarities of professional identity among doctoral students in Lithuania. The Doctoral Students’ Professional Identity Questionnaire was used to measure how doctoral students perceive themselves in three professional roles: teacher, researcher and practitioner. The results revealed that the most expressed role of professional identity among doctoral students is practitioner’s role, the least – teacher’s professional role. The impact of practical experience is emphasized.

Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Organizing Committee of WCES 2014.

Keywords: professional identity; doctoral students; professional roles; multiple identities.

1. Introduction

Doctoral studies open up unique possibilities for independent scientific research and contribute to the development of a future generation of highly qualified specialists. Investment in young researchers is considered to be a driving force of economic growth. However, a widespread problem in academic world is the increased in time-to degree and attrition rates of doctime-toral students (West et al., 2011). The attrition rates in doctime-toral studies in some disciplines are approximately 50% (McAlpine & Norton, 2006). This shows the importance to identify specific challenges doctoral students face, because doctoral student’s attrition is extremely expensive for institutions (Gardner, 2009), may affect the personal lives of students (e.g., influencing their future success in the job market)

* Kristina Kovalcikiene. Tel.: +370-37-327-824; fax: +370-37-327-824. E-mail address: [email protected]

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and has social consequences (e.g., loosing talented leaders, innovative researchers, prolific scholars or influential educators) (Lovitts, 2001; Gardner, 2009). One of the possible reasons or one of the challenges doctoral students face is multiple identities and roles they hold in academic environment (Colbeck, 2008; Jazvac-Martek, 2009; Lovitts, 2005). Adcroft and Taylor (2013) suggest that “the importance of career management and resolving issues, both long and short-term, in the relationship between teaching and research (and other elements of academic work)” (p. 837) is one of the crucial dimensions to successful career support for new academics. Professional identity is an essential condition for successful career. In addition, developing an identity as a professional scholar is an essential task for doctoral students (Austin & McDaniels, 2006). However, doctoral students may experience difficulties, because they are faced with multiple identities. The three traditional components of doctoral preparation or the three main professional roles of academic identity is teaching, implementing research, and providing service for community (Bath & Smith, 2004; Golde & Dore, 2001). Beijaard et al. (2000) explained professional identity as something established and maintained through the interaction in social situations and negotiation of roles within the particular context. Similarly, Hong (2010) stated that identity is continually being formed and reformed through the way we internalize the external environment, negotiate interactions, and externalize ourselves to others. Once an individual has accepted and internalized meanings and expectations for a particular role, that identity becomes a cognitive framework for interpreting new tasks and experiences (Colbeck, 2008). An internalized identity motivates behaviour and dictates changes to external behaviours. Thus, “interventions cannot focus on influencing external behaviours alone without targeting the internalized identity” (Jazvac-Martek, 2009, p. 255). For example, reduction of attrition rates in doctoral education cannot focus on doctoral students’ behavioural changes without focus on internalized professional identity.

Individuals organize their identities in a hierarchy that affects the likelihood that one identity will be more salient than other identities in any given situation. This happens because of the fact that, when two identities with contrasting meanings and expectations are activated at the same time, an individual is likely to experience stress. In order to avoid feelings of time-related pressure and stress, individuals feel higher levels of commitment to some identities and lower levels of commitment to others. Thus, doctoral students who are more committed to their researcher’s identity than teacher’s identity may resent time they must devote to teaching assistantships (Colbeck, 2008). This highlights the importance to analyze which identities are dominating for doctoral students. Hence, the main aim of the present research was to analyze the peculiarities of doctoral students’ professional identity.

1. Methodology

1.1. Design

The current study used descriptive approach to investigate the professional identity of doctoral students in Lithuania. In descriptive research, the researchers seek to answer the following questions:

x Which of the main three professional roles of doctoral students’ is dominating: teacher, researcher or service provider (practitioner)?

x Are there gender differences in analyzing professional identity of doctoral students? x Does doctoral students’ professional identity varies depending on the study science area?

x Does doctoral students’ professional role identity expression differs according to the years in the study program?

x What is the impact of practical experience (outside university) for professional identity of doctoral students?

x How does professional identity change depending on the fact that a doctoral student is working in a professional field or not?

x What is the significance of teaching experience for professional identity?

1.1. Sample

The sample of this study is 428 doctoral students (66.1% females and 33.9% males) from 22 higher education institutions in Lithuania: 33.6% of social sciences, 20.3% of biomedical, 16.4% of technological, 15% of physical,

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10.7% of humanities, and 4% of agriculture. The mean age of the respondents was 28.5. Among the doctoral students 22.4% were the 1st year students, 23.6% - 2nd, 25% - 3rd, 23.8% - 4th, and 5.2% were those who have already finished their studies, but did not defended their thesis yet.

1.2. Instruments

Doctoral Students’ Professional Identity Questionnaire was used to measure the professional identity of doctoral students. This questionnaire was developed in 2013 by K. Kovalcikiene and L. Buksnyte-Marmiene (Kovalcikiene, 2013; Kovalcikiene & Buksnyte-Marmiene, 2013). The instrument covers three professional roles of doctoral student: teacher, researcher, and practitioner or service provider (e.g. psychologist). The instrument measures how doctoral students perceive themselves in the latter mentioned roles. It contains 27 items (9 items for each scale), ranging on a 5-point scale: from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Sample of the items: “I think that as a

researcher-scientist, I contribute to knowledge development in my scientific field” (researcher’s professional role

identity scale); “I feel satisfaction of having the opportunity to teach students” (teacher’s professional role identity scale); “Professional practical career is meaningful to the development of public wellbeing” (practitioner’s professional role identity scale). Results of exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis support a three-dimensional structure of the construct (Kovalcikiene & Buksnyte-Marmiene, 2013). The reliability coefficient of the questionnaire was calculated using Cronbach’s alpha coefficient. The obtained results indicated that the full questionnaire and the single scales have good or at least acceptable reliabilities (ranging from .752 to .865). Socio-demographic data was also collected, including age, gender, study program, years of studying, years of work experience outside university, years of work experience in the study area and teaching experience.

2. Results

The results demonstrated that the practitioner’s professional role identity was identified as a slightly more pronounced professional role (M = 4.10, SD = 0.54) compared to researcher’s professional role identity (M = 4.06, SD = 0.59) and teacher’s professional role identity (M = 3.75, SD = 0.73). Teacher’s professional role identity can be presented as less expressed (compared with other professional roles) and was considered controversial (largest standard deviation).

The findings indicated that there are no gender differences analyzing professional identity of doctoral students. Statistically significant differences of teachers’ professional role identity of doctoral students were found among different study area or science fields (F = 4.52, p < .01). The results revealed that doctoral students in social sciences identify themselves more with teacher’s professional role than doctoral students in physical sciences (p < .01).

No statistically significant differences were found analyzing professional identity depending on the years of doctoral studies. Although authors of the present research did not follow doctoral students over time, interestingly, the results seem to show tendency that the study year may change the direction of professional role identity expression. More specifically, it seems that teacher’s professional role identity is likely to increase in later courses, while researcher’s and practitioner’s professional role identity seems to decrease (see Fig. 1).

Fig. 1. Doctoral students’ professional role identity expression according to years in study program

The differences of professional identity between doctoral students who are working outside the university and

3,6 3,7 3,8 3,9 4 4,1 4,2 I-II III-IV Researcher’s professional role identity Teacher’s professional role identity Practitioner’s professional role identity

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those who are not were also analyzed. Statistically significant differences were found in the expression of teacher’s professional role identity (F = 6.68, p < .01) and the expression of practitioner’s professional role identity (F = 27.17, p < .01), see Fig. 2. The results provide evidence that working outside university is important for student’s professional identity as a teacher and practitioner, but not as a researcher.

Fig. 2. Doctoral students’ professional role identity expression according to working experience

Moreover, practitioner’s professional role identity is more expressed among those doctoral students who are working in their professional field compared to those who are not working in the related field (F = 14.12, p < .01), see Fig. 3. The results show that doctoral students’ practical experience in professional field is highly relevant to their practitioner’s professional role identity.

Fig. 3. Doctoral students’ professional role identity expression according to working experience in study area

In addition, it was analyzed whether the teaching experience (or lecturing practice) is important for expression of doctoral students’ professional role identity. The results revealed that teacher’s professional role identity was more expressed among those students who have the teaching experience compared to those students who haven’t (F = 62.99, p < .01), see Fig. 4.

Fig. 4. Doctoral students’ professional role identity expression according to teaching experience

The Pearson correlation revealed that lecturing practice (years of teaching experience) was positively related to teachers’ professional role identity (r = .295, p < .01). This means that lecturing practice is essential for teacher’s professional role identity development.

4,01 3,83 4,21 4,12 3,65 3,95 3,6 3,8 4 4,2 4,4 Researcher’s professional role identity Teacher’s professional role identity Practitioner’s professional role identity

Working outside university

Not working outside university 4,01 3,84 4,28 4 3,76 3,78 3,6 3,8 4 4,2 4,4 Researcher’s professional role identity Teacher’s professional role identity Practitioner’s professional role identity

Working outside university in study area

Working outside university not in study area

4,04 4,08 _3,97 4,09 3,43 4,13 3,2 3,4 3,6 3,8 4 4,2 4,4 Researcher’s professional role identity Teacher’s professional role identity Practitioner’s professional role identity Lecturing practice No lecturing practice

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3. Discussion and conclusions

The study findings indicate that the most expressed role of professional identity among doctoral students in Lithuania is practitioner’s role, whereas, the least expressed role of professional identity was teacher’s professional role identity. This suggests that doctoral students in Lithuania are currently practice-oriented and demonstrate strongest interest in professional practical activities. This may mean that such doctoral students may not associate their future career with the university. The reason may be the decreasing number of tenure-track academic positions or the fact that a smaller academic job market does not nearly employ the supply of new doctoral graduates (Golde & Dore, 2001). In addition, as Adcroft and Taylor (2013) emphasized, the reason may be the tension in the relationship between teaching (which takes up a great deal of time) and research (which is essential for career progression in universities). Finding demonstrating that teacher’s professional role identity was least expressed in the present research supports the notion of researchers’ Golde and Dore (2001), who claimed that overly specialized research training leaves future faculty ill-equipped to perform other faculty roles, especially teaching. Thus, increasing the quality of teaching in terms of improving the quality of undergraduate education is essential. This can be also supported by the fact that doctoral students who feel higher level of commitment to one identity simultaneously feel lower level of commitment to the other one, for example, teaching (Colbeck, 2008). No statistically significant differences were found analyzing professional identity depending on the study years. Although it was not a longitudinal study, it may be assumed that the results demonstrate some stability of doctoral students’ professional identity. On the other hand, there is a need for longitudinal studies to test the professional identity change during the study period. Our results revealed that the teacher’s professional role identity is likely to increase in higher courses, while researcher’s and practitioner’s – to decrease. This is striking, because the aim of the doctoral studies is to develop the researcher’s professional role identity, which should increase the most. Also, the results show that practical experience outside university (especially in the related study area) and teaching experience are very meaningful for professional identity of doctoral students.

In summary, it seems that in Lithuania more doctoral students are practice-oriented and do not believe that university career is realistic. The reason lies in the higher education institutions’ need to move from the boom of curriculum development to the reduction of the study programs, joining of the faculties, and staff dismissal due to the decreasing number of students. The results of this study confirm Golde and Dore (2001) findings that despite more than a decade of attention, the mismatch between a purpose of doctoral education, expectations of doctoral students, and the realities of their careers – within and outside university – continues. Graduate programs persist in preparing doctoral students for careers at research universities, but cannot offer jobs for doctoral graduates, so doctoral students persist in pursuing careers in practice. It would be interesting to explore what doctoral students want from their careers? Do they really practice-oriented (because of internal or personal factors) or it is the outcome of the situation of universities and country (because of external factors)? Do they have a clear concept of their suitability for work outside of research? Hence, the present findings inevitably inspire new questions that lead to further research.

The research findings can help us to better understand the complexity of doctoral students’ professional identity. The results of this study may be interesting for organizers of doctoral programs and career counselors. Timely provided professional counseling may help to show opportunities for doctoral students to find the right direction of their career path. Introspection and self-discovery are important tools for professional development, thus specific classes, workshops, and programs can be designed to highlight the differences and connections between multiple identities of doctoral students.

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