The mismatch between doctoral students toolbox and the task

Doctoral study is typically ill-defined, ill-structured and replete with uncertainty. It is a task that involves risk management. The intellectual bar in doctoral study is high. In order to build this task students, require a number of tools in their toolbox. The toolbox needs to have the capacity to hypothesise about the givens in their field of study and the ability to test their hypothesis in a discipline appropriate way. The tools need to be able to manage the potential intellectual and emotional challenges in doctoral study. Not all students come to PhD study equipped with the tools to master the task. Supervisors and students often hold tacit assumptions of expertise as a learner in relation to basic competencies developed in prior study. The acknowledgement of higher level intellectual challenges and the accompanying emotional challenges in the doctoral task means that how the learning process is managed will create a high metacognitive load during candidature. Doctoral students need many tools, especially sophisticated metacognitive tools to address the potential intellectual and emotional challenges in doctoral study. There are individual differences in doctoral students and not all doctoral students are equipped with the best tools to master the task. Often supervisors and students hold tacit assumptions of expertise as a learner that may be based on basic competencies developed in pre-doctoral study. However, the acknowledgment of higher level intellectual challenges in the doctoral task also means that that how the learning process is managed by students will be on-going during candidature. There are individual differences in the tools doctoral students may have respond to the potential intellectual and affective challenges of doctoral study. How each student responds to the intellectual and affective challenges varies because actions by individuals are informed by sophisticated conceptions of knowledge, knowing and self as learner. An individual’s toolbox contains their conceptions of knowledge which set the boundaries through which self- regulatory decisions are made. Doctoral students (263) were surveyed to identify the quality of tools they had in their toolbox and identify if there were individual differences in the quality of their toolboxes to build their PhD. Implications for supervisor pedagogy are explored.