Search

The Nordic doctorate has its roots in the Germanic Bildung-tradition, with a decentralised and discipline-oriented curriculum, local and individualised leadership and autonomous supervisors. Currently, the Nordic doctorate has arrived at a crossroads where it is pulled in two different directions. The first characterised by formalisation and centralised Graduate Schools with study directors, middle-management and educational bureaucracy, and an increasingly generic curriculum. The second characterised by the projectification of academic work through new modes of governance on national and EU-level. The double pull threatens to create a ‘torn curriculum’, where curricular planning, formal requirements, and supervision and community support are not aligned, which confuses and fragments the learning journey and the PhD-degree. We argue that a new way is needed, which lies not in choosing either tradition, but to form a societally oriented, community anchored, and at the same time highly specialised and research-driven doctorate. Introduction The Nordic doctorate has its roots in the Germanic (Northern European) Bildung-tradition with a decentralised and discipline-oriented curriculum, local and individualised leadership and autonomous supervisors. It is highly diversified and embedded in the day-to-day practices of departments. However, the Nordic doctorate has now arrived at a crossroads where it is pulled in two different directions. The first is characterised by formalisation and centralised Graduate Schools with study directors, middle-management and educational bureaucracy, and an increasingly generic curriculum. This pull can be related to the Bologna process and efforts to create a joint European HE area with compatible educational systems, coordinated national reforms and increased mobility (Andres et al, 2015; Elmgren et al, 2015; QF-EHEA 2005; EQF 2008), including global drivers such as professionalisation and quality assurance agendas (Gudmundsson, 2008; Teichler, 2004). The second pull is characterised by the projectification of academic work (Ylijoki 2016) through new modes of governance on national and EU-level. Through new funding regimes, increased competition, and the notion of research excellence, an increasing number of researchers are collaborating in problem- or innovation-oriented research projects. Doctoral candidates are project members, supervisors become project leaders, and the project becomes the doctoral curriculum. These two directions are the result of the same political agenda where doctoral education, and research, increasingly is viewed as a policy instrument for other ends, e.g. economic and social growth, sustainability and international competitiveness. The double pull in the Nordic doctorate threatens to create a ‘torn curriculum’, where curricular planning, formal requirements, and supervision and community support are not aligned - confusing and fragmenting the learning journey (Bengtsen, 2016; Cornér et al, 2018). A discrepancy is created between the disciplines and the cross-disciplinary and generic career initiatives and funding schemes. We argue that neither of these traditions can point the way for doctoral education in the Nordic region. A third way is needed, which lies not in choosing either tradition, but to form a societally oriented, community anchored, and at the same time highly specialised and research-driven PhD. Theory and method The research team includes members from Danish and Swedish universities, who have a connection to researchers with similar interests at Norwegian and Finnish universities. Our study takes its departure in policy material around doctoral education in the Nordic countries, on the governmental level published through ministries for research and higher education in the Nordic countries, and on the institutional level through Graduate School strategy papers and assessment reports on the quality of doctoral education in each country. Further, we bring in examples from courses on doctoral supervision for doctoral supervisors and doctoral students that are offered at a selection of Nordic universities. These course plans show what is being prioritised by each Graduate School and how doctoral supervisors and students are encouraged to understand (1) the purpose of the PhD, (2) the nature of research, (3) the role of supervisors and research teams, and (4) their own individual role and responsibilities. Theoretically, our argument is informed by an understanding of the PhD as being enacted in a series of ‘nested contexts’ (McAlpine & Amundsen, 2016; McAlpine & Norton, 2006), where governmental policy is intertwined with institutional leadership, research agendas, disciplinary belonging, and the educational practice relating to doctoral supervision. Also, we draw on the understanding of doctoral education as part of a wider ‘ecology’ (Barnett, 2018; Elliot et al, 2016), where the boundaries between political, societal, cultural, institutional, educational, and disciplinary domains become permeable and entangled. Finally, we draw from the idea of doctoral education and its pedagogies as ‘distributed’ (Boud & Lee, 2005) and decentralised, where doctoral learning journeys do not only hinge on the interpersonal relationships with supervisors, but extends into a much wider and diverse ‘doctoral learning penumbra’ (Wisker et al, 2017) and involve support and feedback systems even outside institutional contexts. Findings The Nordic doctorate is construed in a complex and many-sided way where different discourses about the doctorate coexist but without a cohesive and unifying educational framework. Especially, we identify four different, and sometimes conflicting, strands within the Nordic doctorate: (1) Career: The doctorate is linked to an external job-market domain and conceived as an entry into professional domains outside the university. The focus is on generic competences and transferable skills that will help boost the political economy. (2) Research: The doctorate is linked to an academic and often university-intern domain and conceived as an entry into the academy with the progress into researcher positions. The focus is on the dissertation, publication and contributions to the international research field. (3) Education: The doctorate is linked to the institutional interpretation of national and global policy drivers around doctoral education. The term ‘doctoral student’ weighs stronger than ‘junior researcher’, and the doctoral student is expected to undertake a curriculum consisting of certain obligatory elements set down by the Graduate School. (4) Formation: The doctorate is linked to the personal development, maturation, and growth of the researcher. A way of developing researcher and personal autonomy and independence and is coupled with a greater awareness of academic citizenship and cultural leadership, coupling the PhD with the wider societal and cultural domains. Discussion and conclusion The four different strands of the Nordic doctorate are not aligned and integrated and they risk pulling the PhD into widely different directions without a cohesive force. However, in Nordic universities, we also see an authentic interest from Graduate Schools to experiment and try out new initiatives. The Graduate Schools in the Nordic countries are not (yet) entirely bound by economic drivers, and there is still a strong and vital understanding of research as an educational, institutional and societal cohesive force. Even though being at a crossroads, the Nordic doctorate is not ‘broken’, and we point out that the Nordic countries have a unique chance to find a new way and to take ownership of the doctorate. To do this, the integration of its cultural rooting in the Bildung tradition is crucial, where a new doctoral curriculum may integrate the strands and build stronger cohesion between the domains.

Doctoral education in medicine, engineering, technology and science (METS) is in many ways different from doctoral education in the humanities or social sciences. In the METS disciplines, typically, students and supervisors work and publish together within the supervisors’ research projects. The projects are usually financed by the supervisors’ research grants and their success, in terms of high quality research publications, is of great importance not only for the students’ dissertations but also for the supervisors’ academic careers. In METS contexts, supervisors and students could therefore be said to have double roles: the supervisor being also a project leader and the student also a project worker. Research on this double relationship is scarce, particularly considering the large number of students within the METS disciplines. Doctoral education and research have increasingly attracted interest among politicians and policymakers world-wide, often resulting in new legislation and policy. In many countries, doctoral education has gradually become more formalised in order to improve students’ rights and study conditions. Research, on the other hand, has seen the introduction of productivity audits and increased competition for funding. Such changes converge at the level of doctoral education and could be expected to create tensions, particularly within the METS disciplines due to the close integration of doctoral education and research. Sweden provides an especially interesting case as changes to educational legislation and research policy, respectively, have been comparatively large. Swedish doctoral students today are guaranteed four years of fully financed studies and a monthly salary (normally between 2100 and 3000 €). At the same time, more than 50 per cent of funds for research and doctoral education today come from funding bodies (governmental and private) external to the universities and are mainly awarded in competition. In the METS disciplines the dependence on external funding can approach 100 per cent, since government base-funding to a large extent is used for infrastructure and administration in order to attract more external funds and researchers with large grants. Consequently, researchers increasingly have had to compete with research proposals, CVs and bibliometric scores, and institutions are now often described as “research hotels” were you can stay as long as you pay. We have interviewed doctoral supervisors within medicine, a discipline that in Sweden almost exclusively is financed through external funding. For our analysis, we have used cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) and constructed two co-occurring and overlapping activity systems: one for doctoral education and one for research. We find synergies as well as tensions and contradictions between the two systems but also adaptations. Supervisors describe how increasing pressure from the (research) funding system has reduced the available space for students to influence the design of their projects, to exercise creativity and to fail. Accommodating doctoral students within large and prestigious research projects also means that students often begin their studies at very different stages in the process, and rarely at the design stage. Supervising involves putting projects, funding and future opportunities at high risk, which is reflected in a student recruitment process characterised by risk-management. At the same time supervisors remark that students to a higher degree today view their studies as work rather than a calling. Furthermore, the requirements of educational policy for full funding and formal qualifications necessitates that supervisors form alliances with more senior researchers. Such alliances typically extend also to research and provide senior and well-funded researchers opportunities to exercise power over junior and less funded researchers. We conclude that Swedish research policy, contrary to its intentions and in combination with educational policy, could have negative and far-reaching consequences for doctoral student research and learning but also for the STEM disciplines themselves.

This report has been translated from Swedish and adapted for an international audience. The original report, Leadership for quality in doctoral education1, was commissioned by the Association of Swedish Higher Education. Here we describe and discuss doctoral education as policy, practice and as an object of knowledge, and highlight a number of questions that are important for the management and leadership of doctoral education, today as well as in the future. The policy trends, changing circumstances, and challenges we discuss here are to a large extent international. Sweden specifically, with its long history of government regulation of doctoral education and swiftness to adapt to the ideas of the knowledge economy, provides an interesting case. We represent two different Swedish universities, three disciplines and four contexts. Together, we have held positions as heads of department, directors of doctoral studies, faculty board members, quality coordinators and educational developers. We have developed and given courses for doctoral supervisors, doctoral students, and leaders of doctoral education in most subject fields. Our research includes assessment practices in doctoral education, the practices of peer review, leadership and management of doctoral education, and the European higher education curriculum reform. Furthermore, we have personal experiences of supervision, supervisor collegia, and the practices of peer review within different subject fields. As a result, we have gained a broad insight into the diverse practices of doctoral education and supervision, and into the different ways in which policies may affect fields of research and doctoral education By describing, contextualizing, contrasting and problematizing doctoral education we aim to provide support for the continued development of this level of education.We are very grateful to The Association of Swedish Higher Education’s Expert panel for quality assurance queries and to the participants at the conference Leadership and quality in education, research and doctoral education for constructive comments on various drafts of this report.

Högre utbildning (meaning Higher Education) is a Swedish peer-reviewed Open Access journal launched in 2010. The purpose for starting the journal was twofold: to support the development of knowledge about teaching and learning in a primarily Swedish and Nordic Higher education context, and to support the development of SoTL. In International journals perspectives from Britain, Australia and North America dominate, and any questions related to the context of Swedish higher education may be of lesser interest unless as part of a comparative study. Also in these journals, authors are often researchers of Higher education. The first issue of Högre Utbildning was published in 2011, and to date nine issues have been published. From the start, the number of submissions slowly but steadily has increased. Authors are primarily from Sweden, but also from other Nordic countries. Topics range from teacher ethics to national systems of quality. Authors are sometimes teachers/researchers from the field of education but more commonly from other fields of teaching and research. Many studies relates to the authors’ own teaching and subject field, thus qualifying their work as both educational research and Scholarship of teaching and learning. Our impression is that Högre utbildning has filled a gap for Swedish (and Nordic) university teachers and scholars by providing a peer-reviewed forum for dissemination that is one stepping stone above the local report or conference proceedings and one below, or rather next to, the international journals. We argue that similar gaps exists in other countries or regions as well and suggest that journals similar to our can contribute to the formation of both scholarly knowledge and practises. As editors we would like to share our experiences from the first four years of Högre utbildning.

2012 beslutade MedCUL (Medicinska fakultetens centrum för undervisning och lärande) och sjuksköterskeprogrammets ledning att påbörja en större utvärdering av sjuksköterskeutbildningen. Projektet består av två delar med delvis olika syften. Den första delen, som här redovisas för perioden höstterminen 2012 till och med vårterminen 2014, syftar till att ta fram underlag för förbättring av programmet. Den andra delen är ett forskningsprojekt där olika utvärderingsmetoder utprovas och jämförs. Tillvägagångssätten har varit fokusgrupper med studenter på termin tre respektive sex, enkäterna DREEM och CLES+T, intervjuer med enskilda studenter och lärare, samt analys av kursplaner och andra kursrelaterade dokument. Projektet påbörjades i samband med att programmet sjösatte en ny utbildningsplan höstterminen 2012 och de studenter som ingått i projektet representerar sex olika kohorter, fyra inom den tidigare utbildningsplanen och två inom den nuvarande. Denna rapport inleds med en sammanfattning av de olika tillvägagångssätt vi använt samt huvuddragen i resultaten (i rapportens appendix återfinns samtliga enkäter och frågemallar samt resterande resultat). I den avslutande diskussionen, där vi också ger förslag för utveckling, har vi begränsat oss till ett antal problemområden som vi menar framstått särskilt tydligt och är särskilt viktiga att göra något åt. Rapportens resultatdel rymmer dock mer än så och kan vara användbart för vidare analys och utvecklingsarbete.

Leif Karlsson och Anders Sonesson beskriver och diskuterar ett samverkansprojekt mellan Lunds universitet och Högskolan Kristianstad kring utbildning av forskarhandledare, som i sig innebär att: man kan utveckla den forskarhandledningsutbildning som finns; man kan stärka samarbetet mellan de två högskolorna; man kan skapa kommunikation och möten för framtida samarbete mellan olika discipliner inom det vetenskapliga fältet; och man kan utveckla kompetensen hos enskilda forskare. Projektet beskrivs på ett detaljerat sätt, och kopplas till vilka värden man menar sig kunna erhålla via en modell som den som presenteras. Det finns tre kurser med något individuella mål, det finns en progression mellan dem och helheten förväntas leda till en säkerhet inför framtida handledning.

We report here on a diagnostic tool for improving doctoral supervision that supervisors in training at Lund University use to develop strategies for supporting their student’s learning. The tool has been developed by combining two theoretical models, an empirically generated model of orientations to doctoral supervision (Lee, 2008) and a meta-perspective on professional learning (Dall'Alba & Sandberg, 2006), with supervision strategies that has emerged in our study of supervisors in training. In this session we will present the tool and how it has been developed in our workshops for supervisors. Such workshops are mandatory for doctoral supervisors at Lund University and are held across all eight faculties as well as within single faculties. The number of supervisors that has attended is exceeding 500. We will also demonstrate how we use the tool to help supervisors explore their supervision strategies and departmental practices for doctoral education. References Dall'Alba, G., & Sandberg, J. 2006. Unveiling Professional Development: A Critical Review of Stage Models. Review of Educational Research, 76.3. 383-412. Lee, A. 2008. How are doctoral students supervised? Concepts of doctoral research supervision. Studies in Higher Education, 33. 3. 267-281.

A study program for doctoral supervisors is currently being implemented at two higher education institutions: One large and traditional research university and one university college. The overall aim of the program is to improve supervision as well as local practices for doctoral education and doctoral research in departments and research groups but also at the institutional level. In planning the program three important considerations were made. The program should:- be aligned with existing qualification frameworks for tenure and promotion; - serve as a platform and source for knowledge building and organisational learning on doctoral supervision and doctoral student learning; - serve as an arena for supervisors, educational developers, and educational researchers to collaborate on doctoral student learning and doctoral supervision.These considerations will be discussed in relation to enhancement of supervision and doctoral student learning, the scholarship of teaching and learning movement, and compulsory higher education teacher training. The study program of Lund and Kristianstad will be used as a case. The presentation will be made against a contextual backdrop in which doctoral education is claimed to be under increasing tensions. On one hand doctoral education has become increasingly important for research production and research funding. On the other hand there is a strong push for doctoral education to focus learning and employability and to serve a wider purpose than the re-growth of the academy. In Europe this is most visible through the Bologna process.

I år var andra gången som Lunds universitet genomförde en universitetsgemensam pedagogisk utvecklingskonferens, första gången var 2007. Konferensen, som är ett samarrangemang mellan samtliga fakulteter och CED, har nu alltså blivit en återkommande aktivitet! Samhällsvetenskapliga fakulteten stod värd för årets konferens och dekanus Ann-Katrin Bäcklund sträckte vid invigningen fram en symbolisk stafettpinne inför nästa konferens. Medicinska fakulteten tog denna stafettpinne och därigenom värdskapet för 2011 års utvecklingskonferens. En konferens av detta slag skapar möjlighet för lärare och andra inom universitetet med intresse och engagemang i pedagogiska utvecklingsfrågor att dela kunskap och erfarenheter samt att föra en kritisk dialog kring lärande, undervisning och lärarskap. Resultatet blir ökad kunskap och kunskapsbildning kring lärande och undervisning men också inspiration och delaktighet i och runt lärarskapet. Totalt deltog 161 personer i årets konferens. För att hålla hög kvalitet på konferensen blev alla bidrag granskade av särskilt sakkunniga bedömargrupper. Av ett 60-tal inskickade bidrag – i form av papers, rundabordssamtal, workshops och posters – bedömdes 43 stycken hålla tillräckligt hög kvalitet. Inga teman var bestämda i för-väg utan kom till genom att analysera och kategorisera de godkända bidragen. Resultatet blev sex tematiska spår. De var: • Professionen i fokus • Generella färdigheter – som mål och medel • Att följa lärandet • Pedagogiska arbetsformer • Undervisningens ethos • Att utveckla(s) för lärande Konferensen inleddes med välkomsttal av rektor Per Eriksson, dekanus Ann-Katrin Bäcklund och pedagogiska utvecklare Gunilla Amnér och Anders Sonesson. Som inbjuden key-note talade Vernon Trafford om ”Writing is at the core of postgraduate student research”.