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Browsing by Subject "väitöskirjaprosessi"

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  • Mikä jatko-opiskelijaa motivoi? : tavoitteet ja tiedeyhteisö väitöskirjaprosessissa 
    Stubb, Jenni (2007)
    Motivation has an important role in academic learning for learning is regulated by motivation. Further motivation is centrally manifested by goals. Goals reflect values and regulate individual's orientation and what they strive for. In spite of the central role of motivation in academic learning, discussions on post-graduate education has somewhat overlooked motivational processes and concentrated on the excellence of performance. The aim of this study was to investigate what kind of goals PhD students have and how they experience their role in their own scientific community. It was also purpose to study how these goals and experienced roles are in relation with study each other, context, possible intentions of quitting studies and prolongation of studies. Furthermore, the aim was to investigate how different postgraduates differ in terms of how they experience their learning environment. The data was collected with the "From PhD students to academic experts" - survey (Pyhältö & Lonka, 2006) from four complementary domains: medicine, arts, psychology and education. The survey consisted of both likert-scaled items and open ended questions. The participants were 601 postgraduate students. The goals and the experienced role in scientific community were analysed in terms of qualitative content analysis. The relation between goals and experienced role and background variables were tested using χ² and the differences between different postgraduate groups using one way analysis of variances (ANOVA). The results indicated that postgraduates goals varied based on whether they brought up goals related to the product (outcome of the thesis process), the process (thesis process as whole) or both the product and the process. Product goals consisted of for example career qualification and better status as process goals consisted for example of learning and influencing ones own discipline. The experienced role of the postgraduates differed in terms of whether the conception was organised, unorganised or controversial. Both the goals and the experienced roles were in relation with study context and commitment to the studies. The different postgraduate groups also differed in terms of how they experienced their own learning environment.
  • Tohtorikoulutuksessa asiantuntijaksi : tohtoriopiskelijoiden kuvauksia asiantuntijuudesta ja sen rakentumisen tilanteista 
    Lammassaari, Heidi (2015)
    Today, high-quality science and research are considered as a crucial key for economic growth both in a national and international level. While the number of graduated PhDs has grown strongly and traditional researcher career is able to employ only a fraction part of PhD graduates, rapid technological developments and globalization have changed our society in a radical way. The trend is directed to increasingly consider the quality of doctoral education, as well as what kind of expertise is built during the doctoral process. There are several official documents considering the contents and goals of the doctoral education, but they do not necessarily reflect the doctoral students' personal experience, as the goals mentioned in the official documents are very abstract and dissertation-related. The aim of this study was to investigate how doctoral students who prepared their dissertation in an internationally highly valued scientific research group described expertise and its developmental situations in the context of doctoral education. In this study, doctoral students' descriptions is explored within the general framework of sociocultural views of expertise. The data was collected in a top-level research community in the field of natural sciences at a large research intensive Finnish university. Altogether, 7 doctoral students were interviewed. The research group in which the participants participated was internationally highly acknowledged, and in addition to the Big Science tradition, its functioning was based on a systematic doctoral education. The interviews were conducted as a semi-structured peer interview. The data was content analyzed by relying on an abductive strategy. The results showed that doctoral students described the most generic expertise which was able to be utilized in various contexts but was not committed to a specific scientific field. Thus, the results showed that doctoral students situated their descriptions of expertise typically to situations in which a doctoral student worked independently. For its part, this study confirms that in the context of doctoral education, expertise appears to be much more than just conducting research, although the doctoral education is generally considered to be rather theoretical and impractical. In addition, the results were in line with the former understanding that in the context of doctoral education, the progression of expertise is often perceived as an individual burden. This gives reason to explore how the practices in doctoral education could be developed further so that the processes of participation and knowledge creation, which are on the basis of modern expertise research, could be supported and fostered in a more elaborative way.

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