Succeeding with Your Doctorate

′From page one the appeal of the book is evident in the jargon free, user friendly text. I would not hesitate to recommend it to other students whatever stage of their doctorate they have reached.′ - Educate Journal  

Whether you undertaking a taught doctorate, or a course of study leading to a PhD, Succeeding with Your Doctorate offers complete, up-to-date guidance and discussion on all aspects of successful doctoral work. The five experienced authors give advice on every stage in the process of completing a doctorate, from helping you to engage in critical reflection to better understand your own research biases, to useful guidelines on preparing for, and surviving, the viva.

Combining general discussion with practical advice, this book is an essential companion to your research. Topics include:

• Preparing for a doctorate
• Embarking on your Research
• Adapting to life as a student
• Working with a supervisor
• Reading critically
• Conceptualising your research
• Thinking about methodologies and approaches
• Producing a thesis
• Preparing for and taking the viva
• Disseminating your research.
  

SAGE Study Skills are essential study guides for students of all levels. From how to write great essays and succeeding at university, to writing your undergraduate dissertation and doing postgraduate research, SAGE Study Skills help you get the best from your time at university. Visit the SAGE Study Skills hub for tips, resources and videos on study success!

My current interests and publications lie mainly two areas: firstly in the study of research methodology and methods; and secondly in the area of practice and policy in post-graduate education, particularly at doctoral level. In this second area, I am currently looking at the impact of the professional doctorate on people´s lives and professional practice. I am also writing in the area of educational publishing and how this has evolved, building on some of my earlier publications in this area. Research Interests My research is in the broad field of lifelong learning, focusing in particular on further education and vocational education and training.  I am interested in the relationship between policy and practice, and in how policy is experienced, formed and reformed at micro levels of practice. I have an underlying interest in social justice and in/equality in the context of people’s changing experience of learning, education and training, and the relationship between learning, education and people’s wider lives. I am on the editorial board of the Journal of Vocational Education and Training and I convene the British Educational Research Association Special Interest Group in Post-Compulsory and Lifelong Learning. Teaching I am course director for the professional doctorate (EdD) programme. I also teach on a range of other programmes, including the Cert Ed/ PGCE in Post-Compulsory Education and Training and the MA in Lifelong Learning. My main areas are: the formation of learner identities and professional identities; 14-19 vocational education; widening participation in further and higher education; and qualitative research methods. Dr. Cheryl Hunt is an Honorary University Fellow in the Graduate School of Education, University of Exeter. She is interested in adult and inter-professional learning and has extensive experience of working with postgraduate students, including as programme director for professional doctorates, as a research supervisor, and as a tutor on professional development courses for university lecturers. She is the Founding Editor of the Journal for the Study of Spirituality; Executive Editor of Teaching in Higher Education; a Director of the British Association for the Study of Spirituality; and a long-standing Council (now Honorary) Member of the Standing Conference on University Teaching and Research in the Education of Adults (SCUTREA). My principal interests are in the history of education, including curriculum history, the history of secondary education, the history of teachers and teaching, the history of educational policy, historical perspectives on current educational issues, historical theory and methodology relating to education, and documentary research methods Pat Sikes is a professor of qualitative inquiry in the School of Education, University of Sheffield. She became interested in narrative auto/biographical approaches in the late 1970s and throughout her career has undertaken research which has used them to investigate topics around teachers’ lives and careers and, from 2014, the perceptions and experiences of children and young people who have a parent with a young onset dementia. Research ethics are another key concern and focus of Pat’s work. In 2018, the British Educational Research Association awarded her the John Nisbet Fellowship for an outstanding contribution to educational research over a career.