Exploratory Study Of Doctoral Students’ Research Socialization At Two Research-Intensive Pakistani Universities

A recent dramatic increase of publish and parish policy at higher education impact doctoral students’ research process.Studies around the globe explored doctoral students’ experiences in their socialization process with institutions,supervisors,faculty,and peers to investigate how doctoral students acquire knowledge acquisitions and develop their skills during the socialization process.Nevertheless,the doctoral student research process predicts their future professional and academic development.Therefore,the recent study focused on the doctoral student research socialization process in research-intensive universities,which are performing well in research in-country and had obtained world ranking standards in research.The study obtained Weidman’s socialization framework to explore doctoral students’ research socialization process experiences in these universities that outperform research.The exploring inquiry sought to understand the doctoral student’s research experiences in different academic disciplines.However,the socialization framework provides the four stages(anticipatory,formal,informal,and personal)to explore doctoral students holistic aspects of the research socialization process.Therefore,the qualitative research design adopted a narrative approach to explore the research experiences of doctoral students;the data was obtained through semi-structured telephonic interviews with twenty-four doctoral students from hard and soft sciences from two research-intensive universities.Study findings revealed that doctoral students have high expectations from researchintensive universities to enhance their research capacities.Moreover,doctoral students were aware of research significance in their academic and professional lives.The study noted progressive and adverse research socialization experiences of doctoral students.The progressive elements were constructive research environment of department,with ample research resources and funding for conferences and most importantly,research relationship with supervisor and academic peers,research networks.Contrary to this,the adverse elements were lack of research collaboration,lack of physical research resources,and supervisor lack of interest in doctoral students’ research development.Most importantly,doctoral students revealed different levels of relationship with supervisors,and their research collaboration was explored through their supervisors.A doctoral student who went through a successful research socialization process developed their research capacities in terms of research networks,research collaboration,and academic publication in reputed journals.Besides,the doctoral students who did not go through successful research socialization experienced found incompetent to conduct research and were not confident to predict their future careers.Prominently doctoral students from hard experiences more challenging to conduct advanced research;however,the study revealed that supervisors’ research competencies had no positive impact on their research process.Additionally,in soft sciences,doctoral students experience outdated research curricula that lack insufficient advanced research methodologies knowledge.Doctoral students from both hard and soft sciences were not satisfied with course orientation and comprehensive assessment.