The Future of Education

Embarking on a doctoral journey is a process that may require adaptation to the new environment of academia in order to succeed and complete. The Ph.D. completion rates in the U.S. are alarming which brings out the importance of doctoral students’ lived experiences. Departing from this point, the researchers sought to explore the lived experiences of doctoral students during their transition into a Ph.D. program. The intent of this study was to obtain a deep and meaningful understanding of the reality of doctoral student experiences with integration process through the participatory action research. By doing so, the insights obtained may be used later on to create an environment that positions doctoral students for success. In this study, we used the photovoice methodology to tap into academic lives of doctoral students to explore their perceptions of the integration process into the Ph.D. program. The rationale for using photovoice is to encourage collaborative sharing of experiences between the participants. The study addresses the following research question: “How do doctoral students experience integration into a Ph.D. program?” In this study, we asked doctoral students to take a photo representing how they personally experienced the process of integration to the doctoral program. After the pictures were taken, participants were asked to reflect and share their pictures in- group, explaining to other participants what was happening in the photo and what it represented. In addition to the in-group sharing and telling the story of the photo, we asked participants to provide a narrative explaining their pictures. The process of analyzing the data consisted of content analysis of the pictures and narratives to look for emerging themes. With this presentation, we will describe the rationale, purpose, and the research question driving our research. Results and discussion will be presented in both visual format and narrative.

Keywords: Photovoice, Doctoral Students, Integration, Action Research;