The purpose of this paper is to present a research review of research on doctoral education research, firstly in more general terms and then more precisely with a focus on the education and training of educational researchers. There are two reasons for this interest. Firstly, to analyse doctoral education is a way to capture the intellectual organization of academic fields (Whitley, 2000) and  its paradigm(s) (Kuhn, 1970). Secondly, doctoral education is today subject to the interest not only for the universities but also for other actors, such as policy-makers and supra-national organizations, and it is of importance for educational research to capture this tendency.  However, research on doctoral education as an education problematic, e.g. in terms of curriculum and program design is, according to Green (2012) relatively sparse. Furthermore, as illustrated by OECD.stat, the number of graduates on advanced research level has increased in most European countries since the turn of the millennium.Given this, a research review updating this field of educational inquiry is needed when interested in educational design and curriculum for doctoral education.

In order to deal with this problematic there is a need to do a research review by means of different search engines, such as Web of Science and Scopus in combination with Google Scholar. We ask; (a) how does this field of study look like in terms of references and conceptual frameworks, (b) how are intellectual traditions and approaches dealt with in studies on doctoral education of educational researchers, and (c) what does this tell us about the social and intellectual organization of educational research in different contexts?

To answer such questions considering doctoral education could be of general interest in order to understand the field of educational research in its disciplinary and contextual variation. To this is added a more specific interest so analyze the education science-policy agora (Nowotny et al, 2003; Lindblad, Pettersson and Popkewitz, 2015) where doctoral education is understood as a boundary object moving between different positions and agents at the agora. This is of interest in order to capture political movements and tendencies related to doctoral education initiatives and interests.

The research review approach is formulated in terms of what Gough (2012) put forwards as a distinction between configurative and aggregative approaches to systematic reviews. Where the first is conceived of as interpretative of different kinds of studies and their conceptual contributions, the second is based on aggregated collection of data from different studies. The distinction is of a heuristic kind and is constructed in order to identify choices and potential combinations in review problematics and designs based on a set of dimensions concerning aims, approach, and breadth and width, as well as structure of the review work. We have here chosen a configurative approach. A first step in the review is to identify research publications. There is a lot of research publications, which in one way or another are communicating about doctoral education (in Web of Science more than four thousand publications and in Google Scholar ten times more. When reducing the selection in Web of Science to also use the educational concepts of curriculum and design as search terms the number of identified publications turned out to be 80. Of this was 40 in the topic of educational research. The search process turned out to be similar in Scopus. The next, configurative, step was to analyse these publications first in terms of relevance +/- and the relevant in terms of explanandum (what to be “explained”) by what explanans (how this is "explained") (cf von Wright, 1983).

Preliminary results show that there are both converging and diverging trends when it comes to redesigning curricula of doctoral education, and also fragmentation (e.g. Elmgren et al. 2016). Movements towards a homogenization are discussed in terms of international collaborations and mobility arrangements, including inflow of international doctoral students, and also in research on systems of quality improvement and accountability, demands for internationally valid methods for assessments and evaluations. However, the review also points to differentiated doctoral programmes and diversified modes of knowledge production and communication. The strivings of the universities to internationalize and to catch up with competence demands from the so-called knowledge economy are part of a the intellectual organisation of doctoral education curriculum, and expectation from national and international policymakers, and last but not least, expectations from the doctoral students themselves (e.g. Labaree, 2003). Another line of research points to a rather stable curricular position in the preparation of educational researchers when it comes to knowledge traditions (e.g Paul & Marfo, 2001). These findings are regarded as significant for analyses of the intellectual organization of educational research and discourses on paradigms and politics of knowledge. This paper is part of an international research project, “International Comparisons and the Re-modelling of Welfare State Education” in which we analyze the intersection between science and society in an important field of education. In accordance with Nowotny et al. (2003) we name this metaphorically as an education agora where different politics are displayed by agents in different positions.

Elmgren, M., Forsberg, E., Lindberg-Sand, Å., & Sonesson, A. (2016). The formation of doctoral education. Lund: Joint Faculties of Humanities and Theology, Lund University. Gough D., Thomas, J. & Oliver, S. (2012). Clarifying differences between review designs and methods. Systematic Reviews 1:28. Green, B. (2012). Addressing the curriculum problem in doctoral education. Australian Universities review. 54 (1) p. 10-18. Kuhn, T. (1970). The structure of scientific revolutions. Labaree, D. (2003). The peculiar problems of preparing educational researchers. Educational Researcher. 32(4). 13-22. Lindblad, S. Pettersson, D. and Popkewitz, T. (2015). International comparisons of school results: A systematic review of research on large scale assessments in education. Stockholm: Vetenskapsrådets rapporter. Paul. J. & Marfo, K. (2001). Preparation of educational researchers in philosophical foundations of inquiry. Review of Educational Reserch. 71 (4). 525-547. Nowotny, H., Scott, P. Gibbons, M. Introduction. (2003). ‘Mode 2’ revisited: The new production of knowledge. Minerva. 41 (3). 179-194). Whitley, G. (2000). The intellectual and social organization of the sciences. Oxford. Oxford University Press. von Wright, G.H. (1983). Practical reason. Philosophical papers, vol 1. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.