Background and purpose

In this symposium we are analyzing the making of doctoral education in education sciences. A general background is the remaking of the system of higher education and research as pointed out by e.g. Nowotny et al (2003) from a discipline-focused Mode-1 to a problem-focused Mode-2 where societal rather than scientific relevance is underlined at the science-society agora. To our understanding educational sciences are very much influenced by a mode-2 position (e.g. Lindblad & Pettersson, 2024). What are the implications of this?

Given this, we turn to the work of Kuhn (1962) who studied doctoral education as an object for understanding paradigmatic reproduction and change in the sciences. This study has been important in discourses on science and society and is debated and further developed in later studies (e.g. Shapin, 2022), for instance with a focus on Matters of globalization of doctoral education are of interest here, for instance considering North-South differences and matters of intellectual predispositions (Connell, 2017) at work in doctoral education discourses and in the making of doctoral education.

Research questions:

The purpose of this symposium is to analyze doctoral education in the education sciences over time and place. We ask:

-          How is doctoral education evolving as an institution in the paradigmatic (re)production of knowledge in different contexts over a longer period?

-          What are important events and agents in making and re-making of doctoral education?

-          Which scientific predispositions and matters in the making of arguments and systems of reason are at work in the making and remaking of doctoral education, shown as global North-South differences?

Theoretical framework and research approach

A recent research review (Lindblad & Gross, 2025) shows that previous research on doctoral education is mostly studying doctoral education as a matter of educational problems (supervision, identity problems, attrition, etc.). Thus, there is little research with a focus on doctoral education that corresponds to the research interests presented above. To analyze paradigmatic reproduction and change, we turn to historical institutionalism (Thelen, 1999), to describe and understand doctoral education trajectories – events, agents and tracking of processes – and to compare these trajectories over global contexts. Of special interest here is arguments for making and remaking of doctoral education – its tasks, design, and selection of relevant knowledge, in systems of reason (Popkewitz, 2014) at work in these trajectories.

To answer and discuss these questions we put forwards a comparative case study approach. We are not comparing nations, but we use the opportunities to compare changing institutions in different contexts. Thus, we choose a Grounded Theory approach (Glaser & Strauss, 1977) by comparing doctoral education trajectories over time and place regarding important events, agents, and reasoning in the making and remaking of doctoral education.

Scientific significance:

The proposed symposium will describe and analyse historical developments of institutions of doctoral education in educational sciences over time and place. This is of vital importance for reflections on scientific reproduction and change and for cooperation between different epistemic cultures in the sciences (Knorr-Cetina, 1999) in a changing system of higher education and research.

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