International Doctoral Students’ Lived Experiences of A Carousel of Emotions and Researcher Identity: A Narrative Inquiry
Despite growing research on doctoral students’ emotions and researcher identity, little is known about those aspects among international doctoral students. To bridge such a gap, this study explored the lived experiences of navigating emotions in relation to the researcher identity of international doctoral students through the working lens of the Perceptual Control Theory, as revised by Burke and Stets (2009).
Understanding how international doctoral students’ emotions interplay with their researcher identity can offer significant insights into how they can be supported during their PhD study in international learning environments.
This study adopted narrative inquiry as the research methodology. Using purposive and convenience sampling, four international doctoral students studying at a US university were selected. Two semi-structured interviews with each participant, supplemented by the researchers’ reflective notes and informal discussions, were conducted and analyzed using narrative analysis.
This study reveals the nature of international doctoral students’ lived experiences of a “carousel of emotions” during their research work. However, emotions alone seem not to influence their researcher identity. The proposed framework of the interconnectivity of goals, cognition, motivation, and emotions can enrich our understanding, though possibly not exhaustive, of international doctoral students’ lived emotional experiences in relation to their researcher identity.
Four diverse and distinctive voices emerge from the narrative analysis of the four participants’ interview transcripts. These stories reveal that while two participants (Camilo and Ola) claimed to have a strong sense of researcher identity, one participant (Kofi) said he is only a becoming researcher, and the last participant (Jessica) believed she is still an aspiring researcher. In addition, three participants (Camilo, Kofi, and Jessica) experienced emotional highs and lows throughout their PhD journey. Yet, those experiences, particularly negative ones, did not seem to shape their researcher identity. Meanwhile, the remaining participant (Ola) did not report any negative emotions and sounded confident that he would avoid emotional distress during his study. Last, but not least, all four participants shared their own unique strategies of coping with emotional breakdowns and academic challenges.
First, professors, supervisors, and mentors need to initiate an explicit and guided discussion with their doctoral students about their emotions and researcher identity as early as possible. These discussions are particularly important for international students, who are more prone to challenges in a new learning environment due to their diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Second, the stakeholders involved in doctoral education are encouraged to promote their intercultural awareness and competence to understand better the challenges faced by diverse groups of international doctoral students, so that students can receive timely support, if needed. Finally, doctoral programs are encouraged to offer training workshops, seminars, or informal talks on learned resourcefulness, social-emotional competence, and cultural capital for international doctoral students.
Future researchers can apply, test, and refine the proposed framework of the interrelationships among international doctoral students’ goals, cognition, motivation, and emotions to further explore (international) doctoral students’ researcher identity and doctoral experiences, especially by employing methods beyond narrative inquiry.
Understanding how researcher identity develops and sustains can assist international doctoral students in learning to persist in doctoral study and yield practical implications for doctoral programs seeking to support their international doctoral students.
Future research can investigate other factors that might influence international doctoral students’ emotional experiences and researcher identity, such as their countries of origin and associated cultures, individualist cultures, field of study, PhD stage, and gender. In addition, longitudinal research with more data sources can be desirable to further support and expand the interplay between goals, cognition, motivation, and emotions of international doctoral students in influencing their researcher identity.
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