Traversing the Doctorate: Situating Scholarship and Identifying Issues

The scholarship attending doctoral study and supervision is growing rapidly, yet in many ways successful approaches to traversing the doctorate remain idiosyncratic, even mysterious. Accordingly, it is timely to situate the terrain occupied by that scholarship, and to identify the accompanying issues and proposed strategies for engaging with those issues. This situating and identification draw on literature about doctoral study and supervision distilled from the sometimes divergent perspectives of students, supervisors and administrators. The chapter also outlines the book’s structure and organising questions, and explains the techniques for maximising its rigour. From that perspective, traversing the doctorate emerges as a fundamentally worthwhile, yet complex and multifaceted, enterprise that warrants ongoing evaluation and continuing professionalisation.