Part 1:

Many researchers and other academic pundits posited that doctoral students must be self-organizing, create their own learning opportunities, and draw knowledge and wisdom from a wide range of relationships. These relationships include peers, cohorts, friends & family, and collaborators both inside and external to their university. These pundits also found that doctoral students needed support, encouragement, and space to develop academic competences.

Needing to develop academic skills does not indicate deficiencies or academic deprivation because doctoral studies learning pedagogy requires high levels of self-organization, self-direction, and self-management. This is why a coaching support mechanism is beneficial. Transitioning from a course taker to an independent researcher is no easy feat. Having a bachelor’s degree, master’s degree and completing course work in doctoral studies hardly prepares a student to be an independent researcher.

Coaching doctoral students in doctoral education pedagogy is new but has been proven to be an effective method of support for doctoral students. Many students believe that their research chair or mentor should perform the role and function of a dissertation coach. There are many benefits of using a dissertation coach as a support system for getting through the doctoral degree, even before the dissertation process begins:

• Enhanced self-consciousness and self-acceptance
• Strengthened academic self-efficacy
• Increased self-discovery, self-confidence, and self-expression
• Improved communication and problem-solving skills
• Increased goal setting and goal achievement
• Better reception and use of feedback, more effective critical thinking strategies
• Changes in behaviors and attitudes
• Increased awareness of academic deficiencies
• The capacity to realize challenges and impediments to success, and more.

Doctoral coaching differs profoundly from both university supervision and most types of mentoring where the supervisor or mentor has varying degrees of interest in the outcome. Academic coaching also differs from life-coaching where any topic can be brought up by the person being coached. Coaching itself is vastly distinguishable from therapy, which focuses on personal and emotional healing, or from consulting and teaching focused on building knowledge. In my next blog, I will discuss the doctoral coaching relationship and how it differs from your university research supervision or mentoring programs.

If I can ever help, please feel free to reach out to me at any time.

Kindly,

Remember: The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but they, while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the night. – HW Longfellow.

“We Can Do This, Together.”

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