Conference Agenda

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 significant importance for reflctions of scientific reproduction and change, and for cooperation between different epistemic cultures in the sciences (Knorr-Cetina, 1999). Our ambition is toanalyze similar processes in the educational sciences in a changing system of higher education and research.

Education research was institutionalized as an academic field at the University of Oslo in 1938, primarily to establish a research-based foundation for teaching and teacher education. This initiative led also to the development of a research portfolio and degree programs that qualified graduates for diverse roles within the education system. In contrast, teacher education institutions—organized through university seminars and regional colleges—were expected to integrate research generated at the university while simultaneously cultivating their own knowledge base in collaboration with school authorities, schools, and teachers. Within this framework, pedagogy (and Didaktik in the German tradition) emerged as a bridging discipline, mediating between the university and teacher education institutions. Over the past decades, the shared responsibility for general education at universities and teacher education has shifted significantly. Teacher education has evolved into a scientific, evidence-based domain, driven by its integration into universities in the late 20th century and by substantial investment in research training (Elstad, 2023; Smith, 2020). Supported by the Research Council of Norway, teacher education programs have established their own doctoral programs (Smith, 2020), participated in general doctoral programs (Ludvigsen & Ulfsnes, 2013), and joined Nordic networks of collaborating institutions. These developments have repositioned general educational research as a core academic field within universities, introducing new disciplinary tracks and educational expectations for evidence-based practices. General didactics appears to loose its significance as a key bridge between academia and schools due to an epistemic drift toward evidence-based knowledge in teacher education institutions, and it seems no longer to hold the same authority among scholars. However, nuances can also be found by encouraging hybrid approaches (Smith, 2022). The change is seen as a consequence of political strategies and academia itself, and their numerous efforts to change the scientific rationales and the division of labor between general educational sciences and teacher education as an institution and practice (Caspersen & Smeby, 2023). This paper presents the historical trajectories of general and teacher education in Norway. By drawing on a historical analysis of documentary sources, including doctoral programmes, it traces the development and disciplinary differentiation of doctoral education in Norway from its inception in the 1990s to the present, and examines how institutional and conceptual bridges have been re-constructed between the academic-scientific and practical knowledge domains. It concludes by discussing emerging implications of a more evidence-based approach for the field of pedagogy/didactics.

Caspersen, Joakim, & Smeby, Jens-Christian. (2023). Research-based teacher education in Norway – a longitudinal perspective. International journal of educational research, 119, 102177. doi: 10.1016/j.ijer.2023.102177 Elstad, Eyvind. (2023). Teacher Education in the Nordic Region: Challenges and Opportunities (1st Edition 2023 utg.). Cham: Cham: Springer Nature. Ludvigsen, Sten, & Ulfsnes, Kari-Anne. (2013). Forskerskoler som modeller for forskerutdanning: Progresjon og utvikling av ekspertise. Research schools as models for research education - progression and development of expertise, 36(4), 65-79. doi: 10.3402/uniped.v36i4.23144 Smith, Kari. (2020). Expansive learning for teacher educators-the story of the norwegian national research school in teacher education (NAFOL). Paper presentert ved Frontiers in Education. Smith, Kari. (2022). Balancing teacher educators' researcherly and pedagogical dispositions - an example from Norway. Asia-Pacific journal of teacher education, 50(4), 328-342. doi: 10.1080/1359866X.2022.2073868

It has long been recognized that formation of an academic field primarily occurs through training doctoral students within an institutionalized framework (Elmgren et al., 2016; Kuhn, 1962). Thus, doctoral education and doctoral research are testimony of both the production and reproduction of “epistemic cultures”, that is, the practices, instruments, norms, and social arrangements through which a field produces and legitimates knowledge (Knorr Cetina, 1999). This paper is part of a lager research project on how science-society interactions influence the design, content, and organization of doctoral education, and what this implies for the formation of epistemic cultures. Our focus is doctoral education in Education Science in Sweden and its development from the 1950s to the present. In this sub-study we focus on the analysis of doctoral theses published during this period. The aim of the paper is to show how internal (disciplinary) and external (societal, policy, economy) relevance pressures are visible in the theses. We ask: What kinds of knowledge production are prioritized and legitimized over time? Which intellectual traditions and ideas dominate, decline or emerge? We have analysed more than 100 doctoral theses from the post WW 2-period up to 2024. The analysis traces the movement from “pedagogik” organized as a distinct academic discipline toward problem oriented doctoral education (Nowotny et al., 2003) that characterizes Educational Sciences today. Drawing on historical institutionalism (Thelen, 1999) and the concept of epistemic culture (Knorr Cetina, 1999) the analysis focuses on how internal and external pressures gradually have gradually reshaped practices, instruments, norms, and social arrangements that define epistemic cultures of Educational Sciences. To contextualize this analysis, we refer to Foss Lindblad’s & Lindblad’s (2016) analyse of relevance regimes as ideal types in Education Science in Sweden. As in many countries, Swedish doctoral education has since the 1960s been a target of national policy making and ideals produced within international organizations, such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the European Union (Apelgren, Lindblad & Wärvik, 2022; Elmgren et al., 2016). In the doctoral theses, we can trace a movement from a discipline-centred and psychology-oriented field focused on measuring individuals and on nation building, to a policy-responsive and profession-oriented field, and increased collaborations with schools and municipalities.

Apelgren, Britt-Marie, Sverker Lindblad, and Gun-Britt Wärvik. "Restructuring Doctoral Education in Sweden." Österlind, ML., Denicolo, P., & Apelgren, BM. Doctoral Education as if People Matter (2022): 28-42. Elmgren, M., Forsberg, E., Lindberg-Sand, Å., & Sonesson, A. (2016). The formation of doctoral education. Media-Tryck, Lund University. https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:916582/FULLTEXT01.pdf(open in a new window). Knorr Cetina, K. (1999). Epistemic cultures: How the sciences make knowledge. Harvard University Press. Foss Lindblad, R. & Lindblad, S. (2016). On relevance and norms of science in times of restructuring: Educational research in Sweden. In Political pressures on educational and social research (pp. 66-76). Routledge. Kuhn, T. S. (1962/1997). The structure of scientific revolutions (Vol. 962). Chicago: University of Chicago press. Nowotny, H., Scott, P., & Gibbons, M. (2003). Introduction: 'Mode 2'revisited: The new production of knowledge. Minerva, 41(3), 179-194. Thelen, Kathleen. "Historical institutionalism in comparative politics." Annual review of political science 2.1 (1999): 369-404.

Doctoral education in Educational Sciences in Italy has moved from an elite, pre-PhD apprenticeship model to a quality-assured third cycle integrated in the European Higher Education Area. While earlier forms of advanced study existed, the modern dottorato di ricerca—informed by nineteenth-century German and French models and, subsequently, by the UK and US—was institutionalized in Italy only in 1980, with the creation of a national degree and standardized admission and training (Cappa, 2009; Di Maio & Gaeta, 2021). Subsequent reforms progressively tied doctoral provision to accreditation, external evaluation and alignment with European quality assurance standards (Alfano et al., 2021). In Educational Sciences, doctoral programmes evolved from single-chair traditions to structured, multi-curricular schools. The Bologna Process consolidated the doctorate as the “third cycle” and incentivized internationalization and quality assurance logics (Donina et al., 2015). Recent instruments within the Next Generation EU programme and the new cross-institutional National Doctorates re-steered doctorates toward strategic, networked consortia, foregrounding digital transition, public-sector impact where applicable, and faculty development. This, however, may even have exhaberated the challenging occupational outcomes (Passaretta et al., 2018; Carriero et al., 2024; ISTAT, 2018) and academic career opportunities of PhD graduates. This paper highlights the development and actors of doctoral education in educational sciences in making and re-making of doctoral education in Italy. Main actors in Italy shaping doctoral education in educational sciences are MUR (national ministry of university and research), ANVUR (quality assurance/accreditation), CRUI (rectors’ conference), universities providing doctoral education, and the disciplinary associations in Educational Sciences (SIPED, SIRD, SIPES, SIPEGES). The paper shows how, across decades, reforms reflect shifting rationalities, especially in relation to 1. Disciplinary-humanistic reproduction through academic apprenticeship; 2. Massification, Europeanization and comparability; 3. Quality assurance, evaluative state and New Public Management; 4. Innovation, employability and competitiveness; and 5. Open science, equity and inclusion.

Alfano, V., Gaeta, G. L., Pinto, M., Rotondo, F., & Vecchione, G. (2021). Ph.D. courses in Italy after the Gelmini reform. MPRA Paper No. 108144. Cappa, C. (2009). Il dottorato in Italia: Una storia recente. Rivista Scuola IaD, 1, 66–94. http://rivista.scuolaiad.it/wp-content/uploads/pdf/numero1/il-dottorato-in-italia-una-storia-recente.pdf Carriero, R., Coda Zabetta, M., Geuna, A., & Tomatis, F. (2024). Investigating PhDs’ early career occupational outcomes in Italy: Individual motivations, role of supervisor and gender differences. Higher Education, 87, 1375–1392. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-023-01068-y Di Maio, A., & Gaeta, G. L. (Eds.). (2021). La trasformazione del dottorato di ricerca: Orientamenti europei, riforme nazionali e misure regionali di supporto. FrancoAngeli. Istituto Nazionale di Statistica (ISTAT). (2018). L’inserimento professionale dei dottori di ricerca. https://www.istat.it/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Report-Dottori-di-ricerca-26nov2018.pdf Passaretta, G., Trivellato, P., & Triventi, M. (2018). Between academia and labour market: The occupational outcomes of PhD graduates in a period of academic reforms and economic crisis. Higher Education, 76, 997–1023. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-018-0288-4 Donina, D., Meoli, M., & Paleari, S. (2015). Higher education reform in Italy: Tightening regulation instead of steering at a distance. Higher Education Policy, 28(2), 215–234. https://doi.org/10.1057/hep.2014.6