Conference Agenda

Topic and aim

A growing body of scholarly literature has extensively focused on doctoral student experience, highlighting the multifaceted challenges they face in completing their doctoral degrees and achieving their other relevant objectives (e.g., refs). The doctoral journey is arguably complex and multifaceted, extending beyond the acquisition of the academic proof of disciplinary expertise and requiring a range of support beyond academic foundations (Elliot et al., 2020). Recent years have witnessed the increasing scholarship highlighting that doctoral students’ experiences are profoundly influenced by the hidden curriculum i.e. unspoken norms and expectations, and cultural values that are embedded in doctoral education but rarely articulated (Elliot et al., 2016; Elliot et al., 2020).

This autoethnographic study aims to shed light on the role of shared office spaces in shaping the hidden curriculum within doctoral education. The authors of this paper have shared the same office space (office 681) since 2017 at a UK university, with some leaving the tangible space but maintaining a close connection with others, and some joining at times. Throughout years, the office has remained a dynamic and cohesive environment for meaningful engagement, academic development, and collective celebration of success. Data was collected through reflective writing and analysed using thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006). Drawing on the conceptual framework proposed by Elliot and colleagues (2020), this paper explores the lived experiences of doctoral students sharing an office to highlight the diverse trajectories of learning and thriving through the hidden curriculum embedded in such spaces. Findings of this study demonstrate how the office stands as an enabling space for informal learning, emotional support, long-term co-creation of knowledge base, and implementation of community practices. This intangible but significant value embedded in the shared office space critically denotes a need to synthesise a novel dimension in relation to four “S”s – spatiality, sustainability, self-agency and safety – to the framework, and provides key directions for future developments in doctoral education in the UK.

Theoretical/Conceptual framework

Elliot and colleagues’ framework (2020) of the formal and hidden curriculum within doctoral education outlines four dimensions for supporting doctoral students’ achievements in psychological wellbeing, transformational growth, and doctoral qualification. The four dimensions include emotional, academic, social, psychological. Through the prism of this framework, this study looks at the ways in which informal and hidden curriculum is developed by sharing an office in the four dimensions and how office facilitates doctoral students to go through the four stages. As an outstanding example of student-initiated informal learning (ref. in one Dely’s work), the shared office is arguably an enabling space that helps harness the informal or hidden curriculum for doctoral students. Drawing on this conceptual framework to articulate this could further illuminate the critical roles of peer interactions, embodied space, and other diverse aspects regarding hidden curriculum in doctoral education.

This paper examines master’s thesis supervision in situ. Following a cohort of students within universities located in three countries, the study investigates how master’s thesis supervision takes place in real time and context. It examines the agentic opportunities (Klemenčič, 2021; 2023; 2024) created for and enacted by students during supervision sessions. While previous empirical work on thesis supervision has largely focused on data gathered outside supervision sessions (e. g. Eklund & Løvland, 2025; Filippou, 2020) – for example, by interviewing students separately–, we actually know less about what happens within the actual sessions. Earlier research has investigated the supervisory practices and discourses in Master’s thesis supervision situations (e.g. Svinhufvud, 2015; Svinhufvud & Vehviläinen, 2013), but not especially in regards to students’ perceptions and agency. The study aims to contribute to the topic by answering the following research questions: How is master’s thesis supervision practiced in situ? What agentic opportunities do students enact within these practices?

To examine the research questions, the study defines student agency as “students’ capabilities to intervene in and influence their learning environments and learning pathway” (Klemenčič, 2017, p. 69; see also Klemenčič, 2021). More specifically, it uses Klemenčič’s (2017) concept of agentic opportunities to understand the students’ positioning within the supervision sessions. Agentic opportunities refer to students’ opportunities to make and take choices and are well-suited framework to understand students’ actual freedom in these practices (see Sen, 2005; Crocker & Robeyns, 2009).

The rationale for this theoretical approach links to the past-decade initiatives of the Bologna Process, especially the promotion of the concept of student-centred learning as a principle and as a standard to be implemented within higher education institutions (Aref & Stensaker, 2025). These initiatives have been understood as a responsibility of university teachers, especially related to implementing student-centred learning within their teaching responsibilities (Dakovic & Zhang, 2021; Damiani 2019). It is in this context that researchers have argued for strengthening theoretical foundation of these initiatives – highlighting student agency as a point-of-departure (Klemenčič, 2017; 2021; see also Geven & Attard, 2012).

Contemporary education research predominantly applies data-driven epistemologies, standardised indicators, widely accepted ranks and instrumental policy demands, margining ethical judgment, moral responsibility, and questions of value. These clashes are further intensified under conditions of contemporary poly-crisis and AI development, where higher education is simultaneously expected to produce knowledge, serve the public good, and respond to political and economic pressures. In this context, education research faces newly emerged questions about how knowledge is produced, legitimised, and translated into action.

This paper proceeds debates on knowing and acting by centring locally grounded ethical formation as a foundational yet under-theorised dimension of higher education. Drawing on Madhok (2020), who argued that “there are not enough concepts to capture and produce theorized accounts of different, historically specific and located forms of worldmaking in ‘most of the world” (p. 395), this paper develops the concept of Tolyq Adam (the holistic person), articulated by the Kazakh philosopher and poet Abai Kunanbayev (1845–1904), as a theory-capable educational philosophy emerging from Kazakhstan, Central Asia.

Abai’s philosophy conceptualizes human development through the integration interrelated concepts such as aqyl (reason), jürek (heart), and qayrat (will). This paper interprets these concepts as mutually constitutive dimensions of ethical formation, linking epistemic judgment, value orientation, and responsible action. In doing so, Tolyq Adam offers an alternative to fragmented, performative, and competence-driven models of higher education by foregrounding education as a process of ethical self-formation.

Since 2023, this philosophy has been systematically operationalised at Almaty Management University (AlmaU) through the Tolyq Adam program developed within the School of Transformative Humanities and Education. The initiative integrates humanistic pedagogy, psychology, philosophy, and service learning into a comprehensive general education framework designed in response to post-pandemic challenges related to student wellbeing, identity, and meaning-making (Aubakir, 2025).

At the core of the program lies the LEADER framework, which articulates six interrelated capacities for contemporary higher education: lifelong learning, empathy, analytical and creative thinking, dialogue and discourse, ethics and ecology, and resilience. These principles are embedded across eight compulsory general education courses reaching over 1,000 first-year students annually. In this sense, the Tolyq Adam program operates not merely as a curricular innovation but as an institutional epistemic design that redefines the purpose of general education. Survey data conducted by the institute from 2024–2025 indicate substantial student-reported growth across these dimensions, alongside the implementation of more than 100 student-led community projects translating ethical reflection into social action.

Recent research has begun translating Abai’s ethical categories into pedagogical models for civic and historical education, indicating the practical viability of Tolyq Adam and related concepts while underscoring the need for further philosophical clarification (Raissov & Zhylkyshybayeva, 2025). Therefore, we propose to position Tolyq Adam philosophically as an intervention in the politics of knowledge production, rather than merely as a culturally specific pedagogical model. This intervention also challenges the marginalisation of non-Western concepts in education research and demonstrates their analytical value for theorising education’s role in crisis-responsive yet academically autonomous contexts.