Sources of stress and scholarly identity : the case of international doctoral students of education in Finland

This is a self-archived version of an original article. This version may differ from the original in pagination and typographic details. Author(s): Title: Year: Version: Copyright: Rights: Rights url: Please cite the original version: CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Sources of stress and scholarly identity : the case of international doctoral students of education in Finland © The Authors, 2019 Published version Pappa, Sotiria; Elomaa, Mailis; Perälä-Littunen, Satu Pappa, S., Elomaa, M., & Perälä-Littunen, S. (2020). Sources of stress and scholarly identity : the case of international doctoral students of education in Finland. Higher Education, 80(1), 173192. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-019-00473-6 2020 Sources of stress and scholarly identity: the case of international doctoral students of education in Finland Sotiria Pappa 1 &Mailis Elomaa 2 &Satu Perälä-Littunen 3 #The Author(s) 2019 Abstract Although stressors and coping strategies have been examined in managing stress associated with doctoral education, stress continues to have a permeating and pernicious effect on doctoral students’experience of their training and, by extension, their future participation in the academic community. International doctoral students have to not only effectively cope with tensions during their training and their socialization in their discipline but also address the values and expectations of higher education institutions in a foreign country. Considering the increase of international doctoral students in Finland, this study focuses on perceived sources of stress in their doctoral training and how their scholarly identity is involved when responding to them. The study draws on thematically analyzed interviews with eleven international doctoral students of educational sciences. The participants, one man and ten women, came from nine countries and conducted research in six Finnish universities. The principal sources of stress identified were intrapersonal regulation, challenges pertaining to doing research, funding and career prospects, and lack of a supportive network. Despite the negative presence of stress, most participants saw stress as a motivating element. However, in order for stress to become a positive and motivational force, participants had to mediate its presence and effects by means of personal resources, ascribing meaning and purpose to their research, and positioning themselves within their academic and social environment. The study argues for stress as a catalyst for scholarly identity negotiation and professional development when perceived positively. Keywords International doctoral students .Scholarly identity.Identity negotiation .Stress . Eustress .Higher education Higher Education https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-019-00473-6 *Sotiria Pappa [email protected] Extended author information available on the last page of the article Introduction There has recently been a surge of interest in doctoral education amidst academic discourse (e.g., Aittola 2017;Cantwelletal.2012; Laufer and Gorup 2018), especially with the Bologna Process suggesting key aspects of educational and political importance as well as a supranational character (Baptista 2011). Yet going beyond the technical aspects of doctoral training, the personal experiences of the doctoral student have largely remained underexplored (Amran and Ibrahim 2012). One of the doctoral students’personal experiences in doctoral education that remains salient is stress. Doctoral students may be particularly susceptible to stress and precariousness, as they run a high risk of having or developing mental health problems, especially depression, due to factors like organizational policies, work-life imbalance, job demands, and career prospects outside academia (Levecque et al. 2017). Moreover, doctoral students’perceptions of their training play an important role in the success of doctoral programs (e.g., Aittola 2017). Although stressors and coping strategies have been examined in managing stress associated with doctoral education (Devonport and Lane 2014), stress continues to have a permeating and pernicious effect on doctoral students’experience of their training and, by extension, their future participation in the academic community. Following the European models and regulations, such as the Bologna Process, the Finnish national system of doctoral education has undergone several reforms within the last decades. The reforms, including the expressed need for internationalization, have enhanced possibilities for participation in education for international doctoral students (IDS) (e.g., Aittola 2017; Peura and Jauhiainen 2018). This increase is evident in the number of IDS in education which increased from 72 students in 2007 to 138 students in 2017 (Vipunen, Education Statistics Finland 2017). The increase of IDS could partially be attributed to the fact that the core funding model of universities in Finland up to 2017 favored doctoral degrees by international students (Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture 2011). Finland has seen the increased steering of doctoral training in recent decades by actions such as using a quota of completed doctoral degrees per university as a funding criterion (see Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture 2015). As a result, the doctoral degrees –especially degrees by international students until 2017 –have gained new importance, and the work by doctoral students forms a considerable part of research in universities (e.g., Hakala 2009). Therefore, the experiences of pressure and professional development by IDS in Finnish universities becomes an issue pertinent to universities’financial and research support (see Peura and Jauhiainen 2018). Within such circumstances, this case study focuses on IDS doing educational research in Finnish universities. It explores the perceived sources of stress in their doctoral training and how scholarly identity is involved when responding to them. Theoretical framework Scholarly identity negotiation as an emotion-imbued learning process Professional identity is individuals’understanding of themselves as professional subjects, influenced by personal and professional trajectories, workplace and interpersonal settings, personally held value systems and ethical standards, beliefs, and interests (Eteläpelto et al. 2014). The professional identity of doctoral students as young researchers in training is understood as scholarly identity. Scholarly identity is central to doctoral students’training, Higher Education as it strongly engages their overall learning, aspirations, desires, and personally held views of themselves as young academics (Cotterall 2015). Research on IDS shows that their socialization, both selfand other-directed, recursively uses internal and external sources and resources in becoming agentic and internalizing institutional practices, pedagogical paradigms, behaviors, positionalities, and ways of thinking (Anderson 2017; Evans and Stevenson 2010; Pyhältö et al. 2012a; Sidhu et al. 2014). Despite the exercise of individual agency, scholarly identity negotiation is a bidirectional process. Scholarly identity requires recognition and validation by the intellectual and institutional networks in which the doctoral student should credibly exhibit their competence in a relevant discipline (Cotterall 2015). Validation of one’s scholarly identity may further be influenced by the roles emphasized in their academic environment, with doctoral students of education choosing that of the practitioner’s over that of the teacher’s–something which stresses the implications of practical experience within educational research (Kovalcikiene and Buksnyte-Marmienea 2015). Moreover, authority figures influence one’s scholarly identity negotiation, with the supervisory and research processes bearing on the subjective experience of being a doctoral student (Baptista 2011). In effect, the intellectual and institutional networks at the university comprise the community of practice that affects how doctoral students experience themselves as scholars; they can nurture scholarly identity negotiation and provide it the space to connect to other identities (Coffman et al. 2016). While bidirectional, the process of navigating and using networks to negotiate one’s professional identity is also an emotional one. In her research with IDS, Cotterall (2013, 2015) argues that identity occupies a central role in doctoral training, as a doctoral student’s current understandings and future aims are inextricably tied to their learning trajectories and thinking processes. In addition to that, developing a scholarly identity has emotional dimensions that often go unacknowledged and is a process punctuated by emotion-provoking encounters with key individuals and situations (e.g., supervisory relationship, composing the dissertation, writing in English as a second language) (Baptista 2011;Cotterall2013; RussellPinson and Harris 2019). The emotions that need to be managed on the part of the doctoral student include stress, pressure, and uncertainty, which may be exacerbated under the evertightening financial constraints in academia and the expectation for new faculty members to exhibit more talent and productivity in relation to their predecessors (Austin 2002). In addition to that, doctoral students are expected to be mobile and flexible not only as employees of the contemporary job market (Meijers 2002) but also as researchers with future work and funding prospects (e.g., Academy of Finland criteria). This state of impermanence may heighten their perception of stress in their lives. Taking such conditions into account, examining how stress affects the negotiation of scholarly identity becomes important to doctoral students and doctoral education alike. Stress and eustress From a broader perspective, stress may refer to an event or succession of events that cause a response, often in the form of “distress,”or to a challenge leading to a feeling of exhilaration, in the form of “good”stress (Joshi 2005). While a stressor is a stimulus event that challenges the integrity or health of the body, stress response is the body’s compensatory reaction to that challenge (Lovallo 2005). In literature, stress is often described as a person’s response mechanism or a survival reaction to a negative event (Baum et al. 2001; Folkman 2008; Ursin and Eriksen 2004). More particularly, stress is a response syndrome of negative affects Higher Education which develop because of prolonged and increased pressures that cannot be controlled by an individual’s coping strategies (Kyriacou 1987; Ursin and Eriksen 2004). Stress serves as a mediational process in which stressors (or demands) trigger an attempt at adaptation or resolution that results in individual distress if the organism is unsuccessful in satisfying the demands (Linden 2005). Moreover, stress can be understood as part of a sequential process in which objective environmental circumstances are appraised by the individual either as having no adaptive significance or as straining or exceed a person’s adaptive resources (Lazarus and Folkman 1984;Linden2005). Amidst environmental demands, regarded as one of the most common factors causing the stress (Shapero and Hankin 2009), responding to stress occurs at physiological, behavioral, and cognitive levels (Schneiderman et al. 2005). The negative characteristics of stress are commonly known (Kyriacou 1987;Lazarus and Folkman 1984), yet its positive side, referred to as “eustress,”is less often discussed (Mesurado et al. 2016;O’Sullivan 2011). Stress is not only seen as something “negative” when the individual is unsuccessful in satisfying personal or environmental demands but also as something “positive”when it leads to success in fulfilling such demands (Kupriyanov and Zhdanov 2014; Szalma and Hancock 2008). Reactions to stress depend upon the nature of that stress and the capacities that the exposed entity or organism can utilize to answer the challenges which this stress poses. Eustress is both the process of responding positively to stress as well as the positive outcome of this process (O’Sullivan 2011). O’Sullivan (2011) argued that, at the academic level, the positive response to stress could include studying and working to complete assignments, whereas the outcome of eustress could include productivity and successful completion of assignments and exams. This is supported by research among university students who showed eustress as a positive psychological response to academic stressors that are perceived as a challenge (Mesurado et al. 2016). Although the experience of stress may play an important role in doctoral student life, there are, to our knowledge, very few studies conducted on the phenomenon and even less concentrating on the role of stress in scholarly identity. Research questions The importance of scholarly identity for doctoral students as well as the institutional and social influences on it has been acknowledged. Moreover, despite attention to practical rather than emotional considerations shaping one’sscholarly identity, stress is understood as a salient emotion affecting doctoral students’wellbeing and resilience. Yet international doctoral students’affective stances toward their doctoral education and the impact they have on how they see themselves as developing scholars remain underexplored. The present study focuses on international doctoral students of Education in Finland as a group that needs to shape a scholarly identity under academic and sociocultural circumstances new to them. Focusing on their experience, this case study addresses the following research questions: 1) What sources of stress do international doctoral candidates of Education in Finland perceive during their doctoral training? 2) How is scholarly identity involved in response to perceived sources of stress? Higher Education Research methods Participants Eleven IDS pursuing a research doctorate in Education participated in this case study. Their doctoral training took place within educational sciences at the universities of Eastern Finland, Jyväskylä, Lapland, Oulu, Tampere, and Turku. In the research doctorate model used by Finnish universities, the workload lies in accomplishing the doctoral research; this may be a source of stress, as university students are used to studying but have very little previous experience of conducting research. The participants were one man and ten women from China, Greece, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Namibia, Poland, Turkey, and Vietnam. Five of them were in the early (exploring the literature, designing the studies, collecting data, preparing the first manuscript), three in the middle (having submitted or published manuscripts), and three in the final stage (having submitted or published the last manuscript, preparing the dissertation, preparing for thesis defense) of their training. Research approach and data analysis The interviews took place from March to April 2018, in person and via Skype. The participants were reached by sending an invitation via the email list of the Finnish Multidisciplinary Doctoral Training Network on Educational Sciences (FinEd). The participants were informed of the content and aims of the study as well as their rights to anonymity, withdrawal of participation, and reading the final manuscript before its submission. Upon signing the informed consent form, the IDS participated in a semistructured interview in English (see Appendix 1). The interview addressed the participants’background and was based on literature on the concepts of scholarly identity and stress. The qualitative approach taken aimed to highlight how participants perceived their experiences and contextualized within social and relational dynamics at the university (Labuschagne 2003). The interviews were conducted by the first author, who at that time was a doctoral student herself, thus creating an interview climate of ease, closeness, and confidentiality. The interviews were audiorecorded (average 42.27 minutes) and transcribed (average 9.5 pages; Calibri, font 11, single-line spacing and a break between speaking turns) by the first author. All authors became familiar with the transcripts, coded following the model of thematic analysis suggested by Braun and Clarke (2006). The first author coded the transcripts from the perspective of scholarly identity, while the second author coded them from the perspective of stress (see Tables 1,2and 3). This helped identify stressors and their relationship to scholarly identity negotiation, while it also enabled triangulation during the coding phase (Bogdan and Biklen 1998), as the similarities found in naming some codes were discussed with the third author. The codes were organized into themes, which were understood as abstract constructs capturing the meaning of units of textual data and identifying possible patterns at different levels of granularity (Guest et al. 2012). The main stressors were examined against the themes for scholarly identity. The recorded and transcribed data have not been altered, but repetitions in the selected excerpts are indicated by […] for easier reading. Higher Education Findings In this section, each perceived source of stress is discussed in relation to the ways scholarly identity was involved in response to stress. Intrapersonal regulation Intrapersonal regulation (10/11) involved a sense of conflict between internal and external personal and contextual demands, but also personal resources used to negotiate this conflict. Table 1 Data analysis for intrapersonal regulation Intrapersonal regulation Main themes Themes Subthemes Codes Stress Expectations and demands Individual expectations •Comparing self to others •Lack of expertise •Uncertainty in defining one’s position •Valuing ones’worth External expectations •New environment •Supervisor’s expectations Contextual demands •Overworking Personal resources •Balance between different roles •Time management Identity Biographical trajectory The personal •Background information •Cultural values (not Finnish) •Family situation •Individual characteristics •Individual values and beliefs •Ties to home country New environment •Adapting •Finnish culture Negotiating the self as a scholar Academic responsibilities •Publications •Teaching duties •Writing Managing stress •Being proactive •Being merciful to oneself •Compassion •Distracting oneself •Doing things for oneself •Giving oneself credit •Negotiating stress with oneself •Self-regulation •Sense-making Personal work-related resources •Expectations •Learning goals •Passion •Motivation •Career goals •Professional values Positioning oneself as a doctoral candidate •Affiliation with institution •Comparing self to others •Positioning •Presentation of self to others Higher Education Participants (6/11) referred to expectations they had of themselves concerning becoming skilled at a particular field or method and investing more time than anticipated into their doctoral studies. By examining some of these expectations, some participants tried to make sense of how they themselves might be in the future, should they continue as researchers. For instance, talking about whether stress eases at a later time, IDS2 says: So, they do not struggle […]tograspthebasics[…] they enjoy more than they struggle. This is how I want to think about it, because otherwise I think that my motivation will drop dramatically, if I think that it will always be the same, hard and stressful and struggling. This participant negotiates stress by taking a protective stance toward her motivation and assuming that the present stress she feels, due to her current lack of expertise, will be replaced by quality and enjoyment. The negotiation that takes place may temporarily fortify her scholarly identity against defeatism by envisioning what research may be like at a more advanced stage. Stress from intrapersonal regulation further involved trying to determine one’s own place. Nearly all (10/11) participants referring to how they saw themselves as doctoral students replied in a manner that vacillated between roles. The most self-reflective comment would be IDS10’s: Table 2 Data analysis for challenges in doing research Challenges in doing research Main themes Themes Subthemes Codes Stress Prerequisites for research Practicalities •Collecting data •Finding participants •Office space •Presenting one’s work •Publishing Funding •Competition •Coping financially •Uncertainty about the future Taking a toll Health •Cognitive presence of research •Mental health •Physical health Negative affect •Feeling inadequate •Frustration Identity Becoming a researcher Being critical •Doubts and reservations •Uncertainty •Suggestions for improvement Learning to do research •Prioritizing •Professional learning •Realizing a research plan •Material resources Practical challenges •Subsidizing •Training •Time constraints The PhD process •PhD as a process •Feelings of reward •Feeling creative •Taking ownership of one’s research Higher Education so that kind of identity question has been in my head all the time […]I’m all the time somewhere between […]I’m still kind of reluctant to sayto call myself a researcher, but I’m also reluctant to call yourselfmyself a student. […] If you don’t have funding, you’re not, uh, this tohtorikoulutettava [a salaried doctoral student] either, but you are always a student or a candidate, […]it’s a continuous, um, thinking, for me, but I think I’m somewhere in between all of these, uh, yeah, definitely. Which iswhich is difficult, but it is also kind of liberating [laughs] not to be just this or that. This excerpt echoes the ambivalence in other participants’answers, but it also highlights the in-between position doctoral candidates might feel they occupy as well as how being funded or not may affect the title or role one may decide upon for themselves. While the institution may be a safe place, participants were still unsure of how to describe themselves within their respective institutions. A critical comparison of oneself as a scholar to others was also seen as a challenge (10/11). Despite this comparison being positive regarding their doctoral training, a few participants made an unintentional comparison between themselves and others concerning their professional values. For instance, being a researcher is not merely a job one does but a means of personal development. This value is echoed in IDS3’s understanding that research is something “maybe you can feel personally connected to and give you this kind of sense of self-actualization, self-fulfillment.”However, precisely because doing doctoral studies “is a very privileged life”(IDS3), one should remember that “teaching a bit and doing research a bit, like, together”(IDS3) as well as contributing to societal change are important aspects of research to uphold: Table 3 Data analysis for lack of supportive networks Lack of supportive networks Main themes Themes Subthemes Codes Stress Work environment Work environment •Colleagues leaving •Individualistic academic culture •Poor supervision Identity Sense of belonging Academic culture •Academic autonomy •Lonely Finnish PhD culture Acceptance as a PhD student •Being worthy •Feeling grateful Outsider •Feeling excluded •Loneliness •Not belonging •Working at home Seeking supportive social networks •Building a social network •Collaboration •Communication •Connecting through research •Encouragement •Feeling included •Sharing knowledge •Supervisor-student relationship •Support in others •Toward building a researchers’ community Higher Education case of supervisory challenges (Sakurai et al. 2012). In the present study, participants seemed to have developed positive relationships within their academic community, including mostly supervisors and other international students, but be preoccupied with how transient these relationships can be. This could attenuate a sense of belonging to the university, since it does not involve a close connection to Finnish counterparts in their academic community, and imbue the interpersonal aspect of scholarly identity with a sense of futility. Some social networks helped participants with perceived sources of stress in their doctoral training, validated their membership with the university as an institution, and facilitated the exchange of ideas. This supports the suggestion made by Sakurai et al. (2012) to explain a lack of statistically significant association between broader communities and participants’satisfaction with their training or desire to drop out; more than the training, a sense of attachment, friendship, and general well-being may be experiences that relationships with peers and colleagues contribute toward. Scholarly identity negotiation may further involve the acceptance of stress as a shared experience and the knowledge that its negative influences could be moderated by insight, inspiration, and support found in members of the academic community, such as supervisors. In Finland, doctoral students in educational sciences reported supervisory challenges more frequently, perhaps because their background in pedagogy raises their awareness concerning educational practices and communication problems (Pyhältö et al. 2012b). The present findings corroborate the importance of doctoral supervisors for students’well-being; the satisfaction from the developed relationship derived from the expert knowledge and guidance participants felt they received, but also from the positive working relationship (Sidhu et al. 2014). Doctoral supervisors strongly influence how the personal and professional attributes of their students will be nurtured toward becoming contributing members of an academic community and how effectively the supervisory process and challenges are managed toward critical thinking and emancipation (Friedrich-Nel and Mac Kinnon 2019). Moreover, a functional supervisory relationship based on mutual trust, sensitivity to the student’s needs, clear communication, constructive feedback, and explicit strategies for the completion of the doctoral degree are conducive to students’ well-being, satisfaction with their doctoral training, and timely completion of their doctorate (Cornér et al. 2017; Pyhältö et al. 2015). It is worth mentioning, however, that firmer guidance might be more formative in the early years of IDS’training until they gain domain-specific expertise, strengthen feelings of self-efficacy and self-regulation, and abate feelings of loneliness (e.g., Pyhältö et al. 2012b). Although stress may be negative, resulting from being unsuccessful in satisfying the personal or environmental demands (Szalma and Hancock 2008), more than half of the participants saw stress as a motivating aspect and necessary for development. It was regarded as an ever-present element of their doctoral training, yet one that facilitated their progress (e.g., setting deadlines for oneself), rather than paralyzed them. The findings show that experiencing stress as eustress and seeing stressors as challenges, rather than negative events, become resources themselves for succeeding in one’s doctoral training. The findings are in line with O’Sullivan (2011) who argued that eustress supports studying and working on assignments, thus heightening productivity and successful completion of assignments and exams. Having such an outlook on stress might be encouraging for the overall development and acculturation of IDS as young scholars, yet the need for self-regulation skills as well as balance between demands and resources should be paid attention to by both institutional and individual initiative. Higher Education Limitations The study explored stress and scholarly identity, focusing on IDS in educational sciences in Finland. The number of the interviews, while not high, was sufficient for code saturation (e.g., Baker and Edwards 2012). To see if the findings are reflective of other IDS’s experiences, future research should include doctoral students in other countries and different disciplines. Moreover, follow-up interviews with the participants of the present study could yield interesting new insights, since most of them were in the early stage of their doctoral training. Another limitation is that the interviews took place in English, which was a second or foreign language for most of the participants. However, all participants were highly proficient in English and used to discussing research-related matters using English. As doctoral programs vary in implementation across and within universities and countries, detailed practical suggestions may be hard to make. However, it can be suggested that information about access to mental healthcare services be more readily available to doctoral students. Moreover, doctoral programs could create a more supportive environment offering the students activities validating their membership. Finally, universities may need to attend to special challenges posed by the in-between state of doctoral students (i.e., neither students nor researchers) by acknowledging their status in the academic career track as researchers in training in formal documents (e.g., using the term “doctoral researcher”). Acknowledgments The authors would like to thank the Finnish Multidisciplinary Doctoral Training Network on Educational Sciences (FinEd) for disseminating the call for the interviews. Their gratitude is extended to the international doctoral students who participated in this study. Funding Information Open access funding provided by University of Helsinki including Helsinki University Central Hospital. Compliance with ethical standards Conflict of interest The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. Appendix 1. Interview questions Warming up &Which university are you from? &Where are you from? &How many years have you been a doctoral student? &At which stage of your doctoral training are you at the moment? &Why/How did you choose Finland for your doctoral studies? &Why did you choose education as your field of research? Interview questions 1. How do you see yourself as a doctoral student? Higher Education –Would that be the term you would use for yourself? 2. How do you see yourself as a young researcher? 3. What do you see as the (primary) responsibilities of a doctoral student? 4. What do you think you have learned so far? (as a doctoral student or young researcher in training) 5. What do you think are some of the constraints and resources at your current workplace? –What about Finnish doctoral education and Finnish higher education institutes? –How about your current phase/stage of doctoral training? 6. What are your views on life as a researcher? 7. How do you see yourself as a (developing) scholar? –Where do you draw your motivation from? –What have you found to be difficult during your doctoral training? –What have you found to be easier during your doctoral training? 8. How do you see stress as a component of your doctoral training/of your life as a doctoral student? –How would you describe the presence of stress in your life? –How would you describe the presence of stress in your doctoral training? 9. What do you find to be the most stressful? 10. How do you cope with stress? 11. What sort of coping strategies have you developed? –What sort of coping strategies have you found to be effective or helpful? 12. How do you see the balance between your doctoral studies and personal life? –How has your doctoral training affected or influenced your private life? 13. How would you describe your relationship with –writing? –your supervisor? –other doctoral students? 14. How do you feel you are part of a local and international community? Part of your field of research? 15. How does your funding situation affect/influence the progression of your studies and your own development? 16. What are some of the positive emotions you have associated with your studies? Higher Education –Have these positive emotions been somehow heightened by stress? Closing &Whatareyourfutureplans? &What support do you think you would benefit from? –What do you think would help you complete your doctoral training? (in the beginning or middle) –What do you think would have helped you throughout your doctoral training? 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Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory & Practice, 20(4), 511–529. https://doi.org/10.1177 /1521025116682036. Publisher’snote Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Affiliations Sotiria Pappa 1 &Mailis Elomaa 2 &Satu Perälä-Littunen 3 1 Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Helsinki, Siltavuorenpenger 1A, Psychologicum, FI00014 Helsinki, Finland 2 Ruusupuisto RUU 2B, Alvar Aallon katu 9, University of Jyväskylä, FI-40014, PL 35 Jyväskylä, Finland 3 Ruusupuisto RUU C221, Alvar Aallon katu 9, University of Jyväskylä, FI-40014, PL 35 Jyväskylä, Finland Higher Education