A Probe Into Chinese Doctoral Students’ Researcher Identity: A Volunteer-Employed Photography Study

Xing Xu

SAGE Open, 2021, vol. 11, issue 3, 21582440211032151

Abstract: Researcher identity has been widely studied as central to doctoral education. However, little is known about students’ emic conceptualization of what represents researcher identity based on their lived experience. Using a sample of 24 Chinese doctoral students in Australia, this study adopts volunteer-employed photography (VEP) to facilitate the participants’ delineation of their researcher identity. Findings reveal that researcher identity is indexed at three levels: belonging as being, doing as becoming, and limited limitlessness. It presents itself as a complex formulating process in which dichotomous, yet mutually constitutive, forces collide and merge. This study concretizes perceptions about the notion of researcher identity through photographs and corresponding revelatory dialogues in relation to people, objects, feelings, phenomena, and relationships. Some insights on visual research methodology are also discussed.

Keywords: Chinese doctoral students; researcher identity; Australia; volunteer-employed photography (VEP) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/21582440211032151 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:sagope:v:11:y:2021:i:3:p:21582440211032151

DOI: 10.1177/21582440211032151

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in SAGE Open
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().