“I realised that, if I am dead, I cannot finish my PhD!”: a narrative ethnography of psychological capital in academia

Lynette Pretorius

Chapter 1 in Research Handbook of Academic Mental Health, 2024, pp 32-47 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Despite increasing quantitative evidence that there is a mental health crisis in doctoral education, there is a lack of qualitative research highlighting the voices of individuals experiencing mental illness. This study highlights the experiences of a second-year PhD student as she discovers that she is mentally unwell. The participant’s experiences are interwoven with the reflections and experiences of the researcher, a doctoral educator. Through narrative ethnography, this study highlights the need for doctoral educators to build an environment that fosters students’ psychological capital by helping them develop hope, efficacy, resilience, and optimism. In this way, doctoral education environments can become more welcoming, compassionate, inclusive, and growth-focused. This study also demonstrates the benefits of employing narrative ethnography to improve educators’ pedagogical practices by helping them better understand their own lived experiences and those of their students.

Keywords: Business and Management; Education; Environment; General Academic Interest (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781803925080.00008 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable

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:elg:eechap:21655_1

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Darrel McCalla ().