Professional goals
The assignment
Explain how your academic and professional goals align with Waden’s vision, mission, social change message, university outcomes, and the AACN DNP Essentials. Be Specific
Explain how you plan to incorporate social change throughout your program of study and in professional practice. Be sure to include how social change may contribute to your practicum field experience and your role in professional practice
Prompt: By starting your doctoral program at Walden, you are joining a group of career professionals in pursuit of the Walden University mission to “transform themselves as scholar-practitioners so that they can effect positive social change.” This is a pursuit that comes with joys, challenges, and rewards. While many begin a doctoral program, not all successfully complete their program. One way to increase your chance of success is by understanding and reflecting on the challenges many doctoral students face and identifying and employing the strategies that will work best for you.
The excerpted reading provided below is from the article “Dissertation completion: No longer higher education’s invisible problem,” published in the Journal of Educational Research and Practice by Marshall et al. (2017). In this article, the authors conduct a literature review and qualitative interview study in order to better understand the challenges and supports that impact doctoral student success. The reading below includes the literature review portion of the article which focuses on “Challenges to Completion” and “Supports to Completion” as well as the “Implications” section which offers reflections on the findings of the authors’ qualitative study.
As you read and engage with this excerpt from Marshall et al. (2017), determine what content from the reading is relevant to your doctoral journey; then, compose an essay in response to the questions listed below:
What challenges to completion do you anticipate you will encounter in your doctoral program?
What strategies for successful completion do you anticipate will be the most useful for you, and how will you work toward implementing these strategies to meet your goals?
In your essay, include relevant paraphrased and cited information from this Marshall et al. (2017) reading excerpt, using your preferred citation style:
Challenges to Completion
Cassuto (2013) identified three different types of doctoral completers: (a) those who cannot complete because of time commitment, lack of research skills, personal challenges, and other outside factors; (b) those who can complete but choose not to, leaving the program for personal or professional reasons; and (c) those who successfully reach dissertation completion. How the personal and professional challenges impact those who do complete the dissertation became the focus of this study.
Personal or Environmental Factors
To successfully reach dissertation completion, the impact of outside factors such as managing work and family (Flynn, Chasek, Harper, Murphy, & Jorgensen, 2012) must be mitigated to ensure student progress. This is particularly true for practitioner scholars who negotiate both the professional and academic spheres. A frequent challenge to completion is the needs of families (Cassuto, 2013; Dominguez, 2006). Another relevant barrier to doctoral degree completion is lack of funding. Dissertating doctoral students may be conflicted with work concerns and money during this final stage in the doctoral process. Financial aid and fellowships for doctoral students are critical resources to ensure completion (Ehrenberg et al., 2009). Flynn et al. (2012) further explained that professional factors such as unemployment were barriers to dissertation completion.
According to Smallwood (2006), many of the issues related to non-completion may be attributed to admission selections. “Academic and affective factors that enter into the admissions process of doctoral students must be focused upon the student’s ability to complete program requirements and ultimately be awarded the doctoral degree” (McCalley, 2015, p. 4). The immutability of these issues spans 3 decades, with doctoral degree candidates reporting similar barriers impacting completion (Bair & Haworth, 2004).
Impostor Syndrome
Clance and Imes (1978) studied high-achieving individuals and observed that high-performing professionals may often struggle with fears of being exposed as an impostor. The groups they identified included persons for whom success came quickly, first-generation professionals, people with high-achieving parents, members of minority groups, and students. Nelson (2011) described impostor syndrome as “the crippling feelings of self-doubt and anticipated failure that haunt people who attribute their success to luck or help from others rather than their own abilities” (p. 129). Sherman (2013) warned that this self-doubt could create a paralyzing fear of failure: “Impostor syndrome can create performance anxiety and lead to perfectionism, burnout, and depression” (p. 31). Hendrikson (2016) noted that impostor syndrome often appears “after an especially notable accomplishment, like admission to a prestigious university, public acclaim, winning an award, or earning a promotion” (p. 1).
Young (2011) clarified that those with impostor syndrome believe erroneously that they lack intelligence, skills, and competencies; consequently, they feel undeserving of success. Young further predicted that times of transition, new challenges, and high-stakes assignments could cause impostor feelings to surface, even in otherwise confident, high-performing adults. Cuddy (2016) opined that impostorism is nondiscriminatory and knows no limits, as she recalled a conversation she had with Pauline Clance: “One more thing, if I could do it all over again, I would call it the impostor experience, because it’s not a syndrome or a complex or a mental illness. It’s something almost everyone experiences” (p. 95). Cuddy further explained that rates of perfectionism, performance anxiety, and societal expectations may contribute to the impostor syndrome. Nonetheless, Cuddy reported that fear of failure was recognized across numerous studies in different disciplines as the root cause of performance paralysis in otherwise highly capable individuals.
Writing Anxiety
Candidates associated anxiety with producing doctoral level work, especially because “explicit instruction in areas such as ‘thesis writing’ and ‘writing for publication’ does not seem to be normal practice in higher education” (Ferguson, 2009, p. 286). Students can feel overwhelmed by feedback for revisions regardless of depth or breadth of the recommendations due to a lack of exposure to academic writing before program admission (Ondrusek, 2012; Thomas, Williams, & Case, 2014). When students can edit their work based upon the feedback of faculty or peers, students lacking research skills are likely to focus primarily on grammatical changes instead of strengthening their overall argument (Ondrusek, 2012).
Becoming a good writer requires a sense of vulnerability and discomfort inherent in the practice during multiple revisions. Additionally, O’Connor (2017) argued that when students face their intellectual inhibitions, it is not simply an issue of confidence in presenting ideas, but a compelling anxiety about the nature of formulating thoughts. Writing is a personal experience and receiving feedback requires a certain level of openness and willingness to take criticism (Ferguson, 2009; Liechty, Schull, & Liao, 2009). “We must recognize that the ability to write from a scholarly perspective is a skill that does not necessarily precede acceptance into a graduate program” (Ondrusek, 2012, p. 185). “Providing for supportive groups or peer review opportunities and providing prompt and meaningful feedback may foster writing efficacy in students” (Lavelle & Bushrow, 2007, p. 817). O’Connor (2017) discussed how writing offers both an opportunity and a threat for students: “In the negotiation with the dissertation, there is a frustration in the inability we meet in ourselves, the lack of fluidity in expression and the sometimes torturous space between what we seek to express and what we actually express” (p. 3).
Scholarly writing skills required in doctoral programs emphasize critical thinking, synthesis, and clarity of expression as essential for overall doctoral performance.
Productivity
The final barrier to successful doctoral completion relates to overall productivity. Because graduate students are, on average, older, they often balance expectations of family, friends, community or civic involvement, and careers. Therefore, finding dedicated dissertation time can prove to be a barrier (Ondrusek, 2012). In a study of a predominantly Black female cohort, Holmes, Robinson, and Seay (2010) found that training in self-regulated learning in conjunction with effective mentoring can assure success for all students in the dissertation phase of doctoral study.
