Synthesis Paper - Researcher Skills (Education Essay)

Synthesis Paper
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Synthesis Paper
For over a long time, the low doctoral completion rates have been an issue of concern. Ideally, many students begin the program but only a few get to complete the same at the required time. This worrying trend is largely attributed to the difficulties that doctoral students encounter in writing their theses or dissertations. The main challenge is usually getting the thesis or dissertation to be approved by the institution or faculty members because in many cases, they are not of the required standard. These great expectations on the doctoral students can prove to be challenging to the students and often contribute to the delay in their timely completion. In their articles, the authors Lindsay (2015); Lee, Chankg, and Bryan (2020); and Klocko, Marshall, and Davidson (2015) explore this issue and look at some of the possible ways of helping the doctoral students in order to ensure timely completion. Generally, the authors agree that dissertation writing is a stressful process and a big challenge to doctoral completion and therefore, support from faculty members and peers is needed to ensure successful completion.
The process of writing a dissertation is usually very stressful and often contributes to delays in doctoral completion. According to Lee et al., (2020), only 56.6% of all students in Canada and United States’ universities are able to successfully complete their doctorate programs. The researchers attribute this to the lack of adequate support given to the students during their studies. Notably, this lack of support means that students at this level cannot have their issues addressed in time thereby causing them to take unnecessarily long to complete their doctoral program. Offering timely responses and support is therefore important in helping address this challenge. Similarly, Klocko et al., (2015) also point out that the process of writing a dissertation is long and full of stress, doubt and anxiety. This stress and anxiety often stem from the fact that the faculty has great or unclear expectations for this students. Considering the other demands from their professional and personal lives, most PhD students find it challenging to meet their academic goals and expectations. The unclear expectations make the situation worse since every faculty member is said to have their own expectations that may differ thus confusing the students. Concerning this, it is noted that a student’s writing could be approved by one supervisor but be rejected by another (Lindsay, 2015), When this happens, it can cause the affected students unnecessary stress and increasing doubts in themselves thus leading to lower scores and lower chances of completing the course on time. Stress and doubt also emanate from the underdeveloped writing skills among the doctoral students, which makes the quality of their work low, also leading to lower scores and decreased completion rates (Klocko et al., 2015). Therefore, from this, the authors in these three articles agree that stress and doubt associated with writing doctoral dissertations leads to delays in students completing their PhD programs, hence there is need to address the issue.
In order to address the mentioned problem, it is sugg...