29th April 2026: Dr Bróna Murphy

1.10-2pm [with optional extended discussion time until 2.20pm]

‘I am more confident. Maybe. I don’t know’: Exploring Doctoral Mindset Awareness as a Catalyst for Learning: A discourse perspective

Dr Bróna Murphy (University of Limerick)

The doctoral experience and its landscape have been transformed in recent decades (Taylor 2023). With larger cohorts of students has come greater international diversity, alongside mounting expectations for efficiency and timely completion (Hammond et al., 2010; Sarrico, 2022). As a result, pursuing a PhD has become a high-pressure path where student well-being and mental health are often stretched, and success rates are under constant strain (van Tienoven, Glorieux, Minnen et al., 2024). As a result of these challenges and pressures, and although still in its infancy, a growing body of literature has begun to emerge around doctoral mindsets and their role in doctoral study (Albertyn 2022; 2024; McGloin 2023). While this research recognises and highlights the potential value of tapping into new and different mindset beliefs, views and ways of thinking for success in a doctoral context, there has been very little attention on how students’ own mindsets around learning and doctoral study can be harnessed and leveraged to inform doctoral pedagogy and development. This paper, therefore, explores a 130, 000 word spoken corpus of international doctoral student focus group data looking, in particular, at how the pronoun ‘I’ is used by students. This study focuses on how the linguistic patterns ‘I’ commonly occurs in can provide insights into how doctoral students think and talk about their doctoral journey. The study suggests that paying attention to these patterns can help to inform doctoral study and has the potential to act as a catalyst for change, action, learning and development within the doctoral context. This practice is referred to here as ‘Doctoral Mindset Awareness’. Overall, this study argues for greater recognition of the discourse of mindset awareness and its potential valuable as a pedagogical tool within doctoral education.

This session takes place in Room 3.58 of the John Percival Building at Cardiff University or join us via Teams using this link.