How can we best support doctoral candidates? ViDSS Supervisor's day 2022

Abstract

The workshop How can we best support doctoral candidates? focuses on the motivation and self-regulated learning of PhD students. For the successful completion of a doctorate (and also for a possible further scientific career) early stage researchers need to be able to motivate themselves and to have the competence to organize, structure and evaluate necessary tasks within the framework of the doctorate on their own. However, the great autonomy and the responsibility for the own doctorate can trigger excessive demands and cause motivation problems. Anxieties can lead to a pessimistic evaluation of one’s own competencies (“I can’t do it!”, “Others are much better than I am”) or of the work itself (“I don’t know why I am doing all this!”, “Is it really worth all this effort?”). Supervisors are faced with the challenge of how to best motivate doctoral candidates and strengthen competencies for self-regulated learning.