DOCTORAL STUDENT SOCIALISATION IN HIGHER EDUCATION: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW OF ITS RESEARCH LANDSCAPE AND SHAPING CONDITIONS
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.35631/IJEPC.1164111Keywords:
Doctoral Education, Doctoral Socialisation, Higher Education, Systematic Literature ReviewAbstract
Doctoral socialisation is described as the process through which students learn, negotiate, and participate in the norms, roles, relationships, and practices of scholarly communities. Existing reviews have examined specific aspects of doctoral education, including supervision and mentorship, supervisory competence, and epistemic injustice, but the wider research landscape and the conditions shaping doctoral socialisation remain insufficiently integrated. This review examines how doctoral student socialisation has been studied and brings together evidence on the antecedent and contextual conditions that may shape it. Scopus was searched for English-language journal articles published from 2015 to 2026, coverage for 2026 was limited to publications indexed by the search date. The review included 165 empirical studies. RQ1 used descriptive synthesis, while RQ2 used thematic synthesis to identify and organise shaping conditions. The evidence base was recent, geographically uneven, and dominated by qualitative and interpretive research. The synthesis identified six condition families: supervisory and mentoring; peer, network, and community; programmatic and institutional; disciplinary and academic-cultural; structural, cultural, and inequality-related; and individual and psychological. Doctoral stage operated as a cross-cutting context with the relevance of particular conditions changing across the doctoral trajectory. The findings show that supervision is one part of a broader set of conditions shaping doctoral socialisation. Across studies, socialisation depended on how access to relationships, institutional opportunities, disciplinary norms, recognition, and resources was organised across contexts and stages. The review also clarifies the distinction between shaping conditions, socialisation processes, and outcomes. For doctoral education, the findings highlight the value of clearer expectations, broader sources of support, meaningful opportunities for scholarly participation, and more equitable access to resources and recognition.
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