In this article, the implications of foregrounding ontology for teaching and learning in higher education are explored. In conventional approaches to higher education programs, ontology has tended to be subordinated to epistemological concerns. This has meant the flourishing of notions such as transfer and acquisition of knowledge and skills, either generic or discipline-specific. The authors challenge this emphasis on what students acquire through education by foregrounding instead the question of who they become. They do this through a theoretical/conceptual exploration of an approach to learning that undermines a narrow focus on the intellect by promoting the integration of knowing, acting and being.

While much research focuses on factors contributing to doctoral completion, few studies explore the role of the doctorate in forming active researchers with the skills, knowhow and appetite to pursue research post-completion. This article investigates fifteen existing studies for evidence of what factors in the doctoral experience may contribute to the formation of an active researcher with a capacity for later research productivity. The analysis reveals a productive advisor may be key to forming an active researcher and, although inconclusive, productivity post-completion. Further detailed research is required, however, into how the advisor influences candidates' productivity. The article also points to other potentially influential factors requiring further investigation, such as: developing collaborative capacities, conceptualising the purpose of the doctorate as forming an active researcher, advisor mentoring and fostering emotional engagement with research.

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In higher education, the conventional design of educational programs emphasises imparting knowledge and skills, in line with traditional Western epistemology. This emphasis is particularly evident in the design and implementation of many undergraduate programs in which bodies of knowledge and skills are decontextualised from the practices to which they belong .In contrast, the notion of knowledge as foundational and absolute has been extensively challenged. A transformation and pluralisation has occurred: knowledge has come to be seen as situated and localized into various 'knowledges', and the status of the body has taken on renewed significance in epistemological debates. Rather than thinking of knowledge as transcending the body, the embodiment of knowledge has become a key factor in understanding the nature of knowledge and what it means to know.In this paper, we adopt a phenomenological perspective in exploring the notion of embodied knowing as it relates to higher education programs and, more specifically, the ways in which information and communication technologies (ICTs) are used in these programs.

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Abstract:There is an increasing trend within higher education and, more specifically, in higher degrees by research, to treat a professional skills set as a desirable graduate outcome. The increasing value that is being placed on a professional skills set in large part reflects growing interest around the world in the role of research degrees in labour markets and economic prosperity. Some have seen this shift as an opportunity to re-situate higher degrees by research as a form of professional education in the practices of research and scholarship. This raises a number of important issues for research education, which we aim to identify in this article. While a range of scholars has previously noted several of these issues, we draw together key issues for interrogating the notion of research degrees as a form of professional education. In doing so, we point to ambiguities in expectations about what is produced through higher degrees by research programs.Some university programs have a relatively long history of being perceived as professional degrees by virtue of their discipline, such as medicine, architecture and law. Increasingly, however, graduates of all university degrees are seen as possessing a professional skill set when compared with others, such as those in trades. This trend is also evident in higher degrees by research. The increasing value being placed on a professional skills set in large part reflects growing interest around the world in the role of research degrees in labour markets and economic prosperity (Chambaz, 2008;; Department of Education, Science and Training, 2003;; Roberts, 2002). So-called generic skills, such as communication, teamwork, problem solving, lifelong learning, intercultural understanding, entrepreneurship and leadership, are often deemed necessary to professionals and are considered favourable to the needs of a globalised knowledge-based economy. Scholars such as Margot Pearson have seen this shift as an opportunity to re-situate higher degrees by research as a form of professional education in the practices of research and scholarship, with the aim of assisting candidates to become "…autonomous professional practitioners for the future " (1996: 304). This raises a number of important issues for research education, which we aim to identify in this article. These issues include questions concerning what constitutes a profession, the status of professional knowledge, the role of generic skills in the higher degrees by research curriculum, the value and potential contribution of the research degree, diversity in researcher careers, and how to re-engage with the practice of research. While a range of scholars has previously noted several of these issues, as we acknowledge below, we aim to draw together key issues for interrogating the notion of research degrees as a form of professional education. Our analysis of knowledge generation will draw primarily on the work of scholars such as Donald Schön to address how higher degrees by research candidates learn to engage in r...

In the current socio-political climate pedagogies consistent with rationalism are in the ascendancy. One way to challenge the purchase of rationalism within educational discourse and practice is through the body, or by re-thinking the nature of mind-body relations. While the orientation of this paper is ultimately phenomenological, it takes as its point of departure recent feminist scholarship, which is demonstrating that attending to physiology can provide insight into the complexity of mind-body relations. Elizabeth Wilson's account of the role of the gut in psychological processes suggests a far less hierarchical relation between brain and body than rationalism allows. Such insights are also supported by recent phenomenological inquiries into cognition and the body. My question is, what implications do these insights have for how the nature of embodiment is understood, and, by extension, learning? This paper explores how informal, non-cognitive modes of knowing, or of engaging with the world, inform learning in higher education contexts. More specifically, it raises the question of what role non-cognitive modes of engagement, such as sensibility, have in augmenting, enabling or delimiting the learning process.world into the natural and non-natural there is the possibility for new paths of educational inquiry and, ultimately, improved educational approaches and outcomes. Note1. This paper has seen various iterations and has gradually evolved based on the feedback received. I would particularly like to thank the anonymous reviewers of this journal for their suggestions as well as participants in the symposium on phenomenology in education at the