Review on Becoming a scholar.

What is it about?

This review entails the branches of importance and relevance that the book, Becoming a Scholar, has. The book is regarding the doctoral degree journey, specifically the part time Doctor in Education program at UCL. It specifically focuses on how the journey transforms one’s personal, professional and academic identity through the study in what the program trues to achieve in students, such as diverse perspectives and dimensions of education, and those that indulge in it. Savva and Nygaard introduce a theory chapter that discusses the key concepts, mechanisms, and assumptions and conclude the volume by analyzing all the findings from the chapters. What is clearly shown in the review is that they are able to establish a framework for the building of an identity by showcasing the internal journey of it. Their identity aims to belong in the international world by pondering on questions such as “Where is my disciplinary home?” and “What is my epistemological perspective?”. What the review states is truly important, is the book's mentions in the learning processes complexity and need for effort from the participants. Throughout the chapters, the different authors discuss the obstacles faced in socially and professionally integrating themselves, with their different linguistic, cultural backgrounds. Three authors experienced loneliness, uncomfortable, sometimes felt disheartened, felt like they were not understood, and had emotional discomfort which led to other personal issues. This helped them build resilience, self-awareness, as well as intercultural connections, which shone light on how turning points in someone’s life, take place at the same time as critical life incidents. All these points lead to an interpersonal journey of self-actualization and conscious identity formation, that helped the authors complete the program and is widely mentioned in the review. The review mainly admires the large number of foci the book has, about a sense of belonging, a scholarly identity (expert, novice, and imposter), the demonstration of their transformations, and the purposeful reflections and discussions of challenges and the combination of the personal and professional identity, and how they are linked. Finally, it focuses on the misconstructions about international students and the unexpected difficulty in becoming a scholar. What is so inspiring, is the books embracement of uniqueness, or as one of the authors puts it, “hybridity”. As well as the authors' braveness's to show their failures and fears throughout the journey.

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Photo by Prateek Katyal on Unsplash

Photo by Prateek Katyal on Unsplash

Why is it important?

As academia endeavours to globalise itself, it is of value to facilitate and learn from the doctorate students’ perceptions and experiences. I would recommend this book to doctoral students, professors, higher education faculty, supervisors, and tutors. The book serves as an extremely useful analytical account of the complexities that professional doctorate students go through towards becoming novice scholars, sending messages to students, supervisors and institutions. It is even shown in the review, how resilience and adaptability can help go through a very transformative process that contains many stimulating experiences.

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