Inside doctoral education in America: Voices of Latinas/os in pursuit of the PhD

Journal of College Student Development, Jul/Aug 2002 by Gonzalez, Kenneth P, Marin, Patricia

My subjectivity is the basis for the story that I am able to tell. It is a strength on which I build. It makes me who I am as a person and as a researcher, equipping me with the perspectives and insights that shape all that I do as a researcher. ... Seen as virtuous, subjectivity is something to capitalize on rather than to exorcise. (Glesne & Peshkin, 1992, p. 104)

In a similar vein, Neumann and Peterson (1997) argued that muting the personal learning needs of the researcher would not produce better studies, but rather would dissolve important areas of investigation. They stated:

What imbues these authors' research with social value - what makes their studies compelling to those for whom they write - is their framing of these studies from within their own experiences of the problems they pursue, as opposed to relying on the experiences of others. Their work then emerges as a more personal statement of learning and thus more open to personal connections with the learning needs of others. (p. 244)

Motivated by Neumann and Peterson's argument (1997), we offer an example of a personal statement of learning. Our statement consists of the knowledge we constructed of our doctoral student experiences.

The remaining authors of this article assumed more of a participant role than that of author-researcher. However, as Jones in this special edition (2002) has argued, when it comes to the writing process, the line between author and participant is blurred. We agree with her assertion that the "text to be written should emerge in a process of co-- creation as participants' stories infuse researchers' interpretations" (p. 468). We embarked on this project in the spirit of co-- constructing the resultant text in an attempt to write against "Othering" (Fine, 1994).

Fine defined Othering as the process by which researchers speak "of" and "for" Others while occluding themselves and their own investments. We view the researcher and participant categories not as fixed and mutually exclusive but rather as existing along a continuum. Seen in this light, we sought to create a text that more closely resembled a co-construction project.

To obtain a holistic picture of our Latina/o doctoral student experiences, we outlined two research design goals: (a) capturing our interpretations of our individual experiences, and (b) obtaining a collective interpretation of our common experiences through group dialogue. Our interpretations of our individual experiences are discussed in a previous issue of the Journal of College Student Development (Gonzalez, Marin, Perez, Figueroa, Moreno, & Navia, 2001). Our goal for this article was to complete our holistic picture by presenting a collective interpretation of our common experiences vis-a-vis group dialogue. Because we believe, like other scholars (Glaser & Strauss, 1967; Lincoln & Guba, 1985), that it is important to understand participants' experiences inductively from their own points of view, we chose not to rely on any a priori theory. However, later in this article we discuss the findings in the context of the socialization of doctoral students.