Indonesian doctoral students’ negotiation of knowledge production in their doctoral research: A photovoice study

Doctoral supervision has been deemed as a site of power, knowledge production, and an effort in career progression, mediated by doctoral students and their supervisors. Extensive studies have looked at these interactions from multiple angles. Although research into doctoral supervision has been extensively documented, there lies a paucity of studies exploring the voices of doctoral students with regard to knowledge production during doctoral supervision using photovice artefacts. To fill this lacuna, the current photovoice study aims to inspect doctoral students’ voices in perceiving the process of negotiating knowledge with their supervisors during their doctoral supervision. A total of five Indonesian international students enrolled in different universities in Australia, the United Kingdom, Brunei Darussalam, and Taiwan reflected on their experiences with doctoral supervision. The analysis of participants’ photovoice revealed two main supervisory styles, namely co-constructed and superior or dominating, that determined the nature of negotiations of knowledge and showed whose legitimised voices were accommodated in doctoral supervision. Our findings suggest that socio-culturally constructed doctoral supervision and power relations need to be better addressed in the negotiations of knowledge production in doctoral supervision. These findings imply that doctoral education should seek a deep understanding of doctoral students’ socio-cultural elements and enact this into doctoral program design. © 2023, Western Australian Institute for Educational Research Inc.. All rights reserved.