Complexity of Academic Socialization of Historically Underrepresented Doctoral Students: De-Privileging Distinctions Between Macro-and-Micro-Theoretical Approaches

Abstract

This article represents a conceptual work that critiques and challenges traditional linear theoretical assumptions of academic socialization and integration that are often applied to research of diverse populations in academia in general and doctoral education specifically. The article further proposes a new conceptual framework of academic socialization as a meaning-making act of historically underrepresented doctoral students. The ultimate goal of the proposed framework is to reconcile the restrictive use of sociological macro- and micro- orientations to foreground possibilities of a conceptual and empirical focus on an individual meaning making act (as a form of individual agency) of historically underrepresented doctoral students within the critical contexts of academia. The proposed framework offers methodological and analytical tools for a more complex qualitative research and institutional/individual practice to account for increasingly diverse populations in higher education.