Now I know why I have been knocking my head against a brick wall: doctoral candidates and stuck places

The research reported here was motivated by a comment from a doctoral candidate. I had asked her, as a Research Assistant not as a candidate working with me, to check a manuscript on Threshold Concepts in doctoral education in preparation for publication. Her main comment after reading the paper was, “If only I’d known that I was just in a stuck place it would have made it so much easier”. So began work with doctoral candidates to help them understand doctoral study as: an extended period of learning where the candidate might be in a liminal state until crossing the threshold of completion and ‘graduation’, and a period made up of a number of threshold crossings as candidates understand the various concepts that challenge them (Kiley, 2009), each preceded by a state of liminality and maybe being in a ‘stuck place’