ABSTRACT
In recent years, models and practices of doctoral education have come under increasing scrutiny world-wide. There is a growing view that changes to research education are needed in order to cope with reforms to the higher education sector and in response to new kinds of knowledge generation and production. This critical questioning of doctoral education is not only evident within the academic and scholarly literature but is also reflected in the policies of governments and universities. As a result, it is not only the forms and provisions of doctoral education that are being critically questioned but also the associated pedagogy itself. It might be said that doctoral education now occupies an increasingly contested and reflexive space – a space operating at a number of different levels:
• At the government level, for example in relation to gaining value for money and providing for the needs of what has been termed the knowledge economy.
