The Role of Intellectual Humility in Dissertation Completion
by Dia Sekayi, Roni Ellington, Benjamin Welsh & Kmt G. Shockley
This study examines the narrated perceptions of doctoral students regarding their development as scholars and the impact of that development on the dissertation process. The purpose of this study was to substantiate and add nuance to the Scholar Transformation Theory with empirical data using the following research questions: how do advanced doctoral students narrate their view of themselves in terms of the phases of the Scholar Transformation Theory continuum and where do advanced doctoral students place the locus of control regarding the writing of the dissertation? Individual interview data were collected in 2020 from a sample of doctoral students who completed a Summer Dissertation Intensive. Interviews were conducted with nine individuals who gave informed consent and subsequently scheduled an interview. Hybrid thematic analysis was used to handle the data. The findings suggest alignment between participant self-placement on the Scholar Transformation Theory continuum and locus of control language used in the interview as a precursor to successful movement through the dissertation process. The concept of intellectual humility and its less productive counterpart, intellectual overconfidence/arrogance, captured the implications of the alignment or misalignment between self-placement on the continuum and locus of control language; the former facilitating success and the latter, stagnation.