结论
访谈材料并未穷尽改善教学实践、丰富课程内容的全部策略。在多学科领域中,博士生项目的挑战在于如何保证教育的质量、多样性、整合性,同时又不乏深度与广度(Hall,2006;Hyrnan,2006)。这可能提示我们需要其他学习机会(例如课程作业)来拓展学科知识。另一个问题是,多学科领域的学生仅仅在一个分支领域或一个实验室工作是否足够,澳大利亚的大多数学生就是这样,这不同于美国让学生到不同的实验室轮转的做法。不过,最根本的是学生在做选择时要与导师协商,以适合其个人的需求。
此外,解决博士生“课程”范围的问题,需要来自学生所属研究团队或学术单位的关注,而不是完全将这一问题留给导师个人。这意味着在重要性排序上要做出集体改变。有趣的是,师生在调查中给“学生应当有创造性,能独立思考”(问题9)打出了高分,但是对“导师应当鼓励学生对研究主题外的领域产生兴趣”(问题13)的评分则较低、排序靠后。在其专业领域内,根据学生的职业意愿将其区分开来并不能使学生从中受益,无论他们希望成为研究科学家,或者希望在诸如商业、管理或公共服务部门寻求发展。无论学生将来从事何种职业,如果他们日后有能力与研究资助机构、公众进行有效的交流,或是在非学术领域应用其所受的科学训练,那么他们就需要在更广阔的学术共同体内接纳智识与政策的发展变化。
在本章,我们提出了自然科学领域内教学与博士生课程范围中存在的主要问题,并且集中讨论了学生与导师在多大程度上认可“研究能力的发展”,以及“让学生为多样化的职业选择做好准备”的重要性,此外我们也关注了导师为实现这些结果所采用的策略。在追求高效利用资源和时间的压力下,在增加研究成果的压力下,强调更多的课程内容似乎不太可能。不过,从科研实践情境中的学习课程这一视角出发,就有可能重新理解这种课程困境。批判性地提升自然科学博士生教育中的教学实践,产生了丰富的学习课程,进而能够拓展博士生课程。这种课程提供了一系列学习机会,学生从中可以发展科学的思维方式,其独立性、适应力和创造力可以得到培养。
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【注释】
[1]在这个问题上,不同的性别群组间没有明显的差异。与导师的指导经验(指导学生的数量从1~25)、学生完成学位所用的时间(0.3~6.6 年)这些问题相关的回答,均没有明显的差异。