What’s Involved in the Work of Dissertation Advising? An Interview with Jeremy Kilpatrick and Some Personal Reflections

Abstract

This chapter addresses the mathematics education doctorate and, in particular, the dissertation or thesis. The core of this chapter is an interview with Jeremy Kilpatrick in an effort to document Jeremy’s own advising style. The interview is situated within an attempt to bring out more general issues that are in play in how a mathematics education scholar might advise or direct a doctoral dissertation, fueled mostly by my own introspection into this role. After brief descriptions of dissertation experiences in other fields and personal descriptions of my own experience working on my dissertation, I document Jeremy’s responses to the question of how he sees his style as dissertation advisor. I then propose that the dissertation work develops in response to four stakeholders: (1) the student, (2) the advisor, (3) the field, and (4) the institution. In an exercise of speculation, I examine those stakeholders in terms of how they could conceivably be invested in the successful completion of a doctoral dissertation. I go back to the interview with Jeremy Kilpatrick to see how Jeremy responds to the question of how and how much each of those stakeholders matter in his own dissertation advising style and how he views the dissertation.