Doctoral Student Research Skills: Case of the University of Rwanda – College of Education

Abstract

Although many universities offer Doctoral programs by research in the field of education, students’ preparation to conduct doctoral research has remained uncertain. This paper reports the knowledge and skills of doctorate students of one college of the University of Rwanda acquired during their initial training on academic and scientific writing in terms of research methodology. We administered a questionnaire to 11 doctorate students before and after the training to reveal the training practices and analysed the content of two research proposals. Results show that participants had a moderate knowledge of educational research methodologies before the program and were improved after the training. We, therefore, concluded that further enhancement of training on research skills amongst doctorate students in education is essential to ensure the production of very knowledgeable and skilful students before engaging in any research for publication. We expect that this paper will contribute to the improvement of Doctoral programmes.

Keywords: Academic writing, doctoral research, doctorate students, research knowledge.