Editorial [Special issue : emerging scholars of education in Malta]

Abstract

The development of a highly competitive and knowledge-based economy is linked intrinsically to a country’s ability to produce more and better trained researchers (Kehm, 2006). This market-driven rationale is based on the assumption that researchers, who are often construed as scholars with a doctoral qualification, are needed to produce original research (Mendoza & Gardner, 2023). Indeed, the preparation of new scholars to conduct original research is a key purpose of doctoral education (Trafford & Leshem, 2009; Mendoza & Gardner, 2023). From this perspective, doctoral education serves as a formative experience for new scholars during which they: “… both understand what is known and discover what is yet unknown. They conserve the most valued knowledge of the past even as they examine it critically. They invent new forms of understanding as they move their fields ahead” (Walker et al., 2008, p. ix).