The purpose of this article is to discuss our observations and insights into the challenges many doctoral learners face in writing their dissertations. In more than 30 combined years of mentoring doctoral learners, teaching content courses and chairing dissertation committees, we have experienced that doctoral learners seem to lack the basic skills to craft their dissertations. We refer to this as writing critically.
In this article, we present a thesis that writing critically requires thinking critically. Thinking critically necessitates reading critically and that requires purposeful reading. In many classrooms, during discussion, a student raises a thoughtful point, connects ideas across readings, and responds insightfully to classmates. However, when that same student submits a written assignment, the paper often reads as a series of disconnected summaries, or annotated bibliographies, rather than as presenting and supporting an argument. Many instructors recognize this disconnect between what students can articulate in discussion and what they demonstrate in writing.
The Persistent Faculty Complaint
Orally or in discussion postings, students engage complex ideas but struggle to demonstrate comparable reasoning in writing for assignments. The writing describes what authors wrote, more of a regurgitation, rather than effectively synthesizing sources into the context for their writing. Doctoral learners, in their coursework and carrying forward to the dissertation, write to a prompt, checking off the boxes, without insightful, and intellectual discourse. The purpose of a paper or the dissertation becomes meeting the stated purpose of the writing assignment, without including a deeper purpose for their writing.
The problem is not necessarily that students cannot think critically. Rather, the instructional sequence linking reading, thinking, and writing does not consistently prepare students to demonstrate that thinking in sustained written form. Students frequently learn to read for comprehension, discuss ideas collaboratively, and write assignments organized around sources rather than arguments. When faculty expect synthesis, prioritization, and intellectual positioning, students may not recognize that the rules of engagement have changed. This reframing shift often coincides with the move from master’s to doctoral work. This shift to the dissertation level moves attention away from writing to demonstrate understanding, towards writing to support a thesis.
Writing with Purpose
Our observations of many hundreds of doctoral learners in a variety of settings indicate that doctoral learners struggle to make the transition to doctoral-level writing. A primary reason for this seems to be that they do not recognize that the objectives have changed. Doctoral learners seem to get stuck in writing to demonstrate understanding of what they read. Clearly, understanding is essential, but, for doctoral learners, it is no longer the ultimate objective.
Doctoral learners must transition to writing to support a thesis. Each section and paragraph that a doctoral learner writes should have a clear purpose. The purpose indicates why they are writing something, but it is not necessarily the main point that they are trying to make. That main point is the thesis for the paragraph or section.
Doctoral-level writers must evaluate competing interpretations, reconcile evidence, and clarify their own positions through the act of writing. This cycle of evaluate-reconcile-clarify is iterative and, through this cycle, the doctoral learner develops the position they will support in their writing. Students may recognize complex ideas when prompted in conversation but struggle to organize those ideas into coherent written arguments. Their writing reveals whether students have learned to prioritize ideas, connect evidence, and articulate defensible claims. When it does not, perhaps the doctoral learner has not yet made the transition to doctoral-level work.
The Hidden Gap Between Reading and Writing
Reading, thinking, and writing are often treated as separate instructional activities rather than as components of a single academic reasoning process. Reading frequently becomes an exercise in comprehension rather than inquiry. Students focus on understanding what each author says rather than identifying patterns, tensions, or conceptual relationships among multiple sources. Writing then becomes a report on those readings. The result is writing organized around authors rather than ideas.
Many students develop source-based writing habits throughout earlier academic experiences. Assignments frequently reward accurate summaries, balanced presentation of viewpoints, and careful citation of individual sources. These habits are not inherently problematic, but they can reinforce a model of writing organized around authors rather than ideas. When students encounter assignments requiring synthesis, they may extend the structure they already know: one source at a time, connected by transitional language. The resulting papers often appear well-documented yet lack conceptual integration.
Annotated bibliography assignments illustrate this dynamic. When designed thoughtfully, annotated bibliographies encourage careful reading and evaluation of sources. However, they typically preserve a source-centered orientation: each entry focuses on a single text evaluated independently.
As Bryan and Graham (2020) noted, annotated bibliographies function most effectively as transitional tools. They help students develop evaluative reading habits but do not necessarily teach the integration of ideas across sources. The move from evaluation to synthesis, therefore, requires an additional instructional step that is not always visible to students. From a learning theory perspective, this transition from evaluating individual sources to synthesizing ideas across sources resembles what Meyer and Land (2005) described as a threshold concept—an intellectual shift that fundamentally changes how students understand and participate in a discipline.
One reason this lack of transition persists is that students often begin reading without a clear intellectual purpose. When reading is approached primarily as comprehension, students focus on understanding what each author says rather than examining relationships among ideas. Purposeful reading, by contrast, begins with a question or problem that guides attention across sources. When students read with a guiding purpose, they are more likely to compare arguments, identify patterns, and recognize unresolved issues. These relationships among ideas provide the foundation for synthesis and thesis development.
Synthesis
Synthesis requires that writers determine which ideas are central and which are peripheral. Students are frequently taught to present multiple perspectives fairly and avoid appearing biased. While this emphasis supports intellectual humility, it can also discourage students from articulating clear positions. At more advanced levels of academic writing, however, positioning becomes essential. Writers must explain how their interpretations relate to existing conversations in the literature.
What Faculty Can Do Differently
Relatively small adjustments in instructional design and faculty mindset can help students demonstrate critical reasoning more effectively.
- Assessing Form While Valuing Integration. While formatting, grammar, and citation style matter, when they dominate grading criteria and feedback, students infer that correctness outweighs conceptual integration. Constructive alignment theory (Biggs, 1996) suggests that students concentrate their effort on what assessment and feedback signal and what matters most. If synthesis and supporting a thesis are not explicitly rewarded, they may receive less attention.
- Clarify the Purpose of Reading. Reading assignments and dissertation committee feedback should encourage comparison and evaluation rather than simple comprehension. Questions and feedback that ask students to identify agreements, disagreements, and conceptual patterns across readings help shift attention from individual sources to relationships among ideas
- Require Idea-Centered Writing. Encouraging students to organize paragraphs around claims rather than authors promotes synthesis. One practical guideline is that each paragraph should integrate multiple sources supporting a single idea.
- Scaffold the Transition from Evaluation to Synthesis. Assignments such as annotated bibliographies can strengthen evaluative reading, but they should be followed by tasks that explicitly require integration across sources.
- Align Assessment with Priorities. If synthesis and prioritization matter, grading criteria and feedback should reflect those expectations. Rubrics can reward integration of sources, conceptual organization, and clarity of argument rather than simply counting citations.
These adjustments do not lower standards. Instead, they make expectations clearer and help students demonstrate the critical thinking faculty already expect.
Conclusion: Reframing the Problem Without Lowering Standards
The persistent gap between students’ understanding of doctoral-level expectations compared with master’s-level expectations may lead instructors to question whether students are developing strong critical thinking skills. Our experience is that the focus on critical thinking may be addressing the wrong problem. Too many doctoral students may simply not understand why they are reading and thinking and writing.
When reading assignments emphasize comparison, writing assignments prioritize ideas rather than sources, and assessment criteria reward synthesis, students begin to see how academic arguments are constructed. The challenge then shifts to cultivating critical reasoning evidenced in effective academic writing. However, the issue may not be whether students can think critically. The more productive question is whether instructional environments consistently cultivate the habits that allow critical reasoning to become visible in writing. When weaknesses appear, the solution is not to reduce expectations but to examine how those expectations have been communicated and supported. In many cases, the difficulty students experience with critical writing originates earlier in the reasoning process, when reading occurs without a clear intellectual purpose. By aligning reading, thinking, and writing more intentionally, instructors can create learning environments in which the critical reasoning students demonstrate in discussion becomes equally visible in their writing.
Dr. John Bryan, DBA, is a university professor, editor, and dissertation chair.
Dr. Donna Graham, PhD, is a university professor and dissertation chair.
References
Biggs, J. (1996). Enhancing teaching through constructive alignment. Higher Education, 32(3), 347–364. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00138871
Bryan, J., & Graham, D. (2020). Key elements for a doctoral annotated bibliography. Journal of Scholarly Engagement, 3(1), 43-49. Retrieved from https://scholarlyengagement.com/2020/06/30/key-elements-for-a-doctoral-annotated-bibliography/
Meyer, J. H. F., & Land, R. (2005). Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge. Higher Education, 49(3), 373–388. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-004-6779-5