Sense and sensibility: making sense of a Professional Doctorate

This paper offers a retrospective reflexive narrative of my experience of sensemaking and identity on a Professional Doctorate Programme. It discusses some of the challenges of professional doctoral learning, and some of the nuances of following a ‘practitioner doctorate’. Sensemaking and habitus provide a method of conceptualizing how I positioned myself in relation to particular pre‐existing discourses, and how this in turn influenced my identity as student/researcher/practitioner. The complexities of practitioner focused doctorates involve dealing with the ambiguity and uncertainty of multiple identities. Concluding comments include considering a Chair of Learner Identity, which is influenced by both structural and individual factors.