Collaboration et construction identitaire d’une étudiante chercheuse au doctorat en éducation

The article describes the path taken by a doctoral student during her training supervised by a team composed of a director and of two assistant directors. Faced with the main challenge presented by this process, the relational dimension played a preponderant but often obscure role. The purpose of this article is to track down the significant steps and the characteristics of the collaboration experienced, with a supervision or an accompaniment pole. In order to grasp this complex process, the collaboration and accompaniment concepts are developed further. A documentary research process was conducted to complement self-explicitation and interview sessions with the thesis supervision team. The supervision process is presented from the angle of a collaboration in four phases: the apprentice, the intermediate transformation period, the journeyman and the master (Narcy-Combes, 2001). It highlights the conditions that promoted the tipping point towards autonomy as experienced by the doctoral student, which led to her identity building as a researcher. Confidence building and respect were the basic conditions towards identity transformation and autonomy. As crisis happened, they were managed from a mediation between the supervision and accompaniment poles embraced by different team members. This article provides an incursion, from the future researcher’s point of view, in the heart of the narrow collaboration process which took place between her and the members of her supervision team.