摘要：Along with the development of science, the need for academicians is also increasing day by day. In many countries doctorate is a prerequisite for academicians. So, doctorate is very important for the quality of higher education and advancement of science. Therefore, the challenges of doctoral education period to be identified and to be solved by taking the opinions of doctoral students whom will be the future academicians. In this sense, this study aimed to describe challenges of doctoral students and their strategies to overcome these challenges. For this aim, semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten doctoral students in the Department of Primary or Secondary Science and Mathematics Education in Karadeniz Technical University. Challenges faced by participants and their strategies were analyzed by using qualitative methods. Two researchers analyzed the data and thematic coding was used. After two researcher coded data the reliability of the analysis was calculated as 0.86. The findings are presented with three main themes: challenges, strategies and suggestions. It was seen that the most important challenges of the students were related with their supervisors, that they usually used self abandonment strategies to solve these challenges and that their made suggestions usually related to the challenges and also strategies. Considering the challenges faced by students as well as their suggestions to cope with these, solution proposals which may contribute in the development of doctoral education in Turkey were made.
