Taking the “blues” out of the Doctoral Supervision “Magic”
Doctoral Supervision has become a problem child for most universities in recent years. This is primarily driven by poor management of expectations across three broad groups, the universities and their postgraduate research offices; supervisors from the academic staff; and students whose motivation, and capacity, is clearly misunderstood.
My experience of doctoral supervision and examination spans geographic contexts and institutions from Africa, through Europe and South Asia, to the West Indies.
So when I came across the Researcher Education and Development Scholarship (REDS) conference organised by the University of Leeds, I thought I should participate and establish whether I was alone in my thinking.
It turns out I wasn’t. Here’s a brief summary of the titles from that event, and if we tow the line of “judging a book by its cover,” you would get the message.
It can be surmised, from the featured presentations at the conference, that the doctoral journey has its twists and turns —from the allusion of magic in “Doctoral Supervision — now you see it, now you don’t” —to the lack of deeper understanding of what the process entails or should entail —something that resonates with my own contribution—“Supervision challenges: What do we know and what can we do about it?”
This lack of understanding is also captured in “Becoming comfortable with the unknown: Supervising practice-based research as a non-practitioner,” with the process having a darker side in “Mirror, mirror on the wall: Is the current doctoral researcher well-being crisis being propagated by supervisors’ past experiences?”
Perhaps, universities may be guilty of “Putting the cart before the horse? Harnessing researcher development activities to impact institutional policy,” especially in these covidian times, “Using an online peer-assisted learning scheme to support the supervision and professional development of doctoral researchers.”
Ultimately, this may well be the time for a major rethink in terms of the co-learning as suggested in “A Team Effort? Addressing boundaries between supervisors and researcher developers,” as well as in “It takes a village to raise a child – is the same true for PhD researchers?”
The support should also extend to the supply side especially in terms of training, “PhD supervisor support for research impact training and planning” in order for the doctoral supervision meal to be a palatable experience.
