phd supervision mentorship

Ten types of PhD supervisor relationships – which is yours?

Lecturer, Griffith University

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It’s no secret that getting a PhD is a stressful process .

One of the factors that can help or hinder this period of study is the relationship between supervisor and student. Research shows that effective supervision can significantly influence the quality of the PhD and its success or failure.

PhD supervisors tend to fulfil several functions: the teacher; the mentor who can support and facilitate the emotional processes; and the patron who manages the springboard from which the student can leap into a career.

There are many styles of supervision that are adopted – and these can vary depending on the type of research being conducted and subject area.

Although research suggests that providing extra mentoring support and striking the right balance between affiliation and control can help improve PhD success and supervisor relationships, there is little research on the types of PhD-supervisor relationships that occur.

From decades of experience of conducting and observing PhD supervision, I’ve noticed ten types of common supervisor relationships that occur. These include:

The candidate is expected to replicate the field, approach and worldview of the supervisor, producing a sliver of research that supports the supervisor’s repute and prestige. Often this is accompanied by strictures about not attempting to be too “creative”.

Cheap labour

The student becomes research assistant to the supervisor’s projects and becomes caught forever in that power imbalance. The patron-client roles often continue long after graduation, with the student forever cast in the secondary role. Their own work is often disregarded as being unimportant.

The “ghost supervisor”

The supervisor is seen rarely, responds to emails only occasionally and has rarely any understanding of either the needs of the student or of their project. For determined students, who will work autonomously, the ghost supervisor is often acceptable until the crunch comes - usually towards the end of the writing process. For those who need some support and engagement, this is a nightmare.

The relationship is overly familiar, with the assurance that we are all good friends, and the student is drawn into family and friendship networks. Situations occur where the PhD students are engaged as babysitters or in other domestic roles (usually unpaid because they don’t want to upset the supervisor by asking for money). The chum, however, often does not support the student in professional networks.

Collateral damage

When the supervisor is a high-powered researcher, the relationship can be based on minimal contact, because of frequent significant appearances around the world. The student may find themselves taking on teaching, marking and administrative functions for the supervisor at the cost of their own learning and research.

The practice of supervision becomes a method of intellectual torment, denigrating everything presented by the student. Each piece of research is interrogated rigorously, every meeting is an inquisition and every piece of writing is edited into oblivion. The student is given to believe that they are worthless and stupid.

Creepy crawlers

Some supervisors prefer to stalk their students, sometimes students stalk their supervisors, each with an unhealthy and unrequited sexual obsession with the other. Most Australian universities have moved actively to address this relationship, making it less common than in previous decades.

Captivate and con

Occasionally, supervisor and student enter into a sexual relationship. This can be for a number of reasons, ranging from a desire to please to a need for power over youth. These affairs can sometimes lead to permanent relationships. However, what remains from the supervisor-student relationship is the asymmetric set of power balances.

Almost all supervision relationships contain some aspect of the counsellor or mentor, but there is often little training or desire to develop the role and it is often dismissed as pastoral care. Although the life experiences of students become obvious, few supervisors are skilled in dealing with the emotional or affective issues.

Colleague in training

When a PhD candidate is treated as a colleague in training, the relationship is always on a professional basis, where the individual and their work is held in respect. The supervisor recognises that their role is to guide through the morass of regulation and requirements, offer suggestions and do some teaching around issues such as methodology, research practice and process, and be sensitive to the life-cycle of the PhD process. The experience for both the supervisor and student should be one of acknowledgement of each other, recognising the power differential but emphasising the support at this time. This is the best of supervision.

There are many university policies that move to address a lot of the issues in supervisor relationships , such as supervisor panels, and dedicated training in supervising and mentoring practices. However, these policies need to be accommodated into already overloaded workloads and should include regular review of supervisors.

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• Correspondence
• Published: 11 May 2017

PhD supervisors: be better mentors

• Devang Mehta 1 &
• Konstantinos Vavitsas 2  

Nature volume  545 ,  page 158 ( 2017 ) Cite this article

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As steering-committee members of the European Association of Students and Post-docs in Synthetic Biology, we find it questionable and unhelpful to blame research students for the breakdown in communication with supervisors ( E. Diamandis Nature 544 , 129; 2017 ).

We agree that PhD students should be proactive in their investigations and in using their supervisor's expertise. First, however, they need to find their feet. They are largely naive about the highly competitive nature of science when they start in a lab, and often have no experience of project management. PhD students are not trainees or employees: they need guidance and supervision, particularly during the first two years.

PhD students today face more challenges than most professors ever did. The supervisor has mentoring responsibilities beyond academic performance, including the student's well-being. Many PhD students crack under the strain of publishing pressures and deteriorating career prospects (see go.nature.com/2pt9q6j ). Unless underpinned by appropriate support, meetings with the supervisor risk reinforcing the student's fear of failure.

European universities are tackling this problem by providing more courses and resources to train principal investigators in management and leadership. Their widespread requirement for PhD candidates to have completed a master's degree before enrolling means that students are better equipped to deal with the few islands of success in the sea of failures typical of the research environment.

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What Makes A Good PhD Supervisor?

• By Dr Harry Hothi
• August 12, 2020

A good PhD supervisor has a track record of supervising PhD students through to completion, has a strong publication record, is active in their research field, has sufficient time to provide adequate supervision, is genuinely interested in your project, can provide mentorship and has a supportive personality.

Introduction

The indicators that you’ll have the best chance of succeeding in your PhD project are multi-factorial. You’ll need to secure funding, find a research project that you’re interested in and is within your academic area of expertise, maybe even write your own research proposal, and find a good supervisor that will help guide you through PhD life.

As you research more into life as a doctoral student, you’ll appreciate that choosing a good supervisor is one of the most important factors that can influence the success of your project, and even If you complete your PhD at all. You need to find a good supervisory relationship with someone who has a genuine research interest in your project.

This page outlines the top qualities to look for as indicators of an ideal PhD supervisor. But before we get to that, we should be clear on precisely what the supervisor is there to do, and what they are not.

The Role of a PhD Supervisor

A PhD supervisor is there to guide you as you work through PhD life and help you make informed decisions about how you shape your PhD project. The key elements of their supervisory role include:

• To help ensure that you stay on schedule and maintain constant progress of your research so that you ultimately finish your PhD within your intended time frame, typically three to four years.
• To advise and guide you based on their knowledge and expertise in your subject area.
• To help you in the decision-making process as you design, prepare and execute your study design.
• To work with you as you analyse your raw data and begin to draw conclusions about key findings that are coming out of your research.
• To provide feedback and edits where necessary on your manuscripts and elements of your thesis writing.
• To encourage and motivate you and provide ongoing support as a mentor.
• To provide support at a human level, beyond just the academic challenges.

It’s important that you know from the outset what a supervisor isn’t there to do, so that your expectations of the PhDstudent-supervisor relationship are correct. A supervisor cannot and should not create your study design or tell you how you should run your experiments or help you write your thesis. Broadly speaking, you as a PhD student will create, develop and refine content for your thesis, and your supervisor will help you improve this content by providing you with continuous constructive feedback.

There’s a balance to be found here in what makes a good PhD supervisor, ranging from one extreme of providing very little support during a research project, to becoming too involved in the running of the project to the extent that it takes away from it being an independent body of work by the graduate student themselves. Ultimately, what makes a good supervisor is someone you can build a rapport with, who helps bring out the best in you to produce a well written, significant body of research that contributes novel findings to your subject area.

Read on to learn the key qualities you should consider when looking for a good PhD supervisor.

Qualities to Look For in A Good PhD Supervisor

1. a track record of successful phd student supervision.

A quick first check to gauge how good a prospective supervisor is is to find out how many students they’ve successfully supervised in the past; i.e. how many students have earned their PhD under their supervision. Ideally, you’d want to go one step further and find out:

• How many students they’ve supervised in total previously and of those, what percentage have gone onto gain their PhDs; however, this level of detail may not always be easy to find online. Most often though, a conversation with a potential supervisor and even their current or previous students should help you get an idea of this.
• What were the project titles and specifically the areas of research that they supervised on? Are these similar to your intended project or are they significantly different from the type of work performed in the academic’s lab in the past? Of the current students in the lab, are there any projects that could complement yours
• Did any of the previous PhD students publish the work of their doctoral research in peer-reviewed journals and present at conferences? It’s a great sign if they have, and in particular, if they’re named first authors in some or all of these publications.

This isn’t to say that a potential supervisor without a track record of PhD supervision is necessarily a bad fit, especially if the supervisor is relatively new to the position and is still establishing their research group. It is, however, reassuring if you know they have supervision experience in supporting students to successful PhD completion.

2. Is an Expert in their Field of Research

As a PhD candidate, you will want your supervisor to have a high level of research expertise within the field that your own research topic sits in. This expertise will be essential if they are to help guide you through your research and keep you on track to what is most novel and impactful to your research area.

Your supervisor doesn’t necessarily need to have all the answers to questions that arise in your specific PhD project, but should know enough to be able to have useful conversations about your research. It will be your responsibility to discover the answers to problems as they arise, and you should even expect to complete your PhD with a higher level of expertise about your project than your supervisor.

The best way to determine if your supervisor has the expertise to supervise you properly is to look at their publication track record. The things you need to look for are:

• How often do they publish papers in peer-reviewed journals, and are they still actively involved in new papers coming out in the research field?
• What type of journals have they published in? For example, are most papers in comparatively low impact factor journals, or do they have at least some in the ‘big’ journals within your field?
• How many citations do they have from their research? This can be a good indicator of the value that other researchgroups place on these publications; having 50 papers published that have been cited only 10 times may (but not always) suggest that this research is not directly relevant to the subject area or focus from other groups.
• How many co-authors has your potential supervisor published with? Many authors from different institutions is a good indicator of a vast collaborative professional network that could be useful to you.

There’re no hard metrics here as to how many papers or citations an individual needs to be considered an expert, and these numbers can vary considerably between different disciplines. Instead, it’s better to get a sense of where your potential supervisor’s track record sits in comparison to other researchers in the same field; remember that it would be unfair to directly compare the output of a new university lecturer with a well-established professor who has naturally led more research projects.

Equally, this exercise is a good way for you to better understand how interested your supervisor will be in your research; if you find that much of their research output is directly related to your PhD study, then it’s logical that your supervisor has a real interest here. While the opposite is not necessarily true, it’s understandable from a human perspective that a supervisor may be less interested in a project that doesn’t help to further their own research work, especially if they’re already very busy.

Two excellent resources to look up publications are Google Scholar and ResearchGate .

3. Has Enough Time to Provide Good PhD Supervision

This seems like an obvious point, but it’s worth emphasising: how smoothly your PhD goes and ultimately how successful it is, will largely be influenced by how much time your research supervisor has to provide guidance, constructive academic advice and mentorship. The fact that your supervisor is the world’s leading expert in your field becomes a moot point if they don’t have time to meet you.

A good PhD supervisor will take the time to meet with you regularly in person (ideally) or remotely and be reachable and responsive to questions as and when they arise (e.g. through email or video calling). As a student, you want to have a research environment where you know you can drop by your supervisors’ office for a quick chat, or that you’ll see them around the university regularly; chance encounters and corridor discussions are sometimes the most impactful when working through problems.

Unsurprisingly, however, most academics who are well-known experts in their field are also usually some of the busiest too. It’s common for established academic supervisors to have several commitments competing for their time. These can include teaching and supervising undergraduate students, masters students and post-docs, travelling to collaborator meetings or invited talks, managing the growth of their academic department or graduate school, sitting on advisory boards and writing grants for funding applications. Beware of the other obligations they may have and how this could impact your work relationship.

You’ll need to find a balance here to find a PhD supervisor who has the academic knowledge to support you, but also the time to do so; talking to their current and past students will help you get a sense of this. It’s also reassuring to know that your supervisor has a permanent position within your university and has no plans for a sabbatical during your time as a PhD researcher.

4. Is a Good Mentor with a Supportive Personality

A PhD project is an exercise in independently producing a substantial body of research work; the primary role of your supervisor should be to provide mentoring to help you achieve this. You want to have a supervisor with the necessary academic knowledge, but it is just as important to have a supportive supervisor who is actively willing and able to provide you constructive criticism on your work in a consistent manner. You’ll likely get a sense of their personality during your first few meetings with them when discussing your research proposal; if you feel there’s a disconnect between you as a PhD student and your potential supervisor at this stage, it’s better to decide on other options with different supervisors.

A good supervisor will help direct you towards the best outcomes in your PhD research when you reach crossroads. They will work with you to develop a structure for your thesis and encourage you to set deadlines to work to and push you to achieve these. A good mentor should be able to recognise when you need more support in a specific area, be it a technical academic hurdle or simply some guidance in developing efficient work patterns and routines, and have the communication skills to help you recognise and overcome them.

A good supervisor should share the same mindset as you about finishing your PhD within a reasonable time frame; in the UK this would be within three to four years as a full-time university student. Their encouragement should reflect this and (gently) push you to set and reach mini-milestones throughout your project to ensure you stay on track with progress. This is a great example of when a supportive personality and positive attitude is essential for you both to maintain a good professional relationship throughout a PhD. The ideal supervisor will bring out the best in you without becoming prescriptive in their guidance, allowing you the freedom to develop your own working style.

Finding a PhD has never been this easy – search for a PhD by keyword, location or academic area of interest.

To sum up, the qualities you should look for in a good PhD supervisor are that they have a strong understanding of your research field, demonstrated by regular and impactful publications, have a proven track record of PhD supervision, have the time to support you, and will do so by providing mentorship rather than being a ‘boss’.

As a final point, if you’re considering a research career after you finish your PhD journey, get a sense of if there may any research opportunities to continue as a postdoc with the supervisor if you so wanted.

Is it really possible to do a PhD while working? The answer is ‘yes’, but it comes with several ‘buts’. Read our post to find out if it’s for you.

Do you need to have published papers to do a PhD? The simple answer is no but it could benefit your application if you can.

Self-plagiarism is when you try and pass off work that you’ve previously done as something that is completely new.

Join thousands of other students and stay up to date with the latest PhD programmes, funding opportunities and advice.

Browse PhDs Now

Academic conferences are expensive and it can be tough finding the funds to go; this naturally leads to the question of are academic conferences worth it?

The answer is simple: there is no age limit for doing a PhD; in fact, the oldest known person to have gained a PhD in the UK was 95 years old.

Dr Grayson gained her PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell University in 2016. She now works in industry as an Applications Portfolio Manager and is a STEM Speaker and Advocate.

Dr Pujada obtained her PhD in Molecular Cell Biology at Georgia State University in 2019. She is now a biomedical faculty member, mentor, and science communicator with a particular interest in promoting STEM education.

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Researcher, coach, mentor: the task of the PhD supervisor

Good phd supervision is life-changing – and not only for the few who succeed in making it as researchers.

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A staggering statistic about doctoral education, published by the Royal Society, suggests that just 3.5 per cent of science PhDs in the UK move on to permanent research posts.

The stat is a little old now, appearing in a 2010 report, and there has been some debate since about its accuracy – although the suggested upwards revision was only by a few percentage points.

Nevertheless, the rate of attrition from a doctorate to a career in academia is astonishingly high.

There is an argument that this brutal filtering process ensures that only the best rise to run labs, and that those without the necessary attributes are done a favour when they are siphoned off elsewhere.

But there is no doubt that the majority of PhD students harbour ambitions to make it as researchers, and that doctoral training has in the past given little time or attention to the alternatives.

Perhaps this is now changing. In our cover story , we ask six experienced PhD supervisors for their reflections and advice about how best to fulfil the role, and most, in different ways, reflect on their responsibility to develop doctoral students for a life full of possibilities, rather than just one.

For Philip Moriarty, the fundamental responsibility is still to nurture independence such that the doctoral candidate ceases to be a student and becomes a peer.

Doing this effectively, he suggests, requires complete honesty: “In physics we’ve become rather more open with PhD applicants in recent years about their chances of ultimately securing an academic position, should that be their goal,” he writes. “Let’s go one step further and be entirely upfront about the level of independence and self-direction involved in a PhD.”

Another of our contributors, Clare Kelly, also acknowledges that there will be times when “a gap remains between expectations and student progress”, advising that in such cases “stepping off the PhD track can often be a sensible option, and should be thought of as goal adjustment, not defeat”.

A third, Jennifer Schnellmann, points out that such pragmatism is essential when PhD dropout rates are approaching 50 per cent in some disciplines in the US. But she also suggests that it is incumbent on supervisors to think more flexibly about their charges' possible futures.

“In a time of immense innovation, fresh thoughts about employment trajectories should be equally novel,” she argues. “A student who ends up working outside academia should not be regarded by their supervisor as a failed self-cloning experiment. A PhD teaches students how to think, but we can broaden the scope of our mentoring to augment research skills with practical talents that build resilience and hone the interpersonal intelligence that is valuable in a wide range of careers.”

None of which is to suggest that the primary role of a PhD supervisor – preparing young researchers for a life furthering the boundaries of knowledge – is in any way diminished.

The lifelong impact that experienced academics can have on those just starting out was vividly described in our opinion pages last week by Alix Dietzel , who reflected on the personal legacy of the late David Held, professor of politics and international relations, who examined her PhD thesis. His support, kindness and engagement with her research – which began but by no means ended on the day of her PhD viva – had such an effect on her, she wrote, that “I honestly don’t know where I’d be if we hadn’t met. What David did for me, and for my career, can never be repaid. He built up my confidence, encouraging me to believe in myself not just as a scholar but as a person. He was truly a mentor in every sense of the word.”

There is no doubt that PhD supervision can be a tough gig. And yes, supporting a talented early career academic emerging from doctoral chrysalis post viva is different from supervising a spectrum of candidates including those without the necessary spark or application to grow wings. But as an academic eulogy – and reminder of what it’s all about – it doesn’t get much better than that.

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How to be a PhD supervisor

The relationship between PhD students and their supervisors is often said to be the most intense in the academy, with huge implications for student success. Yet most supervisors receive little if any training. Here, six academics give their take on how to approach it 

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The recent death of politics academic David Held left Alix Dietzel shocked and guilty. Why did no one warn her she could feel like that?

Effective PhD Supervision – Chapter One: Introduction

• by: Ahmed A. Wadee, Moyra Keane, Ton Dietz & Driekie Hay

Foreword by Ms. M. Metcalfe

I am very pleased to present this second edition of the South Africa-Netherlands Research Programme on Alternatives in Development (SANPAD) Supervision Workbook.

The Workbook is yet another contribution by SANPAD towards improving the quality of supervision of doctoral students in South Africa. The Department of Higher Education and Training is particularly encouraged by these efforts, as they continue to enhance the overall quality of our PhD graduates and future academics. PhD qualifications are generally considered to be the first real entry points into the rigorous world of research. As a result, the focus on improving the academic experience of students at this level through improved supervision and mentoring will go a long way towards increasing the overall numbers of PhD graduates at our institutions.

It has become clear that although the number of students enrolling for PhD studies in South Africa has increased over the years, a large proportion of these students do not complete their studies. The reasons for this are many, among them the relationships between supervisors and their students and the overall quality of supervision. The difficulties often stem from the fact that not all supervisors have been properly trained for supervision duties. The mistake that is often made in higher education institutions across the globe is to assume that every academic, by virtue of his or her experience in teaching or research, knows what is required to supervise postgraduate students. Studies show that this is not usually the case and, in fact, academics need proper training and support if they are to effectively carry out their supervision responsibilities. This Workbook will provide a useful guide for both supervisors and PhD candidates on how to structure their working relationships into better interaction and supervision experiences.

This book sets out to serve as a challenge for improving PhD supervision, mentoring and coaching both in South Africa and in the Netherlands. It can be utilised as a training manual for supervisors in both countries. The book is also easy to use, as it provides practical examples and scenarios. Moreover, it provides strategies on how to deal with some of the challenges commonly experienced by both supervisors and candidates during PhD supervision, mentoring and coaching. For these reasons, I offer my support for this publication.

Finally, I would like to thank the individual authors of each section of this book for their hard work in putting together such an important text. My sincere thanks also go to the people and institutions that have provided support for the production of this book. I really hope that this resource will stimulate and inform. In this way it will contribute positively to the improvement of our postgraduate students and research system.

MS M. METCALFE

DG: HIGHER EDUCATION AND TRAINING

Chapter 1 – INTRODUCTION

1.1       Background to this Workbook

SANPAD (South Africa-Netherlands Research Programme on Alternatives in Development) has had a proud history of over ten years in providing a platform for promoting a research culture in South Africa in partnership with the Netherlands. SANPAD’s flagship programme has been its research capacity building programme for pre-doctoral candidates. Two hundred and thirty candidates were selected for the RCI programme during the period of 2002-2008; all candidates registered for their PhD degrees. Of these, 125 have graduated from their respective universities, and the remaining 105 candidates who registered between 2005 and 2008 are expected to complete their PhDs and graduate by the end of 2010.

Following the first edition, the approaches to supervision and mentoring have evolved over time (with some new facilitators), but the essence of running the workshops from which this publication emanates has essentially remained the same. However, in this second edition, as implied by the revised title, we have included coaching as an important means of promoting graduate student success. This expands the coverage and includes numerous improvements to the original material. The first edition of this workbook filled an obvious gap at the time and met with gratifying reception from the academic community both in the Netherlands and Southern Africa, but there were areas that required further expansion and new information needed to be included. The PhD candidates, their supervisors and the facilitators in the Research Capacity programme (RCI) were a valuable source of information that motivated the authors to revise the first edition. Hence, the second addition was born. The changes in the second edition respond to the experiences of both the students and the facilitators in the SANPAD pre-doctoral programme and the input that we received from the broader academic community in South Africa over the last five years. More importantly, the book engages readers in dialogue and active reflection on the strategies of effective supervision of PhDs. Accessibly written, it encourages supervisors to reflect on and enhance their research supervision practice with a diversity of students on a variety of research projects. There is a special focus on research skills development and on supporting students through and beyond the examination process.

High quality postgraduate education is of central importance to the creation of the ever more highly skilled workforce that is necessary if our country and continent is to flourish in an increasingly complex and competitive world. It also brings great benefit to individuals and, through them, to society as a whole. Over the past decade we have witnessed some really quite dramatic and challenging changes in the shape, nature and volume of education at this level; changes that not only support our immediate needs for the workforce and knowledge-based economy but also reflect today’s remarkable and rapidly advancing technology. Of course, such changes don’t come for free and I am only too well aware of the various pressures to which postgraduate education is subject, pressures that in turn impact upon staff and students alike. It is against this backdrop that we present this comprehensive workbook on supervision and mentorship.

The first edition was immensely successful, as is so evident from the positive feedback that we received. The book has been most notably recommended as reading for many postgraduate programmes on the African Continent and so has had a much wider remit. I am convinced that this new edition will be even more successful than the first, successful with both postgraduate students and their supervisors.

‘If only this book had been available when I was a PhD student’

1.2       South African Perspectives on the PhD

Since 1994, South African higher education has experienced a major transformation – particularly in redressing the educational backlogs and needs of previously disadvantaged students. A lot has been achieved in widening access for black students at the undergraduate level, specifically. However, with regard to postgraduate students and research output, the system is not yet making the progress desired, since insufficient numbers of black and women postgraduate students obtain doctoral degrees. Subsequently, institutions find it hard to reach staff equity targets and not enough black supervisors exist to serve as role models for black students. The Education White Paper 3 sounds the alert about the ‘insufficient research capacity in higher education that is amongst others poorly coordinated and inadequately linked to postgraduate studies.’ [1] This paper has also prioritised the access of black and women students to master’s, doctoral and postdoctoral programmes. These race and gender imbalances are found in the demographic composition of researchers in higher education, research councils and private-sector research establishments.

The participation and completion rates of black postgraduate students are crucial in order to deal with employment equity targets and the creation of a new generation of scholars/academics in South Africa. Although progress has been made in terms of the staff compilation of higher education institutions and black academics now constitute approximately 30% of the higher education workforce, they still produce less than 10% of all peer-reviewed articles in the latter part of the previous decade. In terms of equity, black students constitute about 30% of all master’s and doctoral enrolments in higher education. However, they only constitute about 20% of the postgraduate enrolments at the historically white universities. It thus seems that in the case of research, which includes master’s and doctoral degrees, it has been more difficult to break down the apartheid legacy than it has in terms of student access, research funding and staffing. [2]

The training of supervisors and promoters is becoming increasingly important as is the need to change dated ways of providing supervision. We need to consider how cultures meet, what kind of interactions should take place, and how applicable and acceptable the methods are for postgraduate students. The realities of a complex supervisory relationship, where colonial/West and African, the scholastically advantaged and disadvantaged, and a number of different cultures and languages interact, often with conflicting and deviating political and worldviews coming together, have not yet been researched sufficiently within the new higher education dispensation.

1.2.1    Complexities in postgraduate supervision

The predominant assumptions and values that have characterised postgraduate supervisory practices in the South African higher education system are mainly derived from aspects of European culture. However, higher education is a narrow culture that rewards specific ways of knowing and instinctively discounts other ways of knowing (nonverbal, empathetic, visual, symbolic or nuanced communication are often not valued, for example). Accepted postgraduate supervisory practices usually conform to the traditional ways of knowledge creation, research paradigms and worldviews, and utilise one specific methodology to oversee postgraduate research. What has thus emerged in the South African higher education system is a lack of conscious cultural identity among postgraduate students in higher education, since in most cases a single common norm is advocated and the culture-conscious postgraduate student is viewed as frivolous.

1.2.2    Supervisory challenges in the Southern African context

An array of challenges still face postgraduate supervision in the South African context, amongst them, inadequate academic literacy and writing skills, power relations, and inadequate preparation in research methodology.

1.2.2.1 Academic literacy skills

A great area of concern is the inadequate academic literacy levels of postgraduate students whose mother tongue is not English, as it is expected from them to write and articulate their ideas at the level at which they are working and thinking. Working in another language clearly hinders this. Often students need to translate what they hear and read. This slows down postgraduate students’ thinking and expression, impeding thought processes.

1.2.3    Power relations in postgraduate supervision

Power relations between supervisors and students usually emanate from the authority position of the supervisor, exacerbated in the case of non-traditional postgraduate students who work in English as a second (third, fourth or fifth) language. In a multi-cultural supervisory relationship, it is imperative to reflect on whether pedagogical approaches to supervision and research, and the suggested values and outcomes underpinning these, are themselves culture- and value-free or a product of cultural ideologies. In the South African context non-traditional postgraduate students and those representing first generation postgraduate students are expected to fit into the culture and practices of historically advantaged (predominantly white) higher education institutions and are expected to assimilate into these institutions’ beliefs and practices. This needs to be done with great sensitivity and to be built on a relationship of trust and respect. One way of achieving this, is to draw on Vygotsky’s work on mediated learning experiences. [3]

Vygotsky, a founding theorist on socio-cultural learning issues, reminds us that all uniquely human or higher mental functions are transformed social relationships which emerge and are shaped in the course of joint activities with others. The crux of the matter is that what people come to know, that is, how they learn to learn, to think and to act in particular contexts, is constituted in a relationship between their existing cognitive schemes, knowledge, skills and dispositions, the functional demands of the activities they participate in, and the forms of mediation they are afforded in such activities. [4] The implication is that, regardless of how much potential postgraduate students have, if they do not have opportunities to participate in activities that develop specialised forms of knowledge and functioning and/or are not afforded sufficient opportunities of mediation by others experienced in those activities, they are unlikely to develop such forms of functioning. Consequently, the notion of mediated postgraduate learning experiences and how they should be brought into supervisory practices is becoming increasingly important for transforming the typical South African postgraduate context. This should be viewed against the fact that the gap in many of our postgraduate students’ educational backgrounds and in their limited research training at undergraduate and honours degree levels needs to be closed by helping students along their way, in other words, closing the gap between what is known and what is to be known.

The following guidelines, drawing on the actual experiences and observations of exemplary supervisory practices within South African universities, should be considered when attempting to improve the practice of supervision:   – Applying appropriate selection measurements which could include instruments that will assess the student’s level of readiness to engage in rigorous postgraduate work.

– Considering the training of supervisors as a serious matter, since underprepared supervisors can hamper the quality of postgraduate work, retention and success rates. Training should include aspects such as technical, personal, legal, ethical, administrative and professional aspects of supervision.

– In addition, an induction programme for new supervisors in the field should be designed so that they gradually learn to supervise, ideally under a mentor, starting initially as a co-supervisor.

– Creating reporting opportunities for new supervisors in the field, so that they can receive constructive feedback on emerging problems and take corrective action before serious problems surface.

– Offering structured and regular opportunities for students to provide feedback on the quality and effectiveness of supervisors and on their experiences of the overall supervisory process. Such a practice will ensure that students at risk can be identified early so that necessary and timely interventions can be brought to bear.

– Ensuring that universities, faculties and departments have an updateable Handbook for Supervision which outlines the code of conduct for all involved. This will ensure that every supervisor and student is aware of and familiar with the often complex administrative regulations, requirements and deadlines that accompany this process.

– Holding supervisors accountable for the progress of supervision by requiring regular reports on each student. A ‘logbook’ is often very helpful, as it keeps a record of all the meetings and interactions between student and supervisor as well as what should be done in terms of follow-up action and preparations for the next meeting.

– Looking carefully at the workload of supervisors and preventing a novice supervisor from supervising more than one or two students.

– Getting to know the postgraduate student early on. Although this is hard for cases of supervision at a distance, for those students who are nearby and on-campus, it is important to get to know the students.

– Building the confidence of the postgraduate student: students should be encouraged to put ideas on paper. This will help the supervisor to judge whether the student understands the nature of the doctorate and will provide opportunities for positive feedback.

– Dealing effectively with pressures in the supervisory relationship: there are the pressures of the developing relationship and pressures to get the student completed in the designated timeframe. Students need to understand that they must work hard early on and have regular meetings. At the end of a meeting, the next meeting needs to be scheduled.

– Keeping to timeframes . Supervisors have a responsibility to get students to stick to timelines. Establishing this habit early on in candidacy is crucial.

– Monitoring student focus. The supervisor needs to keep one step ahead of the student to keep the student from being sidetracked. If the student is going off in different directions, pull them back into focus.

– Encouraging publications from the beginning. Supervisors should encourage students to publish, although this will depend on the student and the topic. If a student is able to be published in a good journal, this will help the examination. But getting published needs to be balanced with getting the thesis written. Writing the thesis should be the first priority.

Next Chapter: Chapter Two – http://rozenbergquarterly.com/?p=1863

[1] The Education White Paper 3 (DoE 1997)

[2] Bawa & Mouton (2002): 320, 328

[3] Vygotsky (1978)

[4] Bradbury (1993)

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