Supervising to Inspire Doctoral Researchers

Pam Denicolo,Dawn Duke,Julie Reeves

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781526483041
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Conseil en développement de carrière

Early careers researchers and academics receive little to no on-going trainingforproviding support to doctoral students.In light ofthis, this book addresses the needs of prospective and current supervisors of doctoral students, by providing you with guidance on: • Engaging with the process of selecting researchers and developing reliable expectations,
• Identifying the most effective supervisory style and your role in shaping students' skills,
• How you can contribute to your students' progress and reflective practices,
• Your role in the final assessment stages, and how your support can extend beyond their studies. Through a wide range of multidisciplinary case studies, you will find valuable guidance on how tosupport your students, and be empowered in the process.

Part I Engaging with the process

1 How can you make a good start?

In this chapter you will:

• Consider why you might want to supervise a doctorate
• Reflect on the purposes of doctoral study and how supervisors are involved in achieving them
• Weigh up the pros and cons of supervising
• Learn about ways to recruit a doctoral researcher
• Explore how you might select a suitable candidate
• Think about how to encourage a wider range of talented people to become researchers through inclusive recruitment and admissions procedures

Contemplating a potentially fulfilling journey

It is very exciting to make your own contribution to knowledge. It can be just as exciting to support someone else to do so. Furthermore, it is extremely satisfying to induct someone into your disciplinary community of scholars, growing your network, potentially establishing a future collaborator and possibly a lifelong friend.

You may have one of many other reasons for wanting to become a supervisor or, indeed, needing to become one whether you are currently an academic, or involved in research or a profession linked to research. You may simply love research but not have time to explore all the aspects of your favourite topic yourself. You may have had excellent/far from satisfactory doctoral supervision yourself and want to emulate the former or save others from the latter. While there are many such altruistic reasons, there is also the possibility that, whether you like it or not, supervision is something required of you in your job. Bridging positive intent and professional obligation, the situation may be that you have been approached to supervise, perhaps as a collaborative or co-supervisor (see next section for elaboration on these roles and remits) and are flattered, intrigued or obliged to consider the possibility. On the other hand, instead of contemplating the prospect of being a supervisor, you may already be one and wish to find ways of doing the job better/more easily/with greater fulfilment.

A more common route to becoming a supervisor, though, is usually a mix of good intentions, pragmatism, necessity and opportunity, each competing with the other to both attract and deter you from taking up the role or extending it to other potential applicants. We will review the benefits and limitations of the role shortly, after briefly describing its purpose, but first let us emphasise our purpose in writing this book. It is our belief that supervisors can make the doctoral process fulfilling for both themselves and their doctoral researchers. Fulfilment comes in many forms, for example, the satisfaction of intrinsic motivation, contentment of a problem resolved, pride in achievement, relief at surviving a troublesome period and pleasure in a job well done. It can even result from having your CV enhanced by additional publications and a new successful doctoral completion.

Whatever your situation and motives, psychologists agree that fulfilment is seldom achieved through engaging only in easy tasks. Rest assured that supervising, while it might occasionally have dull and even tedious moments, is seldom, if ever, an undemanding activity in total. Extensive experience suggests that often surprises and challenges emerge in even the most well-structured and managed doctorate. In this and the chapters that follow we hope to provide you with realistic expectations about the supervisory process so that you can judge if it truly is for you, whilst also arming you with a range of ideas and tools to prepare you for the expected and the unexpected.

So, first let us consider what the ‘documents of the case’ say about the purpose of the doctorate and how supervisors contribute to it.

The purposes of doctoral study and the supervisor’s role in achieving them

For more than 20 years doctoral education has been undergoing substantial transformation. We have detailed these developments and their causes in several publications, included in Further reading at the end of the chapter, and so will only provide its essence here noting the most significant changes to practice.

Following the massification of Higher Education, in conjunction with downturns in Western national economies, postgraduate research education came under closer scrutiny from governments since it is largely funded by the public purse. Concerns emerged about success rates, time to completion and the skills of successful candidates as they joined the labour market. In the past most holders of doctorates stayed within the academy so that the supervisor–student partnership was akin to a master–apprentice model; however, now the majority of successful doctorates in countries with well-established and staffed universities move on to other forms of work for a variety of reasons. For instance, commerce and industry value their intellectual powers and their ability to create new knowledge in what is now known as the knowledge economy. Further, widening of participation in doctoral study means that mature professionals seek to extend their knowledge and expertise to contribute more to their calling and gain promotion. For them, a doctorate is a special form of Continuous Professional Development. On the other hand, many doctoral researchers begin their studies with only vague career goals, with some expecting it to be the route into academia. For these individuals, it is wise to advise them that academic jobs are scarce and often require global relocation, and that postdoctoral jobs are short term. That being said, the career landscape for doctoral graduates has diversified and expanded considerably in recent years both within and outside academia, so much so that doctoral graduates have extremely low unemployment rates.

Challenge to the status quo has not been confined to the employment aspirations of candidates but has come also from employers who now expect of their doctoral recruits a wider range of ‘employability’ skills and abilities than can be evidenced within a doctoral thesis. Simultaneously, governments expect their investment in doctoral education to produce doctorate holders in a more circumscribed timeframe, generally three to four years full-time equivalent, who are more highly skilled. The digital revolution also has had an impact especially in relation to communication activities, such as information accessibility, exchange and presentation, which are integral to research and development.

Thus, the purpose of the doctorate, originally to generate new knowledge and prepare candidates for working largely in universities or at least in the education sector, has become supplemented by requirements to prepare candidates for a wider range of employment requiring an extended range of skills. These developments of purpose and required outcomes, influenced by a plethora of national and international, government and research funding body initiatives and edicts, have led to debates about the nature of doctorateness and the role of the supervisor (see Further reading).

The first important point to emerge from this debate is that the supervisor’s role is still of supreme importance. It is essentially to guide the researcher’s development from novice to independent researcher through engagement with a research project that culminates with the production of a non-trivial contribution to knowledge. We deliberately avoided describing that contribution as ‘significant’ because that word has implications of size as well as importance. Since this purpose is to be achieved within a restricted timeframe with limited resources while acquiring a range of research and transferable skills, the knowledge contribution can normally only be quite small for any individual researcher. As we advise our doctoral researchers, take heart as a supervisor: a doctorate is not a Nobel prize-winning task, nor does it take a genius to complete one, therefore supervision of a doctoral project does not require exceptional talents of the supervisor.

Another important point is that a supervisor is not expected to be the sole support for all the researcher’s learning and development activity because the range of knowledge and expertise needed to provide adequate support far exceeds that of any individual (see Chapter 7). This point is particularly relevant with the current trend towards research with a multi- or interdisciplinary focus. Before taking on a new researcher, it would be sensible to check with colleagues what support you would receive in this role and how you might be prepared for it. Find out if there is a Graduate School/Doctoral College and/or research methods and skills training available to help support your researcher and whether there is a training programme for new supervisors (see Chapter 4). In the UK, most European countries, some states or provinces in the USA, Canada and Australia/New Zealand, there is an expectation that new supervisors will work with a more experienced one until they have seen at least one researcher through the full process to completion. This provides a mechanism for peer learning about different supervisory styles and is beneficial to both the junior and the more senior colleagues (see Chapter 6).

In the next section we discuss considerations you should realistically reflect on before undertaking doctoral supervision, saving an elaboration of the regulatory responsibilities of supervisors for the next chapter.

Realistically weighing up the pros and cons of supervising

We wish to be clear about one point from the outset: it is inappropriate, given the size and range of investment required of the candidates themselves and those others who support them in a variety of ways, for a supervisor to plan to spend only a modicum of time on their support. Even with a team of co-supervisors and support from external collaborative supervisors and other professionals within the institution, the researcher deserves dedicated time and energy of their nominated supervisor/s. Further, sharing progress reports and negotiating ways forward within the whole team necessarily takes real time.

We also wish to be clear about a second point: supervising doctoral researchers can be the most fulfilling, that is rewarding and joy-inducing, aspects of an academic career if undertaken with passion, interest and willingness to learn.

However, we recognise the practicalities of life in academe. Thus, if you are an aspiring supervisor, we advise you to ensure that you check on workload agreements within your institution, so that when you take on a new researcher you do so in the knowledge of how much time you have available officially for the task. You should also guesstimate how much time you can feasibly afford from your ‘spare’ time to do justice to the task at, potentially unpredictable, critical points for the project or for the researcher. (It is inevitable that at some time, or times, within a three-year period some extra guidance, or simply reassurance, will be required in this challenging adventure of producing new knowledge.) We will address time and people management at various points throughout this book, but it is sensible to give this some consideration at the point of recruitment. Supervision of a doctorate cannot be fitted into small breaks between teaching, marking and meetings.

We also appreciate that each supervisor–researcher relationship is unique with some being more stimulating than others, some being more productive than others and some being more enjoyable than others. That is why we will emphasise in the following sections ways to increase the likelihood of a more positive relationship at the recruitment stage. You will find more about how to follow that up in the early part of the registration process in Chapters 3, 5 and 7 in particular.

Another issue to consider is resource availability. Again, this has several dimensions. There are the resources that you will need, beyond time, to support your prospective researcher, from journals and books in the library to IT equipment, expertise in statistics, laboratory kit or accessibility to fieldwork venues. To some extent these may be provided in part by the researcher’s funder and could potentially contribute in the longer term to your department’s stock of resources. You could also explore less tangible resources such as places available on courses (research methods and professional skills) that would support your supervisory efforts. At the same time, balance what researchers need with what they can contribute: enthusiasm; conduits to recent literature that you have little time to access and evaluate yourself; drafts of journal articles you could work on together; new networks in the disciplinary community; previously unconsidered perspectives and novel ideas, to name but a few valuable assets.

If, on balance, the prospect of supervising a doctorate is appealing and looks viable, then the next step is to investigate means of recruiting a potentially suitable candidate.

Recruiting doctoral researchers

Thirty years ago any student hoping to progress their studies on to a doctorate found that both funding sources and university places were scarce; nowadays, though funding is still an issue, it is universities that are in competition for good candidates. Simply by putting this section title into a search engine, you will discover that there is considerable debate about best or effective practice in recruiting and retaining doctoral researchers (or graduate students) with those more prestigious and/or wealthy institutions scooping up both the grants and the students with greatest potential. For example, in the USA some universities advertise widely, use search engine optimisation techniques, pay the air fares and subsistence to likely candidates and have extensive selection procedures, including open house and campus visit days, with incentives such as assistantships to those who are successful. In Scandinavian and other European countries and Canada, doctoral candidates are recruited as staff, albeit frequently in low grades especially in terms of remuneration. In the UK, they are still regarded technically as students and must compete for scarce financial resources, but for Research Council funding the quality of institutional and supervisory support is evaluated as well as the attributes of the candidate. Nevertheless, the UK is a strong competitor for international doctoral researchers, based on its reputation, though of course some universities are more highly rated than others.

We start with that rather challenging overview of the recruitment situation to emphasis...