Supervision provided to Indigenous Australian doctoral students: a black and white issue

The number of Indigenous Australians completing doctoral qualifications is disparately below their non-Indigenous contemporaries. Whilst there has been a steady increase in Indigenous completions in recent years, significant work remains to redress the imbalance. Supervision has been identified as a primary influencer of the likely success of Indigenous doctoral students, yet very little research has been undertaken in this area. This paper examines the experiences of 11 Indigenous Australians who hold a doctoral qualification. It also provides the experiences of five non-Indigenous supervisors who were an integral part of the supervision team of one of the successful doctoral graduates. A best-practice framework for supervision is offered as a guide for how supervisors, universities and national bodies can contribute to building the number of doctoral qualified Indigenous Australians.     

Bringing pedagogy to doctoral publishing

This article explores the role of publication in taking forward the work of the doctorate. Low publication rates from doctoral degrees have been noted as a problem in the quality of doctoral education for preparing students to participate in research cultures. At the same time there is ambivalence and some resistance among doctoral supervisors and candidates about the place of publication in doctoral work. This article argues that issues of writing and publication need to be systematically addressed within doctoral pedagogy. In a climate of increasing pressure to publish during and after candidature, pedagogies need to take up a more explicitly outward-looking stance, developing a stronger orientation to induction and participation in the world of peer-reviewed publication. These arguments are developed through two case studies that illustrate ways of supporting doctoral researchers to effectively recontextualise their dissertation writing for wider audiences.     

Juggling competing activities: academic staff as doctoral candidates

ABSTRACT

This article explores the experiences of a group of established academic staff in New Zealand and the UK, as they undertake a doctorate in their home institutions. Our interest is in how individuals negotiate this dual status from a cultural-historical activity theory (CHAT) stance that explores how rules, tools, community and divisions of labour, and interacting activity systems, shape doctoral experiences. The focus in this article, having analysed their detailed narrative accounts, is on how academics experience three interdependent activity systems: those surrounding the thesis, the institutional context, and the home-life spheres. Issues related to time, workload and supervision issues, variability in collegial support and impact on personal priorities and time emerged. There is a range of particularities – from easy access to resources/supervisors to inflexible institutional regulations – applicable to this group of doctoral candidates. Negotiating life as an academic with concurrent doctoral candidature provides positive outcomes in terms of teaching, research confidence and general personal and professional development. However, a range of difficulties can also be encountered, particularly in relation to personal and professional relationships, and workload management.     

The learning alliance: ethics in doctoral supervision

This paper is concerned with the ethics of relationships in doctoral supervision. We give an overview of four paradigms of doctoral supervision that have endured over the past 25 years and elucidate some of their strengths and limitations, contextualise them historically and consider their implications for doctoral supervision in the contemporary university. Two common threads across the four paradigms are a view of doctoral supervision as pedagogical practice and that supervisors have primary responsibility for the supervision of doctoral students. We challenge these assumptions. In their place, we propose that the goal of doctoral supervision is praxis and that this involves a learning alliance between multiple institutional agents grounded in a relational ethics of mutual responsibility.     

Team modes and power: supervision of doctoral students

Currently, team supervision in doctoral studies is widely practised across Australian universities. The interpretation of ‘team’ is broad and there is evidence of experimentation with supervisory models. This paper elaborates upon a taxonomy of team modes and power forms based on a recent qualitative study across universities in a number of states and territories in Australia. Team modes, described as de facto dyad, segmented and collaborative are defined, explained and presented in diagrammatic forms. Team modes are understood as being fluid, oscillating along a continuum according to particular contextual factors such as thesis stage and personal/professional circumstances of team members. Operating parallel to team modes are forms of power, defined as ‘power to’, ‘power over’ and ‘power with’. The article concludes that to maximise collaborative knowledge making within team supervision it is necessary to background social status. As the performance of social status is diminished the focus of the team endeavour is the creative exchange of ideas, creating ‘power with’. The intention of this article is to provide more information to supervisors and doctoral students on team structure so that the needs of all parties might be met more reliably and productively during the intense and sustained period of thesis production.     

Mentoring doctoral students online: mentor strategies and challenges

The purpose of our research was to explore faculty members’ experiences with online mentoring during the dissertation stage of an online doctoral program. During semi-structured interviews, four mentors reflected on their online mentoring of students, specifically the strategies that worked well, challenges faced while mentoring online, and other factors that contributed to their mentoring practices. The data revealed the importance of structure, small group mentoring, and peer support in overcoming challenges faced during online communication and the mentoring of dissertations at a distance. Implications for the online mentoring of dissertations are discussed.     

Writing together to foster wellbeing: doctoral writing groups as spaces of wellbeing

ABSTRACT

Candidate wellbeing is recognised as a continual challenge for doctoral programs, with government mandates requiring an institutional response. This article explores the experiences of candidates undertaking intensive writing sessions (‘Write-Ins’) and their influence on their wellbeing. Exploratory findings demonstrate opportunities for Write-In models to contribute positively to ‘Spaces of Wellbeing’. Spaces of Wellbeing theory highlights four dimensions of space that influence wellbeing: capability, security, integrative and therapeutic spaces. Findings show the Write-Ins contributed positively to wellbeing by offering space for candidates to enhance writing productivity, to work to their own pace, to connect with others, and to work flexibly.     

关于当前博士研究生培养改革的思考

当前,为了更好地促进博士研究生创新精神和创新能力的培养,不断提高博士研究生的培养质量,我们需要不断深化教育改革,而正确认识博士研究生培养尤其是课程改革是其前提。对此,我们需要从以下几方面进行反思:第一,博士研究生按一级学科管理与培养是两个不同范畴,不能简单将两者等同化,即以管理思维来化约培养过程中的复杂性与多样性;第二,无论是就历史还是就现实而言,博士研究生教育的关键环节不是课程而是科研训练,为博士研究生教育提供共同的知识基础是本科、硕士阶段教育的责任,博士研究生的培养与课程设计的权力应在基层培养单位而不是行政部门;第三,虽然在不同时期,实质性功用和形式性功用使探究性、个性化的研究生课程教学成为研究生培养过程之一,但当前我国博士研究生培养的问题应在于培养目标的厘清,而非课程建设。为此,哥伦比亚大学教师学院的相关做法或许值得我们借鉴。     

Promoting doctoral students' research self-efficacy: combining academic guidance with autonomy support

A diverse sample of doctoral students completed an on-line questionnaire assessing their supervisors' academic, personal and autonomy support and their research self-efficacy. The more task-related help and personal support students received, the more positively they evaluated their supervision. The degree to which supervisors encouraged students to think and act autonomously (autonomy support) was not uniquely associated with students' supervision satisfaction but predicted greater research self-efficacy. A combination of high levels of autonomy and academic support was associated with the highest levels of research self-efficacy, whereas when greater levels of personal support were accompanied by low levels of autonomy support, students reported lower research self-efficacy. These results indicate that effective doctoral supervision involves supporting students to voice and act on their own ideas while simultaneously providing guidance on how to complete research tasks.     

The role of research education coordinators in building research cultures in doctoral education

The development of cultures of support has become important in programmes for the preparation of research students. The paper draws on in-depth interviews with 21 research education coordinators from Australian and UK institutions to identify the strategies that they use to build research cultures and integrate research students into them. Students’ research cultures are not always linked to departmental research cultures more generally. Local contexts and conditions and staff (including supervisors’) attitudes are found to be critical in how research education coordinators respond and what is considered possible in order to ensure that research students are involved in research cultures.     

Stories return personal narrative ways of knowing to the professional development of doctoral supervisors

Storytellers have always known that there is more to a story than ‘just a good yarn’. It is through stories that individuals construct and reconstruct their sense of self as they learn ‘to be’ in the world. Learning through stories is common across a number of professional contexts. However, storied approaches are under-utilised in supervisor professional development programs. This paper argues that telling, receiving, reading, writing and re-writing stories can open to doctoral supervisors a way to negotiate the chaotic pedagogy of becoming and being a doctoral supervisor. Two examples of storytelling – interactive telling and reading of stories of research student experience and supervisor autobiographical writing – illustrate how the art of storytelling can return personal narrative ways of knowing to professional development in today's performance-driven higher degree by research context.     

African international doctoral students in New Zealand: Englishes,doctoral writing and intercultural supervision

While the experiences of international doctoral students, especially those from Asian countries, have been well researched, fewer studies have explored the experiences of African students in Southern countries like Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand. This article reports on doctoral writing and student and supervisor perspectives on English languages in a small study of supervisors and African students in New Zealand. It challenges deficit constructions of African students and illustrates how the growing internationalisation of higher education is adding to the complexities of doctoral writing, raising questions as to how students and supervisors recognise and navigate differences in Englishes and doctoral writing. It makes a number of recommendations about how supervisors might work effectively with African and other doctoral students.     

Excellence in doctoral supervision: an examination of authoritative sources across four countries in search of performance higher than competence

Supervision is generally recognised as playing a crucial role in the quality of a research student’s doctoral experience and their academic outcomes and, in common with most areas of higher education, there is an oft-stated desire to pursue excellence in this important area. Excellence in research degree supervision is, however, an elusive concept and on close scrutiny most of the discussions of high-quality supervision, even those that purport to be identifying excellence, refer to competence rather than excellence. This paper examines two potentially national authoritative perspectives from which excellence in research degree supervision might be explicated (codes of practice and learning and teaching awards) from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the United Kingdom but concludes that the complex nature of the activity and the complexity of the concept itself mean that rather than identifying excellence in supervision we can only respond to claims for excellence.     

Broadening the search for minority science and engineering doctoral starts

This analysis looked at doctorate completion in science and engineering (S&E) by underrepresented minorities: blacks, Hispanics and Indian Americans. These are the groups we must increasingly depend upon to make up for shortfalls in science and engineering doctorate production among American citizens. These shortfalls derive from truncated birth rates among white people, for the most part. The analysis answered several questions officials will need to know the answers to if we are to plan effectively to develop the talents of these individuals. Specifically, the National Science Foundation asked us to look at the feasibility of involving nontraditional minority science and engineering graduates (baccalaureates at 25+) as doctoral starts, along with minority S&E graduates who had taken jobs with corporations to pay off student loans and military personnel involved in S&E study and S&E work (see NSF report of research under grant SED-9107756). We found that nontraditional minority S&E doctorate recipients matched their traditional counterparts in elapsed time to degree and similar indicators. They had less in the way of support for doctoral study, however. We found that minority S&E graduates who took jobs in corporations were keenly interested in returning to campus to complete degrees. We also found that many bright minority youngsters are studying S&E subjects in the Community College of the Air Force and in U.S. Army SOC colleges. Some have enrolled in baccalaureate programs on university campuses and plan to continue on to the PhD. We concluded that money is important in tapping these talent pools to make up for the demographically driven shortfalls discussed above.     

A sociocultural view of doctoral students' relationships and agency

Existing literature suggests that doctoral students' learning and experience are significantly influenced by their relationships with a wide range of people within and beyond academic settings. However, there has been little theoretical work focused on these issues, and questions of agency in doctoral study are in need of further attention. This paper draws on sociocultural theory in the analysis of interviews conducted with 33 doctoral students across four UK research-intensive universities. It focuses on agency and frames others as mediating students' experiences whether as embodied or represented in material, or imaginary form.     

When the governmental tail wags the disciplinary dog: some consequences of national funding policy on doctoral research in New Zealand

This paper explores disciplinary approaches to knowledge production and the supervision of doctoral students in the context of New Zealand’s current Performance Based Research Fund (PBRF). In the last decade New Zealand has experienced significant changes to the way doctoral students are funded by central government. Funding has moved away from a ‘head count’ model to one that rewards specific performance criteria of staff and timely completion of students. In the new regime, research outputs by way of peer reviewed publications, conference presentations, grant awards, postgraduate completions and so forth constitute the significant markers of such performance. Yet in general terms, the production of knowledge varies considerably by academic discipline. This paper uses qualitative methods to explore the potential for the PBRF to privilege some approaches to knowledge production (and models of doctoral supervision) while challenging the viability of others.     

Evaluating the readiness of special education doctoral students to apply the standards of evidence‐based practice to single‐case research

How well doctoral students in special education are prepared to evaluate research as evidence‐based practice (EBP) is likely to impact their careers, as well as the teachers they will train. In developing a method for evaluating the readiness of small cohort groups of doctoral students to apply a research‐based model of EBP, an instrument and procedure were refined in a pilot evaluation and implemented within a multiple baseline design across participants. Participants’ independent and instrument‐guided performance in rating published research was compared to the ratings of two experts in single‐case research design, yielding proportions of agreement across evaluation conditions. Results indicated group readiness to independently conduct the EBP evaluation and individual differences in readiness indicating the need for remediation.     

博士生多元化培养的构想及实现路径 ——基于我国博士生教育质量研究20年的反思

1999年以来,我国博士生招生人数显著攀升,回顾我国博士生教育质量20年的研究,其思想纵向呈现出三个变化趋势:从专注学术取向到关注多元发展,从聚焦在学质量到追求发展质量,从强调显性成果到倡导综合能力。依据这一趋势,当下的博士研究生培养应以立德树人为根基,以科研能力为主干,以服务社会为枝叶。高校要以此为培养标准,树立起多元化培养目标,实现博士生全方位、多维度发展。具体到实践层面,鼓励博士生全面参与学校治理不失为实现博士生多维培养的有效途径,具体应以党建工作提升政治觉悟,以课题参与提升学术水平,以志愿服务厚植奉献情怀,以社会实践推动成果转化。     

Negotiating democratic relations in a doctoral project examining university conditions and pedagogical praxis

This article is a critically reflexive account of how collaborative processes and democratic relations were negotiated in a doctoral research project which combined elements of institutional ethnography, self-study, and, significantly for this article, critical participatory action research. The critical participatory action research dimension of the project involved a group of academics working in the same university faculty, critically and collaboratively examining their own pedagogical practice and the conditions which constrain and enable critical pedagogical praxis in their setting. The article explores what possibilities for democratic participation were created and limited by the circumstances and conditions that constituted this critical participatory action research. I consider the kind of democratic participation that was possible, what enabled this kind of democratic participation, and challenges that emerged in attempts to realise democratic goals. The discussion highlights some of the complexities of fostering democratic participation in critical participatory action research within doctoral research.