Mapping the Pleasures and Risks of Supervision

Good supervision is central to successful graduate research, yet it is a pedagogy that is poorly understood. This may be one reason why it is often experienced as problematic, especially by students. To address these concerns, in this paper I delineate a map of supervision which is informed by contemporary theories of education. As I describe the layers of the map, I will attempt to show traces of each layer in some texts from the supervision of a master's student. The fruit of my analysis is a view of supervision as a complex and unstable process, one filled with pleasures and risks. This view is potentially useful for informing the practices of supervisors, students and the academic advisors who work with them.