Motives and Meaning amongst PhD Supervisors in the Social Sciences

Effective supervision of research students is acknowledged to be a crucial factor in the latter's successful completion of the social science PhD. How well supervisors supervise is likely to be linked to why they choose to occupy their role. These reasons constitute the supervisor's vocabulary of motives and are examined in some detail from the perspective of interpretative social‐psychology. Three dimensions of the vocabulary are depicted: intellectual, functional and subjective. The vocabulary is then situated within its specific locus, namely the institutional context of higher education. Links are then made between the vocabulary and various aspects of the formal value system of academia, a value system which legitimates the depicted vocabulary of motives and declares others to be illegitimate. The paper concludes with some comments on the relationship between why supervisors supervise and the quality of that supervision, citing a range of factors influencing that relationship.