Creating Postgraduate Collaborations › Forums › CPC Supervision Development Course 2 › Module 1 › Module 1, Session 3: Models of supervision
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I have only had experience with co-supervision (both as a student and new supervisor) but I really like the idea of the team supervision. In academia, you have to learn how to deal with the feedback and opinions from multiple people (especially in the peer-review process), so where better to start learning this skill than in your pg studies? I think it also facilitates the student finding ‘their own voice’ as they may have to accept some comments and not contradicting ones, and they learn how to articulate why they made those choices. I think my own studies could have definitely benefitted from team supervision.
Being in a supportive community is important for post-doctoral fellows and supervisors. After watching this video, I realized that moments of discouragement and low productiveness links with moments of isolation. Thank you. Something to work on.
When I did my masters and PhD, I had two supervisors. I found this useful, because I could have one-on-one sessions with them. Each supervisor had their own strengths, which collectively helped me a lot. However, within our research group, there was a group of people that did project based research, a PhD student was working with a post-doctoral fellow, and there was more than one senior researcher/supervisor. That PhD was more productive and had more support during his studies. Therefore, I prefer this model of supervision above a co-supervision.
One of the major challenges to be overcome by p/g students under team & co-supervision is to be able to reconcile conflicting advisements from multiple supervisors. Another challenge has got to do with mastering the sometimes pronounced ego of some supervisors who are often unwilling to listen to the student’s point of view of an idea.
Having many supervisors(Group Supervision) may help cater for various stages of supervision in the research process for the post graduate student. Every supervisor will provide expertise in their areas of expertise. However, sometimes this can be confusing to the student being supervised since not all the supervisors see things in the same manner. In terms of methodology, some supervisors lean more on Quantitative approach, others on Qualitative approach while others Qual/Quant. Also in analyzing data there could arise disagreements on the best method to use.
I prefer when two supervisors do the work together like the way it is done in most universities in Kenya. Two supervisors can agree on the advice they give to the student. It assists the student not to get confused. Furthermore, during examining of the final thesis, the student will be further guided by three examiners.
From my experience, co-supervision is the most commonly practiced form of supervision in our faculty. Two to three supervisors are assigned to a student and they guide the learner to the end. It normally works well although in most cases, conflict arises on the “how” to do a certain task. This leaves the student confused on which advise to follow. However, it has benefits including having different multi-disciplinary approach hence improving the research output. During my PhD, I experienced cohort supervision which helped a lot with peer-peer learning. However, this method works well in cases where the learners have a similar topic for their research.
All the supervision styles and models are ideal depending on the subject matter. The success of the supervisory task majorly lies in the individual commitment to the task. The involved partly must take up personal responsibility to play their role beyond expectations towards the ultimate goal of the research work.
In my department and subdiscipline we don’t have the critical number of students to really supervise within a group/cohort. I think this would be something I would find effective. However, my colleague and I supervise as a team and I find this very effective for students. We are lucky in that we conduct research together and our research philosophies align well. We also bring different skills, literacies and personalities to the table. The students benefit from this range of expertise and personalities so that there is always someone to go to for help, feedback, advice and so on. We take a very hands on approach that we have adopted from our colleagues in the sciences despite our background in the apprenticeship approach of the humanities.
I would love to set up some group activities like writing weeks and workshops. This will happen in time as we grow the number of postgraduate students in our subdiscipline.
I was supervised using the team/project approach, which I find to work well with students especially from different backgrounds and nationalities as peer learning is encouraged.
In my university, we mostly practice co-supervision.
Cohort supervision is tricky as students normally have different commitment levels (parttime students) and some take longer to do research due to other external factors, If the program is full-time, then maybe.If supervisors can some together and write proposals, then team/project model can be achieved.
Team supervision sounds perfect. However, universities have varying post-graduate supervision regulations. Personally, I am a product of co-supervision and it is a good way of mentoring novice supervisors too.
In my department co-supervision model is mostly practiced where the supervisors are experts in different areas (qualitative/qualitative) but all geared towards enriching the research work and outcomes. However, the choice of the model of supervision is all dependent on the research/project at hand.
Thank you for the presentation that has exposed me to a number of the responsibilities of supervisors and different supervision styles some of which I was not aware of. I however did not get a clear difference between the panel supervision and the team supervision styles. Can I be correct if I say panel supervision is a form of team supervision?
I noticed that each of the supervision style has its own strength and weaknesses. I have experience with individual (for my PhD study) and co-supervision (master’s) where the co-supervisor was being mentored. Individual supervision is good and beneficial if the supervisor is experienced, hard working and good. The student can progress faster throughout the research process as there are no delays in the feedback and the student is accountable to the expectations of one supervisor. I really enjoyed this type of supervision in my PhD journey maybe because of the experience I had had during master’s. With individual supervision, the student does not get to wait for feedback or suffer the power dynamics between two supervisors. My first attempt to do master’s did not work because of the supervisors’ power struggles. They never agreed on anything yet I needed the two for their areas of experties. The co-supervisor always crossed the bounderies and caused strain in the relationship. She always wanted me to take her side even when I did not want to take any side. I ended up abandoning the research as the supervision process was toxic.
If the supervisor is not clear with the research field or process, individual supervision can be detrimental at the proposal stage. At this planning stage both the student and the supervisor need to be clear about the research they are engaging and how it is going to be done. If the supervisor is not very clear with the area of research, it may take the student much longer to get the proposal to be approved by the university faculties research gatekeepers. I have noticed how a number of proposals from the novice single supervisors often bounce at the proposals reviewing committees suggesting both the student and the supervisor’s inadequate understanding of the research process and the theories. Single supervision also becomes works if you fall into hands of an irresponsible or busy supervisor who will take ages to give you feedback. I know a number of students who dropped out of research because the supervisors were not giving them feedback and would fight those who want to assist the student.
Co-supervision offers more advantages than individual as two eyes are always better than one. However this depends on how it is managed and why it is being employed. If supervision is shared for mentoring purposes, the mentors sometimes focus more on the mentoring responsiblity at the expense of the student. For my master’s research, the mentee took the main supervisory position while the mentor became the co-supervisor. The mentored supervisor worked with me single handed at the most and will only submit the drafts to the mentor supervisor after certain stages such as when the proposal is ready for submission or the chapter is finished. The mentor will correct a lot of things, resulting in me redoing most of the things that could have been corrected at earlier stages of writing. The process made me feel like a guine pig, as I felt the co-supervisor was focusing more on the mentoring responsibilities than supervising me. I felt like a lot of trial and error that was taking place returded my progress and at the same time exhausting me. It also became problematic when at some point I complained about how the process they were using was returding and exhausted me that we agreed that should I send my drafts to both and receive feedback from both at the same time. Sometimes I will receive contradicting comments and it became difficult to choose whose comments to follow as power dynamics came into play. I am now supervising with my supervisor who takes a mentoring position as well as I am a novice supervisor. We have tried to avoid the challenges I suffered by that I look at the student’s draft first, then pass it on to my mentor supervisor with my comments. She adds her comments and send back to me before sending it back to the student. If we have differing view points, we iron these out before we send to the student. This seems good but is very time consuming and delays the student’s progress, particularly that I am struggling to meet the turnaround period we agreed on because I have more of both family and work demands than my mentor. However, If the supervision process is laid out well; the supervisors have clear roles and work at the same pace, the research and the student benefit from the shared superviory responsibilities. I think the more the supervisors the more enhanced is the support and the better the research outcomes. I would have prefered the panel supervison for the benefits of shared experities. However, working with diverse human beings is usually problematic. At the moment feel safe with co-supervision as I fell it may be easier to deal with one person than with a group.I lecture research methods to our fourth year students. I have found the cohort supervision to be working very well for us, as the department can not have adequate human resources for individual supervision. As mentioned in the presentation, this supervision style allows the students to learn from each other and it also helps us to set working paces for our students. Each supervisor has 7-8 students. The style is condusive for mass production.
As a PHD student I had the experience of working with a supervisor and a co-supervisor.
With my supervisor, it is individual and one-on-one supervision. My co-supervisor it is mostly virtual. Due to the fact that they are from different campuses.I am learning from both in the field, they are both experts and are really open minded to learn from both of them.
I personally do one on one supervision. but since i am a co-supervisor, the main supervisor initiated monthly meetings with all the students since late 2021, the meeting is working so much well and i see great progress on individual students since they have an opportunity to ask questions, learn from others and get feedback from different professionals which broadens their ideas of how to go about their dissertation.
In my university and most that i have interacted with, co – supervision is dominant in my discipline. It works well however as a novice supervisor learning from the older faculty, lots of challenges are experienced relating to conflicting ideas whilst directing candidates. There seems to be a senior supervisor whose ideas supersede that of a junior supervisor. Often a student is left wondering which direction to take. In case of the unfortunate demise or departure of supervisor either on leave or circumstances that will allow them to continue with the supervision a candidate has to form a new relationship with a third supervisor.
I appreciate the other models and hoping that institution policies would be more open to other collaborative methods what ease students postgraduate training and supervision. In many occasions, students do not have a choice since the model is stipulated in university postgraduate study policies.
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