Session 3: Identity Work in the Postgraduate Journey

This second ZOOM meeting focused on student identities using 6 case studies:

Each group will be allocated one case study. Once you have read through the allocated case, chat in your group about the questions that follow. Please select one person to report back on your discussion.

1. What are the key issues at play in the case study?
2. How is the student’s sense of self challenged?
3. How is the supervisor positioned?
4. What would you need to consider in understanding the issues involved?
5. How would you engage with the student as a supervisor?
6. Have you encountered similar issues as a student or a supervisor?

A. “It’s on its way”

Adimu is a lecturer at a private university which requires its staff to carry very heavy teaching loads. However, this isn’t her only job. She also helps her mother out with her cake baking business and tells you she is forever having to sort out the accounts for her husband’s own business as he is so bad at bookkeeping. Adimu also has two small children so her household duties are very onerous.

When Adimu came to see you about doing a PhD, she told you that she badly needed the qualification if she was ever going to get a better job as an academic. She also told you that she was really interested in the topic she wanted to study and claimed that her interest would keep her focused on her research and allow her to fit study time in amongst her many other commitments.

Now, nearly a year on, you believe Adimu has made very little progress. She always comes to meetings you ask her to attend and, when you point out how little progress she has made and how many times you have asked her to provide you with a draft of the proposal she is working on, she always makes excuses and promises that you will have what she has written as soon as she has had time to give it ‘a quick lookover’. When you contact her after the meeting, she invariably replies ‘It’s on its way!’

You are under pressure at your university to try to get students to finish their doctoral studies in regulation time. There is no shortage of PhD students and getting a successful graduation is important for your own career. You are beginning to wonder if you are wasting your time and don’t know how to move forward.

B. “This is important, I’m really on to something”

When you agreed to supervise Muthoni, you were aware that many of your colleagues thought she was a difficult student. She always seemed to be involved in a dispute with someone and could be quite abrasive. However, you were also impressed by Muthoni’s knowledge of her field and her ability to work extraordinarily hard. At the same time, you were also aware that Muthoni had a history of mental health problems as she had shared some of this with you.

Muthoni’s proposal for her doctoral study won praise from the Higher Degrees Committee which reviewed it. Once the proposal had been approved, Muthoni set about collecting data for her study that involved three separate case studies. She was successful at collecting and analysing data for two of the studies but appeared to become completely bogged down in the third. You then realised that she was obsessing about this particular study and began to suspect that this was because she had had a dispute with someone who worked at the site of the study and was beginning to use it to try to reveal the injustices she alleged this person had committed.

You speak to Muthoni about academic research and the need to be unbiased. You tell her she has enough data for this particular case and that she runs the risk of the three cases being unbalanced. Muthoni will not stop and continues to obsess over the smallest details in the case poring over more and more documents and telling you ‘This is important, I’m really on to something’. She sends you some of her writing on the case and it is very difficult to follow. There is no ‘golden thread’ of argument and evidence. Rather the writing is convoluted and full of detail.

You begin to suspect that Muthoni’s mental health problems have resurfaced and do not know what to do.

C. “I want this thing done as quickly as possible”

Grace came to you as the result of the recommendation of another student you had supervised successfully. When she first spoke to you, she said “I want this thing done as quickly as possible” and stressed that she wanted to get the degree for the purposes of her career and not because she had any intrinsic interest in academic research. Your former student who recommended her had told you that Grace was enormously efficient and widely praised for her ability to work hard.

Grace had a topic she was interested in but her approach to pursuing it was very practical. The first drafts of her proposal focused on methods and not on conceptualising the problem in any depth or on grappling with issues such as validity. However, when you directed her to more reading, she complied and came back quickly saying “So, I’ve done that, what next?”

Grace writes well and you begin to suspect that her ability to command academic discourse masks in-depth understanding. But, the study is progressing well. Her proposal has been accepted and she has collected data and is busy analysing it. You are torn between holding her back to ensure she really engages with the ideas you believe she should engage with or allowing her to do a thesis which will probably get by the examiners. Grace has indicated that she has no interest in doing more academic research once she has completed her degree.

D. “I’m on track, Prof!”

Thembankosi has been registered for a doctoral study for nine years now. He works at a neighbouring university in a demanding position. For a long time now, you have had nothing from him and, whenever you ask him about his study, he tells you how difficult it has been to get down to academic work because of the ‘politics at work’ and also because his own health, as well as that of his wife, has not been that good.

Eventually you tell him that he is at real risk of not being allowed to continue with his registration as the Registrar is refusing to allow students who have been registered for more than a maximum number of years to re-register. Themba falls into the category.

At this point, he sends you three chapters of his thesis. They are very long. If not radically cut and redrafted, the thesis would end up being about 200 000 words long. However, the chapters do show that Themba is on top of the very complex theory he is using and is using it well. You give feedback indicating to Themba how he could edit his work down to a more manageable number of words.

Themba then goes silent again. You contact him, concerned that he is going to miss the deadline for submission this year and asking him to send you the redrafted chapters. He responds “I’m on track, Prof” but doesn’t send anything.

E. “Same old, same old – how can this be a contribution to knowledge?”

Kirui is doing a complex study involving in-depth analysis of interview data. He made good progress in the initial years of study winning praise for his proposal from the Higher Degrees Committee and gaining your admiration for the rigorous way he went about data collection.
However, of late, he has become increasingly negative about his work and has indicated to you that he is thinking of abandoning his study. The reason for this is that he claims that the data is not telling him anything new, that it is the “Same old, same old” that he might have been able to state without ever having done the study.

What he is able to do, however, is offer a very insightful critique of the methodology he has used which was based on an approach to evaluation developed by two well known US authors and experts on research. You suspect that he really has something important to say in respect of the methodology but are finding it increasingly difficult to get him to continue with his study.

F. “It’s only fun, Prof!”

Gatimu is doing a study which forms part of a group project in your lab. Gatimu proved himself to be very able at honours and master’s levels which is why you offered him funding to join the project you lead.

Gatimu who is very good-looking, has always been very popular with his fellow women students and you gather he has something of a reputation as a ‘womaniser’. On a number of occasions, you have had to speak to him about wasting time in the lab chatting and joking with his female peers. Gatimu has always laughed off your reprimands, however, saying “It’s only fun, Prof”.

Things took a more serious turn a couple of days ago when one of the women students in your project came to complain about Gatimu. Her complaint about Gatimu basically amounts to one of sexual harrassment. The woman tells you that she is not the only member of the project team who is upset about his behaviour and that, if you don’t do anything, a group of female students will make a formal complaint using the institution’s Sexual Harrassment Policy.

One of your colleagues in the project team says this is really relatively innocent and ‘normal’ behaviour between young men and women and that the student who has complained is unpopular because of her overly ‘politically correct’ and judgemental stance about everyone in the team. You are worried this will turn into something that has the potential to destroy relationships in your project team and effectively ‘wreck’ the project.

Go to this week’s forum to discuss the issues identified in the Zoom Session in which we looked at the six case studies of supervisors and their students.