Session 4: Course Readings
The field of postgraduate education as an object of study: Key readings
In recent years, postgraduate supervision has become an object of study in its own right. One sign of this is the specialist conferences that have appeared. The University of Stellenbosch, in South Africa, runs a biannual conference on postgraduate studies, the next of which is planned for March 2022. In addition, a Quality in Postgraduate Research (QPR), focusing on doctoral education, is run every two years in Adelaide Australia. The QPR conference was due to be held this year (2020) but has been postponed until 2021 because of Covid.
Many people across the world do research into postgraduate supervision, either their own or the practice in general. Some of these people are experts in the mainstream disciplines, who find that they are interested in their work as supervisors and begin to research and write on it. An example of this is the book produced as a result of an earlier project called Strengthening Postgraduate Supervision, intended to support and develop the practice of supervisors. At the moment, this book can be downloaded free from the publishers and is a useful starting point to see how supervisors can write about their work and get it published.
Lots of work on postgraduate education and supervision appears in the academic journals, however, particularly those focusing on higher education such as Studies in Higher Education and Teaching in Higher Education. The annotated bibliography below identifies some of the work that appears in journals and is intended to guide your reading as you engage with the online Creating Postgraduate Collaborations course.
Before we get to the readings though . . .
For many participants in the CPC course, reading in the area of postgraduate supervision will be an entirely new experience. The field will be new to them and the ‘genre’ of the readings (i.e. the way the texts are written) will be very unfamiliar.
One of the things we recommend in the session on supporting students’ writing, is the use of a reading journal. If reading in the field of postgraduate studies is new to you and you find some of the articles below difficult to get into, consider following this advice and keeping a journal for yourself. You will at least have the chance to see if it works and this will help you decide if it is a strategy you want to use with your students.
A journal prompts you to reflect on your reading and the way what you have read may, or may not, connect to your practice as a supervisor. It also allows you to make connections across the readings. Ultimately, it will really help you to write your assignment for the course by serving as a piece of what is called ‘pre-writing’, preparatory writing focused on the generation of ideas.
National Overviews
For Kenya
The Commission on Higher Education published a report entitled State of Postgraduate Research and Training in Kenya (Mukhwana, Oure, Too & Some, 2016.)
For South Africa
Cloete, Mouton and Sheppard (2016) provide an overview of Doctoral Education in South Africa
For Europe
The Council for Doctoral Education has published a number of reports on doctoral education the most recent of which is Doctoral education in Europe today: approaches and institutional structures (Hasgall, Saenen, Borrell-Damian with co-authors Van Deynze, Seeber & Jeroen Huisman, 2019).
Journal Articles
Texts marked are highly recommended.
Kenyan authors
Ayiro, L.P. & Sang, J.K. 2011. ‘The award of the PhD degree in Kenyan universities: A quality assurance perspective. Quality in Higher Education, 17(2): 163-178.
In recent years, the role of research and development in the economy has been stressed by national governments seeking to compete globally. This is also true of Kenya which has seen a rise in PhD enrolments without a comparative increase in resources. This article, in a journal focusing on quality assurance in higher education, calls for the mechanisms used to assure quality in the award of doctoral degrees to be enhanced. The article thus speaks to the CPC course, especially to the final module on supervision processes.
Mbogo, R. W., Ndiao, E., Wambua, J.M. Ireri, N.W. & Ngala, F. W. ‘Supervision challenges and delays in the completion of PhD programmes in public and private universities: Experiences of supervisors and graduate students in selected universities in Nairobi, Kenya’. European Journal of Education Studies, 6(11): 261-278.
This article reports on a study which surveyed both students and supervisors about their experiences with doctoral research. The challenges identified by students and supervisors speak to many of the issues dealt with in the CPC course. The study identified strategies that both students and supervisors could use to accelerate progress and surveyed responses to them. In the context of what you have learned on the course, what do you think of the strategies and the responses of the participants reported upon in this paper?
Kimani, E.N. 2014. ‘Challenges in Quality Control for Postgraduate Supervision’. International Journal of Humanities Social Sciences and Education, 1(9): 63-70.
This article echoes many of the claims made in Ayiro & Sang (2011) above. Although it identifies many of the problems faced by supervisors and students, it does not offer any solutions. It would be interesting to read the article and see if your experience of the CPC course allows you to identify some ways to address any of the challenges identified by Kimani.
Kilonzo, S.M. & Magak, K. 2013. ‘Publish or Perish: Challenges and Prospects of Social Science Research and Publishing in Institutions of Higher Learning in Kenya’. International Journal of Sociology, 43, (1): 27–42.
Although this article focuses on the need for academics and PhD students to publish (or perish), its relevance to the CPC course relates to the need for both supervisors and students to juggle multiple roles as they try to bring a study to completion as quickly as possible without impacting on quality. In many respects, the article relates to what is said by Mbogo et al., (2014) and Kimani (2014) in articles listed above.
South African authors
McKenna, Clarence-Fincham, Boughey, Wels & van den Heuvel (eds). 2017. Strengthening Postgraduate Supervision. Sun Media: Stellenbosch.
This edited collection, currently available as a free download, showcases assignments that were done by supervisors on the Strengthening Postgraduate Supervision course. These reflective pieces illustrate the way supervisors go about engaging with their students in very different institutional contexts.
Nsibande, R. 2007. ‘Using ‘currere’ to re-conceptualise and understand best practices for effective research supervision’. South African Journal for Higher Education, 21(8): 1117-1125.
This article is aligned with the ‘reflective’ approach underpinning development in the CPC course in which participants are asked to think about their own practice in the light of what they learn.
Hodza, F. 2007. ‘Managing the student-supervisor relationship for successful postgraduate supervision : a sociological perspective’. South African Journal for Higher Education, 21(8):1155-1165.
This is yet another article that supports much of the thinking in the CPC course. It argues that the supervision is essentially a ‘social’ process which is structured by the contexts in which students and supervisors work. This means that although the supervisory relationship allows a considerable degree of freedom, it always takes place within a context which constrains it. Interestingly, the article offers the possibility of supervision working to change the contexts in which it must take place.
Cekiso, M., Tshotsho, B., Masha, R. & Saziwa. T. 2019. ‘Supervision experiences of postgraduate research students at one South African Higher Education Institution’. South African Journal of Higher Education, 33(3):8-25.
This article reports on a study conducted at a historically black university in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. The study looked at students’ experiences of being registered and supervised for postgraduate research and mirrors the challenges identified in articles reporting on similar studies in other parts of the world (see, for example, Mbogo et al., 2020 above).
Bitzer, E.M. & Albertyn, R. 2011. ‘Alternative approaches to postgraduate supervision: A planning tool to facilitate supervisory processes’. South African Journal of Higher Education, 25(5): 874-888.
This article speaks to the ‘Models and types of supervision’ section of the CPC course. It provides a very useful overview of models of supervision and a mapping tool to match the various roles of the supervisor with the research process. The tool is intended to allow supervisors and colleagues to reflect on which role might be most appropriate at different stages of the process.
International authors
Carter, S., Blumenstein, M. & Cook, C. 2013. ‘Different for women? The challenges of doctoral studies’. Teaching in Higher Education, 18:4, 339-351.
This article speaks to the social justice theme in the CPC course. National data often shows women are not as well represented in the demographics of those studying at doctoral level as men. This paper explores some of the reasons for that. Do you think the reasons cited by Carter et al. are valid in your context?
Parker-Jenkins, M. 2018. ‘Mind the gap: developing the roles, expectations and boundaries in the doctoral supervisor–supervisee relationship’. Studies in Higher Education, 43(1): 57–71.
This paper is relevant to the ‘supervisor practices’ module in the CPC course and deals with the relationship between supervisors and students. It might be useful to read this article before the session in the CPC course that deals with case studies of supervisory practice.
Akerlinda, G. & McAlpine, C. 2017. ‘Supervising doctoral students: variation in purpose and pedagogy’. Studies in Higher Education, 42(9):1686–1698.
In recent years, variants of doctorates have appeared on national qualifications frameworks, possibly the most well-known being the ‘professional doctorate’. This article reports on a study at a UK research intensive university, where one might expect the ‘traditional’ doctorate understood to prepare candidates for an academic career might predominate, which explored supervisors’ views of the purposes of doctoral level study. Even though all supervisors subscribed to the ‘traditional’ view of the doctorate, they nonetheless identified different purposes for the doctoral journey and took different approaches in their teaching as a result. The article calls for greater clarity on the purposes of doctoral study. How much clarity is there in your context? How could greater clarity be achieved?
Guerin, C., Kerr, H. & Green, I. 2015 ‘Supervision pedagogies: narratives from the field’. Teaching in Higher Education. 20(1): 07–118.
The CPC course deals with models of supervision quite extensively. This paper is intended to inform the thinking behind courses such as CPC but it does this by drawing on supervisors’ own understandings of what it means to supervise. The paper relates to the models of supervision dealt with in the course and also to supervisory practices and particularly to the approaches to teaching adopted by supervisors.