{"id":65057,"date":"2022-10-02T12:37:26","date_gmt":"2022-10-02T16:37:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/world.edu\/?p=65057"},"modified":"2022-10-02T12:37:26","modified_gmt":"2022-10-02T16:37:26","slug":"south-african-universities-need-to-better-support-doctoral-supervisors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/south-african-universities-need-to-better-support-doctoral-supervisors\/","title":{"rendered":"South African universities need to better support doctoral supervisors"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

South Africa\u2019s government has ambitious plans for doctoral education. The country aims\u00a0to increase its output<\/a>\u00a0to 5,000 doctorates annually by 2030.\u00a0In 2013<\/a>, the figure stood at 2,051; by 2019 it was up to 3,445.<\/p>\n

It also wants 75% of all academics employed at universities to hold a PhD by 2030. In 2019,\u00a0that figure was just 46%<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There are several reasons for the drive to prioritise postgraduate education. One is a response to the rise of the so-called \u201cknowledge economy\u201d: universities want to improve their research output and see doctoral graduates as a good group to help achieve this aim. One of the key requirements for a university to produce PhD graduates is to address the supervision capacity by developing emerging supervisors.<\/p>\n

When embarking on a PhD, candidates make several choices. What is their central research question? What methodology will they use? And, crucially, who will be their supervisor? A supervisor is a university staff member whose role is to guide and support postgraduate students studying towards a master\u2019s or a doctoral degree. At the doctoral level students are allowed to choose their supervisors based on their expertise in the field of research.<\/p>\n

But merely holding a PhD or having spent some years in academia doesn\u2019t make someone naturally able to supervise students. Good supervisors need a variety of skills, research experience and publications.<\/p>\n

The South African Council on Higher Education recently released\u00a0a report<\/a>\u00a0on its key findings from a review of doctoral education. It states:
\nThere is clearly a need for additional supervisory capacity across the national system, and programmes for training supervisors are in place in most universities.<\/em><\/p>\n

My\u00a0own PhD research<\/a>\u00a0found gaps in the system, including where programmes for training are said to be in place. I investigated how 20 of South Africa\u2019s public universities support emerging supervisors. My study findings revealed that emerging supervisors were often simply thrown into the deep end with no development or support. Where professional development was available, it was often presented by facilitators without supervision experience.<\/p>\n

I identified five areas that could be strengthened. These included whether training for supervisors was once-off or ongoing; how supervisors viewed the purpose of higher education \u2013 merely to ensure a certain number of PhD graduates or as a way to build knowledge \u2013 and whether supervisors were given the space to apply lessons learnt in workshops. I believe that if these steps were taken South Africa\u2019s universities would have a much stronger cohort of supervisors.<\/p>\n

Five factors<\/strong><\/h4>\n

For my PhD\u00a0I surveyed<\/a>\u00a0186 participants, both emerging (novice) and experienced supervisors, and interviewed 54 academics from multiple disciplines. Some of their institutions offered once-off workshops for PhD supervisors. Others presented short courses or developed mentoring programmes.<\/p>\n

From this data, I identified five factors that determined the success and value of institutions\u2019 development of PhD supervisors.<\/p>\n

The first was how supervisors understood the purpose of postgraduate education. Many supervisors were under enormous pressure to \u201cget students through the system\u201d. They felt this undermined their role in nurturing the next generation of researchers who could contribute to the stock of knowledge.<\/p>\n

Some reported that\u00a0incentives paid to supervisors<\/a>\u00a0had perverse consequences. In some cases, experienced supervisors were not willing to work alongside and mentor a novice because they didn\u2019t want to share incentives.<\/p>\n

Key performance indicators related to postgraduate throughput rates also led to an understanding of supervision as managing their pathway through the system rather than advising students in knowledge creation processes.<\/p>\n

The second factor centred on efficiency, which refers here to the government\u2019s desire for high graduate returns on its subsidy investments in doctoral enrolments.<\/p>\n

Many of those I interviewed felt like workshops were a tick-box exercise designed to ensure compliance with institutional regulations. They responded either by not attending workshops, by attending without meaningfully engaging. This \u201cabsent attendance<\/a>\u201d means that making workshops or courses compulsory won\u2019t address their inherent problems.<\/p>\n

The third factor was the credibility of course designers and facilitators. Emerging supervisors told me they appreciated being introduced to the wealth of literature on issues of teaching and learning with postgraduates. But the facilitators were often employed in\u00a0administrative posts and on contract<\/a>: they had little research or postgraduate supervision experience. This dented their credibility in the supervisors\u2019 eyes.<\/p>\n

Supervisors\u2019 own agency was another factor. My PhD supervisor, Professor Sioux McKenna, and I\u00a0have argued elsewhere<\/a>\u00a0that some supervision development initiatives operate from the problematic premise that supervisors can be trained to \u201cfix\u201d low retention and poor throughput rates.<\/p>\n

Good supervision is a necessary condition for a successful postgraduate journey. But it alone won\u2019t repair these problems. If novice supervisors are sent off to workshops to develop generic skills and little is done to ensure that the department, faculty and university have a research-rich environment and student-focused administrative systems, structural issues will persist.<\/p>\n

Emerging supervisors also said they emerged from training enthusiastic about the possibilities or alternative approaches to postgraduate education they\u2019d discussed \u2013 only to have their ideas dismissed by colleagues or thwarted by institutional processes.<\/p>\n

The fifth factor related to whether training was once-off or part of ongoing development. Despite their concerns, most participants who had attended supervisor development initiatives indicated that they benefited at least in some way from such support. However, where the support was offered as a once-off training, often just a half-day workshop, they felt there was an underlying message: good supervision was simply a matter of implementing a few skills.<\/p>\n

Conclusions<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Overall, the people I interviewed wanted flexible, collaborative, supportive \u2013 and ongoing \u2013 opportunities. There were calls for more discipline-specific interventions and collaborative spaces where emerging supervisors could engage with experienced supervisors rather than being instructed in a generic best-practice of \u201chow to supervise\u201d.<\/p>\n

If these calls are heeded and institutions develop training into something beyond a tick-box exercise, the pool of capable supervisors in South Africa can be dramatically expanded.<\/p>\n

Author Bio:<\/strong> Puleng Motshoane is an Academic Developer at the University of Johannesburg<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

South Africa\u2019s government has ambitious plans for doctoral education. The country aims\u00a0to increase its output\u00a0to 5,000 doctorates annually by 2030.\u00a0In 2013, the figure stood at 2,051; by 2019 it was up to 3,445. It also wants 75% of all academics employed at universities to hold a PhD by 2030. In 2019,\u00a0that figure was just 46%. […]\n… learn more→<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[92199],"coauthors":[11733],"class_list":["post-65057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-higher-education","tag-phd-supervisers"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nSouth African universities need to better support doctoral supervisors - World leading higher education information and services<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/world.edu\/south-african-universities-need-to-better-support-doctoral-supervisors\/\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"South African universities need to better support doctoral supervisors - World leading higher education information and services\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"South Africa\u2019s government has ambitious plans for doctoral education. The country aims\u00a0to increase its output\u00a0to 5,000 doctorates annually by 2030.\u00a0In 2013, the figure stood at 2,051; by 2019 it was up to 3,445. It also wants 75% of all academics employed at universities to hold a PhD by 2030. In 2019,\u00a0that figure was just 46%. 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