Workshop 1
Supervising by distance: Transitions, tools, and transformations
Date: 15 March 2022 (9:00 – 12:30, South African time)
Duration: 3 hours (two sessions of 90 minutes each with a 30-minute break between sessions)
Target group: Senior degree supervisors
Overview:
The practice of distance supervision has become far more prevalent over recent years, especially given the limitations the Covid-19 pandemic has placed on educational travel and even localised face-to-face interaction. However, for many supervisors the very idea of research supervision is intimately bound up with notions of proximity and co-present encounters. Many supervisors were ill-prepared to transition into a distanced supervisory mode, and many institutions needed to pivot rapidly in order to support supervisors with the technology, tools, and professional development they required in order to understand online supervision pedagogy and transition to supervising at a distance. Despite the efforts of many stakeholders, too many students have been left in limbo in their trajectories towards completion as a result of inadequate infrastructure, the inability to access their research spaces, and the sudden disruption to connections with colleagues, supervisors, and the institutional environment.
This workshop therefore collaboratively explores what it means to supervise at a distance within different national, institutional and disciplinary contexts. It considers how the pandemic is contributing to transforming what we see as 'normal' postgraduate study and supervision, and interrogates what ‘distance’ might mean in a time of increased social distancing. In addition to collaborative exploration, the workshop draws on existing research and practices to offer a range of tools that supervisors may use to enhance their distance supervision and query their orientations to this supervisory mode.
Facilitators:
Katrina McChesney is a Senior Lecturer in initial teacher education at the University of Waikato in New Zealand. Katrina’s overarching research interest is people's experiences in education - what it's like for them. This includes a current interest in the lived experiences of doctoral research by distance. Katrina completed her own PhD by distance and now supervises master’s and doctoral students by distance. She founded and co-edits Ipu Kererū, the blog of the New Zealand Association for Research in Education.
James Burford is an Assistant Professor of Global Education and International Development at the University of Warwick in the UK. Prior to taking up his position at Warwick, James worked at universities in Australia and Thailand. James undertook his own PhD via distance from various international locations while undertaking paid and care work. His research is broadly in the area of critical university studies, with a particular interest in doctoral education, academic im-/mobilities, and gender and care in higher education. He co-edits the Conference Inference blog.
Liezel Frick is the Director of the Centre for Higher Education and an Associate Professor within the Department of Curriculum Studies at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. Liezel has extensive experience of supervising master’s and doctoral students at a distance, and has a particular research interest in postgraduate supervision as a field of study. She currently co-leads a joint international doctoral programme involving three universities.
Workshop 2
Current and emerging international practices in doctoral examinations
Date: 15 March 2022 (9:00 – 12:30, South African time)
Duration: 3 hours (two sessions of 90 minutes each with a 30-minute break between sessions)
Target group: Senior degree supervisors
Overview:
The doctorate is the highest award made by universities, and in order to gain them, doctoral submissions have to be examined. While there have been a few studies in individual countries, there has been no attempt to systematically study doctoral examination on a cross-national basis and little is known about the different ways in which countries have sought to ensure that the awarded degree is comparable in standards. This workshop will report on a project involving case studies of examination practices covering 20 countries that are collectively responsible for over 75% of global doctoral awards. It will (1) summarise how the main doctoral awarding countries across the globe examine doctoral degrees, (2) compare and contrast their approaches/outcomes, (3) identify examples of good practice, (4) comment upon their robustness and (5) explore debates about changing practices.
Facilitators:
Vijay Kumar is an Associate Professor in Higher Education at the University of Otago in New Zealand. He is the first person outside the UK to be a UK Council of Graduate Education (UKCGE) recognised research supervisor. He is also a reviewer for the UKCGE’s Supervisor Recognition Programme. He has facilitated doctoral supervision capacity building programmes in 36 universities across 13 countries. He is one of the founding members of the International Doctoral Education Research Network. His research interests are in the areas of doctoral supervision, feedback in supervision and doctoral examination. His recent publication on the role of the convenors in a PhD viva appears in Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education.
Sharon Sharmini is a senior lecturer in University Putra Malaysia. Her PhD in higher education from the University of Otago in New Zealand explored how examiners assessed a thesis with publications. Recently, she completed her post-doc at Pennsylvania State University. Her research interest is in doctoral examination. Her recent publication (with Rachel Spronken-Smith), The PhD - is it out of alignment?, appears in Higher Education Research and Development. Her co-authored publication (with Clinton Golding), What examiners do: what thesis students should know in Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education has been viewed more than 80 000 times.
Stan Taylor is an Honorary Professor of the School of Education, Durham University, UK, where he was formerly Director of the Centre for Academic and Researcher Development. He has many years of experience working with doctoral supervisors in the UK, Europe, and the Far East to enhance their practice. Recent publications include (with Margaret Kiley and Robin Humphrey) A Handbook for Doctoral Supervisors (Routledge 2018) and (with Margaret Kiley and Karri A. Holley) (eds.) The Making of Doctoral Supervisors’(Routledge, 2021). He is an Honorary Life-member of the UK Council for Graduate Education and currently Chair of its Research Supervisors' Network.
Workshop 3
Relooking roles and responsibilities in supervision
Date: 15 March 2022 (13:00 – 16:30, South African time)
Duration: 3 hours (two sessions of 90 minutes each with a 30-minute break between sessions)
Target group: Senior degree supervisors
Overview:
Thanks to the influence of the knowledge economy, the demand for postgraduate qualifications has grown steadily in recent years. As a result, many students now being supervised might not previously have attempted to study at this level. One of the areas in which this ‘new group’ of postgraduate students struggle most is writing.
This workshop argues for a transformative approach to understanding the roles and responsibilities of supervisors in relation to students’ writing. In addition to showing how writing functions as a tool for learning and introducing some very practical ways it can be used in this way, the workshop also draws on understandings of language and writing which show that supervisors are central to the development of writing proficiency. In doing this, the workshop will introduce participants to a model for providing feedback on writing which is more productive than approaches used by most supervisors.
The workshop will be ‘hands on’ where participants will be invited to identify a piece of their own student’s writing to work with during the workshop. Opportunities will be provided for participants to discuss and comment on their experiences of working with the model of feedback in the course of the workshop as well as on the ideas introduced more generally.
Facilitator:
Chrissie Boughey is an Emeritus Professor of Rhodes University. All her research has been in the field of Higher Education Studies and she has supervised and examined numerous doctoral theses. In recent years she has been involved in several large projects focused on the development of a supervision and the postgraduate environment more generally funded by the Royal Dutch Government and the European Union. She draws on her work on the relationship of language to learning in order to offer this workshop.
Workshop 4
Promoting senior degree students’ conceptual capacity
Date: 15 March 2022 (13:00 – 16:30, South African time)
Duration: 3 hours (two sessions of 90 minutes each with a 30-minute break between sessions)
Target group: Senior degree supervisors
Overview:
Many doctoral students struggle to develop a decent conceptual framework for their studies and sometimes supervisors are unclear on how to guide a student towards such a framework. Absence of a sound conceptual framework leads to a weakly or under-theorised study - often with bad consequences. In most fields conceptual frameworks guide research projects and serve as thinking mechanisms that impact on all aspects of a doctoral study, while many publications point to the problem of an absence of a strong conceptual framework in studies.
This workshop will show, in practical terms, how reality is always more complex than any theory or model can completely capture. The ‘slice of reality’ that doctoral students work with is in most cases contextually sensitive and doctoral researchers need to construct thinking tools that avoid oversimplification. We shall point out how conceptual frameworks serve as lenses and are most useful when they incorporate complementary theories that promote the theoretical understanding of phenomena, problems or issues under scrutiny at different stages of a study. We shall also share some ideas on supervising the conceptual framework.
Facilitators:
Eli Bitzer is past Director of the Centre for Higher and Adult Education at Stellenbosch University and currently Emeritus Professor of Higher Education Studies. He has successfully supervised over 90 Master's and PhD graduates, has examined more than 50 theses and dissertations and has published extensively in the field of postgraduate supervision, doctoral education and different aspects of assessment and quality promotion in higher education. His latest co-edited book with Peter Rule and Liezel Frick (2021) is The global scholar - Implications for postgraduate studies and supervision.
Vincent Bosman is an experienced researcher, postgraduate supervisor and examiner. His recent work as senior academic, after retiring from full-time teaching, includes teaching on conceptual frameworks in the Doctoral Research Training Programme at Stellenbosch University’s School of Business. His most recent article is: Liberating the oppressed consciousness of preservice teachers through critically reflective praxis: Educational research for social change. Currently he is involved in evaluating training and development for the HIV/AIDS Unit at the University of the Western Cape, while his prime interest remains the development of theories/conceptual frameworks as lenses for sense-making, also of own lived experiences.