VAN AARDT, Andri Corné (Dr)

Background on why this topic When I started as a lecturer in 2017 one year after my own PhD, I was expected to supervise students at all postgraduate levels. This often presented its own challenges for me as a supervisor and person. Reading Turner (2015) I could associate with the statements indicating that the supervision process is personal (Blass, Jasman and Levy, 2012) where one often has to try and make sense of this new role in isolation from other people (Amundsen & McAlpine, 2009). This role was often associated with disappointment and struggle (Sambrook, Stewart & Roberts, 2008) as well as self-doubt and anxiety (Blass, Jasman and Levy, 2012), one also experiences tension and challenges as frequently as pleasures. According to Bastalich (2017) the quality and efficiency of higher degree research is determined by supervision. As an inexperienced supervisor I experience these struggles and realise that my supervision is important for students to achieve success. These challenges in the process of supervision indicated that often novel supervisors will become agentive, setting goals in order to help or direct the student for the candidate to make progress. This often result in achieving the aspirations of the supervisor instead of the student. Supervisors also need to be resilient – having the capacity to withstand stress and difficulties. This entails the ability to confront challenges with perseverance, think differently, improve one’s self-management skills and seek more knowledge. It is also important to remember that supervision is a learning experience that takes time, are challenging, require resilience and agency, can be emotional, might be personal and often one need to draw on the support and experience of experienced supervisors (Turner, 2015). I, therefore, investigated literature in order to determine what is expected of me as a supervisor. I focused on the supervisor, the doctorate, the student and the process of supervision in this review.