Postgraduate Research
Supervision: Transforming (R)elations
New York: Peter Lang 2001.
1
Introduction
Alison Bartlett and Gina Mercer
Q: How many supervisors does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Just one, but you have to wait until they're back from study leave, finished their conference paper, marked the undergrad exams, completed the departmental review, been to the conference, and read your chapter.
Both students and supervisors will find something to chuckle (or cry) over in this joke, which makes light of a number of issues commonly encountered in supervisory relations. A candidate might recognise the difficulties of accessing a supervisor when they are needed most, and the distressing time-lag involved in getting feedback on, or even discussion of, current work, before going on to the next step. A supervisor might recognise the increasingly diverse and competing tasks required nowadays, and nostalgically remember the single-mindedness of postgraduate research.
Over the past decade, a body of literature on post-graduate research supervision has emerged. As a newly qualified supervisor or newly enrolled research candidate, you might read this material and feel a little less diffident about your experiences but it's not until you actually begin to work with another person that the real complexities of this relationship begin to surface. It's very difficult to foreshadow, and therefore negotiate in advance, the needs of either a postgraduate or a supervisor when factors like family responsibilities, cultural and racial histories, sexualities, or differently-abled bodies are taken into account beside the usual academic preoccupations with topic, methodology, data collection and so on. The dot-point ‘how-to’ manuals on PhD supervision are useful but they can’t include or even imagine the variety of possible situations that may arise between a supervisor and a candidate.
This silence in the literature had a significant impact on both of us when we began to work as supervisors. So before going too far, we want to narrate those experiences …
Alison becomes a supervisor…
My introduction to being a supervisor came within six months of completing my doctoral thesis. In a new job in a new town, I looked forward to befriending my first candidate and having animated discussions over coffee about her project, which she would naturally be passionate about. It was within my area of expertise, so I felt confident I could offer her sound advice, and was eager to discuss innovative ways to make her thesis cutting edge. To my surprise, the only aspect of these expectations that materialised was the coffee. The candidate was extremely reluctant to discuss her project, was not interested in innovation, did not follow up my advice, and friendship seemed to be the last thing on her mind. In fact she seemed to avoid me. Being thrown over to the other side of the pedagogical stage meant transforming myself into a ‘supervisor’ in ways I hadn't previously imagined. I’d never anticipated being positioned as an ogre to be avoided, and felt distinctly uncomfortable with my new-found power when asked to make reports, follow up missed meetings, make deadlines. After about a year of this, when I was out of the country, the candidate withdrew without telling me. This experience upset me deeply and we still barely talk to each other. For a time I wondered what 'went wrong' and what I 'should' have done to make it right (that is, to enable her to complete and submit her thesis). On reflection I realise that my expectations and hers must have been very different, and maybe withdrawing was the 'right' thing for her.
One of the central factors shaping my expectations was my experience of being supervised. I enrolled to do my doctoral thesis when I was thirty, unattached, with no children, and on a scholarship. So I was under very few external pressures. It was an ideal situation and I was passionate about my work and committed to its feminist politics. Gina was a supervisor who whole-heartedly supported my work, willingly discussed my ideas, read what I was reading, and sensitively critiqued my drafts, and we increasingly shared our personal as well as professional friends and lives. With this formative experience of supervision imprinted as a model that worked for me, I was eager to make it work for others. In contrast, my first candidate was in a very different position. She worked in a full-time, turbulent job, had a son, a husband, a house and a community of friends and activities. Her doctorate was only a part of her life, not the central focus as it had been with me. This was my first supervision and I could find nothing in the literature that related to my feeling of genuine shock and self-doubt when this candidate did not perform the role in the way that I had.
Having very few places to turn, and not wanting to repeat this performance with my next unlucky candidate, I began talking with Gina about what exactly made my candidature so smooth and our relation as supervisor and post-graduate so productive, to the extent that we still choose to work together. Gina, it seemed, had since been encountering supervisory complexities of her own, so she was as eager as I to do some serious thinking, reading and writing about our experience. We wanted to work out which aspects of that positive experience we might take with us into other supervisory relations whilst still being able to embrace the inevitable differences of new relationships.
Gina becomes a supervisor…
Very soon after my first lecturing appointment at a remote regional university, and only a few months after graduating with my PhD, the Head of Department called me into his office. He told me, in rather shocked tones, that a newly-enrolled PhD candidate had specifically requested that I supervise her project. He was clearly unsure about entrusting her to my inexperience but it was a small department with only a small number of PhD-qualified staff, so I was given the job. Alison and I then began work together on what was to become one of the most pleasurable experiences of my professional career. A lot of deep and troubled thought went into that supervision, and a degree of anxiety attended it. The sense of responsibility about having so much influence on someone else’s work weighed heavily with me, as did my sense of making it all up as I went along. My Head of Department kept assuring me that I was doing something drastically wrong because Alison was apparently having too much fun, and looking too indecently cheerful for a 'real' PhD candidate. The sense of joy and relief I felt when her thesis passed with accolades was immense. Years later, what I feel most grateful for is that this early creative experience showed me what the candidate-supervisor relationship might be like. This has given me courage in the face of more complicated supervisions. It has encouraged me to take risks when troubled by the unpredictable or challenging terrains of subsequent supervisions and mentorships.
When I was a participant on a panel on postgraduate supervision recently, an audience member asked the panellists to summarise the different roles a supervisor could be expected to perform. The impromptu list we devised looked a bit like this: confidante; source of intellectual inspiration; resource manager; grant application writer; navigator of institutional tangles; manager of change; personal motivator; writing teacher; editor; career mentor and networker … and those were just some of the most readily identified roles. Given the broad parameters of the relationship then, it’s not surprising that the field is littered with grim tales of disappointing supervision experiences. This experience reminded me of why I felt so keen, when Alison suggested that we analyse what worked in our relationship, to engage in this work, to really try to understand the narrative we made up together - not to suggest an ideal, but to share our story, as a way of contributing to the development of alternatives to the predominating tales of horror and disappointment. The act of writing was transforming, in that it helped us to develop a way of thinking about postgraduate supervision as pedagogy (see Bartlett & Mercer in this volume). And it was our desire to learn from other people’s experiences and their theorising about those experiences that gave rise to this collection.
Transforming (R)elations represents a shift in the literature about post-graduate research supervision. It brings together intimate and detailed stories of actual postgraduate research supervision experiences, thus inviting into public circulation the diversity of those experiences. Not simply for the sake of airing the personal, but to provide a space for the development of situated knowledges. Some of the stories are troubled, others elated; some critical, others celebratory; a significant number are personal, others more distant, using traditional academic voices; many are practical, some are evocative and metaphorical. All are filtered through the tropes of narrative, so particular experiences of supervision are transformed into emblematic stories. Our aim is to stimulate further discussion, thinking and learning about postgraduate relations. We want to provoke more talk: between supervisors; between candidates; and between supervisors and candidates. These stories of very specific bodies, situations and relationships, provide provocative points for discussion. We want to make space for ‘talking dirty,’ as Barbara Grant suggests (in this volume), for slipping beneath the 'cleaned up' official discourses of the institution, for going beyond the hygienic dot-points of the "how-to" guides. In this volume you will find a wide range of different perspectives: from the educational researcher who has analysed transcripts of his own supervisions in the light of current pedagogical theories (Smith); to librarians developing a new model of off-campus supervision which focuses on the information needs of both candidate and supervisor (Macauley & McKnight); to the intense fieldwork experiences of a candidate whose research took her inside locked psychiatric wards (Johnson & McIntyre). The topic of sexual relations between supervisor and candidate arises (Gallop), as does fear and anger (Parsons), as well as frustration at the continuing imperialism of university cultures (Budby and Peseta).
Theorising from experience
Lee and Green's feature edition of Australian Universities Review on Postgraduate Studies/Postgraduate Pedagogy (1995) was a key moment in the development of postgraduate pedagogy in Australia. Their work contributed to our thinking around this project. In their article, Green and Lee emphasise the importance of 'lived, experiential relations of postgraduate research and training … in the larger project of understanding and theorising postgraduate pedagogy' (44). They argue that this will require,
a richer consideration of the formation of subjectivity through pedagogical practices. On the one hand, this involves drawing explicitly on theory - or rather, those forms of textual/interpretive theory available through post-structuralism, feminism and psychoanalysis that will enable exploration of power, knowledge and desire, of the body, gender and sexuality and textuality. On the other, we have referred to postgraduate education as a key site of praxis. (44)
Personal stories of supervision are important narratives on which to begin critical reflection and theorising. The theoretical paradigms drawn on in this collection are taken from feminism, post-structuralism, deconstruction, Foucault, Jung, discourse analysis, and psychoanalysis. But mostly they draw on practice and critical reflection. This makes it readily accessible to a diverse range of researchers (post-graduates and others) and supervisors at different levels of theoretical or experiential expertise, from a variety of disciplines. While the chapters focus on the intense one-to-one supervisory relationship common to universities based on the British model, as Australian universities are, we are aware that the collection will also be a useful resource for multiple or panel supervisory models. Outside of tertiary institutions, these chapters have relevance to the management of any teaching and learning relationship, enhancing their transformative potential. People working as mentors, workplace supervisors, line managers, psychotherapists and personnel managers may find intersections with their work in this volume.
Pleasure
Overall, the contributions in this collection celebrate the excitement and pleasures of the candidate-supervisor relation, although not unproblematically. It's motivating to read the enthusiasm for post-graduate supervision (in Howitt et al for example), and also the pleasures of theory in bringing a renewed awareness of language and agency (as Campbell articulates). Desire in pedagogy is not often recognised as a factor that shapes teaching and learning within tertiary education (for notable exceptions see McWilliam, Bartlett, Gallop, Matthews). The desire to teach, the desire to learn, and the desire for knowledge are powerful forces. The dialectical relationships between candidate and supervisor, between teaching and learning, that constantly shift to transform learner into teacher and vice versa, is part of the frisson that Gallop talks about in this volume and elsewhere (1997). It can be a powerfully motivating dynamic, and many chapters mention the pleasure of friendships forged between candidate and supervisor (Venables et al; Hewson et al). But this is not for everyone. Behrendt is definite in not wanting her supervisor to be 'her new best friend'. Instead she requires a formidable intellectual authority, someone she could regard with awe, to ensure she works to deadlines and pushes herself intellectually. Maheshwari also expresses discomfort with using first names between candidate and supervisor, a practice he finds antithetical to his cultural customs where the form of address is an indicator of respect.
Dialogue
Dialogue proved to be a dominant motif in the chapters commissioned, with many contributors choosing to reflect this in the form of writing, through interview or other conversational modes. While post-graduate candidates often get together to discuss and compare their supervisions, supervisors rarely have an opportunity to discuss supervisory practices. Such discussions are often caught up in a web of institutional expectations, personal ambitions, professional reputations and collegial loyalty. The very position of a supervisor, as someone institutionally appointed in recognition of intellectual authority, means that discussing the complexities of supervision may make them vulnerable to loss of face, or even reputation.
Green and Lee draw attention to Rod Giblett's 1992 article, and its desire to 'provide the other side of the dialogue left out' of an article by his former supervisor. They go on to suggest 'the impossibility of such a 'dialogue' in postgraduate pedagogy generally, and yet the necessity to work towards overcoming that impossibility' (142). In this book, we have sought to create a space for dialogues - between supervisors, and between supervisors and candidates. We contacted the research offices of Australian universities and approached selected international thinkers, asking for contributions which explored the specifics of postgraduate research supervision, for essays which theorised from that experience. We especially sought collaborative contributions from candidate-supervisor teams and drew together a range of established and beginner researchers for inclusion. We received many more responses than we could include, an indication of the widespread desire to articulate some of the undercurrents of this influential relationship. We also asked for contributions that addressed the specificities of social, cultural and corporeal circumstance which we considered had been neglected in the literature, much of which still generalises and therefore feels comfortable in assuming a homogeneous student and supervisory body (white middle-class Western able-bodied hetero male). We actively shaped the book and the contributions through these desires. The numerous successful and insightful collaborations which are to be found here go some way to undoing the ‘impossibility’ of dialogue identified by Green and Lee.
Silence
Yet the intransigently hierarchical relations in which candidates and supervisors are embedded still impinge on the work available to us. Smouldering beneath a number of essays is the feeling of being unable to speak for fear of recrimination. We were not prepared for the reticence, and even active resistance, of some of the 'voices' in these dialogues. Some contributors told us the 'real' story of their candidatures, ‘off the record’, while their written contributions offered very different narratives of success and uncomplicated completion. When we suggested that those 'off the record' stories needed to be put on the record, we met adamant refusals. In some cases the supervisions were still active, so the undercurrent of dissatisfaction could not be articulated within the ongoing power relations. But, we argued, isn't this the idea: to be able to discuss and negotiate conditions during the process of supervision, rather than being traumatised afterwards (see Lee and Williams 1999)? But we underestimated the power of those institutional positions and their attendant requirements. In other cases contributors feared writing about a supervision experience of twenty years ago in case the supervisor in question, who now occupied an even more powerful position in the academic hierarchy, happened to read it. That an experienced academic can still be afraid of the ramifications of offending their former supervisor, decades later, indicates the power of such relations and the significant ways in which they shape subjectivities and lives. This book is testament to the fact that this relationship, between a research postgraduate and a supervisor, is a profoundly formative one, and one which needs much more discussion and theorising than are currently available.
We are also conscious of other stories which remain off the record. Post-graduate research relations are predicated on the establishment and continuation of candidature. We necessarily couldn’t include those who could not consider candidature due to its high cost: financial, personal or professional. Those who could not continue due to the collision of social, cultural and corporeal conditions are also silent here. Urging a friend to write a contribution for us about the cessation of her research (and loss of contact with her supervisor), she wrote back the following:
sorry, realise how long its been - of course its 4.30am now and have been up all night for over a week with a sick, coughing baby. jaslyn also has it. i do too. i'm desperate for sleep. but no end in sight. suicidal. don’t know what made you think i was still doing post-grad work - gave it up with motherhood. sorry to sound so pathetic. maybe u can use this tale of failure and defeat?
Rather than a tale of failure and defeat, this brief narrative should be positioned as an example of institutional imperatives foreclosing on a (quite common) life narrative that includes bringing children into your ambit.
Transformations
Children and partners (or their absence) clearly shape the process of a research project (see Nagappan et al; Daruwalla & Mazzacato) and are also affected by it in profound ways (see O'Leary). The chapters here that recognise the impact of our parental, racial, physical, social and cultural markers and their imprint on our academic work go some way toward countering what Catherine Waldby calls the 'fiction of the disembodied scholar … the assumption that the scholar is simply a properly trained mind, unlocated in the specific historical experience and social position of a sexed, classed or racially marked body' (Waldby 1995). In these chapters, the impact of national (Cadman & Hai; Peseta), migratory (Venables, Ahjum & De Reuck; Daruwalla & Mazzacato) and indigenous identities (Budby; Behrendt) are brought to bear on supervisory relations in their institutional settings, with various surprising (dis)connections. While some celebrate the professional transformations made available through doctoral supervision (like Rendle-Short et al, Nagappan et al), and others are elated by the personal transformations (Campbell; Hewson et al), there are also those for whom such shifts are oppressive. Balatti & Whitehouse go 'feral' in a guerilla-style attempt to subvert the hierarchy of authority that transforms their experienced, professional selves into infantilised selves in need of 'teaching'. Peseta also resists being racially and pedagogically othered, and Budby struggles for recognition of indigenous subjectivity and research material within the imperialist expectations and demands of an Australian educational institution.
As candidates and supervisors our subjectivities and those around us might be transformed in pleasurable or unwanted ways by the process of research supervision, but it is not a one-way process. We also have the capacity to transform the body of research, its disciplines and their institutions, to alter their specific histories, languages and cultures. Candidates and supervisors in relatively new disciplines like creative writing are shown to be challenging what constitutes research and supervision (Perry & Brophy). The ways in which we use technology have the capacity to transform postgraduate relations and institutional policy, as suggested by Symons, and Macauley & McKnight in their innovative models. Kelly & Ling ask what it might mean to locate supervision in a post-traditional era of 'faceless encounters' where relationships are recast 'away from the interpersonal level to an interaction with symbolic and abstract systems which rely on high tech electronic wizardry.' Anders & Gough identify advantages in such 'faceless encounters', but their account also follows the impact of Anders being injured in a car accident and her research trajectory being radically transformed by this trauma to her embodied self. Other chapters position the doctorate as part of a career transformation and the thesis as only one component of the preparation for entry into an academic career (Collins et al) or industry (Nagappan, Crasswell & Grundy).
We hope the experience of reading this collection will provide readers with a number of models through which to actively shape their experience of candidature and/or supervision. It could also provoke thinking about how experiences might be narrated and reflected upon retrospectively through the different critical and theoretical paradigms of readers' disciplines. Postgraduate pedagogy is still relatively new in terms of theoretical approaches, but different forms of research and interest in the area are becoming increasingly visible and generating intense pockets of debate. As we write, the latest issue of Southern Review: Essays in the New Humanities has arrived on our desks. It is dedicated to the theme of 'PhD Pedagogy', specifically in response to work by Lee and Williams previously published in that journal. Some of the issues raised indicate: a need for postgraduate student voices to enter the debate; a need to apply self-reflective postgraduate pedagogies across a range of disciplines; the risks of institutionalising the pastoral elements of emotional care; recognising the intervention of feminist scholars and their ability to represent alternative models in the academy; the imperative to negotiate institutional economies of 'clients' and 'outcomes'; further work on the psychoanalytic structures applicable to the student-supervisor relation; and consideration of the narratology involved in written reflection (in Greenfield 1999). In this one journal there is remarkable vehemence and passion in the contributions. This attests to the personal as well as philosophical impacts experienced when theorising about postgraduate pedagogy. Our collection brings a range of diverse voices to this intense debate. We hope that it will stimulate some transformation, even some elation, to the thinking, teaching and learning about, postgraduate research supervision.
Alison Bartlett and Gina Mercer.
April 2000.
References
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Gallop, Jane. Feminist Accused of Sexual Harassment. Durham: Duke University Press. 1997.
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Greenfield, Cathy, ed. Southern Review: Essays in the New Humanities 32,2 (1999).
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---. 'Theorising Postgraduate Pedagogy.' Australian Universities' Review 38,2 (1995): 40-45.
Lee, Alison and Carolyn Williams. ''Forged in Fire': Narratives of Trauma in PhD Supervision Pedagogy.' Southern Review 32,1 (1999):
Matthews, Jill Julius, ed. Jane Gallop Seminar Papers: Proceedings of the Jane Gallop Seminar and Public Lecture 'The Teacher's Breast'. Canberra: Humanities Research centre. 1993.
McWilliam, Erica. 'Touchy Subjects: A Risky Inquiry Into Pedagogical Pleasure' British Educational Research Journal 22,3 (1996): 305-17; 'Admitting Impediments: Or Things To Do With Bodies In The Classroom' Cambridge Journal Of Education 26,3 (1996): 367-78.
Waldby, Catherine. 'Feminism and Method', in B. Caine and R. Pringle (eds) Transitions: New Australian Feminisms, St Leonards: Allen & Unwin. 1995. 15-28.