Alistair McCulloch

The Student as Co-Producer: Learning from Public Administration about the Student-University Relationship.

The dominant metaphor/model used to characterise the relationship of the student to the university, that is, the ‘student as consumer’, is partial and not appropriate to the realities of contemporary higher education. This article suggests that co‐production, a concept drawn from the public administration literature, offers a more appropriate metaphor. In this metaphor, the student, lecturers and others who support the learning process are viewed as being engaged in a cooperative enterprise focused on the production, dissemination and application of knowledge, and on the development of learners rather than merely skilled technicians.

Widening Participation to Doctoral Education and Research Degrees: A Research Agenda for an Emerging Policy Issue.

Widening participation is on the political agenda but, to date, policy, practice and research has focused on undergraduate education. This article identifies an emerging widening participation focus on doctoral education. Using England as a case study, the article examines this development within the context of the long-standing concern with equity in education, before reviewing the relatively small literature addressing who participates (and why) in doctoral and more general postgraduate education. An analysis of Widening Participation Strategic Assessments produced in 2009 by 129 English Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) reveals an emergent institutional awareness of this new development. Finally, a research agenda for widening participation to research degrees, focusing on research students, HEIs and policy-makers, is outlined. The conclusion calls for this agenda to be pursued at institutional, national and cross-national levels so that future policy can be made and implemented on the basis of a robust evidence base.

The quest for the PhD: a better metaphor for doctoral education

Purpose – The paper seeks to propose the adoption of an alternative metaphor to that of the “journey”, currently the most pervasive characterisation for the students experience of doctoral education.Design/methodology/approach – The paper adopts a conceptual and rhetorical approach.Findings – The paper offers a critique of the journey metaphor as a characterisation of the students doctoral experience and proposes instead the metaphor of the Quest, a cultural and literary form found in most societies. It argues that the six elements of the Quest identified by W.H. Auden resonate with the contemporary doctoral experience and emphasise the uncertainty involved in research rather than the linearity implied by the journey metaphor.Social implications – The paper argues that the quest metaphor offers a cross‐cultural basis for both staff and student development activities through which sense can be made of the research experience, student concerns can be surfaced, and potentially difficult issues raised for d...

Excellence in doctoral supervision: an examination of authoritative sources across four countries in search of performance higher than competence

Abstract Supervision is generally recognised as playing a crucial role in the quality of a research student’s doctoral experience and their academic outcomes and, in common with most areas of higher education, there is an oft-stated desire to pursue excellence in this important area. Excellence in research degree supervision is, however, an elusive concept and on close scrutiny most of the discussions of high-quality supervision, even those that purport to be identifying excellence, refer to competence rather than excellence. This paper examines two potentially national authoritative perspectives from which excellence in research degree supervision might be explicated (codes of practice and learning and teaching awards) from Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and the United Kingdom but concludes that the complex nature of the activity and the complexity of the concept itself mean that rather than identifying excellence in supervision we can only respond to claims for excellence.

Does research degree supervisor training work? The impact of a professional development induction workshop on supervision practice

ABSTRACT Supervisor induction and continued professional development programmes constitute good practice and are enshrined in institutional policies and national codes of practice. However, there is little evidence about whether they have an impact on either supervisors’ learning or day-to-day practice. Set in a discussion of previous literature, this article unpacks the concepts ‘impact’ and ‘evaluation’ and assesses the medium- and longer term impact of the University of South Australias doctoral supervisor induction programme, Supervising@UniSA. It suggests that the workshop leads to the acquisition of understanding and knowledge and, for the majority of attendees, also has an impact on supervisory practice.

“PhD, meet QPR”: The quality in postgraduate research conference and the development of doctoral education

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the relationship between the quality in postgraduate research conference (QPR) and the developing doctoral education agenda, as well as serving as an introduction to this special edition of the International Journal for Researcher Development. Design/methodology/approach – The paper adopts a conceptual and rhetorical approach. Findings – The paper argues that, over its two decades of existence, the QPR conference has been at the forefront of developments in doctoral education and has also influenced practice and policy in the area. Originality/value – The paper is the first to review the QPR conference and its place in the development of doctoral education.

Mapping the landscape of awards for research supervision: A comparison of Australia and the UK*

Abstract The aim of this paper is to map the pattern of awards for research degree supervision in institutions in Australia and the United Kingdom. In particular, it explores the scope of such awards, their objectives, the criteria for nomination, the evidence required to be submitted, the composition of award panels, the criteria for award, and the rewards and conditions attached to success. Marked differences are found between these features in the two systems, which it is argued stem mainly from the fact that in Australia institution-led awards are the norm, while in the UK student-led awards are predominant. In conclusion, it is suggested that, while institution-led awards seem more likely to be effective in identifying, recognising and rewarding exemplary supervision, students can and should have an important role to play and, hence, that optimally all stakeholders should be involved in the awards process.

Research degrees in Information and Communication Technology (ICT): Why so few doctoral students?

Abstract A ‘knowledge society’ relies on a workforce with high-level skills in Information and Communication Technology (ICT). Continuing development of ICT will arise partly from research undertaken by doctoral graduates. However, compared to other cognate disciplines, ICT has relatively few students taking up doctoral studies. This article explores some of the perceived barriers to undertaking doctoral studies in ICT in three Australian universities. Current students were surveyed regarding their post-course intentions relating to employment and further study, and the resulting data was analysed in terms of type of university attended, gender, nationality and first-in-family status. Overall, the perceived barriers to doing a research degree were related to the financial implications of such study and a limited understanding of what research in ICT involves. The following recommendations are made to universities and higher education policy-makers: that universities ensure that students have accurate information about the financial costs of doctoral studies; that students be provided with authentic undergraduate research experiences; and that pathways be developed to facilitate a smooth return to research degrees after periods of working in industry.

Special Quality in Postgraduate Research Conference (QPR 2016)

The Quality in Postgraduate Research conference (QPR) has been held in Adelaide, South Australia, every two years since 1994. The conference is a collaboration between three local universities, the University of Adelaide, Flinders University and the University of South Australia and a brief discussion of its development can be found in McCulloch and Picard (2015). As noted there, over this period, the conference has provided ‘an increasingly important space for those involved in doctoral education across the world as supervisors, managers, academics interested in doctoral education as a research area, students, research administrators and government and institutional policymakers to come together to discuss matters of common interest and share good practice.’ (p. 5) In recent years, prior to each conference, a special conference edition of a journal has been negotiated and, following the conference, a call for papers issued to all delegates. This special edition of Innovations in Education and Teaching International comprises largely articles developed from papers first delivered at the 2016 conference, and follows earlier special editions of Quality in Higher Education (Houston, 2015, from the 2012 conference), and the International Journal for Researcher Development (McCulloch & Picard, 2015, from the 2014 conference). The issue comprises nine articles which, between them, address perennial issues in doctoral education, all but one focusing to a significant extent on supervision, the quality of which is recognised as determining to a large degree the nature and quality of a doctoral student’s experience. Over time, supervision has come to be seen less as a dyadic activity involving a single supervisor and one research student and more as a set of relationships involving the student, a discipline-specific supervisory team and others who can contribute to the doctoral candidate’s development as a researcher and also as an individual. These relationships, the lived experience of students and supervisors, and also the broader support environment for research students, are discussed in a number of the articles, including some addressing the complexities of cross-cultural supervision. In the first article in the collection, Gina Wisker and her colleagues use the metaphor of the dramatic production to explore the experiences of doctoral students. Drawing on their experience across three countries (Denmark, South Africa and the UK), the authors seek to throw light on the wide range of actors who contribute to the research student’s performance. While acknowledging the leading role played by the supervisors, they use the theatrical setting as a way of pointing to and bringing front-of-stage the ‘many positive, supportive, meaningful others, including family members, translators, editors, research assistants, fellow doctoral students, and critical friends’ contributing to the doctoral student’s development and seek to bring them into the light rather than leaving them in the back-stage darkness to which they are often consigned. Backstage is also the place where, in addition to finding these ‘coaches, mentors, guardians or extra unofficial supervisors ... (who mediate) the work of the more formal supervisor’, some of the darker arts of doctoral education are practiced. Practitioners of these arts include the ghostwriter, the thesis-mill and the ‘Royal Explorer’, a kind of accompanied Cook’s tour at the end of which lies a (presumably) oven-ready thesis. The paper concludes by questioning the extent to which the PhD should be seen as an individual rather than a collective endeavour and calls for further research into the extra-institutional inputs to the creative system at the centre of which the research student and her supervisor act out their roles.