Cally Guerin

Supervision pedagogies: narratives from the field

In designing supervisor development programmes that are appropriate to changing research contexts, it is necessary to draw on both established best practice and emerging innovations that respond to the changing contexts of higher degree research. We undertook a narrative enquiry at an Australian university to establish a clearer understanding of the supervisory models and pedagogies currently employed by effective supervisors. Three key findings have emerged: these supervisors employ a broad range of approaches informed by their own experiences of being supervised; they place great importance on their relationships with students; and they reveal a strong awareness of their own responsibilities in actively developing the emerging researcher identities of their doctoral candidates. These aspects of supervision models should be emphasised in supervisor development programmes.

Why start a higher degree by research? An exploratory factor analysis of motivations to undertake doctoral studies

Despite the increasing numbers of candidates embarking on higher degrees by research (HDRs, e.g., PhD, professional doctorate, practice-based doctorate), we still have limited knowledge about why they are choosing this path. What are the factors that motivate students to embark on research degrees? Given that many of those who succeed in completing their doctorates will not go into academic positions, the motivations for choosing to undertake a research degree may not match the experience or outcomes (and hence, perhaps, contribute to incompletion rates). This article investigates the motivations of students in all faculties embarking on HDRs at an Australian university. A survey of 405 students was subjected to a factor analysis. Five factors emerged: family and friends, intrinsic motivation, lecturer influence, research experience, and career progression.

Diversity in collaborative research communities: a multicultural, multidisciplinary thesis writing group in public health

Writing groups for doctoral students are generally agreed to provide valuable learning spaces for Ph.D. candidates. Here an academic developer and the eight members of a writing group formed in a Discipline of Public Health provide an account of their experiences of collaborating in a multicultural, multidisciplinary thesis writing group. We consider the benefits of belonging to such a group for Ph.D. students who are operating in a research climate in which disciplinary boundaries are blurring and where an increasing number of doctoral projects are interdisciplinary in nature; in which both academic staff and students come from enormously diverse cultural and language backgrounds; and in which teamwork, networking and collaboration are prized but not always proactively facilitated. We argue that doctoral writing groups comprising students from diverse cultural and disciplinary backgrounds can be of significant value for postgraduates who wish to collaborate on their own academic development to improve their research writing and communication skills; at the same time, such collaborative work effectively builds an inclusive, dynamic research community.

‘They’re the bosses’: feedback in team supervision

Team supervision of PhDs is increasingly the norm in Australian and UK universities; while this model brings many improvements on the traditional one-on-one research supervision, it also introduces new complexities. In particular, many students find the diversity of opinions expressed in teams to be confusing. Such diversity in supervisor feedback is often experienced as unsettling, and the study indicates that students generally seek consensus from their supervisory team. The power dynamics existing in the relations between team members in this situation need to be carefully considered, and supervisors must be alert to the ways in which doctoral students can be effectively and productively inducted into the norms of academic debate and collaborative research projects. The paper explores the implications of diversity in feedback in relation to developing a pedagogy of supervision.

Blogging as community of practice: lessons for academic development?

As practices and expectations around doctoral writing continue to change, so too do the demands on academic developers and learning advisors. Social media is increasingly playing a role in doctoral education, just as it is in higher education more generally. This paper explores a blog initiated in 2012 to inform and support doctoral writing; since its inception, it has grown to include diverse and overlapping communities of academic developers, language and literacy specialists, supervisors, and students with shared interests in doctoral writing. This case study reflects on our experiences of entering the online environment through the lens of connectivist learning, noting the practices and communities that have been established, and the blog’s positioning in relation to our formal roles within universities. We consider how blogging relates to our work as academic developers. Details of our experiences, with our analysis and reflection of them, can inform other academic developers seeking to engage in social media networks as part of their working lives.

Rhizomatic Research Cultures, Writing Groups and Academic Researcher Identities

As interdisciplinary research becomes increasingly common in universities, new types of research culture appear to be developing. The doctoral students undertaking studies in this research climate are themselves increasingly diverse (Gardner, Jansujwicz, Hutchins, Cline, & Levesque, 2012; Pearson, Cumming, Evans, Macauley, & Ryland, 2011), coming into their studies from nontraditional pathways, from a variety of disciplinary and professional backgrounds, as well as from a range of cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Informed by interview data collected from members of doctoral writing groups, this article outlines the academic researcher identities these diverse students need to develop in order to operate effectively within rhizomatic research cultures. By considering this through the lens of Deleuze and Guattari’s (1980/1988) model of rhizomatic knowledge structures, we can begin to understand how the contemporary research environment values heterogeneous, non-hierarchical, networked styles of work on research projects. The article proposes that multidisciplinary doctoral writing groups offer experiences that enable researchers to embrace the qualities of flexibility, multiplicity, collegiality, and connection and that these qualities will be of benefit to students in the current research environment.

Cultural diversity and the imagined community of the global academy

Transnational academic mobility and the ongoing push towards “internationalization” together raise challenges for the cultural climate of todays universities. This paper explores these issues from the perspective of supervisors of research degrees in an Australian university in which “internationalization” and “academic mobility” apply to supervisors as much as to students. The concepts of the imagined community and cosmopolitanism are employed to interpret a series of one-on-one and group interviews conducted with international academic staff, conversations which reported surprisingly untroubled negotiation of cultural difference. Using the insights provided by the concepts of “imagined community” and “cosmopolitanism”, we investigate the mechanisms mobilized by these supervisors in apparently backgrounding cultural diversity in the workplace, and consider the implications of the academic subjectivities they perform.

The Emerging Workforce of International University Student Workers: Injury Experience in an Australian University

International university students are a growing section of the workforce and are thought to be at greater risk of injury. Qualitative studies have highlighted vulnerabilities, but there is a shortage of quantitative research exploring the injury experience and associated risk factors of this emerging issue. In this study, a total of 466 university student workers across a range of study programs in a single Australian university completed an online survey, with questions relating to their background, working experience, training and injury experience. Risk factors for injury were explored in a multivariate statistical model. More than half had not received any safety training before they started work, and 10% reported having had a work injury. About half of these injuries occurred after training. Statistically significant risk factors for injury included working more than 20 h per week (adjusted odds ratio 2.20 (95% CI 1.03–4.71) and lack of confidence in discussing safety issues (AOR 2.17; 95% CI 1.13–4.16). The findings suggest the need for a more engaging and effective approach to safety education and a limit on working hours. This situation is a moral challenge for universities, in that they are effectively sponsoring young workers in the community. It is recommended that longitudinal studies of international student workers be conducted.

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.

A coordinated framework for developing researchers’ intercultural competency

Background and context In keeping with global trends, there is a national imperative in the terrain of higher education in South Africa to increase the percentage of university students studying at the postgraduate level (RSA DHET 2012). With this comes mounting pressure to increase the throughput rates of postgraduate students in the country’s universities for economic, social and political reasons, and critically in order to maintain and further what has become known as the ‘knowledge project’. However, as a result of the inequities of the apartheid era, the higher education arena is faced with a complex and diverse student population (Quinn 2012) and ever-increasing student numbers (Snowball & Sayigh 2007) as it attempts to grapple with issues of epistemological access, redress and quality. To date, there is evidence to suggest that our higher education system is failing the majority of students, at both the undergraduate and the postgraduate levels (Letseka & Maile 2008; Scott, Yeld & Hendry 2007). Higher education in South Africa, therefore, must be understood to speak to both the ‘knowledge project’ and the issue of social justice, as without a sustained emphasis on the latter, the country will have failed in its mandate to engage in equal and equitable transformation of the higher education system.IntroductIon: AcAdemIc mobIlIty While the concept of the wandering scholar is not new, the speed and frequency of academic mobility have rapidly gained momentum in the 21st century (Kim 2009). Linked to the notion of the ‘borderless’ university (Cunningham et al. 1998; Hearn 2011; Watanabe 2011), scholars today expect to study and work in more than one country, to present their research at international conferences, and to collaborate with colleagues from all around the world. The result is a multicultural academic workforce in many universities for whom boundaries between national cultures are increasingly being erased and where all members require high levels of intercultural competence.