Deirdre Barron

Pedagogical concerns in doctoral supervision: a challenge for pedagogy

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to focus on pedagogy as a crucial element in postgraduate research undertakings, implying active involvement of both student and supervisor in process of teaching and learning.Design/methodology/approach – Drawing on Australian higher degree research supervision practice to illustrate their argument, the authors take issue with reliance on traditional Oxbridge conventions as informing dominant practices of supervision of postgraduate research studies and suggest pedagogy as intentional and systematic intervention that acknowledges the problematic natures of relationships between teaching, learning, and knowledge production as integral to supervision and research studies.Findings – The authors examine issues of discursive practice and the problematic nature of power differentials in supervisor‐supervisee relationships, and the taken‐for‐grantedness of discursive practice of such relationships. The authors do this from the perspective of the student involved in higher ...

Subjects of Western education: Discursive practices in Western postgraduate studies and the construction of international student subjectivities

This paper focuses on discursive practices of postgraduate research as a crucial element in constructs of international student subjectivities when they undertake postgraduate studies in Australian universities. As such, it focuses on a discursive field emerging within domains of internationalisation, globalisation, and resistance. It examines processes and protocols in a number of Australian universities’ postgraduate divisions’ practices in the conduct of postgraduate supervision, in the context of increasing pressures towards internationalisation within frameworks of globalising influences. It takes issue with Western custom and tradition as privileged within the field of supervision of postgraduate research studies and suggests a model of postgraduate research supervision as intentional and systematic intervention, based on literature deriving from research in postgraduate supervision which acknowledges the problematic natures of cultural relationships as to teaching and learning and knowledge production, and student resistances within these fields. In doing so, it examines issues of discursive practices and the problematic natures of power relationships in supervisor-supervisee protocols and possibilities suggested by alternative models of postgraduate supervision of international students.

Discourses of Deficit in Higher Degree Research Supervisory Pedagogies for International Students

Global student mobility has placed pressure on western universities to recruit students from non-western, non-English-speaking backgrounds. In this article, we argue that language requirements such as the International English Language Testing System bands are underpinned by discourses that privilege western modes of thought. We go on to argue that English language proficiency underpins discourses of deficit that construct non-western students as less able to undertake research programmes. In exploring pedagogical possibilities, we draw on a published story of an international higher degree research student, called Mei, at an Australian university. We question the idea that a research higher degree is more about linguistic skills than it is about research skills, and we argue that rigour, scholarship, and new knowledge constitute the assessable factors in what international higher degree research students produce.

Milestone 6: Method

Research method is a way of conducting research, a sort of package of strategies for gathering data. Method is not the same as methodology, and writing two separate chapters for each of these will help to ensure that the difference between them is maintained, but this is not necessary. You will make your own decisions regarding whether to address both in the same chapter or not. It is also useful to have a section in this chapter headed Technique , such as doing a survey or interviewing research participants. Some of the more common methods in qualitative research are case study, ethnography, document analysis, discourse analysis, and narrative enquiry. The selection of method will be informed by the methodology you have selected, and you will address issues of validity and trustworthiness as these pertain to the ways in which you employ the method selected.

Milestone 5: Methodology

Methodology is a theory of producing knowledge through research and provides a rationale for the way a researcher proceeds. It is the philosophical underpinning of a given research practice. The chapter that you write on methodology is your discussion of the theory upon which your research is based, and you will show that you understand it well. When you write your methodology chapter, you will engage another body of literature, the literature on research methodology. It is a different body of literature from what you engaged when reading the research literature for your literature review chapter.

Milestone 1: Clearing the decks

If you are enrolled in a Masters by Research, Professional Doctorate, or Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) program then you are considered a Higher Degree Research (HDR) student. What you are doing is called an HDR because it is based on research. This is also the case when you are doing the research component of Honors. Research is not just reading everything that everybody has written on a given topic. It is generating new knowledge or using existing knowledge in new ways (which is in effect generating new knowledge) on the topic that you have selected for close study. You may have any number of what you consider to be good reasons for not doing your HDR, but an examination of the reasons for not doing it may enable you to clear the decks so that you can proceed with confidence.

Milestone 3: Getting ethics clearance

A qualitative researcher within an interpretivist tradition investigating a social world will be working with people participating in their research. This means that ethics clearance is required before any generation of data in relation to these participants is undertaken. We make it clear to others in our research community and in our community of research participants that the research that we are undertaking is moral, honest, not putting anybody in harms way, physically, emotionally, or psychologically. To have our research acceptable to and accepted by the wider community, we are required to have what we are doing scrutinized and assessed as being in accordance with research ethics principles and protocols.

Milestone 2: The confirmation or defense of candidature

A defense of your research or a Confirmation of Candidature or a colloquium may occur toward the beginning of your candidature, or toward the end. This is the point at which you present, discuss, and defend your research to a panel of research experts. You will convince them, on the basis of what you have written and what you have to say in your presentation and in response to their questioning of you, that you have indeed considered all the demands of a successful PhD research program from the outset of your research, or if it is a defense of thesis, that you have met them at the completion of your research.