Models for supervision and the (possible) influence of the discipline group
Not so long ago I attended a day long workshop on supervising postgraduate students here at the University. The program was very interesting, and incorporated a number of short presentations by both administration and academic staff.
The final session took place late in the afternoon and involved a panel of three, very experienced supervisors, each of whom took five minutes to reflect on their personal approach to supervision. Each of these supervisors was from a different discipline group (one from the School of Anatomy and Human Biology, one from the School of Social and Cultural Studies, and one from the School of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering). After listening to them speak, it became clear, firstly, that they have all been very successful in getting their PhD students through to submission, and second, that they all have very different views on how postgraduate research students should be supervised. The latter point was of most interest to me. I started to think that perhaps these supervisors are representatives of particular supervisory management styles.
The biologist, for instance, took a more directorial approach in her supervision, there was a great deal of structure in her dealings with students, she was task driven and prone to administer direction in the research project, but much less inclined to pastoral support. The second supervisor was a historian and, contrary to the biologist, tended towards high levels of pastoral support, all the while gently challenging his students to pursue and explore there own interests. There seemed to be quite low levels of structure in dealings with his students, but he seemed more inclined to view the research process holistically, actively encouraging his students to communicate their research widely (through publishing and conferences), giving advice to students who were contemplating life post PhD and informing students of other forms of institutional support. Finally, the engineer adopted a more laissez-faire approach to supervision. I guess this really involved low level of both support and structure, but a willingness to offer input at certain key stages in the research and encourage the student to be disciplined and work independently toward towards predetermined goals.
It was clear to me that all these supervisors articulated different models for ‘managing’ their postgraduate students. I began to wonder if these differences were embedded in, or stemmed from, the discipline group from which they derive. That is, do most supervisors in the humanities tend toward the pastoral model of supervision, do those in the sciences adopt a more managerial approach to supervision and so forth. I think it would be interesting to explore this question further.