This year I’ve been supervising a Higher Degree by Research (HDR) student for the first time. This feels a bit strange, considering that I’m only a few years out of completing my own PhD, but I imagine that’s common for students. And, of course, at least I have the benefit of drawing on my own experiences as a teacher in order to provide some kind fo framework for this kind of engagement. But that’s what this blog post is all about: how very different supervision is
The most significant difference that I’ve noticed is that the weight of responsibility really rests with the student. This is, of course, different to most forms of education, where the teacher is responsible for setting curriculum, organising materials and classes, providing opportunities and so on. In the case of supervision, a lot of the research argues that it is up to the student to organise meetings and ensure that work is submitted for discussion at these meetings. This is taking some getting used to! One of my fellow academics has a rule that they apply after the first year of candidature: ‘if there’s no writing, there’s no meeting.’ In other words, if the student is doing the work, then the supervisor doesn’t go to the meeting. That sounds pretty confronting, but I can understand the idea behind it – and I guess it becomes even more crucial once people have more than one student, and hence time become more and more limited.
The second thing that I noticed is that it’s a much more collegial atmosphere. By collegial, I mean that it’s more like a partnership between the student and the supervisor. Unlike a traditional educational program, where the teacher has clear outcomes and pedagogies to achieve them, the supervision process is more the process of discovering new knowledge together. While I know a bit about my student’s topic, and it’s adjacent to my own research, it is new research, new knowledge creation, and thus I don’t know what the end result will be. With hindsight, this makes sense, and is as it should be, but the actual experience of having a student brings this into focus.
The final point that I’ll make is that I was incredibly lucky regarding my own experience of being a HDR student.