Doctoral supervision: Not an individual but a collective institutional responsibility

AbstractMy research broadly speaking has always been directed at understanding how individuals learn from and through experience. Since 2006, with Canadian and UK colleagues I have been researching the experiences of doctoral students, post-PhD researchers, and new lecturers. Our hope has been to shed light on what ana how they learn about academic work. What I want to focus on in this essay is what we have learned about supervision. What participants in all three roles have in common is the experience of having been supervised. In contrast, the experience of being an institutionally-recognized supervisor tends to emerge only as individuals become lecturers and try to make sense of ‘moving to the other side of the table.’ My goal in this essay is to draw out from our research the pedagogical implications for supervision—implications which I find myself now trying to implement in my own supervisory practice. Overall, the evidence I present challenges the taken-for-granted assumption that the supervisor is ...