Working with and through Neoliberalism: Envisioning Research Supervision as a Pedagogy of Care in a Context of “Privileged Irresponsibility”

The report of the Ministerial Committee on Transformation and Social Cohesion revealed that exclusionary practices are commonplace in South African universities. They remain a compelling factor that contributes to student attrition in Master’s and doctoral programmes, and they were a trigger to the #RhodesMustFall movement. Universities, oblivious to their doublespeak, have institutionalised curriculum decolonisation and delivery, yet simultaneously enforce neoliberal performative principles (fast-tracking increased numbers despite different levels of student readiness). The extent to which traditional, hierarchical research supervision models (with their genesis in an asymmetrical master-apprentice power dynamic) have responded to the needs of the euphemistically coined “non-traditional” student is moot. In a context of unprecedented increase in research supervision workloads and pressure to decolonise, there is limited research-informed knowledge as to how research supervisors navigate these contradictory conditions. This article reports on a study informed by a Freirean “pedagogy of care” as it attempts to address this lacuna by exploring the research supervision experiences and practice of a sample of 18 research-active professors in a College of Humanities at a research-led university in South Africa. Data was generated through in-depth interviews and subjected to reflexive thematic analysis. The findings indicate that a deep sense of care exists among the sampled supervisors and it manifests in various ways as supervisors actively work with and through neoliberal protocols.