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Studies in Higher Education Vol. 31, No. 2, April 2006, pp. 149–168

Mastering the dissertation: lecturers’ representations of the purposes and processes of Master’s level dissertation supervision Charles Anderson*, Kate Day and Pat McLaughlin University of Edinburgh, UK Taylor Studies 10.1080/03075070600572017 CSHE_A_157184.sgm 0307-5079 Original Society 202006 31 Department CharlesAnderson 00000April and in for Article Higher (print)/1470-174X Francis Research of2006 Higher Education Ltd into andHigher Community (online) Education EducationUniversity of EdinburghPaterson’s Land, Holyrood RoadEdinburghEH8 [email protected]

This article reports on part of a study of dissertation work in taught Master’s courses. It focuses on presenting findings from interviews with 13 supervisors in a faculty of education concerning the normative order that they believed should prevail within the supervisory relationship, and their complex representation of student agency and of student and supervisor responsibilities. The final discussion frames central findings within a sociocultural account of learning and teaching. It highlights the duality of shaping and supporting students’ efforts that framed supervisors’ commitments and actions: i.e. it details how supervisors saw themselves as having a gatekeeping role and a commitment to align students’ work with academic standards, and at the same time a personal commitment which involved a responsibility to assist students to pursue a topic that excited their interest and to support their sense of agency.

Background Previous research studies There has been a substantial growth in the number of students undertaking Master’s study in the UK, with a 40% increase in enrolments on taught programmes between 1995–96 and 2002–03 (Sastry, 2004, p. 6). This has meant a parallel growth in the number of students undertaking Master’s dissertations (Knight, 1997; Taylor, 2002), so that ‘supervision is now a more pervasive aspect of academic work in virtually every department’ (Delamont et al., 2004, p. 6). A few studies have straddled both doctoral and Master’s supervision (Youngman, 1994), or Master’s and undergraduate *Corresponding author: Department of Higher and Community Education, University of Edinburgh, Paterson’s Land, Holyrood Road, Edinburgh EH8 8AQ, UK. Email: [email protected] ISSN 0307-5079 (print)/ISSN 1470-174X (online)/06/020149–20 © 2006 Society for Research into Higher Education DOI: 10.1080/03075070600572017

150 C. Anderson et al. projects (McMichael, 1992), and there are a few people with a long-standing interest in Master’s students and their supervisors (Grant, 1999, 2003). Other investigations with relevance to the ways in which Master’s study and supervision are managed and experienced include those undertaken by Cargill (1998), Dysthe (2002), Haggis (2002), Hetrick & Trafford (1995), Mackinnon (2004), Taylor & Dawson (1998), Woolhouse (2002) and Ylijoki (2001). While the literature on dissertation research, writing and supervision at Master’s level per se is only beginning to expand, there are the rather more established doctoral thesis and undergraduate project literatures to consider and draw upon as appropriate, taking due account of differences in the intellectual demands and time frames entailed. The literature concerning undergraduate dissertations, with relatively few exceptions (Hammick & Acker, 1998; Todd et al., 2004), tends to have a strong emphasis on the benefits of project work and on assessment matters rather than on supervisory processes. The doctoral literature is more promising, for while postgraduate supervision may be ‘more private than any other scene of teaching and learning’, it is no longer the case that ‘the pedagogic practices of the PhD’ have ‘remained unscrutinised and unquestioned’ (Johnson et al., 2000, p. 135). The increasing amount of detailed attention given to various aspects of Ph.D. supervision may well have some generic relevance, particularly studies and issues to do with professional and part-time doctorates (Leder, 1995; Denicolo, 1999; Holbrook & Johnston, 1999).

Key features of the current study Focus Since the topic of supervising dissertations at Master’s level had not been investigated in any depth, we sought to address this gap by examining supervisor and student perspectives on producing a Master’s dissertation. We were very much in sympathy with earlier efforts to explore the interpersonal aspects of supervision, as a useful corrective to any temptation to view dissertation work in narrowly instrumental terms. But we were also very concerned to keep in view that the supervisory relationship is centred on a specific task, and that the interpersonal dynamics of the supervisory relationship are mediated by the demands the dissertation places on both student and supervisor. To understand the nature of the interpersonal relationship between student and supervisor, one needs to look carefully at how both parties conceive of the purposes to be pursued in the dissertation, their respective responsibilities for progressing this task and how these matters impinge on the normative order and affective climate that is established. At the same time, this task-oriented relationship needs to be viewed within the context of the nature of the particular programme of study and the characteristics of the students involved. The scope of our study was quite broad. Student and staff perspectives on a range of topics within Master’s dissertation research, writing and supervision were investigated by:

Mastering the dissertation 151 ●

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a detailed survey of Master’s level students (91) who had just completed, or were about to submit, their dissertations; focused interviews with a subset (15) of the students surveyed; and focused interviews with supervisors (13) of Master’s dissertations.

This article focuses on the findings from the interviews with supervisors and a subsequent article will concentrate on student perspectives. (In a separate but closely related study we are analysing the talk in supervision sessions at Master’s level.) The context Our investigation was conducted within a faculty of education where there is a large number of students on a variety of taught Master’s courses, which in the main focus on some area of practice and its development. The dissertation (between 15,000 and 20,000 words in length) is undertaken by students once they have successfully completed eight coursework modules and thus obtained a postgraduate diploma. The research project is intended to involve original research, and is customarily empirically grounded rather than library based. It has to be completed within two years for part-time students (who have a maximum of six years to complete the degree as a whole). Full-time students need to complete the taught components and dissertation within a year. Each student has a supervisor chosen on the basis of substantive and methodological expertise that is as well matched as practicable to the topic area and likely research approach. A very high proportion of the students were pursuing their Master’s dissertation on a part-time basis and in a somewhat intermittent way, due to their work and other commitments. Strategy for, and characteristics of, the supervisor sample The purposive sampling of supervisors to interview was driven by the following considerations: ●





a local reputation for competence in Master’s supervision (thus well placed to act as thoughtful and articulate commentators—though we recognise that their perspectives may be different, say, from beginning supervisors); recent experience of Master’s supervision (enabling linkages across to the student strand of the research); representation of different subject areas (reflecting the way postgraduate degrees in education draw on different disciplines, each with distinctive research approaches and practices).

The nine men and four women, selected to meet the criteria outlined above, were in the age bracket of 45 and over and had a range of Master’s level teaching experience in special education, child and adolescent development, management, teaching English as a foreign language or to bilingual learners, outdoor education, counselling, community education, and research methods. They had varying disciplinary backgrounds, with sociology, psychology and linguistics being the most common ‘parent’

152 C. Anderson et al. disciplines. These backgrounds thus need to be borne in mind when considering the findings of this current study. When conducting our analysis we were alert to the possibility that differences in views of supervision might be related to disciplinary background. In a recent article we have highlighted the need to foreground the shaping effect of disciplinary practices in university teaching and learning (Anderson & Day, 2005); and there is a body of work that points up how the writing practices of specific disciplines impact on students (e.g. Lea & Stierer, 2000; Stierer, 2000; Dysthe, 2002). But, as the following section reveals, there were more commonalities than points of contrast in representations of supervision. Supervisor interviews Informed by the preceding student interviews, the in-depth interviews with supervisors were focused in approach and conducted in a fluid, interactive fashion. Almost all lasted over an hour, and some were considerably longer. The topic set for the interviews was designed to capture relevant background information, and explore participants’ representations of dissertation supervision in professionally based Master’s degrees and their experience of supervision and its challenges. Participants were also encouraged to explore issues outside of our topic set which they identified as matters of interest or concern. Data analysis The first exploratory stage in analysis involved individual team members in a finegrained reading and annotation of the transcripts, being alert both to the differences and to the commonalities in representations of supervision among participants. At this early stage of reading and throughout the analysis, meetings of the research team were held with the explicit purpose of testing out each other’s readings and emerging interpretations of the data. This initial exercise of close comparison and contrast revealed more commonalities than points of contrast in these participants’ representations of supervision, and there was no evidence of gender differences. An important source of variability in representations of the nature of supervision was evident within individual accounts, rather than between participants. This source of variability involved aspects of change (in addition to constancies) over the whole time frame of supervising a student’s dissertation, from the beginning conceptualisation to final write-up. The approach taken to analysis and interpretation, therefore, had to take account of features of change over time and avoid presenting too static a picture of how participants represented supervision and acted to advise students. At the same time, it was clear that there were central characteristics of the role which applied across all stages of the dissertation project, and that these elements of continuity would need to be clearly portrayed.

Mastering the dissertation 153 After this exploratory stage of close reading and interrogation of the transcripts, the data were coded on two distinctly different levels. The first level was that of drawing together and organising material on specific, substantive topics (such as material related to the early stages of students’ dissertation work), while the second level was concerned with a conceptual coding and ordering of the elements that had emerged. Taking an account back to the participants A draft of this article was given to each supervisor for comment and most participants did respond. They indicated satisfaction with the way in which quotations from their individual interviews had been used, as well as with the general interpretations advanced. Findings Figure 1 gives a summary sense of the perspectives displayed in the interview transcripts regarding three elements of supervision; the student, the task, and self. However, a two-dimensional representation cannot readily capture the dynamic, closely interwoven relationship between the various components. The presentation of findings will focus on the supervisors’ perspectives on the nature and role of the dissertation, expectations of dissertation students, and conceptions of their own role and responsibility. Figure 1. Supervisors’ framing perspectives

student / (supervisor) responsibilities manner in which students should engage in the task purposes and perspectives that should frame student work

STUDENT

research practices to be pursued by students nature of a dissertation in a professional domain nature of the relationship between research and practice

supervisor/ (student) responsibilities nature of the supervisory relationship supervisor shaping and enabling

DISSERTATION

Figure 1.

Supervisors’ framing perspectives

SUPERVISOR

154 C. Anderson et al. Perspectives on the nature and role of the dissertation Dissertation: general purposes The supervisors gave a clear view of the general purposes that students were expected to pursue. A common theme in the interviews was the importance of the student setting out with a project which had been well conceptualised and had a very clear set of aims. Supervisors recognised that this was a challenging task, and a later section will describe how they assisted students to achieve a clear framing and focus. Another central matter for all supervisors was the need for students to avoid being trapped within taken-for-granted assumptions about their domain of study and to adopt a questioning perspective. In the words of one participant: ‘the critical spirit in which it’s undertaken I think is most important’ (Participant 13). Another participant acknowledged that gaining such an open, questioning perspective was not a trivial matter and could require students to disembed themselves from the frames of understanding that governed their everyday contexts. She talked of how: It may only be a local piece of knowledge and it may not be generalisable much beyond the context in which it was collected, but it has to have been collected with an open mind: and that is again something that I found difficult in an area [special educational needs], a discipline that is driven by policy and driven in many cases by values and political correctness. It can be hard to be free. To free the student’s thinking from that in terms of here they can have a view as long as they can defend it. (Participant 5)

This quotation thus draws attention not only to the expectation that students take an open, questioning approach, but also to the need to engage in academic discursive practices by entering into active defence of their work. This matter of producing a ‘defensible’ product was also highlighted by other participants, and stress was placed on providing a convincing rationale for key decisions and for any conclusions drawn from the study. Consonant with the emphasis on a questioning perspective, and the active defence of the territory students had mapped out, was the expectation that students should take an analytical approach in researching and writing up their dissertation. Dissertations that veered towards straightforward narration were severely frowned upon. Allied to this strong disapproval of work that was overly descriptive was an anticipation that a dissertation would be informed by theory. The strength of feeling with which some participants expressed this requirement for a sound theoretical underpinning is indicated in the following, brief quotation: ‘I don’t see how you can do a good piece of work that’s atheoretical’ (Participant 4). Turning to expectations about the write-up of the dissertation, it was important that this was cast in a logical, coherent, and preferably fluent, form. In the words of one participant: ‘it just, you know, flows through logically, coherently from beginning to end’ (Participant 12). In addition to the intellectual requirements detailed in the preceding paragraphs, it was assumed that a good dissertation would display a particular quality of involvement in the task, as the following quotation illustrates:

Mastering the dissertation 155 I think beyond that, something which is less tangible but gives evidence that the student has been excited by it and values it and really wants to carry it further forward, so it’s meant something personal to the student beyond the requirements. (Participant 2)

Dissertations and the world of research Supervisors thus expected dissertation students to be guided by the values and to adopt the practices of the research community. A number of participants also pointed out that Master’s dissertations could, and on occasion certainly did, make a worthwhile contribution to knowledge. Although dissertations might contribute to knowledge, supervisors also acknowledged limitations in the extent to which a dissertation in a professional Master’s course could lead a student towards fuller participation in the community of researchers. A number of participants made the point that acquisition of research knowledge and skill is incremental in character, and heavily reliant on gaining actual hands-on experience in a variety of projects or settings. Accordingly, it was necessary to be realistic about the extent to which a dissertation could act as a vehicle for research training. Nevertheless, some participants did see it as a valuable opportunity for developing confidence in the use of research methods. A strong theme in some of the interviews was the benefits that could result from taking certain of the world-views and practices of the research community into a particular community of professional practice. Dissertation work was viewed as having increased the students’ ‘research-mindnedness’, allowing them to look at their individual practice from a wider and more analytical perspective and to subject it to a more detached scrutiny. It was also pointed out by some participants that a certain level of research expertise was required to be able to function as a competent professional in contemporary contexts. In summary, dissertation students on professional Master’s degrees were expected to align themselves with the practices of the research community by disembedding themselves from the assumptive worlds of their everyday contexts, adopting an open, questioning perspective and following the academic, discursive conventions that require an active defence of one’s stance on a topic. The dissertation in relation to professional practice There were differences of opinion about whether the dissertation in Master’s degrees in professional domains ought to focus on some issue of practice, and exactly how the relationship between professional practice, research and the dissertation ought to be defined. Some participants felt strongly that the dissertation in a professional Master’s degree should be concerned with the illumination of practice. Other participants took a more permissive line, judging it inappropriate to insist on a link between the dissertation and practice. Also evident from the transcripts were variations in conceptions of the relationship between ‘research’ and the development of practice. For Participant 1, education was

156 C. Anderson et al. very much an applied discipline where, in conducting research, at any level, one needed to: ‘answer the “so what question”. Why did you do this? How has it taken things forward?’ By contrast, Participant 9 was critical of the ‘notion of applied instrumental value’, and concerned instead with the ‘development effect’. He saw the dissertation as a forum where the student should be concerned with posing rather than solving problems, and wished to see students problematise and transform their conceptions of professionalism and professional development during the period of their dissertation. For him the most salient outcome of the dissertation process was the students’ development towards achieving a critical and reflexive intellectual stance. While developing the practice of an individual or institution was seen as a legitimate objective for a dissertation in Master’s degrees which focused on a professional domain, certain boundary conditions were identified for the pursuit of a topic that focused on practice or policy. It was judged important that academic independence be maintained in dissertation work—that the student and the university should not face undue pressure from an ‘outside’ agency in terms of content or research approach. Considering the stance expected of students investigating some area of professional practice, supervisors recognised how pursuing an open, questioning perspective might require achieving a degree of distance from everyday concerns: ‘standing back from a local context and looking at it from more of a research point of view’ (Participant 5). Practice was not to be viewed from within the student’s everyday frame of reference, but needed to be ‘problematised’ and viewed with an analytical, critical eye. (Correspondingly, a number of supervisors noted that they often had to invest effort in learning about the student’s professional context, so that they would be appropriately informed and freed from any unhelpful preconceptions.) Participant 7 recognised that requiring students to adopt this approach towards investigating practice might also pose a challenge to their professional identity: I think teachers … are so commonly involved with the kind of immediate day-to-day needs of the people they are working with … that getting that kind of distance is very, very hard, and I think it imposes for them all sorts of complications when they do it, because they then feel very guilty that they don’t do it more of the time, so when they do sit back and analyse, they think ‘I ought to be doing this about my practice on a daily basis and I really don’t have the time to do that’. So I think it produces a real difficulty.

In addition to expecting an appropriately analytical approach, a number of participant supervisors were concerned that the investigation of practice did not have too narrow a focus. They wished students to look at how their own day-to-day practice was influenced by institutional factors and/or a wider context of policy. For some participants it was also important that a dissertation did not have too limited a focus on an individual context or organisation, but was capable of contributing more widely to informing the work of a profession. This group of supervisors did wish to see their students’ dissertation activities having a real impact on taking practice forward. This contribution to practice might take the form not of direct suggestions for concrete actions but of new ways of framing practice.

Mastering the dissertation 157 In addition, benefits for professional practice were seen as flowing from the way in which dissertation work could help the individual develop as a practitioner. On this theme, Participant 2, for example, stated: ‘greater self-awareness of the practitioner’s own situation, I think that is certainly what we should be looking for’. Some participants stated that students could emerge from the dissertation process with a wider, more analytical perspective on practice, which would inform their thought and future action.

Expectations of dissertation students Student voice and the authority of texts It has been established that students were expected to adopt an open, questioning perspective and to enter into an active defence of their work. These expectations call for critical evaluation of, and debate with, the existing research literature. Students were thus being asked to position themselves in a particular manner towards the research literature and policy documents: not to be acceptingly subservient to the authority of established texts, and to have confidence in their own evaluative voice. One supervisor described how she encouraged such a stance, in the following terms: As I say, ‘Don’t just assume because it’s published, or because it’s somebody famous that it’s necessarily well grounded or will be the state of knowledge for all time’. (Participant 5)

It was recognised by some participants that this could be a somewhat demanding task for some individuals, particularly if they came from a culture where students were not accustomed to exercise this degree of independence of voice. A participant with extensive experience of supervising the dissertations of international students was aware that this expectation for student agency needed to be viewed as itself a culturally specific demand, and one which could challenge a student’s established sense of identity. During his account of this matter, he remarked on: a third kind of difficulty, not quite cognitive but affective in a way, in that I think what we’re doing, rightly or wrongly, is inducting people into a particular cultural and cognitive tradition, so that brings them into conflict sometimes with their own preconceptions and previous experience, and is quite a hard experience for many students to live through. Equally, if they totally resisted it, or totally accepted it because this is what X University, or whoever, said, it must be right! I think both of those things would be quite disappointing, so in a way I was asking quite a lot. (Participant 2)

Responsibilities for progressing the task A somewhat more straightforward requirement of students was the exercise of responsibility for progressing the task at hand. The first stage of dissertation work, that of clarifying the objectives of the project and coming up with an appropriate, detailed and practicable research design was seen as requiring joint, interactive work between student and supervisor. Once objectives and a plan of work had been established, there was an expectation that the student would take the task forward in a proactive, well-organised fashion. This need to display organisation and initiative in

158 C. Anderson et al. progressing the dissertation was seen by some interview participants as a useful challenge to the students. However, as the subsequent discussion of supervisor actions and responsibilities will reveal, the students were not expected to work in isolation but were assisted by supervisors to structure their time and effort on the task. Displaying an engaged interaction with the dissertation work The supervisors believed that a good dissertation would display evidence of an attitude of engaged commitment to the work. This quality of engaged interaction with, and investment of self in, the intellectual demands posed by the dissertation was seen as a desirable achievement in itself. Considerable dissatisfaction was reported when students did not commit themselves in a wholehearted fashion to grappling with the intellectual challenges presented, as the following passage shows: the main frustration was getting people to be creative. It was very difficult to get people to be creative, to actually brainstorm ideas about [it], you know to turn it from something other than an exercise into something where they were engaged. (Participant 6)

As the extract above indicates, this type of active engagement with the task was expected at the stage of topic choice and research design, as well as the later stages of the dissertation work. Student agency in relation to supervisor authority Looking first at the stage of topic choice, supervisors were aware that they potentially had considerable power to direct the student towards a particular topic. They were clearly of the opinion that it would be wrong to exercise this power, and that the origination and ownership of a topic had to lie firmly with the student. Student responsibility to originate a topic area free from undue supervisor direction was made explicit by some supervisors in initial meetings. Participant 13, for example, noted that: ‘I have told them that it’s not for me to tell them what to research, that that has to come from them’. The following quotation illustrates how this position regarding student control of topic area was viewed as a moral obligation: It’s got to come from them. So that, although we kicked around the idea from time to time of setting up research projects and getting students to help us with them, it never came to anything. I think I’m quite glad actually; because I’m not sure it’s legitimate because you’re in too strong a position. (Participant 6)

Once the student had settled on a topic, the balance of control and shaping of the project became a more complex matter. It has been established that students were expected to take the project forward in a vigorous and intellectually engaged matter; and supervisors saw themselves as having the role of supporting this sense of personal agency. At the same time, however, they needed to ensure that the objectives, proposed methods and implementation of the project were appropriately aligned with established research practices. There existed a need, therefore, to shape as well as to support a student’s dissertation efforts. This was particularly true in the early stages

Mastering the dissertation 159 where a student’s chosen area of investigation needed to be turned into a manageable project and a sound research design established. In addition, supervisors recognised from experience that in the early stages of dissertation work, students often lacked confidence and consequently found it difficult to seize the initiative. There were thus limitations on the extent to which students could be expected to act in an autonomous fashion during the earlier stages of their dissertation work. Later in the dissertation process supervisors felt that the need for them to be as proactive diminished. As students accumulated experience and confidence they would and should be able to act with greater autonomy. One participant, for example, while discussing the question of the frequency of meetings with students, highlighted this expectation of a change over time in the balance of control between supervisor and student: that’s part of their developing autonomy. I say to them I expect we’ll see quite a lot of each other in the beginning and then we’ll gradually see less of each other until near the end where you’re just ready to submit. (Participant 4)

Two key aspects of the development of autonomy over the course of the dissertation were evident from analysis of the transcripts: (a) a greater degree of autonomy was seen as possible as students were inducted into research practices, and (b) student achievement of a greater degree of independence in action was viewed as a desirable end in itself. Conceptions of supervisors’ own roles and responsibilities Supervisor assistance with particular tasks and stages of the dissertation work Once a topic area had been settled, the participants believed that it was a key part of their role to assist students in gaining clarity in the conceptualisation of this topic and a well-defined focus for the dissertation. This work of helping students to establish a clear focus went hand in hand with the construction of an academically appropriate and realistically manageable research design. Considerable assistance was given also with the fine grain of the design of specific research instruments. Supervisors used their research experience to help students to structure their overall distribution of time and effort, and to produce a realistic timetable which included an appropriate sequencing for particular tasks. They reported investing considerable time and effort themselves and taking a ‘proactive’ approach during this period of the genesis of the dissertation. Once the tasks of clarifying the focus and constructing a sound, detailed design had been achieved, all of the supervisors described themselves as drawing back somewhat and expecting students to take on responsibility for progressing the research. There were distinct differences between the participants in the role that they adopted during the middle stage of dissertation work. Some very much saw responsibility as lying with the student for maintaining contact during this stage, and for alerting the supervisor to any problems that had arisen. Others, while seeing initiative for progress as resting primarily with the student, regarded the setting of meetings between student

160 C. Anderson et al. and supervisor as a joint responsibility, and thought it important to help the student ‘stay on track’, which could involve more than aiding an appropriate application of time and effort. An important function of the supervisor in the middle and later stages of the dissertation work was to assist in ensuring that the student’s activities maintained an appropriate conceptual direction, keeping in mind the overall aims of the project. The way in which a supervisor might provide such a ‘loan of consciousness’ (Bruner, 1986, p. 76) is indicated here: So it’s reminding them, trying to get the whole thing in their heads early on and then, as we’re doing different bits of it, reminding them what this is all about and where it’s leading to, because they can get lost. (Participant 4)

At the stages of analysis and writing up, supervisors assumed a rather more central role. Assistance was given with the craft of analysis and interpretation and different aspects of the task of writing up. Some supervisors inducted students into the habit of regular writing by encouraging writing and/or setting small writing tasks right from the early stages of the dissertation. Supervisors also interacted with students to assist them with the overall planning of writing and its timetabling, and to ensure that a coherent narrative line was established throughout the dissertation. In addition, help was sometimes given by modelling at paragraph level the forms of academic writing. Awareness was also shown of the affective as well as the intellectual demands students faced in writing up, and it was recognised that they might need to be encouraged to ‘keep the thing alive at that stage’. Supervisors took very seriously their role as ‘critical reader[s]’ and commentators on student drafts, seeing themselves as having a large measure of responsibility to ensure that the final product met established academic standards. This meant that demands would be made on students to revise and restructure. Thus, the guiding and aligning functions of the supervisor’s role came into the foreground again. Participant 6 talked of how: certainly at the end there was quite a lot of time involved because that was where you went through the whole thing. And that was, I think, where you were able to give the most useful impact because then, it was only when you saw the whole thing that you could really see, ‘Oh, this is no good,’ or, ‘This is not going to work,’ then people would have to go back and redo bits.

At this final stage of critical reading a number of supervisors indicated they had experienced a dilemma in some cases as regards the specificity and quantity of changes it was valid to make. They found it problematic to determine in practice where the boundary lay between the supervisor’s responsibility to bring the dissertation to meet academic standards and the students’ responsibility to take their own work forward. The account of this matter by Participant 12 is typical of the way in which supervisors wrestled with the dilemma: it can be very problematic indeed and it’s difficult to contain that line between providing guidance and not getting involved in the actual process of production. And that I think it is a dilemma that’s common to all supervision. To be able to say that this isn’t right—there are problems here. Without actually saying: ‘This is how you rectify the problems’ or ‘This is what you should say’.

Mastering the dissertation 161 Bringing students into the perspectives and practices of the research community The care supervisors took with the initial stages of tightening up the dissertation focus and constructing a sound research design can be seen as inducting students into the general ‘habits of mind’ of the research community. Students were guided to acquire the disciplines of conceptualising in a clear and focused way the object of their inquiry, and of providing a convincing rationale for their research actions. Some supervisors highlighted the importance of getting students to internalise from the outset certain of the standards expected in good research practice, in particular those concerned with a rigorous, meticulous attention to detail. Throughout the whole process of the dissertation, supervisors described themselves as both guiding and supporting students to take an analytical, critical stance towards the literature, and to have confidence in their own interpretative voice. In addition to encouraging an open, questioning perspective to existing literature, supervisors nudged students towards taking a more detached, open perspective on their own work: in the words of one supervisor, ‘Getting them to pull back from time to time’. The encouragement of students to take this meta-perspective on their own research actions and writing was accompanied by the induction of students into the habit of discussion and justification of the positions they were adopting. Supervisory meetings could provide a forum for helping students meet the expectation that a good dissertation should display an active defence of its research decisions and framework of explanation. Participant 5, for example, talked of how: ‘I think it’s good for them anyway to have to sound their ideas out regularly with somebody who has a broader perspective on it than their colleagues or themselves’. The supervisors’ accounts indicate clearly that they were not engaged in a straightforward, unilateral shaping of students’ efforts. The preferred style was to act more indirectly to draw students into appropriate research practices. Here, for example, is a supervisor describing the manner in which he now encouraged students to gain clarity and precision in research design: initially I tended to be too steering in that process but … I’ve eased up on that and begun asking more questions and probing rather than saying, ‘Well, I think you could do this, this and this’. (Participant 13)

The indirect, but still very potent, way in which Participant 4 guided students in structuring their time and effort is revealed in the following extracts, where she described how she gets: them to give themselves tasks. So I would say, ‘When do you think it would be useful to meet again?’ … And they would say, ‘Two weeks’ time’ and ‘What would we talk about then, how could I best help you? What would you … would you have been able to write anything?’ You know, it’s that sort of thing.

This exchange clearly indicates a very complex weaving of supervisor guidance and student direction, constituting a process which could not be captured well in any scheme that viewed student agency and supervisor control in dichotomous terms. The following extract from the interview with Participant 7 provides another example

162 C. Anderson et al. of this preferred style of an indirect shaping of dissertation work which entailed active student participation. I suppose my expectation is that they should be very organised and that they should be— that my job, my preferred job is to support them to negotiate targets, to set their own targets. … what I want them to do is I want them to take responsibility for the research they are doing and the writing they are doing and seeing why it has to be done. What I don’t want to find halfway through is that I’m having to persuade them things are necessary that I thought we’d got sorted out to start with.

Again, then, one sees a complex interlocking of supervisor guidance and student initiative, and the expectation that students would internalise the purposes of the research community: ‘seeing why it has to be done’. Analysis of this passage, and other similar extracts from the transcripts, adds a fine shading to the account that has been given of expectations for student agency. As illustrated earlier, supervisors expected students to display a ‘developing autonomy’ over the course of their dissertation work, but it was an autonomy that had to be demonstrated within a particular community with its own purposes, values, exacting standards and procedures. ‘Autonomy’ thus has a specific, situated meaning. How supervisors supported students’ sense of agency in relation to the task Moving to the new situation of the dissertation was felt to be challenging for many students. The supervisors therefore saw part of their role as encouraging individuals to develop greater confidence. Participant 5, for example, talked in the following terms of the importance of ‘motivating’, i.e. engendering a sense of confidence in students: I think you can’t underestimate how much you have to motivate, even highly motivated people, and people who are used to being utterly confident in what they are doing. Research is quite unnerving, I think, to people.

Another participant described in similar terms the affective challenges faced by students, and the supervisor’s responsibility to help them meet those challenges. She highlighted the importance of encouraging students to import the sense of confidence they have about their abilities in the world of work into the dissertation. In addition to encouraging students to trust in their own abilities, participants described how they needed to act on occasion to move students on from viewing themselves as having a dependent role within the supervisory relationship itself. Participant 6, for instance, described how he had resisted being put in too directing a position by demanding more student initiative: So you just had to keep throwing the ball back to them, and saying, ‘No, you have to come up with the suggestions, I’ll react to your suggestions’.

At the same time supervisors recognised that getting some individual students to take on a more active and powerful role within the supervisory relationship could be a somewhat difficult task, particularly when these individuals possessed a different set

Mastering the dissertation 163 of cultural norms concerning the relationship that should obtain between a student and a teacher.

Gatekeeping Attention so far has centred on supervisors’ responsibilities to students, in terms of supporting students’ sense of self-efficacy in relation to the task and guiding them towards appropriate research practices. Supervisors also, however, experienced a responsibility to the wider academic community to ensure that appropriate standards were maintained, as illustrated by this extract from the interview with Participant 9: Interviewer: … what would you see as specifically your responsibilities, as opposed to the students? Well, I think it is, I mean ideally I see this kind of work, whether it’s even at undergraduate level or the Ph.D.s I supervise, as something where there are obviously different sorts of authority and responsibility: but if it works properly it comes together as some kind of synthesis, where you don’t separate out things too much. But in the end I am responsible for standards. I am responsible for making sure that the literature is being used properly.

Supervisors noted that on occasion this commitment to maintaining appropriate academic standards could lead to interpersonal difficulties in the supervisory relationship. Participant 9 talked about one encounter as involving ‘a real struggle. I mean, I was very, very committed to him as a person and yet completely unwilling to compromise my standards’. In a similar vein, Participant 7 described the following problematic situation: she wanted really to be told it was all fine and she could just leave it. But it wasn’t on. I think that’s really hard. I think there was a bit in there which was slightly kind of moral pressure on me about ‘You could just say it’s all right and that’ll be OK’, as if I could swing the examination process, or as if I might want to.

In addition to this deeply felt responsibility to ensuring that academic standards were maintained and the dissertation shaped up in a way which would make it ‘research worthy’, supervisors were strongly committed to a conception of students as being very agentic in taking forward the task and to their own role in supporting this sense of agency. There was thus the potential for a dilemma as to how best to proceed in cases where these two strong commitments appeared to be in conflict.

Discussion Supporting and shaping students’ efforts The preceding paragraph has highlighted the central duality of supporting and shaping students’ efforts that framed supervisors’ day-to-day practice. This duality has featured throughout the presentation of findings and is illustrated in Figure 2, which represents the supervisors’ principal commitments on one axis and their associated actions on the other axis. It points up that supervisors saw themselves as having a

164 C. Anderson et al. gatekeeper role and a commitment to align students’ work with academic standards, which entailed the need to take actions to ensure that the dissertation was research worthy. At the same time supervisors experienced a personal commitment to students. This involved a responsibility to assist students to pursue a topic which excited their interest and to support their sense of agency. The term ‘duality’ has been chosen to avoid giving the impression that supporting and shaping were straightforwardly oppositional elements of the supervisory relationship. Its use is guided by Wenger’s (1998) recent work, in which he attempts to move Figure 2. Schematic representation of supervisor’s commitments and actions

  

    

            

                    

Supervisor

   



  

 

Figure 2.

          

Schematic representation of supervisor’s commitments and actions

Mastering the dissertation 165 on from dichotomous representations of learning and social participation which can present an oversimplified and distorted picture. Wenger describes a duality as ‘a single conceptual unit that is formed by two inseparable and mutually constitutive elements whose inherent tension and complementarity give the concept richness and dynamism’ (Wenger, 1998, p. 66). This definition (with appropriate caution over how one interprets the term ‘mutually constitutive’) is a helpful way of framing the supervisors’ central commitments to support and to shape. If one focused too exclusively on the supporting half of Figure 2, one would lose sight of the fact that the interpersonal dynamics of supervision are mediated by the demands that a dissertation places on both supervisor and student. In the words of one supervisor: ‘I think that’s probably a universal tension in roles between being a gatekeeper and being a student’s friend!’ (Participant 2). Alternatively, if one concentrated too heavily on the shaping side of the figure there would be the dangers of neglecting the supervisor’s concern with promoting student agency, and of divorcing the supervisor’s guiding of student efforts from the lived reality of the relationship. On the basis of the findings of the current study, supporting and shaping can be seen to be inseparable elements of everyday practice in supervision. Their interlocking relationship is succinctly captured in the following quotation from Participant 10: ‘I think the challenge for a member of staff is to give the student space to develop things, while at the same time guiding and directing’. A focus of the recent literature on doctoral study has been the delineation and conceptualisation of the power dynamics within supervisory relationships (Green & Lee, 1995; Kam, 1997; Delamont et al., 1998; Bartlett & Mercer, 2000; Johnson et al., 2000). Grant (1999, 2003), a prominent contributor to this literature, has argued for the need to recognise that ‘the power relations between supervisor and student, imbued by an expectation of independence and autonomy, are more complex than simply domination on the part of the supervisor and submission on the part of the student’ (Grant & Graham, 1999), noting that the ‘two parties … while clearly of unequal status and power, are both capable of action in the Foucauldian sense’ (p. 77). Seeking a more differentiated representation, Grant (2003) has delineated different layers of ‘pedagogical power relations’ within supervision. Consonant with a principal thrust of Grant’s depiction of power relationships, reflection on the close interlocking of supervisors’ supporting and shaping actions also leads one away from a dichotomous view of supervisor control versus student direction, to a more complex representation of the power relations within supervision. The presentation of findings has revealed both the emphasis that supervisors placed on developing students’ autonomy and that this autonomy had a specific, situated meaning. To support students’ capacity to act with initiative, supervisors needed to align students’ activities appropriately with the established values and practices of the research community. Support for developing autonomy thus entailed shaping and guiding student actions in such a way as to allow them to act as competent, albeit peripheral, participants in this community. Clearly, one needs to be alert to the oppressive and constraining effects that a supervisor’s exercise of authority may have on a student’s efforts and sense of self. At

166 C. Anderson et al. the same time the findings of the current study would suggest that is important not to focus solely on the supervisor’s authority as a negative source of oppressive control. One also needs to keep in view how it can be used in a positive fashion to enable students to meet a challenging set of demands, and to develop a sense of self-efficacy in relation to this task. Supervisors’ actions in aligning students’ efforts with the standards and practices of the research community could be represented as constraining their freedom of action. However, as has already been noted, these acts of ‘constraining’ guidance were also enabling students to act appropriately, and thereby achieve more autonomous performance within this context. Principled responsiveness The duality of supporting and shaping provides us with a synoptic view of central features of the process of supervision, and one which brings out the commonalities across stages, specific tasks and individual students. However, this duality should not be regarded as a static representation of supervision. In common with Wenger’s definition of a duality, the tension between these two facets entailed ‘richness and dynamism’ (Wenger, 1998). It has been established that the balance between supporting and shaping shifted considerably over the time frame of the degree, as did supervisors’ expectations of student agency. While the central commitments to the student and to maintaining research standards remained constant, the tension between these commitments played out differently according to the demands associated with specific tasks—a movement over time and task which can be captured in the phrase ‘principled responsiveness’. Supervisors also described themselves as adjusting their approach to the needs of individual students. As examples, Participant 12 talked of how: ‘supervision, certainly my experience of supervision, is tailored to every individual student’, and Participant 9 spoke of how ‘I think I respond to students and their interests in different ways’. While the duality of supporting and shaping points up constant elements in the supervisory relationship, it also allows for this dynamic change over time and responsiveness to person and circumstance. A current study in which we are analysing the talk recorded in Master’s supervision sessions is allowing us to gain a fine-grained picture of how this dynamic duality of supporting and shaping can be seen to operate within actual supervisory meetings. This analysis will be reported in a forthcoming article. References Anderson, C. & Day, K. (2005) Purposive environments: engaging students in the values and practices of history, Higher Education, 49, 319–343. Bartlett, A. & Mercer, G. (2000) Reconceptualising discourses of power in postgraduate pedagogies, Teaching in Higher Education, 5(2), 195–204. Bruner, J. (1986) Actual minds, possible worlds (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press). Cargill, M. (1998) Cross-cultural postgraduate supervision meetings as intercultural communication, in: M. Kiley & G. Mullins (Eds) Quality in postgraduate research: managing the new agenda (Adelaide, University of Adelaide), 175–187.

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