Dear Ken,
I hope you won't mind my joining in here, on the issue of PhD
supervision. I would like to try to counter what strikes me
as some mistaken thinking, recently posted on this subject.
I take a PhD be to a training in doing research; and having a
PhD to denote an ability to carry out independent research.
And I take it that this is NOT a controversial view of what we
are talking about.
The PhD training is necessarily a supervised training, where
supervision is provided by one or more supervisors. The
training involves a Master-Apprentice like relationship
between the PhD candidate and his or her supervisor or
supervisors; it is one that gives necessarily different and
distinctive roles to the players involved, but which is
essentially a collaboration: if there is no Master, there is
no apprentice, and thus no apprenticeship. And a Master does
not become a Master without first being an Apprentice.
Now, as we know, presenting a thesis and being awarded a PhD
certificate does not necessarily mean, in and of itself, that
the candidate has received a proper training in doing
research. But, just obtaining a PhD degree certificate should
NOT be the objective of any PhD candidate: getting though
despite the lack of supervision, or despite the lack of any
good supervision, should not be the aim of any PhD candidate.
Why? Because this will not get what he or she set out to
obtain, when he or she elected to join a PhD programme: a
training in doing research.
All PhD programmes and all PhD supervisors have a professional
responsibility to provide high quality supervision. Now I know
full well that this does not always happen, and that people do
get awarded PhD degrees after having had nothing like a proper
supervised training in doing research, and yet others fail to
present a thesis for the lack of good enough supervision. That
this is sadly true does not change the fact that a PhD is
necessarily a supervised training in doing research. It means
that some people have PhDs without actually having received the
necessary kind of training. This is not to be simply accepted.
It is to be continuously struggled against. This struggle
includes the students involved. Thinking that an option--to escape
an unhappy, inadequate, or useless supervision situation--is
to go without supervision, is a basic mistake; a clear indication
that the student has not yet learned what research is about,
and thus, that he or she needs some proper supervised training
in doing research.
The need for a Master-Apprentice like collaborative relationship,
in any PhDing, is NOT something imposed by some self-proclaimed
higher authority, which can be dismissed as being out-dated,
irrelevant, and disconnected from today's realities. It is
a well tried and tested, and widely practiced way to train new
researchers who are good enough to take on the responsibilities
of doing good research in today's world. These responsibilities
necessarily include training more new researchers.
For me, and I believe for all of us who supervise PhDs, one of
the most important, and often one of the most enjoyable
aspects of collaborating with PhD students, is what I (as the
supervisor) learn, including what I learn about doing research
and about supervising students. A necessary part of any
training in doing research is thus seeing that your supervisor
(or supervisors) learns from working with you: the training
is not a one-way process; from Master to Apprentice. It is a
collaborative learning process. And if you don't experience
this first hand in your own PhD training, you do not easily
pick it up and know how to do this when you come to have
your own PhD students.
A good PhD training is not the end; it is just the beginning:
the beginning of future PhDs. Obtaining a PhD without a
proper supervised training simply destroys this truth.
Best regards,
Tim
Donostia / San Sebastián
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