Hi Gavin,
Thanks for your message.
I'm aware of the breadth of literature on PhD supervision and have read a
fair bit of it in engineering, social sciences and art and design. From my
reading, I got the impression that almost all of it is written in a
parochial manner from inside each discipline. This has the disadvantage that
it tends to hide the weaknesses of each discpline's approach.
An advantage of 'The Pedagogy of 'Good' PhD supervision' is it compares
across disciplines the different PhD outcomes profiles AND supervision
practices in ways that are rare in say studies of PhD practices in Art and
Design written from within Art and Design traditions.
The research gives some simple solid findings, e.g.: 1) Outcomes associated
with PhD practices (completions, time to completion and publications) are
signficantly weaker in the Humanities and Art fields. The differences are
not small. 2) PhD supervision practices more commonly associated with the
Natural Sciences did much better than those traditionally used in the
Humanities and Arts when used in the Humanities and Arts instead of
traditional Humanities and Arts supervision practices. 3) Across the board,
PhD students did particularly badly where their supervisors were involved in
publishing sole-edited international collections (a weird finding but
intriguing!).
With such a large sample size across the disciplines, I feel these findings
are hard to wave aside in favour of smaller scale 'within discipline'
research that in the Humanities and Arts often suggest 'best practice' in
supervision is more of the same because it is specific to that discipline.
If you feel differently, I'd look forward to when you have time to point to
the evidence otherwise.
Best wishes,
Terry
-----Original Message-----
From: Gavin Melles [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Thursday, 14 May 2009 5:38 AM
To: [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Critiques of PhD supervision
Thanks Terry
This study is useful and forms part of that larger background of work on
research supervision in general I alluded to in the previous message. My
view is that while useful such work can obscure the particular issues with
specific fields - and this is also a finding of the peer reviewed literature
that such differences for engineering, science, etc., need to be considered
when trying to understand what is going on. I don;t ahve time this morning
to field another list of work documenting that but be assured it's there ...
Dr Gavin Melles
Head, Industrial & Interior Design
Swinburne University of Technology
Office: +613 92146851
Mobile: +61 (0)414374368
Skype: gavin.melles
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