Thank you Teena and Danielle!
... for taking the time to describe your respective
PhDing experiences in some detail.
These are, I think, both very good contributions to
the discussion. They help to fill out the realities
we all need to be aware of and mindful of. It'd be
very good to have more of these kinds of reflective
experience reports from others on the list!
One thing that I think is highlighted in both Teena's
and Danielle's posts, though in quite different ways,
is that good PhD programmes are formed from good
"eco-systems" ... different a whole collection of
needed components fitting well and working well
together.
Ken too, I think, points to the same, when he talks
of the needed institutional system. He makes clear
how individual responsibilities for quality are
interlocking in communities of (good) practice,
and thus shows, by implication, how bad community
practices can arise with failures of individual
responsibilities: which can and does happen in
a great variety of different ways.
So, it's clear the System is important, not just
individual supervisors. However, I'd still like to
push the view that the System arises from the
collective and coordinated (responsible) actions of
the people who make up the System. Not the other way
around. It's (responsible) people first, then the
(good) System they engender, not the System first
then the people fitted into it to make it work.
If we adopt the System first people implement view,
then the System all too easily becomes the cover and
excuse for personal failure. Irresponsible people
can hide behind the System, and they often do, at
least in my experience. And, worse, it can give them
cover, making it hard to expose them, and often hard,
even impossible, to move them out of the System.
So, we do need a clear System's understanding here,
but we must not let it become the object of our view,
and thus obscure what the System is there for.
To end, a slight digression, though may be not.
Ken has several times cited the Rugg and Petre book
"The unwritten rules of PhD research". At the end of
this, in Some Further Reading (page 222), they cite
Phil Agre's piece "Networking on the network". The
http address they give for this is long since broken,
but you can still find this here
http://vlsicad.ucsd.edu/Research/Advice/network.html
where it's called
Networking on the Network: A Guide to Professional
Skills for PhD Students
and still very relevant and worthwhile reading.
Regrettably the Phil Agre cite they also point to is
no longer maintained and much of what Phil wrote (there
is/was tons of it) is becoming less and less easy to
find.
One of my favourite pieces is, however, still there ...
How to help someone use a computer (1996)
http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/pagre/how-to-help.html
It ends with something I think all supervisors should
know and practice, and lots of other people too, of
course, including PhD students:
Never do something for someone that they are capable
of doing for themselves.
... which means that you do need to know what the
person you are helping is capable of doing. Good
supervisors know this. It comes best, I think, from
collaborating with PhD students, not just Supervising
them. And this requires the Supervisor to work out and
learn how to collaborate with his or her PhD students,
each one of them in a different way, usually.
Best regards,
Tim
Donostia
The Basque Country
==================
On Jun 26, 2012, at 09:19 , Ken Friedman wrote:
> Dear All,
>
> As I was working on a reply to Francois, Tim posted, as did Ann, and
> others. They’ve responded on key substantive issues and I agree with
> what they’ve written. The discussion moved forward while life dragged
> me away. Nevertheless, I’m adding a few notes on institutional
> issues.
>
> Francois identified key organizational and institutional factors that
> are part of the problem. These are important issue. He also suggested
> “the onus seems to be put on the sole shoulders of supervisors.”
> I disagree.
>
> Supervision and research training do not rest on individual supervisors
> alone. They take place in an institutional context. Communities of
> educational practice develop them. These communities usually work
> through the academic committees and administrative teams that shape and
> manage the process of doctoral education. Supervision and research
> training is a process and we manage the process through a system. While
> this system includes supervisors, we have not been speaking of
> individual supervisors as though individual supervisors alone are
> responsible for the process. Individual supervisors are responsible for
> the quality of their own supervision. It seems to me that we have not
> paid enough attention to the system or to the quality of individual
> supervisors in our field. Both factors work together.
>
> It is vital to understand the relation between the process of doctoral
> education, the systemic practices that support the process, the
> organization that maintains the system, and the individuals who do the
> work. Excellent doctoral supervision rests on a comprehensive practice
> of supervision, advising, and administrative support. Elsewhere, I
> describe the central elements of this practice (Friedman 2000): “1) A
> solid, supportive faculty; 2) A well-trained research faculty for
> advising research doctorates; 3) General faculty support for doctoral
> education; 4) A department organized to provide proper curriculum
> development, seminar management, and research supervision; 5) Available
> support from other departments and programs if needed; 6) An environment
> with senior doctoral students and post-doctoral researchers; 7) Rich
> administrative support from experienced administrative staff; 8) Good
> academic administration by program coordinators, program heads, and
> department heads, as well a good academic administration by professors
> whose responsibilities embrace coordination and headship; 9)
> Administrative and program support at the college and university
> level.”
>
> A university that graduates students with an inadequate PhD is not the
> fault of one poor supervisor. Everyone has problematic individual
> supervisors. The challenge lies in addressing the problems to improve
> the work that individual supervisors do or to remove them from
> supervision.
>
> Doctoral supervision and research training is a system in which
> supervisors play a key role. Groups of supervisors play a role because
> they constitute the committees and managerial group responsible for the
> doctoral program at any given faculty or department. Ultimately, the
> university and its faculty-level and department-level teams and systems
> make the difference.
>
> The problem in our field appears when a university design faculty, an
> independent design school, or a design program in a faculty of art and
> design or architecture and design has only one or two supervisors. The
> other problem, of course, is a large group of poorly trained supervisors
> who took on their roles before design schools understood what we
> understand now about doctoral supervision and supervisor training.
> Unfortunately, there are many such cases in our field. Luke’s example
> and Tim’s account are not uncommon.
>
> The relatively recent development of doctoral programs in design is a
> reason for this. While supervision problems are visible across many
> fields, fields with longer research traditions and a longer tradition of
> doctoral programs have moved sooner than we have done to remedy the
> problems.
>
> While all fields have problems, universities offering doctoral
> education in mature fields generally recognize the problems. Doctoral
> programs across the board have been working in a systematic way to
> improve. In art, architecture, and design, some of the worst programs
> and worst trained supervisors claim to be advancing the field by arguing
> that general standards appropriate to all fields are irrelevant in
> design, art, or architecture. (For a list of common standards, see Rugg
> and Petre 2004: pp. 6-7.) The effective claim of such programs is that
> the ignorance of poorly trained supervisors represents a new standard.
>
> As Teena notes, the PhD-Design list is a good place for this kind of
> conversation. Holding a conversation like this on the PhD-Design list is
> especially useful given the fact that many list members hold supervision
> roles. As individuals and as groups, we are responsible for doctoral
> education. We are responsible for our individual students. We are also
> responsible for the systems and processes in our faculties and
> departments. Some of us are responsible for the management decisions
> that govern these programs. A reasonable number of list members serve on
> university boards. Several serve the discipline, the educational system,
> or research governance and evaluation systems at the regional or
> national level. This makes the list a useful resource and a community
> with valuable information. We also have many current doctoral students
> who reflections and experiences are relevant and equally valuable.
>
> Keith Russell and David Durling established the list after the first
> conference on doctoral education in design at Ohio State University in
> 1998. It took off following the second conference at La Clusaz. It has
> grown dramatically in the years since, and we’ve got enough of the
> right kinds of people for a global conversation.
>
> I disagree with Francois on one issue. The topic of PhD supervision is
> too broad for a PhD thesis and often too advanced. There is also a
> question on whether this topic is appropriate for a thesis in design
> history. The history and development of doctoral studies in design is
> rather different to the studies of design in culture that generally
> constitute the focus of design history. These questions involve
> education, education policy at the level of governance, pedagogy, and
> professional education. One requires reasonable background knowledge and
> experience across several fields to address this.
>
> The institutional issues that Francois raised move into politics,
> political science, and education policy at the level of national
> education frameworks. While these issues are important, nearly no one at
> the PhD level could address this as a thesis. In fact, only a handful of
> people in design programs could supervise such a thesis. To the degree
> that these issues are significant, scholars with the proper experience
> and a broad enough knowledge of the issues to address these problems
> ought to write articles in peer-reviewed publications or monographs for
> good academic presses.
>
> The political and policy level issues that Francois identified are
> important, but we can’t control them. That debate moves from doctoral
> education and design education to education policy. It also involves the
> government policies and national fiscal policies that affect education
> policy. While we can debate these issues, our opinions are as important
> as that of any group of taxpayers or citizens. This means that we have
> as much and as little power as any other group of citizens in the
> debate. As it is, I’m not overly concerned with issues that operate on
> the level of taxpayers, politicians, or governmental agencies. I’m
> only slightly more concerned with issues at educational levels operating
> outside the university. These are regulatory regimes, and they are
> negotiated through political decisions over which we exert no control
> and for which we have relatively little responsibility.
>
> We have enough work to do in areas where we are responsible for systems
> and processes. In these areas, we can and should take responsibility.
>
> The exception involves individuals who advise government bodies. While
> those individuals may have significant expertise, their expertise and
> the influence they exert are two different issues. Even those whom the
> government acknowledges as experts merely advise. They generally speak
> to the civil servants who carry out policy. Those civil servants in turn
> advise senior civil servants who, in their turn, offer advise to
> ministers who may or may not act on their advice.
>
> The political butterfly effect also plays a role here. External experts
> gain influence and credibility over time by offering useful advice that
> helps civil servants and elected politicians to shape policy. This
> influence can vanish overnight when a minister changes portfolio, taking
> advisors along. A new minister brings a new team into office, a team
> that may or may not have their own favored experts on issues of research
> and education that cascade down to affect doctoral education and
> research training.
>
> In contrast, the topics that Tim has been addressing are issues that
> nearly all the members of this list work with in one way or another.
> Like many on this list, I have occasionally been called on for advice at
> levels outside the faculty where I work. Sometimes my ideas made a
> difference, sometimes they didn’t.
>
> The key issue is that any of us with supervisory or management
> responsibilities do make a difference on the job. Our ideas and those of
> our colleagues make a difference through the decisions we make, and
> through the actions we take to bring those decisions to life.
>
> Our ideas also make a difference within our discipline. As we build the
> field through dialogue and common conversation among those with
> front-line responsibility for doctoral education and doctoral students.
> In my view, that’s the place to begin.
>
> Yours,
>
> Ken
>
> Professor Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished
> Professor | Dean, Faculty of Design | Swinburne University of Technology
> | Melbourne, Australia | [log in to unmask] | Ph: +61 3 9214 6078 |
> Faculty www.swinburne.edu.au/design
>
> --
>
> References
>
> Friedman, Ken. 2000. “Form and structure of the doctorate in design:
> Prelude to a multilogue.” In Doctoral Education in Design. Foundations
> for the Future. Proceedings of the La Clusaz Conference, July 8-12,
> 2000. David Durling and Ken Friedman, editors. Staffordshire, United
> Kingdom: Staffordshire University Press, pp. 369-376.
>
> Rugg, Gordon, and Marian Petre. 2004. The Unwritten Rules of PhD
> Research. Maidenhead and New York: Open University Press.
|
