This article offers excerpts from a live, reflective supervision between supervisor (Deborah Weatherston) and supervisee (Faith Eidson) and is followed by their intimate exploration of the process. In revisiting the supervision, they share personal and professional observations that reveal their vulnerabilities and their strengths. They identify…

This paper presents an autoethnographic, narrative analysis through self-reflection of my own personal transition from doctoral student to doctoral supervisor. An evaluation of the importance of the PhD in South Africa, the role of doctoral supervisors, and characteristics of good supervisors was undertaken; against which my personal experience…

Des Moines (Iowa) Public Schools is one of six urban districts participating in an effort to redesign the role of principal supervisors. The Wallace Foundation's Principal Supervisor Initiative provides four years of support for these districts to transform the role, which has traditionally focused on operations and compliance, into one that…

In recent years, there has been an increasing focus on professional learning structures for teaching and finding ways to embed this learning into the daily work of teachers. This is premised on the understanding that one-shot professional development yields little transfer or change of practice to ultimately impact student learning. But how has…

In this brief forum article, the author suggests studying the instructor-student relationship as a superior-subordinate relationship offers an alternative way to view how student learning occurs in the college classroom, and can provide instructional communication researchers with the opportunity to explore how structural and institutional…

This article is the twelfth in a series of articles entitled "The Legacy Project." The series focuses on the lives and actions of leaders who have forged technology engineering education profession into what it is today. Members of the profession owe a debt of gratitude to these leaders. One simple way to demonstrate that gratitude is to…

In response to the study and recommendations presented in the article "I Didn't See it as a Cultural Thing," written by Linda Griffin, Dyan Watson and Tonda Liggett, we explore three interrelated topics. First, we seek to problematize some of the assumptions in the study. We review some of the authors' approaches and assertions that seem…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to share the reflections of a group of five academics who started supervising practice-based doctoral students at a similar time in the same institution. Design/methodology/approach: The supervisors engaged in a collaborative research process themselves, exploring their supervision practices, due in part to…

In this article, I examine three claims that in some senses can hinder the supervisory process rather than facilitate it. These are the claims that the relationship between supervisor and student should be a friendship; that students writing their theses should demonstrate "own voice"; and that students should choose supervisors on the…

In this essay I offer an imaginary of postgraduate student supervision focusing on sceptical encounters with the other. Drawing on the seminal thoughts of Harvard philosopher Stanley Cavell (1997), particularly on his ideas on "living with scepticism", I argue that postgraduate student supervision ought to be an encounter framed by…

If the author was to pinpoint her greatest passion as an educator, it would be that of mentoring teachers. Everyone knows the statistics of how many new teachers leave the profession after just a few years and that one of the factors in retaining them lies in the value of a quality mentor. Looking back, the author realizes that educators' first…

Hegel's master and slave is a significant archetype for graduate research supervision. The master-slave relation vividly exemplifies the hierarchical bond that ties supervisor and student together. Such a confronting view of supervision provides a counterbalance to contemporary emphases on equality between supervisor and student. In what follows,…

For this commentary, the author went back and read most of her own writings on graduate education. Having only just retired but still working with supervisees and doing research, she reflects on supervision and culture. She has four questions for authors and readers: (1) What is supervision?; (2) What are the implications of "sameness" and…

In this essay, the authors talk about higher degree supervision as a human relationship, and shares how to supervise a PhD. There's a tendency now to talk about supervision as if it's a technical process one needs to learn the rules of. This paper urges educators to think about this as a human educational relationship, which has all the ups and…

Exploring postgraduate supervision practices with supervisors is a complex and contested endeavour. The growing body of literature on approaches to working with supervisors attests to this. Unlike some areas of higher education research, studies of supervision span theoretical spectrums from liberal approaches (e.g. Ballard and Clanchy 1991; Bruce…