The number of Indigenous Australians completing doctoral qualifications is disparately below their non-Indigenous contemporaries. Whilst there has been a steady increase in Indigenous completions in recent years, significant work remains to redress the imbalance. Supervision has been identified as a primary influencer of the likely success of…

The focus of this article is on the written feedback that supervisors say they often give their second language (L2) doctoral students. Little is known about the focus of this feedback and about what supervisors consider as priorities in the early draft writing of dissertation chapters. Given the potentially different priorities and foci of…

The journey towards completion of a PhD is a bumpy one for many. One of the major factors that influence successful and on-time thesis completion is the relationship that the PhD candidate has with her or his supervisor. This paper presents results from research undertaken using a 12-item survey to collect data from a purposive sample: PhD…

The question of what a doctorate is has been looked at before. The author argues that the issue of "doctorateness" is a recurring debate which needs to kept alive and revisited regularly. The aim of this article is to suggest five different areas or arenas in which the question can be addressed, forming a framework which can perhaps be…

This paper presents our theorizing about the complex nature of higher degree research supervision. The intent is to make a contribution to the current debates about higher education generally, and supervision of higher degree research students in particular. We add to the pedagogy of supervision by extending its scope to and beyond the supervisory…

The position of this paper is to further the discussion on what constitutes academic assessment in the PhD by artefact and exegesis. In doing so, it explores some of the ideas that arose in setting up the PhD in creative writing at Swinburne University of Technology. Thus, I: (1) survey some of the questions that arise about the journeys made by…