Higher education often acts as a bridge to society, preparing people for future social, political, and economic roles. For many academics, social justice and social inclusion are areas of research interest and teaching expertise. As such, institutions of higher education are well placed to foster reflection on social justice, through research and…

Although there has been considerable "post hoc" research on student views of supervisors, there is little on how candidate expectations are constituted at or close to the point of commencement. This study reads students' commentary about the 'ideal supervisor' at the point of institutional induction to examine commencing candidate…

This paper performs a critical qualitative inquiry exploring supervision pedagogies utilising duoethnography as both methodology and conceptual framing. We begin the inquiry by reflecting upon our social and cultural identities and our evolving supervisor/supervisee-colleague-friend relationship. Our critical dialogue then shifts to scrutinising…

Doctoral supervision is a subtle but complex form of teaching in higher education, where supervisor-to-candidate expectations including support around the literature are important, but supervisory practices and candidate starting points can be disparate and expectations are not always discussed. This paper uses autoethnographic reflections and a…

Much guidance on how to identify and contact a doctoral supervisor can be found on YouTube. There is a wealth of advice videos presented by 'insiders' including students, academics, consultants and institutional representatives. This article explores such 'find a supervisor' videos, characterising them as texts in the broader genre of doctoral…

Doctoral study remains the most popular form of research degree globally. The student and supervisor relationship is an integral part of the postgraduate researcher (PGR) experience. Supervisory relationships can be complex and multi-faceted, with differing expectations from both supervisor and PGR. However, comparing different perspectives of the…

Supervision is one of the most important determinants of a successful doctoral process. However, there have been few large-scale survey studies on the development of PhD supervisors. In this study, doctoral supervisors' perceptions of their supervisory competence, professional development activities and professional support from the research…

The PhD confirmation, or upgrade stage, is a key requirement and rite of passage for most doctoral students. Yet despite its significance and high-stakes nature, little attention has been paid to students' experiences of this stage of the PhD journey and how it influences the development of their researcher identity. Through semi-structured…

This study focuses on the changes that doctoral education has experienced in the last decades and discusses the role of doctoral supervisors. The figure of doctoral supervisor continues to be a subject of much debate; therefore, the aim of this study is to provide a universal, global, and common definition that clearly establishes the roles and…

New to the academy's 'publish or perish' game, doctoral students hold varied expectations of supervisors in relation to their publishing endeavours. These expectations can be unrealistic or contradictory to those of the supervisors and thus make supervision problematic. Set in a faculty of education in New Zealand, this study explores fantasies,…

The alignment of student-supervisor expectations in doctoral research builds a foundation for strong supervisory relationships. While some expectations around research practice and outputs are clearly stated and regulated, the expectations concerning personal aspects of supervisory relationships are seldom voiced. To address this gap, this article…

We describe our experiences with the first offering of a new program, BMEntored, for supporting first-year doctoral students in Biomedical Engineering (BME) during their first semester. The goal of BMEntored was to enhance the first-semester experience of first-year doctoral students in BME with an emphasis on guiding students in selecting a…

More and more empirical studies address doctoral candidates' health. Yet, the mechanisms linking supervision and doctoral candidates' health often remain unclear. We start to fill this research gap with classifications of supervisors produced by latent class analysis, which were introduced into structural equation models with motivation towards…

Understanding the determinants of PhD student satisfaction is likely to become increasingly vital for universities as student satisfaction rankings already ubiquitous at undergraduate and master degree levels extend more broadly to the PhD level. Moreover, as PhD student populations and university competition become increasingly transnational,…

The completion rate for graduate studies is around 50% in some programs, and several authors suggest that doctoral supervision in a key factor in explaining this. Existing research on doctoral education reveals an uneven international landscape made up of the perceptions of both doctoral students and their supervisors. In the French-speaking North…