From supervised to supervisor

Bachelor student, Master student, PhD-student. All education within academia rely on supervisors to be able to step in and lead when students are in doubt or facing difficulties. Here, supervisors are supposed to help students find not only new perspectives and ideas, but also to ask those much needed thought-provoking questions that can lead a thesis forward, while developing necessary academic skills. And then one day, somewhere in your academic career, you will yourself be called upon to be the one providing support to other students, despite still being a student yourself. Obviously, this can from a student perspective feel quite intimidating and a long way from your comfort zone. I mean, all that responsibility. What if the student you are supposed to supervise lacks the motivation or need some kind of learning support? What if you cannot provide adequate supervision and the student fails? Or, to avoid a potential future student failure, you take over and basically do the research and write up the paper or thesis for the student, so that your colleagues will not witness the failure, and see it as a reflection of your incompetence as a supervisor.. So, to put it mildly, there is a lot to worry about when entering the role of a supervisor. In this post, I will therefore argue how important it is to get the right support when beginning to supervise. In my case, this meant being a PhD student still used to being supervised and not the other way around.

Athough being considered an important part of the PhD program supervision is often thought of as a self-acquired skill, instead of a learned skill, demanding extensive pedagogical training and experience. This is both unfair to the supervisor and the supervised. Because, if the newly appointed supervisor does not get the necessary training and instead is forced to acquire this “natural” skill through “trial and error”, supervised students are at risk of not getting the supervision they deserve with a high risk of failure. Instead they are treated as guinea pigs and ‘sacrificed’ to the new supervisor’s process of acquiring the necessary skills not already in place. Without proper training, there is also a risk of consolidating old inefficient supervision one has encountered yourself instead of questioning one’s assumptions and what has ‘always worked just fine’.

As a third year PhD-student, I accounted my own first experience as a supervisor to undergraduate music teacher students. Here, I was lucky enough to have a professor at my institution who was aware of the importance of getting the necessary skills as a supervisor through training and peer education. Together with two experienced supervisors (post-doc students), she formed a supervisor’s team for me and my fellow PhD-students, with scheduled meetings throughout the academic year. Here, we could get familiar with, and discuss, assessment criteria for how to grade an undergraduate thesis. She also gave us a lot of time to supervise so that we could gain the necessary experience. 

The students also got access to additional resources, like tools for academic writing, courses in basic research methodology and how to use informal interim deadlines for when students’ data material should be collected, transcribed, and analyzed. This turned out to be of great help to both the students and to me as a supervisor. When starting to supervise, it was helpful that students had between three or four supervised occasions, together in small groups throughout the academic year. This way of supervising has many potential benefits and may serve as a valuable complement to the individual supervision (see for example, Dysthe et al., 2007; Ray and Altekreuse 2011; Nordentoft et al., 2012). Here, students can give and receive feedback, which to some extent can replace individual discussions with the supervisor. It is also beneficial for their learning to listen to others’ interpretations and perspectives. Giving feedback is also beneficial for the learning process for students. Often, they have the same kind of questions, and instead of the supervisor explaining the same thing over and over again, he or she can address the whole group at once. Also, by helping each other sort out the answer to a problem (with some guiding of the supervisor) could increase their motivation and feelings of capability and reduce their dependence of the supervisor.

In this post, I have argued for the importance of being adequately prepared when starting to supervise students. Therefore, institutions must acknowledge the importance of having highly competent supervisors to get better student results. This means providing them with the necessary tools to gain required supervisory skills. Being part of a community of peer supervisors is one strategy that may help not only new supervisors, but also experienced teachers that can benefit from an environment that can challenge their views and give them new perspectives. Ultimately, the students will obtain a better education, and that must be the main objective. 

Featured Image by geralt from Pixabay

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