Reflecting on supervision experiences: Honours students' research projects in development studies at the nelson Mandela University

Mhlahlo, A.

doi:10.20853/34-2-3565

Cited by 7 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…Research has highlighted that mentoring and providing networking support for postgraduate students often does not meet student expectations and needs, both during the postgraduate journey and in transitioning to careers. Several studies (Mhlahlo, 2020;Rugut & Chang'ach, 2023;Tamrat & Fetene, 2022) indicate a gap between the career development assistance students hope to receive from supervisors and the actual mentorship and networking provided. Many postgraduate students expect research supervisors to guide them in building professional skills, making industry connections, and preparing for academic job searches (Denicolo et al, 2019;Nerad & Bai, 2021;Waghorne, 2021).…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Navigating the Academic Odyssey: Exploring the Role of Supervisors in Supporting Postgraduate Students

Adedokun,

Oyetunde-Joshua

2024

JCVE

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Postgraduate supervision entails an intensive, one-on-one academic relationship between the supervisor and student. Through this relationship, the supervisor facilitates the student's scholarly development. This study investigates supervisors' roles in supporting postgraduate students from the students’ perspective. This study through in-depth semi-structured interviews with 12 doctoral and masters students at two universities seeks to investigate how postgraduate students perceive and undergo guidance from their supervisors. The factors analyzed include the role of networking and motivational supports provided by supervisors during postgraduate students’ research journey. This study explores the ways supervisors provide career mentoring and networking to prepare students for postgraduate careers, and how they inspire and emotionally assist students through inherent research challenges. The findings identify strengths in supervisory support and areas needing enhancement. The findings indicate that many students desire more hands-on help with methodology and writing and career mentoring emerges as an area where postgraduate support falls short of expectations. The study recommends that supervisor trainings be provided for supervisors and intending ones, and such trainings should be focused on writing guidance, networking, advising and motivation. By implementing such programs, universities can empower supervisors to optimally assist students, thereby enhancing experiences and outcomes.

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Navigating the Academic Odyssey: Exploring the Role of Supervisors in Supporting Postgraduate Students

Adedokun,

Oyetunde-Joshua

2024

JCVE

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“…Mhlahlo also argues that this line of thinking is erroneous if not totally irrational because it implies that only PhD holders produce quality research while non-PhD holders cannot produce quality research. 9 In its argument here, the article holds that lecturers engage in research and even have published works which serve as evidence that quality research is happening.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Thin Line between Education and Certification: A Battle of PhD Supervision in South African Universities

Ntshangase,

Mboweni

2024

EHASS

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This study sought to critically review and demystify the postgraduate research supervision in South African universities. There is unnecessary discrimination among scholars concerning the certification of lecturers in South African universities. Some lecturers are not recognized as academically fit to supervise doctoral students even when there is evidence that they have the capacity to supervise doctoral research. While there is a lack of recognition of some lecturers with regard to doctoral research supervision, others support this lack of recognition with the argument that it is not fair for doctoral research to be supervised by a lecturer who is still a doctoral candidate. However, this paper argued that it is irrational to think that all lecturers with no PhD completely lack knowledge about academic research. This becomes more irrational if the lecturer in question has some published research works and has shown the skill through conference presentations. Against this backdrop using analytic theory, this study sought to challenge the status quo of how doctoral research is perceived in universities. This study utilized a conceptual desktop form of qualitative research and all sources used are adequately acknowledged. At the core of this paper, the researcher sought to appeal for co-supervision as recognition of those lecturers who are still pursuing their PhDs but already show the capacity to contribute to doctoral research supervision. In its entirety, this desktop conceptual research study found that the lack of recognition in South African universities is a neglect of upcoming researchers and it is recommended that lecturers who are upcoming researchers be involved in postgraduate/ doctoral research supervision. This study’s contribution is to motivate collaboration in doctoral supervision and mentorship for lecturers who are upcoming scholars in South African universities. Keywords: Doctoral Research, Lack of Lecturer’s Recognition, Universities Irrationality, Academic Experience

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“…This article adds to the pedagogy of supervision by extending its scope to the idea of involving greater connectedness, creating communities of practice, collaboration and more intense relationships, where the research supervision process considers the uptake of new technologies. Whilst recent published papers (Mhlahlo 2020;Grossman and Crowther 2015;Sefotho 2018;Muraraneza, Mtshali, and Mthembu 2016;Cekiso et al 2019), focused on research supervision practices and models in general, not all research studies found movement away from the traditional form of supervision dyads. Gumbo (2020) in an article published in the South African Journal for Higher Education, purports that the vast burdens faced by supervisors could be lessened, if advantage is taken of online information management systems.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

COVID-19: An alternative approach to postgraduate supervision in the digital age

Hendrickse

2022

SAJHE

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Universities globally are facing enormous governmental pressure to increase postgraduate output, and in turn, contribute to the knowledge economy. This pressure is transferred to research supervisors, who have to navigate the complexities of research supervision to not only meet postgraduate output targets set by the university in particular, but postgraduate output targets set by government in general. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, research supervision mostly followed the traditional apprenticeship or group model approach to supervision, where engagement took the form of face-to-face interactions. With the COVID-19 pandemic came social distancing, which forced research supervision to move to online platforms. The core objective of this article was to peruse selected research supervision models or approaches to determine which model or approach would be most suited to an online supervision context, if any. This article advances a re-imagined view of research supervision in higher education. The author proposes an argument for an alternative approach to research supervision, most appropriate to the online supervision environment. The ontological stance, from the perspective of constructivism, underpinned the interrogation of selected research supervision models or approaches with the view to engender a different understanding of what the core components of a research supervision framework could be in the context of COVID-19, with due regard to the “pedagogy of supervision”. This article will be of value to emerging South African research supervisors and scholars in the higher education realm. Keywords: research supervisors, research supervision models, online supervision, COVID-19, pedagogy of supervision

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Reflecting on supervision experiences: Honours students' research projects in development studies at the nelson Mandela University

Cited by 7 publications

References 37 publications

Navigating the Academic Odyssey: Exploring the Role of Supervisors in Supporting Postgraduate Students

Navigating the Academic Odyssey: Exploring the Role of Supervisors in Supporting Postgraduate Students

A Thin Line between Education and Certification: A Battle of PhD Supervision in South African Universities

COVID-19: An alternative approach to postgraduate supervision in the digital age

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