Twelve tips for supervisors to move towards person-centered research supervision in health care sciences

Abstract

The research supervisory role is becoming increasingly complex due to issues such as diversity of students; mismatched expectations between the student, supervisor and higher education institution and shorter and specific time-bound research outcomes. The current postgraduate research supervision culture and supervision practices should change. Moving towards person-centered research supervision practices may enhance the research environment, as healthful relationships between supervisors and postgraduate students may lead to increased postgraduate research outcomes. Using a World Café, we critically reflected on our existing research supervision practices. All healthcare educators involved in postgraduate research supervision were purposively selected to participate. During the café, we explored and shared ideas in a safe space. Twelve tips emerged, which can be implemented to move existing supervision practices towards person-centered research supervision practices. We present these twelve tips from the perspective of the four constructs of person-centeredness as outlined by McCormack and McCance -pre-requisites, environment, process, and outcomes. The use of these tips may enable both supervisors and students to flourish. Avoiding routine, ritual supervision practices and embracing personcentredness, will enable supervisors to form healthful relationships and put the postgraduate student at the heart of our supervision practices.

Discussion Paper: Conceptual thresholds in health professional education research and scholarship

“…Given the subjective, contextual and contested nature of conceptual thresholds (Milligan & Wood, 2010), an excellent starting point is for HCPs and their supervisors or mentors to co-construct these transition points together (Cousin, 2010). Fundamentally, this requires a learning climate founded upon partnership (Heyns et al, 2019) and safety (Tsuei et al, 2019), where both experienced researchers (e.g., supervisors, mentors) and novices can analyse and question their own thinking, commensurate with the metacognitive dimension of learning (Flavell, 1979). New and emerging HPE researchers and scholars need to be encouraged and guided not just to articulate their a-priori epistemic views and values (Ng, 2013) but to share these with supervisors, critical friends and peers as the basis of discussion and learning.…”

Supervisory feedback to postgraduate research students: a literature review

“…The supervision relationship is a two-way process (Heyns et al 2019), but some students do not proactively seek feedback when needed (Soumana and Uddin 2017). In addition, students from cultures where the supervisor is considered a figure of authority may also struggle with feedback as they can be overly dependent on the supervisor (Soumana and Uddin 2017) or are unable to question unclear feedback (Yarwood-Ross and Haigh 2014).…”

“…As part of these negotiations, students should be exposed to strategies of how to manage their supervisor(s) (Siltanen et al 2019) while also becoming aware that they need to be open to feedback, including criticism (Nethsinghe and Southcott 2015). It is a good strategy for supervisors to view the relationship as a community of shared responsibility, in which student and supervisor(s) willingly learn from one another and in which both parties understand that the supervision is a two-way street (Heyns et al 2019;Lim et al 2019). In the case of international students, supervisors should acculturate together with their students (Ding and Devine 2018).…”

“…The reviewed literature describes effective feedback as suggestive and constructive, brief, frequent and regular, actionable, specific and tailored, explicit, honest but empathetic and tactful, formal, supportive and encouraging, advising, appreciative and respectful but critical (Odena and Burgess 2017;Soumana and Uddin 2017;Ding and Devine 2018;Ali, Ullah, and Sanauddin 2019;Heyns et al 2019;Kiley 2019;Lim et al 2019;Lonka et al 2019). In the case of co-supervision, feedback also needs to be non-conflicting -the strategy is to either get on the same page with the co-supervisor(s) before any feedback is given (Kiley 2019), or to arrange joint meetings with the entire team (Olmos-López and Sunderland 2017).…”

Relationships, power and accountability: Reflections on transformative postgraduate supervision workshops at a South African University School of Public Health, 2014-2020

“…In South Africa, there is a vibrant discourse on postgraduate supervision (Backhouse, 2010;Knowles, 2015;Nkoane, 2014;Pillay & Balfour, 2011). However, the traditional apprenticeship supervision model remains dominant (Backhouse, 2010;Pillay & Balfour, 2011), despite critiques and limitations of this model (Heyns et al, 2019;McKenna, 2017;Nkoane, 2014). Various scholars have explored alternative approaches to supervision (Bitzer & Albertyn, 2011;Nkoane, 2014), including supervisor-initiated groups (O'Neil et al, 2016), communities of doctoral scholars (McKenna, 2017), or person-centred supervision (Heyns et al, 2019).…”