RSRP in action: Systems of support for navigating community-based reflection

The UKCGE’s Research Supervision Recognition Programme offers an opportunity for research supervisors to develop their practice and attain official recognition for supervision through structured self-reflection. In this Q&A series, Dr Heledd Jarosz-Griffiths (Researcher Development Advisor, PGR Development at the University of Leeds) and Dr Joanna Royle (Researcher Development Manager at the University of Glasgow) will discuss creating methods of communities of support around UKCGE’s RSRP – specifically discussing writing and discussion groups – detailing what has worked well at Leeds and Glasgow, ways in which other Researcher Development Teams can create support, and the benefits of reflective practice in supervision. In Part 2 of this series, Joanna discusses creating writing groups and spaces for community connection and reflection at the University of Glasgow, as well as across ScotHERD more broadly. 

Can you please start by speaking on why you felt it was important to engage with UKCGE’s Research Supervision Recognition Programme (RSRP)? Why do you feel recognition and reflective practice is important to supervision?

There is growing sector recognition that the relationship between a PGR and their supervisor is among the most important ingredients in a flourishing doctoral journey. This deeply personal, trust-based relationship sits right at the heart of postgraduate research. We also know that supervisors genuinely love supervising, and they really want to be good at it. Both the original and the most recent UK Research Supervision Survey show this in spades. 

But loving to do something is not the same as finding it easy. Relationships are hard, and the truth is that few HE institutions are able to offer fully scalable, high-quality, pedagogically informed structures that intimately supports people to think through the end-to-end piece of what Supervision entails. That’s why I’m such a fan of the Good Supervisory Practice Framework. It is one of the best tools I’ve seen in the sector, because it takes the complexity of the supervisory role and breaks it down into practical, digestible, chunks. This makes it grounded, accessible, and genuinely helpful in navigating the realities of supervisory work. 

Supervision is a pedagogy, but it’s not like designing a module or delivering lectures. It’s messier, more relational, more embedded in the dynamics of human connection. And the only way to get really good at that, I believe, is through reflective practice. What the Research Supervisor Recognition Program (RSRP) offers is a structured way of doing that thinking, underpinned by the Good Supervisory Practice Framework. 

What makes the RSRP stand out to me is firstly that it can be easily enabled and supported institutionally with pretty low resource requirements: it doesn’t take a huge investment to embed, but it gives so much in return. And secondly that the award is a built-in motivator for doing the reflective practice that enables great supervisory pedagogy. It is a great carrot: especially for colleagues who are earlier in their research careers. They get an award that they can celebrate, it can be a potential stepping stone for promotion, and it can be leveraged to convince a reluctant line manager that it is worth investing their time in professional development. 

You have begun creating systems of support at your institutions, aiding applicants and staff members looking to engage with RSRP. How have you implemented communities or systems of support at your institution? What have been the challenges in creating these support mechanisms? 

When we started thinking about how to frame RSRP support at the University of Glasgow, we really considered what kind of energy it would take to do it well. That was the inspiration for designing a long-form Scotland-wide RSRP writing group. Glasgow is lucky to be relatively well-resourced for researcher development, but many Scottish HEIs are not. However, what we do all have is a highly collaborative researcher developers Community of Practice, called ScotHERD. Tapping into ScotHERD enabled us to lower the resource burden for all institutions, support smaller institutions who might not otherwise be able to offer anything like this, and design a space where doctoral supervisors from across the spectrum from research intensives to practice-based institutions can connect and share perspectives. 

At its heart, what we offer is a writing group, with an intentionally simple format. I was inspired by some great talks at the 2023 UKCGE conference where people shared how they had been running RSRP reading groups. They sounded brilliant, but while participants were finding them enriching, they didn’t always lead to completed applications. However imperfect a metric, applications are proxy indicator of engagement and impact, and we all have to attest to the value-add of the development opportunities we offer. More importantly, though, I believe that reflective practice is realised through the process of writing, not just thinking about writing. So we designed a writing group that enables the reflection to happen through the doing. 

The format runs from February to September (with breaks for school holidays to support researchers with caring responsibilities). We meet fortnightly for 90-minutes with each session usually focusing on one section of the Good Supervisory Practice Framework. There are a couple of additional topics such as planning your supervisor observation or engaging with the literature. The structure is always the same: a 15-minute introduction from one of the delivery team, 15 minutes of solo writing, 30 minutes of breakout discussion, and another 20 minutes of writing, coming together at the end to share progress. It’s repeatable, reliable, and purposeful. By the end, you have had meaningful conversations, and you have also written something, which makes the final ​“writing up” sessions much less daunting. 

We also built a shared literature bank on Padlet. It signposts core texts from the UKCGE website but also enables us and participants to add new papers that we find. This helps foster a sense of collective ownership and shared knowledge-building. We keep things very low-barrier. Weekly reminder emails go out, we track attendance purely for metrics (not to police engagement), and we are clear that even attending one session is still valid CPD. No one is turned away because they missed a few. The atmosphere is deliberately welcoming and low-pressure. 

The writing group supports both the Associate and Full RSRP awards. We slant the early sessions towards the Associate award, looking first at the mandatory GSPF criteria and then the electives. However, we have been really deliberate about not separating out the Associate Award track, because there is so much to gain from more experienced supervisors hearing from those earlier in their journey, and vice versa. We have had a lot of questions about Associate eligibility, so our close connection with the UKCGE team has been a real asset. 

Of course, it hasn’t all been smooth sailing. Attrition is a real challenge. Initially, we had over 100 signups, but by the point in the year when people are buried in marking attendance can drop to around 15. And while we used to talk about the post-COVID slump, event attendance seems to be getting worse not better. This not unique to us: it is something I hear across the sector and beyond. That said, the format helps. It is designed so that no one has to come every week. The stand-alone topics and repeatable structure means folks can dip in and still benefit. 

We’re now on our second iteration of the writing group. The ScotHERD delivery team has grown each year. There are now around seven of us involved in running it, and the programme is open to anyone in Scotland, regardless of whether their institution has a formal lead. From a logistics point of view, it’s probably one of the easiest things we have ever run. It is all online, we just update the dates each year, so admin is minimal. A shared spreadsheet keeps track of who’s leading which session. Its light-touch nature has definitely been one of the reasons it worked, especially in a time when energy and resources are stretched. 

I’m really proud of this piece of work. As well as supporting doctoral supervisors, I think one of the most meaningful outcomes is how it has brought the Scottish researcher development community closer together. This isn’t just a space where we discuss practice: it is something we do together. And institutions can build on that. They can choose to add bespoke sessions, fund application fees, or offer internal reviews. But the core shared space is already there. 

Could you please speak to what types of support have been the most useful at your institution? What hasn’t worked as well? 

Some of our partner institutions put a lot of effort into shaping their applicants into a formal cohort and supporting them collectively to submit their applications together. At Glasgow, we took a lighter-touch, covering the cost of applications and offered feedback if people asked for it, but without creating a cohort structure or chasing completion. In hindsight, I think that didn’t work as well. Institutions who actively supported participants to cross the finish line had better completion rates. And while the award isn’t the point (the real value is in the reflection) disciplining yourself towards the award definitely crystallises thinking gives shape and purpose to that reflection. 

That contrast has really stuck with me. I’m incredibly proud of the wide, collaborative community we’ve built across Scotland to deliver the RSRP writing programme. But when it came to the final institutional lift, I didn’t keep the community energy going right to the end. This is something I want to shift next time, building in a more intentional peer support system around the submission phase. 

Timing is another area we are looking at post-pilot. The programme is brilliant, but if you miss the start of it, or you find out a bit late, the next iteration is a year away. Speaking to schools and institutes we know there is a pool of technicians and postdocs who are absolutely doing associate supervision but didn’t realise this was for them. We are planning to run a couple of shorter, targeted sessions over the next few months specifically for those groups. We want to reach the people we missed the first time around: not just to include them, but to centre their experience and show them that RSRP is for them too. 

What practical steps can institutions take to support reflective practice in supervision, and what benefits have you seen through your own initiatives? 

One of the interesting challenges with reflective practice is that even when supervisors and academics say they want it; they often don’t easily engage with it. 

Take Communities of Practice, for example: we have a Supervisor Community at Glasgow with the aim of creating space for connection and reflection. In reality, it is more frequently an information communication space than a reflective one. The same goes for classic workshop formats: they rarely open the door to the kind of deeper, sustained reflective practice that actually changes how people supervise. But then if you do label an initiative as ​“reflective practice”, attendance becomes an issue, as people just won’t come. 

So instead, you have to lure folks in with the practical. You offer something that looks useful, actionable—something that sounds like it will make their day-to-day better—and then you create space within that for reflection to happen more organically. That’s exactly why the writing group format has been so effective. People show up thinking it will help them make progress on their application (which it does), but the reflection happens as they write, as they talk, as they listen to others. And it’s been incredibly well received. We’ve had feedback like ​“best CPD I’ve ever done,” and stories of people taking the model back to their own groups or labs to use it there. So we absolutely have evidence that this is a genuinely a format that changes how people think and act. 

Another thing that has been powerful is linking supervisory reflection to the broader concept of research leadership. At Glasgow, we have made a real investment in this area: our Talent Lab houses initiatives that develop leadership in research, and researchers as leaders, and we embed reflective practice throughout. We see that investment rippling outwards. When reflection is genuinely embedded in how people think about research leadership, it starts to shift how they show up in other areas too: how they approach collaboration, how they support colleagues’ careers, how they hold space for care and wellbeing even in competitive environments. It starts to chip away at some of those harder edges of academic culture. 

Change doesn’t happen because everyone suddenly decides to behave differently. It happens through coalitions of the willing, who model something else. Reflective practice, done well, can be the engine for that kind of culture shift. And as we all wrestle with what research culture means in a REF-driven world, I think reflective practice has to sit at the centre of it, because that’s where we learn to lead with kindness, with generosity, and with grace.