‘Perhaps I should be more proactive in changing my own supervisions: student agency in ​‘doing supervision’

What does ​‘doing supervision’ entail? This chapter begins by explaining the choice of the term ​‘doing’ in this context. It continues with a brief review of how supervision has been theorised, primarily from the supervisor perspective (studies that may, therefore, be seen as concerned with ​‘doing supervisor’ as opposed to the focus of this chapter, which, if it didn’t retain some connotations of ​‘being done to’, we might more accurately think of as ​‘doing supervisee’). 

The review is placed in the context of a changing landscape of doctoral studies, determined by wider economic and institutional forces, and characterised by tensions between ​‘artistic’ and ​‘rational’ models of doctoral study. The chapter goes on to illustrate the implications for practice of contemporary models of doctoral study by drawing on a fairly limited number of empirical studies of doctoral supervision that do incorporate the student experience, including a project employing peer observation and videoing of supervision meetings. 

And although recognising the inherent power differentials within the supervisory relationship, as well as the ways in which personal responsibility for learning can act as a form of governmentality, it concludes by highlighting the possibilities for and importance of student agency in ​‘doing supervision’.

Goode, J. (2010).

‘Perhaps I should be more proactive in changing my own supervisions: student agency in ​‘doing supervision’.

In Walker, M. and Thomson, P. (eds.) The Routledge Doctoral Supervisor’s Companion. London, Routledge: 38–50