1. Using Learning Communities to Support the Development of Doctoral Supervisory Skills
Dr Kate Whittington, Prof Sally Barnes and Associate Prof Anne Lee
7th June 2018

2. Why Does Supervisor Development Matter?
Positive doctoral researcher experience and timely submission rates rely on good doctoral supervision.
CREATE provides initial training but how do we provide ongoing development?
Can learning communities provide a forum for reflection, support and development?

3. Project Aims The specific aims of this project are:
To review local practices of doctoral supervision and determine how these map onto existing national and international models.
To start building a learning community of doctoral supervisors that brings people together across disciplines and of varying levels of practice.
To identify effective supervision practices, examine their contexts and explore what lessons we can draw from them for the wider University

4. ✔️ partly complete PART 2 PART 1
i) Models of supervision – discipline/local context
ii) Consider how supervisors develop their skills
PART 1
Faculty specific focus groups
staff
students ✔️
partly complete
PART 3
Develop case studies
on key themes from focus
group discussions.
PART 4
4 mixed discipline/experience
learning communities use case
studies to trigger discussion
PART 4
Evaluation of learning
community.
Recommendations

5. Preliminary Findings:
Number of cross-discipline themes affecting supervision.

7. Preliminary Findings:
Number of cross-discipline themes affecting supervision.
Discipline differences exist, especially around opportunities for enculturation.

8. Discipline Differences
Topic
STEM Subjects
Arts, Humanities and Social Science Subjects
Project originator
Often the supervisor/team as part of funding.
Often developed by Individual student with supervisor advice.
Funding
Can be extensive for specialised resources hence often external funding.
Fewer funding opportunities and hence more self-funded students.
Facilities Needed
Often specialist equipment.
Rarely needs specialist equipment.
Supervisory Teams
Often multiple supervisors
Supervisors and co-supervisors are often more isolated.
Supervisory Meetings
Often research group meetings that include others plus one-to-one.
Usually focused solely on one-to-one meetings.
Resultant Publications
Supervisors almost always included in publications.
Supervisors rarely included on publications.
Conferences
Opportunities/funding often evident due to project funding.
Opportunities/funding is often less evident.

9. Preliminary Findings:
Number of cross-discipline themes affecting supervision.
Discipline differences exist, especially around opportunities for enculturation.
Credibility of development opportunities.
A need for both University-wide and discipline-specific opportunities.
A University supervisor ‘pack’ together with printed copies of the Code was viewed positively.
Time was a critical factor in engagement with development.
Faculty differences in culture and support received by supervisors.
Agreement that mechanisms for dealing with poor supervision are unclear and rarely used.

10. Next Steps?
Recruitment of supervisors into learning communities (approx. 8 per community)
Run sessions (x3) for communities on core themes identified by focus groups:
Wellbeing and mental health
Progress
Conflict
Each session with be kick-started with a speaker, followed by discussion of specific case studies.