Big Love: Managing a team of research supervisors (original) (raw)
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The purpose of this paper is to share the findings of a highly generalizable investigative feasibility project, whose goal is to enhance the teaching ability of current higher education faculty members. The mission of the project was to introduce a new doctoral degree on Global Education and Leadership (GEL) geared toward a ubiquitous, broad approach to assist faculty members in their pursuit of improved teaching and learning. The methods used were to perform an online search identifying 18 different institutions, whose mission focused on both student-centered learning, as well as pursued an active scholarship of teaching and learning agenda; contact 52 key personnel for a visit to share our program; travel to each of eight countries to share the vision of the program in five weeks; and finally to collate results and examine trends and identify host institutions, accreditation steps and start dates. The major result of this experience was the unanimous agreement on the universal uns...
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Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 2023
Traditionally, doctoral education was a matter of the talented few being apprenticed to learn how to research from masters in their discipline; it was conducted in private in spaces far removed from normal teaching or industry or commerce; the only requirement to supervise or to examine candidates was to be research active; many candidates dropped out in the course of their studies; for those who persisted their research took as long as it took; and the majority of graduates went on to become academics. But, over the past three decades or so, there have been a number of changes which have transformed doctoral education almost beyond recognition. The purpose of the present article is to provide a general analysis of these factors in order to provide an overall framework for the discussion at the international level of the changes in doctoral education in a sample of case studies drawn from across the globe.
The formation of doctoral education
2016
This report has been translated from Swedish and adapted for an international audience. The original report, Leadership for quality in doctoral education1, was commissioned by the Association of Swedish Higher Education. Here we describe and discuss doctoral education as policy, practice and as an object of knowledge, and highlight a number of questions that are important for the management and leadership of doctoral education, today as well as in the future. The policy trends, changing circumstances, and challenges we discuss here are to a large extent international. Sweden specifically, with its long history of government regulation of doctoral education and swiftness to adapt to the ideas of the knowledge economy, provides an interesting case. We represent two different Swedish universities, three disciplines and four contexts. Together, we have held positions as heads of department, directors of doctoral studies, faculty board members, quality coordinators and educational develo...
OVERVIEW A signature of developing countries is that they provide their workforces with postsecondary education. In this chapter, we argue that doctoral education must be a key element of the planning of science/technology policies for nation building. Doctoral education serves a number of important objectives. For example, doctoral graduates are innovators, and they increase the capacity of a country to address more complex issues. Where does doctoral education occur most efficiently? In this chapter, we argue that knowledge clusters provide the most efficient means of presenting a critical mass, but that they can pose some difficult governance issues. Doctoral education must encompass all the disciplines, since prosperity will not be obtained without the alignment of scientific/technical advances with societal advances. The value ascribed to doctoral graduates means that the doctoral workforce is not readily contained within national boundaries, and the flows of this workforce into and out of the training countries are poorly understood. Countries differ markedly with respect to the capacity for producing graduates, and training is more concentrated in those nations that have track records in research and development (R&D). Many doctoral students come from developing countries that, arguably, can ill afford to lose doctoral-level expertise. The " host " countries to which these students migrate tend to play important roles in the development of international doctoral graduates. Will these flows continue? The development of knowledge is predicated on information, and information is now being rapidly disseminated from the sites of knowledge production. In short, although doctoral education may be based locally or in larger clusters, doctoral attributes include coded skills and knowledge along with the intangible skills that facilitate exploitation of the knowledge produced across national and geographical boundaries. These collective skills must be recognized, taught and studied, exchanged, and mastered by graduate and doctoral students. 1
2010
In this article we present a case study of an experience anticipating the Bologna Process, inspired by the assumption that the European joint doctorate is a strategic tool for enhancing the attractiveness of the European Higher Education and Research Areas. We briefly introduce its distinctive features, defined as a jointly established multilateral degree awarded by at least three universities in three different European countries on the basis of inter-institutional agreements. These agreements establish the criteria for planning, implementing and monitoring an international network-based doctoral programme. The Joint European/International PhD on Social Representations and Communication is the first formally recognised European doctorate within the multiple institutional scenarios (European Commission: DG-Education and Culture and DG-Research; Ministries of Higher Education; Universities) established in 1993 under the Erasmus Inter-Universities Cooperation Programme. Since then, the original network of 13 European universities has grown to 22 universities, research institutes and enterprises in 15 countries around the world, opening the door to an increased transfer of knowledge, and expanding career opportunities for researchers. The Joint European/International PhD on Social Representations and Communication, provides advanced research training in a key supra-disciplinary area of social sciences that deals with the social construction of knowledge, its relation to socially situated practices and to traditional as well as new means of human interaction and communication. It has been selected by DG Education and Culture as an example of "best practices" for dissemination in higher education and is the core of the EU approved SoReCom THEmatic NETwork, a worldwide "network of networks" of academic, professional research and commercial institutions interested in this area of social psychology. We describe its innovative curriculum, which takes full advantage of modern communication technologies to build a worldwide virtual campus. Its well-tested didactic formula and training structure include: tutoring and co-tutoring triadic system (multiple supervision), annual International Summer School and three annual International Lab Meetings (winter, spring and summer sessions), face-to-face individual and small group mentoring activities integrated with an open learning system where tutors have on-line access for didactic activities and for monitoring trainees' progress; structured individual and collective international mobility of trainees and teaching staff; and learning by doing in academic and non-academic settings. The Joint European/International PhD on Social Representations and Communication guarantees: a) mutual recognition of the degree in addition to institutional recognition from the EC, universities, and ministries; b) joint governance model for promotion of the programme and dissemination, on-line unified server for application and registration, recruitment of applicants, fee policy and administrative management, common web platform and integrated infrastructure, training structure, international mobility, intellectual property rights, services policy, obligations and rights of both teaching staff and doctoral research trainees, assessment and quality assurance, awarding of degrees; c) training in research and transferable skills in an international environment; d) multiple supervision; e) training assessment; f) physical and virtual international mobility for research trainees and professors; g) intensive didactic stages in multilingual settings; h) expanded networking opportunities via the integrated SoReCom THEmatic NETwork; i) enhanced career prospects in and outside academic contexts.
This Forum issue discusses the centrality of the fieldwork in doctoral research. The inevitability of researchers' influence and of their values apparent during and after their fieldwork calls for a high degree of reflexivity. Since the standard methodology textbooks do not sufficiently guide on addressing such challenges, doctoral researchers go through stressful phases, at times revising various decisions they made before starting fieldwork. By drawing upon four case studies from varied contexts, this forum highlights some of these challenges including: going beyond signing the consent form and building rapport to elicit student voices; the ethical implications of White privilege of researchers turning consent into an obligatory contract with participants; unanticipated delays in the fieldwork opening up new possibilities; and tensions resulting from negotiating between insider and outsider identities while researching in two hostile contexts.