Introduction
This paper critically evaluates a postgraduate skills development programme offered by a central support office at a South African University. Drawing on recent literature on doctoral pedagogy, it examines the implicit assumptions, discourses and pedagogical practices underlying these services. Next, it considers whether and how an institutional support service can enhance postgraduate pedagogy, within the framework of “supervision as a collective institutional responsibility” (McAlpine 2013, 259-280).
Nature of research
The research is part of the pre-empirical work done for my doctoral study. It includes a literature review and offers a conceptual framework for exploring a model of “institutional” postgraduate supervision.
The presentation is structured around one example of a project management resource developed by the postgraduate skills office at Stellenbosch University, called the on.track planner.
Key arguments
Coming from a training and development background, I developed the tool in response to a needs analysis among postgraduate students. As I embarked on my own PhD studies and attempted to situate my practice in the growing scholarship around postgraduate pedagogy and supervision, I realised that seemingly neutral practices were in fact hiding assumptions about learning (McAlpine and Amundsen 2012) and reinforcing particular discourses and models of (doctoral) education (Backhouse 2011).
Does the planner misrepresent the complexity of the postgraduate journey, portraying it as “a discrete set of technical skills” (Kamler and Thomson 2008, 507)? Is there a role for generic learning support offered outside of disciplinary communities of practice (Wenger 1998)? Or does our office form part of the new managerialist approach to higher education (Connell and Manathunga 2012)?
On the other hand, as a practitioner I remain concerned with how the findings of the scholarship on postgraduate education can be made practical within institutions, beyond assuming that individual supervisors will change their own practices. I therefore hope to present a conceptual framework for building on McAlpine’s recent work (2013) and further exploring “institutional supervision” of postgraduate learning.
