Presentation by Michael Samuel on phd supervision for the SOTL @ UJ seminar series

1. UKZN – INSPIRING GREATNESS
What’s the PhD for?
Postgraduate supervision,
social justice and research methods
Prof Michael Samuel
UKZN School of Education
Seminar presentation 17 March 2016
University of Johannesburg: Johannesburg

2. Structure
• Selection of topics
• PhD in Higher Education (16 March 2016)
• Universities –South Africa: Daily Higher education News (03 March 2016)
• Global Edition - University World News (13 March 2016)
• THE PHD IN CONTEXT
• Agenda
• What is driving the focus of the PHD?
• Types of PHD
• PhD by thesis; PhD by publication and creative works
• The professional doctorate: integrated doctorate; combinations
• POLICY STEERING
• Operational considerations
• Social Sciences vs Natural Sciences
• The PHD in PRACTICE
• Methodological approach
• Alternative forms of methodologies and approaches
• Is the SMALL the new BIG?
• Closing thoughts
• The PhD and social justice

3. Selection of topic focus
The PhD in context

4. GROUP A
On PhD in Higher Education topics
March 2016
1. What could be the factors driving the selection of the PhD topic?
2. How does who the candidate is, influence the selection of the
topic?
3. How does the institution at which they are studying influence the
choice of the topic?
4. What other factors might be influencing the selection of the topic?

5. Group B:
Universities SA: Daily Higher Education News
03 March 2016
1. Which of the above topics are most likely to become part of a
future doctoral study in South Africa?
2. Why? Why not?

6. Group C
Global Edition - University World News
13 March 2016
1. Which of the above topics are most likely to become part of a
future doctoral study in South Africa?
2. Why? Why not?

7. Agenda
What is driving PhD expansion?

8. status
access
capacity
building
success
INTERNATIONAL
PROGRAMMATIC
INSTITUTIONAL NATIONAL
Knowledge production
University rankings
Economic growth
Redress
Transformation
Social justice
Knowledge economy
Enrolment planning
Developing research learning
Throughput
Collaborative partnership
MOUs
Funding
INDIVIDUAL STUDENT AND SUPERVISOR

9. Intersection of external pressures on doctorate production in SA
Moutonn, J 2015.
The doctorate in SA:
Trends, challenges and constraints.
UKZN Seminar.
18 June 2015: Durban.

10. ?relationships
Graduate Work
Social
context

11. Types of PhDs
Curriculum Policy drivers

12. •PRODUCTS: ARTEFACTS:
papers , chapters,
monographs, verbal, visual
performances (largely
already existing at start)
•DESIGN FEATURE:
•Has a written cohesive
argumentation:
introduction, artefacts and
summative commentary
• PRODUCT: WRITTEN
TEXTS, ARTEFACTS
(constructed during study)
• PROCESS: Usually includes
a TAUGHT SUPPORT
which may/ may not be
credit bearing
• DESIGN FEATURE: Clearly
defined progression steps
• PRODUCT: a WRITTEN TEXT
(constructed at end)
• FOCUS: development of
theoretical/philosophical
knowledge based on context
and practice
• PRODUCT: RANGE of
ARTEFACTS: written, verbal,
visual performance/s
• FOCUS: development of
contextual professional
knowledge based on theory
and practice
Professional
doctorate
PhD
Integrated
PhD
PhD by
Publication
& Creative
Works
1
3
4
2
Theorydriven
Practicedriven
Blurred
boundaries
Models of doctoral curriculum

13. Guiding rationale
A) PHD
THEORY
CONTEXT
IMPLICATIONS
OF THE
RESEARCH
STUDY
PRACTICE
B) Professional doctorates
CONTEXT
THEORY
IMPLICATIONS
OF THE
RESEARCH
STUDY
PRACTICE

14. The PhD in operations
How are PhD delivered?
Variants across Social Sciences and Natural Sciences

15. Differences between PhDs
in Social Sciences and in the Natural sciences (Matos 2013, 631)
PhD in the Social Sciences
• Scope of the thesis
• Student responsible for
whole research project
• Topic of the thesis
• Student’s own
• Results
• Only positive results
accepted
• Proximity to supervisor
• Meeting by arrangement
PhD in Natural Sciences
• Scope of the thesis
• Student responsible for a part
of a wider research project
• Topic of the thesis
• Part of a wider research
project and selected/assigned
by the supervisor/principal
investigator
• Results
• Negative results accepted
• Proximity to supervisor
• Constant presence of
supervisor

16. • Location
• Student rarely has own space
provided by department/university.
Many students work from home
• Proximity to other researchers
• Lonely endeavor
• Funding
• Student has to apply individually for
funding
• Duration of doctoral programme
• Rarely within 4 years
• Facilities
• Usually none
• Location
• In the lab
• Proximity to other researchers
• Close to other researchers in same
lab
• Funding
• Attributed to student as part of the
overall funding for supervisor’s
project
• Duration of doctoral programme
• Stricter time limit – due to way
funding is organised
• Facilities
• Lab, computing facilities, desk
PhD in the Social Sciences PhD in Natural Sciences
Frederico Matos (2013) PhD and the manager’s dream: professionalising the students, the degree and the supervisors?,
Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management, 35:6, 626-638

17. STUDENT/S STAFF NOMENCLATURE PURPOSE
One One Primary/ Main supervisor Legal
Administration
?Overseer
Promoter
One Two Joint supervisor/s
Co-supervisor/s
“Fractional supervisor”
Context
Theoretical
Methodological
Practical
Discipline
Focus
One >3…many Supervisory Panel
Study
Collaborative input
Many One Project supervisor Each student/staff researching a different
aspect of the same phenomenon
Many Many Cohort supervision Could include main supervisor /not

18. 18
Phase One
Research Design
Proposal
Phase Three
Analysis
Report
Phase Two
Data Production
Non-cohort
Presentation
of
Research Proposal
to SHDC
Intended
research focus
One-on-one
supervision
Team
supervision
headwork
field work
text work
SELECTION
APPOINTMENT
OF
SUPERVISOR
The UKZN PHD
collaborative PhD cohort model

19. 19
Building capacity
Students as researchers
• Peer review
• Oral Presentations: defending
work in progress
• Planning /organising/
reflecting
• Written work: phase 2
• Learning to be a supervisor
Staff as supervisors
• Offering supervisory advice and
critique
• Moving along with the students
through each phase (progress)
• Shifting kinds of audiences, texts,
purposes
• Both MIE and UZKN supervisors

20. Principles
• Ubuntu
• Serendipity
• Democracy
Samuel M & Vithal R, 2011.
Emergent frameworks of research
teaching and learning in a cohort-
based doctoral programme.
Perspectives in Education. 29 (3). 76-
87.
• The power of inter-disciplinary,
multi-disciplinary, juxta-disciplinary,
trans-disciplinary study….
• You never know who/ what will be
inspirational:
• Methodology (Approach)
• Context
• Theory
• DESIGNING FOR CREATIVE ACCIDENTS
• LEARNING THROUGH, WITH and
AGAINST OTHERS
• LEARNING IN COMMUNITY

21. Methodological approaches:
representations
From big  Small

22. • Growing critique of the limits of policy as a steering mechanism
• Shift away from policy-implementation analysis
• Towards smaller case study approaches:
• concentration on the lived experiences of the participants in educational settings
• Rise of Ethnographic approaches:
• self study methodologies (Pillay, Naicker & Pithouse-Morgan); methodological agency
(Samuel& Mariaye)
• “Individual Individualistic/ self-centred?
• Capabilities approaches (Nuusbaum, Walker) “false necessities” (Hugo)
• Disguised consumerisation
• The post-human condition: (Olivier)
• environment, energy, equity & economics (Sen)
• People, planet and profit
• Responsibility, accountability & sustainability
• A new liberalist retreat
• Narcissistic: self-marginalisation; peripheralisation
• ??IS THE SMALL THE NEW BIG?

23. Pillay, D., Naicker, I. &
Pithouse-Morgan (2016).
Academic
autoethnographies: Inside
teaching in higher
education. Sense
Publishing: Rotterdam

24. Samuel, M & Mariaye, H (eds.) (2016).
Continuity, complexity and change.
Teacher education in Mauritius.
Common Ground Publishing: Champaign, IL.

25. Closing comments
• Can alternative methodologies generate new forms of social justice
highlighting?
• Can methodology be a leverage?
• New narcissism

26. Recent related publications
• Samuel M and Mariaye H 2016. (in press) From a distance: Small island states and their global partners. In Tavis D. Jules & Patrick
Ressler (eds.) Is “small” always small and “big” always big? Re-reading Educational Policy and Practice in Small
States. Comparative Studies Series, ed. by Jürgen Schriewer, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
•
• Samuel M (2016). (in press). PhD value: what is the doctorate for? Comparative responses from South Africa and Mauritius. Paper
in press: Higher Education Forum. Research Institute for Higher Education, Hiroshima University, Japan.
• Samuel M 2016 (in press). Re-membering and re-directing the self: an educational journey. Journal of International Cooperation in
Education. 17 (2). 2015: 109-127.
• Samuel M & Mariaye H (eds.) 2016. Continuity, complexity and change: Teacher Education in Mauritius. Common Ground
Publishing: University of Illinois, Champaign.
• Samuel M 2015. Angels in the wind: the future of educational research. Journal of Education. Number 61. 2015: 147-158.Post-
conference proceedings publication of the South African Education Research Association (SAERA) 2014 Conference: Theme:
Education research: future directions. Elangeni Hotel, Durban.12-15 August 2014. (Opening address: SAERA). (Chair of Local
Organising Committee).
• Samuel M 2015. Beyond narcissism and hero-worshipping: Life history research and narrative inquiry. Alternation. 22 (2) 2015: 8-
28. Special Issue: Memory work and interdisciplinary studies (Editors: Sabine Marshall & Phillipe Dennis). ISSN 1023-1757
• Samuel M 2014 Doctoral career path studies: exchanging paradigms across international borders. South African Journal of Higher
Education. 2014 28.(5): 1469-1484. ©Unisa Press ISSN 1011-3487
• Samuel, M & Vithal R 2011. Emergent frameworks of research teaching and learning in a cohort-based doctoral programme.
Perspectives in Education 29 (3): 76-87. Special edition: The changing face of doctoral education in South Africa.

27. Abstract
• This presentation explores the competing expectations of doctoral education from a national, institutional, programmatic and personal
perspective. The rhetoric of PhDs contributing to the knowledge economy, and wider socio-economic development is questioned as
adequate explanation for the rise in interest in doctoral studies. An examination of the motivation behind choice of topics of a sampled
group of PhD in Higher Education students forms the basis for this analysis. This will be explored against the backdrop of recent
websites: Universities South Africa, Daily Higher Education News Education news, University World New Global Edition. How do the
competing agendas of the managerial, policy and international terrains influence/not the choices of doctoral topics in the sphere of
educational research locally, institutionally and personally? Should these agendas drive doctoral topic selection? How is the
worthwhileness of a doctoral study topic decided; by whom and why? Who frames the agenda for doctoral education?
• Secondly, the presentation questions why the range of alternative forms of representation of doctoral studies are more
restricted/dominant in certain fields/ disciplines compared to others. The following types of doctorates and their possible curriculum
implications include the PhD, the PhD by publications & creative works, the professional doctorate and the integrated doctorate. How
could/should doctoral education be broadened to encompass a greater diversity of types and curriculum offerings?
• The above will be located through comparing the operational foci of doctoral education (admission, selection, scope, supervision,
delivery outputs) in the Natural Sciences and the Social Sciences, arguing for a reconsideration of benchmarks used to examine
institutional productivity, investment of human, physical and financial resources to support doctoral education. This will be followed by
an analysis of the potential /limitations of a cohort supervision model of doctoral research learning which aims to produce a community
of scholars engaged in creating critical discursive spaces for more democratic rather than traditional one-on-one Master-Apprenticeship
supervision models.
• Thirdly, the presentation questions whether innovative disruption of present doctoral education traditions could potentially be
challenged through the choice of methodological approach. The shifting of discourses away from macro-policy-practice implementation
fetishes towards deeply understanding the lived personal experiences and effects of everyday practices and practitioners, including
auto-ethnographic critical reflexion, is offered as potentially a reclaiming of space, a re-definition of the small. Individuals, communities,
and institutions who bear the responsibility of shouldering macro-systemic interventions and their lived worlds are foregrounded in
such research methodologies, potentially offering new vocabulary for theorising, a kind of “methodological agency”. Can the small
issues become big? Is this retreat into the small, evidence of a form of marignalisation, another form of self-peripherilisation? Is the
“small-is-big agenda” adequate for a social reconstructivist activism? Does methodology of doctoral studies provide the leverage for a
social justice turn? Is methodological innovation adequate?
• The above foci question how the rationale, curriculum design, supervision, topic selection and methodology of doctoral education are
capable and/or constrained to achieve greater forms of social justice considerations.