“Facing upward in social space they routinely battled feelings of insecurity and inferiority, and facing downwards they were inevitably met with a sense of guilt, estrangement and abandonment” (Friedman, 2016). Higher education as social space or ‘field’ in the Bourdieusian sense, increasingly resembles a battlefield as a variety of stakeholders stake their claims and contest each other’s’ claims. Supervisors and more specifically, early career supervisors find themselves unprepared (and anxious) in negotiating the complexities in the nexus of ever-increasing teaching and administrative workloads, being held solely accountable for the success of their students, and mapping a personal career trajectory in a context with increasingly blurred and precarious boundaries and prospects (see Hall, 2014). The potential for and scope of agency of early career supervisors are also influenced by the dominant performance doxa in higher education that embraces the mantras of managerialism (Diefenbach, 2007), doing-more-with-less and fake rituals of fraternisation (Hartley, 1995) and ranking regimes, benchmarking and performance management (Morrisseya, 2015). In the specific context of South African higher education the impact of the flux and uncertainties in international higher education are amplified by the #FeesMustFall campaign, the slow pace of curriculum and institutional transformation as well as contestations regarding tuition language. Early career supervisors are caught in an interregnum (Gramsci, 1971) where the models and supervisory practices accepted in the not-so-recent past have died (or have been killed) and the new is yet to be born. Considering postgraduate supervision as a space of play (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992), supervisors have little choice but to ‘play the [new] game’ with different rules determining the nature, processes and criteria for evaluating the quality of supervision (Carter, Guerin & Aitchison, 2016; Maritz & Prinsloo, 2016). While seasoned supervisors have learnt the specific logic of supervision practice and often adapt easier to this new state of play, early career supervisors may not know the ‘trade secrets of the game’ which are required to ‘perform’ supervision. This results in toxic shame and anxiety (Gill, 2016) and practices of ‘fake-it-till-you-make-it’ (Friedman, 2015; Ivana, 2016). This paper employs the Bourdieusian analytical tools of ¹doxa, habitus and capital to make visible the doxic and often toxic life-world experiences and journeys of early career supervisors. Through Bourdieu’s notion of doxa, we gain an understanding of how the early career supervisor negotiates a particular (classed) and performed, embodied practice. This perspective provides an innovative lens and theoretical insights that are of direct practical use in developing and supporting pathways for early career supervisors.

1. The (d)(t)oxic lifeworld of early
career supervisors
Jeanette Maritz
Paul Prinsloo

2. overview
• context: the space of play
• bourdieusian analytical tools
• methodology
• findings
• discussion

3. supervision as a space of play
considering postgraduate supervision as a space of play (Bourdieu
& Wacquant, 1992), supervisors have little choice but to ‘play the
[new] game’ with different rules determining the nature, processes
and criteria for evaluating the quality of supervision

4. bourdieusian analytical tools
to make visible the doxic and often toxic life-world experiences and
journeys of early career supervisors
• doxa (we gain an understanding of how the early career supervisor
negotiates a particular (classed) and performed, embodied practice)
• habitus (has both an “inner” (disposition) and “outer” (the social)
form. These dispositions bring value to the person to the degree that his or
her inner habitus is more or less “well formed” relative to that of the field of
inculcation)
• capital (refers to that which is symbolically valued)

5. methodology
• phenomenological lifeworld approach (Dahlberg, Dahlberg &
Nystrom, 2008).
• we were specifically interested in how these experiences were
produced, performed or maintained in the field
• nine early career supervisors were purposefully selected and
interviewed (ages 25 -56)
• all but one participant was first generation academics, meaning
that they were the first in their family to study towards a degree
• analytical coding: coding that comes from interpretation and
reflection on meaning making in context

6. findings
theme category code
the uncertainty of the field
and ‘would be’ space
internalising doxic
structures
becoming aware of the
greater academic ‘game’
build symbolic capital accepting learned doxic
norms
harnessing social and
formal capital
toxic shame and a broken
habitus

7. the uncertainty of the field and ‘would be’
space
• the transformative natures of their developmental pathway often lead
the early career supervisor to a double bind or dual consciousness
(Bourdieu in (Grenfell, 2014)
• often required to operate in duel structures (of student and supervisor)
they were left unsure of what to focus on, what to do and how to act
often resulting in a process where the ‘blind were leading the blind’.
• the transition from student to supervisor was mostly abrupt with little
time for a gradual transformation of habitus or to acquire ‘a feel of the
game’

8. the uncertainty of the field and ‘would be’
space
“Your research process does not prepare you
for supervision. I’m a student. I’m being
guided. I’m not the guider; I’m being guided.
So it doesn’t mean that I’ve done my master’s,
I’ve done my PhD, I’m ready to supervise. It
means nothing. I’ve been a student. Don’t just
throw me out there and I must perform “

9. internalising doxic structures
• as the doxa or field had already created the norms and practices for
them, the early career supervisor internalised and attempted to
integrate these norms into their habitus in order to define who they
were and create their own identity and values within the field
• in order to cope and manage the murky waters the early career
supervisors became aware of the greater academic ‘game’ as well as
the specific demands of supervision

10. internalising doxic structures
“The game is changing because the competition is changing and
everybody tries to be ahead …this requires us to stay on top of our
game”

11. accepting learned doxic norms
• in an often ‘cloudy’ space the early career supervisor accepted
and learned the doxic norms contained in policies, processes
and approaches to supervision
• policies were a form of symbolic capital against which both
outcomes and processes of supervision were measured and
evaluated
• they consequently internalised the performance structures
• this became embodied as part of their habitus, behavioural
actions and exhibitions in the course of their supervisory
practice often defeating the pedagogical nature of postgraduate
supervision

12. building symbolic capital
• the motivation and intent of early career supervisors were
mostly noble
• participants shared their observations and thoughts regarding
some colleagues who were attracted to a position in academia
based on career blocks or seemingly had a vested interested in
upward mobility

13. building symbolic capital
“Personally I would rather say don’t give me any more students; I
want to write articles. That’s a quicker path [towards promotion].
So for someone working towards promotion supervision is almost
not worth it although it’s important to build your CV but if you want
to get promoted, why supervise? “

14. Supervision thus became a performative
product rather than an art of learning research
and the craft of supervision

15. harnessing social and formal capital
• social capital was mostly derived from identifying and
perusing a relationship with a mentor in order to increase a
perceived lack of academic, research and supervision capital
• the relationship however often lacked reciprocity
• social capital was therefor mostly used for an instrumental or
functional purpose in that ties were built and kept with some
functional purpose in mind
• not everyone was as fortunate to have access to a mentor

16. harnessing social and formal capital
“I was fortunate enough to have a NRF-rated researcher to be my
supervisor… I tried to get as much information and guidance out of him
as I can and even today”
“I remember I asked one of the senior people I said won’t you please
teach us how to supervise? And she simply said, no, that’s not for you.
I was a lecturer then. That’s not for you. Because I said please take us
through the part of supervision, we want to learn this so that we know,
and I was simply told this is not for you. So I am ill-prepared. I could not
even have thought until I came to this [higher education institution] and
they said you have to supervise student [sic] and I’m thinking, excuse
me, how am I going to do that?... So I had to figure it in my head… I
would have learnt a few tricks [while doing a masters’ degree] as I was
walking the dark path”

17. This further complicated the unequal distribution of
acquiring and distributing symbolic capital

18. formal capital
• access to training was available to most early career supervisors;
they were however left to their own devices as to understand their
training needs “you don’t know what you do not know”
• how to access the training and what to do after the training as
there was an apparent lack of follow-up

19. they therefor needed to improvise and adapt to
the new social field without clear guidance in
how to construct a developmental pathway

20. toxic shame
• process of becoming not always a straight forward or a benevolent
process
• the course of development was often messy, and the personal and
emotional cost left many early career supervisors feeling sad,
discouraged, fearful, anxious, insecure and uneasy
• they frequently feared that they would be ‘weighed (evaluated) and
found wanting’ especially when their students submitted
dissertations for examination
• having a student pass or fail would reflect on their worth as a
supervisor and thus could increase or decrease their symbolic
capital

21. toxic shame
“I think I will get a couple of surprises as we go along, especially after
the examination. I’m quite scared about that. It will be totally
disappointment [sic]. I’m aiming for distinction. It’s everything or
nothing… your reputation is also on the line. You will be assessed by
your peers and we deal with academic jealousy and all of those other
things”

22. broken habitus
aiming towards ‘superhero’ status in trying to balance all aspects of the
academic game while lacking the necessary capital to sustain themselves,
increased the likelihood of developing a ‘broken habitus’

23. broken habitus
“’m busy with exams, I’m busy with marking, I’m busy with moderation, there’s
no way I can do everything. I’m not sure anymore. My brain is messed up”
“I worked harder, read more. I felt like a zombie”

24. conclusion
• we can no longer idealise what policy can deliver in the supervision
process :it does not include a fuller epistemological representation of
how supervision is constituted or operates
• Neither does it address the demands made on the individual habitus
of the supervisor

25. conclusion
• there is a requirement for the successful translation of the codes and
practices of the field and game of supervision as well as a realistic
expectation of an entry level supervisor and what development they
might need.

26. if the field site does not facilitate a process whereby the site integrates
with the early career supervisors personal and pedagogical habitus,
supervisors may become a disembodied facilitator of others’ needs and
we may expect a social reproduction of the status quo