Being a Research Guide

Description

One of my doctoral students was giving a speech at her pre-graduation dinner. I was supervising her thesis. While thanking me, she spoke about how I gave her adequate time and space during the literature review and research problem identification stage, but during her research design, data collection and data analysis phases, I had tightened my supervision. She felt that had I not conducted such close scrutiny of her thesis at that stage, it would have been difficult for her to complete her doctoral work. It is not often that, as a research guide, you get feedback on what you did right or wrong. Most of us learn to become effective through a process of trial and error. I was reflecting on this episode when Prabhakar, Guest Editor of this issue, asked me to share my thoughts on what it means to be a research guide and what research students need to acquire as skills and capabilities. This article has two sections. In the first section, I draw on my experience of being on dissertation committees as an internal and external supervisor and present my insights. In the second section, I present the capabilities that I think research students need to acquire to do meaningful research. This is a purely reflective piece intended to synthesise my key learnings.

Publication Date

1-1-2015

Publisher

National HRD Network

Keywords

Higher education, Research, Supervision

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