The problem with research supervision as a private practice

I was recently asked to talk about research supervision at a faculty forum. I asked the audience what they wanted me to discuss and what were the problems that they were confronted with in their everyday practice of research supervision. They asked for discussion about the time requirements involved in research supervision.

This seemed at first like an isolated incident, but reading a university wide review of research supervision I was not surprised to see a similar concern voiced. Does anyone know how much time is actually involved in research supervision?

The question opens up into a Pandora’s box, as once we start to know how much time it takes to supervise a research student we become aware of incongruence between different types of students:

• Does it take more time to supervise a student for whom English is a second language?
• Does it take more time to supervise a student who has completed earlier undergraduate studies and perhaps other research in a different culture?

There are also flow on issues, that when we can estimate accurate amounts of time required to supervise various categories of students, this can help inform resourcing and staffing formulae, such that appropriate resources are provided for research students and realistic goals are set for their supervisors.

It made me think of an article by Catherine Manathunga in the International Journal of Academic Development in which she describes research supervision as existing in a private space. Unlike other forms of academic teaching, research supervision often takes place in the privacy of a research supervisor’s office, and save for the possibility of an associate supervisor, private from any assessing or learning eyes. In this privacy each supervisor may well wonder about their own benchmarks and particularly their own practice. Particularly from my privileged position of being involved with many research supervisors through their exercises in reflective practice, I have learned that many worry about how much time it takes them to achieve the task.

The comment also reminded me or made me make a comparison to another practice with which I had been involved, Accountancy, in which it is sometimes possible to identify how much time it is likely to take to fulfil a particular task so that you can estimate accurate chargeable services. This thought took me back to my first years as a Work Study Analyst where we would help people in administrative positions start to estimate and calculate how long various tasks took so that they had benchmarks when a practice might be improved with technology or by gaining a new insight into it.

The amalgamation of these thoughts and requests figured in my mind about what might make an excellent research study. Starting to identify and quantify the amount of time taken for various aspects of research supervision.

If I started with my own practice I was aware of a model I had developed and used for the first six months of candidature:

I estimated that I would meet with my student once per month and read their written work once per month. The time taken in each of the meetings was about one hour and the time taken to read varied from about 30 minutes with the early written exercises to much longer as the work approached a research proposal. This averaged out to about one hour every fortnight. This was the answer I gave when I was asked this question during various speaking engagements associated with providing professional development for research supervisors. This model was very much based on my experience working with humanities type dissertations and my exposure to other disciplines saw variation in this:

• The research that was being undertaken in a laboratory that required more regular but often shorter meetings to clarify certain procedures that were part of the developing the necessary research skills.
• The lengthier meetings that were required in creative industries as creative practitioners struggled with the concepts of reflecting on and documenting their practice.

I am hopeful that as some of the readers of this blog think about their own practices they post responses which start to inform the general question: How much time does it take to supervise a research student? Maybe this might be considered a form of light that is turned onto an otherwise private space.

Manathunga, C. (2005) The Development of Research Supervision: ‘Turning the light on a private space’ International Journal for Academic Development, 10(1), 17–30

Helping a student with their thesis statement

The term thesis is often associated with research reports. It is derived from a Greek word (θέσις) meaning position and in a modern vernacular becomes synonymous with the idea of an argument.

If we adopt a view of a research report that it is an argument, then the essence of that argument can be expressed in what is called a thesis statement.
This is one of the most important aspects of the entire thesis because it not only introduces the objective of a research report, but also outlines the major topics covered in the thesis to achieve that objective.

The thesis statement is usually placed at the end of the first paragraph of an essay or a similar document and it is also referred to in the conclusion of the essay, as you need to balance various perspectives presented in the argument.

Helping a student with their thesis statement helps to focus on their academic writing and also draws out of them the analytical thinking for which the research report is renowned.

1. Helping the student to write a thesis statement based on what they perceive is their type of paper

First, determine whether your paper is an analytical one that presents the breakdown and evaluation of an idea, or an expository one that explains something, or perhaps an argumentative one that convinces the audience about the validity of a claim through evidence. The paper type lets you understand how your thesis statement should be framed and positioned. As you will see below, determining your paper type will further help you in considering other aspects of your thesis statement.

2. Building an appropriate thesis statement.

It is very important to keep the length of your statement optimized. To achieve the right length, one needs to consider the document type. If your work is large, a thesis statement could be a small chapter. However, many times, it could be a single line statement. for example, in essays. The length of the thesis statement will vary according to the style; for instance, it could be written in the form of questions and answers.
Your style and length should vary only according to the prescribed guidelines or the subject of your debate.

Thinking about the thesis statement this way lends itself to a strategy for research supervisors to help students in the development of their thesis statement as well as their overall writing.
Start with a one line statement and use the statement as a reviewing mechanism each time you meet with a student. Ask them what has changed in the way the student understands their thesis/dissertation. That may mean that the statement grows to become eventually a paragraph rather than a one line.

You have to remember to keep your thesis statement flexible unless your paper is already completed. You may discover new information during the process of writing your paper and that information should be included in your thesis statement. If you need prior approval for the thesis statement, it is better to take permission in advance from the instructor regarding future changes. Note that you should not miss the opportunity to rewrite your thesis statement.

About Enago: The ideas that prompted this particular blog have been brought to my attention by Enago. They offer thesis & dissertation editing services for students. – http://www.enago.com/australia/

Evaluating your own research supervision practice

In some parts of this blog I have looked at a set of analytical tools for ascertaining your student’s progress. In the professional capacity of being a research supervisor it is also important to ascertain your own progress as a research supervisor. This theme has been explored in a set of practice strategies in the series associate with advancing your research supervision. In this blog I would like to illuminate one of the tools I am using with research supervisors to help them formulate plans of action to advance their research supervision.

The whole field of research and research supervision can be typified as a problematic discourse. Because people come to the practice of research from different backgrounds, the core notion of research supervision, which is the practice of research, is disputed. These disputes have been referred to in some of the debates or paradigm wars.

In a similar way, the practices of research supervision also represent a debated discourse with different views being expressed to not only what constitutes research supervision, but more importantly what constitutes ‘good’ research supervision. Having your own mental image of good supervision is one of the core practices to being able to evaluate this aspect of your academic practice.

To begin to evaluate your research supervision start with the first notions of what you consider to be good research supervision. Your jottings might include reference to relational aspects – such as ‘good supervision is about having a good relationship with your student’.Such a statement holds quite different measure of performance than a definition of good supervision which is based on the outcomes of the candidature – such as ‘good supervision is about getting the student to completion’ .

These two variants on the notion of good supervision reveal emphasis in the relational aspects of research supervision compared to emphasis on the management aspects of research supervision. In reality, good supervision might involve both. When there is a good relationship, a student is more likely to reach completion. Part of forming a workable relationship is providing the supportive structure of key milestones and an end outcome.

In my own work as a research supervisor, embracing the types of issues I have referred to in the themes of this blog, I define good research supervision as involving.

• ‘good’ teaching, with explicit microskills.
• ‘good’ management with agreements about deadlines and expectations we have one for another.
• ‘good’ relationships
• ‘good contributions to knowledge’ which involve both ‘good’ investigative practice that has been thought through from the perspective of truth and knowledge; and ‘good’ writing evidenced by an elegant set of arguments that present your approach to investigation as well as the reasons you have reached the conclusions you have reached.

I am the first to admit that it is a complex definition!
It reflects my thinking that research supervision is a complex practice and that when I think about how I am progressing as a research supervisor, I am looking for multiple measures and indicators.

In my practice, this sort of definition leads to my observing a number of concrete indicators as evidence that I am happy with my practice.
For example:
The student completing is an important factor. This has a rider for me because ‘completion at all odds’ is not satisfying for me, particularly if it is at the expense of a traumatic relationship. That leads into a second indicator, that for me, I still hold good relationships with the students I have supervised. Where there was evidence of tension in the relationship I recommend that the student seek an alternate supervisor.

I pay attention to the examiners reports because they provide evidence regarding the quality of the contribution to knowledge. This is also evidenced in papers that students have published, sometimes in collaboration with me, following their graduation or in the final moments of their candidature.

Perhaps the greatest factor in reviewing my research supervision is converting what I have learned in terms of teaching strategies into published papers that feed back into the literature pertaining to research supervision.

Working in the field of delivering professional development for research supervisors, it is important to also keep tabs on your own practice such that it offers a benchmark and a congruency basis for those whom you develop. It would concern me if I had a reputation of being a poor research supervisor while I am tasked to help develop others.

Because part of an agenda of offering professional development for research supervisors also involves helping them when their practice is appraised, being aware of the different measures of practice it important. I recognize that the measures that I choose to use for my own practice may not be the same ones that the university at which I work uses or values. I hope that by focusing on my identified performance indicators I can also lead to achieving those that the university values.

In the context of professional development it is highly likely that participants will be asked to consider ‘good’ research supervision. Those who are undertaking a more personal form of professional development, by considering their day to day work, might benefit from making explicit their notions of good supervision and using the details of this to explore whether they are living up to their own measures.

How do you recognise the problems of research supervision?

Research supervision poses a range of problems. If a problem is recognised, a supervisor often draws on their repertoire of practice to come up with a way to address the problem. Sometimes this involves drawing on your own experiences of being supervised and considering how your own supervisors addressed a similar problem with you. Sometimes the particular issue that you are facing as a supervisor is one which you have not previously experienced as a student yourself and you need to draw on other sources for your strategies.

Before addressing what you see as a problem, it sometimes helps to look at how the issue has been framed and ask yourself whether a different frame might lead to a different resolution of the issue, and therefore a different strategy. Such consideration is based on a belief that every issue is in some way framed, and often the solution is driven by the way in which the issue has been framed.

The Bolman Deal model (Bolman, L.& Deal, T. 2008) operates from this sort of belief. Although this model is specifically designed to address organisational issues, by considering a university as an organisation, and issues within research supervision as part of the organisational life of a university organisation, there may be some relevance for the model for research supervision issues.

Bolman and Deal (2008) suggest that an issue is often framed in one of four ways:
Structural – the issue is understood from the perspective of rules and regulations of an organisation, such as its policies and procedures and reporting frames.
Human Resource – the issue is understood from a people perspective of people employed in the organisation.
Political – the issue is understood from the perspective of the ways in which power is articulated in the organisation.
Symbolic – the issue is understood from the perspective of the culture of an organisation.

In endeavouring to ascertain the frame from which a particular research supervision issue is emanating, it can sometimes be useful to explore the language used to describe the issue.

Structural frames often utilise language such as rules, regulations, policies and procedures. They might also refer to organisational change.
Human Resource frames often refer to skills and capabilities and the need for professional development and training.
Political frames often refer to issues of power or people lacking power. They can similarly refer to people taking initiative or failing to take initiative.
The research student-supervisor relationship is a classic example of a power imbued relationship. The supervisor is often the one with power and one of the goals is for the student to become empowered.
Symbolic frames often refer to the culture and may also refer to values and attitudes.

Once you can see a dominant frame in the way in which the issue has been set, you can ask yourself whether the issue might be different if it were described from a different point of view.

For example:
A student not meeting milestones of candidature might be dominated by a structural frame, but could be viewed from alternate frames in different ways:

• An HR frame might look at the student’s skills and whether there is a lack of skills impacting on failing to meet the milestones.
• A Political frame might identify a student waiting to be led rather than taking initiative themselves.
• A Symbolic frame might identify a culture of compliance rather than a culture of seeking to make contributions to knowledge. Change the culture and you might change the ways in which people operate within it.

Having a different frame for setting the problematic issue does not necessarily solve the problem. It may simply revitalise the range of strategies that you consider calling upon to address the issue. It might also promote a new and different set of strategies to the ones which you have used previously in addressing that particular issue.

Bolman, L. and Deal, T (2008) Reframing Organisations: Artistry, Choice and Leadership. (4th Ed) Jossey-Bass, San Francisco: USA.

Facilitating your student’s Reflective Practice of their candidature

In the very early stages of my own research career I was introduced to Schon’s (1983) the Reflective Practitioner. It was a text and a concept that underpinned my academic life, in that all of the subjects I taught embraced reflective practice as an essential ingredient for professional development.
It is not surprising that reflective practice is an essential ingredient of most professional development programs for research supervisors.

Although the concept is simple – that one reflects on their practice – this becomes complicated in that some practices are complex, and embarking on reflective practice opens up a range of considerations; and reflective practice is time consuming and some professionals feel that they do not have time for this introspection.

I have always felt that the time taken to reflect is well retrieved with a greater understanding of one’s practice. In this regard it is important for an emerging researcher to also learn to reflect on their practice. That is not to suggest that this is not something that is happening naturally: research students are likely to be going through a range of reflections from the excitement of seeing their investigation progress to the frustration of it not progressing and to it sometimes stalling.

Adopting a position of facilitating reflective practice ensures that these experiences, once reflected on, lead to actionable knowledge, both for the immediate future of completing their research degree and for the long term in understanding their practice of research and improving their quality as a researcher.

In that I have written this blog from the framework of
1. Supervision as project management
2. Supervision as contribution to knowledge
3. Supervision as pedagogy
4. Supervision as relationship

I have adopted the same framework for exploring the issue of facilitating reflective practice.

Facilitating reflection about project management

As your student is engaged in project planning and monitoring for their research project, help them recognise this as project management so that on graduation they will have a command of project management language and recognition that, in keeping with the graduate research capabilities, they have research project management skills.

Project management can also introduce a different form of discipline into research practice, by identifying deadlines and working towards these milestones.

Facilitating reflection about the contribution to knowledge

As your student starts to consider what their research might lead to, reframe this to their contributions to knowledge – an essential ingredient and criteria for research practice. This may also extend to their realisations that they are making contributions to the field of their methodology as well as to the official topic.

Keeping a student focussed on the importance of making a contribution to knowledge also builds an accountability of actionable and useful outcomes of the process.

Facilitating reflection about the pedagogy
When we help students to understand how they are learning and how to recognise the ways they are learning, they can transfer this to any task. This can also lead them to nominating how best they might learn new skills.

By recognising how they learn they begin to recognise the scaffolding that is taking place to enable them to learn what they are learning. This is particularly important for the ways they learn how to write. Asking the question ‘What were the strategies that progressed their writing?’ might well provide the basis for their continuation as writers. Helping them identify tools that assisted them can lead to recommending these tools for others.

Facilitating reflection on the relationship
In the early stages of the research supervisor student relationship, the supervisor is often taking most of the initiative. Reflecting on the way in which the relationship is developing can alert students to moments when they take ownership for the direction of their investigation and start to initiate what they believe needs to happen. This is a key indicator for them and for you as the supervisor as it is a strong sign that the research will be completed.

…add to this the idea of Graduate Capabilities
The idea of Graduate Capabilities is a relatively new one within the research process. It is intended to make students alert to the sorts of skills which will make them attractive to employers of researchers following their graduation. While some universities will address this agenda by providing a range of workshops for students to gain accreditation that they have these skills, I have always felt that greater reflection on the research process by the student would lead them to recognise the multitude of skills to which they are being exposed and becoming competent as they undertake a research journey. The more they can relate their experiences to the framework of Graduate Capabilities the more they will be able to discuss their acquisition of these skills in job interviews following their completion and graduation with a research degree.

Schon, D. (1983) the Reflective Practitioner. Basic Books. N.Y.:USA

What does it mean to advance your practice?

Some professional practices come with an established and documented set of practices. When I read Accounting in my undergraduate studies, Bookkeeping seemed a little like that.
Research supervision practice is part of a broader arena of academic practice and sits somewhere between an academic’s teaching practice and their research practice. Most research supervisors start practicing research supervision based on what they remember their own supervisor did when they were being supervised themselves.
This common provenance of research supervision practice, based on observations when we were being supervised, is the first reason why this particular aspect of academic practice needs constant reflection. There is no certainty that the practices that we observed and remember, were either good or contemporary practices. Just the proviso that a student has completed their research degree is insufficient endorsement for the quality of the research supervision.
Some observations made in the context of being supervised may fail to register the nuances of the practice or the rationale behind the practice. The reasoning a supervisor has used to justify a particular intervention with their student may not hold relevance over time. Since research supervision emerged as an important aspect of professional academic practice to be examined in the mid 1980s there have been some significant shifts in the culture of academic work and particularly university based research degrees, and these may have changed the rationale for various interventions. For example

1. The shift towards project management within research and therefore research supervision.
2. The growth in the general acceptance of academic teaching and an emphasis on research supervision as pedagogy.
3. The emergence of a number of electronic devices that can assist with various aspects of research supervision such as Plagiarism detectors Feedback writing programs

Even for an experienced research supervisor, the continual change in priorities that make up the research culture have given rise to reconsideration of what is involved in undertaking that element of your academic work.

In Australia, the Post Graduate Research Experience Questionnaire, and in other countries similar graduate experience surveys, only survey those students who have completed their research degree. Many of the students who have received poor research supervision are also in the group of students who drop out of the degree, and without exit surveys, their opinions of the quality of their research supervision may go undetected.
For these reasons it is important for an individual practitioner academic to continually explore avenues for keeping themselves up to date with their research supervision and also trying to improve the quality of their practice. This continual improvement acts as a buffer to what appears to be a parallel continual growth in workloads and expectations, and by continually seeking to work more effectively it allows some leeway in the constant growth in work portfolios.

Dilemmas of the research culture

When we visit another country there are (for many) expectations of exposure to a new culture. Sometimes this is preempted by reading about the culture so that there are some expectations about what you will encounter. Part of experiencing a new culture is the range of people whom you will meet and their impact on your understanding of the culture.

When we talk about a research culture, and acculturating a student into the research culture in a particular faculty or research centre, we must give some thought to the range of people whom they will encounter in these new experiences and the impact of these people on their understanding of the culture.
In particular I am mindful of encounters which research students may have that may not help them to develop the sense of the research culture in the ways you their research supervisor had intended.

For example:
If coursework is a necessary requirement of candidature, research students will encounter academic staff who not only hold different viewpoints about research; they may hold strongly different viewpoints about the ways in which research students learn. When students attend compulsory coursework delivered by these academics this may come as a shock to their emerging views of the research culture. In particular they may encounter academics whose opinion of themselves and their contribution to research is so great that it stifles any sense of emergent researcher in the students who participate in their class.

Another example is when students are required to present their developing work to a broader network in the faculty and they encounter not only hostile but actively soul destroying questions and comments under the guise of a rigorous research environment. Many students have commented on these issues that can come to light while they are presenting their viva voce or final seminar, and they are shattered by the experience.

A third example I have come across is a potential research student who in their overtures to a faculty about undertaking a PhD was led to believe that work undertaken in her research master’s project was not considered worthy of an entrée into a PhD because it was a different type of research – in this case action research- to what the faculty was used to.

Each of these scenarios can be small instances and a research student is surrounded by a research culture that both nurtures and affirms their development into a full researcher, however the fragile nature of many research students and the insidiousness of politics within many faculties can often mean that a single instance destroys a lot of confidence that students have built up and need in order to complete their candidature.

I have said elsewhere that a research supervisor cannot be all things to all people so there is a sense of reservation about suggesting that there are things about which a research supervisor can be mindful in order to counteract some of these disempowering experiences:

1. The research supervisor can act as an advocate for their research student, fielding inappropriate questions during their research presentations or at least drawing attention to the inappropriateness of the question. This can be very important if fellow academics bring along positivist agendas into what is clearly presented as a post positivist frame in which the research student is operating.
2. The research supervisor can be a political guide alerting students to potential political agendas that they may encounter in the course of their candidature. These can be parochial department politics and can also be broader research community politics in which space may not be allowed for particular approaches to investigation.
3. The research supervisor can be a presentation coach, suggesting ways to respond to certain types of loaded questions that might emerge during a presentation: for example
   • ‘That doesn’t sound like a question, it sounds more like a statement. Were you expecting a response from me about that?’ to professors who make statements rather than ask legitimate questions in presentations.

• ‘That sounds like a loaded question. Did you want to explain the agenda before I attempt to answer it?’

This way, as in much of the assertiveness training, a student can rehearse some possible assertive responses to prevent being silenced by the apparent authority that often comes with these questions.

It has been said that in many of these scenarios students need to learn how to fight their own battles, as that is an essential part of defending your research in the public. I agree with this, once you are skilled to handle some of the subtle power politics that unfortunately pervade settings in which people have titles. Those without titles, such as doctor and professor, are often working from the lowest position of power. In these instances they may need a bit of healthy propping up or moral support.

Modelling Time Management Skills – analysing the time you put into research supervision

One aspect of research supervision as project management is evaluating whether individual input of resources provides useful contributions to a project and/or deliverables which can add value to the project.

Perhaps one of the largest resource inputs is the amount of time which you as a research supervision might be contributing to the project. From the perspective of a research student, their research supervision is a given, and may not be a resource the efficiency of which they evaluate. They may not even see this as  one of the resource inputs. In that regard it can often be a hidden input. Usually the only time a research student evaluates the efficiency or valuing adding nature of the research supervision is when they are not receiving any supervision or when they are receiving so much that they are feeling micro managed.

A research supervisor needs to regularly ask themself whether the time spent with their student is the most effective use of their time and of the student’s time.

In my work coaching research supervisors, this sort of evaluation often is embedded in other questions that research supervisors ask, such as:

• How do you balance the workload and care for the student (with emotional issues)?
• How do you ensure you guide your student so they get through?
• How can we ensure that our students are not left isolated and unsupported?
• How do you provide sufficient writing support but not so much that you end up writing the dissertation?
• When is enough supervision enough?

In the time poor work environment in which many university academics work, it is always important to evaluate our use of time. When I originally trained as a Time and Motion analyst with W. D. Scotts we encouraged professionals to monitor the time taken on individual tasks to begin to see how much time was actually being taken. This can be done using a simple logging system that you note the start and finishing time of anything involving a particular student. Although an essentially Taylorist approach to your work, it does start to quantify how much time is being devoted to the task of supervising a student and this data can be useful when you are discussing real work loads of supervising students.

A second level of practice reflectiveness is asking yourself what deliverables arise from your investment of time in research supervision? This sort of question helps to focus on the purpose of research supervision as advancing the student’s completion and also helps you to avoid the trap of research supervision becoming a socialising opportunity for both you and your student. In the same vein you can ask yourself whether you can see evidence of your meetings with the student paying off in either their ability to take responsibility for their project or in the development of their researching and writing skills? What you are endeavouring to develop is an independent student who begins to initiate actions about their research project and seeks clarification or affirmation from you rather than continual guidance. You are constantly looking for evidence of a student who is developing into an independent researcher.

Another way of evaluating the project advancement of your research supervision meetings is to review the content of the meetings you have with your student. A good question you can ask yourself once you look at this content is whether you are the most qualified person to address these issues. This is particularly the case when emotional issues arise that are occupying the meetings and you need to question whether a counsellor might be the more appropriate person to deal with this.

When is enough, enough?

One of the things that you can begin to do to estimate when the time you have invested may be enough for you and for your student, is to start to review the readiness of the dissertation for examination. The dissertation is the major deliverable in a research student’s project.

In order to ascertain how ready your student’s dissertation is you will need to  look at the criteria provided by a university to an examiner when they are invited to examine the dissertation. These criteria are the quality indicators for a successful dissertation. Looking out for what examiners are asked to look out for provides a way of ensuring the research supervision sessions are focussed.

One of the professional development options that will enhance this particular aspect of your research supervision is to look for opportunities to examine a dissertation. The sooner you can examine a dissertation yourself this will provide invaluable knowledge that will pay off both for your examination practices as well as your supervision practices.

You may reach a point in the student’s candidature when you have to say to them that the dissertation is ready to be submitted and to undergo peer review by examiners rather than being continually reviewed by you. This is perhaps the polite way of suggesting enough is enough.

Analysing the research proposal.

Over the past months I have been progressively exploring analytical tools for research supervisors to ascertain from student outputs their progress towards completing their research degree. The research proposal is often the main interim output on which a student’s progress is judged, and sometimes this is the basis on which their research program is confirmed or approved to move forward.

In essence, many of the previous analytical tools are useful in analysing different aspects of the research proposal and the research proposal itself represents a capstone report to demonstrate a research student’s command of understanding both of their topic and of research, in order to give the go ahead for their particular research project.

As with other written work, the research supervisor is often the reader or the initial reader of student’s writing and as such they need to provide feedback, not only to the student about the suitability of a research proposal document, but they may also be required to provide feedback to the faculty on the viability of a project based on evidence of the research proposal.

For the analytical tool in this blog I am referring to work I completed some years ago (Sankaran, Swepson and Hill, 2005), following the examination of my first PhD dissertation and teaching and examining groups of students undertaking a Master of Education research dissertation. For those students benefit, and in recognition of the pedagogy of making the assessment criteria explicit, I constructed a rubric which explored various elements of the final dissertation.

As a research proposal is not a complete dissertation I have drawn on a select sample of these criteria.

In sharing these I am more than suggesting criteria for assessing a research proposal. I am suggesting that the process of a research supervisor identifying what their assessment criteria are for a research proposal and discussing those criteria with a research student is a profound pedagogy of research supervision. Because these genres of writing lack specific assessment criteria, student’s often struggle with coming to terms with what is required of them at this stage of their candidature.

My definition of a research proposal is that it is an extended argument that addresses:

• how the proposed topic can be understood in the context of available literature

…and given this understanding

• how the particular topic can be investigated.

I have drawn three criteria from my previous work

1. Framing the practice
2. Arguing for the methodological approach
3. Academic rigor in the report

   (Sankaran, Swepson, & Hill, 2005)

1. There is a clearly framed issue or practice that is being investigated.

The issue or practice is framed both by the investigator’s practice experiences (experiential or practice-based epistemology) and by the identified discourses that impact on the practice. There may even be need for an argument regarding which discourses impact on the practice.

The assumption underpinning this requirement is that there are discourses that frame a practice. These discourses might include policy documents, procedural manuals, correspondence and observations. By using the broader term of “discourse” here, rather than “literature”, there is space to argue that, while a practice is evident in a range of discourses, it has notably not been articulated in literature. Also, by using the broader term “discourse” there is room to include the practitioner’s own story as a discourse.

In discussing the discourses it would be expected that the discussion would help a reader (examiner) understand:

1. The debates surrounding the particular practice.
2. The silences within and across the discourses.

For example, a practice might be discussed in the popular literature but is notably absent in the academic literature or a practice might be talked about in web-based literature but not in mainstream refereed journals. These constitute silences that inform the way in which the community understands the practice.

When this criteria is applied to a research proposal it is suggesting that the proposal demonstrates a command of knowledge about the topic being investigated evidenced by reference to the literature about that topic, and perhaps reference to the researcher’s own experiences with that practice.

2.There is a well argued approach to investigating the practice.

As the research proposal is making a suggestion about how to investigate a particular issue it cannot be assumed that the appropriateness of the investigative approach is clearly obvious. I believe the rigorous way is to clearly articulate the argument for the particular investigative approach. This would involve:

1. Recognising the specific ways in which the practice is observed and articulated and has been observed and articulated in the investigation.
2. Showing how the ways used to harness relevant data for the investigation are congruent with a stated epistemology and ontology.
3. Showing how meaning-making about the data is congruent with the stated ontological position.

When this criteria is applied to a research proposal it is suggesting that there is an argument for the methodology and that this argument either works from first principles of the inquiry or research paradigm or it relies on precedent, and shows, with reference to published research, how the topic or a similar topic has been previously investigated.

 

3. There is evidence of rigor throughout the report.

1. First level rigor in spelling, grammar, style of citation and bibliography.
2. Second level rigor in the way in which the argument itself is presented
   1. Conclusions reasonably arise from the analysis
   2. Discourses used to make sense of the data, and to frame the practice, are shown to be relevant and authentic for this particular practice and its data
   3. The investigator recognises that his/her perception of the practice is just that. A given situation might be understood in many different ways, and the investigator is not so much arguing for the sole truth of his/her interpretation as for a reasonable logical acceptance that his/her interpretation is a viable way to understand the practice. Alternatively, an investigator adopts a positivist stance and argues for single truth.

 

When this criteria is applied to a research proposal it is suggesting that that the document is acknowledged not only as a proposal but as evidence of the research student’s competence in academic writing.

 

4. The potential contribution to knowledge

A fourth element of consideration in a research proposal involves whether the study is likely to make a contribution to knowledge. This is essential for a doctoral investigation. In my criteria (Sankaran, Swepson, and Hill, 2005) I referred to this particular criteria in terms of

There are many ways in which this could be achieved:

a. Contribution towards the knowledge about the issue or practice.

b. Contribution towards the knowledge about the particular investigation methodology chosen.

c. Contribution towards the field of practitioner investigation.

With a research proposal that criteria would be transformed to address potential to make a contribution and while this should be specifically a contribution in knowledge related to the issue or practice, some consideration could also be given to whether the methodology might also potentially be making a contribution to knowledge about investigative methodologies. This is particularly the case in methodologies which are still in their embryonic stage and any research utilising that methodology is potentially advancing the knowledge about that methodology.

Of all the research outputs and exercises undertaken by a research student in the first six months of their candidature, the research proposal requires detailed feedback, particularly if that feedback is given alongside reservations about the success or completability of the study.

Hopefully these criteria provide some source or substance for research supervisors to engage in discussion with their student about their progress based on the submission of this sort of milestone document

Sankaran, S., Swepson, P., & Hill, G. (2005). Do research thesis examiners need training? Practitioner stories. Qualitative Report, 10(4), 817-835.

Modelling the skills of Project Management – The annual progress report – evidence based

Most universities have an annual progress report that the supervisor is required to fill in, often in association with their research student, to indicate that the student is progressing at a satisfactory pace. Many supervisors criticise this requirement as just another of the paperwork hurdles in the process of candidature. Another way of viewing the annual progress report is to see it as a project management tool and an opportunity to review the progress of the project.

When a research student commences their candidature, and often in the context of a research proposal, they are often required to submit a project plan. Part of this plan may take into account risk management of the project. The essential risk in research degree completion is failure to complete. At one time, the incidence of this event was so prolific that it spurned the acronym – ABD – all but the dissertation.

The risk assessment for a project is not a one of requirement. Risk assessment needs to be undertaken throughout a project, particularly assessing the risk of non-completion. The risk can be reduced by reviewing the risk on a regular basis. Such action generates two key questions:

• How do I know that this student is likely to complete?
• How do I know that this student is unlikely to complete?

Both questions give rise to a search for evidence and both can be used in the context of completing an annual progress review.

There are several types of evidence that contribute to a belief that a research student is likely to complete their research project and therefore their dissertation.

• The student has met the acknowledged milestones within the designated time frame.
• The student has met the milestones that they identified in their initial research proposal project plan.
• ‘chapters’ are emerging in their writing that shows the skeleton of a dissertation.
• Data for the investigation has been collected and is being analysed.

There are several types of evidence that contribute to a belief that a research student is at risk of not completing their research project. This evidence is more a set of warning signs rather than a prediction, like the warning signs that appear on certain roads warning of impending risk for the driver and prompting them to change their driving behaviour in order to accommodate these risks. In the same way, warning signs of ‘at risk of not completing’ might be useful for the research supervisor to have them reconsider the nature of their own practice and how it may be contributing to the risk of non completion.

• The student is regularly giving excuses for not turning up to scheduled meetings. Sometimes this excuse is that they have not written anything, but not having written anything could be a good reason for meeting as it may suggest that there are other problems.
• Projects other than the research project are distracting the student from addressing their research project. A good example is the opportunity to deliver tutorials which can also be a financial advantage for a research student, but the time taken to prepare tutorials is cutting into time otherwise spent on progressing the research. Some faculties, in a well intentioned way, invite research students to teach in the faculty so that they are provided with some additional income to supplement their scholarship, but this can detract from the actual completion of the primary focus of the research.
• Students talk about what they intend to do but this does not convert into actual evidence of progress. This is generally called Procrastination and is so prolific that it has spurned a specific research group web site to better understand the phenomena http://http-server.carleton.ca/~tpychyl/ .

The formality of completing an annual progress report provides the opportunity to review these sorts of factors and ascertain the risk level of a research student not completing.

These sort of milestone forms become important when a situation does arise and a research student is under scrutiny. It is often asked, whether early warning signs were noted in the annual progress reports. Early warning signs are much easier to deal with than a full blown emergency!