Mutual Benefit and Humanistic Caring: Comparing Patterns of Doctoral Supervisor-Supervisee Interaction in Different Disciplines

• In Event: Humanizing International Higher Education: Decolonial Practices, Indigenous Perspectives, and Collaborative Care

Proposal

The quality of doctoral training is contingent upon the nature of the interaction between supervisors and doctoral students. The interaction between doctoral students and their supervisors can have a significant impact on the development of the doctoral students. This impact can be positive or negative. The positive influences can assist doctoral students in having a positive experience and successfully completing their doctoral studies. Conversely, negative influences may result in delayed graduation or even withdrawal from the doctoral program. The study concluded that the role of the doctoral advisor can be divided into two dimensions: the provision of intellectual expertise to the student and the provision of counseling that enhances the confidence and morale of the student (Hockey, 1994).

Ideal level supervising of doctoral students typically emphasizes the four areas of scientific, personal, administrative, and professional (Denis, Colet, & Lison, 2018). However, empirical studies have found that doctoral supervise often prioritize doctoral students’ task/role learning over personal learning (Ohlin, & Brodin, 2013). Also, students were more satisfied when their supervisors demonstrated effective collaborative skills, and conversely, students expressed greater dissatisfaction when their supervisors relied excessively on non-directive interpersonal approach (Aldosari & Ibrahim, 2019).

Given the intricate nature of the supervision process and its disciplinary context, a significant portion of the effort required to enhance the quality of graduate student supervision must be concentrated at the departmental level (Donald, Saroyan, & Denison, 1995). A number of researches has been conducted at the departmental level, examining the interactions between supervisors and doctoral students in STEM fields and in the humanities and social sciences. In STEM fields, graduate student supervisors play a pivotal role in fostering the development of the theoretical physicist's identity (Cornell, & Padayachee, 2020). However, structural constraints, such as time limitations and an increase in student numbers, as well as institutional culture and intense competition, can significantly diminish the support and input provided by STEM supervisors (Cornell, Doorsamy, & Padayachee, 2022).

In the social sciences area, research has identified three primary categories of motivations for doctoral supervises. The first is intellectual, which depends directly on the supervisor's knowledge and the extent to which they advance the particular discipline. The second is functional, these depend on the supervisor's perception of the tangible benefits (material or otherwise) of interacting with the doctoral student. The final interest is a subjective factor: self-esteem, these motivations are of paramount importance to the supervisor's self-esteem in the context of their academic role. Based on different motivations, the interaction between supervisors and doctoral students in social science disciplines includes forms such as surrogate research, interest specificity, joint publications (Hockey, 1996). Hockey also describes the supervising of doctoral students in the social sciences as a complex craft, comprising a range of practices, including balancing, foresight, timing, critiquing, informing, and guiding (Hockey, 1997).

Researches focusing on humanities and social science disciplines has found that supervisors are striving to overcome the challenges they ever faced when they were doctoral students. They are adopting more effective supervising practices to interact with their students. This emphasis on their supervisory, supportive, and interactive experiences may be related to the fact that the dyadic supervisory relationship still remains as primary source of support in the social sciences and humanities (González-Ocampo, & Castelló, 2019).

Prior researches have examined the supervising practices of doctoral supervisors and students across humanities, social sciences, as well as STEM disciplines. These researches have analyzed the doctoral supervising process from multiple levels of motivations and behaviors, ideals, and realities. However, the extant studies tend to focus on the specific supervising practices of a single discipline type, and do not consolidate the mentoring interaction patterns of different discipline types. Furthermore, there is a paucity of studies that compare the supervising interaction patterns between discipline types. In light of the aforementioned considerations, this study classifies disciplinary types into four categories: natural sciences, social sciences, engineering disciplines, and humanities.

Based on the research questions, the present study adopted an interpretive research design that aims to shed light on the interaction patterns of the study participants and the reasons for them. In this case, doctoral students' experiences, perceptions, and reactions to interactions with their supervisors were the focus of the study. Semi-structured interviews were used to unravel the doctoral students' interaction perceptions and actions. The data were analyzed using the grounded theory approach, which provides a systematic set of procedures that help elucidate patterns of interaction between participants and their supervisors and the reasons for such patterns of interaction, was adopted as an appropriate analytical framework. The data for this study were collected through qualitative interviews with 17 doctoral students enrolled in various higher education institutions in mainland China. These participants were purposively selected to cover a range of disciplinary backgrounds, including natural sciences, social sciences, engineering disciplines, and humanities.

The interaction patterns of doctoral supervisors and supervisees in different disciplines have both similarities and differences. These patterns can be analyzed as: (1) natural sciences: mutually benefit model of understanding; (2) social sciences: humanistic care model of academic partnership; (3) engineering disciplines: mutually benefit model of contradiction between academia and practice; (4) humanities: humanistic care model of personality charm. The reasons were relevant to three areas: (1) objective factors (e.g., nature of discipline); (2) subjective factors (e.g., academic experience of supervisors, personal ambitions of students); (3) social world factors (e.g., difference in status between teachers and students). The results of the study indicated that the patterns of interaction between doctoral students and their supervisors varied by discipline, but there were some similarities in the patterns of interaction between the natural sciences and engineering disciplines and between the social sciences and the humanities.

Author

• Xiaoyu Niu, Graduate School of Education, Beijing Foreign Studies University