Intentions, concepts and conceptions of research supervision: a consideration of three disciplines

This interview-based study with thirty doctoral supervisors in the UK focused on the diverse goals and intentions behind their supervisory activities, from which we derived a six-dimensional model of concepts of supervision. We explored how strongly each of these concepts featured in supervisors’ intentions and whether this varied by discipline. Most of the intentions underlying the activities supervisors employed pertained to the concepts ‘Enculturation’ and ‘Functional’; far fewer pertained to the concepts ‘Emancipation’, ‘Critical Thinking’, ‘Care’ and ‘Preparation for Work and Life’. When supervisors were asked to identify the intentions behind their supervision practice more generally, not in direct reference to their activities, the functional perspective was less prominent. Some differences were observed between as well as within disciplines. The study confirms and extends previous research on concepts of graduate supervision and illustrates how supervisors’ personal views, their ‘conceptions’, of supervision can be described in relation to the six concepts.