IN-PERSON New Schools of Thought

Abstract

This paper aims to trouble the traditional relationship between a doctoral candidate and ‘supervisor’ in terms of its power differential, often characterised as an asymmetric, hierarchical expert/novice dyad, which can trap supervisory relationships in a ‘transmission’ or ‘training’ mode, with candidates receiving ‘instruction’ from ‘experts’. I consider how we can rethink, disrupt and disorient dominant conceptions of doctoral pedagogy, to build a more collaborative, collegial ‘decentred’ approach to supervisory work. This work, drawing on interdisciplinary theoretical and conceptual resources from cultural sociology, anthropology, organizational studies and education, argues the liminal spaces students pass through offer opportunities for relational, productive and decentred pedagogies, where supervisors/advisors construct ways of valuing their postgraduate researchers’ expertise, and facilitate a critical inclusion within the academic community. Doctoral pedagogies should aim to develop repertoires of successful members of the discourse community – mirroring professional ways of being, and doing research work. A candidate’s doctoral repertoire will be indexical and biographical, grounded in the plethora of networks, communities and resources they learn through, and forming a distributed patchwork of competencies, dispositions and values. The paper discusses recommendations for doctoral pedagogic practices and the implications such decentring orientations have for decolonizing doctoral pedagogies. It traces the ways in which doctoral practices emerge from the historic colonial project and the potential impacts this has specifically on International, indigenous and refugee PGR’s, alongside some possibilities for mitigating these colonial impacts.