Supervisors’ Colloquium

Research design and methodology:Strategies for Supervisors

Presentation byDenise Cuthbert

Dean, School of Graduate ResearchSeptember 2013

My governing assumptions• If an HDR research project is to be brought to successful and

timely completion, candidate and supervisor need to establish as soon as possible (within the first 4-5 months FTE) the scope, methods, rationale of the study.

• PhD and Masters candidates are by definition “researchers in training”: they not in the best position to do this without highly active – even interventionist – involvement by the supervisor

• In many disciplines, this issue is dealt with through the research funding of major projects which allows scope for HDR work on discrete components of the larger work

• In other fields, this process has to be emulated to a degree by active supervision

Preliminary Considerations• Significant differences between research cultures within STEM

and HASS disciplines (reflected in differentials in completion and publication rates also)

• Historically high premium placed on individual endeavour within HASS disciplines

• Historically, this has come at the cost of low completion rates and long completion times

• While the cost of research training approaches in the STEM fields is often characterised as the longer time taken to achieve full independence as a researcher

Thinking About Research Training as in STEM disciplines

• Systemic and structural elements support this culture

• HDR research generally occurs within the context of large-funded research projects

• Lab-based or team research is the norm: many stakeholders in the success of each candidate

• Hence strong correlation between the research of the supervisor/CI and the research candidates

Consequently

• In most cases, the difficult and time-consuming work of topic selection for individual candidates is done within the context of the larger project design

• Strong team culture and support (i.e. many stakeholders in the progress & success of each candidate)

• Team research provides opportunities for publication throughout candidature

What features of this mode of research training can be emulated with HASS

disciplines?

• In the absence of the systemic and structural features which characterise research in STEM disciplines, it is possible to emulate some of the best features of this research culture in regard to research candidate outcomes?

Features of research culture which enhance HDR outcomes

• In his 2004 DEST-funded study The Pedagogy of Good PhD Supervision, Mark Sinclair undertook quantitative and qualitative research with effective (10+ completions) supervisors across science and HASS disciplines and found the following:

Features of research culture which enhance HDR outcomes

• Strong correlations between effective PhD supervision practices across all disciplines

• These included practices by effective

supervisors in HASS disciplines which emulate or reproduce certain features of lab-based and/or team research culture

Features of research culture which enhance HDR outcomes

• Very regular – mostly weekly – meetings• Strong correlation between HDR research and

supervisor’s area of research (cf. research supervisor as CI)

• Due to this, strong interconnections between the research candidates of each supervisor

• Promoting actual team approach or approach which is analogous to “research team”

Features of research culture which enhance HDR outcomes

• This in turn provides opportunities for peer-support mechanisms (reading groups, writing groups, distributed supervision via post-docs and others)

• And for some intra-group mentoring (e.g. senior and completing candidates mentoring or “buddying” commencing candidates)

• Strong publication culture amongst HDRs, including co-publication with supervisor (CI)

Features of research supervision culture which enhance HDR outcomes

• All of the above are predicated on a very active pedagogy of PhD supervision

• As distinct from the largely reactive pedagogy which has traditionally characterised research supervision in HASS disciplines

Features of research supervision culture which enhance HDR outcomes

Reactive Pedagogy:• Candidate undertakes tasks • Supervisor comments

This method frequently leads to very long lead times as candidates struggle to identify tasks, endeavour to complete them, etc.

Features of research supervision culture which enhance HDR outcomes

Active Pedagogy:• Supervisor actively works with candidate to

identify, structure and define tasks: including active role in initial project design

• Candidate, thus supervised, completes tasks and progressively takes more control and initiative in the project

• Supervisor evaluates formatively (not summatively) providing clear and enabling advice as to how the work may be improved

Active Pedagogy and Topic Selection & Project Design

• Within scientific disciplines and for effective supervisors in HASS disciplines, it is assumed that in most cases, the senior researcher – CI/research supervisor – is in the best position to identify topics which will readily support doctoral-level research.

Active Pedagogy and Topic Selection & Project Design

• This contrasts sharply with the view still prevalent in many HASS disciplines that the interest of the candidate is the major determinant in topic selection

• Without totally abandoning this as a possibility for some candidates, we need to recognise that commencing candidates (many straight out of Honours or with limited prior research experience) are not necessarily best positioned to identify topics for doctoral research

Active Pedagogy and Topic Selection & Project Design

There is considerable scope for the research supervisor in guiding topic selection (short of the broad-based systemic change to HASS research culture discussed earlier)

For example:

• Each of you will be aware of questions/problems/areas of inquiry which have been uncovered in you own research but which, for a variety of reasons, you have not been able to pursue

Active Pedagogy and Topic Selection & Project Design

• These can be very usefully catalogued by you and presented to prospective students as potential topics

• For a novice researcher, it may take up to 12 months reading to identify such possibilities

• This is precisely the 12 months that the RTS (which reduced PhD candidature time from 5 to 4 years) pared back forcing a paradigm shift through a reduced funded period for HDR.

Strategic approach to scoping the research project: Note the difference between 1 and 2:

1. I want to write the best thesis ever on subject X (note X is usually an unrealistically large area of inquiry with little or no conceptualisation of appropriate methods for the research)

2. What specific and defined approach to subject X can be completed within the time frame and with all available resources?

Strategic Approach to Research Design: what are the available resources?

The resource base for the proposed project is a strict triangulation of:1. The skills set and prior knowledge/experience

of the candidate: expertise the candidate brings to the project

2. The time for the degree (fixed, non-negotiable)3. Other resources needed to support the

research

From the large and undo-able to the focused and do-able…

• Prospective and commencing candidates underestimate the time/skills involved and imagine vast and unwieldy projects

• These need to be focused and reduced from a general field of inquiry to a more focused field of inquiry to a specific research question of short series of questions

What? How? Why?...and So What?

• What is the research (research question/s)?• How is it to be undertaken?• Why is this research needed?

• And what I call the So what? question…so what? Why would anyone be interested? Why would anyone publish findings from this work? Or fund it? Or assess it as making an original contribution to knowledge?

CASE STUDYProcess of finding and REFINING the research question

1. Area of research interest = Hungarian community in Australia (comes down to Victorian study, spatial focus)

2. To specific topic = the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 and Australian Hungarians (temporal focus/limit)

3. Specific research question = In what ways did Australian Hungarians’ sense of their connection with Hungary change with the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, what impact has this had on the community in Australia and how can this be measured?

Concluding Remarks• Re-conceptualise the PhD endeavour within a

“research training” paradigm; requiring active not reactive supervision

• Re-conceptualise our supervision of HDR candidates from a largely reactive to an active pedagogic practice which includes active supervision on research design

• Don’t be hesitant to guide, shape the research focus, suggest topics, etc.

• Put in place active and educationally-sound practices which will enable more than 64% of our PhDs to bring their projects to completion

Concluding Remarks

• Active involvement from supervisors in topic selection and the design of projects is assumed by RTS

• Your involvement in topic selection and project design needs, in many cases, to be analogous to that of the CI on these projects

• The research supervisors is the senior researcher actively guiding and shaping the work of the “research trainee” especially pre-confirmation

Concluding Remarks

• Such re-conceptualisation and re-configuring of practices will readily enable other practices such as co-publication

• The supervision of HDR candidates does not take time away from your research, but enhances and enables this

•Comments?

•Questions?