Developing quality postgraduate research and supervision practices
In April 2024, the Quality in Postgraduate Research (QPR) conference celebrated its 30th anniversary. Hosted at the National Wine Centre of Australia in Adelaide, the 2024 conference theme centred around graduate researchers: their identity and their importance.
QPR is held every two years in Adelaide, and brings together educational researchers, policy makers, university leaders, research students, and research degree supervisors ‘for the purpose of better understanding the processes, practices, pedagogies, and theoretical frameworks of doctoral education’. Together, these role players discuss and debate key issues facing postgraduate research environments, with QPR2024 being no different.
Showcasing research from Rhodes University, Dr Kirstin Wilmot (CHERTL), together with Profs Sioux McKenna and Chrissie Boughey (CPGS), presented papers on various aspects of doctoral education.
Drawing on the lessons learnt from an innovative PhD project housed within CHERTL, Kirstin shared insights about how PhD coursework can be used to create boundaries around ‘what counts’ as legitimate disciplinary knowledge and scholar dispositions/identities when working in ‘regions’, such as higher education studies.
In a joint paper with Kenyan colleagues, Sioux offered a critical perspective on instrumentalist framings of doctoral education that can act to prioritise retention and throughput at the expense of quality. In a second co-authored paper, Sioux and Prof Stephanie Burton, drew on national reports and definitions of the doctorate to raise the critical question: How does the national context influence the nurturing of graduate attributes?
Chrissie and Kirstin presented a joint paper that problematised dominant understandings of the literature review in doctoral research. They argued that common features and understandings from the natural sciences have come to influence how this aspect of doctoral writing can be approached in the humanities and social sciences.
Engaging with research on doctoral education more broadly at a conference like QPR is important for our own supervisory and PhD programme development, as well as supporting academic staff and students at Rhodes University who are involved in postgraduate studies. The CPGS continues to support students through various workshops and short courses and in a recent collaboration with CHERTL, we now co-host a termly community of practice seminar series, RUSupervising?, where active supervisors can engage with each other and learn from cutting edge research on postgraduate studies.