Book chapter
Critical transcultural exchanges: Educational development for supervisors
The Routledge Doctoral Supervisor's Companion: Supporting Effective Research in Education and the Social Sciences, pp.76-87
Routledge
2010
Abstract
Providing educational development for supervisors is an important part of creating vibrant and productive doctoral education cultures within universities. In particular, I think the key purpose of any form of supervisor educational development is to create a space where supervisors are able to break open this intensely private pedagogical relationship (one of the few remaining in the performative university) for discussion, debate and critique. How you go about doing this, however, is fraught with challenges and tensions. Even finding a comfortable and agreed upon language is difficult. Am I going to use the term educational, professional, staff, faculty or academic development? How might we get beyond the colonial nuances of the word ‘development’? Alternative terms like ‘authentic professional learning’ (Webster-Wright 2009) still carry echoes of a patronising positioning of academics or supervisors as the subjected other of those who implement the development programme. In this chapter, after trying to address some of these language issues, I suggest a theore-tical framework for thinking about and enacting supervisor educational development that draws upon my work on postcolonial approaches (Manathunga 2006; 2007) and Rowland’s (2003: 17; 2006) work on academic development as a ‘critical interdisciplinary field’. I am hoping that this theoretical lens resonates especially with supervisors in education and the social sciences, who are well-placed to critique the neoliberal impulses inherent in notions of supervisor ‘training’ and educational development more generally. I then explore a range of approaches to supervisor educational development, discussing a number of curriculum design features and pedagogical strategies that might prove useful. Finally, I outline some of the ongoing issues and challenges involved in providing educational development for supervisors. I hope that all of this provokes a conversation in your school or university about supervision and how both supervisors and students can extend their understandings of this ‘chaotic pedagogy’ (Grant 2003: 189).
Details
- Title
- Critical transcultural exchanges: Educational development for supervisors
- Authors
- Catherine Manathunga (Author) - The University of Queensland
- Contributors
- Melanie Walker (Editor) - University of NottinghamPat Thomson (Editor) - University of Nottingham
- Publication details
- The Routledge Doctoral Supervisor's Companion: Supporting Effective Research in Education and the Social Sciences, pp.76-87
- Publisher
- Routledge
- Date published
- 2010
- DOI
- 10.4324/9780203851760-15; 10.4324/9780203851760
- ISBN
- 9780203851760
- Organisation Unit
- Indigenous and Transcultural Research Centre; School of Education and Tertiary Access; University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 99513758402621
- Output Type
- Book chapter
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