Supervisors were first students: Analysing supervisors’ perceptions as doctoral students versus doctoral supervisors

ABSTRACT

This study focused on examining how supervisors perceive their doctoral experiences both as students and supervisors and the relationships between these perceptions. Sixty-one supervisors from different Spanish universities described their accounts through narratives. The results indicated a varied range of affective values that they attributed to their experiences. The results also showed that supervisors’ experiences were related to research skills, supervisory support, agency, interaction and resources and affordances. These categories integrated the most significant aspects that they considered to help or hinder the doctoral process. Moreover, a relationship between participants’ student experience and their current experience as supervisors was detected.

KEYWORDS:

• Doctoral education
• supervisors’ perceptions
• doctoral experiences
• supervisory relationship
• supervisor development

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The study was approved by the Commission on Ethics and Research (Ref. URL 2013_005).

2. According to McAlpine, Pyhältö, and Castelló (2018), we address Agency as ‘efforts to achieve goals including, regulation of cognition, behaviour and emotions in relation to academic activities’ (p.150).

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (CSO2013-41108-R); and by the National Council of Science and Technology (México) CONACYT (Ref. 216956-477102).

Notes on contributors

Gabriela González-Ocampo

Gabriela González-Ocampo is researcher at the SINTE-Lest team at Universitat Ramon Llull in Barcelona, Spain. Her research interests include postgraduate education, supervision and research writing.

Montserrat Castelló

Montserrat Castelló is Full Professor in Educational Psychology and Director of the Research Institute on Applied Psychology at Universitat Ramon Llull in Barcelona, Spain. Her research interests include academic writing strategies and identity of early career researchers.