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ABSTRACT
This conceptual study examines the challenges involved in a new context of postgraduate education that emphasizes timely degree completion, skill development and employability, while still seeking to uphold a commitment to a genuine education (‘Bildung’). Findings from two recent empirical studies set the scene for this inquiry since they raise questions about the extent to which care underpins contemporary postgraduate research supervision practice, and thus render an exploration of the meaning and importance of care in the current context of postgraduate supervision especially timely. The author then reviews four models of understanding postgraduate research supervision for their compatibility and the extent to which they address ‘care’, before concentrating on five concepts highlighted in one of these models: Functional, Enculturation, Critical Thinking, Emancipation and Care. Drawing on insights from social philosophy, the philosophy of education and the literature on the professions, the author proceeds to theorize the relationships between these concepts, building an argument for prioritizing care as the core category, and demonstrating that in a context of postgraduate research supervision that emphasises the ‘functional’, to care authentically means to promote a genuine education through emancipation (‘Bildung’). Developing the notion of authentic caring further by drawing on the ancient idea that one’s own flourishing is a genuine ethical concern, it is also proposed that understanding and reconciling the tension between care for self and care for others is important to meaningful postgraduate research supervision. The study concludes with some practical and reflective questions for supervisors and those supporting their development.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Correction Statement
This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
Notes
1 Kreber, Wealer, and Kanuka (Citation2021) asked the sixty doctoral supervisors participating in their study to first list the concrete supervisory activities they employ when working with a particular doctoral student and then identify the intentions behind each of their supervisory activities. A ‘caring intention’ was noted when responses supervisors gave resonated with the ‘care’ perspective (category) as understood and reported by Lee (Citation2008) and Kreber, Wealer, and Kanuka (Citation2021) and Kreber and Wealer (Citation2021). Kreber, Wealer, and Kanuka (Citation2021, 671) provide as examples of ‘caring intentions’ ‘Helping students to work through programme-related difficulties in a safe space’, ‘Getting to know students’ interests and motivation’, and ‘Promoting students taking pride and enthusiasm in their work’.
2 The assumption here is that employability and Bildung are in tension, as has been argued by contemporary philosophers (e.g. Nussbaum Citation1997, Citation2010), philosophers of higher education (e.g. Barnett Citation1997), and higher education scholars (e.g. Nilsson and Nyström Citation2013). Nonetheless, one would be amiss to not acknowledge that employability has been defined in a range of ways (for interesting recent work, see for example, Römgens, Scoupe, and Beausaert Citation2020). More expansive conceptions of employability hold that to be ‘employable’ in these complex times requires next to technical knowledge and domain-specific skills also certain forms of self-understanding, tolerance for ambiguity, courage to take risks, and so forth, critical qualities, one may say, that resonate, at least to an extent, with the notion of ‘Bildung’ (e.g. Barnett Citation2007; Blankertz Citation1963). However, in this article I choose to not develop this interesting point further except, of course, for the study’s most central point: in the context of postgraduate research supervision that emphasizes the functional (read meeting targets including skills development and employability), how can we understand what it means for postgraduate research supervisors to care authentically? Part of the answer given is that to care authentically means to promote Bildung (read emancipation), requiring us to explore the linkages between care and emancipation, emancipation and enculturation, critical thinking and emancipation, as well as ‘care for self’ and ‘care for others’ in the context of the ‘functional’.
3 Given that this study was carried out in the North American context where ‘graduate education’ is the commonly used term for studies at the postgraduate level, I choose to use it interchangeably with postgraduate education in this section of the paper.