Recommendation 4: Ensure systems, guidelines and regulations keep pace with the changing nature of research education.
The project recommends that universities review their own systems, guidelines, rules and regulations regarding both supervision and thesis examination to ensure:
- they are relevant to increasingly diverse interdisciplinary and non-traditional research education projects;
- they keep pace with pressures for increasingly interdisciplinary and non-traditional research education projects; and
- they provide relevant and appropriate guidelines for both supervisors and thesis examiners in regard to interdisciplinary and non-traditional projects, and their forms of presentation.
Recommendation 5: Further address the impact of growth and diversity on supervisors and provide further support.
The project recommends that universities further address the impact of diversity on research supervisors and the additional challenges they face as a result of:
diverse geographical locations of supervisors and their students;
- working with culturally and linguistically diverse students;
- supervising interdisciplinary projects; and
- working with students who are experiencing difficulties or problems.
Such challenges could be addressed by ensuring structures and resources are in place to support supervisors in their work with diverse students and in diverse modes of study by, for example:
- addressing specific challenges within the professional development programs provided for supervisors, with appropriate follow-up support; and
- providing specific support mechanisms (beyond risk minimisation) for supervisors working with students experiencing difficulties (or for students working with supervisors who are problematic).
Recommendation 6: Strategies for addressing academic literacy in research education be improved.
The project recommends that the higher education sector and individual universities further acknowledge and provide resources to address the challenge faced by many research students (both international and local) and their supervisors in regard to academic literacy.
ALTC and the higher education sector could do this by:
- commissioning a project to clarify questions regarding roles and responsibilities of supervisors regarding support for students’ academic literacies. Such a project, with reference to DDoGS guidelines on best practice, could provide guidelines in this complex area. It could also develop guidelines regarding the kind of professional knowledge of academic literacy required by supervisors.
Individual universities could do this by:
- in addition to centralised resources, providing further discipline specific resources for students at the local/faculty level for teaching English for Academic Purposes (EAP); and
- providing appropriate professional development and resources to increase supervisors’ own professional knowledge of academic literacy, and knowledge of how to support their students in academic literacy.