Unpacking supervisors' tacit knowledge of research supervision

Abstract

Studies indicate that conflict sometimes occurs in postgraduate student and faculty supervisor relationships. Some of these conflicts are resolved through dialogue and arbitration. Others lead to termination of studentships and change of supervisor. Yet some faculty members have conflict-free supervisory relationships with their students. In each case, the supervisors concerned hold unique tacit knowledge as regards the strategies and techniques they employed or would have used in resolving such issues. As important as this knowledge is, little research exists to capture the supervisory knowledge. To address this gap, we designed a technique to capture faculty's tacit expertise of graduate students' supervision. In doing so, we hope that the method would benefit fellow supervisors and newly recruited faculty members to avoid supervisory breakdown and to reduce error Finally, we used a case study to test the acceptance and usefulness of the narrative technique in research supervision among 52 professors from three research universities.