Doctoral supervision as an academic practice and leader–member relationship: A critical approach to relationship dynamics
Maija Vähämäki, Essi Saru, Lauri-Matti Palmunen
Abstract
Recent rationalisation of academic work has challenged the role of traditional supervision, which still plays a significant part in students' experiences of their doctoral studies. Accordingly, we give a voice to doctoral students' lived experiences and trace how relationship dynamics are constructed during encounters between the supervisor and supervisee in the contemporary academic context. We approach the topic with interview data and written stories from 33 doctoral students. First, aided by the LMX theory, our findings demonstrate supervisory relationships to be leader–follower relationships that contain imbalanced power relations. Second, a narrative reading of our data helped us identify the critical moments and encounters that pushed relationships towards either a fruitful co-operation or a destructive endeavour. Our findings add a critical view to the mainstream pedagogical research on supervising practices. In addition, we contribute to the research on doctoral students’ wellbeing by demonstrating how a combination of intertwined elements explain the overall satisfaction and experience of the supervision.