UKCGE Recognised Research Supervisor: Associate and Full. An exemplar for sharing good practice between two Graduate Research Schools in the Northwest of England

Abstract

Our presentation will promote the UKCGE pathways for recognising good supervisory practice at the levels of Associate and Full. Our story, as Graduate Research School educators, is about fostering conditions for colleagues from two contrasting institutions (regarding their PGR communities), to write for UKCGE Recognition. We note how various Research Council funded consortia e.g., Doctoral Training Partnerships, are currently focused on developing research subject expertise, such as Artificial Intelligence or Genetic Engineering, but rarely if at all, do they concentrate on the quality of PhD supervisory practices which support such advances in knowledge and research (UKCGE 2022). In response, we felt the UKCGE recognition pathways created an opportunity to work directly with supervisors, regardless of subject discipline, to collaboratively share supervision stories across a ‘flattened hierarchy’ of academic roles and responsibilities between our institutions. We set about coaching 18 colleagues, from experienced research professors to those new to PGR supervision, to write for Associate and/or Full recognition. We approached this task by creating a community of learners, all sharing the common ground of writing and reflecting, and opening opportunities to observe each other in student tutorials. Our presentation will outline some of the barriers to writing a UKCGE Application that we encountered and point to some possible solutions for overcoming them. For example, we expected workload and time to feature as barriers, but also discussed were issues of supervisor self-esteem, and respect for all parties in supervision, poor communication ‘loops’ and significantly, how isolation in doctoral learning can be as draining for the
supervisor as it can be for the PhD student. This was not mentoring but rather, all sharing the vulnerability of taking a fresh and sometimes critical look at personal practice, while supporting their applications to UKCGE to improve the quality of learning experience in the doctoral education they provide.