13 - Creating Effective Postgraduate Learning Environments: An Analysis of an Intervention from Realist Social Theory

Abstract

This paper analyses two illustrative reports of the external examiners on some of the manuscripts of the twenty postgraduate students who graduated at the University of the Free State between 2013 and 2014. The students were part of the twenty-eight PhD and twenty-two MEd students as well as fifteen supervisors working in a cohort approach within the Sustainable Postgraduate Learning Environments research project. The two reports are analysed in order to document, understand and illustrate how the Sus- tainable Postgraduate Learning Environments facilitate good academic performance. The focus is mainly on the working together of the actors’ emotional and cognitive aspects. The argument is that the two reports refer to two different sides of the same process, implying that improvements in the students’ academic performance are influenced by the extent to which they are validated through a caring learning environment. However, it should be noted that even poor academic performance seems to be a reflec- tion of the problems in this interaction. Both students and supervisors are affected in the same way. The paper uses Margaret Archer’s theory of social realism to generate an understanding of how the interaction between the students and the supervisors on the one hand, and between cognition and emotion on the other hand, produce particular academic performances that are central in the creation of sustainable postgraduate learning environ- ments. The argument put forth is that agency and structure can and should not be collapsed into each other, even though the two co-constitute each other. Tolerance of their separation enables individual agents to take charge of their own lives despite the constraints of their situations to construct particular meanings; hence, their good academic performance beyond the dictates of their contexts.