‘Designing in’ Interaction in Pedagogy: Collaborative Team Supervision and Midcareer Doctoral Candidates in Australia

Abstract

Team supervision has become accepted practice in supervision of doctoral candidates in Australia, though there is broad interpretation of what might be understood as ‘team’. In some instances team means little more than a principal supervisor and a ‘name only’ co-supervisor. In other instances the team is a fully collaborative of two or more supervisors working with the doctoral student. Remarkably little research has been conducted into the way team supervision actually works, and the impact on teaching and learning for the stakeholders. While initially this research project has been directed at understanding how mid-career doctoral candidate’s bodies of industrial knowledge, experience and culture might affect the power dynamics that are fundamental to team work, more needs to be understood about the phenomenon generally. Mid-career doctoral candidates are uniquely positioned, bringing with them substantial bodies of knowledge that may increase balance in power dynamics that are more typically asymmetric, and sharing knowledge sets with supervisors in collaborative supervisory arrangements. This paper lays the ground work for a qualitative study into this under theorized aspect of doctoral studies.