Transforming creative writing postgraduate and supervisor identities: Ways of becoming professional

Abstract

In the twenty-first century, research higher degree students in Australia do more than simply research (DIISR 2011a:24, ACER 2011). They might teach or be employed as research assistants or administrators. These jobs prepare RHD (aka HDR) students for transition to the workforce; they inhabit, therefore, multiple identities. Supervisors in the twenty-first century also face the challenge of multiple identities. They act as employers as well as mentors to induct their cohort into a discipline’s professional life. Mentorship, we argue, is not the same as supervision. The mentorship role is especially important in emerging subject areas where the concept of research itself and appropriate methodologies are developing; both supervisor and student might be working as ‘reflective practitioners’ (Schön 1987), each helping the other to refine and theorise practice. This is particularly true of the flourishing but still relatively young discipline of Creative Writing (Brien 2004, Dibble & van Loon 2004, Woods 2007, Harper & Kroll 2008). Some supervisors have always performed a variety of roles, but aspects of the postgraduate experience have been increasingly professionalised, affecting an academic’s access to promotion and offering them another research area – the pedagogy of supervision. This paper explores the nature of these complex relationships focused on the Creative Writing doctoral experience and considers how they impact on the student overall.