Understanding the Master’s Degree Research Supervision at Community Campuses of Nepal

Abstract

Research supervision has become increasingly demanding for graduate students towards the successful completion of their research. However, there are limited studies on how supervisors supervise the research students and what their experiences are in the context of Nepalese higher education. This phenomenological qualitative study explores the Master’s degree research supervisors’ perceptions and their lived experiences on supervision of Master’s thesis. Thematically analysing the data collected from six purposively sampled supervisors of three public campuses of Nepal, this paper reports the findings that research supervision practices in community campuses of Nepal lack sociocultural pedagogic practice for developing research skills in the students. Furthermore, it examines the supervisors’ roles, supervisor-student relationship, and the challenges the supervisors faced during research supervision. In this paper, I argue that the research supervisory process in Nepal needs to be socioculturally situated for producing independent researchers.