PhD Pack for Supervisors

In May 2023 I'll be running a workshop for supervisors of PhD researchers aimed in particular at the Director of Studies. First some headline statistics on PhDs in the UK and England in particular

In England, a 3-year full-Time PhD research degree costs 4300 GBP approx. for each year, so that is 4900 EURO = 15000 EUROS in course fees alone.

The UK produces 25000 doctoral completions every year.

A large university in England might have 500 completions per year

Grossing it about 2.4 million EUROS a year

Source: Statista, 'The Countries with the most Doctoral Graduates' by Niall McCarthy, Dec 19, 2016.

 

Level 8 QAA Benchmark

A key focus of my PhD Pack is the discipline of writing at doctoral level. I explore this through (i) criticality in writing, (ii) judging this criticality and (iii) raising the quality of the postgraduate's writing to Level 8. Level 8 is doctoral level work from The QAA Benchmark Guidelines (2016) Section 3.2 pp.8-9. Supervisors can use this as a measure of value in the PhD thesis. The PhD Pack also looks at the role of the external examiner, and how that helps the candidate even during the period of research study.

Agreeing a PhD Research Proposal

Most often a potential doctoral candidate might approach you to become their main supervisor, in the UK this role is called their Director of Studies. Usually they will bring their area of research interest to that discussion. It is often, and it should be, a topic they enjoy and feel strongly about. For example, they might have a real passion for moving on from sustainability in tourism to discover if tourism can begin to contribute to restoring the natural environment or returning carbon dioxide to the earth. Even in an initial interview, or your email discussion, this passion can be re-formulated as a way of questioning or finding out what is happening in this field or what could happen in this area of study.

Questions to direct responsibility

I emphasise good questioning as the main dialogue to be initiated by the Director of Studies. Start to pose questions in emails and then during the supervisory meetings with the candidate. The Director of Studies can teach and direct by questions rather than trying to tell the candidate what to do at every supervisory meeting. A question demands that the candidate deploys their knowledge, and thus begin to take responsibility. Good Directors will not make the postgraduate researchers dependent upon them.

The Director aims to move the responsibility onto the candidate. Rather than the candidate coming into supervisory sessions to ask for help or emailing questions through the week. The relationship must be directed the other way to create authority and capability in the candidate. It is a challenge, because at levels 6 and 7, the university lecturer is often the most knowledgeable person in a taught module. Administrative and technology questions need to be addressed to the university support departments directly by the candidate so that these issues do not use the precious time allocated to the Director of Studies for supervision of the PhD.

 

Writing, Meetings, Rhythm

The supervisory meetings should build a rhythm for the candidate’s writing productivity and performance. With a September start, you will hold 3 formal supervisory sessions before the winter break and 3 more in the spring and early summer. Also plan a whole doctoral study day in the late spring. The supervisory sessions will only last 1 hour 15 minutes, maximum, otherwise the session will be overloaded and all the effort will be lost. Therefore, the initial half hour should be used for the Director of Studies to ask 3 questions based on the last piece of writing the candidate has submitted. Avoid administrative problems and technology issues; university's provide other specialist staff to resolve these for their PhD candidates as part of the fee.

The second half of the supervisory session will turn to the setting of the writing for the following work period. The DoS will pose 2 questions that each require 1500 words of writing to answer, for example, during the literature review, the DoS might ask, can you read up on Bourdieu’s personal cultural capital and show where Bourdieu's concept can be made relevant to your investigation? With two of these progression or briefing questions the candidate will have 3000 new words to write. The candidate submits these 4 working days before the next supervisory session.

Remember, too, that they are also writing 2000 words of quality clarification making a total word count of  5000 before the next supervisory session. In the autumn term this gives the candidate just under 5 working weeks, or 20 clear days to complete this word-count. This is 250 words per day. This is why it helps PhD researchers if you encourage them to find out their productivity and how to improve their performance for their higher-quality critical writing. I suggest using a spreadsheet, and provide opportunities for writing days and workshops. In our book, Table 5.3 page 84 gives a spreadsheet-type word-count list that can easily be tailored to suit each PhD thesis.

This management of high-quality thesis is the responsibility of the doctoral candidate, as their director you can ask them to use the tools to manage their productivity and to improve their output performance in terms of criticality, synthesis, depth and creativity at QAA Level 8.

Table 5.3 is given in full in Chapter 5 of Travel Writing for Tourism (2023).