Transcript PROFESSIONALIZATION IN DOCTORAL EDUCATION The role of

PROFESSIONALIZATION
IN DOCTORAL EDUCATION
The role of supervision
Marie-Laure DJELIC
Associate Dean, PhD Program
ESSEC Business School
THE ”WHY” QUESTION
ROLE OF A PHD PROGRAM (1)
• A reservoir of ”cheap labour” for chaired
professors
• A symbolic marker for a University or an
Institute
• A source of funding in some Universities
• One particular ”product” in a wide range of
programmes
THE ”WHY” QUESTION
ROLE OF A PHD PROGRAM (2)
• A placement machine – ensuring PhD
students get a (good) job
• A process to produce ”sustainable scholars”
– beyond the Diploma and the Job
• A process to increase the research
orientation of a Faculty body
INTERESTING QUESTION AS TO WHERE
OUR RESPONSIBILITY STOPS….
THE ”HOW” QUESTION
STRUCTURE OF PhD PROGRAMS (1)
• A great diversity in the structure and make-up of
programs
• In Europe, two extreme ideal types
• Traditional continental/German model
• US Phd model (2+2/3)
• On a continuum between
• Everything in English
• Everything in the national language
• On a continuum between
• Nearly no course requirements
• A full Master Research program as a first step
THE ”HOW” QUESTION
NATURE OF PHD PROGRAMS (2)
• Small-size programs with cost, resources
and staffing issues
• A great diversity of structures and roles.
Diversity is enriching….but creates
obstacles
INTERESTING QUESTION AS TO WHERE
OUR RESPONSIBILITY STARTS….
CURRENT TRENDS
• Towards more structured PhD programs
• A lot of work is being done on the formal
training part of the program
• Either through the development of
courses in-house or through the use of
different strategies to enhance crossprogram collaborations
COMPARING STRATEGIES
NATIONAL
TRANS-NATIONAL
Adhoc
Collaborations
(A)
Networks (C)
or
Hubs
(D)
National
Consortia
(B)
Trans-national
Programs
(E)
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FLUID
STRUCTURED
NATIONAL CONSORTIA
• SUBS – Stockholm/Uppsala Business
Studies
• Bringing together the two programs – in
2010 a total of 19 students
• Common compulsory and elective courses,
shared between Uppsala and Stockholm
• The thesis process remains associated with
each organization
TRANSNATIONAL
NETWORKS
• Fluid but real collaboration between a small
network of programs around the world
• More or less breadth
• Division of labour on certain courses
• Exchange of visiting PhD students and/or
Faculty members
• Agreement on shared quality criteria seems
necessary
TRANS-NATIONAL HUBS
SOME EXAMPLES
• EIASM PhD seminars, EDAMBA Summer
Research Academy
• Pre-conference doctoral courses
• Summer/Winter courses
• Open enrollment courses offered by a
particular institution (Scancor, CBS….)
[email protected]
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JOINT PHD PROGRAMS
• CLEI /IEL– International PhD program (Center for the
Comparative Analysis of Law and Economics, Economics of Law,
Economics of Institution), founded in 2004
• CRG – Polytechnique, France
• Cornell University
• Law School at the Centre of Advanced Studies in Law and
Economics, University of Gent, Belgium
• University degli Studi di Torino
• Joined later 5 other European programs
• First year – compulsory course work in Turin with professors
coming from all over the network. Preliminary exams.
• Second year – development of the research at one of the schools
depending on the topic/fields of their project. Mobility of at least
6 months within the network is compulsory
• Third year will be devoted to completion of the doctoral
dissertation.
DOCTORAL SUPERVISION
• Within Phd programs much less attention is paid in
general to the Doctoral Supervision Process
• Arguably, though, the quality of doctoral
supervision makes the difference between
• An input to an output program (students really
graduating)
• A diploma-only to a job placement program
• A job placement to a scholar-generating program
DOCTORAL SUPERVISION
• For thesis completion
• For Professionalization
• Finding a job
• Becoming a ”self-sustainable” scholar
TOPICS WE ARE WORKING ON
• Supervision for thesis work
• Organization, challenges and constraints
• Ethics and the doctoral contract – the
student/supervisor relationship, plagiarism and other
issues, management of conflicts, representation of
students’ interests
• Supervision for professionalization
• Turning our students from the start into researchers –
and in time stand alone researchers
• Socializing our students as members of an intellectual
community – and more often than not of several
different intellectual communities
SOME BASICS OF SUPERVISION (1)
• Number of PhD students being supervised - limit
• Is supervision part of the formal work load – associated with ”real time”
- or is it coming on top of the rest?
• What is the value – institutional and personal – placed on the PhD
program and PhD supervision compared to other activities?
• Stages in a career
• Can a freshly minted PhD be ”availabl for and effective at
supervision?
• Can a senior professor with a lot of competing administrative
responsibilities be available for supervision?
• General availability and regularity of meeting points – skype is great but
regular physical encounters are important too
• Creating a formal memory of the supervision process? An online log?
The fine line between efficacy and bureaucracy
SOME BASICS OF SUPERVISION (2)
• Readiness to listen and to ”understand” who the
student is
• Adequation between research pedigree of the
supervisor and the needs of the PhD student
• Willingness and institutional flexibility to ”share”
supervision
• The necessary ”humble” posture – the importance
of being a connector
• Effectiveness of feedback – timeliness, substantive
and written feedback, to do lists with deadlines….
MOVING BEYOND
SUPERVISION FOR
PROFESSIONALIZATION
SUPERVISION AND PUBLICATION
• Early start on the publication game – many programs
are now encouraging students in that direction
• The role of the supervisor
• The challenge of creating a virtuous circle – between
two scholars at different stages of their career
• Need to move away from an old ”continental model”
• Pros and cons – fast to the publishing line…but how to
ensure autonomy afterwards?
• Ethical issues – and conflict resolution mechanisms
SUPERVISION AND COMMUNITY
BUILDING WITHIN (1)
• Creating a sense of community between students of the
same program
• Creating a sense of commnunity between students and
faculty members of the same program
• The supervisor as facilitator
• Calls for a sense of community between different
supervisors
• And a capacity to work together
• The particular case of co-supervision
• Issues of ”territory” and ”susceptibility”
SUPERVISION AND COMMUNITY
BUILDING WITHIN (2)
• Importance of the logistics
• Office space, common room, possibly students living
not too far from each other…
• Availability or construction or regular events
(workshops, brownbags, seminars….)
• Institutionalized incentives to ”share” PhD students
and to spend time on community building
• Availability of formalized rules of the game and
conflict resolution mechanisms at the level of the
program
SUPERVISION AND COMMUNITY
BUILDING ACROSS
• Not only sending students to conferences but
going to conferences with students
• Referencing students to helpful networks or
colleagues in other institutions
• Working with students on the debrief of those
encounters
• Building upon personal networks to send
students away
SUPERVISION AND JOB
MARKET PREPARATION
• Letters of recommendation
• Job market mock talks
• Allowing students to attend recruitment
seminars (”community within”)
• Proximity coaching and debrief during the
process
SUPERVISION
AND ETHICAL TRAINING
• A ”role model” responsibility for the supervisor
• Sharing the ethics of our trade not only in
theory but also in practice
• Walking the Talk and exhibiting Integrity
SUPERVISION
AND AUTONOMY BUILDING
• Allowing for an enlarged intellectual space
DURING the PhD process
• Letting students explore topics, methods, theories
you are not familiar with – as long as this is done
under proper guidance
• Allowing students to get multiple sources of
intellectual inspiration
• After the PhD, working with your students still –
but letting them take the lead!...
CHALLENGES
• Balancing between active specialization (publishing) and intellectual
openness (autonomization)
• Balancing between supervision as a one-to-one relationship and supervision
as a collective endeavour
• Balancing between distance and proximity
• Balancing between the provision of intellectual tools and personal coaching
• Balancing between stiffling control and neglect
• Balancing between time pressure and maturation
• Balancing between over-protection and destructive harschness
• Balancing between generosity and utilitarianism (time, resources, first other
practice….)
METAPHORS
METAPHOR
SUPERVISOR ROLE
STUDENT ROLE
Journey
Guide
Traveler
Project
Customer
Project Manager
Marriage
Spouse
Spouse
Family
Parent
Child
Magic
Wizard
Novice
Survival Test
Mother Nature
Survivor
Servitude
Master
Slave
Adapted from: Baskerville and Russo (2005), « Metaphors for PhD Study », in Avison and PriesHeje (eds), Research in IS: A Handbook for Research Supervisors and their Students, Elsevier.
DEFINITION?
”Mentors are advisors, people with career
experience willing to share their knowledge;
supporters, people who give emotional and moral
encouragement; tutors, people who give specific
feedback on one’s performance; masters, in the
sense of employers to whom one is apprenticed;
sponsors, sources of information about and aid in
obtaining opportunities; models, of identity, of the
kind of person one should be to be an academic”
Morris Zelditch, 1990, Speech to the Western Association of
Graduate Schools