Commonalities and Variations in Understanding Doctoral Supervision in Two Australian Universities: A Collaborative Autoethnography and an Interdisciplinary, Phenomenographic Case Study

Abstract

This chapter reports selected elements of a broader collaborative autoethnography and an exploratory case study involving a Doctor of Philosophy candidate and her three doctoral supervisors who, as participant–researchers, examined the commonalities and differences in the meanings that we assigned to the idea(l) of “supervision”. Guided by our defined boundaries for a collaborative autoethnographic case study, we examined our respective conceptions of supervision through phenomenographic means, utilising data from interviews conducted with each of the authors individually to explicate our varied understandings of supervision. The analysis elicited three distinct categories of description—doctoral supervision as a relational endeavour, as a pedagogical commitment, and as reciprocal growth—and an outcome space centred on the holistic development and self-actualisation of doctoral students and their supervisors alike.