Postgraduate research supervision pedagogic methods: A critical review for South Africa

Abstract

In the South African context of university educational research, the real question involves postgraduate research supervision process as a continuation of teaching research methodology. This paper is located in reviewing literature on business and management educational research areas for rarely addressing this question. The research assumption was that at postgraduate level research supervision continues teaching research methodology. The aim analyse literature covering educational researches to conclude that postgraduate research supervision extends teaching research practices for business and management studies in the South African context. Therefore, how does literature address postgraduate research supervision and research method teaching pedagogic and practice issues? In other words, to what extent do scholarly views inform the business and management postgraduate research supervision process as teaching research method continuum. The research setting was selecting journal articles dealing with educational research and research supervision to fit the selected ECRM19 conference topic: 'Research supervision', and for the Electronic Journal of Business Research Methods. A qualitative design paper that analysed researched articles. An exploratory basic content analysis method was applied. A computer-assisted data analysis software called Nvivo was used to compute Pareto technique which generated research results and findings. This study established some trends in postgraduate research supervision and teaching research methods pedagogies and practices. However, in South Africa business and management educational researches rarely pursue these trends. This paper therefore infer postgraduate supervision pedagogies and practices fit the contention about teaching of research methods continuum. Contributing is made in the educational research raising questions regarding research supervision as continuation of teaching research methods. Future attention in postgraduate business and management educational research is triggered. This regards improving both the quality of postgraduate research supervision and teaching productivity and quality postgraduate research projects.