Postgraduate Supervision: A Heuristic Approach to Learning, Unlearning, and Relearning

Abstract

Since postgraduate supervision remains a grey area for many academics following several hydra perspectives and interpretations, the paper examines how postgraduate supervision is an approach to learning, unlearning, and relearning. The study is entrenched within James and Baldwin’s framework on good practice in postgraduate supervision to discuss what the concept should entail from the viewpoint of the researcher, while there is also a constant recourse to relevant literature. The paper addresses the fuzzy nature of supervision through an autoethnographic research. It discusses how supervision at the postgraduate level should not merely involve guiding a student to graduation, but an avenue for the supervisor to also learn, unlearn, and relearn academic concepts, methods, and approaches. The study contends that postgraduate supervision should not only be a stage for building new knowledge through postgraduate students’ research, but it should also be a stage for knowledge improvement, knowledge advancement, knowledge re-evaluation, knowledge cross-pollination, and knowledge transfer. It is in so doing that the learning, unlearning, and relearning nature of postgraduate supervision can indeed come to fruition