4: Supporting Pedagogical Relationships and Needs in Doctoral Supervision

The supervision of doctoral research students has been described as one of the most complex pedagogical relationships in the academic realm. This complexity has often been attributed to the changing nature of the relationship between the student and the supervisors as the doctoral study progresses.

Universities usually provide early career supervisors with compliance-related training for the process of supervision within their institution, which aims to ensure students are meeting milestones for the candidature. However, training is seldom provided for developing practices which might help to cultivate this evolving complex pedagogical relationship between supervisor and higher degree student.

Developing effective pedagogical relationships in higher degree supervision teams requires a deep understanding of students' needs, motivations and aspirations, as well as a willingness to adapt and learn from each other. In this chapter, we use self-determination theory (SDT) to explore the needs of students across a candidature and discuss pedagogical strategies, conversations and routines that we have found helpful while working with higher degree research students. To achieve this, we present composite archetypes which are fictional characters created to represent several diverse types of students that we have encountered.