Supporting Indigenous success through quality supervision in research degrees

Abstract

Supervision plays an integral role in the success of higher degree by research (HDR) students. A vital component of a successful research degree is quality supervision. In this paper, we explore supervisors’ understanding of Indigenous HDR students’ expectations and compare them with Indigenous HDR students’ expectations of their supervisors. This study is part of a larger study which included six phases of data collection, however, this paper focuses mainly on phase five of the study and at times refers to phase four. In phase five, we surveyed 33 supervisors across Australia who have experience supervising Indigenous HDR students. We also refer to phase four which included 32 Indigenous HDR students. To analyse the data, we conducted a thematic analysis using NVivo software. We found that supervisors need to be more supportive of Indigenous HDR students’ work and provide opportunities for students to succeed through the completion of their research degree. Our findings demonstrate that supervisors may understand Indigenous HDR students’ expectations of quality supervision; however, there are other expectations that were not accounted for, such as discussion of working styles and clear expectations from the beginning of a supervisor-student relationship, supervisors’ practices of cultural safety and awareness, and access to research training for Indigenous HDR students. The implications from this research include strengthening supervision strategies and fostering mutually-respectful supervisor-student relationships.