Supervision as Apprenticeship-like / Power Relationship
4.3 Category one - supervision as apprenticeship-like/power relationship
4.3.1 Institutional/departmental context
4.3.1.2 Participants’ conception that inadequate resources and infrastructure in the department/university inhibit learning
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4.3.1.2 Participants’ conception that inadequate resources and infrastructure
91 downloads. The implication of taking such a stand is that doctoral students may be unable to follow trends of issues and debates in their respective fields of study. Thus, they cannot engage with authors and writers in their field to contribute meaningfully in pushing forward the frontiers of knowledge in that specific field. Also, in terms of the supervision relationship, there is a high tendency of students failing to meet the supervisor’s expectations regarding the thesis production, and this can result in friction and misunderstanding between the supervisor and the doctoral student.
Another participant revealed another dimension that was intensifying the students’ challenge in accessing information from the internet, by asserting that:
I had a hitch with sourcing literature because…we don’t have regular light…so it was not easy for me to get to know about recent literature. …I think there is a major problem here…because even when you have laptop, the infrastructure is not available as at when due, and then it costs so much (Gabriel, 7a).
The participant here revealed that apart from the limited access to the internet and the cost implications arising there, the issue of an unstable electricity supply as provided by the university poses a bigger challenge to students. The participants are of the view that electricity is so central to the use of the internet that all other efforts that students made to alleviate their plight, in terms of accessing information on the internet - such as purchasing laptops, computer modems, and probably the data bundles for activating the modems, become absolutely useless without a properly functioning and consistent supply of electricity. Since it is unlikely for students to provide electricity for themselves due to the cost, it means that doctoral students in this context are likely to grapple with the issues of quality and productivity (in terms of being able to potentially produce research outputs in the form of publications in reputable journals, for example).
Apart from the internet, the library is another important aspect of the university infrastructure that is critical to doctoral students’ research work. Traditionally, the library has been a major source of information for students in the social science disciplines. Unlike the pure sciences, where students conduct practical work in laboratories, students in the social science disciplines depend heavily on
92 the literature and other library resources. But the participants in my research revealed how the inadequacies in the library resources provided by the university/department impacted on their progress, thus:
…you know our libraries, we don’t have adequate materials. Sometimes the materials you find may not be very, very helpful (Cecelia, 3a).
The literature review chapter is not supposed to be a problem, if you can get the materials in the library (Kenneth, 11b).
The supervisor will not get the material for you, is it your responsibility as a student to find material for your study; anyhow you want to go about it, is your business. They [the supervisors] know how difficult it is to get these materials, they will not help you to know what to focus on. Instead, they allow you to beat around the bush and they keep cancelling your work. They even see it as a form of discipline... We already know that whatever you want to get in this place, you must suffer for it, even if it is a plain sheet of paper. …Anyhow, we will cope (Naomi, 14).
From the data presented, there seems to be an acute inadequacy in the university/departmental library’s stock of materials and resources for the doctoral students they admit into the business education programme. One of the participants who indicated that the library in her school does not have so much usefulness to her, in terms of her research work, seems to suggest also that several other libraries in the country are in a similar dilapidated state. Hence, this means that universities admit doctoral students into various programmes and charge fees annually without providing adequate library resources. Ironically, the universities expect students to conduct their research work within reasonable time-frames. This failure on the part of the university shifts the responsibility of sourcing for literature back to students, most of whom are unable to write the literature review chapter of their thesis easily, as shown in the data. Notably, the data reveal that some of the doctoral students rely on their colleagues/peers from other universities to source for literature on their behalf or they take the pain to travel to different libraries themselves. This also suggests that the system of interlibrary loans in most of the institutions is not very effective, as one of the participants pointed out. Again, supervisors’ attitudes of neglect and lack of support for students, which are considered as a form of discipline in the department, as revealed in the data, is an indication that such supervisors are distant and detached and are not concerned about the overall
93 wellbeing of their students. Arguably, this is because the supervisors know that the students struggle to acquire resource material for their research, but supervisors opt for turning a blind eye, without acting on behalf of students by taking on the responsibility of fighting for better conditions for their students. Therefore, it is unlikely that all of the doctoral students would be very bothered to cope with such a situation. Those students who are unable to quickly source literature for their studies may resort to missing supervision meetings and thus they avoid their supervisors. The implication is that the progress of such doctoral students would be delayed and that could lead to frustration and probably the student decision to leave their studies.