Supervision as Apprenticeship-like / Power Relationship
4.3 Category one - supervision as apprenticeship-like/power relationship
4.3.2 Supervisee-supervisor relationship
4.3.2.5 Repressive silence in supervision
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111 A woman cried out of his office asking if she really looked stupid. I don’t know what she did to him, she said he called her goat… I don’t know if she later came back but I haven’t seen her since then (Doris, 4a).
Let me tell you this… it happened in this university… somebody who is now a professor here was once doing his master’s programme and when he came to his supervisor’s house… he collected his file and threw the file away, so the papers…scattered everywhere.
It was the supervisor’s wife who came out and started picking the papers and she said ‘oh father, why did you do this? This is a postgraduate student… it would have been better if you said you would not attend to him…’ But what is the purpose of collecting the file and throwing it away... …It was the woman you know…that has a caring heart (Isaac, 9a).
The participants here revealed scenarios, whereby, as doctoral students go for consultations they are seemingly ill-treated by the supervisors. Based on the data, those supervisors disrespect and disregard the personhood of students, and blatantly abuse them by using derogatory animal remarks about those doctoral students which hurts their feelings. The data show how a doctoral student who attempted to consult with his supervisor at his residence was disgraced publicly by the supervisor, such that, the wife of the supervisor, who was empathetic to the doctoral student had to question the inhuman behaviour of the supervisor. However, the supervisor may justify his actions by claiming that he is entitled to his privacy and he probably wants students to respect that.
But, it is unlikely that doctoral students would go to the extent of consulting with supervisors at their residences if supervisors are always available and accessible to students during official hours.
This brings to light the height of oppression that goes on in supervision relationships in this context. This has implications on the emotional well-being of doctoral students as they are likely to lose self-esteem, confidence and self-efficacy. Also, with supervisors’ disdain, lack of respect and lack of empathy for doctoral students, it would be difficult for supervisors to build an academically nourishing and empowering relationship with doctoral students in order to scaffold learning.
Notwithstanding, the data further show how a doctoral student, who could not bear the terrible abuse, appears to have quietly dropped out of the doctoral programme, as revealed by another participant, who stated:
112 When a supervisor put fear in the heart of students, what do you expect? What is he telling the student? … That is why people do different kinds of thing. …Sometimes students get to the point where they become frustrated and they leave (Oshua, 15b).
This means that abusive repression in the supervision relationship could result in the loss of an important human resource, the doctoral student, who could have produced research outcomes that could push forward the frontiers of knowledge. Essentially, the analysis shows that abusive repression in the supervision relationship could have a negative impact.
However, since people react and respond to things differently; other participants revealed variation in their reaction and response to abusive repression. This can be seen in the excerpt below:
You don’t need to pick up offence because you did not meet … [your supervisor]. Of course if you do that, you know you are not likely going to finish your programme. … In most cases you won’t get the apologies. You need to stomach it, if you really want to get through (Cecelia, 3a).
The participant here seems to reveal that students who wish to complete their doctoral studies must endure humiliation and abusive repression. This means that such students may have to become passive and unable to assert themselves in the relationship. The implication for doctoral students is that, they may be unable to develop necessary qualities critical to the scholarly self they are trying to develop; and that may affect the knowledge creation process.
Another variation in conception with regards to supervisees’ reactions to abusive repression is captured in the following excerpt:
…To me, there is nothing they do now that will surprise me … I don’t depend on them any more... What is important for me is to develop myself and that is what I am doing. …There is this prof that came to my department for sabbatical in my workplace… He has really been very helpful to me (Benjy, 2b).
The data here show that, rather than being overwhelmed by the level of abuse in the supervision context, some of the participants could decide to look out for other sources of support outside of the bounds of the university-assigned supervisor. This means that some of the students do exercise agency for their learning and subsequently empower themselves. Hence, this suggests that the way
113 that power plays out in the supervision relationship, could also result in productive and rewarding effects for some of the doctoral students. But, the question now is whether the supervision relationship must be a gruelling experience or as eloquently described at the grass roots level in the words of one of the participants, thus:
…it is like a camel passing through the eye of a needle (Isaac, 9a).