Supervision as transacting in the social space
5.3 Transacting in the personal space: Influences of personal social life on the supervision relationship
The findings in this study show that many factors which are peculiar to the personal lives of the participants contribute to the complexity of the supervision relationships. From the cases cited by the participants, most of the personal issues were not envisaged at the on-set of the supervision relationship and, sometimes, the issues are beyond the control of both the supervisor and the doctoral student. The following excerpt exemplifies how the participants experienced extenuating personal circumstances:
…my only brother from my mother ran down from Jos [a northern state] with his kids due to crisis in the state. … I had to take care of them with the wife. … … When I went to my supervisor, he was like ‘others are moving and you are not moving’. I said sir, please something is holding me, a family problem that I cannot escape … … By August that year, a man came and said he wants to marry me. See me o! [Laughter] …so we went to different places for a lot of interviews and there were lots of distractions (Doris, 4a).
The participant here reveals how an unforeseen circumstance, which in this instance was a political crisis in the state displaced her brother’s family. The participant, as shown in the data, felt a deep sense of obligation to secure the safety of her brother’s family and because of her commitment to ameliorate this family challenge, her attention shifted away from her student research. As a result, the participant revealed that her supervisor compared her with other students and simply concluded that she was not making progress. That kind of comparison and comment about the participant’s progress is an indication that the supervisor is either unaware of his doctoral student’s plight, or did not care to enquire of her, before drawing the wrong conclusion. This shows that supervisors could be insensitive to doctoral students’ personal circumstances, such that they develop a wrong perception about doctoral students. When that happens, the supervision relationship could be impacted negatively. Again, from the data, another personal circumstance indicated to the effect that the participant was initiating a marital relationship. Based on her view, the marital relationship placed different demands on her time and her physical ability to undertake her student research, and all of that seem to have altered her so-called ‘normal circumstances’ as a doctoral research student. This implies that when life-changing shifts, such as marriage, occur in the life of a doctoral
142 student, they change the situational context in which the student functions and this has a direct bearing on the supervision experience of that doctoral student.
Another participant indicated how personal job demand could impact doctoral students’ learning experience, as follows:
I registered in 2003/2004 second semester… As far back as then… I did my coursework quite alright... Thereafter because of the cumbersomeness of my… work I couldn’t do my actual research work. It… was not the issue of my supervisor, I did not have time… that was the situation until 2009 when I got converted to academics in the middle of 2009. In 2010 I came to… pick up the work again to do my research work. So I would say effectively, I started in 2010 even though my reg. number is reading 2004 (Haman, 8a).
Here, the participant from the population sample revealed how combining his job and study adversely affected his ability to focus on his study, and that resulted in halting his academic programme for more than five years. As an administrative staff running side-by-side with a part- time doctoral research studentship, the participant seems to give more attention to his job than to his PhD. It is likely that the participant is self-sponsored and depends on his salary as the main source of funding, and as such he had to give more priority to his job. Based on the data, the participant was only able to continue with his student research when he became a member of the academic staff. This suggests that there was more demand on his time when he was a non-academic staff member and his employers may not have given him consideration with regards to his study programme. Sometimes, employers do not support their employees in their acquiring additional degrees if such qualifications would not be of direct benefit to the organisation, and is solely for the personal gain of the employee. Notwithstanding, the participant’s supervisor may still expect that the participant observes the agreed deadlines. This implies that holding a full-time or a part- time job places additional demands on doctoral students, and that could affect their supervision relationship.
In a somewhat similar manner another participant expressed his experience of personal challenge, thus:
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…between 2011 November to present time we have had series of screening, staff verification and whatever, which has led to some people’s salary being stopped… Some had delay in salary payment because of omission, same name, or similar name…so, for that reason it affected me. […] and at times they [my supervisors] sound warning to me that this programme is dragging for too long and is delaying… … …definitely, you know that as workers we are solely dependent on our salaries, anything that affects our salary will automatically affect every other thing about us. So, I just felt that, since I could no longer pay my school fees, the wisest thing for me to do at that point was to suspend my programme, and that was exactly what I did, until the matter was resolved in 2013 (Moses, 13b).
For this participant, his experience relates to an unforeseen circumstance, which constitutes a financial crisis. The resulting effect of the financial problem, according to the participant, was that he could no longer pay his university registration fees and, consequently, he had to suspend the doctoral research programme. The participant reveals that his supervisors had felt compelled to issue cautionary messages to him. Although the participant understood his supervisors’ warning, the circumstance seems to have been beyond his control, as he could do nothing about it until his employers could sort out his income issue. But, one may wonder why his university supervisors would react to the employer manner with respect to how they undertook this. One reason for that could be that the supervisors themselves were concerned that they would be held accountable to the university for the extended duration. Another reason could be that the participant was not able to communicate the nature of his financial problem convincingly to his supervisors. As such, the supervisors may have reacted based on the initial limited information/knowledge of the personal challenge that the doctoral student encountered. In the quotation below, this participant further revealed how his supervisors later became a huge source of support for him, and probably when they understood the nature of his personal challenge:
…in fact sometimes…I make calls and…send text messages and I get responses from them… Sometimes they even call me…otherwise I think for what had happened overtime, probably I would have abandoned the program (Moses, 13a).
144 From the data, the participant seems to express satisfaction with the open communication line between himself and his supervisors, in which either party in the relationship could, potentially, initiate contact. It is notable, therefore, that the supervisors were not just waiting for the participant to contact them, as they also initiated the contact. According to the participant, his supervisors’
concern for his wellbeing was a major motivation in his decision to persist in pursuing the doctoral research programme. This means that when supervisors incorporate issues of affect awareness in the supervision relationship, they are likely to encourage better throughput in addition to making the supervision experience more fruitful and beneficial for them.
A variation is revealed in the excerpt below, which indicates that the supervisors’ personal life also filters into the supervision space and impacts the supervision experience of doctoral students:
At a point she [my supervisor] was indisposed, that also led to delaying my work.
…because she was not sound, she was sick she could not attend to me. […] there are so many things I wasn’t certain about, but while I was waiting and praying for her to recover, I kept doing the much I could on my own (Kenneth, 11a, b).
Here, the participant revealed that at a certain stage in his student research, his supervisor became ill, and she was unable to carry out her supervisory role. The participant believes that his supervisor’s unavailability to make input and give feedback and to provide support resulted in a lack of direction and uncertainty for him. Based on the data, there seems to be no alternative arrangement by the department/faculty to bridge the gap created by the supervisor’s absence (due to the unexpected illness), in order that the participant could still progress with his student research.
This suggests that the university may not have put in place any system to deal with unforeseen circumstances, in order to be responsive to the need of the doctoral students. The implication of this for doctoral students is that their progress will not only be halted, but they may also lose focus or become de-motivated and discouraged.
Similarly, another participant reported his experience when his supervisor passed away, as follows:
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…I noticed that she had just extinct, so that is the painful aspect of it all, it was very traumatic. […] well, I know that it has affected my study at least for now pending when the department re-assigns me to some other supervisor, but no two individuals are alike, even the Siamese twin (Abel, 1a).
The data here show how the sudden demise of the participant’s supervisor resulted in a traumatic experience for him as a doctoral student. There also appears to be a level of uncertainty exhibited by the participant, with regards to being re-assigned a new supervisor. Usually, when a supervisee is re-assigned to a new supervisor, the supervisee is less likely to be aware of the research orientation and supervision style/approach of the new supervisor. The supervisee may also be unsure about whether the new supervisor would understand the focus of his/her study or whether s/he would have to reshape his topic and several other issues that may subsequently create uncertainty. This clearly shows the dilemma of a doctoral orphan. The new supervisor may also experience some tension in dealing with the psychological state of mind of the doctoral research student as an orphan and the thesis task that is taken-over half-way through his/her student research programme. This shows that personal life situations of both the doctoral students and the supervisors could impact supervision experience in ways that are not predictable. Although these situations exist, in most cases they are not taken into consideration by the supervisor, as they appear to be not factored into the supervisory policy guidelines.