Being a Research Guide

Abstract

One of my doctoral students was giving a speech at her pre-graduation dinner. I was supervising her thesis. While thanking me, she spoke about how I gave her adequate time and space during the literature review and research problem identification stage, but during her research design, data collection and data analysis phases, I had tightened my supervision. She felt that had I not done such a close scrutiny of her thesis at that stage, it would have been difficult for her to complete her doctoral work. It is not often that as a research guide you get feedback on what you did right or wrong. Most of us learn to become effective through a process of trial and error. I was reflecting on this episode, when Prabhakar, Guest Editor of this issue, asked me to share my thoughts on what it means to be a research guide and what is it that research students need to acquire as skills and capabilities. This article has two sections. In the first section, I draw on my experience of being on dissertation committees as internal and external supervisor and present my insights. In the second section, I present the capabilities that I think research students will need to acquire to do meaningful research. This is a purely reflective piece intended to synthesise my key learnings.