Who’s involved in supervision and mentoring?
Who’s involved in supervision and mentoring?
The ALLEA Code states:
- Senior researchers, research leaders, and supervisors mentor their team members, lead by example, and offer specific guidance and training to properly develop and structure their research activities.
- Researchers across the entire career path, from junior to the most senior level, undertake training in ethics and research integrity.
Junior Researcher - Phd student
Junior researchers are expected to establish an open and responsive communication with their supervisor or mentor which promotes research integrity.
Senior Researcher
Senior researchers are expected to create a climate in which fair and honest scientific conduct is the norm.
Doctoral Schools
Doctoral Schools facilitate the process of a doctoral trajectory in which effective supervision is key.
Confidential Counselor
Confidential counselors or ombudspersons are important contact points when problems arise. They can play an important role in advising and mediating between the parties involved.
Supervisor - Mentor
The (co)supervisor is expected to act as a responsible role model in order to assure that the PhD researcher develops good habits. (Co)supervisors comply with the generally accepted standards of research integrity.
The (co)supervisor also creates a climate in which these standards drive the conduct of the PhD researcher and in which fair and honest scientific conduct is the norm.
Distinction between supervision and mentoring
One of the major differences between supervising and mentoring is that the former is often task-oriented (e.g., completion of a thesis or dissertation) whereas the latter is more about caring for an individual’s long-term development (Acker, 2011).
- A supervisor has an official hierarchical relationship with official responsibilities and is involved in a formal advisory process which is mandated or assigned within a graduate programme that tends to be short term.
- A mentor role, on the other hand, can be quite informal and is less structured or institutionalized. (S)he can provide guidance and support to the mentee as a trusted counselor thereby acting as a neutral sounding board.
It is important that the role of the supervisor and possible mentor(s) and the role of the PhD researcher are made clear from the start of the research project. Who is responsible for what? Who has the final responsibility? In certain cases, like (inter)national bilateral PhD agreements or interdisciplinary PhD projects, there are at least two supervisors from each university or discipline involved. The implementation of principles might differ (slightly) with respect to authorship issues, e.g. order of authors. Potential differences should ideally be identified, discussed, and clarified at the start of the project, so that problems do not occur at a stage when they will be more difficult to solve, e.g. when a first draft manuscript is ready.
Cartoon by Patrick Hochstenbach under a Creative Commons CC BY-SA 4.0 license
What is the role of the supervisor and the PhD researcher?
Each Flemish university has adopted a charter for the PhD researcher and the supervisor. It outlines the mutual expectations and responsibilities of (co)supervisors and PhD researchers and should be used as a basis for effective supervision and fruitful scientific collaboration. At the start of their collaboration the supervisor and PhD researcher should go through the charter to make the necessary arrangements concerning scientific supervision. Research integrity is a crucial part of these arrangements. The initial stage of the PhD is a good time to reflect together on the responsible conduct of research and exchange information and guidelines about good data management, responsible authorship, avoiding conflict of interest, …
Numerous mentoring programmes have been developed in academia, which focus on leadership for women (combatting the “glass ceiling” and “leaky pipeline”). The specific cause of these inequalities are less rooted in direct and explicit discrimination as in the dynamics of a gendered organisation. The principal objective so far in gender equality progammes has been to gain greater access to the highest positions of the organisation, where large disparities have been observed between the sexes. The actions have been orientated largely towards enlarging the professional network and/or the integration of women in this network. The analysis of the results of various research studying these programmes have shown positive effects upon the access to high positions, however with some limits pointed out by McKeen and Bujaki (2008):
- The mentors behave differently towards men (more instrumental orientation of the mentoring: promotion of the career, transfer of knowledge, orientation towards the needs of the institution, knowledge about organization) and women (more developmental orientation: development of the person, guidance and support, orientation towards the needs of the mentee).
- The objectives and aims of mentors in the mentoring relationship are different according to actions destined to a woman (adaption of the system) or to a man (promotion and enlarging of networks).
These results do however have a tendency to show positive effects of mentoring by focusing on how women have successfully adapted to a masculine dominated environment, rather than a general inclusion of woman in various academic levels of positions.
Take home messages
After module 2 supervision and mentoring, I:
- Know the different roles that are involved in conducting research;
- Know the difference between supervision and mentoring;
- Understand that it is important that each role (supervisor vs. mentor) is defined before the start of the research project.
Example of gender sensitive mentoring
We would encourage the mentoring programmes to not only focus upon targeting gender inequality in the long-term in sense of increasing numbers of women in science, but also being able to create in more immediate terms, a more gender friendly, gender sensitive, and more reflexive and conscientious research work environment. It is about playing on and working with the existing system, but also about guiding people towards a realistic and balanced working life and career, by integrating gender sensitivity in our work units. In the framework of transformative mentoring, the idea is to aim at transforming the researcher the person on the one hand (socialization through a process of adaptation to the structural functioning of the organisation), and transforming the organisation on the other hand. This in view of a system that is more adapted to the rhythm of the researchers, whatever may be their gender and of a better adaptation to their articulation of private and professional life. Mentoring then intervenes as a tool for change.