Training research supervisors: a framework for a scheme of accreditation

  

  

This page argues for the professional recognition of research degree supervisors and suggests mechanisms for the formal accreditation of their training. It considers:

1. Why accredit training for research degree supervisors?
2. Which body should do the accrediting?
3. The UK Professional Standards Framework for
    Teaching and Supporting Learning in Higher Education
4. Suggestions for adapting the Professional Standards
    Framework for the training of supervisors
5. What teaching and learning methods are
    suitable in an accredited programme?
6. How can achievement be assessed?
7. How can supervisors be kept up-to-date once they
    are accredited?
8. Costs and resources for an accredited supervisor
    training programme
    
The views are based on my involvement over almost a decade with the TAPPS scheme, now accredited by the UK's Higher Education Academy and my more recent involvement with supervisor training at the University of Winchester.

  

Why accredit training for research degree supervisors?

To carry any long-term benefit, supervisor training should go beyond one-off events, useful as these may be in some circumstances. Even with longer comprehensive programmes, however, there are advantages for institutions in going a step further along the path to accredit the training. That does not mean that accreditation or professional recognition is necessarily for all the supervisors who participate in or dip into the training. I recommend it being an option within a comprehensive programme.

The advantages for an institution of running a formally accredited supervisor training scheme go beyond the advantages of simply running 'good' training. They include:

  • Giving a clear signal that the approach to supervisor training is professional.
  • 'Covering their backs' in case students complain about inadequate supervision and /or take complaints to litigation.

The advantages for supervisors of completing an accredited supervisor training programme go beyond the advantages of simply participating in 'good' training. They include:

  • Professional recognition / a qualification for career advancement.
  • 'Covering their backs' in case students complain about the quality of their supervision and / or take complaints to litigation.

Which body should do the accrediting?

Institutions will probably prefer to do their own accrediting in the first instance, possibly through a validated module for a 'taught' masters award. There are, however, other options. My own involvement with supervisor accreditation goes back many years to the ground-breaking BBSRC TAPPS scheme where the accreditation was originally through the BBSRC TAPPS committee. Institutions' own committees could take on a similar function.

The accrediting body for the TAPPS scheme is now also the Higher Education Academy (HEA). In fact TAPPS was the first - and so far (October 2007) the only - supervisor training programme to be recognised nationally by a body with a national remit. In my opinion the recognition is well-deserved and I am proud to have been part of the scheme's development. Any supervisor training programme with appropriate rigour could follow a similar route.

The Professional Standards Framework

The National Framework for Professional Standards in Teaching and Supporting Learning was developed by HEA on behalf of Universities UK (UUK), the Standing Conference of Principals (SCOP) and the UK higher education funding councils after consultation with the higher education sector. The framework is set to be influential for future training programmes of professional development. Therefore any supervisor training programme which might in due course be submitted for HEA accreditation would do well to take note of its requirements:

  
Areas of activity as stipulated by the Professional Standards Framework:
  1. Design and planning of learning activities and/or programmes of study
  2. Teaching and/or supporting student learning
  3. Assessment and giving feedback to learners
  4. Developing effective environments and student support and guidance 
  5. Integration of scholarship, research and professional activities with teaching and supporting learning 
  6. Evaluation of practice and continuing professional development

Core knowledge as stipulated by the Professional Standards Framework

Knowledge and understanding of

  1. The subject material
  2. Appropriate methods for teaching and learning in the subject area and at the level of the academic programme
  3. How students learn, both generally and in the subject
  4. The use of appropriate learning technologies
  5. Methods for evaluating the effectiveness of teaching
  6. The implications of quality assurance and enhancement for professional practice

Professional values as stipulated by the Professional Standards Framework

  1. Respect for individual learners 
  2. Commitment to incorporating the process and outcomes of relevant research, scholarship and/or professional practice
  3. Commitment to development of learning communities
  4. Commitment to encouraging participation in higher education, acknowledging diversity and promoting equality of opportunity
  5. Commitment to continuing professional development and evaluation of practice

Suggestions for adapting the Professional Standards Framework for the training of research degree supervisors

My understanding is that HEA does not require a one-to-one mapping between the descriptors of a programme and the descriptors of the Framework. This is all to the good because problems do tend to arise with anything that is one-to-fit-all. Nevertheless, I understand that the cross-mapping does need to be recognisable.

I suggest below a framework that does map roughly onto the Professional Standards Framework. It is based on the BBSRC TAPPS scheme which has proved itself in the biological sciences, but I have adapted it slightly to make it more applicable across subject areas.

  
In my view, at the level of training research degree supervisors, the content, or learning outcomes or pedagogy of a programme are best considered in terms of the knowledge, skills and values that the training will impart or develop.

The knowledge to be imparted consists of:

  1. The regulations of the institution concerning research supervision.
  2. National codes of practice, policy documents and high profile supervisory issues.
  3. The essence of what is involved in the skills and values listed below. [Note that skills-development requires on-going practice and feedback as well as knowledge.]

Knowledge of the subject areas and typical research methodologies of the research degrees being supervised is not included. It is taken as read, because institutions should not allow supervisors to supervise outside their expertise.

For skills, what matters is that they are appropriate. The following list therefore needs to be interpreted flexibly, and possibly also to be reworked for different uses. For example skills 1 and 2 below may need to be positioned in reverse order. This is because in the natural sciences a student tends to be recruited for a project for which funds have already been acquired, while in the social sciences students tend to bring their topics with them. So, in the first case, the topic and outline research design are both known before the student is recruited, while in the second case the student arrives with a general idea of a topic which needs to be moulded into a suitable research design.

With due account of flexibility, accredited research supervisors will have shown that they can:

  1. Ensure that the student, main supervisor (and supervisory team) and research topic are suitably matched.
  2. Guide the student in developing a research proposal that is suitable for the research degree.
  3. Agree an appropriate research supervisory process and supervisory team.
  4. Use an appropriate range of teaching and supervisory skills to ensure students’ education, attainment and professional development.
  5. Provide appropriate support to individual students on academic and pastoral issues.
  6. Use an appropriate range of methods to monitor and assess student progress and attainment.
  7. Reflect on their own practice, assess and plan for their future needs and continuing development as a research supervisor / research worker.

Subsidiary skills will probably be identified in discussion according to the needs of the individual participating supervisors.

Accredited research supervisors will also have demonstrated the values that underpin their practice. The following list should also be regarded as a framework that is adaptable:

  1. An understanding of situations that support student development and achievement.
  2. A concern for student progress towards independence.
  3. A personal commitment to student scholarship, academic excellence and integrity.
  4. A commitment to work with and learn from colleagues.
  5. A commitment to and practising of 'equal opportunities'.
  6. Continuing reflection on their own professional practice.

Teaching and learning methods for an accredited supervisor training programme

A major advantage of the 'Knowledge, Skills and Values approach' is that no specific training elements or workshops are mandatory. The training can be from any source, which recognises the high quality training events that are already widely available, many of which would be directly relevant for postgraduate supervision, even though not necessarily publicised as such. These events may relate to established staff development programmes, or may be specific to an individual academic discipline. See also the suggestions for a comprehensive supervisor training programme.

Assessing against the Knowledge, Skills, and Values criteria

Assessment methods are many, varied, and well-known. The method that has stood the test of time in the TAPPS Programme and which is ideally suited to a 'Knowledge, Skills and Values' approach is via a portfolio. For TAPPS, this needs to be built up over the period of a complete supervision (although there are alternatives*) and must include:
  • evidence of activities - such as for example, the signing off of a student's report
  • written material demonstrating reflection on the activities, with reference to the Knowledge, Skills and Values
  • A matrix-style cover sheet to show where the Knowledge, Skills and Value are considered.

The portfolios can be assessed by staff within the institution who may need special training - see the TAPPS website, although for TAPPS there is also an external scrutinising committee which oversees the assessment.

The portfolio approach need not be used in isolation. For example, there are all sorts of tried and tested ways of assessing the acquisition of knowledge. Alongside the portfolio approach, the University of Winchester is using on-line self-tests on supervisors' knowledge of the University regulations (which incorporate the Code of the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) and also refer to discipline-specific codes). The tests are sequenced in the order in which supervisors have to make decisions or take actions during any student's research programme. Being computer-marked, the questions are necessarily simple, even simplistic, but they cannot be passed merely on the basis of guesswork because there are a number of right answers to each question and the supervisor is not told how many. As such the supervisors have to read the background material, which they might not otherwise manage to fit into their busy schedules, and consequently they are made aware of gaps in their knowledge which ought to be plugged by further reading. The tests are essentially self-audits, but they form 'evidence' for the portfolios for those supervisors who wish to go on to accreditation by portfolio.

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* It can be offputting for supervisors to have to wait up to four or more years to become accredited while they collect evidence over a student's entire programme of research. So some lesser form of recognition could be made available to them for having participated in an introductory programme of some sort. At the University of Winchester both approaches are being trialled side by side.

Keeping up to date

Broadly speaking, an accredited supervisor is not unlike any other accredited professional. So it is worth looking at how, for example, doctors, solicitors and even academics keep up to date once they have qualified. Mostly they take responsibility on themselves, by reading the literature and enrolling themselves on appropriate courses or refresher events. It must of course be the responsibility of institutions to supply the opportunities and bring new regulations and developments to the attention of their supervisors - and this is true irrespective of whether or not the supervisors are accredited. Institutions will have their own ways of doing this, perhaps through email alerts, or flags on home pages of the institutional website or special seminars or workshops. Revisions to codes of practice or regulations are not enough by themselves: supervisors need to be alerted to them.

Where accredited supervisors are unable to participate in the refresher /updating events, institutions may choose to require some other form of check that the supervisors concerned are keeping themselves up to date. Its form and timing will probably vary from one institution to another. The appraisal interview could be a good forum in this connection. 

In my view it is not appropriate to accredit a supervisor for a specific time only or to remove the award for malpractice. Again there are parallels with other professions. Just as a qualified doctor, remains a qualified doctor whatever happens, so a qualified research degree supervisor should remain a qualified research degree supervisor. However, just as a qualified doctor can be struck off the medical register, institutions may, as a last resort, want to remove the freedom to practice for supervisors who they deem to be unfit. 

Costs and resources for an accredited supervisor training programme

The costs and resources for supervisor training will be met as part of the career development and support that are normally offered to supervisors by their institutions. The additional cost of accreditation depends on the chosen accrediting body - see also the HEA website.

  

More on this site for academic managers and training personnel

Frequently asked questions about training PhD supervisors | A full training programme | A single training event | Accreditation of training | Guides on postgraduate issues | SRHE Postgraduate Issues Network

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