合格指导指南（The Good Supervision Guide）是亚历山德拉布拉特（Alexandra Bulat）基于对伦敦大学学院导师们的采访而编写的帮助导师们指导学生的有效建议。 然而，原文以ppt（pdf）的形式给出，不方便使用翻译功能阅读。这里我们将原文档改写成可以被自动翻译软件识别的文本形式，读者可以利用微信或网页自带的翻译功能阅读，或直接阅读原文。往下我们先提供基于网页翻译的引言译文，接下来给出（不带翻译的）原文全文。
引言译文
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本指南由博士生Alexandra Bulat编写，文稿基于她对来自各个学科（医学、艺术和人文、教育、数学和物理科学、生命科学、人口健康科学、建筑环境、工程、法律、社会和历史科学）的伦敦大学学院研究生导师（FGT）的采访。她要求他们举例说明“合格指导实践”对他们意味着什么。本指南是根据这些对话中出现的主题而构建的。一些指导建议比其他建议更适用于某些学科，而其他见解则超越了学科界限。
合格博导关键原则。本指南围绕三个关键原则组织，可帮助博导们培养合格指导文化。这三项原则中的每一项都分为主题和院系研究生导师（Faculty Graduate Tutors——FGTs）就如何将其付诸实践提供了建议。第一原则：设定期望值，但要注意不断变化的现实。本节提供了有关在博士生早期设定期望值、保持灵活性、规划博士生过程以及管理您在监督上花费的时间的建议。第二原则：倾听、反思和分享。本节提供了有关倾听学生、与其他导师沟通、在机构结构内有效工作以及利用可用资源的建议。第三原则：考虑到（论文）以外的事情，这一部分提供了关于如何在论文之外思考作为一项研究的建议，以及如何考虑你的学生的职业愿望，这可能并不总是学术性的。
本指南旨在鼓励新导师和经验丰富的导师反思自己的做法。在阅读示例时，请思考以下问题：-我是在自己的指导实践中这样做的吗？如果不是，我这样做是否合适这对我的学科有用吗？如果没有，有没有其他可能的办法？
反思：我们如何指导往往取决于我们如何看待博士学位。所有导师，即使是具有多年经验的导师，都可能难以定义“什么是合格的导师”，因为每一种指导关系都是独特的，每一种经验都是不同的。除了我们自己的受指导经历外，FGTs确定为影响我们所认为的合格指导的主要因素之一取决于我们对以下范围内的博士目的的理解：作为具体研究的博士生<=>作为综合培训计划的博士生。
This guide was compiled by PhD candidate, Alexandra Bulat, based on her interviews with UCL Faculty Graduate Tutors (FGTs) from across the disciplines (medical sciences, arts and humanities, education, mathematical and physical sciences, life sciences, population health sciences, built environment, engineering, laws, social and historical sciences). She asked them to give examples of what ‘good supervision practice’ means for them. This guide is structured according to the themes which emerged from these conversations. Some supervision advice applies to some disciplines more than others, whereas other insights transcend disciplinary boundaries. Key principles of good supervision
This guide is organised around three key principles, which can help supervisors to foster a culture of good supervision. Each of the three principles is divided into themes, with advice from the FGTs on how to put it into practice.
Set expectations, but be aware of the changing reality This section provides advice on setting expectations early in the PhD, being flexible, planning the PhD process and managing the time you spend on supervision.
Listen, reflect and share This section provides advice on listening to students, communicating with fellow supervisors, and working effectively within institutional structures and making use of resources available.
- Think outside the (thesis) box This section provides advice on how to think beyond the thesis as a piece of research and how to consider your students’ career aspirations, which may not alway s be academic.
The aim of this guide is to encourage both new and experienced supervisors to reflect on their own practice. As you read through the examples, think about the following questions: — Am I doing this in my own supervision practice? If not, would it be appropriate for me to do this?— Would this work in my discipline(s)? If not, is there an alternative which might help?
Reflection: How we supervise often depends on how we view the PhD .All supervisors, even those with many years of experience, can struggle to define ‘what is good supervision practice’, as every supervisory relationship is unique and every experience different. Alongside our own experiences of being supervised, one of the main factors that FGTs identified as influencing what we see as good supervision depends on what we understand as the purpose of the PhD on the following spectrum: PhD as specific piece of research <=> PhD as comprehensive training programme.
1. Set expectations, but be
aware of the changing reality
All FGTs mentioned that setting expectations is crucial to creating a good
relationship between the PhD researcher and supervisor. However, it is
important to be flexible: a lot can change in 3 years. The likelihood is
that your student will encounter at least one major life event during their
PhD cycle (marriage, having a child, death of a relative, etc.), which
can change the goals and timelines. Be prepared to be flexible but
encourage your student to stay as close as possible to the timeframe
of the PhD.A good way to avoid confusion or mismatch of goals
later on is to set clear expectations early in the
process. Depending on the discipline and whether
the student’s PhD project is a lone project or part of
a team, this ‘expectations meeting’ is recommended
to take place at some point during the first three
months. Although this may seem common sense,
FGTs agreed that not enough supervisors discuss
expectations openly and clearly with their students.
This can sometimes lead to problems building up,
which are then escalated to Departmental, Faculty
and even institutional level.We advise students to have their first meeting
and discuss very specific things with the supervisor,
to look at the Code of Practice and work out mutual
expectations at the beginning: how funding is going to
work, how training is going to work, etc.An ideal supervisor should sit down at the
beginning and actually talk to the student and work out
the coming months, to say, “this is where you are, this is
where you want to be in six months’ time, these are the
types of training courses available.”If you want to get through the three or four years,
at the beginning, it is very important to get to know each
other in the sense of: what is your knowledge base,
what do you actually know, and trying to work out what
is it they need training in. This could be around ethics,
integrity, but there are other things, they might need
some further training in mathematics, for example.These are obvious things, but it may well be
good for everyone here to be reminded that we should
all set the expectations together with the students and
be clear about what we expect from the students and
what they ask from us and be there and support them
as they develop their projects.It’s ideal to set clear expectations at the beginning,
and give an opportunity to PhD students to set
their own expectations in terms of supervision.
Nevertheless, keep in mind that some expectations
have to be revisited periodically, some are difficult
to pin down in the first place, and some need to be
adapted as situations change. What do FGTs say? It’s difficult to specify whether it should be monthly meetings or weekly meetings, because it does depend very much on the student and supervisor and also on the stage of research. I think it does need to be flexible, it’s the sort of thing that does need to be discussed and agreed between the supervisor and student and reviewed as the research progresses, because there are times when you need much more support and much more feedback and other times when you’re going away and actually researching something when you don’t perhaps need such frequent meetings.It is also important to acknowledge that the
typical PhD student is not likely to be a 21-yearold freshly graduated from their Masters, without
any caring or work responsibilities. In reality, and
disproportionately in fields such as education and
social sciences, PhD students’ profiles include
vast work experience, family, sometimes children
and other responsibilities. International students
can have particular needs, so too students with
disabilities. Flexibility and adapting to students’
specific needs is central to a good supervisory
relationship. The discipline may also influence
the type of supervisory relationship one has. What do FGTs say? Given the distinctive profile of our students, a general principle of good supervision here is flexibility, so it’s about responsiveness of the programme to our students’ varying needs. For example, when we did the research training, we tried the training in different formats, so we had some which was during office hours, some on weekends, we have some which is offered in an intensive format so people, if they are going to come to the campus, they come for a week and then go back again, we have some that’s offered online. And the idea is that no one method of training can work for all our students, so we have to offer all of these things in as many different formats as we can make viable. So that diversity is important. In a sense, every PhD is different. As a theorist you can function with a very intense relation with one person, as a lab person you need to be in a group where everyone is, the dynamics are completely different.Setting expectations isn’t a one-off event,
but a process. What do FGTs say? I think you need to remind them every year
what is required of a student in order to get a PhD,
that should be repeated at the end of every year,
so we got this far, this is where we need to go nextGetting the
upgrade right There is one thing all UCL PhDs have in common,
in their diversity of disciplines and topics, and
that is the key milestones – the first being the
upgrade. Being flexible with students does not
mean that the key milestones cannot be planned
in an effective way. To ensure success, the
purpose of the upgrade needs to be clearly
communicated with the student early on, possibly
even during the initial expectations meeting. Again,
this may seem straight forward, yet a majority of
FGTs said that the upgrade is not always as clear
a process as it should be. This advice extends to
other milestones as well, such as entering writing
up and thesis submission.What do FGTs say? I think students sometimes don’t have a clear
sense of the milestones they need to reach, and I think
when supervisors are quite clear with their students
about how to prepare in their first year, it helps them
get started and stay on track. I am often worried about
students finding the first year very challenging if they
are not being given clear objectives of what to achieve
in that first year. What is the upgrade for? As I understand it,
whoever does the upgrade assesses whether or not
the student is capable and that there is a project that
will make a PhD. But for many supervisors, it’s a
reflection on them, and they do not want their student
to upgrade until there is a whole lot of data. And so
it’s about changing people’s perception of what that’s
about. So, I think it is very good practice to set a year,
so they have a bit of drift, I even know there are some
Departments and Divisions that are setting nine months.
So I think actually a clear upgrade date is probably
better. It’s a good milestone to have.Common student complaints heard by FGTs
mention infrequent supervision meetings or
absences of supervision for extended periods
of time. With research, teaching and admin
responsibilities on top of supervision and personal
commitments, it is crucial that supervisors think
carefully about the time needed to allocate to
supervision itself, and reflect this in the number
of PhD students they supervise. This entails good
time management on the part of the supervisor,
as well as the student. What do FGTs say? We have a workload management system within
the faculty, so if a supervisor has a doctoral student,
there is a given time for that student, it’s not an infinite
amount of time, they are given time in order to do that
supervisory work and that scales with the number of
students. We monitor who is at or over capacity, the
ones who are over capacity will have to be signed off
by the head of department, given extra time so that
they are not disadvantaging their students.Start by planning to finish Setting clear expectations, allocating sufficient
time for supervision meetings, but staying flexible
at the same time, will improve your supervisory
relationships. ‘Starting by planning to finish’ is a
common piece of advice given by FGTs: setting
expectations at the very beginning will enable a
smoother PhD process for the student and will
increase the likelihood of timely completion. What do FGTs say? I would encourage supervisors to start by
planning to finish, from very early on, talking about the
thesis as a complete document, talking about moving
even from the first year to the final submission of the
thesis, so the end is always in sight, students know
how they are progressing towards it. That shapes the
doctoral journey.
2. Listen, reflect
and share
The second key principle of good supervisory practice, which all FGTs agreed
upon, was the importance of not acting in isolation. They emphasised the
need to communicate well with students, to make the most of opportunities
to work with peers and colleagues, and to have a good understanding of the
institutional resources available to support supervision.Listening to the
student voice Listening to what students have to say about
supervision is central to improving supervision
practice. The Postgraduate Research Experience
Survey (PRES) offers a good overview of students’
satisfaction with supervision, but often it is the
conversations you have with your own students,
other students or peers in your department that
make you reflect the most about how to improve
your practice or adapt it to particular student needs. What do FGTs say? I remember my PhD supervisor, he asked me,
“do you like to have deadlines?” I said yes, so we were
setting deadlines all the time. With my PhD students,
one of them told me at some point, “I would like to see
you more often if possible,” I said of course, but I hadn’t
realised that until he told me. But some students don’t
communicate so well or directly with their supervisors.
Some students may be shy, some supervisors don’t
realise what their issues or needs are unless they tell
us, so it’s complicated, but it’s the most important thing
in a PhD, in supervision.Moreover, having appropriate spaces and
structures in the department for students to
share feedback, including about supervision,
can help host a constructive dialogue. Although
formalised structures such as graduate student
representatives tended to return feedback related
to pressing issues, such as the provision of work
spaces, more informal groups can prove useful
in creating a culture where students share their
experiences of supervision. What do FGTs say? One good practice is creating space for students
to talk to one another. And space for students who
interact with each other. If you are always stuck in the
library, how are you going to talk to other students?Good practice may be difficult to explain or
measure, but creating an environment where
students feel comfortable in expressing their
concerns is key. What do FGTs say? Where I see happy students, who are positive
about their supervisors, it tends to come down to the
supervisor having a clear knowledge of what the project
is and where the student is at, and what are they doing
next. A supportive environment is where the student
feels that if they have an issue with their research or
something else, but primarily with their academic work,
they can go to their supervisor and discuss it, and have
that addressed in a way that they feel they’ve made
progress as a result of the meeting, rather than them
keeping going back and not getting anywhere.Finally, yet importantly, supervisors are
encouraged to communicate well through a variety
of media. This is particularly important for students
with specific needs, such as distance learners,
international students, students with disabilities
or students who are also in work. What do FGTs say? Even in a face to face meeting, supervisors
ought to be providing written feedback to their students,
whether it is annotations on drafts, or through emails
or written stuff as well, so immediately there is not just
one method of communication. We are not really doing
something that’s that radical, all we are doing is saying
there are already multiple ways in which students
interact with their supervisors, here is another one,
and if everyone is fluent in that bit of communication,
great, and if they are not we can support them or they
can find an alternative that works better for them.
It’s not something that is radical, it’s something that
is just sensible.Peer dialogue and the
institutional structures In addition to listening to the student voice, a
dialogue with colleagues in the department (or
across disciplines) can prove useful in reflecting
on and improving one’s supervision practices.
This is facilitated where ‘thesis committees’ exist:
students are exposed to different supervision
styles, and the committee can also learn from
each other. Thesis committees are seen as a
positive structure by FGTs. What do FGTs say? Supervisors are quite reluctant to raise concerns,
because somehow that’s perceived to be a failure, that
you haven’t managed your students. This is where
thesis committees may be helpful in hopefully not being
perceived to undermine the supervisor, but to be a kind
of sounding board where the primary supervisor could
say, “I am really worried about this student, they are not
making progress,” and that can be explored with the
student, rather than being just the primary supervisor
and the student.
If supervisory arrangements are primarily
principal supervisor and student, they are not visible to
anybody else. Even if it’s co-supervision with principal
and subsidiary present, if the principal and subsidiary
relationships are fairly stable, going with the same kind
of pairings for all the students, it’s still a very small
circle of people that get to see what happens. Where
there are cross-supervisions in a lab or beyond the lab,
across the whole department or between departments,
or between faculties, this is where you start to see
the kinds of conversations where people are like “oh,
you do it that way, I never thought of doing that!” and
suddenly people are exposed to new approaches to
supervision they might otherwise not have thought of.
I think that kind of exposure builds the repertoire of
approaches supervisors can use, giving us really
a more robust approach to doing supervisory workApart from the structures of supervision, FGTs
encouraged better use of the systems in place at
University level to support supervision practice,
such as the UCL research log, through which
supervisors can track students’ progress, including
seeing the training and courses they attended,
their progress reports and key milestones. What do FGTs say? I think one thing that I try to push is a more
systematic use of the research log, on the part of
supervisors and students. I don’t think we use it enough,
and it is a useful tool to record meetings. When I see
this used systematically, I think that is a good sign, but
it is rare, I don’t think people are using it systematically
enough. Keeping good records of meetings and the
goals set between supervisory meetings is particularly
good practice.
3. Think outside
the (thesis) box
The last theme emerging from the conversations with FGTs was thinking
about the PhD in a broader way. Although crucial, the thesis itself (and
the potential publications based on the thesis) is not the only ‘output’
the student has at the end of their programme.The majority of FGTs tended to see the PhD
more as a ‘comprehensive training programme’
end of the spectrum, rather than the ‘specific
piece of science’ only. They broadly encouraged
supervisors to play an active part in discussing
career options with students and identifying
opportunities which will work towards their
career goals. What do FGTs say? We have quite an extensive research training
programme in the faculty. We have one compulsory
induction course for all our PhD students; for our
professional doctorate they have three taught modules
which are more extensive than the induction for PhD,
they are much more structured. All our students have
had some mandatory training and development early on
in their studies. Beyond that it’s all negotiated between
students and supervisors, we ask about this annually
and supervisors are expected to do this work. What do FGTs say? Supervisors should be at least reasonably
familiar with what training is available from the
Doctoral School. The ideal supervisor should be
having regular meetings with the student, tracking their
progress that way, giving good feedback, engaging
with the secondary supervisor as well, as a team, and
encouraging the student to take advantage of all of
the student training that is available at UCL. And some
are very proactive in that, for example, getting them
funding to go to conferences quite early on, and writing
papers and so on, and some are actually the opposite,
actually discourage that. But encouraging the students
to engage with other students at student led events,
that’s very important.Seeing the PhD student
as an independent
researcher The message from FGTs was clear; if you want a
PhD student to become a world-class researcher
or pursue another satisfying career, then treat
them as an independent researcher, not as a lab
technician! Some ways to build this relationship
with your PhD students are to discuss your own
research with them, give detailed feedback on the
work submitted and encourage critical discussion,
and allow the student to take ownership of their work. What do FGTs say? One of the things we are now encouraging
the supervisors to do is to share their own research
with their students so that it’s not separate from the
doctoral journey but it’s sort of visible in the doctoral
journey, so students can see what their supervisors
have been doing as researchers, effectively modelling
research practice for the student. That can be done
remotely, most people for example could share drafts
of papers and you often read those alone anyway,
individually. Sometimes we have reading groups as
well, we have done some of those online, we can
support that kind of organisation. Encouraging more
of that distributive practice is something which is
currently a challenge for us, but which we are
working on. What do FGTs say? The importance of supervision is the ability to
have a really rich and critical discussion about the work
that is being undertaken, where the student feels that
they have academic ownership. It concerns me when
I hear students say things such as, “my supervisor is
going away for a conference a couple of weeks, and so
I cannot do anything, because I need to be told what to
do.” The student needs to have much more ownership
of their work than that, but occasionally that is fed by
supervisors saying, “this is my project, and you are
working on it,” and I think it needs to be the other
way around. What do FGTs say? The PhD is a qualification the student is going to
get, they are going to produce the thesis and they need
to own that, so they need to have sufficient amount
of input in that direction, but that needs to be within
reason. The students do need to accept that sometimes
the experience of academics needs to trump their own
desire to either reinvent the wheel, or pursue a path
that’s potentially not going to go anywhere. What do FGTs say? Where it works, it’s about that relationship and
the discussion, rather than just simply supervisors
saying “you must do this,” or students feeling left out
in the cold. The expression that you hear a lot is, “just
lab monkeys,” people there just to turn handles, and
that’s not what its about, and not what it should be
about. And you want people to go out from here being
ambassadors for UCL and being able not only to do
what they are told and do it technically very well, but
also to contribute to the wider academic debate, and
have some original ideas, and we have to incorporate
that into PhDs.
Reflection:
One supervisor’s
approach
Read the following testimony from a Faculty
Graduate Tutor regarding her own supervision
practice. Reflect on the questions asked in
the introduction:
— Would the strategies presented in this text
be appropriate for my students? Would this
work in my discipline(s)? If not, is there an
alternative which might help?What do FGTs say? I meet with each of my PhD students once a
week and I have an open-door policy. So, if there is a
crisis, a problem, come and see me because I don’t
want to know about it a week later. Other people say, “I
have a meeting once a week and I am not accessible
the rest of the time”. So, I think in a way it’s even just
about saying to the student – this is how I work. It
might even be just about the practicalities of it – we meet
once a week, and this is what I’d like to see. But get
them to think about it. Maybe students haven’t thought
about what would work for them. It might be a difficult
conversation to have, but later on you can say to the
student, remember, we discussed this, and it’s clearly
not been happening. Whereas if you haven’t told them
what to expect, and then you somehow tell them that
they haven’t delivered, it’s quite hard because they did
not know that was what you would expect. I don’t know
whether that would make a huge difference, but I think
it might clarify something quite early on in the project
for students, that this is what is expected, as long
as it’s realistic.Alexandra Bulat, The Good Supervision Guide, A guide for new and experienced supervisors, The UCL Good Supervision Guide, December 2018, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/teaching-learning/sites/teaching-learning/files/ucl_good_supervision_guide_2018-19_screen.pdf
合格博导指南的作者亚历山德拉布拉特（Alexandra Bulat）就职于伦敦大学学院(University Colleage London)斯拉夫和东欧研究学院（School of Slavonic and East European Studies）。