Making Sense of Postgraduate Education in Context

Discourses related to globalisation privilege the role of ‘knowledge workers’ in economic development. As a result, many countries across Africa have included goals related to ambitious increases in the number of doctoral graduates to be produced per annum in their national plans.
A common response to the need to increase the number of doctoral graduates involves courses intended to enhance supervision. However, the complexity and diversity of postgraduate contexts mean that it is unlikely such a simple solution will be effective.
This project explores draws on a framework developed from the work of critical realist Roy Bhaskar and sociologist Margaret Archer in order to identify the ways in which considerations such as disciplinary difference, structural and cultural conditions within individual universities and diversity within student bodies both enable and constrain impact the way individual supervisors are able make use of what they have learned on a course intended to enhance postgraduate supervision in universities in South Africa and Kenya. The course in question has been developed by academics from universities in Africa and Europe as a result of funding from the European Union.