Information Literacy and the role of the

supervisor: a supervisor‟s perspective

Sheila Webber

Information School

University of Sheffield

May 2011

Supervisor Examiner

With additional

notes for this

Slideshare version

Variations in supervisors

• Education/culture “the powerful impact of the supervisor‟s previous experience as a PhD student on how they supervise now.” (Lee, 2008: 268)

• Supervisory styles

• Discipline

• Research approaches “this is your tiny part of the existing project” to spending first year refining your question

• Conceptions of research

• Stage of career

• Structure of the PhD programme

This presentation identifies some ways in which doctoral supervisors may vary. These variations include differences in the way they supervise. The differences can affect the information literacy of their students Sheila Webber, 2011

Underlying this presentation is the view that a supervisor will have a big impact on his or her

doctoral student, as it is an influential one to one relationship that lasts several years. The

student may model the supervisor‟s behaviour, including information behaviour.

I will not be talking further about differences in doctoral programme structure (e.g. in the UK the

main focus throughout is on the student‟s original research, in the USA there is more emphasis

on taught modules; in the UK the viva is closed, in some other countries it is an open event)

Firstly, supervisors‟ experience or conception of research can vary. Brew (2001) identified four

ways of experiencing research, as outlined on the next slide.

There has not been research in this area, but I would hypothesise that there might be slightly

different information behaviour associated with different experiences of research. For example,

someone with the “trading” experience may be focused on purposive searching (to complete a

paper, or to fulfil the requirements of a project), whereas someone with a “journey” conception

may put high value on browsing, encountering and serendipity, as they explore areas around

their subject of interest.

Sheila Webber, 2011

Conceptions of research (Brew, 2001) • Domino: research as a series of tasks, issues etc.; distinct but

linked & to be synthesised

• Trading: “What is in the foreground are the products of

research: publications, grants, and social networks. These are

created and then exchanged in a social situation for money,

prestige or simply recognition.” (p277)

• Layer: exploring & illuminating existing & new layers of

meaning

• Journey: “The content or topic of the investigation is less

important than the issues or underlying questions posed, or

the ways in which they dovetail with the researcher‟s life or

career” (p279) Sheila Webber, 2011

The next slide lists the different approaches to doctoral supervision identified by Lee

(2008). An experienced and empathetic supervisor may vary their approach depending

on the needs and preferences of the student, but the supervisor is likely to have a

preferred or default approach. I think that my espoused approach to supervision is

“emancipatory”.

Again, this is going to have an impact on information approaches and conceptions of

information literacy as well. The functional supervisor may be focused on ensuring that

the student has just “ticked the boxes” as regards requirements for information literacy

training, the supervisor focused on enculturation may encourage the student only to

value those information behaviours which are important in the specific discipline, the

emancipatory supervisor may put an emphasis on encouraging the student to find their

own information style.

Sheila Webber, 2011

Approaches to supervision (Lee, 2008)

• Functional: project management “I know of places where

there is a PhD factory.” (Lee, 2008: 271)

• Enculturation into the disciplinary community (supervisor as

gatekeeper, coach)

• Critical thinking: students questioning their work, supervisor

challenging, evaluating

• Emancipation: student growing, reflecting; supervisor

mentoring “Your job as a supervisor is to get them to the

stage of knowing more than you” “I want it to have changed

how they see the world” (p274)

• Developing a quality relationship (reciprocal) between

supervisor and student Sheila Webber, 2011

Eva Hornung

Remote location student

Librarian working full time in Dublin, Ireland

Successful viva in March 2011

Phenomenographic approach

Irish solo librarians‟ conceptions of CPD

Dr Yazdan Mansourian

Assisstant Professor, Tarbiat Moallem

University, Tehran, Iran

Graduated successfully 2006

Grounded theory approach

Information Visibility on the Web and

Conceptions of Success and Failure in

Web Searching

In the

presentation

I presented

videoclips of

two of my

students,

Eva and

Yazdan

Sheila Webber, 2011

Academics interviewed for the AHRC-

funded project investigating UK

academics‟ conceptions of IL and

pedagogy for IL

I also quoted from interviews undertaken as part of a three year project funded by the

Arts and Humanities Research Council 2001-2005. 80 academics were interviewed, 20

in each of 4 disciplines; from a variety of universities, and a mix of age, gender and

responsibilities.

The next slides give quotations in which the academics give accounts of their own

information behaviour, e.g. when writing a paper. They illustrate the different information

behaviours, and the different meanings of information, in different disciplines

Sheila Webber, 2011

Discipline CHEMISTRY ACADEMIC 08: “Well, sure, say I‟ve got a paper to write

on a chemical structure. The chemist has often written that part, the

chemical part of the paper, you know, how it was made. They‟ve given

me some of the background information. I would like perhaps to bring it

up to date and stuff like that, particularly from my own perspective in

structural chemistry, so what I will do is I will read the paper, I will check

the references, I will check similar reference on Web of Science, the ISI

one, so you can kind of put in a reference and get similar ones to that

one or ones who have been cited by or cited in that paper, so then you

can sort of by that method you can find similar papers, and you can

also search for subject in these databases as well, so I try to get the

best set of references out of these journal-kind of databases. Then

putting the structural similarity aside, I will use a chemical database,

Cambridge crystallographic database.”

(Quotation from AHRC-funded research into conceptions of IL)

Sheila Webber, 2011

…so developing IL with focus on

• Formal search

• Collaborative information and writing behaviour

• Specific types of information; e.g. textual, chemical

structures

• Journal article publication, set structure

• Current literature

Sheila Webber, 2011

ENGLISH ACADEMIC 11: I am usually starting off with a certain set,

maybe one, maybe several of I would think of as primary texts, texts

which are my primary focus and then on from that, I would be using

my prior experience, the virtual bibliography that I have in my head,

so to speak, to go to ancillary texts to cover my knowledge and to

increase my knowledge of what has already been written,

established, argued, about those texts, and then to see if there is a

point at which that debate which has been set up, because that is

what I take literary criticism to be, a debate or a forum that has been

set up about a particular writer, about a particular text, uh, where my

point of entrance might be, so, you know, one may get some sort of

an idea about it. The start will be there but the next step is to see

there is the possibility of—I‟m sliding around on my metaphors

here—whether there is the possibility of actually making a

contribution in the forum that is already there about that text.

Sheila Webber, 2011

ENGLISH ACADEMIC 10: Yeah, a lot of people as sources. And just

being plugged into the field, um, and um, and, and, and just reading

papers, reading the literature and that kind of thing. I am not sure

hand-on-heart that I more than a handful of times went to the MLA

databases and typed in a search term to find out material, which

might show the limits of my, uh, my own, um, research. I think it‟s

more just working with the field and I think that has made a big

difference for me, I think, I think in fact… I‟ve never had anybody

comment on the fact that I lack that kind of thing, it‟s usually the

reverse. Usually people say, „This is very well read in the field,‟ so it‟s

small, but it‟s a small field, so… minor XXth Century XX poets, so I‟ve

been very, very lucky I think. I get surprised quite… but usually

people in the scholarly community talk about things and about what‟s

coming out, new books, and you know what‟s coming out and you

know what‟s around, because people are always talking about it.

Sheila Webber, 2011

…so developing IL with focus on

• Relationship with your disciplinary community

• Understanding, evaluating etc. the conversations

around your texts/field of study

• Journals, books or other contributions to the

conversation as output

• Keeping in touch with current thinking Particularly if this was combined with an enculturation approach to supervising, it

means that the information literacy being advocated (explicitly or implicitly) by the

supervisor was going to be very different from discipline to discipline. It also means that

if a student had a “functional” supervisor, who pointed a student towards generic IL

education, the student might not be well placed to integrate him or herself into the

information world of his or her discipline. Sheila Webber, 2011

Research approach CIVIL ENGINEERING 17 “… what I have found in my experience is that those

people who, who say are in the fields of science, technology and engineering

are usually quite illiterate really in terms of the information in their own discipline,

and I think that is primarily because they are always given a research topic, you

know, it‟s usually the result of some of their, you know, some other kind of, you

know, their grant has come specifically to support a certain project, so they come

into with that question already. And they usually know nothing about it and then

they go away and find out about it. Whereas those who are doing more

qualitative research, say like something, you know, stemmed from something

more in themselves, they have a more personal, from before they start the

research, it comes from an interest within themselves and they are already a

little bit more aware of what is going on in their field and their discipline, so there

are those two aspects, but really what I am trying to do is get them to the point

that they can be literate in their discipline and its wide, wider context to generate

a suitable thesis for research.” Sheila Webber, 2011

“It helped me find the main focal point of my PhD …”

In the previous slide, the academic was

identifying different research approaches,

which to some extent may be related to

disciplinary differences. Some PhD students

may simply be “given” their research question

or hypothesis, told what research methods to

use, and be part of a larger research project.

This requires little exploration of the literature,

but rather very purposive and precise

searching. In contrast, a student developing

their own research question may spend more

or less the first year in exploring the research

literature and the research methods literature

to identify a meaningful question or hypothesis.

In the presentation, I played a videoclip of

Yazdan Mansourian describing the iterative

process of refining his research question and

then returning to the literature.

Sheila Webber, 2011

The next slide shows the criteria that someone examining a PhD at Sheffield University

uses, when deciding whether or not to award a candidate a PhD, following submission

of the written PhD and the viva.

As you see, they are very brief (the criteria at other universities where I have examined

PhDs are similar). They obviously have to be broad enough to cover PhDs in all

specialisms, but they provide a focus on what is really important.

Sheila Webber, 2011

Criteria for examining PhD

• Is original work which forms an addition to knowledge

• Shows evidence of systematic study and of the ability to relate the results of such study to the general body of knowledge in the subject

• Is worthy of publication either in full or in an abridged form

• In addition, the form of the thesis should be such that it is demonstrably a coherent body of work, i.e. includes a summary, an introduction, a description of the aims of the research, an analytical discussion of the related findings to date, the main results and conclusions, and sets the total work in context.

University of Sheffield Research and Innovation Services. (2011) Guidance Notes for

Examiners of research degree programmes . Sheffield: University of Sheffield

Sheila Webber, 2011

“If I had to do it again, I’d do it

again …”

Q: What does your PhD mean to you?

“An exploratory journey”

“Lifelong ambition” “.. give something

back …”

Here I showed two videoclips

in which Eva and Yazdan said

what the PhD meant to them.

To me, they illustrate how a

good doctoral candidate is not

just concerned about “the

piece of paper”, but values the

doctoral experience and has a

passion for their research

beyond the PhD.

Sheila Webber, 2011

Researcher Development Framework

Vitae®, © 2010 Careers Research and Advisory Centre (CRAC) Limited.

Although I am

not a fan of skill

lists, I think the

RDF makes a

good attempt to

capture skills and

knowledge

required, and

think it is good

that it includes

attitudes as well

as behaviours.

In another

presentation in

this seminar,

Moira Bent

showed how the

SCONUL 7

Pillars of

information

literacy could be

aligned with the

RDF

Sheila Webber, 2011

“All Postgraduate Research students will participate

in the Doctoral Development Programme (DDP).

The DDP will provide research students with a range

of skills and competency-based training

opportunities orientated both towards their specific programme

of study and towards future employment. In particular, as an

outcome of engaging with the DDP, during research studies,

doctoral graduates will possess advanced skills in inquiry,

communication and organisation. They should also be able to

reflect critically and take a creative approach to issues in and

beyond their field of research expertise.” (p17)

University of Sheffield Research and Innovation Service. (2010) Code of Practice for research

degree programmes 2010-2011. Sheffield: University of Sheffield. Sheila Webber, 2011

Doctoral Development Programme:

Sheffield University

© University of Sheffield

This is the structure of the

new development

programme for doctoral

students at Sheffield. I

think that it is good that

doctoral students have

structured frameworks for

development (to avoid the

horrors of non-supervision

that might have been

experienced in times gone

by) but they also may

leave out the creativity,

attitudes etc. from the

RDF & may convey

generic / simplistic notions

of information literacy.

Sheila Webber, 2011

Approaches to supervision (Lee, 2008)

• Functional: project management • Enculturation into the disciplinary community (supervisor as

gatekeeper, coach)

• Critical thinking: students questioning their work, supervisor

challenging, evaluating

• Emancipation: student growing, reflecting; supervisor mentoring

“Your job as a supervisor is to get them to the stage of knowing more

than you” (p274)

• Developing a quality relationship (reciprocal) between supervisor and

student

Returning to Lee‟s (2008) categories, essentially, these frameworks embody a “functional”

approach to doctoral supervision. I think that having this as part of your approach is essential,

but on its own it may not be a very rich experience for the student, nor enable them to explore

and develop their information literacy fully … Sheila Webber, 2011

Chemistry: Information literacy as…

1. Accessing and searching

chemical information

2. Mastering a chemist's information

skill set

3. Communicating scientific

information

4. An essential part of the

constitution/ construction/ creation

of knowledge

(Results from AHRC-funded research into conceptions of IL)

… since it may not

take account of

richer conceptions

of IL, such as some

of those given here

(these were the

conceptions of IL

discovered from

chemistry

academics in our

2002-5 research)

…

Sheila Webber, 2011

Example

• Behaviour:

• Develops new ways of working; has novel ideas and realises their potential

• Identifies new trends; creates new opportunities

• Develops convincing and persuasive arguments to defend research

• Takes intellectual risks; challenges the status quo

• Attitude:

• Takes a creative, imaginative and inquiring approach to research

• Is open to new sources of ideas

3. Creativity

1. Inquiring mind

2. Intellectual insight

3. Innovation

4. Argument construction

5. Intellectual risk

Vitae®, © 2010 Careers Research and Advisory Centre (CRAC) Limited.

… nor develop these behaviours and

attitudes which the RDF identifies as

required for an effective researcher

Sheila Webber, 2011

I finish with the next slide, showing the Information Literate University. This is because I

feel that this support structure of an ILU is needed to ensure that all students can

experience an information literate doctoral journey. The support and development

enabled by an ILU (more rounded and creative than that specified by a functional

doctoral programme, or the individualities of a supervisor) would be important in the

student‟s development of an information literacy of value in his/her discipline, in his/her

career, and in his/her life as a citizen.

Sheila Webber, 2011

Copyright Sheila Webber and Bill Johnston, 2010

Information Literate

University

Information literate

staff & managers

Management for IL •Strategy; Policy;

•Resourcing; infrastructure;

•Knowledge & Records

Staff

development

for IL Information

literate

students

Information literate

Curriculum • IL in disciplinary

curriculum

• IL as discipline

Information

literate research

Sheila Webber Information School

University of Sheffield

s.webber@sheffield.ac.uk

SL & Twitter Sheila Yoshikawa

http://information-literacy.blogspot.com/

http://www.slideshare.net/sheilawebber/

Graphics: Sheila Webber

unless otherwise stated

References

• Brew, A. (2001). “Conceptions of Research: A phenomenographic study.” Studies in Higher Education, 26(3), 271-285.

• Lee, A. (2008) “How are doctoral students supervised? Concepts of doctoral research supervision.” Studies in Higher Education, 33(3), 267-281.

• Webber, S. and Johnston, B. (2010) The Information Literate University. Video of talk presented at Lund University, Sweden, August 2010. http://uwap03.uw.lu.se/KongressCentrum5/Viewer/?peid=9d3f3d440b6d4b5f953c08d4594b5424

Sheila Webber, 2011