The functional supervisor and the emancipated student

Abstract

A key objective of the PhD education is to produce independent scholars. This strive for independence can for many PhD students be frustrating and problematic. One way of overcoming this frustration is for the supervisor to apply a functional approach to supervising the PhD student. This study tries to answer how much and what kind of functional support the supervisor shall give, and when this support shall be given. A total of 12 supervisors and 11 PhD students from six departments at the Faculty of engineering, Lund university, were interviewed. The results suggest that the supervisor – student relationship relies on implicit behaviours during which the supervisor progressively adapts his level of functional supervision. But most importantly, during which the student learns to gradually express his/her own ideas and carries them to completion.