Mind Mapping Supervision

The Boundaries, Challenges and Potentials of Doctoral Supervision in Relation to
Mentoring, Coaching and Teaching in Artistic Research.

Lead Partner: Academy of Fine Arts Prague

This work package will explore the boundaries of supervision, aiming to come up with a working definition of what supervision is – and what it is not. This will be achieved by confronting the concept of doctoral supervision with similar concepts such as mentoring, coaching, and teaching.

Main questions at stake:

• What are the basic challenges in the area of doctoral art education?
• How can the criteria for supervision be defined (from the perspective of a highly diversified field of artistic research)?
• What are the supervisors´ responsibilities towards the higher education institution?
• What are the responsibilities of the supervisor and the institution towards the doctoral student?
• What are the challenges of diferent supervision models?

The mind map is meant to focus on collecting information, facts and knowledge harvested by a long-term practice of doctoral studies at the partner institutions. Based on an initial mapping, the work package will define the main challenges as well as outline the potentials and develop ways of advancing doctoral-level supervision. The work package will bring in new perspectives based on the local practices and give challenging views on actual practices in order to outline the ways of enhancing the quality of supervision. In particular the boundaries of doctoral supervision in relation to practices of mentoring, of coaching, of teaching will be explored. The mind map will, for example, be an important tool for discussing the limits of supervision with young supervisors. With the mind map as a tool, heads of doctoral programmes, can make the different roles involved in supervision understandable and make clear who should be responsible for what. Also the mind map can be an important tool in situations of conflict which often arise from unrealistic expectations (on the side of the supervisor, on the side of the PhD student, on the side of the institution). The mind map should help manage these expectations.