The PhD and the Autonomous Self: Gender, rationality and postgraduate pedagogy

Abstract

Interventions in the quality of research training provided in universities today focus largely on educating supervisors and monitoring their performance as well as student progress. More private than any other scene of teaching and learning, postgraduate supervision-and more generally the pedagogic practices of the PhD-has largely remained unscrutinised and unquestioned. This article explores the problematic character of ideas of autonomy and the independent scholar that underpin the traditional practices of postgraduate pedagogy, particularly in the humanities and social sciences disciplines. These ideas are found to guide the practices of several different models of the supervisory relationship, whether they be of a pastoral care or more distant kind. The gendered character of the ideas of autonomy and the subject of knowledge that underlie these practices of postgraduate pedagogy are examined, as is the paradoxical nature of the processes of the production of the autonomous scholar self. The article concludes by suggesting some possible lines of thought for the future in addressing the problems in doctoral education identified through this analysis.