Description:
Academic boundaries are in some ways similar to national boundaries - they are set up to colonise and govern, but at the same time are constantly challenged to reaffirm their authority and meaning. The postgraduate environment has been and is still colonised and governed by a variety of boundaries: inter/national, geographical, cultural, institutional, disciplinary and paradigmatic; also those of knowledge and relationships, and many more. The contributions to this book set out to explore and challenge such boundaries as they exist within the postgraduate environment.
Brief description: Eli Bitzer is Director of the Centre for Higher and Adult Education in the faculty of Education, Stellenbosch University (SU). He has worked for nineteen years in academic staff development at Free State University and for the past fifteen years he has taught at the master's level and supervised a substantial number of master's and PhD students at SU in higher education studies. He has published extensively in the field of higher education and his current fields of interest are postgraduate supervision, doctoral education and different aspects of quality promotion in higher education.
Review Quotes:
This book is a very important contribution to the growing body of work on postgraduate, and specifically doctoral, education. I find the metaphor of pushing boundaries to be very appropriate, as it suggests a field of study and a range of behaviours and institutional organisational approaches to postgraduate education that are dynamic and characterised by fluidity, creativity and challenge. Readers will gain new theoretical perspectives, ideas for improved practice, and fresh perspectives on boundaries and pressing issues that deserve to be pushed and conceptualised in new ways. Professor Ann Austin Higher, Adult and Lifelong Education, Michigan State University This book is a marvellous resource for all those who want to 'push boundaries' in postgraduate supervision and who wish to embrace new strategies, models and practices of supervision with confidence and credibility. It provides fresh ideas and theoretical perspectives around supervision, probes models and practices, and
critiques policy and raises questions about the levels and kinds of support provided for postgraduate students and supervisors. This book will, by turns, challenge, provoke, stimulate, outrage and reassure postgraduate supervisors, researchers and managers in higher education. Professor Jane Castle
Academic Staff Development, Centre for Learning,
Teaching and Development, University of the Witwatersrand
This book on postgraduate supervision will probably hold some interest for any academic who is involved in postgraduate supervision, but the real audience is those who are engaged with the scholarship of postgraduate supervision, who would be interested in the novel theoretical framings, the thoughtful discursive papers and the reports of empirical studies. The chapters are grounded in current debates within the field and they draw on and contribute to international research agendas.
Professor Judy Backhouse
School of Economic and Business Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand