Doctoral partnership guide

Is it up to the supervisor to ask their PhD student to submit regular drafts of chapters of their thesis or is it up to the PhD student to go to their supervisor and ask for feedback on their work? Who should take the initiative to arrange a meeting? If you and your supervisor each answered these kinds of questions, would you be on the same page right away? The ReD has recently developed a tool to facilitate transparent communication with your supervisor about your mutual needs and expectations!

Concept

The doctorate is a research training, led by a responsible junior researcher, supervised by several experienced researchers, including a main supervisor. The professional relationship between the PhD student and the latter is known to be one of the key factors increasing the chances of the doctorate completion (e.g. Gill & Burnard, 2013; Orellana, Darder, Pérez, & Salinas, 2016 ; Peterse, Lasser, Caglio, Stoltmann, Rusiecka & Schmidt, 2018).

Establishing, from the start, a clear communication regarding the expectations of those two partners is a fundamental step for the success of their incoming relationship (i.e. Lambert, 2013 ; Niclasse, 2019 ; Wisker, 2012).

The “Doctoral Partnership Guide” (DPG) has been developed with this in mind, in order to provide guidelines allowing both partners to 1) think about their individual expectations and needs and 2) promote a transparent communication about those.

Composition and use

This document consists of two parts.

Individual preliminary part

It consists of two versions: the “Supervisor” version and the “PhD student” version. In this part, the PhD student and the supervisor fill in their version individually. The goal is to think and form an opinion on the diverse thematics, freely.

Download - Supervisor version

DownloaD - phd version

Common final part

The two partners share their respective expectations and agree on the final terms, in a joint consideration. This part includes the points proposed in the individual versions. The answers provided in this second part will therefore be the image of a mutual agreement, based on a discussion.

DonwloaD - Common part

Renewal, contract breach and warning

The DPG has been designed to be renewable. It is highly advised that the partners conduct an annual report of their expectations and commitments. The registration renewal is probably the most appropriate moment, but it could also be at a major turning point of the research project of the doctoral research, as well as when any of the two partners feels a big change has occurred. This tool does not aim at guaranteeing the achievement of the doctoral thesis, but to help living more serene PhDs for both partners.

DownloaD - Introduction