Overview of Study

Objective: Our study was originally designed to focus on three main themes of
the Supervisor and Student Relationship and see the links between those
elements and the nature of the interaction in terms of frequency, mode,
formality and alignment. The three main themes were:

Extent of Supervisor Support

Student Approaches to Supervisor
Productivity/Progress/Collaboration Levels Stemming from the Relationship

We hypothesised the following:

Hypothesis 1 The more regularly the supervisor interacts with the

student, the more comfortable they are with one another
Hypothesis 2 The longer the supervisor has known the student, the
better guidance the supervisor can provide to the student
Hypothesis 3 The more PhD supervision experience the supervisor has,
the better guidance the student will receive
Hypothesis 4 Supervision style fit leads to better working relationships
Hypothesis 5 Alignment of topics leads to more collaboration between
supervisors and students
Hypothesis 6 A Supervisor that guides a team of students rather than
several individuals will lead to superior guidance

After observing and conducting our first two interviews, we discovered that a
coherent research team culture and environment drove the supervisor and
student relationship, leading to the student to be far more comfortable with
approaching the supervisor with potential issues as well as the supervisor being
more hands on in a mentoring role.
We then decided to look into conflict and potential problems within the
supervisor and student relationship for a different perspective with our Post-Grad
Coordinator and Post-Doc Student interviews.

Reflection
Our probing was limited to an extent for the first two interviews due to time
constraints.
We were somewhat interested in the goals having seen a very cohesive
relationship and heard about how the supervisor wanted to ensure the student
had a successful career following their PhD, but we did not have the chance to
ask about the specific goals the supervisor and student were striving to achieve.
Additionally, there were so many positive aspects of the relationship that were
unveiled in the interviews and we did not probe too much due to time
constraints. We could have potentially asked what their favourite part of working
with one another was and should have probed when they brought up their
research trips and other experiences outside of working on campus.
Moreover, we made an assumption that the relationship was due to the vibe of
the meeting and the numerous and did not consider that there could have been
difficulties. We assumed that the relationship was completely smooth and the
only difficulty lay in Yenni adjusting to Australia and learning Chinese for
research, which was brought up by Shan to be one of his concerns.
Given how experienced Shan was with supervising, we could have also
potentially asked about how Yenni was different from his previous 15 students
and this could have generated interesting insights as she followed him to
Australia from Singapore for supervision reasons.
Another key assumption we made related to how they came to work with one
another as because Yenni said that they met at NUS and he taught her in
coursework, we assumed that it was how they met. We could have clarified and
probed about the process on how they were paired up but did not get the chance
to. However, we had previously heard from Yenni that because he was the only
qualitative based researcher and topic area was aligned, he was the most
suitable supervisor and so in hindsight it may have been correct in making that
assumption.