Fiction and supervision pedagogies: Creative
approaches to supervisors' professional development

Professional development opportunities for postgraduate supervisors generally run a predictable course.

They often engage the 'administrative framing' of postgraduate supervision (Smith, 2001, p. 26). This involves focusing on the administrative processes involved in research education; the roles and responsibilities of supervisors and students; project management skills; interpersonal relationship and communication issues; and the research education policy context. While these issues are important in supervision relationships, they generally do not investigate critical and postmodernist insights about supervision pedagogy, which raise problematic issues of power, desire, irrationality and the body within supervision relationships. Barbara Grant (2003) offers one of the few programs that explicitly seeks to explore these issues, using her supervision 'palimpsest or map'.

As an attempt to bring some of these perspectives into our supervision development programs, we have each begun experimenting with alternative approaches that may start to unearth some of the inherent complexities in the 'chaotic pedagogy' (Grant, 2003) of supervision. Catherine Manathunga (2004) has used fiction writing as an academic development activity in her Learning Circles on postgraduate supervision. Angela Brew and Tai Peseta (2004) encourage supervisors to draw on a mix of autobiography, reflection and case study work to unpack assumptions of their practice, while Coralie McCormack (2004) uses a story-dialogue approach in her academic development work. This showcase symposium outlines each of these approaches and provides participants with an opportunity to select and experience one of them in detail. A full reference list will be available at the symposium.