Scaffolding in PhD Supervisory Talk

Abstract

Adopting Vygotsky’s socio-cultural perspective, this case study aims to explore and describe how a supervisor’s scaffolding create learning opportunities for a student to practise critical thinking and responding ability in PhD face-to-face supervisory talk. Data was collected through audio-taping which was then used as the basis for a stimulated recall interview with the supervisor to identify purposes. Types of scaffolding were identified inductively from the supervision transcript through a process of recursive categorisation and were then matched against the stated purposes. The findings suggest that a supervisor plays a focal role in guiding, challenging for clarification, supporting and shaping contributions so that the PhD student receives opportunities to express, reflect on and reason out her research ideas, and to learn from the unfolding interaction through constant meaning negotiation and knowledge construction. Limitations and recommendations are discussed for future research on supervision practice.