Abstract:
Team supervision has become accepted practice in the supervision of doctoral students in social sciences, humanities and education in Australian universities. However there is great diversity of interpretation of ‘team’ with teams framed in a variety of ways. In a recent qualitative study of cohorts of Australian doctoral students, experienced and early career supervisors, team configuration has been carefully examined, and three main modes identified. By defining these modes into de facto dyad, segmented and collaborative teams, power relationships that typically operate within these discrete forms may be more closely examined. The operation modes of these team forms impacts on available power relationships which has significant influence on the experience of doctoral studies for students, and the learning outcomes for team members, including supervisors. By understanding how power operates in teams, more may be understood by supervisors and doctoral students about structuring their teams to enhance outcomes for all stakeholders. A framework of theories of agentic power, data from semi-structured interviews of experienced supervisors and late stage doctoral students are used to investigate and develop a taxonomy for team supervision This current paper focuses on defining the three identified modes of teams and tentatively proposes available power relationships in these modes.