Creating sustainable postgraduate supervision learning environments through critical emancipatory research

• Main Author: Molebatsi Milton Nkoane
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: AOSIS 2013-12-01
• Series: The Journal for Transdisciplinary Research in Southern Africa
• Subjects: sustainable learning environments; social justice; emancipation; pedagogic praxis; critical emancipatory research
• Online Access: http://www.td-sa.net/index.php/td/article/view/186

This article articulates pedagogic praxis for postgraduate supervision couched within sustainable learning environments with emancipatory aims. The paper probes the discourses of hegemony as a form of power that relies on non-coercive control by supervisors over students (master-apprentice model). Furthermore, it proposes a counter-hegemonic pedagogic praxis informed by critical emancipatory research. I amplify how postgraduate supervision could be a liberating experience, drawing from my own experiences as part of a supervisory team of 15 academics and cohort of 28 doctoral and 22 master’s students. The article interrogates the struggles on the continuum of power formations between supervisor and students. It proposes an alternative, liberating postgraduate supervision as a pedagogic praxis to counter the dominant discourse. It concludes by emphasising the importance of creating enabling sustainable learning environments with a promise of a counter-hegemonic praxis that requires rearranging master-apprentice relations.