Julia Everitt
Senior Research Fellow in Health, Education and Life Sciences
ALDinHE is an externally funded project exploring doctoral supervisor and candidate collaborative responses to equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI). Supervisors take part in a professional development programme, during which they may explore responses to EDI issues as part of a practitioner inquiry. Whilst supervisors are encouraged to share their experiences via blogs in the scholarship literature, these are rarely written, and this is potentially hidden scholarly activity. The blog reflects on the challenges, assumptions and complexities of conducting the project’s literature review.
Background
A doctoral supervisors’ handbook warns how policies have transformed doctoral education leading to an increase in ‘non-traditional candidates’. This term, although contentious is underpinned by research such as Peterson which suggests that historically doctoral candidates were disproportionately younger, male, from higher socio-economic backgrounds, from majority ethnic groups and did not have a disability. Existing blog posts by Gagnon emphasize that both universities and supervisors need to respond to these candidates’ diverse needs to move beyond policy commitment statements with supervisors supporting candidates through points, tips & strategies from the University of Nottingham. Whilst research by Guerin and colleagues suggests supervisors are influenced by being supervised themselves, Jara in their article, warns that not all supervisors receive professional development or pedagogical support, instead it could include training focused on regulations. Professional development is important as Silence in their paper warns how discussing EDI issues when supporting candidates learning development can cause anxiety, but my earlier paper discussed research has shown how supervisors have different perceptions around their role.
I blogged about being a facilitator of the Birmingham City University Communities of Practice (CoP)programme for doctoral supervisors. I became programme co-lead in 2022 and have been reflecting how being involved in this programme is encouraging positive scholarly activity which is responding to equality, diversity and inclusion issues or EDI. Whilst supervisors are encouraged to share their experiences via blogs such as this blog by Cooper, there are only limited examples of this.
The project being discussed in this blog includes a literature review of published and grey literature, from 2010 to 2024 looking for collaborative responses to EDI in doctoral supervision. Our keyword approach was EDI, those terms separately and equity, we also used ‘non-traditional’ (from Taylor and colleagues handbook), the protected characteristics from the Equality Act 2010, the diversity aspects of doctoral provision (e.g. part-time, Prof Docs), plus doctoral supervision and higher education. Below we both individually reflect on the process and complexities of searching through these terms and the challenges to our assumptions.
Literature Review Results
We located 145 items which we grouped into four categories: EDI in doctoral supervision, EDI related barriers,inclusive supervisory practice and strategies/solutions. Only nine items specifically refer to EDI in doctoral supervision. There were 109 items for the barriers, two for inclusive practice and 25 for strategies/solutions, highlighting limited literature around the solutions which was our focus.
Reflections on undertaking the literature review
The literature review will help to develop a questionnaire for doctoral supervisors. It became apparent that EDI is used by the institution and national organisations (e.g. UKRI) but not in the bulk of the literature. It felt as if EDI was everywhere and nowhere. Whilst authors use the term ‘non-traditional,’ there is clearly contentiousness there, which I experienced from talking about the project. I realized that it is important to capture both the barriers and the enablers of EDI to move beyond a deficit model or othering.
It became apparent that EDI is used by the institution and national organisations (e.g. UKRI) but not in the bulk of the literature. It felt as if EDI was everywhere and nowhere.
I developed a framework of how to refer to EDI in a broader sense underpinned by literature including diversity characteristics, the nine protected characteristics from the Equality Act (2010), the diversification in doctoral studies, identity characteristics and intersectionality, impact of trauma (McChesney) and life changing experiences (Wright’s paper). This caused a shift from referring to the project as exploring ‘EDI’ to referring to the diversity profile and identity characteristics of candidates, but also recognizing these as both barriers and enablers. This thinking was carried forward into the questionnaire.
PhD researcher Shaun Allen-Dooley's reflections on undertaking the review of these terms
Early on there were some conceptual questions that might be worth sharing. First, keywords can become overly broad in a project like this. The ‘E,’ the ‘D,’ and the ‘I’ are not necessarily easy terms to interpret – nor do they always come in that order. Traditionally these can stand for ‘Equality, Diversity and Inclusion.’ But then that already can be questioned as ‘Equality’ might be interpreted as ‘equality of opportunity’ or as ‘equality of outcome’ - two vastly different ideas that can create a tension between different concepts of fairness.
We conducted a literature search for ‘equality’ but also for ‘equity.’ Again, there is a distinction between these two - potentially opposed - ideas. A popular cartoon about equality and equity is often used to demonstrate some of this difference. But it makes something complex seem simplistic and will potentially be much harder to negotiate such ideas in practice.
These conceptual underpinnings matter, and having that conceptual clarity is important. It can say a lot about the direction of a policy initiative or about the actions we might choose to take as educators or doctoral supervisors. This is not necessarily an easy space to navigate. These are questions of fairness. And how might we even go about deciding on an agreed upon idea of fairness?
In any issue worth tackling, there is going to be some level of complexity. But in some ways, particularly when we look at national politics and media, this complexity becomes reduced. And EDI becomes a polarising topic, with a 'backlash' against EDI efforts gaining traction with cuts to EDI initiatives (McVey article) to EDI initiatives and reductions to university staff in the USA news article by Nottingham and colleagues.