The Academic Supervisor of Higher Education Students’ Final Projects: A Gatekeeper of Quality?

Abstract

The production and presentation for public discussion of an end-of-programme project, thesis or dissertation are unavoidable elements for the conclusion of academic training in study programmes of various levels, namely bachelor’s, master’s and PhD. Although these end-of-programme projects may take on various forms, as well as different levels of demand, supervision in the production of these projects is one of the critical elements for their success. This article aims to analyse the supervision process, examining the supervision strategies that faculty members may mobilise in their role as academic supervisors. To this end, the authors carried out a bibliographic collection, which made it possible to substantiate the proposals set out throughout this piece of research. The results allow concluding that, to be effective and efficient, supervision strategies need to consider, as a basic assumption, that this is a pedagogical relationship, with asymmetric powers between the supervisor(s) and the student(s), in which it is paramount to acknowledge the different duties of each party. Furthermore, this relationship entails the need for flexibility on the part of the supervisor, taking into account both the characteristics of the supervisor and of the work designed and the development of the entire process, which may motivate and involve several supervision strategies in the same supervision over time/process. This whole dynamic takes place in a context where it seems important to (re)think the final product of the academic supervision process.

Received: 30 October 2020 / Accepted: 3 December 2020/ Published: 17 January 2021