Mapping supervision trends in doctoral research in library and information science in Nigeria and South Africa: implications for collective learning

Abstract

Research supervisors are indispensable to the production of postgraduate research. Using the Activity Theory and the Scholarship of Integration Framework, this qualitative content analysis study investigated trends in supervision of doctoral research in library and information science at selected universities in Nigeria and South Africa between 2009 and 2015. A total of 108 doctoral theses from 10 selected universities in Nigeria and South Africa whose research outputs were deposited in the Directory of Open Access Repositories were used as the sample for
this study. Sole supervision predominated the supervision trends. The main subject areas of research were information studies in both countries and knowledge management and records management in South Africa. It is recommended that supervisors and policymakers in the two countries consider other postgraduate
supervision models including collaborative supervision. There is mounting evidence that collaborative supervision has superior benefits  for both the supervisors and the students, compared to the dyadic supervision model. Collaborative supervision promotes quality scholarship and reasonable completion times. It also has implications for collective learning and building capacity of postgraduate supervisors.

Keywords: Research Supervision; Doctoral Research; Library Science Research; Collaborative Supervision; Research Output