Keywords

As we discussed in the introductory parts of the book, the relationship between supervisors and students is an essential part of the supervision process and the degree project work. The type of supervisor-student relationship that prevails in a particular supervision situation will affect, for example, the tools used by the supervisors and the demands and expectations placed on the students. How then can you, as a supervisor, contribute to this relationship being positive and constructive? In this chapter, we discuss several aspects of this, including the balance between the professional and the personal in supervision, and how the design of the supervision conversation itself can affect the relationship between supervisor and student.

Building a Relationship

Although a considerable amount of supervision time is usually spent on activities such as giving feedback on texts and drafts written by the students and students informing supervisors about the progress of their work and problems they have encountered (cf. Vehviläinen 2012), supervision also consists of interactions that contribute in several ways to the development of the student-supervisor relationship. As we discussed in the introductory parts of the book, the relationship between the supervisors and the students and their different roles in relation to each other is an aspect that is described as crucial in much of the research on supervision and in many of the handbooks written on the subject.Footnote 1 It is of obvious relevance to the supervision of postgraduate students, not least because a doctoral thesis takes several years to complete and the work often involves a great deal of interaction and varying degrees of collaboration between supervisor and student (e.g. Fan et al. 2018; Hjelm 2015; Mainhard et al. 2009; Wichmann-Hansen and Schmidt Nielsen 2023; Jacobsen et al. 2021; Schneijderberg 2021). Although a master’s thesis or degree project does not take as long and generally does not involve as much interaction or developed relationships, the supervisor-student relationship is also important in this context (e.g. Ädel et al. 2023; e.g. Agricola et al. 2021; Van Veldhuizen et al. 2021; Lee 2019; Vereijken et al. 2018; Rienecker et al. 2019).

Building a good relationship between supervisors and students in the context of degree project supervision can involve fairly basic aspects, such as how to greet students when you first meet, how to start and end supervision meetings, what questions supervisors ask students about things beyond the thesis work, and also what such questions students ask supervisors. If, as a supervisor, you have many students at the same time and not enough time to spend with each of them, this kind of interaction—chatting about the weather, summer plans or what you did last weekend—may seem unnecessary and like a waste of time. However, even such basic and seemingly trivial aspects can contribute to the development of a supervisor-student relationship characterised by students seeing it as possible or appealing to be active in the joint scaffolding work that the supervision process can entail (cf. van de Pol 2012; van de Pol et al. 2010).

It may also help the supervisor to gain insight into the students’ preconditions and goals for the work, as well as the struggles and problems they encounter along the way. In other words, it helps to determine what level the students are at and to establish contingency, which makes it easier for the supervisor to decide how best to design the supervision and which parts or aspects are most important to spend time on (cf. van de Pol et al. 2012, 2015, 2019). In the documented supervision interaction in our project, it was evident that supervisors spent a considerable amount of supervision time trying to find out where the students were in the degree project process. For example, they could ask explicit questions, both during the supervision sessions and via email, about how students were progressing with different aspects of the degree project work: the collection of empirical material, the writing process, experiences from seminars within the course, or problems that students had encountered, and so on.

In the focus group interviews, several of the participating supervisors emphasised another aspect of providing contingent support in the supervision context—that students have different personalities, backgrounds and prior knowledge, and that supervision needs to be calibrated accordingly in order for it to be useful and constructive for the thesis work. In one of the focus groups at a Russian university, one of the supervisors described it as follows:

Different people need different approaches. Although we are working on the same task, we always have to take into account [the student’s] personality, abilities and level of responsibility.

Focus Group Interview 6

The need to tailor your supervision to the students you are supervising, according to their backgrounds, needs, abilities and personalities, was highlighted in focus group interviews at different universities in both countries. In many cases, supervisors linked the need to adapt their supervision practice to the students they supervised to the goal of encouraging and enabling student independence. As in the following examples:

Well, there are [policy] documents and there are students. They are human beings and they are all different. So, of course, it is difficult to work with just one given scheme. All students are different and each one requires a different approach. For example, I may spend more time with one student and less with another. Some students are more independent and self-sufficient, and all you need to do is give them the direction and that’s it. Others need a lot more hours of work.

Focus Group Interview 8

It is simply that students have very different starting points, both as people and in terms of experience and knowledge and so on, and you have to meet them where they are. In order to, where they are, help them to practice being independent

Focus Group Interview 2

The way in which supervisors talked about the need to adapt their supervision practice to students’ needs, backgrounds and preferences could be understood to mean that they took student diversity into account in several ways when planning and conducting their supervision. One aspect of student diversity that has been discussed, for example in research on the internationalisation of higher education and international student mobility, is how cultural and linguistic differences can be central elements in how academic contexts and practices are perceived and experienced by students (e.g. Dall’Alba and Sidhu 2013; Furukawa et al. 2013; Sidhu and Dall’alba 2017; Laufer and Gorup 2018; Gregersen-Hermans 2016; Fotovatian and Miller 2014). Such differences, related to how thesis supervision always takes place in specific national and local academic settings, may also be significant for how the relationship between students and supervisors is perceived (Ding and Devine 2018; Doyle et al. 2018; Fan et al. 2018; Hellstén and Ucker Perotto 2018).

The relevance of students’ national and local academic backgrounds was also mentioned in some of the focus group interviews in our project, for example by supervisors comparing their experiences of regular students within a programme with their perceptions of exchange students from other countries. However, as the interview quotes above illustrate, supervisors did not limit their recognition of the significance of student diversity to these characteristics, but also talked about how differences related to personality, competencies, and prior education and knowledge were relevant to the supervision interaction. The recorded supervision sessions also revealed how supervisors regularly received or asked for information about students’ current life situations. This is potentially relevant to the degree project process and supervision, as it may influence how much time and energy students are able to devote to their thesis work at any given time. Although the expectation may be that students should prioritise their degree project work in order to complete it on time, in practice factors such as financial circumstances, part-time jobs, health issues, childcare or life crises may well mean that this is not possible, or is not perceived to be possible. An awareness of this might, perhaps, lessen some frustration on the part of the supervisor when the degree project work is not progressing as planned.Footnote 2

A well-functioning relationship between supervisors and students can contribute to these various exchanges of information about the student’s work process, life situation, preferences, skills and prior knowledge taking place in a constructive way. In this chapter we will continue to explore how the supervisor-student relationship can be influenced by the actions of both supervisors and students, as well as by the design and structure of supervision meetings. However, we begin by discussing the rather complicated issue of how and to what extent the relationship between supervisors and students should be characterised by being academic and professional, personal or even private.

Managing the Supervisor-Student Relationship

A good relationship between supervisors and students may thus be beneficial to the degree project process by contributing to students’ willingness or confidence to participate actively in the supervision interaction, and by facilitating for supervisors to adapt their supervision to the needs and preferences of the supervised students. From an academic literacies perspective, it is worth emphasising that expectations of what the supervisor-student relationship should look like depend not only on the individual supervisor and student but also on the local academic environment of which they are a part, and the expectations and ideals that prevail there (cf. Lea and Street 2000, 2006; Lillis 2001; Lillis and Scott 2007). For example, in one local academic setting, there may be expectations that the supervisors should appear distant from their students and that the supervision relationship should be primarily professional and academic, whereas in other academic settings, there may be expectations that the relationship between supervisors and students should be more personal.

Expectations may also concern how hierarchical the relationship between supervisors and students is perceived or expected to be, which can be related to Dysthe’s (2002) typification of how the supervisor-student relationship can be characterised by the supervisor being considered an expert or a master, or by a more equal partnership relationship. From a scaffolding perspective, it could perhaps be argued that a partnership relationship should provide the best opportunities for both supervisor and student to be active in the learning process (cf. van de Pol 2012; van de Pol et al. 2010). At the same time, it is necessary to keep in mind that the relationship between supervisor and student is hierarchical in nature. If there are differences and contradictions in how the students and the supervisors think the work should proceed, what choices are possible or best to make, the supervisors’ opinions will generally carry more weight than those of the students. In most cases, this is as it should be, since supervisors, by virtue of their position and experience, typically know more about how to write a good degree project than the students can be expected to. This is not to say that supervisors always know best, but rather that even in a supervisor-student relationship characterised by partnership, there are issues and boundaries that are not and should not be negotiable.

Another aspect of this is that the supervisor-student relationship is influenced by where the students are in the process of writing the degree project at any given time. From a scaffolding perspective, the relationship between supervisor and student should be characterised by the students taking on increasing responsibility as the thesis work progresses, while the supervisors gradually take on a more subordinate role (cf. van de Pol 2012; van de Pol et al. 2010). But it can also be the case that the supervision is initially characterised by partnership, in the sense that the supervisor tries to encourage and enthuse the student so that the work gets started and the student becomes confident enough to take initiatives, while the relationship can become more hierarchical and the supervision more directive or characterised by teaching towards the end of the work, when there is time pressure and the question of whether the degree project will meet the quality requirements becomes critical (Zackariasson 2019).

There are studies and handbooks on academic supervision that emphasise how a more personal relationship between supervisors and students, which also takes into account social and emotional factors, may be valued by students and beneficial for thesis work (e.g. Rienecker, Wichmann-Hansen and Stray Jørgensen 2019; Lee 2019; Brodin et al. 2020). However, a healthy and well-functioning relationship between supervisors and students does not necessarily imply a personal or remarkably close relationship. There are certain risks associated with the supervisor-student relationship becoming too marked by friendship or too focused on the emotional or social, so that role confusion occurs or academic work is overshadowed (Basic 2021, 19f; Blåsjö 2010). Susan Clegg (2000) has discussed this in a study of how doctoral supervisors experience the supervision situation and the supervision relationship. She suggests that supervisors and students may have differing views on what constitutes an appropriate level of closeness between supervisor and student, and that it is not obvious that students would value an overly warm relationship, or that they would expect the relationship to be anything other than professional and distant.

It is thus far from obvious what constitutes an appropriately personal relationship in the supervision context. What may be seen as friendly questions by a given supervisor may be seen as inappropriately private by one student, but completely unproblematic to another. Conversely, what a particular supervisor may perceive as a professional, moderately detached attitude may be perceived by some students as callous and distant, while the same type of approach works perfectly well with other students. There are of course also ethical issues to consider when it comes to how private or personal the relationship between supervisor and student can or should be. With the me-too movement, it became obvious that sexual harassment occurs in the context of higher education, but even before that, various studies and surveys had highlighted this problem (see e.g. Husu 2001; Muhonen 2016; Fedina et al. 2018; Istead et al. 2021). Some studies suggest that the relationship between supervisors and students, both postgraduate and undergraduate, is particularly precarious in this regard (see e.g. Bondestam and Lundqvist 2018). This is partly due to the fact that students are in a position of dependency in relation to the supervisor. If conflicts or problems arise between them, this can have considerable negative consequences for the supervision the students receive and for the progress of the work. Compared to other forms of teaching, supervision is also more likely to be one-to-one. There is therefore a risk that students may end up in a particularly vulnerable position if supervisors overstep the boundaries of what is ethically correct or what a particular student or postgraduate is comfortable with.

The fact that students are so clearly in a position of dependence in relation to supervisors is relevant to consider not only in terms of sexual harassment, but more generally when it comes to the supervisor-student relationship (cf. Basic 2021; Löfström and Pyhältö 2012; Brodin et al. 2020). There is a certain grey area where the boundaries of what is perceived as too personal and intimate can vary considerably from person to person. For example, where should supervision meetings take place? Should they always take place at the university, or can you meet in a coffee shop instead? Is it unproblematic to have supervision in the office with the door closed, or should you book a meeting room with glass windows? Are there any problems with conducting a digital supervision meeting from your bedroom, with your children on your lap or your dog barking in the background? Is it advisable to invite students to your home, if you for instance think that this would create a more personal relationship that might be beneficial for the work process?

When it comes to these kinds of questions, there are of course no obvious answers that apply to all types of supervisor-student relationships and all supervision situations. However, since the choices you make as a supervisor, for example where supervision meetings take place, can affect both the formal nature of the supervision situation and the relationship with the student, it is useful to reflect on such factors. Given that supervision can be emotional in a number of ways, which we will return to in Chap. 5, it is also worth considering what might happen if a student becomes upset or inconsolable in a supervision situation that takes place away from the university. In some disciplines and programmes, there are guidelines on how supervision should normally be conducted, which may include, for example, how often the supervisors are expected to meet the students and in what way. By including in such guidelines aspects related to the boundary between the professional, personal and private, and by discussing these in various collegial contexts, supervisors’ awareness of these issues and their ability to handle them when they arise may be increased.

Another consideration is how much of the supervisor’s private life should be shared with the students. In some situations, it is necessary for students to be informed about events in the supervisors’ personal life, as they may affect the supervision in one way or another. Such events may include illness, death in the family or other life crises that make the supervisors less available than before, or that may result in students having to find a new supervisor. In such circumstances, it is important and natural that students are given the information they need. How much and what kind of information students should receive is then a matter for the individual supervisor or, where appropriate, the course or programme coordinator to decide on a case-by-case basis.

Sometimes much less serious matters in the supervisors’ personal lives affect the conditions for supervision, as in the following example from our material, where the discussion concerned the timing of the next supervision meeting:

Student O::

We said next Tuesday, didn’t we?

Supervisor F::

That’s right. Mm, in a week, yes. And it’s always the case for you now that half past two is not a good time, huh?

Student P::

Well, it’s that I…

Supervisor F::

No, but let’s go with that today, so…

Student O::

Should we change the day or?

Supervisor F::

No, let’s go with this, um, actually it’s (laughs)… It’s my daughter sitting out there. You know, she got sick so, uh, so she had to come along.

Student P::

Yeah, yeah.

Supervisor F::

Sit there and play instead.

Students O & P::

(laughing)

Supervisor F::

But… uh… But otherwise she actually has practice on Tuesdays, and I didn’t think about that. Then she starts at five o’clock and then I’ll have to get home to [place] and pick her up from school. Get home and eat something and then get to the sports hall. And it turns out (laughs) that it doesn’t work. That is not possible.

Student P::

But then… Yes, well, it depends on whether I might…

Supervisor F::

But really, no. It’s more important that… /…/ No, but let’s go with three o’clock.

Supervisor F, Recording 6, Pair supervision

This excerpt from the recorded supervision interaction can be considered from several perspectives. On the one hand, it could be viewed as an example of how supervisors could try to contribute to a more personal relationship with the students, in this case by referring to a daughter when explaining to the students why a particular time was not optimal for supervision meetings. Talking about one’s family in this way may help to show that supervisors are human and have lives outside of work and supervision. Giving students a glimpse of this can help them gain a better understanding of what the supervisors’ work and life situation might be like. Thus, it can be said to contribute to a more equal relationship between supervisor and student, which may then be more easily characterised by partnership (Dysthe 2002).

On the other hand, the extract could be seen as an example of the supervisor’s private life entering the supervision situation in a way that is not always entirely relevant. In the quote, the supervisor also backs away from the initial question and emphasises that supervision should take precedence over the daughter’s leisure activities, which could be interpreted as a sign that the supervisor realises that this may not have been an entirely legitimate aspect to bring up in the supervision interaction. Ultimately, the example illustrates the constant balancing act that supervisors face in drawing the line between the professional, the personal and the private, and that it is far from obvious where these boundaries lie in any given situation.

Personal: In What Way?

While it is necessary as a supervisor to be alert to when a supervision situation or relationship becomes too close, it may be beneficial, as mentioned earlier, for supervision to be characterised not only by being academic and professional, but also by a degree of being personal. As we discussed earlier in this chapter, a good relationship between supervisor and student is relevant in relation to scaffolding (van de Pol 2012; van de Pol et al. 2010), as it can contribute to the students being able, willing and confident enough to be active in the scaffolding work that takes place in the supervision situation. But how can one attempt to create such an appropriately personal relationship in practice?

Describing the supervisor-student relationship in terms of being familiar or personal can be perceived as mainly involving inquiring about the student’s hobbies or family circumstances. Trying to find common interests that can be discussed in a friendly way can certainly be a valuable tool for supervisors, providing an opportunity to build a more personal relationship and contributing to a less hierarchical relationship with a greater element of partnership (cf. Dysthe 2002). For example, Clegg’s (2000) study showed that the most uncomplicated amicable relationships between supervisors and doctoral students consisted of all-male couples where both shared an interest in sport. At the same time, the benefits of finding similarities or common interests between supervisors and students should not be exaggerated. If too much emphasis is placed on this, there is a potential risk that students who are similar to the supervisor, or perhaps working on a topic that the supervisor finds particularly interesting, will be met with greater enthusiasm and interest than someone who has a different background, interests or academic focus from the supervisor. Similarly, asking questions about the students’ family situation has the potential to make the relationship more personal, but at the same time there is a risk that problems the students may be having at home, such as illness, divorce or custody disputes, will enter the supervision situation in a less constructive way.

Another way of trying to build a relationship that goes at least somewhat beyond the academic and professional is, as mentioned earlier, to make use of everyday small talk. Talking about the weather, public transport or how the student got to the supervisor’s office can play a role in making students less nervous and more comfortable with the situation, which in turn can help to lay the foundation for a good conversation during the supervision meeting. There are not many examples of this kind of initial small talk in our recorded material, which is probably partly due to the fact that the recordings were not started until everyone was seated. However, it was quite common for the recorded supervision sessions to begin with a question from the supervisor, either a social question or a general question about the degree project work. As in the following examples from various supervision sessions in our material:

  • Fun topic. How did you come up with this?

  • I’ve read your memo here, but can’t you tell me yourself first? What are you thinking?

  • Hey, sorry to hear about your foot. How do you think things are going?

  • What’s up? How is everything going? What has happened since you last sent this?

From various supervision sessions with supervisors A and F

The examples from our material are consistent with Svinhufvud and Vehviläinen’s (2013, 155) study of how supervision discussions are opened, which revealed certain patterns in the interaction between supervisors and students, such as that it was common for supervisors to start the conversation with a question. On the basis of this, there seems to be a kind of genre convention when it comes to how supervision discussions are started, as is common in institutional discussions in general (cf. Linell and Luckmann 1991). Usually it is the supervisor who controls the conversation and is responsible for initiating it, but the genre convention also includes the supervisor often opening up for dialogue at the outset and showing interest in the students’ activities and the current state of the degree project work.

In many cases, the answers supervisors received to these types of open-ended, initial questions were clearly focused on the degree project work, but other aspects could often also be captured that were more concerned with how students experienced or felt about the process. As in the following example when the supervisor asks the students how it feels:

Supervisor A::

Well, how does it feel?

Student B::

Well, yeah, I guess it feels good. A bit stressful. Tomorrow we are going to [name of school] because my old teacher has mentor time with their class and has already talked to them [about this]. But there were only two students who were interested, so we will crash their class and try to convince or motivate them to participate. So we don’t know if we’ll get any interviews, but we hope to appeal to them. We will bring coffee and stuff as a bit of bait.

Supervisor A::

Yes, well. That sounds good.

Student A::

Mm.

Student B::

Yeah, but I hope they will agree.

Student A::

Right.

Supervisor A::

Yeah, but if you tell them about who you are, that you went to their school and what you’re doing now and this thing about journalism and things like that. Then you can try to… then they might be interested. They can see themselves in you in some way. The personal approach is very important.

Student B::

Yeah, that’s true.

Supervisor A, Recording 4, Pair supervision

From a scaffolding perspective, this type of questions, which provide insight into how students are progressing in their work, can be seen as a way for the supervisor to achieve contingency by identifying where students are at so that the subsequent conversation can be adapted accordingly (see van de Pol 2012; van de Pol et al. 2010, 2019). As the supervisor in this example is specifically asking how the students are feeling, rather than how things are going or how the work is progressing, there is also a clear opening for the students to express their possible uncertainties and concerns, in this case in relation to the collection of empirical material. This gives the supervisor an opportunity to reassure and encourage them, as well as to offer advice on how to make the best of the situation.

Of course, asking how it feels need not be a carefully considered and deliberate strategy to find out more about how students are experiencing the degree project work, although in the example above it had that effect. It may simply be a way of expressing oneself. But that supervisors in our material were sometimes actively trying to find out not only how the degree project work was progressing, but also how the students were experiencing the process, is evident in the following example:

Supervisor B::

What’s up?

Student H::

Well, yeah, it’s fine.

Supervisor B::

What’s up with you, I should say.

Student H::

Oh, yeah, no, it’s… it’s fine. It’s still a bit confused with… This degree project, you know, is like… I don’t like it when it’s… Like this time of unstructured and it’s like, fuzzy. Then I get quite stressed.

Supervisor B::

So like this reflection phase or what?

Student H::

No, that’s not my thing at all. Then I get really stressed, so it’s… But it is, it’s good. Really, it is.

Supervisor B::

Can you tell me a little bit about what’s happened since we last saw each other?

Supervisor B, Recording 3, Individual supervision

To the supervisor’s first general question in this example, the student gives a short and neutral answer. It is only when the supervisor specifies that he or she really wants to know how the student is doing that the student gives a more detailed answer and also addresses what is perceived as hard. It should be noted that none of the supervisors in these two examples dwelt much on the students’ expressions of stress and concern. They did not express explicit sympathy or understanding, but neither did they belittle the students’ experiences and descriptions of the situation. Instead, they gave specific advice on how the students could deal with the perceived problems or redirected the conversation to the actual work of the degree project. At the same time, in both cases the students were given the opportunity to talk about how they experienced the work, not just how it progressed academically. Giving students the opportunity to express that they feel stressed, for example, may have a favourable effect on the degree project work itself. As the questions signal that the supervisors are not only interested in how the thesis work is progressing, but also in how the students are feeling, the supervisors in these examples can also be said to be contributing to a more personal relationship between supervisor and student that includes aspects other than the purely professional and academic.

Mutual Appreciation

Another possible approach that can contribute to a good relationship with students is to provide affirmation and encouragement in various ways. This may also contribute to a good atmosphere during the supervision meetings, which can be important in relation to the idea of scaffolding (van de Pol 2012; van de Pol et al. 2010). If the goal is for students, together with the supervisor, to be active in the scaffolding work that takes place in the supervision situation, this can be facilitated if the supervisor-student relationship is such that the student’s contributions, thoughts and ideas are perceived as desirable and welcome. Claire Aitchison et al. (Aitchison et al. 2012) have discussed that this is not always the case, for example when students, in their case doctoral students, fail to meet supervisors’ expectations of academic writing. As their study shows, this can lead to disappointment and frustration on the part of supervisors, which in turn can contribute to a negative atmosphere during a supervision meeting and strain the relationship.

Other factors that may contribute to hostile feelings in supervisors include when students are perceived to be arrogant towards the supervisors or not accepting of criticism and comments, or when they do not understand or adhere to the written or unwritten rules of the supervisor-student relationship, for example by repeatedly missing deadlines or not respecting the supervisors’ workload (Clegg 2000; Han and Xu 2021). Such behaviour can have a negative impact on the supervisor-student relationship and the climate of the conversation, in the sense that it may force supervisors to intervene and be more directive and explicit in their demands on how the students should proceed, and more negative in their feedback. This may make it more difficult or less attractive for students to be active in the supervision interaction. Although supervisors need to be able to react when students have not done what was agreed or expected, there is thus a need for some emotional regulation on the part of supervisors, as it is unlikely to be conducive to further work if the supervision becomes mired in blame and frustration.

In our focus group material, we had numerous examples of supervisors talking about the relationship with students in terms of disappointment or frustration, and such frustration could at times be reflected in the supervision interaction. However, there were also many cases where the interaction between supervisors and students was characterised by a positive attitude and mutual appreciation. The following extract from the recorded supervision sessions is one example of what this could look like in practice:

Supervisor H::

I think it’s absolutely brilliant. When we were talking with the whole group before, I was thinking that you could do something similar to how you make an interview guide …

Student A::

Yeah. Yeah, sure, exactly.

Supervisor H::

… or an observation guide and that’s exactly what you’ve already done and you’ve done it very ambitiously. I think it looks great! So this is: “Just go for it!”Footnote 3 /…/

Student S::

Mhm.

Supervisor H::

And the thought that I get sort of… Because it’s kind of fun for me, that your topic is by far the closest to my actual academic profession as a linguist. And that’s kind of exciting. How do you imagine… To what extent will your research be linguistic?

Supervisor H, Recording 2, Collective supervision

One reason why the supervisor in this case seemed so positive about what the student wanted to do was, as can be seen from the quote, that the student’s choice of topic was close to the supervisor’s discipline and area of interest. As mentioned earlier, other similarities between students and supervisors can also contribute to a relaxed, positive and friendly relationship between them. Age, gender and ethnicity can obviously play a role, but so can shared hobbies or other similarities (see Clegg 2000). Whilst this can be positive and beneficial in many ways to the degree project process, there is a potential risk that such factors may influence the degree to which different students are affirmed and encouraged, or the way in which supervision is organised and conducted. It is thus relevant for supervisors to reflect on the extent to which their own approach and attitude to the students they supervise is influenced by shared academic interests or hobbies, or a sense of connection through other commonalities.

However, the fact that the student’s chosen topic was close to Supervisor H’s area of interest was not the only thing that contributed to the positive attitude in the example above. As can be seen from the extract, the supervisor’s appreciation was also based on what the student had achieved—in this case, producing an ‘observation guide’ before the supervisor had suggested it. That the supervisor seemed to approve of this can be understood in the context of how taking initiatives was seen by supervisors in our study as a central part of student independence, as discussed in Chap. 3. Here, then, it was both the fact that the topic of the degree project was close to the supervisor’s own area of expertise and the student’s demonstrated independence that appeared to be valued by the supervisor.

As far as the relationship between Supervisor H and Student S was concerned, the appreciation was mutual. During the concluding supervision meeting, when the two of them discussed the final manuscript for the degree project together, the student expressed appreciation for the supervision received during the degree project course:

Student S::

You had a question in your comments on the last draft, which is… Because I’ve… I found your comments amazingly useful!

Supervisor H::

Well, that’s great!

Student S::

And I’ve tried to go through [it] and both ask like this… “Yes, but is this a perfect fit?”Footnote 4 And then I have either… if you think that: “Yes, but it probably is if you think like this…”. Or maybe I’ve just tested it like this or kind of: “No, it’s not. I’ll remove it. Or like that, sort of. And it’s been a really good support and structure.”

Supervisor H::

That’s great!

Student S::

Yeah, but all these examples and comments… Or it feels like it was very good like universal… Like for example: “Keep this in mind when you are writing. This is what you need to know at this stage” and things like that.

Supervisor H, Recording 3, Individual supervision

Here, in other words, it is the supervisor who is validated by the student and receives evidence that the help and support provided during the process was appreciated and made a positive contribution to the degree project work. Although Student S is unusually detailed in the feedback on the received supervision, it was not uncommon in our material for students to give affirmation to the supervisor in a variety of ways, for example by emphasising that they found the supervision meeting they had just had to be worthwhile. As in the following example, taken from the final minutes of a supervision meeting between Supervisor F and two students writing together:

Supervisor F::

But listen… I think this is a very exciting topic. Like I said, you just have to think: “What is it really about?”

Student O::

Yeah.

Student P::

Mm. We’ve actually gained a lot of new insights today. I really feel that. About what we should focus on.

Student O::

Absolutely.

Student P::

Yeah.

Student O::

Because it’s probably… My head has been buzzing a lot with that. More where the focus is (laughs) really.

Supervisor F, Recording 1, Pair supervision

This example of how the concluding part of the supervision session was characterised by a positive and mutually appreciative atmosphere may also be related to the fact that in many of the recorded supervision discussions there was a desire for consensus. In the conversation, supervisors and students often worked together to create a description of the situation that all could accept, even if it was one party who had introduced or highlighted the issue or problem in the first place. This idea of consensus often characterised the very end of supervision sessions, as above and as in the following example from the end of Supervisor A’s first supervision session with two students writing together:

Supervisor A::

So,… concentrate on doing the other things instead. Select your materials so that you have like a pile of articles.

Students C & D::

Mm. Okay.

Supervisor A::

Feel free to start reading as well. Because when you make an… [analytical] tool like this… You also have to do it in interaction with the material you are going to examine.

Student D::

Exactly.

Student C::

Absolutely. (laughs)

Supervisor A::

So it’s a kind of dialogue you have with the survey material. At first you think, “I’m going to find out these things”. That’s how you read it at first. Then you find other things as you read on.

Student D::

Mm. Yeah, exactly.

Supervisor A::

And then you have to go back and rewrite the questions. Then maybe you read a bit more, then you find other things. So it’s a bit of a back and forth.

Student C & D::

Mm. Exactly.

Supervisor A::

So if you have done that, sort of, so that you have a tool that you believe in.

Student D::

That sounds really sensible.

Student C::

Yeah, that sounds good.

Student D::

And fun, I think! (laughs)

Student C::

I can’t wait to start!

Supervisor A::

That’s great.

Supervisor A, Recording 2, Pair supervision

Here it is evident that the supervisor is in many ways confirming that the students are on the right track, while at the same time making explicit recommendations about how they should think about moving forward with their work. The students, on the other hand, repeatedly confirm what the supervisor is saying and show that they are on board, for example by saying that the suggestions sound good and sensible and that it will be fun and exciting to get started. In this way, the supervisor receives confirmation that the students have absorbed what has been said during the supervision meeting. In addition, this concluding conversation sequence contributes to the entire supervision meeting ending in a good atmosphere and with a visible consensus, despite the fact that the supervisor had already made a lot of remarks about the students’ preparations before the supervision meeting, as well as about their thesis idea and initial planning, in the discussions earlier in the meeting. In this way, a good foundation is laid for the next supervision meeting, in the sense that the students and the supervisor are on good terms when they part. This in turn may make it easier for the students to contact the supervisor if they encounter problems or have any questions before the next supervision meeting.

When Students Become Too Personal

It is not only how supervisors relate to students, but also how students relate to supervisors that affects the relationship between them and, by extension, the nature of the supervision. At times it is the students who actively bring their personal lives into the conversation or try to find points of contact with the supervisors. They may do this, for example, by talking about their family or personal interests, or by asking the supervisors about such things. This can also be seen as a way of making the relationship more personal, not just professional and academic, and can therefore contribute positively to the degree project work, for example by making the students feel safer and more comfortable during supervision meetings. At the same time, supervisors may resist this due to not seeking or not feeling comfortable with this type of relationship with students. Since supervisors not only have to encourage and enthuse the students, but also sometimes have to put a stop to ideas that are not expected to work, or point out that work that has been done is not of a sufficiently high quality, it is not self-evident that supervisors would want anything other than a strictly professional relationship with students.

In the recorded supervision sessions, we had several examples of students getting into personal issues or problems of a more sensitive nature, which had affected their thesis work and the writing process in various ways. Sometimes it could be that the students had been struggling with personal issues or their self-image, and that this affected how they perceived their ability to complete the degree project. In other cases, major life events, such as death or illness in the family or divorce, affected the student’s life, as well as the degree project process, in a significant way. But other, less serious life changes or personal circumstances can also impact on the student’s ability to work on the degree project, as in the following example from our material:

Supervisor F::

Are you working this Christmas, or?

Student Q::

I… er… was going to go away… (laughs)

Supervisor F::

Aaahh! I don’t want to hear that! (laughs)

Student Q::

(laughs) So, well… ehm… But I’ll have to bring some stuff with me, that’s how it is. (laughs)

Supervisor F::

Where are you going?

Student Q::

To [place] /…/ I have friends or cousins and stuff that live there, so I thought I’d spend Christmas with them.

Supervisor F::

Okay. Yeah, that sounds good… You are allowed to take some time off as well.

Student Q::

Because my… uh, our children, they celebrated Christmas with us last year, and the grandchildren and so on. But now we don’t have anyone this year, so we felt so alone. So I didn’t want to stay. I couldn’t stay at home then. Too lonely inside the walls. It’s not possible (laughs). So it’s best to get away.

Supervisor F, Recording 4, Individual supervision

The supervisor begins this conversation sequence with a relatively neutral question about how much time the student will have to work on the degree project over Christmas. When the student apologetically presents the plan to go away for Christmas, which is right at the end of the degree project period, the supervisor spontaneously reacts quite negatively. This may contribute to the student going on to explain in such detail the decision to go away at this particular time. In other words, the conversation and what Wetherell (2012) would call the affective practices are initially characterised by a certain amount of apology on the part of the student and a certain amount of blame on the part of the supervisor. However, in the subsequent conversation, the supervisor also shows understanding for the student’s choice:

Supervisor F::

No, no, but I guess it’s simply better to… I will go to [place] for Christmas for the same reason. My partner also has children, but will not have them then either, and thought it would be hard to be here over Christmas, sort of. /…/ So we’re leaving (laughs).

Student Q::

Mm. That’s what I thought. Maybe this time one might… So it was my choice, really. But… eh… I realise now that there is still a lot to do here.

Supervisor F::

Yeah, well, writing a degree project, it does take its time.

Student Q::

Yeah, yeah, it does. But it should be possible… it should be possible, I hope.

Supervisor F, Recording 4, Individual supervision

By referring to oneself in this way, and by pointing to similarities in life situations and choices, the supervisor could be said to be contributing to the relationship with the student becoming more personal and the conversation climate more intimate. The two quotes also illustrate the balance that supervisors must constantly maintain between, on the one hand, keeping the focus on the work, which is a central scaffolding goal in supervision practice (cf. van de Pol 2012; van de Pol et al. 2010), and, on the other hand, acknowledging that students also have a life outside of their studies that may have an impact on the degree project process.

As mentioned earlier, it can be problematic if too much focus is placed on the student’s personal life situation or problems of various kinds, not least because supervision time is usually limited, but also because there is a potential risk of the supervisor acting too much as a counsellor or therapist (cf. Strandler et al. 2014). In our material, there are several examples of supervisors trying to steer the conversation back to the degree project work when students got into these kinds of topics. This was particularly evident in one of the supervision processes we documented, where the student had a recurring tendency to describe themself in negative terms in all supervision sessions. Even when the supervisor asked questions that were directly related to the writing of the degree project and not at all focused on the student as a person, the student had a tendency to respond with a negatively charged self-characterisation. The student talked about having problems or weaknesses, being lazy, having difficulties with setting limits and so on.

At one point, the student highlighted several reasons for not completing the degree project the last time around and for finding it difficult now. These reasons were linked both to self-perception and to aspects of personal life:

Student G::

(laughs) Putting it a bit crudely: I think I’m two years behind my, my starting course. I mean, my former classmates… I started like in [year]. ‘Cause some other things happened in my life. So that… for me it feels like… I just want to get through this now. Just to get my degree. Actually I wouldn’t… like my boss said, “You don’t even have to”. She didn’t even think I needed to do this. But I feel like I have to finish it. So… I’m not super motivated, I can say, to do it. But I only do it because… Well, maybe it’s obvious? That I am taking some shortcuts to get through the degree project.

Supervisor B::

It’s a course. I told you that in the collective supervision session as well. It is a course, eh… It’s a writing exercise. It’s absolutely right to think about it instrumentally and, like, just do the task. /…/

Student G::

And then I don’t really have the confidence. I always think that what I’m doing isn’t any good. So I don’t really have… I don’t really believe myself in what I write. (laughs)

Supervisor B::

Well, you have a great topic and… uh…

Supervisor B, Recording 2, Individual supervision

As mentioned before, it can be difficult for supervisors to deal with students becoming very personal in this way during supervision. While the main focus of supervision should be on the degree project and writing, factors or events in the students’ personal lives may be of inescapable relevance to the degree project. One way of dealing with this kind of situation is to try to downplay the importance of the degree project and make it seem less fateful. In the example above, Supervisor B does this, for example, by describing the degree project as a writing exercise and something you can actually think instrumentally about. Trying to find something positive in the student’s work and build on it, as Supervisor B does at the end of the quote, can also be a viable way of dealing with the situation. At the same time, it may be easier said than done in practice in the particular situation that arises, as illustrated by the fact that this type of conversation was recurrent in all of the documented supervision conversations with this particular student.

How the Design of Conversations May Affect the Relationship

Another way of looking at the supervisor-student relationship, and how it is created and maintained in the supervision interaction, is to start with the design of the supervision conversations, primarily in terms of the structure and content of the conversations. The form and organisation of the conversations is relevant in terms of student independence, in relation to the roles that students take and are given in the conversations, and in terms of the space that students are provided to take initiatives (see Chap. 3) and bring up things that they want to discuss and that they consider important. This is related to aspects of whether the conversations are characterised by teaching, partnership or apprenticeship, and thus to power relations and hierarchies in the relationship between supervisors and students (cf. Dysthe 2002). From an academic literacies perspective, and also in relation to scaffolding, this kind of student agency, that students have the opportunity to influence the learning processes, becomes essential (cf. Jones et al. 2000; Lillis 2001; van de Pol 2012; van de Pol et al. 2010). In institutional conversations, of which supervision meetings are an example, the form of the conversation rarely invites agency and partnership, which places particular demands on the supervisors’ awareness (cf. Linell and Luckmann 1991).

The student’s ownership of these processes is thus important, which makes the organisation of supervision conversations and who controls the conversations through the choice of topics relevant to examine. Both in terms of who controls the conversation at an overall level and in terms of the space for students’ own perspectives and reflections at a more specific and subordinate level. On an overall level, supervision discussions can be described as either supervisor-driven or student-driven. What this entails can be defined in at least two ways, either by looking at who takes the interactive initiatives and initiates conversation topics and perspectives or by looking at who has or receives the most speaking space in a conversation—the students or the supervisors.

In student-driven supervision conversations, students have often prepared questions or topics for discussion, either submitted in advance or presented at the supervision meeting. In the recorded supervision material in our study, the discussions were primarily directed by the supervisors. In other words, it was usually the supervisors who led the conversations and initiated the topics to be discussed, and it was usually the supervisors who received or took most of the speaking space, although the variation between different conversations was considerable. In the following, we will take a closer look at what this looked like in our material in quantitative terms. The overview in Table 4.1 shows how speaking space, defined as word count, is distributed as a percentage in the different conversations we recorded in our study. It is a rather crude measure of speaking space and participation, but it can still give an overall picture of how the distribution of speaking space in supervision interaction often looks. Column 1 indicates which conversation it concerns, and column 2 which supervisor. Columns 3 and 4 show the percentage of speaking time for both supervisors and students, while column 5 shows how long the conversations are in terms of word count. The percentage of speaking time in the student column can include between one and four students.

Table 4.1 Table of speaking space in supervision conversations (cf Magnusson and Zackariasson 2021, 79)
Full size table

As can be seen in the overview, the supervisors have the most speaking space in most cases, 27 out of 36 conversations. In purely quantitative terms, then, the conversations are far from equal and far from what one might imagine to be the ideal image of a supervision conversation characterised by partnership (cf. Dysthe 2002). In the nine conversations where the students’ speaking time exceeds that of the supervisor, there is often more than one student present at the supervision meeting, where no single student’s speaking time exceeds that of the supervisor. There is no discernible pattern when it comes to conversations where the supervisor’s speaking time is less than that of the students. There is no particular supervisor who consistently has less speaking time, and there is no supervisor-student constellation where the supervisor’s speaking time is consistently lower. In other words, the differences do not appear to be about more or less dominant supervisors.

Although the supervisors have the most speaking space, the students’ speaking space is rarely very small. Thus, there seems to be real student participation and involvement in the discussions, in the sense that they do not only consist of monologues and teaching by the supervisors, but also include some form of interaction. It might have been expected that the students’ speaking time would increase in the later stages of the supervision process, when the students are likely to be more confident, but such a tendency is not at all evident in this material. The few conversations in which the supervisors’ speaking space is smaller than that of the students are found both at the beginning and at the end of the supervision process. Thus, in our material, the supervisors’ speaking space is generally greater, which is in line with the institutional role that supervisors have, but it is difficult to see any fixed roles for supervisors and students, as it varies between different supervisors and students, and between different stages of the supervision process.

The way in which supervision conversations are structured is significant for what the supervisor-student relationship looks like and what the possibilities are, or appear to be, within that relationship. Thus, it is not only the distribution of speaking space between supervisors and students that is relevant, but also how supervision conversations are managed in more detail. A closer examination of the recorded supervision interaction in our study revealed how supervisor-led supervision conversations tended to differ from student-led conversations in terms of the principles on which they were organised and structured. For example, supervisor-led conversations, or parts of conversations, could be structured on the basis of a submitted draft text, and the conversation then tended to follow the structure of the text and the comments that the supervisor had made in the document. In addition, conversations led by the supervisor could be structured on the basis of more general perspectives in relation to more specific perspectives, a kind of macro to micro structure. Such discussions could, for example, begin with a discussion of the problem formulation and the purpose of the thesis and end with discussions of specific expressions and phrases or perspectives. A third, more unusual, form of supervisor-led conversation was structured around the criteria for degree project work within a specific course or programme, where, for example, at the end of the degree project process, the supervisor would go through the submitted final draft from the perspective of whether it met all the requirements set for the course. Our material showed that the nature of the conversations varied depending on where the students were in the process, with the first conversations tending to focus on overall perspectives and the last conversations tending to focus more on detail.

The student-led supervision conversations were often structured around problems and concerns the students had about their own work process: finding and choosing relevant theory, problems with material collection and so on. Student-led supervision discussions were also structured around problems and concerns with the supervisor’s written feedback, especially when it was perceived as difficult to interpret. A third way of structuring supervision discussions, which was only partly student-driven, involved student narratives or descriptions, where students were asked to describe what they had been doing since the last supervision meeting, while the supervisor interjected these stories or descriptions with questions and problematisations. In these cases, it was usually the supervisors who initiated the structure, but the students’ accounts or descriptions still guided the conversation.

In summary, we were able to identify a number of types of supervisor-led and student-led conversations or parts of conversations in our material:

Supervisor-led conversations

  • structured based on written comments in text drafts

  • structured based on the macro-micro structure of the degree project

  • structured based on criteria for the degree project

Student-led conversations

  • structured based on problems and concerns in the work process

  • structured based on questions about ambiguities in written feedback

  • structured based on the students’ account of what they have done.

Supervisor-Led Conversations

In the following, we will take a closer look at some examples of supervisor-led conversation sequences structured on the basis of the student’s text drafts, taken from our recorded supervision sessions. In the tables below, the columns with topic levels 1–3 indicate whether the topics discussed are superior or subordinate, while the dialogue boxes indicate who is initiating the topics. Dialogue boxes on the left mean that the supervisor initiated the topic and dialogue boxes on the right mean that it was the student(s). In the conversation sequence from which the first example is taken (Table 4.2), it was, as the dialogue boxes show, only the supervisor who initiated topics.

Table 4.2 Supervisor-driven conversation (cf Magnusson and Zackariasson 2021, 82)
Full size table

First, the supervisor opened the conversation by explaining that the first draft submitted by the student and read by the supervisor was to be discussed. The supervisor then asked what the student had done since submitting the draft (progress summary), which was a relatively open start to the discussion. In response to this question, the student did not mention anything in particular, but stated that everything was probably included in the submitted draft text. The supervisor and the student then went through the draft from beginning to end—introduction and background, purpose and research questions, method and previous research. Sometimes specific aspects were discussed in relation to these different parts of the text. What the supervisor called ‘phrasing issues’ were discussed in the method section, as well as whether or not the student was planning to do content analysis.

When they reached the section on previous research, the discussion first concerned the use of references and then more general considerations about what the section on previous research should contain. Even though it was the supervisor who introduced all the topics discussed and who directed the conversation, the student’s own thoughts and reflections were constantly solicited—so there was a continuous opportunity for the student to take a more active part in the conversation. It should also be noted that this supervision conversation was clearly divided into two parts, which followed completely different organisational principles. What is being discussed here is the first part of the conversation, while the second part was based on open questions aimed at the student to raise matters that he/she considered important, difficult, interesting, etc.

In the example, the submitted draft text thus played an integral role in the structure of the conversation. The supervisor directed the conversation on the basis of the student’s text, which the supervisor had read and commented on before the meeting, read out parts of the text to illustrate something that needed to be discussed and also read their own notes in the text out loud:

  1. 1.

    Supervisor G: Let’s have a look at your first draft then… a bit… and discuss some more things I’ve been thinking about.

  2. 2.

    Supervisor G: But when it comes to… Have you made any changes to the aim and research questions since I read the project plan?

  3. 3.

    Supervisor G: Then you go into method and then you introduce hermeneutics.

  4. 4.

    Supervisor G: Uh, I’ve thought a bit about some, like, phrasing issues here and there.

  5. 5.

    Supervisor G: Previous research, I think this section also works well.

    Supervisor G, examples from individual supervision

In these quotes from the conversation, the supervisor introduces the intended structure for the conversation—to look at the first draft and discuss things the supervisor reflected on during the reading (quote 1). The supervisor then follows the text throughout raising questions around aim and research questions (quote 2), method/theory (quote 3), wording (quote 4) and previous research (quote 5). Phrases such as ‘then you go into’ and ‘that section’ indicate that it is the text itself that is being discussed together.

This way of structuring a supervisor-led supervision discussion is quite typical in our recorded conversations, although not always expressed as explicitly. This structure suggests that it is primarily the text, the specific product, that is the goal of the supervision session, rather than a more general discussion of academic thinking, etc. It thus creates a focus for the activity in question and at the same time involves a prioritisation in which the written text is given the most important role. When, as in this example, a text is used in a variety of ways to support supervision conversations, it can be understood as what Star and Griesemer (1989) call a boundary object. This means that the text can be seen almost as a participant in the conversation, delimiting and connecting activities and situations (Magnusson 2016). The fact that it is the student’s text that guides the conversation could also be described as the student indirectly directing the conversation and gaining agency, as quotes from the text become the starting point for the discussion, which gives voice to the student. At the same time, it is the supervisor who controls what in the text is considered relevant to discuss.

Student-Led Conversations

Although it was generally uncommon in the supervision conversations recorded within our project, for conversations or parts of conversations to be controlled by the student(s), there were some instances of this, such as the supervision conversation from which the example below is taken. Here the student had prepared questions about a number of perceived problems or difficult choices before the supervision meeting and the conversation was largely structured around these questions. As before, dialogue boxes on the right indicate that it was the student who initiated the topics in question, and dialogue boxes on the left indicate that it was the supervisor (Table 4.3).

Table 4.3 Student-driven conversation (cf Magnusson and Zackariasson 2021, 85)
Full size table

In this particular supervision conversation, the opening lines were not included in the recording, so we do not know if the student started the conversation with an explicit request or description of what they wanted to get out of the conversation. However, at the end of the conversation, the student referred to having prepared questions beforehand, commenting, “Yeah, well, those were probably the questions I had, I think”, suggesting that this was also raised at the beginning. These questions from the student clearly structured the conversation, even though the supervisor also touched on related aspects in connection with these questions. The following quotes from the discussion illustrate how the student could initiate different topics in the discussion:

  1. (1)

    Student N: Yeah, what I got stuck on then was this with the method /…/ I don’t know if there is like something general… Or can you kind of use different methods?

  2. (2)

    Student N: But this with legibility, I have to bring it up somehow and then explain what it is and this ‘lix’ and that and then I wonder: Where does it go, is it a theoretical concept or is it just a central concept that you …?

  3. (3)

    Student N: Yeah, but that’s right… Alignment—is alignment a theory or what?

    Supervisor E, individual supervision

The recording began with the student introducing the choice of method as the first topic for the supervision conversation, then proceeding to present a number of potential methods for the degree project, before ending the segment with a question as to whether they were expected to use one overall method or whether several methods could be used (quote 1). The same pattern was then repeated in the ensuing conversation, with the student usually introducing a topic that ended in a question to the supervisor. As in quotes 2 and 3 above, where the topics of legibility and alignment were introduced by the student, leading to questions about whether ‘lix’, a readability test, should be considered a theoretical or central concept, and whether alignment should be regarded as a theory. The conversation then proceeded on the basis of these questions. As mentioned above, the form and organisation of a conversation is relevant to student independence, and this particular way of structuring a conversation can be seen as particularly effective in this regard, as it gives students plenty of space to bring up things they want to discuss and that they consider important. The form of conversation is also effective in terms of student agency, as students have the opportunity to be active and to control their own learning and learning processes, which is also central from a scaffolding perspective (van de Pol 2012; van de Pol et al. 2010).

Although this kind of student-driven supervision conversation was rather unusual in the recorded supervision sessions in our material, there are other forms of communication between supervisors and students where student initiatives were much more common, for example, email correspondence between supervisors and students, which often plays a significant role in the supervision process. In an article by Magnusson and Sveen (2013), a review was made of all communication between a student and a supervisor during the supervision of a degree project. There were a total of 15 emails in 3 email threads, and in all cases it was the student who initiated the contact by asking a question. This question was answered by the supervisor and then the email thread ended with the student sending a message thanking the supervisor for the help. Here’s an example of what this could look like:

Student R::

Hi! I have another question about references. /…/

Supervisor G::

Hi! In this case it definitely sounds like you should refer to [author X].

Student R::

Thank you! Then I think I know what to do.

(Supervisor G, email conversation)

In this example, the student asked a question about references, the supervisor responded with a direct recommendation, and the student then thanked the supervisor for the advice. This exemplifies how student initiative and participation may differ between communication channels or modalities, as the supervisor may be the initiator in conversations, while the student may be the initiator in email communication. In other words, our results show how various types of relationships between supervisors and students can be established during a supervision process through different forms of communication, and that this can enable different types of student participation and independence, understood as taking initiatives (cf. Chap. 3). We would thus argue that supervisors should be willing to let the forms of communication complement each other in order to facilitate different forms of student independence, especially since not all students are equally comfortable with each type of communication, as one student may prefer email conversations to express thoughts and ideas, while another may prefer face-to-face conversations.

So, there are a number of different aspects that are important in terms of what the supervisor-student relationship will look like, both in terms of how individuals choose to behave towards each other when it comes to asking questions or how personal they choose to be, and the actual interaction during the supervision session itself. In addition, relationships with people outside of this constellation are also important to the degree project work and the supervision process, both students’ relationships with their fellow students and supervisors’ relationships with their colleagues, especially if these are examiners, seminar leaders or programme or course coordinators within the degree project courses. We will explore this in the next chapter, where we develop the discussion of the emotional aspects of supervision.