Supervisor development through creative approaches to writing

The development of research higher degree supervisors is a relatively recent phenomenon. In most cases, supervisor development continues within the traditional workshop mode and remains firmly located within what Bob Smith calls the "administrative framing" of supervision. This framing ensures that a liberal and policy-orientated discourse retains dominance as the mode of solving problems in supervision. This article explores three creative approaches to supervisor development that take writing as their starting point for critical inquiry. Each approach enables the exploration and troubling of supervisors' identities, which contains some risks. Careful balancing of benefits and risks opens up possibilities for developing supervision pedagogy that makes central a level of complexity that the administrative framing of supervision often erases.