Associate Professor Barbara Brook

Communication, Language and Cultural Studies, Victoria University (St Albans Campus), Victoria, Australia

Shades of Pale: Reflecting Whiteness in Research Supervision

Abstract

In the current economic climate of Australian higher education, international post-graduate students are being aggressively recruited as full-fee-paying students in Australian universities in both coursework and research programs. Reflective research of postgraduate- supervision has become relatively recently a field of interest. It is, therefore, not surprising to find little discussion of cross-cultural issues in this area and still less consideration of the ways in which different cultural perspectives might fruitfully challenge and materially trouble the western academy's methodologies in the establishment of 'bodies of knowledge'.

'First-world '(or whatever other problematic term is used to designate a hegemonic relationship) feminist methodologies have begun-not before time-- to be more reflective about our/their 'whiteness'.

This paper offers a reflective examination of one set of structural relations: the experience of being a 'white-Australian' academic supervisor for post-graduate students from non-western societies who study, as part of a coursework Masters program, common curriculum in feminist theory and research methods with 'Australian' students, before undertaking field-based research either in their own countries of origin or in Australia.

The experience of returning to the country of origin for fieldwork places the researcher in the position of outsider-insider rather than participant-informant, with sometimes unexpected tensions. Supervision may, therefore, entail a debriefing of the student to a greater extent than usual, and call on skills that have not been conventionally expected of supervisors. This raises a number of ethical concerns around the supervision process and carries implications for future training and for the models of 'knowledge production' more broadly.

Bionote

Barbara Brook coordinates Gender Studies at Victoria University, Melbourne. She has a long-standing interest in feminist pedagogies particularly in the context of higher education. Her most recent publications include Feminist Perspectives on the Body (Longman 1999) and 'Is there any body there?': particular bodies in lecturing spaces', in C. O'Farrell et al (eds) Taught Bodies, Peter Lang, N.Y., 2000. She is currently exploring issues of class and race in postgraduate supervision, using narrative inquiry methodology.

Presentation Type
30 min. Paper

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Country
Australia