Exploring challenges faced by PhD Supervisors and Candidates in Social Sciences in the African Context

Abstract

Postgraduate supervisors and their candidates experience a myriad of challenges during their journeys to reaching to PhD. This study explores challenges encountered by doctoral supervisors and candidates in Social Sciences in the African context. The study employed qualitative methodology informed by the interpretivist philosophy and convenience sampling was employed to generate data. Focus group discussions were used to generate data from twenty-five PhD supervisors who had gathered at a workshop in one of the African countries. For data presentation and analysis, emergent themes that were generated hinged on supervisor challenges, student challenges, methodological challenges, infrastructural challenges, and policy challenges. The study recommends intensive training of PhD supervisors. The study also recommends the need for universities to run workshops with doctoral supervisors to provide them with the fundamentals of doctoral thesis coaching and mentoring. Candidates need workshops from the onset of the PhD journey. Universities need to up skill their PhD supervisors so that they guide their candidates to produce quality work.