Being the supervisor: A duo-ethnographic exploration of social justice in postgraduate health professions education

Abstract

Background

There is growing global awareness of the importance of matters of equity and social justice. In health professions education (HPE), research has focused at undergraduate level and on health sciences curricula. Increasingly, health care professionals engage in HPE Master's and doctoral studies, where they are educated as curriculum designers and ‘producers’ of knowledge through their research. Considering their role in shaping what (and how it) is taught in health sciences curricula, questions can be asked about the extent to which postgraduate pedagogies are mindful of matters of social justice. As supervisors of postgraduate HPE students and as directors of such programmes, we interrogated and juxtaposed our perspectives on social justice and how these perspectives influence our postgraduate HPE supervisory and directing practices in our respective contexts.

Methodology

Utilising a duo-ethnographic approach, in which we each represented a site of enquiry, we generated data through written reflections and dialogic engagement framed around research questions about (1) our understanding of social justice, (2) how this influenced our practices as postgraduate supervisors and (3) how this influenced our practices and policies as directors of postgraduate studies. We recorded and transcribed our data generation meetings. Based on open coding of the transcriptions and written reflections, we constructed a conversation around our research questions. We integrated our reflexive journals in the conversation.

Findings and Discussion

Our conversations were characterised by three sets of ideas involving the terminology around social justice, the complex nature of social justice, and the individual and social justice. These played out differently in our contexts, but they caution both of us against assumptions and encourage us to create time for conversations with our students, to consider what we ‘teach’ them, how we guide them and how we avoid gatekeeping their entry into the disciplinary space.

1 BACKGROUND

Medicine's ever-evolving social contract is inextricably linked to issues of social justice and the need to ensure graduates who are ‘critically conscious’.^{1, 2} In the context of health professions education (HPE), ‘critical consciousness’, which derives from the work of Paolo Freire, has been described as an awareness that will lead to health professionals ‘who question the causes of health inequity and intervene in health care contexts and systems with a view to transforming them into more socially just spaces’ (p. 300).³ Social justice has been described as ‘the heart of medical education’^{4 (p. 161)} and in this context defined as ‘the open acknowledgment of the dignity and autonomy of, and delivery of high-quality medical care to, all members of society, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, language, geographic origin, or socioeconomic background’ (p. 782).⁵ Recent work describes ‘a future state in which root causes of inequity (e.g. racism and ableism), have been dismantled and barriers have been removed’ (p. 1).⁶

Globally, there is a growing HPE literature exploring aspects of social justice^{2, 7, 8}; equity, diversity, and inclusion⁹; critical consciousness¹⁰; intersectionality,¹¹ decoloniality¹² and the like. To date, much of this work has been conducted at undergraduate level, focusing on health sciences curricula and the ways in which these ideas, philosophies and principles can be incorporated in the educational space.² As the field of HPE continues to mature, increasing numbers of health care professionals (and those working in fields allied to the health sciences) are opting to engage in HPE Master's and doctoral studies. Students and graduates from these programmes are educated to become designers of health sciences curricula, and ‘producers’ of HPE knowledge through their research projects. Considering this group's role in shaping what is taught and how it is taught in health sciences curricula, questions can be asked about the extent to which postgraduate pedagogies in this area are mindful of the ideas described above. This includes questions on how social inequalities and power relations might play out in these postgraduate programmes, for example within the student-supervisor relationship. As far as we know, these are questions that to date have not been engaged with in the context of HPE.

It is, however, not easy to explore matters of equity and justice. How these descriptors and definitions are understood, is complex as we individually attribute meaning to them based on ‘discourses that are historically constituted and that are sites of conflicting and divergent political endeavours’.¹³ We are both scholars in HPE who supervise students at Master's and doctoral level, and we are involved in designing and directing these programmes. We utilise our joint research interest in issues of social justice to interrogate and juxtapose our perspectives on social justice and how these perspectives influence our postgraduate supervision practices in our respective contexts. This includes examining how the principles of social justice do/can/should inform our curricula on the one hand (in the context of postgraduate studies this could be extended to the focus of student research and how it is carried out) and also how these principles manifest in teaching encounters (or not). Given the growing diversity in postgraduate HPE students, these questions matter perhaps more now than ever before and speak to issues of knowledge and who determines what ‘counts’ as knowledge in the field. It is these historically constituted discourses that we hope to juxtapose alongside one another to explore what they might mean for our work in very different contexts with HPE postgraduate students and educators. Our work was informed by our research questions:

1. How do I understand social justice?
2. How do my understandings of social justice influence my practices as postgraduate supervisor?
3. How do my understandings of social justice influence my practices and policies as director of postgraduate studies?

2 METHODOLOGY: DUO-ETHNOGRAPHY AS AN APPROACH

To frame our counterpoint conversations, we utilised a duo-ethnographic approach. In duo-ethnography, two (or more) researchers each act as a site of enquiry,¹⁴ similar to a single researcher in auto-ethnography. The researchers learn about themselves from the other through a dialogic process of reciprocal, collaborative, critical introspection and reflection.¹⁴ Duo-ethnographers work ‘in tandem to untangle and disrupt meanings about a particular social phenomenon’ (p. 1)¹⁵—in this case social justice and the implications it holds for our practices in HPE postgraduate studies. An intention of duo-ethnography is to explore ‘personal and collective narratives of resistance in relation to dominant discourses and metanarratives’,¹⁴ which fits our social justice focus. Our intention was not to achieve consensus, nor to prescribe recommendations, but to rather interrogate our positions emphasising difference and the implications this holds for our practice.¹⁶ Our juxtaposed stories intend to encourage readers to recall, question and juxtapose their own stories about implications that adopting a social justice agenda may hold for their work with postgraduate students.¹⁴

In keeping with duo-ethnographic principles, we adopted an ‘analytical-interpretive’ approach that is informed by data generated through our individual stories. Although ethical considerations are important in duo-ethnography, the nature of the approach—with the researchers as participants—does not necessitate board review for ethical approval.¹⁴ We started the process by writing individual, critical reflections that offered an initial response to the research questions. We included a personal position statement (Who am I?) relative to social justice. We then read one another's reflections and generated questions that informed the first of three data generation meetings. These meetings through MS Teams were recorded and transcribed. In the 2 months between each meeting, we read the transcript of the previous meeting and individually engaged in an analytical process that included open coding of the text. This process influenced our practices and experiences of the phenomenon, and also encouraged us to consult literature. Our analyses and transformative experiences served as input for each subsequent meeting. At each meeting, we further probed the phenomenon, revisited our focus and discussed our analyses and literature. Through this dialogic engagement, we intended to create the ‘multi-voiced’ texts that characterise duo-ethnography. Below, we present our ‘findings’ in the form of a conversation around our research questions. It is not our actual conversation, but a constructed narrative based on our analysis of the data (the written reflections and transcriptions). The literature that we consulted serves as a partner in this conversation¹⁴; we used it to further explore our experiences.

2.1 Reflexivity

In this work, we intentionally adopt a social justice agenda while acknowledging that there are many other aspects of postgraduate education that might equally warrant attention. We engage in this work as HPE scholars who hold leadership positions within our institutions, who are responsible for HPE postgraduate programmes and are currently supervising (and have supervised) Master's and doctoral students. We offer these conversations acutely mindful that they represent our individual perspectives, perspectives that render us vulnerable.¹⁷ This vulnerability is in contrast to the positions of relative ‘power’ that we hold at our institutions and to the privileges we experience within our contexts and communities, both locally and internationally.

Early on in our reflective duo-ethnographic process, we both recognised a growing discomfort with the task we had taken on board, questioning whether we, coming from privileged backgrounds and working in privileged institutions in our contexts, were the right people to be raising issues about social justice, acknowledging that we could not claim to ‘represent’ anything beyond ourselves. We even considered withdrawing from the project, recognising that with this publication we might be taking up someone else's space. Duo-ethnography is inherently participatory as the researchers engage in transformative self-study and reconceptualise their own story.¹⁴ In the conversation below, we have integrated further instances of how we changed through this research act. We acknowledge, however, that these transformations are limited and that they do not reflect disruptive, systemic changes. Nevertheless, we opted not to withdraw, but to rather share our stories, uncomfortable as it might be, in the hope that it will prompt other stories being told.

As we present our conversation below, therefore, we invite you to bring your own stories, and those of your students, to this conversation and to acknowledge that each of us has a role to play to reflect on our own positions, perspectives and blinds spots, and to challenge dominant, hegemonic thinking. Reflexivity is intimately tied to the duo-ethnographic practice, and as such, our reflexive notes are not limited to this section but interwoven in the paper. Before moving to our conversation around the research questions, we provide further details about our postgraduate HPE contexts.

2.2 Our post-graduate educational contexts

2.2.1 Susan

I am a professor in Health Professions Education and Director of the Centre for Health Professions Education (CHPE) in the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. The Centre is small although its Master's in HPE programme was one of the first to be offered on the African continent.¹⁸ The PhD programme started in 2012 and has had only seven graduates, four of which are members of staff within the CHPE. With this relatively inexperienced team we have built up our programme registering nine PhD candidates in 2024. Our students are either local or from neighbouring sub-Saharan countries. All work full-time and complete their postgraduate studies alongside their clinical, teaching or other academic work. Most PhD candidates follow the monograph route although an article-based format is an option. The difficulty in getting work from the region published in reputable journals often discourages candidates from selecting this latter option. Candidates are usually supervised by one core supervisor and one co-supervisor with the supervisor typically also mentoring a junior colleague in the co-supervisory role. As the numbers of candidates have increased, a partial ‘cohort model’¹⁹ programme has been designed to address key dimensions of the doctoral process during regular synchronous online sessions.

2.2.2 Janneke

I am an assistant professor at the School of Health Professions Education (SHE), Maastricht University, the Netherlands. Based in what is often referred to as the ‘global North’, SHE is a dominant player in the published landscape of HPE research^{20, 21} and has historically attracted Master's and doctoral students from around the world. Since 2019, I coordinate the SHE PhD program, which hosts an average of 105 PhD candidates. The majority of candidates is based elsewhere in the world and does their PhD project remotely, next to their clinical or other work. A smaller number of candidates is based in Maastricht and work on their PhD fulltime. SHE PhD theses are article-based; candidates are expected to publish four articles in international peer-reviewed journals, with help from a team of typically three supervisors. Apart from short mandatory modules on scientific integrity, open science and science communication, coursework is undertaken on a needs-basis. Additionally, onsite and online activities, such as journal clubs, special interest group meetings and a biennial conference, are organised to facilitate scholarly development, networking and community building. Next to managing the PhD programme, I supervise several candidates in this program, and I am a graduate from the program.

3 A CONVERSATION ON SOCIAL JUSTICE IN POSTGRADUATE HEALTH PROFESSIONS EDUCATION

How do we understand social justice?

Susan

Social justice is very much on the agenda in South Africa where there is considerable inequity across all strata of society. My understanding of social justice on a personal level has been shaped by my history of growing up as a white person in apartheid South Africa, followed by many years in higher education working with a rich diversity of students. On a conceptual level, my understanding has been influenced, among others, by the work of Nancy Fraser, who posits ‘participatory parity’ as the ultimate aim of social justice.²² This parity needs to be present across three dimensions the economic (distribution of resources); the cultural (recognizing and valuing the cultures of all); and the political (representation and membership). It is about ensuring that everyone can participate on an equal footing, for which you need empowerment and status equality across these three dimensions holistically.

Janneke

In the Netherlands, these three dimensions have historically been dominated by a white majority. It is relatively recent that some of those in power have begun to realize and take seriously the lasting impact of Dutch colonial history on our current society. Concepts such as institutional racism and white privilege are now making their way into mainstream discourse - yet also meeting resistance there as part of a polarizing process currently characterizing European politics. In the Netherlands, social justice is not a commonly used term. Related concepts have been increasingly receiving attention in recent years though, notably diversity and inclusivity. Many organizations, including my university, installed a diversity and inclusivity office and organize activities and support in these areas. For example, students and staff can apply for a small grant for an initiative that contributes to inclusivity. The focus is on creating an environment in which everyone feels welcome and valued. Equity is often mentioned in one go with diversity and inclusivity, using the acronyms DEI or EDI, focusing on equal opportunities for all to participate.

Susan

I struggle with the concepts of DEI. Much of the debate about DEI issues is being conducted from the perspective of minorities that need to be ‘included’ and treated equitably. In my country, I am part of a minority based on race, but I am privileged in that context. Naidu has problematized diversity, equity and specifically inclusion, calling the term ‘inherently discriminatory’.^{23 (p. 5)} This debate is of course not straight-forward, but it raises questions about what the idea of inclusion means in, for example, the South African context. Inclusion to what? Inclusion of whom? Inclusion according to whose criteria? I have found that working with the over-arching principles of social justice - such as promoting equity, seeking equal distribution of resources, foregrounding power and privilege, and recognizing society's responsibility to one another^{3, 5, 9} - gives me direction. It is these principles that I seek to draw on during my engagement with my students.

Janneke

Indeed when using the term inclusion, I think these questions are not considered in the Dutch context, at least not explicitly enough. Zaidi et al recently introduced whiteness theory to medical education, and point to (in)visible forces that “create environments that favour White individuals at the exclusion of all others”.^{24 (p. 903)} While listening to you, I start to recognize how even some DEI initiatives are shaped from a whiteness paradigm, viewed from the perspective of how minoritized groups can be felt to ‘belong’ within the majority context, whereas the structure of the context itself is not questioned. Pursuing social justice, I think critical consciousness is crucial,²⁵ which includes critically analyzing the status quo in terms of power dynamics and systemic inequalities, and thinking of how the dominant system can be changed. This project is painfully making me aware how I have not been doing this in many instances, and how I, as a white researcher at an institute with a dominant publication record, based in a country with a history as colonial power, have not been consistently mindful of my privilege.

Susan

This project is also making me think of the different terms we use within our different societal contexts. At a recent conference this was highlighted. The presenter had conducted a literature review of interventions to address racism in higher education, and found differences in the language people used to frame their conversations.²⁶ These included social justice (Sub Saharan Africa); diversity, equity and inclusion (North America); multiculturalism (South America); moral education (Northern Africa); democratic citizenship (Europe); social harmony (Asia) and cultural competency (Australia). What this triggered for me is that there are all these different ideas and perspectives, driven by individual and societal agendas. Maybe striving for a definition of social justice is a fallacious exercise. I say ‘social justice’ because I have to use a word, but in fact it has all these different tentacles. Perhaps the motivation behind these ideas is the same? To have more equitable and just conversations and practices.

Janneke

Yes, the terms matter less than the ideas behind them. I wonder how these ideas, shaped by our contextual differences, play out in our experiences of postgraduate education.

How do our understandings of social justice influence our practices as postgraduate supervisors?

Susan

From an educational perspective, social justice speaks to new ways of knowing,²⁷ and the acknowledgement of new knowledges.²⁸ Whose knowledge counts and matters? What knowledge is being produced? Whose interests are being served in that production? These are questions I grapple with all the time in my context. And specifically in HPE, it is not only about what you know or come to know, but also about who you are becoming. “[F]ostering compassionate, socially responsible health professionals is an imperative for health professions education”.^{25 (p. 12)} Debates about higher education as a public good, particularly in a country like South Africa, are both relevant and complex.

Janneke

In postgraduate education, then, an imperative is to foster socially responsible scholars, and the question of knowledges is at the heart of scholarship. In my context, I feel like I am in the middle of zero-point epistemology (ZPE), which refers to the “avowedly objective stance of how white Western science produced knowledge the ‘truth’ scientists seek is both nowhere and everywhere; we would claim it just ‘is’, as a zero point”.^{27 (p. 1109)} It relates to the whiteness paradigm referred to earlier, and as someone born and raised within this paradigm I often feel I am not able to see or act outside of it. As a postgraduate supervisor, this project is making me aware that I practice in conflicting ways. Depending on the topic of my students' work, I try to encourage them to use critical lenses, and for example discuss how decoloniality and critical consciousness relate to their project. But I do not ask all of my students about such concepts. It seems I make a distinction in my mind between ‘socially just’ and ‘other’ projects. I seem to approach it in an ‘academic way’, as something that can be investigated on its own, rather than something inherent in everything. I approach my supervisory practices from within the ZPE paradigm, in terms of not questioning enough where theories and frameworks that we use originated, which alternatives exist or could be created, and for and by whom knowledge within the project is created.

Susan

I think that attention for social justice cannot be something other than personal. In our field we often approach it academically, but it starts with self, with our own experiences and actions. In my context I witness so many visible injustices on a daily basis that feed into my awareness. In your context, it may be difficult for the ‘ruling majority’ to see or feel the need to change. I think for both of us though, the question is, how do we open up those conversations with our postgraduate students and co-supervisors? For me personally, social justice is present in every conversation and engagement. It does not have to be ‘put on the agenda’. But what I struggle with is how to have those conversations, how to start them and which words to use. This also relates to the writing process, and guiding my students in their language use when it comes to social justice issues. I have a fear of saying the wrong things and using the wrong words, and a desire for not wanting to anger people but wanting to invite them to the conversation. I find myself in need of language. I am mindful of making space for others, to the extent that I even received feedback about being too apologetic in my writing. There is a fine line between being humble and being too apologetic.

Janneke

I recognize the challenge of not having the language to engage. Talking about issues of equity and inclusion involves talking about differences, which often involves categorizations, and these are not representative of the complexity of individuals' experiences. For example, categorizations based on race, or the East/West distinction. In conversations with students and in the writing process, I try to avoid or nuance such generalizations. Perhaps I should be less afraid of using them, and focus rather on how I use them, because they can serve a purpose of starting a conversation about individual experiences, and why and how we want to use these terms, what their history and implications are, what they mean to us personally and to the power dynamics in the team and project. Such conversations do not happen automatically,²⁹ and this project is pointing out to me that I, as a supervisor, can engage with students about this, also and perhaps especially with students who do not take an explicit focus on differences, inequity and injustice in their research work.

Susan

For me, the global North/South categorization has been problematic. I live in a country in the global South that has one of the highest levels of inequality in the world, yet I am part of a privileged minority. I have often felt an ‘imposter’, and I am in a completely different position of power compared with many of my students. I want to empower my students towards critical consciousness, such that they are able to act on society, but I also want to be mindful of not making the doctoral journey even harder for them than it already is. When it comes to the product of the research (the academic text), my practice is fraught with uncertainty and misgivings. While I want to ensure my students have the space and latitude to be strident and push back against dominant thinking, and to let their voices be heard, I have an equal responsibility to facilitate their academic success. Here the cost of challenging disciplinary norms and conventions can be significant. Many of my students struggle to pay university fees, and graduation in the shortest possible time is often paramount. Inevitably I become complicit in serving as a gatekeeper, encouraging them to ‘play the game’. I try to convince myself that this is in their best interest and that, once they have graduated they can use their voices to influence the field. To that end, I have many conversations with my students about academia, about its ‘ways of doing’ and about how, if we all keep pushing, we can shift hegemonic thinking.

Janneke

I recognize the balancing act of teaching our students both the rules and limitations of the game. The acts of writing and publishing are probably the two major aspects of postgraduate education in which this tension plays out. We encourage students to follow the canon, to write up their work using the IMRAD structure (Intro, Methods, Results and Discussion), and to publish in international journals that are not as international as often presented.²¹ By defining this as the only way of academic success, we are indeed complicit of keeping this inequitable game in place. Regarding the product of research, what are your ideas about possible alternatives? Immersed in the dominant context, I find it challenging to think out of the box.

Susan

Recently, I attended a mind-blowing presentation of PhD work at my institution. They called it a ‘digital PhD’ and it was largely comprised of visual elements, narrations, music, and some text. It was so incredibly done. An orthopedic surgeon in the audience said that this would be a fascinating way to do a PhD in orthopedics, because of the practical and visual elements involved in their discipline. So I think that also for HPE doctoral work there are other ways of doing. Why does a PhD thesis have to consist of published papers? Isn't there another way in which artifacts could be created and still peer reviewed? Another example in my context is storytelling, something that comes naturally to many African cultures. I use storytelling a lot in my postgraduate supervision work, for example in a writing workshop where I ask students to write up the outline of their study as a story, starting with “Once upon a time …”. Storytelling has been picked up by the field in general, also for example in the shape of podcasts. And then finally, I think again of language. At one of the universities in my country, a candidate was enabled to write his entire dissertation in isiXhosa (one of South Africa's official languages). He could express himself in his own language, the power of which we should not underestimate. I think with the options for translation that we now have available, why can't people write in their own language? Though the implications for social justice might be more nuanced. Based on their experiences of language editing using AI tools, such as ChatGPT, non-native English scholars warned that optimism about these tools to “level the playing field for non-native English writers should be tempered”.³⁰

Janneke

I like your examples of how we might rethink the products of postgraduate work. I notice my actions as a supervisor stay rather limited to small things within the boundaries of the system, such as broadening the team of supervisors or collaborators to include other perspectives, encouraging students to use more diverse databases and literature, and getting students and scholars from different backgrounds together in discussion groups to exchange research experiences in these areas. I don't feel these efforts work to change the system.

How do our understandings of social justice influence our practices and policies as directors of postgraduate studies?

Susan

I realize that in this story I am the director of my centre and I am near retirement. This creates opportunities for me to push back against the system, without being too concerned about the ramifications. I try to use this position to get my students' voices heard, and I have nothing to lose trying to do things differently, but they have a lot to lose. Postgraduate studies are high stakes. I also recognize you are in a different career stage having to balance different interests. Embodying critical consciousness requires a willingness to delve into ‘complex and messy areas’,³¹ challenging one's own position of power and privilege such that it leads to a different way of being in the world. Paradis et al talk about ‘disruptive change’, which ‘is made possible by identifying, unpacking, and replacing potentially oppressive discourses’.^{32 (p. 843)} It's not an easy space, particularly not for postgraduate students.

Janneke

There is a tension between the individuality of the current academic system, with its importance placed on individual CV's, positions and publications, and social justice which is about the community as a whole.²⁷ Yes, as an assistant professor I am dependent on others for my career steps, and in my position as PhD coordinator I am dependent on the director and management team of the institute for decisions on policy matters, finances, and structure of the program. Our conversations helped me realize that even within this dependency I am in a position of power and have the agency to change things, to exploit ‘gaps in the system’ to make space for others and for different ways.²³ Somehow I did not feel like I was in this position of power, but this project makes me see many opportunities for advocacy, which I now try to use more deliberately, rather than passively participating in the status quo. No one explicitly tells you these things in my context. A gap that I can exploit further in my setting relates to publishing opportunities. At my institution, PhD candidates are traditionally expected to publish their work in journals with an impact factor as reported in the Journal Citation Reports (JCR). In practice, and from a social justice perspective, other journals or platforms may fit better, for example because they reach a regional audience for which the findings and messages are intended, or because they accept work that describes applications or adaptations of existing frameworks that are relevant to a wide audience but that JCR journals may not find sufficiently ‘innovative’. Individual supervisors in our program have encouraged students to send their work to such journals, and their theses have been successfully defended. In my position, I can encourage these practices and place our publication strategy on the management team's agenda, proposing to redefine it to contribute to diversifying the published landscape and creating more equitable publication opportunities for our diverse group of students.

Susan

Indeed, the question probably is, am I recognizing and using the power and privilege that I have? Am I using it for the public good? I have personal connections with journal editors in our field, for example. Given our conversation earlier about alternative academic products, we might approach journal editors to commission a special edition that challenges people to think about the academic project in new and different ways. Across the world there are probably instances of people doing things in very innovative ways, but because it is not the convention, few are writing about it. Maybe if you have a call to reimagine the academic project, people would respond. In the meantime, however, the ‘publication game’ remains largely unchanged and perceptions about how difficult it is for work from countries outside North America and Europe to be published, continue to perpetuate the current skewed global picture.

Janneke

Another inequitable issue in our program is funding and access to resources. We present the program as welcoming candidates from all over the world, including from low and middle income countries (LMIC), but the large majority of our international candidates is from high income countries. Many of the latter have access to mentorship, funding and support in their contexts that enables them to produce PhD proposals that meet our criteria and to participate in educational and networking activities. Our candidates from LMICs often run into barriers related to mentorship, funding and resources to attend courses and conferences.³³ With our management team I developed a new scholarship structure to support this group and to widen access opportunities to our doctoral program, but it is not enough to level the playing field.

Susan

In our program, finances are a challenge as well. Though when it comes to access to the program, pathways here are perhaps the opposite from your context. Black applicants, for example, may be more likely to secure funding, particularly national funding. However, sometimes personal contexts can be crippling. Having said this, our student numbers are small in comparison with yours and we are a very small team who work with the students. Often this allows us to work at an individual level, and find customized solutions that are less readily available when dealing with large groups. And the prevailing discourse at organization level is increasingly one of encouraging socially just policies and practices so we can take bold steps into this space – we just need to take them.

Janneke

And that often starts with self. One of my tasks involves gatekeeping with help from reviewers, I decide whether or not incoming PhD proposals are accepted into the program. Initially, as my predecessor taught me, I rejected proposals that addressed ‘local’ problems that did not seem to have relevance for the ‘global’ literature. Slowly I realized that I was perpetuating epistemic injustice, which Fricker³⁴ refers to as the practices of ingenuously downgrading and/or disadvantaging applicants as ‘epistemically lesser’. This puts them at an unfair disadvantage in getting me to comprehend their stories, ideas and proposals due to my ZPE interpretations of ‘global’ and ‘local’ knowledge. I became more mindful about the review process and the need to constantly recognize my own blind spots and biases. However, you mentioned disruptive change and different ways of being in the world, yet with all of the actions that I talked about, I am keeping my position and the position of my institute ‘safe’ and unchanged. My advocacy is still within the boundaries of the system rather than to oppose or resist it.³⁵ The elephant in the room is: should our doctoral program continue to exist the way it does, with its current size, focus and approach?

4 WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR THE EDUCATION OF POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS GOING FORWARD?

In this paper, we set out to explore, from two different vantage points, the implications that intentionally attending to issues of social justice can hold for the education of postgraduate students in HPE, both in terms of the administration of postgraduate studies, as well as in terms of the supervisory relationship. It is clear that these are complex matters with no easy solutions. In this section, therefore, rather than proposing a way forward, we offer some overarching perspectives. As suggested earlier, we invite readers to reflect on their own stories, and to also invite their students to do so.

Much of the literature around social justice and its implications for education emphasises the need for open and critical dialogue.^{3, 5, 25} However, we use so many different terms to talk about issues of equity and justice that this has the potential to derail our conversations. Terms differ across countries, regions, communities, and cultures each foregrounding a different dimension (belonging, inclusion, diversity, etc.). Even within countries, regions, communities and cultures, there are different understandings of these terms.² These ranges of understandings are often situated at the level of the individual and, as we have seen from our conversations, are drawn from our histories, our values, and our contexts.¹³ This inevitably influences our engagement with our postgraduate students. It cautions us against assumptions and suggests that time should be taken to explore our different understandings with a view to facilitating meaningful engagement.⁵ It also encourages us to create time to hear our students' and colleagues' stories and to consider the implications that these stories hold for their and our research endeavours.

It is not only the terminology that introduces complexity into this discussion. In the educational space, social justice potentially plays out across multiple levels and has both organisational (policy, practices) and academic (theoretical, disciplinary) imperatives. It also has implications for power and knowledge, and for challenging dominant hegemonic practices within the field,⁶ practices that have become entrenched over many years.²⁸ In the organisational context, it means ratifying policies that enable and indeed encourage socially just practices such that institutional cultures shift and embrace new ways of doing. In an academic context, it becomes the norm for the way we engage with our students and colleagues. This emphasises the need for open, ‘brave’ conversations and requires of both parties a willingness to shift, an openness to change, an ability to confront one's position and world view.³ It furthermore holds implications for what we ‘teach’ our students, whose knowledge we foreground, which resources we point them to. And finally, it has implications for how we guide them, the extent to which we might gatekeep their entry into the disciplinary space by requiring conformation and the adoption of dominant thinking.²⁸

For both of us, work in this area is troubling and conflicting.¹⁷ It is also intensely personal. In many ways, in spite of our differences, our experience of work in this area is similar. We question our legitimacy in even participating in this conversation, tentatively looking to serve as advocates for awareness, and for change. We feel conflicted in our student engagements. We second guess our motives while feeling at a loss for the right words, mindful of needing to move beyond awareness to ‘reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it’ (p.52).³⁶

4.1 Concluding thoughts

Postgraduate studies are ultimately about making a contribution to knowledge in the field. Epistemic justice—perhaps a proxy for social justice in the postgraduate space—becomes characterised by a multivoiced contribution to knowledge, and an acknowledgement of different knowledges. In fact, more than an acknowledgement, it should rather become an affirmation of and engagement with these different knowledges. Doing so will require a level of disruption and practice that may feel counter intuitive, one for which we may feel unprepared. Those of us responsible for building the next cadre of HPE scholars instinctively seek to defend the integrity of the canon, this fledgling field to which we are fully committed, and guide our students to success. What we have realised, however, is that in seeking to adopt socially just practices and principles, the task can become both political and personal and there are few ‘rules’ to guide us. Still, we would like to believe that this project has taken us forward on this course, however limited and acknowledging that further discomforting work awaits us.

AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS

Both authors have made substantial contributions to the conceptualization and methodological design of the work, to data collection, analysis and interpretation and to drafting and revising the work. Both authors approve the final version of the work.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to thank our reviewers for their insightful comments on the original version of this paper.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT

The authors report no conflicts of interest.

ETHICS STATEMENT

Not applicable.

Open Research

DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT

Data sharing is not applicable to this article as no new data were created or analyzed in this study.