Supervisor's Workshop

We will soon meet in Johannesburg, and I am looking forward to that.

The Supervisor Workshop was conceived to improve research training, in CARTA but also throughout the partner institutions. It has been internationally recognized that excellent supervision is a key to good research training. Many of you have considerable experience in supervision but others are just entering into an assignment as supervisors. The idea of the supervisor workshop is that we should share our experiences of success as well as failures as supervisors. This should be done with the background of international experiences. With this letter you are provided with the detailed lesson plans, containing suggested readings on different key aspects of supervision. To have maximal benefit of the workshop I suggest that you peruse the readings and study in detail those readings and web sites you find particularly valuable. Please note that Taylor and Francis have made their journals available to you for the workshop (details at p2 of the lesson plan booklet). Other journals are available through the HINARI system provided to your institutions (contact your university library for access details if you do not have them already). We do not plan for a hierarchical teaching and learning philosophy. Thus, the facilitators and the participants should all be involved and contribute to the success of the workshop. Therefore, the workshop will benefit from your experiences both as supervisors and supervisees. The same pedagogic model is used throughout the CARTA Joint Advanced Seminars. The master lesson plans could also be of some value for you to establish supervisor training in your home institutions. Therefore, we encourage you to evaluate the plans critically and suggest necessary improvements.

The supervisor workshop is at the Wits School of Public Health, the same venue as your supervisees are attending the second Joint Advanced Seminar. Knowing the time squeezed situation at your institutions we suggest that you take advantage of the possibility to interact with your supervisee during the workshop. Two “Clinics” where one or two CARTA facilitators discuss the project of your supervisee with you and your

PhD candidate have also been scheduled. It is our experience that many CARTA fellows want to modify their project plans during the CARTA training and we want you to be involved in this process which will be facilitated at the Clinics.

See you in a few days.

Yours Sincerely

Prof Goran Bondjers