Postgraduate student in the field of education: on the relationship with the scientific supervisor
Authors: Sobkin Vladimir S. , Smyslova Maria M. , Kolomiets Yurij O. 
Published: June 2022

Background. In connection with the crisis noted by researchers in the system of training scientific and pedagogical personnel for higher and postgraduate education (one of the indicators of which is the low percentage of postgraduate students defending a PhD thesis), it is extremely important to study the problems of scientific leadership of postgraduate students. Objective. The study of the features of interaction of postgraduate students with their scientific supervisors, depending on the influence of socio-stratification factors, motivation for admission to graduate school and self-assessment of their capabilities in the successful defense of a dissertation research. Design. The article is based on the materials of a monitoring questionnaire survey of 803 postgraduate students of organizations engaged in the training of postgraduate students in the field of education sciences. The study involved students of postgraduate research organizations engaged in the training of postgraduate students in the field of education sciences, as well as pedagogical universities in Moscow and the regions of the Russian Federation. In this paper, the influence of socio-demographic and socio-stratification factors on the relationship between scientific supervisors and postgraduate students is considered. The empirical data were processed using the methods of mathematical statistics (statistical software packages SPSS and StatSoft Statistica). Results. The study showed the influence of socio-demographic and socio-stratification factors on the assessment of the features of interaction with the supervisor by postgraduate students. A special correlation analysis of the motives for admission to graduate school showed that there is a connection between the motivation of postgraduate students and the character of interaction with the supervisor. The connection between the features of interaction of graduate students with the supervisor and the availability of obtaining his advice with the confidence of postgraduate students in the successful defense of the candidate’s thesis is shown. Conclusion. The study allowed us to characterize a number of significant aspects concerning the socio-psychological features of the relationship between postgraduate students and their scientific supervisors. These include: the importance of the experience of working with the supervisor of the dissertation at the stage of writing the graduate work at university, as a special mechanism for recruiting in the field of science; the influence of socio-stratification factors on building relationships with the supervisor about the dissertation research; the influence of the graduate student’s involvement in the scientific activities of the supervisor on the motivation of training in graduate school; the influence of the availability of professional contacts with the supervisor on the confidence of the postgraduate student in the successful defense of his dissertation. In general, the research materials allow us to conclude that the relationship with the supervisor is an important indicator of the “social capital” that a graduate student acquires during his postgraduate studies.