Questions without ideas
Supervisors struggle with students asking questions
but not suggesting their own ideas for solutions.
Thesis projects invariably lead to challenges that are not easily solvable. To a large degree, finding a way through these challenges and devising the best possible path to take can be described to be among the most important meta-capabilities trained and, hopefully, adopted during a research project. However, supervisors know one situation all too well: student researchers encounter a problem, throw up their hands, and seek direction devoid of any own ideas.
Supervisors tend to be less engaged and motivated to help students who show up on their doorstep with nothing more than a problem on their hands. Bringing merely a problem without any ideas on how to solve it signals that the student expects their supervisor to solve the problem they encountered. There are several issues with this situation: first, it suggests lacking ownership by the student on their project. Ownership and commitment are crucial qualities for successful research careers. Committed researchers own every part of their project, and they develop their own ideas for advancement. Of course, commitment never stands in the way of seeking council, but it would not expect a pre-drawn path to be provided by anyone else than the researcher themselves. Second, showing up without ideas suggests a misunderstanding of the supervisor’s role. It signals an overestimation of what a supervisor can accomplish within the frame of resources a thesis supervision can provide. Third, becoming completely shell-shocked by a challenge suggests potential in reflecting on the role of risk in research. There are few worthwhile projects that simply fall into place without any kind of challenge. To a degree, the challenge is why we do research - and solving challenges to reach insight is what we do in research.
Instead of finding students overwhelmed and creatively disabled by challenges, let’s rather reposition the central role of challenges and their solution in research. Devising strategies to overcome challenges is an essential trait of researchers, and it should be trained as such.
Challenges during a research project are most effectively met if they are not understood to be break points in which the researcher can lean back and delegate solving of a question to their supervisor. Quite the contrary: arriving at a challenge requires leaning forward, into the challenge. While the rest of the project may have come together almost by itself, you might consider the challenge to be the reason you undertook the project in the first place. The challenge is the essence of the research - otherwise, it would be mind-numbing implementation of methodology devoid of any required creativity. How can you solve the problem? Here, developing and evaluating options might not get the student fully unstuck, but it will signal to the called-upon supervisor that the groundwork has been laid for them to weigh in on the options.
How do you instruct and encourage your students to develop their own solutions in light of challenges? How can students who need more help be guided in a constructive direction?