top of page

RSVP’s first year: progress and highlights

Find out what we've achieved in our first year and what we’ve got planned for 2025.


RSVP was established at the close of 2023 with funding from Research England, and by February 2024, we had a public launch event attracting over 200 attendees from across the sector. In May, we issued a call for Higher Education Practitioner Partners to work with us on piloting activities. Since then, we have been active across the three fundamental areas that underpin RSVP: Practice, Pedagogy, and Policy.


Practice

Practitioner Partners

We were delighted to have received such a positive response to our invitation to the sector to get involved with RSVP. Over 50 organisations from across the globe are now part of the RSVP story as Practitioner Partners. Through online and face-to-face discussions with our Practitioner Partners, we’ve already learnt a lot about the barriers and accelerators to getting engagement from research supervisors in professional development, and we’ll be sharing that in publications and conference presentations.


RSVP colleagues will also be disseminating what we’ve learnt from our focus groups with supervisors, partners and through the UK Research Supervision Survey 2024 at a panel session at the 9th Biennial Conference on Research into Postgraduate Supervision in Stellenbosch, South Africa and closer to home, running a workshop on Professionalising Supervision at the PRIDE Network Annual Conference. The UKCGE Supervisors’ Network also provides an opportunity for supervisor developers and supervisors to come together to discuss key topics.


Continuing Professional Development (CPD)

Drawing on the empirical data and scholarship on supervision, we are currently developing and piloting within the core consortium (York, Sheffield Hallam, Nottingham, Coventry and King’s College London) a range of onboarding and CPD interventions. These include: workshops, peer observation of supervision, resources to support onboarding, peer mentoring circles, support for recognition of supervision practice through the UKCGE Research Supervision Recognition Programme, web resources, and a self-assessment tool to enable institutions to take stock of current professional development provision for research supervisors and identify what they may wish to put in place. The draft version will be piloted with Practitioner Partners in 2025 and will be released to the sector once ready. We anticipate this might be used to support institutions with regard to the People, Culture and Environment indicators for the REF.


To support piloting of professional development interventions and complement the UKCGE Good Practice Supervisory Framework, we've also started to develop a Continuing Professional Development (CPD) programme aimed at new and experienced supervisors.


Pedagogy, Scholarship and Intelligence Gathering

Focus groups with supervisors

We've conducted 30 (online) focus groups with supervisors (88 in total) at different career stages at the five core universities. We are using this information to underpin the development and refinement of professional development interventions that will be piloted at the institutions from February to July. We plan to publish the findings in 2025.


UK Research Supervision Survey 2024

The second national survey on supervisor experiences ran from June to July 2024, and the UK Research Supervision Survey (UKRSS) 2024 report was released in Autumn 2024. The survey confirms that an overwhelming 90% of supervisors enjoy supervision but that issues of time allocation for supervision practice, recognition and reward are still not being properly addressed. Team supervision has increased with 76% of respondents saying they often work in teams. You can read the executive summary and full details by accessing the report below. In addition to this, we've also made the question set available, free of charge, to any universities who wish to run their own survey.


Policy

RSVP has been highlighted as a key element in the UKRI New Deal for PGRs and explicit mention of professional development for supervisors is included in the UKRI Statement of Expectation for Doctoral Training.


The REF Policy, Culture and Environment Pilot Exercise Assessment Framework asks for Documented evidence that the infrastructure, processes and mechanisms in place to support the training and supervision of research students are working effectively’ and ‘Documented steps to enable staff and research students to engaged in continuing professional development (CPD)’.


There is also a requirement from some UKRI funders (ESRC and BBSRC) to include supervision training in applications for UKRI Focal and Landscape Awards. Together with UKCGE and our External Advisory Board we will continue to use opportunities to influence funders and policymakers.


 

New RSVP External Advisory Board


In September 2024 we launched an open call for RSVP External Advisory Board members which attracted over 100 applications from the UK, Europe, Australasia and North America. Our members were selected on the basis of experience and knowledge of doctoral education, EDI and networks.


Chaired by Dr Maria Augusta Arruda and Professor Jerry Roberts, the Board will provide independent perspective, advice and guidance throughout the project to bring about sustainable change within research supervision.




 

Next steps


We will continue to build on our progress across practice, pedagogy and policy over the next two years by sharing resources, publications and opportunities across the sector. As part of this, a core activity will be piloting professional development interventions with our Practitioner Partners, and testing our online ‘Just One Thing’ series showcasing practical approaches to support supervisor development. Our piloting timeline outlines what we hope to achieve and the pace at which we will do this.

Key dates on a timeline with markers at February 2025, June 2025, October 2025 and March 2027.

February to June 2025

June to October 2025

October 2025 to March 2027

Pilots of the professional development interventions across the RSVP core consortium partners (York, SHU, Coventry, KCL and Nottingham).

Evaluating the results of the pilots with the core partners and making refinements in light of feedback.

Roll-out of the professional development interventions - start of 18 month pilot and evaluation activity with our Practitioner Partners.

We will continue to update you as we enter the next phase of development and look forward to another productive year.

bottom of page