‘I don’t feel so lonely anymore!’: Emerging and established researchers share their experiences of team supervision within a mentoring programme

Journal for Transdisciplinary Research in Southern Africa

 
 
Field Value
 
Title ‘I don’t feel so lonely anymore!’: Emerging and established researchers share their experiences of team supervision within a mentoring programme
 
Creator Condy, Janet Cronje, Johannes Venske, Esti Abrahams, Elhaam Mhlongo, Thandazile Bester, Dirk Raji, Atanda
 
Subject — Community of inquiry; mentoring programme; postgraduate supervision; emerging supervisors; established supervisors; qualitative analysis
Description This study reports on an online transdisciplinary institutional mentoring initiative, the Sisonke Supervision Mentoring Programme. In 2024, a team of three established supervisors mentored a cohort of seven emerging supervisors over a period of 12 weeks. Employing an interpretivist paradigm, we inductively and deductively analysed transcripts using the Community of Inquiry framework. The aim was to ascertain how social, cognitive and teaching presences shaped the mentoring experience. Our results indicate that the mentees progressed from feeling alone and intimidated to realising that a safe, open space had been created where all communication and feedback were valued.Transdisciplinary Contribution: This study makes a novel contribution by highlighting the benefits of moving from the ‘lonely scholar’ model of supervision to a transdisciplinary research culture in which established and emerging supervisors interact with each other. The non-hierarchical environment of the mentoring group produced a safe and encouraging space in which a diversity of perspectives was valued by both mentors and mentees.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor
Date 2026-05-05
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — —
Format text/html application/epub+zip text/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/td.v22i1.1654
 
Source The Journal for Transdisciplinary Research in Southern Africa; Vol 22, No 1 (2026); 11 pages 2415-2005 1817-4434
 
Language eng
 
Relation
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://td-sa.net/index.php/td/article/view/1654/2691 https://td-sa.net/index.php/td/article/view/1654/2692 https://td-sa.net/index.php/td/article/view/1654/2693 https://td-sa.net/index.php/td/article/view/1654/2694
 
Coverage — — —
Rights Copyright (c) 2026 Janet Condy, Johannes Cronje, Esti Venske, Elhaam Abrahams, Thandazile Mhlongo, Dirk Bester, Atanda Raji https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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