The Supervisor as Assessor

In this chapter we explore a central part of supervision practice that is not always obvious—the supervisor’s role as assessor—and how this role can be understood in relation to student independence, academic literacies and scaffolding. We discuss how assessment can be part of supervision practice, for example when supervisors give praise or affirmation to students, as this involves a positive evaluation of what students have achieved or of the choices they have made. The same applies when supervisors give negative criticism or communicate in various ways that something the students have done or plan to do does not meet expectations and quality requirements. In the chapter, we consider how supervisors’ responses can include elements of formative and summative assessment, and discuss this from the perspective of how the role of supervisors relates to the role and tasks of examiners. We also discuss how student independence might be assessed, first looking at how this might be affected by the increasing use of artificial intelligence and large language models in the context of academic writing, and then presenting an example of how a particular aspect of student independence might be assessed.