ABSTRACT
Drawing on their learning from a five-year-long academic relationship, authors Sigrid Gjótterud and Athman Kyaruzi Ahmad write about the transformative power of supervisory work in situations when ‘academic’ knowledge is understood as arising from teaching and learning relationships, and all parties are seen as equally contributing to the creation of ideas that can influence the learning of others. This approach to academic work, they argue, can be transformative, with potential for influencing people's lives. Rather than focus on the possible problematics involved in such situations, as seems to be the dominant message in the literatures, it enables people to imagine new futures, often with the emergence of unexpected potentials. From their own experiences of cross-cultural supervision, they identify strategies for transforming the potentially risky aspects of unhomeliness, discomfort and cultural alienation into situations that can be enjoyable, enriching and mutually rewarding for supervisor and supervisee. They identify new success criteria for such cross-cultural supervisory relationships as a willingness to take risks, to be open to differences and to engage in dialogue. Such criteria, they argue, should be seen as core academic principles: a willingness to suspend established prejudices about the other and engage instead in open relationships that can contribute to enriching, sustainable development.
